016: Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts

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Dave Schramm  00:04

On today's episode, we have a wonderful discussion with Dr. Les Parrott about important questions every couple should ask before and after they marry. Dr. Les Parrott and his wife Leslie had been traveling the globe speaking and helping couples for more than 35 years. Les is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, and they are founders of the Center for Healthy relationships on the campus of Olivet University. The parents had been featured in USA Today and the New York Times. Their television appearances include CNN, The View, the O'Reilly Factor, the Today Show and Oprah. As number one New York Times bestselling authors, their books have sold over 2 million copies in more than two dozen languages, and include best selling and gold medallion winner, Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts. We hope you enjoy the show.

Liz Hale  01:00

Welcome to Stronger Marriage Connection where the doctors are in. I'm psychologist Liz Hale along with Dr. David Schramm, professor at Utah State University. We are dedicating our life's work to bringing you the best we have in valid marital research along with a few tips and tools on how to help you create the marriage of your dreams. It's really an honor to be able to welcome Dr. Les Parrott to the show. He has been someone that Dave and I both follow closely, we actually have original copies of his book he and Leslie wrote, "Saving your Marriage Before it Starts" first editions and we're really proud to have that on our bookcases. I'm so thrilled about that, and Les, you have sold more than a million copies. Is that right of, Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts?

Dr. Les Parrot  01:52

We did at the time that was last printed, and it's closer to 2 million now. But yeah, a lot of couples have used this book over the years. It's kind of a something we never imagined. And all these years later that was that was born out of our own kind of frustration and need. And to this so many years later to still know that couples are benefiting from it. Of course, we've updated it along the way with new research, but it's been such a great thing. Great experience.

Liz Hale  02:21

Thank you for that update, 2 million copies. And of course SYMBIS stands for "saving your marriage before it starts". That's the assessment that you've added to coordinate with this book.

Dr. Les Parrot  02:34

Yeah, yeah, we, I think it was on the third when we reached the milestone of a million copies on this book. And by the way, let me back up on how this book came to be if you don't mind. Leslie and I were teaching at a university here in Seattle, where we live and and students, I think we were in maybe around February or something like that. Some students said, Hey, could you come over to our residence hall and give a talk on how to fall in love without losing your mind? That was the subject that they gave us, how to fall in love without losing your mind. And we said, Yeah, of course, we'd be happy to do that. We were one of the few psychologists on the small college campus. And so clinical psychologists at least and so we said, yeah, we'd be happy to do that. My wife, Leslie's a marriage and family therapist. I'm a psychologist. And so we went over, they said it'd be around 10 o'clock at night. And it was like a Tuesday or a Wednesday or something. And I said, how many should we expect? They said, well, if the whole floor shows up, we might have 20-25 people. I said, great. And so we made our way over there at 10 o'clock at night on a rainy night in Seattle, and there was this huge line of students coming out of the residence hall. And I thought, wow, I wonder what's going on here. This is interesting. And, they turned out they had put signs up about this talk that was going to be given on how to fall in love without losing your mind. And it wasn't because of us. We weren't known we hadn't written a book. We were brand new to the campus just out of graduate school. And that was kind of the first indicator they were all there for that talk. And, of course, we had to move to the auditorium on the campus. And it was just kind of like, wow, this is a moment right now. And so Leslie and I, it was kind of the first kind of inclination that we had, wow, these students are really starving for information on relationships, especially romantic relationships. And so we thought later, a few months after that, you know, we should do an event for engaged couples on this campus. And so we did and we called it, "saving your marriage before it starts". And we did it later that spring. And again, we were kind of overwhelmed by the turnout on that, more than we expected. And so we did it the next year and it was twice as big as it was the year before and the third year people were actually coming in from other parts of the Pacific Northwest to attend it and churches and so forth were reffering people counselors and so forth. And so we said, well, we should write a book, by that topic, by that title, "saving your marriage before it starts". And so we did. And obviously, and soon after that, we got a call from Oprah Winfrey, who said, "Hey, we want you to come on the program and talk about this book." And of course, that just opened up the floodgates to be on the View, and David Letterman, and everything else talking about marriage, and suddenly, we had this national platform to talk about marriage. But that's really how that book was born. And it's just been an incredible ride. And so when you bring up the topic of the assessment, I want people to realize this, we didn't just sit down around in leather chairs one day and go, we should do an assessment on this, you know, this has been something we have been helping couples with for a long time. And so when the book reached a milestone of a million copies, our publisher Harper Collins said that, "hey, let's revise it. Let's update this thing." And we've been around publishing enough to know by now that this is kind of publisher speak for let's put a new cover on it. And we said, No, let's let's really do it right. And we did a massive listening tour with clergy and counselors and coaches, on what do you need to help you do your job better as you help couples launch lifelong love. And so it was really, they were the ones that said we want an assessment. And so we develop the "SYMBIS" assessment, you can find it at symbis.com S Y M B I S. And we've trained hundreds of thousands of counselors now and how to use that assessment. And it's been just, it's kind of a it's just, you know, do you guys know what a BHAG? Is? You ever heard of a bhag?

Dave Schramm  06:53

What's a BHAG?

Dr. Les Parrot  06:55

A BHAG is a business term. If you went to school in business, you'd know the term and it's called a big, hairy, audacious goal. That's a BHAG, you and so, you know, Apple computer has a BHAG, you know, Coca Cola has a BHAG, here's our BHAG, we want to see the divorce rate across North America reduced by a third in our lifetime. That's our BHAG. And do you realize that for every single percentage point that we dropped the divorce rate, the lives of more than a million children are positively impacted? Think about that. That's for one single percentage point. And I think it'd be one of the greatest social revolutions we've ever experienced to see that. What if we just got it to double digits, we've lowered it by double digits, the ramifications and the ripple effect for generations would be difficult to calculate. It's really, so that's kind of the overriding thing. And we realize a books not going to do that seminars aren't going to do that. And we're more optimistic about it than ever before, because of what takes place when someone goes through this assessment. They lower their chances of divorce by 31%, they increase their chances of contentment and happiness by nearly a third and all these it's so measurable, right, an assessment can really measure outcomes. So anyway, that's a long answer to how this book came to be, but, and the how the assessment turns into it. But that's what that's the story.

Liz Hale  08:28

That's very cool. I trained with you on the SYMBIS. So it is impressive. It's really a nice handout to be able to give couples. So thank you for that. It's impressive.

Dr. Les Parrot  08:40

Let me just mention that, you know, we're not the only show in town, there's another incredible assessment called "Prepare/Enrich" out of the University of Minnesota. And that that he 40 years ago, David paved the way on that to build the, really the first, and it was paper pencils kind of clunky, and so forth. But still an incredible, obviously, it's online now. But whatever the assessment is, if it's reliable and valid, that moves the needle, that's what we encourage couples to use.

Liz Hale  09:13

That's nice of you to give them credit, they are on strongermarriage.org that is on our website as well. You know Dave and I are both are just I think so enamored with you and Leslie and how candid you are. You're so very honest about your own marriage throughout this book. Was that important to you? When you when you set out? Did you feel and did you feel kind of vulnerable? When you said some of the things you did about your own gridlocks?

Dr. Les Parrot  09:39

Well, you know, when we started out to write and communicate with other people on healthy relationships and lifelong love, we realize we wanted to not just be proclaimers, we wanted to be pilgrims. And alongside them. You know, the the generation before us kind of stood up on the platform and told us how you should be, and be like, you know, this this is, and there's a lot in fact, I had a great mentor in in Gary Smalley. And Gary has passed on a few years ago. But Gary was super helpful to Leslie and me early on in our careers and, and most people of a certain age know who Gary was and, and he said, you know, people will relate to you if you can kind of convey how you made a mistake, and what you did to overcome it. And we really took that to heart. And so to answer your question, yeah, the very first line of this book, saving your marriage before it starts, says we never had pre marriage counseling, but we spent the first year of our marriage in counseling, Yeah. And that is that is the truth. And we realized, yeah, and by the way, we had dated for seven years. Both our parents our fathers were were in the church clergy. And nobody gave us pre-marriage counseling. And, and on top of it, we have the same name. I'm Leslie, and she's Leslie. I mean, I think people just thought, Oh, well, they're just gonna do just fine. They've dated so long. And we had a really rough go of it that first year. And we realized that's not a outlier. A lot of couples experience that. There's something that happens after you cross that proverbial threshold. And so yeah, we have been pretty vulnerable in in the book, and in most of our writing to do that. In fact, we often say, and we've written a lot of books, but we really write these books for ourselves. And if they help other people, that's fantastic. But we learned so much that helped us in the process.

Liz Hale  11:45

That's why I do what I do too Les. That's for sure. In this book, there are seven questions to ask before and after you marry, we're going to look at our our favorite five, if you don't mind. And question number one, have you faced the marriage miss as quote in your new book, too many people miss the silver lining because they are expecting gold. You say that many of our expectations are unconscious, correct?

Dr. Les Parrot  12:12

Yeah, sometimes we don't even know we we have like, for example, we say everybody gets married with a personal rule book, right? We have rules about how you should do certain things, everything from how you pay bills, to how you take out the trash, to how you should dress and who you should vote for, we have rules about all kinds of stuff, right? And we don't even know that we have that rule book until we get married. And our new spouse begins to break those rules. And we go wait a second. That's not how you're supposed to do that. Right? I remember even early on, I grew up in a home where mom was very tuned in to hospitality and doing things with etiquette and so forth and I don't even know if this story is in the book, I think it is. But I remember we had this thing with ketchup as a kid growing up, I remember, mom would always put the ketchup in a little dish. And you you'd serve it out. You know, like you're just having hamburgers, just an informal meal in the kitchen, right? But she wouldn't put a bottle of ketchup on the table, she put a little dish of ketchup, and you'd spoon it out, my pinkie kind of goes up you're thinking about it, you know? And I remember she did that so often. I have two older brothers. And I remember all of us, which would just go mom just put the bottle of ketchup on the table. It doesn't matter just as, No, no, honey, this is the proper way. This is how we do things and, and so forth. And I can remember seeing as a kid, oh man, when I get my own house, right? When I get my own kitchen, I'm gonna put my own bottle of ketchup right out there on the table. And I did get my own house little apartment in Southern California while Leslie and I were going to graduate school, wasn't much of a house. And not much of a kitchen either. But we had a little tiny table in there, room for two. And I remember the very first time after we got things settled in there, and we were having hamburgers or something and Leslie set the table and she put a big squeezable bottle of Heinz 57 ketchup out there on the table. And I remember going what in the world, you don't put a bottle of ketchup out on the table, you got to put a little dish, right. And here I was, the very thing that I want I thought I wanted right. But that's an example of how these rules get instilled. We don't even know they just become a part of us. They filter into our unconscious, and sometimes we rebel against them. And sometimes we can and we do things differently. But sometimes we rebel against them and they still become what we psychologists call an intro object. It becomes a part of us whether we want it to be or not. Right? Or sometimes we buy into it. But so much of that is formed by the home that we came from our you know our family of origin was really our university of relationships for good or for ill, it taught us how to function in a relationship. And so we sometimes have to unpack that, of course, because, you know, this person I've married, took different relationship classes than I did in their home growing up. And so we have to find our own way to make that happen. So yeah, that's why we start the book with have you faced the myths of marriage with honesty? Does that make sense?

Liz Hale  15:26

And there, there are many, there are many.

Dr. Les Parrot  15:30

That myth, of course, that I'm talking about is that we expect the same things in married life. That's the big, you know, the easiest myth to kind of readily see everybody Yeah, we expect the same things for married life, I'll tell you the deepest myth that we carry in this relationship. And that is that this person that I married is going to make me whole, right, that this person that I married is going to make up for all the things that I'm lacking. And of course, no person can do that. Right. That's the work that we have to do on our own. And, you know, my good buddy, Neil Warren, often would say, get yourself healthy before you get yourself married. And of course, you can never check that off your To Do lists were always in process, but a sense of awareness about your issues that you bring into the relationship, that's a pretty good step in the right direction on becoming whole. And realizing this person that I'm marrying is not a shortcut to personal wellbeing, and wholeness. They can't make up for all the things I lack, you know, remember that movie Jerry Maguire that was so popular so many years ago? you rate me, right? Everybody was putting that? That line? Right? I think it's one of the most quoted lines in all of cinematic history, show me the money, you complete me that you'll be a lot of them. But this other person, I'm not trying to take the romance out of it, but they can't complete you. They can't make up for let you know, if you buy into that myth, you're going to be disappointed. And so anyway, we have several myths in that first chapter. And that's, that's a couple of them, my everything. We expect the same things for married life, and my spouse should make me whole two incredibly powerful myths.

Dave Schramm  17:18

We'll be right back after this brief message.

Dave Schramm  17:20

And we're back. Let's dive right in. Yeah, you know, I, I love that. That concept of that myth. And some of these may be about ketchup with ours, you know, it was like, wait a minute, we had either roast beef, or we had turkey every Sunday for my whole life every Sunday dinner it alternated between roast beef and turkey. So when I was dating my wife, she had tacos on Sunday, I thought oh, my, you know, kind of a sinner are you, that some of them are kind of like that. But others are a little bit more more serious about. I mean, it could be abuse, because whatever we have, your right is normal, for us. This is how families kind of should be and this is how relationships should be. So I think that's super important that you start out.

Dr. Les Parrot  18:15

That reminds me that story slash joke about the couple that got married and, and she would always make the roast beef on Sunday, and cut off the end. And the husband was like, why are you wasting a good part of the meat or whatever. And that's how my mom always did it. And anyway, it turned out that her mom did that, because she didn't have a pan big enough to fit the whole roast. That was the only reason she was cutting it. We just keep perpetuating.

Dave Schramm  18:47

Yeah, yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. So another another chapter Les you talked about again, I've got my copy. For those who are watching. What are the originals of this big fan of your work. Is the habit of happiness, which totally buy into explain a little bit more about that one.

Dr. Les Parrot  19:05

Yeah, this this is an interesting chapter. I'm glad you're highlighting it because this was a chapter where our publisher originally in our editors, they thought this is this doesn't belong in this book. This is a different kind of topic and and they said other pre marriage, you know, curriculum and so forth, it doesn't have a chapter on on attitude. And I said, well, they may not but the research is showing it's one of the single most important things that we can do, is calibrate our attitude, so we can adjust to things beyond our control. In fact, at Stanford University, there was a fella that wrote many many years ago back in the 40s. I think one of the very first marriage and family textbooks and, and in it, he has a single line that is italicized, and there's like 400 pages in this book, only one sentence that is italicized. And, and that sentence is the most important quality of a marriageable person is the habit of happiness. And that's where we got this phrase. And then he goes on to explain that that's all about the capacity to adjust to things beyond your control. Why is this important? Because every marriage, no matter how good it is, eventually bumps into something bad. And that that bad thing that jolt. And by the way, if any of our viewers or listeners, if that hasn't happened to you yet, put your seatbelt on, because it's bound to happen, right? It might be a financial issue, it may be a relational issue, it might be a career issue, any number of things. But every marriage encounters at least one jolt. And I'll tell you what ours was in just a moment, but, but how you respond to that will either make or break your relationship. And so I wish we could give it as a wedding gift, the capacity to adjust to things beyond your control. And so anyway, the publisher said, Yeah, let's let's put that in the book. And that makes sense. And so we did. And I'm so glad that we do did that because we receive more notes from more readers in email, and otherwise online, saying, Thank you for writing that chapter. It paid off for us very soon into our marriage. And one of the most salient examples of that was a couple that we'd actually done some pre marriage work with them here in the Northwest. And for their honeymoon, he wanted to surprise her. And she was imagining, no, they were gonna go to some exotic place or whatever, and some incredibly nice hotel and so forth. And he surprised her by taking her to Mount Rainier to go camping. And he loves camping. And he bought all the equipment and was going to make it super nice and so forth. And so she she just, you know, was it wasn't her idea of a honeymoon, you know. And not not only that, on top of it, when they got to their campsite that he had reserved, it began to rain, like crazy, downpour. And he's hustling around trying to put stakes in the ground and get the tent and keep her dry and start the fire and be the husband, he wants to be in the first few hours of his marriage. And, and, and she she told us, she said, I remember looking out at him building the fire and I was in the tent, you know, kind of looking out that triangle, little space there him and I was thinking, I can't believe he did this to me. I can't believe this is how we're starting a relationship. And she said I could just feel the resentment seething, beginning to seethe within me. And then she said, I remembered something, the habit of happiness. And she said, I realized in that moment, this is going to be the story that we tell the rest of our lives. And it can be either a fun and happy story. Or it can be a terrible story. And she said in that moment, thinking about the habit of happiness, I decided to make it a fun and happy story. And she said I got out of the tent started helping him with the fire. And the whole thing, we started laughing. And it was just, you know, it just they they turned it all around because of their attitude, adjusting to things beyond your control. And so that's the gift of that chapter. It's a powerful one. It's the kind of chapter that you won't find in other curriculum on marriage preparation. But our research shows it's one of the most important things we need to be talking to couples about. And even in the SYMBIS assessment, we have a whole page dedicated to that. And we kind of look at it as almost the proverbial shock absorbers that you're putting out into your marriage relationship when you hit that rocky road. Like I said, we all do. I do, you guys do, we've all encountered tough times in marriage.

Dave Schramm  24:05

Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that you start with that, because it really does. It helps them sets up a realistic you know, it's your attitudes, your perspective, it's being able to say hey, I'm the author of our own story, whether it's your honeymoon story, or your first child story or all of this, we'll be able to script the story. So thank you

Dr. Les Parrot  24:23

Infertility, bankruptcy, not being able to find a job. Not having insurance that you thought you did. Every couple I mentioned that I would mention our the big jolt and that is our first son was born premature and we'd been married 18 years, and we'd given birth to a couple of doctoral degrees and we given birth to a few books but this was our first human and and this little guy decided to come into the world three months early, and he weighed just a pound. Leslie was in the hospital on on her left side for a month, because of the complications with the birth and so forth. And he was the smallest baby to ever be released from Swedish Hospital here in Seattle. And he came home on a on a, an oxygen tank and he that he was tethered to and our house was quarantined. We had more than one 911 calls in the first few weeks of him being home. I remember when he was in the NICU, one of the neonatal nurses, she said if he survives, because they didn't think he would, and if he did, he was going to have all kinds of problems, blindness, and so forth. And they said, if he survives, you'll want a milestone, do you have any take off my wedding band, and slip this little wedding band over that guy's entire hand, clear up over his elbow clear to his shoulder. And, and so that, that kind of experience of dealing with a crisis like that, because it was a crisis, and Leslie's life was in jeopardy, his life was in jeopardy, he went into surgery within a couple of days after being born, I was a medical psychologist working in the hospital across town at the University of Washington School of Medicine, I said, I want to be in the room, I fainted in the room, the doctor said, get that guy out of here. I mean, there is so much tension around this whole process. And and that's the kind of thing that can make or break a marriage relationship. We all know the research on that. And, you know, we fought our way through that. And that guy is our little miracle baby, who is now in his early 20s, and is a doctoral student at Oxford University in England and proved all the doctors wrong. So it has a happy ending for us on that in so many ways. He still struggles with certain things. But that's a jolt right? Something we never expected. We didn't see that coming. Nobody sat down and said, Hey, someday in your marriage, you're gonna have a real difficult time around birth, right? That's an unexpected thing, adjusting to things beyond your control. And that's what that chapter is dedicated to.

Dave Schramm  27:11

Yeah, no, I do. I appreciate that. Because I remember, man, first couple years of our marriage, my wife needed brain surgery. And it wasn't one of those things. Yeah. When you sign up for this, that you think that you don't you just don't expect those on. So glad that you put that in there? Because it does all couples will have them are going through something that's really, really difficult. So, man, I love that. Another aspect you jump into is the gender gap, you talk about just this gender gap. And there's a lot of similarities. But there are some differences that are really important to understand what why did you include that?

Dr. Les Parrot  27:44

Yeah, when we were writing this book, you know, we really, you know, we're social scientists. And so we we looked around what are the most important things, what are the most salient issues that we need to be able to give to these couples. And we realized that we can help them solve a lot of heartache by just understanding that gender gap. And it's pretty predictable. The research is so straightforward on this. And so to simplify it, there's, there's just we talked about, here's certain things a wife needs to know about her husband, and a husband needs to know about her wife, his wife, and so we kind of, you know, synthesized some research to put into that, but here's what I can say, and just boil this down for this, this interview. Every woman needs to know that a man's heart opens up most in the midst of shared activity. And most women don't get this certainly early on in marriage. Because the inclination is, hey, let's just go to Starbucks, let's go to a coffee shop, I just let's just go out and talk, you know, and, and then they go do that for a few times. And then the woman eventually goes, he never talks, we go out over dinner, and just doesn't seem to have anything to say. And if we go to a sports bar, somebody's always looking over my shoulder to see the screen and instead of me and and why is it? Well, it's because guys don't call up other guys and say, Hey, you want to get together and just talk, you know, we go do something, we go fish, we go to a game, we go play tennis, we go mountain biking, we whatever it is, we're going to do. And in the midst of that, we'll begin to talk, right? There's something about shared activity that causes that. And so it can even be a walk around the neighborhood. And we've had women that have told us, even after years of marriage, after reading that chapter, that they said, I just decided that I'm going to initiate a walk after dinner with my husband each night. And so we just walk less than a mile just a few blocks around. And she says that's what I learned everything that's going on in his life. He just starts to tell me about what's on his mind and he's worried about the kids and blah, blah, blah. And there's something about that shared activity that is transformative for a man. So that's on that side of the ledger. If that makes sense.

Dave Schramm  30:02

Absolutely.

Dr. Les Parrot  30:03

And then on the other side of the ledger, every man needs to know that this woman he married, needs to be cherished. And Leslie and I do enough public speaking around North America to know how guys respond to this question. And I will often say to a live audience, men, what does it mean to cherish a woman? And it's crickets like nobody, like to love her? You know, I mean, it's just like, no, no concept of it. And, and then we give a few examples, and guys go, Okay, I'm getting it now to cherish a woman. And I remember one really kind of story that stood out for me from our readers on this. And she said, her man, her husband had a cup of coffee, he knew, he knew that she was going into a really tough business meeting at her work that was going to be tense. And there were several people in the room. And she had to give a presentation, she was uptight about and feeling anxious. And so he couldn't be there. But he had a cup of, what do you call it. Whatever, her drink from Starbucks, sent to the office. And he ordered it, and then had it written a little message written in pin his own pin on the lid so that she could see it when it was delivered. And it was a little encouraging word to her. And that's cherishing a woman right? Now, that may not be what every woman would want to get that cup, but he knew that's what his wife would find meaningful. Just last night, Leslie and I, she has a new car, we drove our last car, which was a Jeep to 111,000 miles, and it just gave out and so finally we break down we get Leslie a new car, and, and it's a car that has this radio that's kind of complicated, and so forth. And she's had the car for like three months. And it just dawned on me last night, before I went to bed. I bet you haven't been able to get the radio station that you want to show up. 105.3 is your radio station, I bet you haven't get that. I'm gonna go down right now and set that in your car. And Well, the thing is, I only said that to myself. I didn't say it to her. And I just did that. When I got up this morning, she got up earlier than I did and went off to a meeting with our small group or something. And I got this email that was gushing. I can't believe you went down in the middle of the night and you set my car radio, right, that's cherishing a woman, right those and you know, you have to study your spouse to do your wife to do that. But that's the difference, shared activity. And on and this idea of cherishing a woman to pretty powerful things to bridge the gender gap.

Dave Schramm  32:58

Spot on

Liz Hale  33:00

Beautiful. We all three of us know that being in love, of course, is a very poor indicator of staying married love is not enough. Any question for in the book, Dr. Parrot, you say? Do you know how to fight the good fight tell us more about how fighting fair is crucial to our survival as a happy couple?

Dr. Les Parrot  33:20

Well, conflict is one of the single most important skills that we can master as a married couple. And John Gottman, my friend and colleague here in the Pacific Northwest, who's now retired from the University of Washington. You know, did more Yeoman work in this area than anybody else on the planet for decades, he studied conflict in marriage. He came up with something a lot of people already know about called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in marriage, these are four things that you're not fighting well. And he has a his this thing called the Love Lab, he did have this thing called the Love Lab over at the U W. And he put ads in the paper and bring these couples in and observe them. It was just like any other day for this couple, except they were hooked up to biofeedback equipment, they are being watched by three or four technicians with, you know, glass in the room and cameras and so forth. And, you know, they had sensors around their forehead to measure muscle tension and their galvanic skin response and all kinds of things our heart rate, just like any other day for this couple, right? And they're given little tasks to do. And so you would notice the John is a mathematician by trade. That's how he, you know, studied. He wanted to quantify this. And so he discovered these four things to avoid in conflict, and criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and withdrawal are the four things to avoid. And, and so that's one of the things that we talked about in the book with his blessing. And in newer research, what we have discovered, there's also four things that you want to do proactively. This is not in the book. It's in another book, that Leslie I wrote called, "the good fight". And ,and by the way, conflict, conflict is the price we pay for a deeper level of intimacy. Let me say that, again, conflict is the price, we pay for a deeper level of intimacy, if you know how to fight a good fight, it can actually bring you closer together. Okay? And so the goal is not necessarily to avoid conflict. Of course, we don't want it. In fact, couples that avoid conflict, that sets up a whole nother line of difficulties and struggles in the relationship. And we don't have time to get into but there's there's different fight types we all have. I'm an aggressive fighter, I like to win a fight. Right? Not Leslie, she just wants to get it out on the table. She doesn't have to win, right? And then there's people that are really reluctant to talk about anything that is not pleasant. And so they avoid conflict. Right? And so they're growing edge. And Dave, I see you pointing to yourself, yeah, you're growing edge is then to, you know, be more authentic with your spouse to say, hey, just so you know, I'm really irritated when XYZ happens or whatever the thing might be. And so we all have our different challenges. And so understanding your fight type can go a long way, but also to avoid things in conflict. And these things that we need to avoid. I'm sorry to do proactively, John talks about what to avoid to do proactively. And you guys know what I'm talking about? Like, there's there's, there's it kind of becomes passive Okay, I need to just stop doing this. But what can I do to fight a good fight? Right, that's, that's what matters. Any guesses as to what those things might be?

Liz Hale  37:04

Trying to put yourself in the other parties shoes?

Dr. Les Parrot  37:07

That's one of them, you got it. Empathy is a big one. They're easy to remember because I spell it with the word Core, C, O R. E, cooperation, ownership, respect, and empathy. cooperation, ownership, respect, and empathy. You got to have a cooperative spirit, which is really tough for me, because I like to win a fight. Okay, but a cooperative spirit. I remember Leslie one time, we were at one of our son's soccer games and, and back in the day, and when they were younger, and, and I remember, she said, a good fight is is like we're, we're, the issue is that soccer ball, we're on the same team. We're just trying to score the goal. We're not opponents. And if we think of conflict like that, it helps with a cooperative spirit. I always think about that when we get into a into a fight. What is the soccer ball? What's the issue? Because it's not her. It's something else. Right? So a cooperative spirit, and then ownership owning your piece of the pie. I don't know who said it, but I love the saying, "Humble Pie is a pastry that's never tasty", right? It takes some humility, to own your piece of the pie and go, I don't I'm not responsible for all this chaos in our relationship right now. But I knew I know, I'm contributing to it. That little admission, that sense of humility goes a long way. Right? So you get the idea. And then finally, empathy is such an important piece of that as well. So fighting the good fight, it's essential conflict. It's the price we pay for deeper intimacy, so dedicate yourselves to learning how to fight a good fight.

Dave Schramm  38:48

Yeah. I love that. Les as we just have a few more minutes with you. Can you think about? I think there's a lot of, I have a daughter who's a newlywed. So I'm going to ask you some of these questions as they hit that, you know, they're in their first year of marriage. Kind of some of the the issues. Are there some poor habits that newlyweds get into and what do you suggest? How do you how do you help manage some of those early on issues?

Dr. Les Parrot  39:11

Yeah, we you know, sometimes in psychology, we call those scripts, right that we have certain things that we do, because that's what was done in my home, or that's what my fantasy is of how things should be done or what have you. And, and they don't always line up kind of comes full circle back to the expectations that we bring into the relationship. But Leslie and I refer to these as honeymoon habits. And the things that you do early on in your marriage, you have an opportunity early on in your marriage, to do things that will serve you well down through the decades, right? We often tell newlyweds, choose your ruts carefully, because you're going to be in them for a long time. Right? And so, in fact, choose grooves rather than ruts, right? Choose grooves and even if you've been married for a long time, you can start a new groove. You know, I mentioned how important it is to have shared activity for a guy to open up. And by the way, once Leslie, like, came across this research, she was like, fully on board, right? Lots of activity and stuff. She knows that to an end. So one of the things that we do everyday we take a walk. And we've been doing this for a long time, if you looked at the pedometer on my, my little iPhone, you'd go that's, that's kind of crazy. They're like obsessive compulsive about these walks. And, but it's our time to connect. And we did it since our kids were little, you know, and and taking them in the strollers, but we just find that we can and that's a honeymoon habit, that's a groove that you can carve into your relationship. And so that's that's what I would encourage is be conscious of that.

Dave Schramm  40:51

So Les, as we kind of wrap things up, where can people go for more information about you and the great information that you offer?

Dr. Les Parrot  40:58

Well, I appreciate that. Our main website is lesandleslie.com, Les, L E S and then the word and a n d leslie.com. But let me highlight two things that I think that our listeners and our viewers might be interested in. One is a completely free resource that you should take out your phone right now and go to loveology.org, o r g. This is a nonprofit completely for free. It's like psychology. But loveology, l o v e, ology. loveology.org. And here, you're gonna find a searchable database from the world's greatest experts on relationships, where they can answer your specific questions, again, totally for free. In three minutes, three or four minutes, and you might be standing, you might have your headphones in or your earbuds in and you're on a bus, or you're in the grocery line or whatever. And you're thinking, I really need help in setting boundaries with my in laws, they seem to be so antagonistic with how I'm parenting. And how do you set those boundaries? Well, Henry Cloud, and John Townsend wrote a fantastic book called boundaries, who better to answer that question than them. So it's like that. So that's loveology.org. And then one of the resources that I think our folks might be interested in, and that is an assessment tool, that is called better love, you'll find it at betterlove.com, better love.com. And it's actually this assessment tool called better love featuring The Five Love Languages, we don't have time to unpack this too much. But it's a customized roadmap for lifelong love. In other words, by answering just a few questions, takes about 10 minutes. Each of you do this separately, it generates this little roadmap. I call it a report, you know, an assessment report. But what couple goes, ooo, I really want to report on my relationship, right? Nobody wants to it's not that kind of report, you don't get graded, you can't pass fail. It's a customized roadmap to lifelong love. And it looks at your two personalities and the chemistry between them. No other assessment in the world does this by the way, not just your individual hardwiring. And why is that important? Because well, there's never been a marriage like yours before. And there never will be again, you're as unique as a fingerprint, the chemistry between you has not existed before. And so we do that. And we have 40,000 variables because of the technology behind this. 40,000 variables that help you pinpoint the connections in your, kind of the DNA of your relationship to leverage communication, conflict management, time, all the things that matter most to a healthy relationship. So loveology.org and betterlove.com.

Dave Schramm  43:49

Wow, amazing resources. And we're gonna put those in our shownotes for our listeners and go to our shownotes and find those links as well. Les has been amazing. Before we let you go, we have to ask the question we ask all of our our guests and that is what is your what is your takeaway of the day? What is the message that you hope our listeners will remember, as they walk away from this.

Dr. Les Parrot  44:13

 Well, that's easy. And that is summed up in a single word, empathy. If I could hand something through the airwaves, to every person that's listening to us, it would be the capacity to see your spouse, as well as your kids as well as your friends as well as your co workers, everybody else, to see through their eyes, and to accurately see through. To imagine, to put yourself in their shoes. It's the single most important relationship skill I think that we work on as human beings, whether we're in a marriage or not, empathy. And most of us, the research shows, most of us think we do that far better than we actually do. Les and I wrote a book on it. It's called Trading Places, right? We both have PhDs doctoral dissertation evolved to empathy. And you'd think I'd be pretty good at it by now. I struggle with it every day in my parenting, in my marriage in my friendships. Empathy is a life long task for all of us. So that's what I would leave our, our listeners with.

Dave Schramm  45:19

Oh, that's great. Les, Liz, what about you? What's your takeaway today?

Liz Hale  45:23

Well, I love that conflict leads to closeness. You know, I've always felt that nothing is wasted. I think sometimes it's so easy for couples to get discouraged, like, oh, my gosh, or something must be something wrong with us, right? If we have this continual fight, but I love of course, Les's, reminders of core, that to be cooperative to, to own the part that belongs to you to respect and have empathy. So I love core. What about you? What's your takeaway, Dave?

Dave Schramm  45:50

 Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump on that bandwagon because compassion, empathy, really, I think are the foundation. So I'm glad that we all agree on that. That that is that's a key to connection. Yeah. Well, hey, thanks for joining us, Dr. Parrot. We sure appreciate your time, the resources. It's been a great episode here, at stronger marriage connection. We hope listeners will join us next time for an episode here and until then, keep doing those small and simple little things and have empathy and compassion. We'll see you.

Dave Schramm  46:22

Thanks for joining us today. Hey, do us a favor and take a few minutes to subscribe to our podcasts and the Utah marriage commission YouTube channel, where you can watch this and every episode of the show. When you hit the like button and leave a comment your feedback helps us improve the show. And don't forget to share this episode with a friend. You can also follow and connect with us on Instagram, at stronger marriage life and on Facebook at stronger marriage. Be sure to share with us what topics you want us to explore or what you loved about today's episode. If you want even more resources to improve your relationship connection, visit our website at strongermarriage.org where you'll find free workshops, webinars, relationships, surveys and more. Each episode of Stronger Marriage Connection is hosted and sponsored by the Utah Marriage Commission at Utah State University. Finally, a big thanks to our producers Rex Polanis, Kiersten Wilson and the team at Utah State University and you, our audience, you make this show possible.