https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=eN9unyv2-9I
So, let’s say you’re having an argument with your partner, and you say, you’re a stupid person. And you’ve always been a stupid person, and as far as I can tell, as far into the future as I can see, you’re going to remain a stupid person. So what are they supposed to do? What are they going to do when you say that? They’re going to cry, like if you mean it. They’re going to get angry, if you mean it. And they’re not going to like you very much. And why is that? Well, it’s like, it’s assault, basically. The only way, really, the only thing that you can do in a situation like that is walk away, ignore it, respond in kind, or it degenerates into violence. That’s it. Because there’s no discussion. You haven’t left the person anywhere to go. You’ve gone right to the top of their hierarchy and said everything about you is wrong, and worse than that, all the mechanisms that we could use to correct it won’t work. So those are fighting words. So don’t do that unless you want to have a fight. So then you might say, well, what would you do instead? And the answer is, deliver the least amount of information you possibly can. And so let’s say you come home and your person is watching TV, and you’re kind of hoping they greet you at the door. You shouldn’t break down into tears and say you’re a stupid person. You’ve always been a stupid person, and you’re going to be a stupid person in the future. So let’s say I have this peculiarity, and that is that when I come home, I don’t have enough confidence to just be happy. I would like you to come and say, just shut the TV off for two minutes, come to the front door and say hello. Then you can go back and watch your TV. Would it be okay if you did that? And they’ll think, well, you’ll have to pay for it somehow. But then they’ll probably do it. But the thing is, you’ve got to specify the routine that you want transformed at the highest possible level of resolution, and you want to recommend the minimal necessary change that will satisfy you. So you can’t say, if you loved me, you’d know how to greet me at the door. Not helpful, because they’re stupid. Right? And so are you. So you have to spell it out. It’s like, what do you want? Exactly, what would make you satisfied? And then you have to have your person grudgingly practice that a few times, and you have to let them do it very badly, and also in a bad temper, and then you have to reward them for it, and then maybe three months later they’ll do it properly. So you need to know that, because that’s what people are like. It’s very hard for them to learn new things, and they’re very resistant to it, but they’re very responsive to reward. So another thing, this is partly what B.F. Skinner figured out. When he was training rats, and he wanted a rat to do something, one of the things he would do is he put, maybe he was going to train the rat to climb a little ladder. I mean, he could get rats to climb ladders, and then climb across the little monkey bars, and then spin around three times, and then whack a ball, and then eat something. He got incredibly complex behaviour out of rats. And the way he did that was patience. So he put the ladder in the cage, and the rat would just run around doing rat things, and then it would put its hand on the first rung, and Skinner would give it a pellet. And so, even once, the rat’s going to be standing in the immediate vicinity of the ladder, and then the frequency with which it’s going to go like this is just increased, so then it does it again, bang, pellet. Well soon the rat is just going like this, right? So then you wait until the rat tries the other hand. So you give it a pellet then, well then it’s going like this. And then because it’s going to get bored, it’ll go like this, it’ll hit the next stair, bang, you give it a pellet, soon the rat’s climbing and doing all the little things you want it to do. Now, the problem with that is you have to be patient. You have to wait until the rat does what you want. Okay, that’s more relationship advice. Wait until the rat does what you want, and then reward it. And it’s unbelievably useful. It’s also extraordinarily positive. I mean I’m being comical insofar as I can manage that about this situation. But people love reward, and they love attention. People love attention more than anything else. And so if you watch through the day, and when your partner does something that’s good, say bam, that was good, or something like that, you can be inventive, and then they’ll do it more. And if you do that a whole bunch, like for a year, they’ll be doing things that are good for you just all the time. But you have to be patient, which is very annoying, and you have to suppress your response to only respond to negative things. You know, because what we know about the expectancy models is that a deviation from expectation produces a burst of negative emotions. So you come home, and the whole house is clean, but there’s like, I don’t know, the dog has shed on the rug or something, and the person overlooked that. It’s like you’re not going to see the clean house, you’re going to see the rug with the dog fur on it. You’re going to say, why didn’t you clean up the rug with the dog fur? And they’re going to say, good luck getting me to clean up the house again. And you know, because the thing is, is the exception stands out, and what’s done doesn’t. And the reason for that is you can just ignore what’s done, because it’s done. It doesn’t get in your way. So it gets invisible really quickly. So you really got to watch that tendency. One of the things Nietzsche said was that if you really want to punish someone, you don’t punish them when they do something wrong. Because they expect that. That’s not a punishment. They expect that. They might even be relieved by it. You want to punish them when they do something right. Because then you’ll really hurt them. And so that’s something to think about. And if you’re in a relationship, man, if someone’s done something right, do not punish them. You do that two or three times, and that’s it. And you’re not going to get them to do that anymore. So judiciousness. Watch what they’re doing. If something happens that’s good, notice it. And if they’ve done a bunch of things, don’t concentrate on the things they did wrong. That’s not smart. It’s really hard on them too. In some sense this sounds manipulative and selfish, because I’m teaching you how to train your partner. But you should also teach them how to train you. Because it would be really nice if you could come home and the person would say, well what did you do today? And you say, here’s a bunch of things I did. And they say, well this looks really good and that was great. Why don’t you do some more of that? And you’re like, oh boy, it was a great day. And so you can train them to train you properly. And that’s a really helpful thing. Especially if you do it over a few years. That’s how you have a good relationship. Because you’re both clueless as hell to begin with. You don’t know even what would make you happy, much less what would make the other person happy. And so you’ve got to figure these things out bit by bit. And then you have to inform each other and then you have to be patient enough to let your partner do these things really badly. I’ll give you another example. Sometimes I see couples sporadically in my clinical practice. I’m not a couples counsellor. But sometimes when I’m working with someone there’s an issue that needs to be discussed with both people, because otherwise it’s just stupid. And one of the things I often recommend to people, especially once they have kids, is that they set aside, to use an anachronistic phrase, date nights. Well everyone hates that idea. It’s like they say, well, you know, they’ll just say, I’m not doing that. That would be one objection. We’re just not doing that. You know, that’s what we did before we got married. They’ll say, well my partner would never go for that. They’ve got a bunch of excuses why that isn’t going to work. And so I’ve heard all those excuses. I know all of them. And then maybe I convince them, yeah, yeah, sure, I know, this is stupid, it’s awkward, it’s artificial. That’s okay, just try it once. So then they go and try it and then they come back and they say, we had an absolutely miserable time. Really, we had a miserable time. We couldn’t agree on what movie to go to and then, you know, she took me to her movie and I really didn’t like it. So we fought all the way home. We’re never doing that again. And I say, well really, you’ve got 30 years, 400 days, that’s 12,000 days. Okay, so you’re not going to do that. You’re going to spend the next 12,000 days without having any real romantic evenings and interactions with your spouse. That’s your plan. And I like doing arithmetic with my clients. They hate that. They hate arithmetic. They hate arithmetic. It’s like, well no, that sounds like a bad idea. I said, okay well, would you like some romance in your life or are you just done with that? Well really, like, you know, people can go for a long time with no romance at all. I say, well no, maybe we’d like some of that. Well how much? Once a year? Well no. Once a month? Well no. Once every two weeks? Well sometimes people are really busy. It’s like, okay, that beats the hell out of zero. Once a week? Twice a week? Okay, whatever. We’re going to start with a range. What would a good evening look like? Like if you could both get exactly what you wanted, what would it look like? Well then they have to think about that because the previous theory was my stupid partner should know what I like and that’s what the partner is thinking too. It’s like good luck with that because no, they don’t have a clue, especially if they’re men, they don’t have a clue. So you have to tell them what you want and how they could deliver it and vice versa, which is very awkward and horrible. And then you have to practice it for six months because you know it takes a lot of practice to do something sophisticated really well. And then if you do that, it’s like poof, you got it for the rest of your life.