Couples Therapist: “The One Rule Every Relationship Must Live By” - Stan Tatkin -#1146

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
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You rule.

**Stan Tatkin** (0:29)
Thank you.

**Chris Williamson** (0:34)
If I was to try and summarize your world view on relationships, allow me to step into your skin and wear it for a second.

**Stan Tatkin** (0:41)
Sure.

**Chris Williamson** (0:41)
I would summarize it as love by design, not desire. Is that a fair, like it's thought not felt as relationships, that design versus desire thing? How far away am I?

**Stan Tatkin** (0:54)
I think I prefer earned love. Earned love on a daily basis by knowing how to hack the brain, the neuroendocrine system, which we can talk about, by designing the relationship to protect feelings, to enhance feelings, to allow two different people under stress to maintain a collaborative and cooperative attitude.
That is a hard get because that takes a certain amount of planning, predicting and planning and preparing what could go wrong between human beings.

**Chris Williamson** (1:36)
Why are romantic attachment relationships neurochemically so hard to navigate?

**Stan Tatkin** (1:43)
Well, they're hard because in the attachment world, if you understand or buy the idea of a primary attachment relationship, the primary attachment relationship is one that tends to be dyadic with human primates, we pair bond in herds. And the romantic adult primary attachment relationship is most likely the earliest one, which is predicated on survival. So the attachment system is actually an existential glue that holds us together. It's the I can't quit you biology. We confuse it for love.
And because it goes back to the earliest, you know, survival relationship, that's why breaking up also is hard to do. That's why it has a very long memory, because it reminds us of that earliest dependency relationship, whereas other relationships tend to not do that.

**Chris Williamson** (2:44)
So we're reliving our childhoods, in a way.

**Stan Tatkin** (2:47)
We're reliving our relationships, how we felt with all these important originals that we were around, in this relationship that we call a romantic adult relationship. But it is 12 and before. That is generally how I will think of it, is that we have the parents in our heads that we had around 12 and before that time, even if our parents, and they do, changed a great deal for the better. Or for the worse. We still draw upon that earliest, because that's the root of our experience through thousands upon thousands of interactions starting from infancy.
So powerful.

**Chris Williamson** (3:36)
Is love enough to maintain a relationship?

**Stan Tatkin** (3:39)
Absolutely not.
No feeling is, because feelings come and go. And besides, who knows what your definition of love is? It may be very different than mine. And even if I were to describe my definition of love in action, my expectations of love may be quite different than what I say. So there you already have a problem. But if you're basing your life on emotion, which is like a roller coaster, then your life is like a roller coaster. So I think the smartest and the wisest, and the way that it's always worked in terms of long-term relationships between individuals of equal power, adults, is that you have to have first a shared purpose, a reason for being in this relationship, not based on feelings. And a vision of where are we headed, what's the endpoint? Are we ride or die? Is it all the way till, you know, I'm wiping your butt, you're wiping my butt in old age? You know, where are we headed and why? What's the point of us? Who or what do we serve? Only purpose that's based on a selfish reason will carry the day, because we're too unreliable as a species. Our species is notably, historically, moody and fickle and impulsive and unpredictable, sometimes opportunistic, warlike, xenophobic, easily influenced by groups and other people. So we're not great over the long run in unions.
Therefore, we have to account for going through time together, and that would be going through some changes. So we need an invention, we need a design from the ground up, which is a made up thing, right? All relationships are made up.
That would sustain us in the long run and would account for all of that will room necessary as we change through time, right?