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Washington Square. On air is the Audiotown square for the Washington Square Review. Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Luckin, editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with poet Mark Putzi, whose poem When They Come is in our Summer 24 issue. Hey, Mark.

Hello.

So tell us about your poem. How did you come to write it?

Well, I mean, I wrote it the way I write everything. At like 3 o' clock in the morning, I lay down, I'm just about to fall asleep, I get an idea in my head, I hear a line, I wake up, I run to the computer and I type.

Okay, so you always do it on the computer?

Always on the computer, yeah. Well, I've done it longhand every now and then if I have no access to a computer, but for the most part, yeah. And my computer is getting old now, so it's kind of like I'll sit there and wait for it to warm up, you know, and it's like, am I going to remember this line? Am I going to do. It's kind of funny.

So at three in the morning, do you get yourself a coffee or a glass of water? You just zip right over to the computer. How does that go?

Usually by the time I get there, I'm wide awake because I'm thinking about stuff, you know, and it's like I have to listen to the voice, you know, there's always a specific voice. And I know if it's either a poem or it's something from a short story I'm working on or I happen to know what it is. For some crazy reason, I have no idea why. I mean, I get to the computer and I just type.

So you just let it show up on the page?

I've learned to trust it. More often than not, it's. Right.

Yeah.

I can imagine the way you describe it that if you just stayed in bed and thought, oh, I'll just go back to sleep. You probably don't go back to sleep.

No, never. My wife sometimes wakes up and that's a problem, but, you know, she's gotten used to it.

And how long do you. Will you stay there until the morning and then just off to work or.

Well, it depends. I mean, I mean, if, if I'm done like this, this, I, I wrote probably in about five minutes and, and, and then I was done. Unless I, I might have started working on something else, you know. But most of the stuff I get you know, it. It depends upon how long, how long I'm writing, you know, how long, how long the voice lasts. I've. I. I've sat down and written for hours, and then I've sat down and written for, like, 10 minutes. You know, I feel like I can get something done, get like a first draft out. Then I feel like I've accomplished something. I have lots and lots of little snippets of things that lead absolutely nowhere.

So the voice that you're referring to, where do you think that comes from?

Probably force of habit. When I was in grad school, I was doing the same thing. I would go to the computer lab. I didn't have a computer, but we had the computer lab. And I would basically write there, like 10 hours a day, like the entire time I was in grad school, if I wasn't working.

And what were you writing?

Oh, I wrote several short stories. At the time, I was writing almost purely fiction. I wasn't writing any poetry. I started writing poetry maybe 10 years after I got out of grad school. How did you come. Huh?

How did you come to start writing poetry? That's interesting that you wrote it later after writing the stories.

Well, I went to some poetry readings, and I. Well, I mean, I'm an egotistical person, and I'd hear somebody read something and think, oh, I could do that better, you know, So, I mean, that's basically how I started. And I would. I did a few things, I sent some things out, and I actually was able to get poetry public. I can't publish fiction. Nobody wants my fiction, but they seem to like my poetry a little better.

Did you study poetry techniques? Formally, no. Okay. But your master's degree is in English.

With a grade of writing concentration.

Okay, so you were studying fiction then, and exclusively fiction?

Yeah.

That's interesting. So when you were working on that master's, you didn't really take any training in poetry or attend any workshops. That's really fascinating.

Yeah, we studied some, you know, some poems like you do in graduate school. You know, we had 19th century American poetry and 20th century American, you know, all this sort of stuff. And so, you know, I at least looked at and thought about things that other people were writing.

So those were. When you compare those poems that you studied to the poems that you began writing, were they similar or different? How do you see that? I'm trying to see, did they influence your poetry writing? That's what I'm really trying to ask.

Well, I'm of the opinion always that everything you read Influences you in some way or other. But I'm not really sure if it influenced the form that my poetry took. I've got this weird voice, that's all. Whenever I'm writing a poem, it's the same voice. It's this authoritarian voice. And I'm actually trying to get away from that because I think I'd be more publishable if I weren't, you know. But in some respects it's good because the difficult part about writing the way I write is you have to create an internal editor, you know, you have to be able to instantly edit things that you know are garbage.

That's interesting.

So, you know, I. I think you. Sometimes I'll think about it and I'll take a line or like, oh, that's trash, you know, and then move. Move on to the next thing, you know. But the thing is, you know, it's just repetition. You keep doing it over and over again, you know, and at some point it becomes much more easy. I don't know, it took a long time for that to happen, but it pretty much has happened for me. And I'm grateful that it has because I just really dislike looking at something I wrote 15 years ago and thinking it was just awful.

That's fascinating to me that you came to the poetry later in life and it sounds like you just dove in, you just started writing it and that was it.

Yeah, I mean, I had some things happening. I had gone back to school, I had had a lousy relationship. I think probably a lot of poetry stems from lousy relationships. And so I was excited about being in a new set of circumstances. And every now and then I would meet someone who'd be interesting and I'd write about that person and I'd write something else. And that, that basically that, that little book of poetry that that my, my brother gave to a friend of mine and he wound up publishing it. But anyway, I mean, every single one of them was, in a way, it was a love poem, you know, And I don't write that way anymore. All my poems are political now, but back then that's all I was writing, was love poems.

That's, that's interesting that you made the shift. Why and how did that happen? Let me give you a follow up question. I was also wondering, when you first began writing poetry, did it feel like it gave you a new emotional outlet?

That's a good question. I don't think I ever had an emotional outlet.

Well, because all of the original poems where you said were love poems, which is very emotional. And you switch to politics, which is a little. It's. There's still emotion in politics, but there's also, you know, it's a lot more logic and thought, sort of.

Yeah. And it's anger, too, you know, which is. Almost has to be okay. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, yeah, it's. I think it's. It's. There are some connections between the two because my. My love poems are really kind of intellectual too, you know, I mean, a lot of people would look at that and say, it's not a love poem. I know, but it really is. So.

What do you mean intellectual? I'm curious. Talk a little bit about that.

Oh, I don't know. In one of my poems, I compare my relationship to this person, like, being overwhelmed, like a bunch of stupefied ants, you know, something like that. But, I mean, back then, I was writing a lot of laundry lists, and that particular poem was a laundry list, and it had a lot of. A lot of clever things in it, things that I thought were clever, at least at the time. Yeah. So, yeah, I. I incorporate. But the things that I know about, you know, science and biology and chemistry and things like that.

Okay, so the chemistry background and the science that comes from your work as a pharmacist, correct?

Well, I mean, I had interest in that before then, but, yeah, especially when I was return. Had returned to school. I majored in, you know, in STEM because I wanted to do something word making money, you know, a career. So. Yeah, and. And I was lucky enough to be pretty good at that, too. So, you know, it kind of was permeating everything I was thinking about at the time. So, you know, and now it's politics. All I can think about is politics. It's just my wife gets mad at me for it.

Okay, we'll come back to the politics, but just for a minute, I want to know what's life as a pharmacist like?

Oh, it's. I was a retail pharmacist, and life as a pharmacist is almost universally depressing. I got to tell you, it's so tedious. I mean, it's just 5 and 5 and 5 and 5 and 5. You know, you're just counting pills all day. And I was a pharmacist during the pandemic, and I delivered over 8,000 vaccinations. And it was. You know, and the sad thing is the control that the retail pharmacies have over people because they determine how many people are at every outlet. And whether people show up or not, they don't it's really. I've had a couple of my former classmates come up to me and say, boy, you're really lucky that you can do that. I mean, I was very frugal when I graduated. I, I paid off my debts. I, I didn't, you know, so I gave myself. I was lucky. I was lucky to have the opportunity to walk away from it.

How many years. How many years were you. How many years were you a pharmacist?

About 12 years.

And the tedium, it sounds like that would have. That was what wore on you.

Well, it's not just that. It's. It's also the, the fact that the workload could become just oppressive, you know? I mean, every now and then I would walk into a place and there would be 500 scripts to be filled in the queue, you know, and I, I just, you know, you look at that and you just kind of shrug, and what do you do?

So you didn't have much interaction with people, it sounds like.

No, you have your texts, you know, and you have the people coming in who are intending to pick up things, and of course, if it's not ready for them, they get mad and, you know, so that kind of adds to the delirium.

Yeah, it sounds pretty intense the way you're describing it. What kind of work did you do before you were a pharmacist?

I ran a construction crew. I was in business with my father.

Okay, that sounds really different from being.

Everyone says that. Yeah.

Was it, in fact very different?

Oh, yeah. I mean, the language is totally different. I, I, I have to, I, I find myself code switching a lot now, you know, because I'm back to the world of construction, so. Okay.

Does it feel like coming home?

It feels kind of fun because I have these younger guys who try to do the ribbing, and it really kind of just bounces off me because I've had so much. They don't realize that I've been around that particular framework for, like, 38 years. So, yeah, nothing bothers me that people can say on a construction site.

Okay, all right. What kind of construction is it?

Oh, I'm testing, I'm testing asphalt. I'm a, I'm a quality control tech, so it's not, you know. Yeah.

So is that on roads?

Well, that's what they put it on. Yeah. It's mostly paving. Yeah. Well, I mean, what else would they use it for?

I don't know. That's why I'm asking.

I think it's mostly like, roads and parking lots, which are sort of, you know, roads that are displaced somewhat. So, yeah, it's roads. Okay.

All right. What kind of problems? If you have a problem in the day. What, what is a problem?

Everything in my job, almost everything currently is like front loaded. You have to have lots of stuff done before you ever really start getting stuff done, you know, so you get there at 5 o' clock in the morning, you get all your paperwork and you do this and you do that. Otherwise, if you're, you're lagging behind, you're likely to get a call from the density check or a call from your quality assurance manager. And, you know, I don't know, you have to get a lot done and early on and then, and then the physical stuff starts where you take a sample and you're dragging it around. And you're dragging around like 100 pounds of stuff and putting it here and there, you know, and testing it this way and that way. I actually think it's kind of fun because it, it's, it's kind of, you know, I've got that science background, so it's got a little bit of theoretical stuff to it, and it's also got a really physical element. I mean, last year I, I think I lost about 30 pounds during the season, you know, and this year I think I'm down about £10 since being laid off.

Well, there's a problem solving element to it, is from.

Oh, goodness, yes, absolutely. You know, I'm not great at solving problems yet, but I, I'll, I'll get there. Yeah. Yeah. And then they, they've asked me if I want to learn how to do that. I'm like, sure, I'll learn it. I'll learn whatever you want to teach me. I know I'm going to be retiring relatively quickly, but, you know, whatever they want me to do, I will do until, until I retire.

Interesting. So the, the two careers you've described to me don't make me think about poets and poetry, but here you are.

That's what they make fun of.

Do you? Wait, you have a fairly long, long list of published poems. Do you ever kind of like, hey, no.

Though most of those are short stories, I think that you're looking at.

Oh, okay.

I have 20, 29 published short stories. Probably what, 40 or 50 published poems.

Okay. That's a lot.

Is it? I don't know.

To me it is. Well, it should be enough to silence someone who wants to make fun of your poetry, I would think.

Well, if no one reads them, then this publishing is one thing and Getting people to actually read you is another, I think, you know, it's. Yeah.

Well, let's talk a little bit more about your poem that we're going to feature. How does it fit in? You said it's more of the political one, so you got like your love poems and your political poems, and this one's more political.

It sort of is. It's meant to be kind of scary. You know, it's the whole notion that, you know, you're either paranoid or else they actually are just looking at you. So, you know, that. That comes into play, obviously. But there's. There's the. The thing about it. I. I mean, what I. What I want to convey is a certain nonchalance, the fact that it's so ubiquitous, this. This notion going through people's heads that they're not alone, that, you know, that. That it almost becomes commonplace, you know, now. And it really. Oh, my goodness. It extends to literally everything you can think of if you think in that direction. I'm trying very hard not to do so. I mean, I'd rather be the commentator rather than the commentated, but I mean, things are as they are.

When you say it stretches into many different areas. Can you give us a couple examples?

Well, I mean, there's privacy issues, obviously, and there's the issue of whether or not someone, if they are being observed or if they're not being observed, but believe they are being. Is this something that just permeates their entire consciousness?

That's interesting.

Does it affect the way that they look at things? The way that they do things? Does it. It make their behavior. Does it alter their behavior in such a way that it makes them less of a person than if they had more control over their own existence? You know, it's an ex. Yeah, it's an existential question. What can I say?

Yeah, it's interesting to think that whether or not someone is or isn't being observed, that the consciousness that it could be happening would still affect the person.

Oh, of course. Of course it does. I mean, this is the Heisenberg principle, right? You know, do you feel, whether they know it or not, that it affects your behavior?

Do you feel that in your own given. In your day.

I've. With me, I am so. I'm so stuck up that nothing affects the way I view myself or the world. I'm just so stuck up that I can deal with anything.

All right, well, let's translate that into your writing, because you were saying you have published quite a few short stories and you've published I think a lot of poems. How do you feel about when your work goes out into the world and people are reading it and responding to it?

I'm not sure people read it.

Okay. Have you ever done any reading events where you read your work to the public?

I used to when I was in grad school. Now I don't anymore. I tried. I tried earlier this year. There's a really great little bookstore in Milwaukee called Woodland Pattern that has monthly poetry readings. I. I went over there with the intention of signing up for this Friday. And it turns out they're like six months booked. And it's just like, I have no idea what I'm going to be doing on some Friday and six months, six months from now. So, I mean, what's the point, really? I'll get up on stage, I read for 20 minutes. Generally speaking, when I did that, when I was in graduate school, everybody would just kind of sit there dumbfounded anyway. Never, never said anything. They would absolutely cheer at this halftuff. I'm sorry to say that, but it was true. But you know, something that. You know, something that I would read, they would never make any kind of comment whatsoever. I would read in total silence. I would get up, walk down, sit down in my chair, and that would be it. They'd come up with the next leader, I guess.

So what did you think about that?

I thought they had no idea what was going on in the poem. Okay.

But it certainly didn't stop you. You kept writing.

No.

So now I'm back to that question about the emotional outlet. Or now I'm wondering, like, so what is it that drives you to write the poems and the stories? Because it's not so much, you know, connecting with another human. Because it sounds like you're not. You're like, read it, don't read it. Nah. You're not too worried about that.

I'm disassociated from most other humans, to be honest. But the truth is, I view America as a place where people kind of live in some sort of fantasy that they try to create. And they always try to make it look as positive as they possibly can. When the truth of the matter is there's positive, but there's also a lot of negative that most people ignore, you know? And I. My goal, really, in my short stories is to demonstrate that. That the good old days never existed. They never will exist, not as long as things are the way they are. And the only thing that. That's. That's. That's. That's possible is to look at if you see things in reality, maybe things will change, but if you don't, things are going to keep going on as they do.

So when you say the good old days, talk a little bit about, what do you think people imagine?

Oh, you know, the family values thing, the 1.2 kids or whatever they have and, you know, and the points in one's life that are supposed to be significant. Weddings, funerals, things. All these things. You know, people gather and they. And it. And it always turns out to be, I don't know, anticlimactic in a way. Yeah, because. Because people don't really. They anticipate the event, but they don't know how to deal with an event of such, you know, supposed significance.

So in the moment.

In the moment, significance really, I think, is something that people just, they. They establish that for themselves, you know, I mean, they experience something, and if. If it's good to them, then it's good. And if it's not good to them, then it's not. And then, then people make bad decisions. What they try, what they seem to do is they tend toward the good things and they shy away from the bad things. But the bad things have a lot of stuff that they can teach you too, you know, And I mean, I. I'm trying to, in my stories, at least let people give people a little hint as to what or not what they can learn from experiencing things, even bad things, you know, and letting that kind of sink in and sort of change your behavior just a little bit, maybe. Maybe make you understand something a little differently.

It sounds like, if I'm hearing you right, that when people move through their life and they build their own narrative story about their past and who they are and what contributed to who they are, that they, you know, gravitate toward what feels like a positive or a good memory, and then don't really take the opportunity to learn from things that they could learn from.

I think that's true. Yeah. And. And I mean, you know, there are things to be learned from good experiences as well, but, you know, you can't just deny when something goes wrong. You can't do that. And people do that all the time, and they get into all kinds of trouble doing.

Yeah, and I think if I'm hearing you right, what you're saying is they could possibly avoid repeating bad mistakes if they learn from them.

That's true. But there's something to be learned also, I think, in the experience itself. You know, how, how brave a person can be in the face of real, real difficulty. You Know, and yeah, you encounter it again, you know, how to. How to deal with it the next time around. But that's. That's not just it. It's. It's like there's. There's a certain amount of heroism in every person, you know, and experiencing that. There's something to be said for that.

I think that's really important.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I try to make it apparent in the stuff that I write. I'm not sure I do that. I'm. Do I succeed? I have no idea. Do people rape me? I have no idea. I hope they do. Be nice if they would.

I think that they do. They just don't loop back around to talk to you. And that is.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I was just gonna say that is. Now that we're bringing this up, that is one of the isolation points of being a writer is that you do write, you know, on your own, in your own time, and then send the stuff out into the world and then you. You really don't get to know how it does or doesn't affect people for the most part. Occasionally someone will tell you, but most of the time, you know, you don't.

Yeah, I've had a few people come up to me and say they really like this piece or that piece, or they think you're a good writer or whatever, you know, which is nice. I mean, it's nice to hear that. And I'm hoping, you know, when I brag to them that I think I'm the best writer in the world, you know, because you have to in order to write successfully. I think every person has to convince themselves that they're the best writer in the world.

I agree with that 100%. At least while your hands are on the keyboard.

Oh, yeah, no kidding. I mean, if you don't do that, then you just never write anything.

Yeah, exactly. You can have those self doubts as soon as you move away from the keyboard or your notepad or wherever you're writing, but you definitely do yourself a favor, at least just convince yourself for the moment, like, I'm just the best. The absolute best. Yeah, because.

And that's. That's one of the reasons I think I probably still write is, is I. I want to keep working on the craft. I want to keep getting better. I think in the last couple of years, I've actually. My prose has actually gotten better, you know, and I'm. I'm tending now towards memoir to a certain extent.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. Although, I mean, is. Is my story worth telling? How would I know?

Yeah, I think if you feel compelled to tell it, that someone else would be interested. That's my two cents.

Maybe. Maybe. I don't know.

Is that what you're working on currently?

No. I'm working on probably 15 things simultaneously. I have several short stories I bounce around to different magazines. I probably average between 500 and 1,000 rejections a year. And every time I get rejected, I read the story over, try to decide whether or not I want to make any changes. Did I make a mistake in submitting it? Because a lot of times that happens. A lot of times I submit something before it's done because I don't really know. And my wife keeps telling me, you got to get an editor, you got to get. I have my friend who agreed to edit my work. He did a great job for about two or three months, and now everything I submit to him, he just thinks it's the most wonderful thing in the world. So he's no longer an editor. Right now he's a fan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The heart of a real writer. You don't want to just hear, that's wonderful. You want to hear some actual dig in somewhere?

For sure. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, he. He comments on my personality, you know, because he sees that in my writing. And. And I. I don't want comments on my personality. I want comments on whether or not this is the right word choice for this paragraph.

Yes, I hear.

Yeah, It's. It's. Yeah, it's just not, you know, I gotta find somebody else. It's nice to have a fan. But, you know, he's. He's. He's no longer in my editor. He can't be. He's too smitten.

I guess. That's it. That's a bittersweet. That's a good bad thing.

Okay. Yeah, absolutely.

So you've given me the link for your poets and writers page so people can find you there. Is there anywhere else people could look for you online?

I think I have an Instagram. I have a substack called Mark's Substack.

Okay.

Really clever there. And it's on that sub stack. I actually publish things that I have no intention whatsoever of ever sending out. And what I do is my editor, Massoud, I gave him all this stuff and I said, what am I going to do with this? He said, well, publish it on substack. He says it's an insight into the way you think, which is kind of cool. I'm good with that.

Lovely. Okay, so we'll be sure to include that substack link in the show notes so that people can come and find that raw, unpolished markwork.

Well, I mean I. Unpolished is something that I sometimes revel in, but. But polishing is. Is. I mean that's, that's a lot of times that's the hard part. Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, thanks a lot for joining us today. It's been fun talking to you.

Yeah, you too.

Thanks for stopping by the audio town square of the Washington Square Review. Until next time, this has been the Washington Square on air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about our writers, community and literary journal, visit lcc. Edu wsl Writing is messy, but do it anyway.

This is lcc Connect Voices, Vibes, Vision.

Lansing Community College Performing Arts is proud to present Collective Rage, a play in five Betty's by Jen Silverman. Betty is rich. Betty is lonely. Betty's busy working on her truck. Betty wants to talk about love, but Betty needs to hit something. Five different women named Betty collide at the intersection of anger, sex, love and the theatre in an array of feministic and queer viewpoints. Featured at LCC's Black Box Theatre October 10th through the 12th and October 17th and 18th. All performances are free to attend. Visit LCC.edushowinfo for showtime information. This play contains explicit language and adult themes. Recommended for adults 18 plus LCC.

Connect voices, vibes, Vision.

Welcome to a Psycho Delicious conversation on mental health issues and trends from two local mental health professionals in the greater Lansing area. I'm Michael Stratton, lmsw.

And I'm Morgan Bowen, dnp, pmhnp. And we're here to provide you with a deep dive into the human experience of consciousness and beyond. Our aim is to be educational and entertaining. So just kick back and open your ears and your minds.

Hey, I'm Mike Stratton.

And I'm Morgan Bowen.

And this is part two of our Couples Talk. And we're going to shift a little bit. This is actually Valentine's Day that we're recording this. And so the first part we talked about our own histories with couples.

Yeah, that was fun.

Current successful coupling that we have going on with our prospective partners. And we're going to talk about treatment of couples during this section because one of the things that does bring people to therapy is often is relationship issues. And couples will sometimes present and sometimes someone will be presented saying, oh, my wife wants me to come or my husband wants me to come.

Spouse ordered.

Spouse ordered.

Do you typically do couples?

I used to, yeah. It's really hard.

Yeah. Yeah.

I stopped doing it. I saw. So it's rare for me to do it anymore. It's very rare. I shouldn't say I stopped doing it completely.

Was there a couple that ever came in where you went, you guys should probably just call it good.

Yes.

Yeah. Okay.

So that is a thing.

I mean, I've seen it lampooned on, like, various shows, so I thought it.

Was early in my career. Early in my career. And a couple years of. Came in and they said, will you tell us whether or not we should be together? And I said, that's not up to me. That's something we should. You guys need to decide on your own. So we worked together for several years, and at the end of. Near the end of our working together, I said, I think you guys shouldn't be together. And they were offended and they stayed together to spite me for another.

And I swear that has been lampooned in a movie or a show or something.

I saw when they get mad at.

The therapist and go, I missed out.

We're gonna do this.

They ended up splitting up, though.

Oh, well, there you go.

So I was right.

Yeah. And it. You know, so do. I was wondering if you, you know, so you're seeing an individual, and then they want to bring their spouse into a session maybe first, you know.

It'S. It's difficult because you. You have a connection with one person already.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so to bring somebody else in, that person feels like an outsider. So you have to kind of double down on the new person to make them feel.

Yeah. Your client's like, can you tell my spouse what you were telling me about how I'm right?

Yeah. Well, and that is a strange thing that you mentioned that, because a lot of couples that come in are looking for someone to figure out who's right here, validate. And. And a big part of therapy is validating both people, of really validating them, but also helping them to see what patterns of communication they have that seems to be getting them in trouble or what the issues are. So the big issues, I mean, what would your guess be? What are the biggest issues that bring people into couples therapy?

Well, we were just talking about it off mic, and we were talking about money. Money, I think would be one thing.

Money, finances, communication, intimacy. Like sex, I would think Infidelity.

Yeah, yeah, all of those. Parenting. Parenting.

Parenting, yeah.

Family of origin issues.

Drug use. Drug or alcohol use.

Drug and alcohol.

I could see a loss being probably a major factor, like a loss of a child or loss of a Parent or anything like that.

Yeah, all of those. All of those are possibilities. Yeah. So one of the ways that. That influenced me a lot in terms of working with couples. There was a guy named Gottman. Have you heard of the Gottman? Yeah. You have, Morgan. And he did a lot of research on couples. He did a longitudinal study. He studied 20,000 couples over the course of 20 years. He created what he called a love lab, where he looked at these couples over a period of time. G O T T M A N Gottman, John Gottman. And he looked at these couples over a long period of time. And he found several things that came out of that research. One was that 69% of the things that people argued about 20 years before were the same things they argued about 20 years later. So there's a lot of things that people have conflicts about that aren't going to change. But on the other hand, 31% of the stuff did change. So things do change to a certain degree. But the idea of, like, I'm going to marry this person and change them, you're probably not going to, you know, what you see is what you get. I think that that's a safe assumption for people when they get into a relationship as opposed to thinking they'll change once we get married.

And that's such a hard. You know, I personally have had that challenge of trying to change and not even consciously doing, you know, like, that there's a subgroup, but it's so consistent that partners are trying to change the other person in some way. That is really probably not going to happen.

Well, everybody's got imperfections. And so your ability to tolerate the imperfections of your partner of like, the things that drive you a little bit crazy, you have to be able to say, okay, can I live with this? Can I accept this? Is this going to be okay? And if, if you can't, then that's an early warning sign of like, maybe I don't belong in this relationship. The other thing that Gottman. There's his love lab. There we go. It's cool. So he also found he would wire people up. He did galvanize skin responses. He would look at micro interactions.

What time period is this? This is current.

He's still current. He's still going. 1986 is when he opened it up. So he's been doing this now for 40 years, maybe. Yeah, about 40 years. Yeah. But he would find a couple of things in particular that were big predictors of whether a couple was going to make it. And he thought that he could Sit down, And in a five or ten minute interview with them, he'd know at a 95% success rate whether people were going to stay together or not. And what he found was that one thing is their heart rate. If their heart rate got up to an aerobic level during a disagreement or an argument, that person was likely to leave the marriage or the relationship.

Interesting.

Yeah. They were just in too much distress. And you can't always tell that. I would see couples and I'd have them look at their heart rates while they were in the midst of having a disagreement about something. And someone who looks really calm, their heart could be in afib. And the person who's yelling or loud might be calm as anything. So heart rate is one thing to look at. The other thing to look at was positive to negative interactions during a disagreement, that there were four positive interactions to every one negative interaction. So the positive interactions could be things like smiling, touching, moving in, nodding, saying endearing things to each other, reflecting back what they just heard them say. Those are all positive things in an argument.

Like in a discussion.

In a discussion or an argument.

Heated discussion.

Yeah. And then the one negative thing would be. So they kept it light, they kept connected. There's that sense of, I still like you in the face of all this.

And then he identified what were negative things. I mean, like name calling.

Here we go.

Profanity.

There were four. Four horsemen. He calls them the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And I've got them on it. I've got them.

Well, let's think of. What do you think they are?

What do you think they are?

Well, I would say some sort of name calling. Like some.

I could see name calling. Definitely be one of them. Trying to think of my own situations.

As we're talking about this.

Basically saying. And I don't know the actual medical term, but the notion that you always do this.

I was thinking that too. Yeah.

Like cognitive distortion. Is that what it's called?

Well, you've named. You've named two of them. Not the names that he gives them, but those are two of them. What you say.

And then beyond that level of, you.

Know, like yelling, like some, you know, like a affective response where you're, you know, aggressive or aggressiveness, angry and.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So that's our three. These are the, these are the four that, that he identified. One is criticism. So it's verbally attacking the person, just being critical of what they did or that what they didn't do. And that would be, you know, when you think about things that you get criticized for in a relationship. You never did this. You always do this. You know, why are you like that? You know, that kind of thing.

Interesting to. That is one of the things that I experience is. Is the notion that I feel like I'm being criticized when indeed the other person says they're not. And I'm always back and forth because I'm like, I still feel like I'm being criticized here.

Well, obviously, you're right.

Just saying no. Well, and I've experienced it the other way, too, where the other person felt like I was criticizing him, and I'm like, no, no, that's not what I mean by that at all.

Yeah. This is a really interesting distinction, because the distinction between intent. So the person doesn't intend to criticize you. They're giving you feedback, but it lands like criticism. For instance, it's like, you might be trying to make this point, but to me, it's feeling like criticism. And so for the person to soften that or to say, it's delivery. Yeah. So the delivery may be a big piece of it.

Well, it's also recognized patterns, because when you argue in relationships, frequently you fall into a pattern where one person becomes the aggressor and the other person becomes the victim or the wounded, and both kind of get entrenched into their roles pretty quickly and pretty easily. And then it's very difficult to move out of that because it's such an ingrained dynamic between the two.

So the way to counteract that, because he's also got antidotes to each one of these four horsemen, the antidote to criticism is a gentle startup where you basically say something positive about the person. So, you know, you use an I statement. So when you think about something, for instance, let's say there's a partner who has a hard time being on time. And instead of saying, you're never on time, to say, you know, something that's important for me is to really be on time. You know, that's just an important thing to me. And I get so anxious when we're going to be late for something. It just makes me just really anxious. That's a different way of delivering that message, which isn't criticizing the person. It's stating a need, and it's making an I statement. So that's a way to do that. Now, what a lot of people will do in the face of criticism is they'll shut down. So the second thing is stonewalling, where a person just stops communicating. So it could be the silent treatment.

That's what John does.

He does that.

Yeah, I'm guilty of that.

He's a shutter downer.

A lot of guys do that. There's a great bit that. Let me see. Oh, that Chris. I think Chris Rock used to talk about that. That there's a. There's a thing that guys know that women don't always know. That there's a line you don't cross that it's like if you go, if it goes any further, I can't guarantee that I'm not going to lose it. And so to keep from doing that, I'm going to kind of shut down. I'm going to get quiet, I'm going to walk away, I'm going to do something. Now on the one hand that's an effective thing if you feel like you have a problem with temper. But another way is to communicate. Like I'm starting to feel really angry. I'm. And I want to slow everything down. Can we slow it down? Because I find myself wanting to leave the room or walk away. We need to cool out or take a time out and revisit this. That's a way to begin to do that. But guys are more often likely to do the stonewalling thing than women are. But it can happen. It can happen the other way too. So just doing any kind of self soothing during that time to help you calm down is a way to keep from that stonewalling thing to happen.

Self soothing as in what would be an example? I'm asking for personal reference.

Well, having a boundary to say I'm getting really upset right now. So one of the things that I.

Do so setting the boundary, just saying, look, I need to stop or take a time out.

Yeah, we need to take a time out.

Well, I think also recognizing when it is that you to need, you need to take a time out like the self regulation or setting the boundary with yourself that if I'm reaching a certain level then I need to. Because ultimately, even if you're in a relationship, you're responsible for your behavior. So to have the sense to, you know, I'm approaching, you know, blow up time or you know, whatever that we need to stop, we just need to stop and we need to separate and we need to go into separate corners.

Does that make sense? This is a stereotype. But I think women are more comfortable with that face to face conflict where they are able to talk about conflict face to face because they know it's not usually going to come to blows. Men have the shared experience of you get to A point and it comes to blows. And so they shut down. So it doesn't get that far. They don't even know that that's what's going on, but that's kind of what's going on. So the ability to articulate, like I'm finding myself getting really upset or I'm finding myself getting really angry. Guys will often have a two stage change, you know, in terms of anger. Like there's anger and no anger. And I usually advise them to have a 10 point stage. So identify it when you're at 2 or 3 or 4 and communicate that. Don't wait until you're at 6 or 7. If you're at 7, you're starting to do an action. I think we've.

I have to confess that's something I would actually have to try to pay attention to because like I said, I'm pretty much an on and off switch. So all of a sudden I'm like, I'm angry. I'm realizing I'm angry.

It's the red hair.

It is.

I think that's coming up.

It does take a long time for me to get mad though. It really does. So obviously I've got more switches than I think I do.

Yeah, yeah. But you can get to that point where you start to do something which seems beyond your control, you know, where you really lose it. And I haven't been there very often in my life, but I've been there a few times and there's this sense of being like, okay, it's, it's on, you know, and it's just, it's. Yeah, yeah, it's awful.

What do you think the importance of your exposure to your parents relationship or your primary caregivers relationship is in developing your own relationship style?

Well, they're your model, you know, they're the ones that you learn things from and right and wrong, sometimes you've learned something not to do. Like my parents had a fair amount of conflict and it would be fueled by alcohol. And so. And I don't drink, so I became very conflict avoidant. So I tried not to have conflict. So I learned a different dysfunctional pattern rather than that dysfunctional pattern, but that ability to address conflict in a way that was calm and a way that was respectful. It was a different kind of thing for me.

It was sort of the same with. I mean, my parents were big personalities and they weren't, there wasn't a lot of alcohol. I mean they drank, but it wasn't necessarily alcohol fueled. It was egos and it was Bravado. And if they. I would say if they got. If they were on the same page, they were both charismatic. Everything was great. It was fun. But when they were not on the same page, it was kind of clash of the titans. There was no physical abuse, but there was. I mean, neither of them would back down. And so it really was just kind of. Until you yelled yourself out, or at least whatever the dynamic was that played itself out. And then it would just kind of fizzle. And my brothers and I would just be kind of audience members of like.

Morgan, there's a reason why you're therapist.

So when.

When I got into my own relationship, I mean, that was my model of, like, you know, to get your point across, you have to be loud, you have to be passionate, you have to be, you know, like, just very intense. And so. And my husband is the opposite. He shuts down when there's too much emotion or energy or anger or intensity. So he would shut down and I. And it would. I would respond in the opposite way. So I would just be like, we gotta talk about this, like, longer and more, and I gotta make my point in 500 different ways.

You are my girlfriend and your husband is me.

So we, you know, so I think I shared in this podcast that we were, you know, we ended up in couples therapy. And a lot of it was, you know, because of. I mean, in that model, we had to change that. We had to change that because it was, you know, and a lot of it was. I had to change it. Whereas I thought we went into couples therapy so he could learn how to be more vocal and kind of meet the moment.

But that was the same thing Mike was saying earlier. Just, you wanted to feel validated and both of you needed to be validated, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

I've been in three primary relationships I've been in. We've seen three different therapists for couples work. And it's like, what do they all have in common? Me.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's. It's interesting. So that was two.

Yeah.

So the third one is defensiveness. So that's where it becomes like a ping pong match. Or a. Or a what? What's the current game everyone's playing?

Pickleball.

Pickleball. Pickleball match. It just goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, point, counterpoint, you know. Hey, you. You left a mess over here. Oh, yeah, well, you met left a mess last week. So the message never gets in. There's just like a counter point going back and forth. And it does become no one can kind of let in. And that's the antidote to it, is to let in and take responsibility. You know what, you're right. I did make a mess. I did make a mess. And I know that's irritating to you, so I'll try to do different next time. Thanks for reminding me. If you can get to that point where you can actually take the responsibility for it, but that's a hard thing to do, especially if you feel like you're criticized. So you want to. Both partners want to work on a way that you can make those statements. So that doesn't feel critical, but it feels more like this is my need. It makes me crazy when this area is messy and it's just hard for me. And if the other partner can say, you know what, I can take responsibility for that, I'll do a better job of making sure.

Well, that's a really good example of like the, the individual responsibility of the, you know, the people in the relationship. It's not just relationship work. It's like you have to, you have to have the emotional maturity to be able to say you're wrong or that you did make a mistake. And so if you are the person that just cannot do that or in a relationship with somebody that just cannot do that, then that is going to be really difficult to have some type of amicable way of resolving things.

It's a paradox because if your confidence and your self esteem are really low, it's hard to let in any negative feedback because it just feels crushing. As opposed to part of why you're in a relationship is to help feed that sense of self esteem. And, and so the paradox in there is how do you get stronger while also taking those bits of feedback that you can get from your partner.

That is a very good point.

And you want a partner that challenges you to some extent. To some extent, not all the time about everything, but to some extent you want a partner that helps you live up to who it is that you want to be. And, and it reminds you of that.

The relationship should be greater than the sum of its parts. The people bring the individual parts. And something about the relationship there is a power in and of itself that is the connection between the two. And it should hopefully elevate the individuals to be able to achieve the things that they want to do, whether career or family or spiritual, whatever it is. And that is a really cool thing about couplehood when it's that. And I think that's something that really cements like a long term connection and the other thing I was thinking was, like, in an argument, and I agree it's so important to be able to argue, not necessarily argue, but disagree constructively or. Well, because the nature of an argument does definitely kind of set the tone for the potential for badness, I guess, in a relationship. And oftentimes in an argument, like the word bad, the bad therapeutic term in an argument, people's character defects or their challenges come out. People can get entrenched. Or like John, my husband. He tends to. I think he would agree with me that he has difficulty with saying when he's wrong or, you know, and it's not that he has really difficulty saying that, but in an adversarial way. Like, he just is not. Like he's not going to say it again, but maybe 20 minutes later, he would come back and say, listen, I'm sorry, or whatever. Those intense moments really bring out kind of some temperamental type of things in people that are pretty persistent, I think.

Accepting and admitting that you're wrong also. I mean, you know, it's growth in you, first of all. But it also. I've found in my personal experiences that it just kind of creates a greater bond because there becomes more trust.

Yeah, it's vulnerable. I mean, it makes you vulnerable.

Vulnerability leads to intimacy. That's like a formula. And then the last one, the fourth one, which is that your relationship's kind of on life support at this point. It's contempt, it's content. You know, just like, I really hate you, you know, I just don't like you. And it's the worst.

I mean, it's the worst place to be.

Yeah. And a relationship is usually just about to end at that point.

It should end at that point. Well, some. Some. That's what you got to call it.

Yeah. Some couples come to therapy at that point when they're. When they're at that point. But the way to keep that from happening is to create a culture of appreciation and gratitude and reminding each other of, like, you know, what I really like about you, or, you're looking really good today, or, thank you so much for doing this. To learn each other's love language, to learn what the person says. Just before we came over here, I know Kathy, part of it is time. And I had a lot of things that I was doing. I was going to do something else. And she said, I thought maybe you'd come in here and sit with me for a while. And I thought, God, I'm doing this other thing, but I'm doing this thing. And then I'm like, okay. She's asking for. So I can sit down and let's sit down and have a cup of coffee for a half hour and talk.

You know, and apparently I'm Mike and Mike's relationship.

So John will be like, well, you know, what are we eating for dinner? And they'll be like, well, you know. And I'll be like, well, why don't you. He's a chef. So I'll be like, why don't you make this? And he says, well, why don't we make it together? And I'm like, oh, God, can't you just make it?

I've got very important things.

He loves to cook together. That is really one of his love languages. And I really do, too. But I'm like, but I could be doing so many other things.

Yeah, that's a quality time kind of a thing. Yeah, it is.

And we both enjoy it.

We should. We should have John and Kathy in sometime.

They should come next time and talk about us without us here. We should have Dadalion to a. Yeah.

Neither one would come, though.

Oh, my God. I know. They wouldn't talk either.

You'd have 52 minutes of silence.

Dadalia would have to interview.

A psycho. Delicious conversation is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is no substitute for therapy and should not be treated as such. If you feel a need for real therapy, you should consider consult your local provider, Google Therapy, or therapists in your area. Check with community mental health or a suicide hotline if you are feeling suicidal.

Mike and Morgan welcome your questions, feedback or dilemmas. Feel free to send us an email at a psychodelicious conversationmail.com that is a psychodelicious P S Y C H O D E E L I C I o u s conversationmail.com the views expressed.

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