Why We Fall for the Wrong Person | Couples Therapist Dr. Harville Hendrix

1. 0:00 – 2:02

   Nature's Agenda: Why We Fall for the Wrong Person

   1. SSSimon Sinek0:00

      And this is healthy?

   2. HHDr. Harville Hendrix0:01

      It's nature. Nature's trying to finish an agenda that it didn't get to finish in the parenting period of childhood. Nature's trying to finish that. And it's simple. It's about survival.

   3. SSSimon Sinek0:13

      So I'm trying to think about the people in my life when I was a kid, and what did they not meet? Uh, and then what am I attracted to now? Ah, [beep] it works. You're right. Ah, damn it. They say that it's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. But you know what's even better than that? Learning how to stay in love. Now, I have my own podcast, which means I get to bring on whoever I want, and it may or may not be a coincidence that I have had multiple relationship and love experts. And the reason is because this stuff is hard, and I have a life of failed relationships to prove it. But that might all change thanks to my guest, Dr. Harville Hendrix. He spent 50 years figuring out love. Working alongside his wife, fellow relationship expert Helen LaKelly Hunt, he's written 10 books, including the bestsellers Getting the Love You Want and Receiving Love, the subject of which made him a fixture on Oprah for nearly two decades. My conversation with Harville really challenged me. But then that doesn't help me understand-

   4. HHDr. Harville Hendrix1:25

      I'm sorry

   5. SSSimon Sinek1:26

      ... okay

   6. HHDr. Harville Hendrix1:26

      I didn't, I didn't create nature.

   7. SSSimon Sinek1:28

      [laughs] Okay.

   8. HHDr. Harville Hendrix1:28

      But I've watched this for 50 years.

   9. SSSimon Sinek1:30

      And it really helped me reframe what's supposed to happen in a relationship, where we learn to stop seeing each other as a resource to meet our needs, but rather that relationships become an act of service. Trust me, this will help anyone who's either looking for love or is looking to stay in love. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is A Bit of Optimism.

2. 2:02 – 6:07

   From Sharecropper's Son to Oprah's Relationship Expert

   1. SSSimon Sinek2:02

      So I, I'm always fascinated by someone's origin, like how they got into their careers, 'cause I bumbled and fumbled into mine. You and your wife were, uh, and your, your, your books, you were on Oprah a million times, and you still are, you know, the go-to for anybody who's trying to understand love and relationships. You know, how did you find yourself in that place?

   2. HHDr. Harville Hendrix2:22

      Oh, in that place. So I could start with the fact that my first, uh, interview was when I was 15 years old. I didn't know that was the beginning of my career. And I became a pastor of a church at 17. So I've been on the stage, uh, regularly every Sunday, and I've done stuff like that ever since I was, uh, or- ordained at 17. I grew up on a sharecropper's farm. I had no money, no status, no nothing. I just happened to speak one day at church, and people said, "Hey, this boy can talk." And that led to, uh, to the ministry and blah, blah, blah. So I have a PhD. Then, uh, got a divorce in '75. I was a professor at Perkins School of Theology here in Dallas. It's a Methodist seminary, and at that time it was a conservative Methodist seminary. So the dean had to fire me because his supporters in the Methodist church could not have a divorced professor. Five of his tenured faculty were divorced five years later, but I was not tenured.

   3. SSSimon Sinek3:28

      What you're saying is, is you're a pioneer and a trendsetter. [laughs]

   4. HHDr. Harville Hendrix3:30

      Yeah, I, I, I didn't know that. But I, but I decided they... I got my degree to be able to be paid to write and read and talk. They put me on committees so that 20% of my time was on teaching, 80% of my time was on committees. So when they fired me, I said, "That was not fun." I was a clinician.

   5. SSSimon Sinek3:54

      Right.

   6. HHDr. Harville Hendrix3:54

      So I decided I would go full time in private practice, started psychotherapy. Then met Helen the fifth year of my divorce, and we clicked around a bunch of things, started talking. Five years later we got married. And then I had begun putting together this Imago Relationship Therapy theory th- stuff. And so our conversation has continued about what causes conflict, why do people get divorced, and so forth. And then when we got into it, Helen became the second most important person in the world in the women's movement after we got married. So we did parallel for a while. She was doing the women's world, and she was number two, along with Gloria Steinem. Helen paid the bill for the women's movement, and Gloria was the face. Then Helen decided she liked working with couples, and we, um, co-wrote books. Uh, she began to join me in lecturing and doing workshops. Our life just merged together-

   7. SSSimon Sinek4:56

      Yeah

   8. HHDr. Harville Hendrix4:56

      ... so that right now we, we do everything together.

   9. SSSimon Sinek4:59

      You had one failed marriage before this happened.

   10. HHDr. Harville Hendrix5:03

       Yep.

   11. SSSimon Sinek5:03

       And now you have a, a relationship that you're still together, and you're n- I believe you're 90, right?

   12. HHDr. Harville Hendrix5:08

       Yep.

   13. SSSimon Sinek5:08

       How long have you, the two of you been together?

   14. HHDr. Harville Hendrix5:11

       45 years.

   15. SSSimon Sinek5:12

       45 years you've been together.

   16. HHDr. Harville Hendrix5:14

       Almost divorced twice.

   17. SSSimon Sinek5:15

       Uh, right, which we will come to. [laughs]

   18. HHDr. Harville Hendrix5:19

       [laughs] All right.

   19. SSSimon Sinek5:21

       I mean, I can tell you from my standpoint, like I never imagined that I would be talking about leadership and culture. I came from the marketing world and I was talking about communication. And it sort of became that those who could communicate from this thing called why, which is what I was talking about, were actually the best leaders. And so-

   20. HHDr. Harville Hendrix5:40

       Mm-hmm

   21. SSSimon Sinek5:41

       ... I discovered leadership, um-

   22. HHDr. Harville Hendrix5:44

       Yeah

   23. SSSimon Sinek5:44

       ... rather than pursued it. How did you discover love and that you had a point of view on it, especially after one relationship ended in divorce and then you found love again?

   24. HHDr. Harville Hendrix5:56

       When we both met at a party neither one of us wanted to go to And she was single and I was single. And it turns out she was in one of my classes,

3. 6:07 – 9:10

   The 30-Second Moments That Change Everything

   1. HHDr. Harville Hendrix6:07

      had a big class, and I didn't know her at all. She sat on the back row. It had a door that went out the back end of the room. I didn't know her, but she came to this party, and I didn't recognize her, but I was leaving 'cause I didn't wanna be there anymore. I'd dated enough and it was, really tired of women, and I thought I'd be a monk or something like that, and I would leave. But on the way out the door she stopped me and said, "Dr. Hendrix, I'm Helen." At that time she was, uh, called Helen Kryling. And I said, "So? I'm trying to leave." [laughs] And she said, "Well, I was in your class." And I said, "Kry- okay, okay." So Helen Kry- 'cause it rung a bell. Helen Kryling, I remember she wrote the best paper in the class. That's why I remembered the paper. These are those 30-second interfaces that if they don't happen, nothing after that happens. Said, "Oh, you wrote that paper. I'll go to my office tomorrow and be sure," 'cause I saved the best papers. You had wrote the best paper. Only one in the class was worth reading, 'cause I learned something from it. Everything else was a regurgitation of the lectures. So I called her and said, "I do have, I do have your paper." She said, uh, said, you know, "You wanna get together and talk about it?" So we got together and talked about it, and we started talking about we were both divorced. How come? I'm a university professor. She's one of the richest women in America because she's the daughter of H.L. Hunt, who was at one point in 1976 the richest man in the world. And so she's a socialite, and she's educated and beautiful. How come you're divorced? Why am I divorced? So we started asking that question. And so we got to, well, uh, couple's conflict, and what, what's conflict about? So I have, have a theoretical mind, so I began to put together more questions and more answers and more research and in- interviews and all that. And after a while I found I had a system emerging about how do people, uh, get attracted to each other, how do they pick each other, why does romantic love turn into conflict? And we kept having all these conversations. Now we were dating, uh, and fighting. We've always fought. We would date and fight. But they were not polarizing, it was just serious disagreements. And so that eventually turned into, uh, lectures, which I started giving in public here in Dallas. And people started showing up and wanting to be trained in what I was talking about. And so I decided when I moved out of the university, I would move into practice. I became a psychotherapist. But then I got interested in marriage after I got my divorce.

   2. SSSimon Sinek8:41

      Yeah.

   3. HHDr. Harville Hendrix8:42

      So what is this marriage thing about? I blew one, and I have no idea what to do next. So it began to show up. As I began to see couples, they began to tell me what they needed, 'cause I did have a good listening ear. Like, what do you need me to help you do?

   4. SSSimon Sinek8:56

      Yeah.

   5. HHDr. Harville Hendrix8:56

      Then I finally learned from them if I do certain things, it really helps. If I do other things, it doesn't help. So I finally put it together, and in 1980 I had a working system that was enough that therapists wanted to come and be trained.

4. 9:10 – 10:41

   The Oprah Effect: How One Book Landed on the Right Desk

   1. SSSimon Sinek9:10

      That's fun.

   2. HHDr. Harville Hendrix9:10

      And then I started writing this book, and here's another 30-second thing. The book got dropped in Oprah's executive producer's office. Her boyfriend came into the office that afternoon, and they got into a fight. And Debbie DiMaio, I still remember her name, said, you know, "We can't even be together without fighting." And Oprah called her in the middle of their fight. She had to go. He said, "Can I have this book on the top of the stack here?" And she said, "You can have all 40." He said, "No, I just want this one." He picked up my book, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, went home and read it, came back the next afternoon and said, "You should read this book." She said, "I'm not gonna do workshops. I'm not, not gonna do any shows on relationships. They don't work." He said, "No, no, no, no. Not, not for the show. For us."

   3. SSSimon Sinek10:01

      Uh-huh.

   4. HHDr. Harville Hendrix10:01

      "This will help us." And she said, "I nearly fell on my face. If you think it..." He says, this guy was a lawyer, so he was really smart, fast reader. She took it home and read it, and went in the next day and put it on Oprah's desk and said, "I changed my mind. I do wanna do a show on this book." 20 years later, I'm still on The Oprah Show. Except during that time, Helen and I get into trouble, and I say to Oprah, "I can't be on the show and be going through a divorce." And she said, "Well, when you fix it, call me." She had no, no belief that we were gonna get a divorce. She's, "But when you fix it, call me."

5. 10:41 – 13:21

   We Almost Divorced Twice: The Therapist Who Fired Us

   1. SSSimon Sinek10:41

      This is important. The two of you are now, uh, you know, in part due to, to Oprah-

   2. HHDr. Harville Hendrix10:46

      Yeah. We're, we're visible

   3. SSSimon Sinek10:48

      ... you are world famous for relationships and functional relationships, and you are a case study yourselves of a beautiful, loving marriage. But here you-

   4. HHDr. Harville Hendrix10:57

      Right

   5. SSSimon Sinek10:57

      ... carpet the secret where you came very, very, very close to actually ending the relationship.

   6. HHDr. Harville Hendrix11:03

      Yes.

   7. SSSimon Sinek11:04

      How close did you actually get to the d- because people, I think, think it, you know, when they're angry. Sometimes they talk about it when they're angry, but how close did you actually come to getting the divorce?

   8. HHDr. Harville Hendrix11:13

      First time it was like, well, we backed off. The second time we actually file the papers.

   9. SSSimon Sinek11:19

      Wow.

   10. HHDr. Harville Hendrix11:19

       And then we went to therapy, and the therapist fired us.

   11. SSSimon Sinek11:23

       Wait, wait, wait. Why did the therapist fire you? [laughs]

   12. HHDr. Harville Hendrix11:25

       Y'all are a couple from hell.

   13. SSSimon Sinek11:27

       [laughs]

   14. HHDr. Harville Hendrix11:27

       She said, "You're untreatable. You're, you're the couple from hell, and I don't wanna see you anymore." So Helen said, "Look, you've been teaching dialogue now all over the world. Why don't we practice that ourselves?" [laughs]

   15. SSSimon Sinek11:42

       Not, not a whole idea.

   16. HHDr. Harville Hendrix11:43

       [laughs] And said, "Oh, okay. So why don't we do that?" So we said, "Okay, we're gonna practice what I preach, the dialogue process." She was now still in the women's world, so she hadn't been teaching it very much then. So we did that nine months of, uh, dialogue on a weekly basis. And finally got to the point where we moved through our pol- polarization and went through this, uh, revision in which we moved out of seeing each other as a resource, 'cause that always generates frustration, and see each other as a gift. That generates gratitude, and that is what transforms marriages.

   17. SSSimon Sinek12:25

       One of the things I'm astonished by is, um, you're, you've filed the paperwork for divorce, which means you've sort of gone through the trials and tribulations. You've even tried therapy to help save the marriage. I mean, you've done it and you've given up that there's nothing else that we can do, and yet you then commit nine months, which is, let's be honest, if you're filed for divorce, that's quite the commitment to stick around for nine more months. What kept you in it?

   18. HHDr. Harville Hendrix12:53

       Well, our commitment, 'cause this therapist was a catalyst for that, because she was so cruel in her, [laughs] in her diagnosis that we said, "We'll show her."

   19. SSSimon Sinek13:05

       So you both shared a spite for the therapist, which is what motivated you-

   20. HHDr. Harville Hendrix13:08

       A spite for the therapist

   21. SSSimon Sinek13:08

       ... to fix your marriage. [laughs]

   22. HHDr. Harville Hendrix13:09

       Right. And that, that there was no therapy that would help us, so we needed to use our own therapy, and it worked. And in fact, that transformed my own understanding of my own intellectual

6. 13:21 – 15:57

   Child Consciousness vs Adult Consciousness: The Core Problem

   1. HHDr. Harville Hendrix13:21

      system.

   2. SSSimon Sinek13:21

      There's many things that I know anybody who's listening now wants to know, okay? For people who are struggling in relationships, who may be considering divorce or breaking up, and may be in the process, what was the transformation that took place?

   3. HHDr. Harville Hendrix13:35

      Okay, so this is a technical thing, so I'll say it right now. When you're a baby, your orientation to the world is that my needs are outside of me, so I gotta find that nipple, then I gotta find that hug and that eye contact.

   4. SSSimon Sinek13:54

      Mm-hmm.

   5. HHDr. Harville Hendrix13:55

      I call it now the child consciousness, uh, follows you all the way into adulthood, and I think nature sorta sets it up that way. In adulthood, however, you become a parent, and you can't now live in child consciousness with your children. You have to move to adult consciousness, and you become a resource for your children. But somehow nature didn't figure out how to shift the adult consciousness to your relationship. So one side of your brain says, "Helen, you're my resource." The other side of my brain says, "My children, I'm a resource for my children." So I would be fine with the kids, be a good parent, and then fight with Helen 'cause she wasn't meeting my needs. So what you have to come to understand is that when you become a parent, nature has set it up that you also become an adult, so that your needs are not outside of you. You are a resource. Not looking for resources, you are a resource, and you have to become a resource for your relationship.

   6. SSSimon Sinek15:07

      I assume that for the relationship to succeed, both parties need to come to this realization.

   7. HHDr. Harville Hendrix15:13

      Yes.

   8. SSSimon Sinek15:14

      Otherwise, one will martyr themselves in the attempt to save the relationship-

   9. HHDr. Harville Hendrix15:18

      Right

   10. SSSimon Sinek15:18

       ... while the other just-

   11. HHDr. Harville Hendrix15:19

       Exactly

   12. SSSimon Sinek15:19

       ... milks it.

   13. HHDr. Harville Hendrix15:20

       Exactly.

   14. SSSimon Sinek15:20

       No pun intended.

   15. HHDr. Harville Hendrix15:21

       Right. So in working with a couple, that's exactly what has to happen. Nobody ever gets to this place on their own, and I hate to say this 'cause it sounds so arrogant. This particular insight into the transformational relationship-

   16. SSSimon Sinek15:35

       Yeah

   17. HHDr. Harville Hendrix15:35

       ... does not yet exist generally in human consciousness.

   18. SSSimon Sinek15:39

       Yeah.

   19. HHDr. Harville Hendrix15:40

       'Cause we do three things. Romantic love is all about you're my n- you meet my needs.

   20. SSSimon Sinek15:46

       Yeah.

   21. HHDr. Harville Hendrix15:47

       Power struggle is all about you didn't meet my needs. The third stage, which is built into relationship, is we have to move to another place

7. 15:57 – 20:07

   From Resource to Gift: The Transformation That Saves Marriages

   1. HHDr. Harville Hendrix15:57

      where we meet each other's needs.

   2. SSSimon Sinek15:59

      Yeah.

   3. HHDr. Harville Hendrix16:00

      That helps the power struggle work better, but it doesn't end the frustration-

   4. SSSimon Sinek16:05

      Yeah

   5. HHDr. Harville Hendrix16:05

      ... 'cause somebody's always gonna blow it. So you really have to make a cognitive decision that I need to reframe my view of you as a blessing instead of a resource. And when I see you as a blessing, that generates a gratitude, and now it's amazing what gratitude does to the brain.

   6. SSSimon Sinek16:29

      Yeah.

   7. HHDr. Harville Hendrix16:30

      Gratitude cuts off that deep yearning that never got met in childhood, cuts it off. It actually goes away. I don't no longer have that yearning. And so then we live supporting each other's full potential.

   8. SSSimon Sinek16:43

      So when you hear couples in trouble or you hear couples breaking up and you say to them, "What happened?" I've done it myself. I've given this list. I, I point out all the other person's failings. It can be done with no anger, but rather this person is incapable of meeting my needs.

   9. HHDr. Harville Hendrix17:02

      Yeah.

   10. SSSimon Sinek17:03

       And, and these are the things I need, and we even call them these are my deal breakers, my, my non-negotiables, right?

   11. HHDr. Harville Hendrix17:10

       Right.

   12. SSSimon Sinek17:10

       That they haven't met.

   13. HHDr. Harville Hendrix17:12

       Right.

   14. SSSimon Sinek17:12

       So what you're proposing is that that mentality is rather to look at oneself and say, "Did I put the work in to meet their needs?" If both individuals can come to the conclusion that, that I did not, and both still wish to, that the relationship is savable and you may actually be a good couple for each other.

   15. HHDr. Harville Hendrix17:36

       Absolutely. And this is where the dialogue process is the engine of that conversation. So the therapist holds the couple looking at each other and essentially gives them words to say, uh, to get them started, because the brain, I don't think we human beings have evolved to this point yet. But it's obviously on the way, or it wouldn't have shown up in my mind. So you hold this couple in this conversation, and they're gonna wiggle, but you don't wiggle. You hold them in the conversation. And at some point, they relax enough- To drop their defenses and hear you say, now we, I want to shift you out of what I now have already told them is a child consciousness into adult consciousness. Do you remember when your children were born, how you shifted to be their resource?

   16. SSSimon Sinek18:31

       How do people do this if they don't have kids?

   17. HHDr. Harville Hendrix18:33

       Well, then we talk about it as a theoretical possibility.

   18. SSSimon Sinek18:37

       And do you have to have a therapist to do this, or can couples, can couples do this themselves?

   19. HHDr. Harville Hendrix18:42

       I have not met a couple yet that can do it by themselves.

   20. SSSimon Sinek18:45

       I assume that, that if one of the members of the couple, if one of the individuals cannot make that shift into how do I help take care of you rather than you just taking care of me-

   21. HHDr. Harville Hendrix18:57

       Yeah

   22. SSSimon Sinek18:57

       ... um, that if one of the m- individuals cannot do that, then the relationship should move on. That, that you should go find-

   23. HHDr. Harville Hendrix19:03

       No

   24. SSSimon Sinek19:03

       ... someone who-

   25. HHDr. Harville Hendrix19:05

       No, definitely not. No, if one of you can do it, and that's usually it, there's one more willing and capable than, than the other. So we support then the one who can to hold the one who's reacting without reacting to them or without judging them and criticizing them, and that person then will experience something in their lower memory cell, the h- the hippocampus, that they didn't have since childhood.

   26. SSSimon Sinek19:32

       Mkay.

   27. HHDr. Harville Hendrix19:33

       So the person who holds them becomes safe enough for them to drop their defenses and then move into the work.

   28. SSSimon Sinek19:39

       Okay, so now let's move on to pre-relationship, finding-

   29. HHDr. Harville Hendrix19:44

       Pre-relationship

   30. SSSimon Sinek19:45

       ... finding love. I think that from what I've read, and you're the expert so, you know, you can tell me if this is right or wrong, you know, that younger couples these days are taking more time. They're having sex later. They're waiting longer when they're in relationships very often. They're actually not in relationships, um, as frequently, and it raises questions which is

8. 20:07 – 23:53

   The Unconscious Imago: Your Brain's Hidden Matchmaker

   1. SSSimon Sinek20:07

      what's not happening? What are they missing? Like, how do we find love? How do we start a relationship that we meet somebody who wants to provide for our needs, and that we want to provide for theirs? How are we supposed to date I guess is where I'm getting to. Like-

   2. HHDr. Harville Hendrix20:21

      [laughs] Yes

   3. SSSimon Sinek20:21

      ... what are we supposed to do to find lo- I mean, we're all looking for it. You know, it's a-

   4. HHDr. Harville Hendrix20:25

      Yeah

   5. SSSimon Sinek20:26

      ... basic human need to want to feel it.

   6. HHDr. Harville Hendrix20:28

      Yes. The search for the partner is regulated by what's happening in the culture at the time. And so that is going to influence, you know, even the fact of having a dating site-

   7. SSSimon Sinek20:40

      Right

   8. HHDr. Harville Hendrix20:40

      ... is a cultural technological innovation. But no matter how many people that may increase their contact with, or they may be working through some stuff from their childhood, and so they're just not ready to do that. But at some point, the selection process will be you'll meet somebody who will a- attract your interest. We call it falling in love. You'll have an attraction. You can't control that. You can't make it happen, and when it happens you can't stop it from happening because your brain has now seen a person, o- of opposite sex or same sex, doesn't matter, whose personality is similar to a caretaker in childhood from whom you did not get your needs met. So there's a yearning left over from infancy and childhood, and the brain is committed to survival. So the brain has to find a replica of that caretaker who didn't meet your needs to put you in relationship with so that you can still try to get those needs met, but they can't be met because the person you fall in love with is similar to the caretaker who didn't meet them.

   9. SSSimon Sinek21:55

      You're gonna properly fall in love with somebody who replicates somebody who didn't take care of your needs?

   10. HHDr. Harville Hendrix22:01

       Exactly. Exactly.

   11. SSSimon Sinek22:02

       But then how do you find attraction if they didn't ca- take care of your needs?

   12. HHDr. Harville Hendrix22:06

       So your unconscious will look at this woman or man, and your unconscious will say, "Mommy, Mommy." The mommy who was not available. So the brain has an agenda. It has to finish that agenda-

   13. SSSimon Sinek22:19

       Yeah

   14. HHDr. Harville Hendrix22:19

       ... to get the unavailable mommy available. Unfortunately, y- I know it doesn't make any, any sense.

   15. SSSimon Sinek22:27

       No, it sounds, it sounds like trying to convince someone to love you. Like I'm trying-

   16. HHDr. Harville Hendrix22:32

       No, no, no

   17. SSSimon Sinek22:32

       ... and it sounds like sort of like my mom wasn't there for me as a kid, so I'm gonna convince the next person I meet to replace my mother.

   18. HHDr. Harville Hendrix22:39

       Yes.

   19. SSSimon Sinek22:39

       It's-

   20. HHDr. Harville Hendrix22:40

       That's what y- that's what you do.

   21. SSSimon Sinek22:42

       And this is healthy?

   22. HHDr. Harville Hendrix22:43

       It's nature. Nature's trying to finish an agenda that it didn't get to finish in the parenting period of childhood. Nature's trying to finish that. And it's simple. It's about survival.

   23. SSSimon Sinek22:55

       Yeah.

   24. HHDr. Harville Hendrix22:56

       So the baby doesn't get the needs met, so the brain is left with I could die until I get this need met. So I have to get the need met with this person.

   25. SSSimon Sinek23:10

       I'm so confused, Harville, because finding love is finding somebody to complete the stuff I didn't get as a kid, to have somebody meet my needs, but what makes the relationship last and survive is that I have to go from a child brain, which is what this sounds like, to the adult brain-

   26. HHDr. Harville Hendrix23:25

       Yeah

   27. SSSimon Sinek23:25

       ... which now I have to convert myself to meeting their needs. So I'm now meeting-

   28. HHDr. Harville Hendrix23:29

       That's right

   29. SSSimon Sinek23:29

       ... the needs of the mother who didn't meet my needs?

   30. HHDr. Harville Hendrix23:32

       Now meeting the needs of the mother who didn't meet your needs. Yes. That's, that's the way nature sets it up. So that-
9. 23:53 – 25:11

   The 18-Month Fantasy: When Reality Replaces Projection

   1. SSSimon Sinek23:53

      but then that doesn't help me understand why one relationship succeeds and one relationship fails. It's not the nature that I'm pushing against. I'm trying to understa- I'm trying to understand. You had me, which is I fully get- Showing up in the relationship and expecting somebody else to meet your needs, and that's why the relationship fails because that doesn't work. And that what rescues the relationship is making the conversion of instead of showing up in the relationship expecting the other person to meet all your needs, we make this beautiful, beautiful, we mature and ha- make this beautiful conversion of dedication and devotion to helping the other per- person meet their needs. And if both individuals are able to do that, the relationship thrives. And I'm thinking of my favorite couples, you know, that I watch the way they interact, and that seems to be the way in which they're organized, which is how do I help my partner succeed and thrive, find joy and happiness, and all the rest of it, and as opposed to how can they help me find joy, happiness, and thrive [laughs] in-

   2. HHDr. Harville Hendrix24:47

      That's right

   3. SSSimon Sinek24:47

      ... you know, I get that

   4. HHDr. Harville Hendrix24:48

      The struggle is over.

   5. SSSimon Sinek24:49

      So where you lost me and where I need help to understand is, and because I asked about finding it, this is, that's in the relationship, and which I get wholeheartedly. But if I'm trying to set myself up for success in a relationship, wouldn't it be that I meet somebody who wants to meet my needs? I don't understand where I'm attracted to people who don't meet my needs,

10. 25:11 – 30:40

    The Paradox of Attraction: Falling for Who Won't Meet Your Needs

    1. SSSimon Sinek25:11

       and I'm trying to, I'm trying to put my own, I'm trying to run it through my own filter rather than intellectualize it, right? So I'm trying to think about-

    2. HHDr. Harville Hendrix25:18

       Okay

    3. SSSimon Sinek25:18

       ... the people in my life when I was a kid, and what did they not meet? Uh, and then what am I attracted to now? Ah, shit, it works. You're right. Ah, damn it. This is really interesting. So I'm thinking, like, what I was unable to get from the people who were tasked with looking after me when I was a kid and what the most attractive thing that I find in a partner is their ability to give me that.

    4. HHDr. Harville Hendrix25:54

       Yeah.

    5. SSSimon Sinek25:54

       Okay. So wow, okay, tracking, got that part of it. But now I'm still left in the dynamic. I've found the person who meets my needs, fulfilling the void that was left when I was a kid. Got it. But I'm still in the mindset now of that person meeting my needs and having that child mentality because it fills this childhood void. So now then that's what makes me attracted to the person, that's what makes me fall for the person, but that's not what makes the relationship succeed.

    6. HHDr. Harville Hendrix26:27

       What we have to add here is the whole concept of the unconscious.

    7. SSSimon Sinek26:31

       Right.

    8. HHDr. Harville Hendrix26:31

       You are not in charge of the selecting process. You're just in charge of the act of-

    9. SSSimon Sinek26:36

       Well, I did swipe right. The, I was in charge of swiping right

    10. HHDr. Harville Hendrix26:39

        ... but what you have to bring into, uh, the, and, and this is, once you get this, this is easy to understand, that your unconscious mind, outside of your awareness, is going to pick the person that you're going to fall for. Because your unconscious mind has inside an image, I call it an imago. It's the core word in my intellectual system-

    11. SSSimon Sinek27:05

        Right

    12. HHDr. Harville Hendrix27:05

        ... an imago, an image, of this caretaker.

    13. SSSimon Sinek27:07

        Right.

    14. HHDr. Harville Hendrix27:08

        And when somebody crosses your path-

    15. SSSimon Sinek27:11

        Right

    16. HHDr. Harville Hendrix27:12

        ... that matches that picture, your brain is gonna go, "Wow, look at that." But what it's looking at is, "I'm gonna get my need met now-

    17. SSSimon Sinek27:21

        Right

    18. HHDr. Harville Hendrix27:22

        ... 'cause there's mommy or daddy," whichever one was the most active in my frustration. So the expectation is, "You are going to meet my needs," but you never make that conscious.

    19. SSSimon Sinek27:33

        Right.

    20. HHDr. Harville Hendrix27:33

        You just say, "Wow, how wonderful, how beautiful. Let's go date," and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you'll both go through the romantic stage with all kinds of things that are wonderful until some difference shows up in which you had an expectation, and this is, can come anywhere from the end of the honeymoon to 18 months later, which is about the range. It'll show up that the expectation now 18 months later is still not being met. Now you know you're with the right person, and this may sound paradoxical.

    21. SSSimon Sinek28:13

        What? So you're with the right person because you're attracted to them because they meet the need, but then 18 months r- later they don't meet your need and that makes them right?

    22. HHDr. Harville Hendrix28:21

        The, uh, first 18 months is all fantasy.

    23. SSSimon Sinek28:24

        Right, that I, that I've definitely lived that. It took me a lot less than 18 months.

    24. HHDr. Harville Hendrix28:28

        There's a kind of collusion.

    25. SSSimon Sinek28:29

        Yeah, yeah. I projected. I projected-

    26. HHDr. Harville Hendrix28:32

        Of course

    27. SSSimon Sinek28:32

        ... on somebody. I, I, I handpicked the things about their personality that reinforced my narrative of what I wanted them to be, and then I projected-

    28. HHDr. Harville Hendrix28:42

        Yeah

    29. SSSimon Sinek28:42

        ... that they were the perfect person for me because they met all these needs that I have, only to discover that they didn't. Like, I set them up to fail. It was a, it's not fair.

    30. HHDr. Harville Hendrix28:51

        That's right. Yeah.
11. 30:40 – 34:47

    Arranged Marriage vs Choice: The Commitment Difference

    1. SSSimon Sinek30:40

       exchange. When the Industrial Revolution happened and people were leaving-

    2. HHDr. Harville Hendrix30:43

       Right

    3. SSSimon Sinek30:43

       ... the home to go live by themselves in-

    4. HHDr. Harville Hendrix30:46

       Yeah

    5. SSSimon Sinek30:47

       ... the urban centers, and when dating first started showing up, it took about 30 years for it to normalize because it was, if you were walking down the street with a member of the opposite sex, uh, and you weren't married-

    6. HHDr. Harville Hendrix30:59

       Bad stuff

    7. SSSimon Sinek31:00

       ... it was considered disgusting and, and accusations of prostitution. And so it took 30 years for that concept of choosing my own mate and walking down the street-

    8. HHDr. Harville Hendrix31:08

       Mm-hmm

    9. SSSimon Sinek31:08

       ... with somebody I'm not married to, to be acculturated. So how does this... Because everything we're talking about here is a very modern conception of choice and unfulfilled n- needs, and yet, and yet arranged marriages have much lower divorce rates than marriages of choice.

    10. HHDr. Harville Hendrix31:26

        Yeah. I'm not an expert in your question, but I have thought about it, read about it, and have conclusions about it. One of the things that if you look at arranged marriages, while they look stable, and are stable, and they last longer, they have compensatory sidebar behaviors.

    11. SSSimon Sinek31:46

        Oh.

    12. HHDr. Harville Hendrix31:46

        That the affair-

    13. SSSimon Sinek31:48

        So the king, the king had mistresses is what you're saying.

    14. HHDr. Harville Hendrix31:51

        The king had mistresses. The queen had mistresses.

    15. SSSimon Sinek31:54

        The courtiers.

    16. HHDr. Harville Hendrix31:55

        In other words, this dynamic of romantic love, of being attracted to somebody, has been around forever.

    17. SSSimon Sinek32:02

        Got it. Got it. So, so the romantic love was-

    18. HHDr. Harville Hendrix32:04

        But culture-

    19. SSSimon Sinek32:04

        ... sometimes found outside the relationship. I understand

    20. HHDr. Harville Hendrix32:07

        Found outside the relationship. It's like Romeo and Juliet, you know? They found love outside, and it was a forbidden love.

    21. SSSimon Sinek32:15

        Yeah.

    22. HHDr. Harville Hendrix32:16

        The natural dynamic that finally got culturized, enculturated-

    23. SSSimon Sinek32:20

        Yeah, yeah, yeah

    24. HHDr. Harville Hendrix32:21

        ... didn't come until about 150 years ago. But prior to that, nature dealt with the same thing. It just didn't have a cultural container for it, so it had to happen outside of culture.

    25. SSSimon Sinek32:31

        If we think this through, and f- and again, these are two people with a lot of opinions who have done very little research on the subject, which is-

    26. HHDr. Harville Hendrix32:38

        [laughs]

    27. SSSimon Sinek32:39

        [laughs] ... uh, my favorite kind of conversation. Which is when there's an, an arranged marriage, it sort of meets your standard, which is, "Okay, I'm gonna make this work, and that means I have to invest in meeting the other person's needs. Otherwise, this is gonna fail because I can't sit around going, you know, 'Is this person gonna meet my needs?'" Because f- the interviews that I've seen of arranged marriages, there's a commitment to the relationship, which means there's a commitment to the other person, and it meets your standard to a T, which is, "I enter the relationship with a commitment to meet the other person's needs because that's my job-

    28. HHDr. Harville Hendrix33:13

        Mm-hmm

    29. SSSimon Sinek33:13

        ... in this arranged marriage." 'Cause the interviews that I've seen with arranged marriages, very, very happy, and the love came later, but the work started immediately. Where I think for us in our choice of relationships, the, the, the, the love may come sooner, the lust may come sooner, but the work starts later, usually when problems occur.

    30. HHDr. Harville Hendrix33:31

        Yep. That's right. Yep.
12. 34:47 – 40:39

    The No-Exit Decision: Why Commitment Means Staying Through Anxiety

    1. HHDr. Harville Hendrix34:47

       And the reason I do the no-exit decision is I can tell you in advance that when we start working, you will start making progress. You will get more and more anxious about the progress you're making because it's violating your survival directive.

    2. SSSimon Sinek35:04

       Yeah.

    3. HHDr. Harville Hendrix35:04

       'Cause your brain has been fine with survival without the needs being met. When the needs start getting met, it changes the survival directive. So you get more and more anxious, and you'll wanna stop therapy. And when you wanna stop therapy is when I'm going to invite you-

    4. SSSimon Sinek35:22

       Yeah

    5. HHDr. Harville Hendrix35:22

       ... to make a non-negotiable recommitment to the therapy process. Because in about three to five weeks, the anxiety will go away because your brain will discover it's not dangerous to receive stuff that you really want and need-

    6. SSSimon Sinek35:38

       Right

    7. HHDr. Harville Hendrix35:38

       ... and are getting. But if you leave when you get anxious, that simply means your brain says, "Hey, I can't. I don't know how to operate and be safe with this system of stuff, good stuff coming in."

    8. SSSimon Sinek35:48

       Yeah.

    9. HHDr. Harville Hendrix35:49

       "I can't count on that. I can count on the bad stuff 'cause that gives me security." So the brain's kinda crazy about that.

    10. SSSimon Sinek35:55

        I'm tracking this conversation. I like it. The one part where I disagree is I do think couples can do it without a therapist. It makes sense that you've never met a couple that couldn't do it without a therapist because you were their therapist.

    11. HHDr. Harville Hendrix36:04

        Of course, of course.

    12. SSSimon Sinek36:04

        [laughs]

    13. HHDr. Harville Hendrix36:05

        That's the only, those are the only couples I meet. Yeah.

    14. SSSimon Sinek36:08

        So that makes perfect sense to me. [laughs]

    15. HHDr. Harville Hendrix36:11

        Well, we did it without. Helen and I did it without a therapist. We became our own therapists.

    16. SSSimon Sinek36:13

        There you go. You see? You and your own wife did it without a therapist, so you have, you have empirical data-

    17. HHDr. Harville Hendrix36:18

        Right

    18. SSSimon Sinek36:18

        ... to show that it can be done [laughs] without a therapist.

    19. HHDr. Harville Hendrix36:20

        [laughs] Right.

    20. SSSimon Sinek36:20

        You just both have to be self-aware and willing. Here's one thing that I think happens in a relationship, and I, I've definitely done this in mine, which is- The person is meeting my needs, and I'm so afraid of losing that that I shy away from total transparency for fear that I will somehow push them away or upset them-

    21. HHDr. Harville Hendrix36:42

        Yeah

    22. SSSimon Sinek36:42

        ... or they won't like, you know, all-

    23. HHDr. Harville Hendrix36:44

        Yeah

    24. SSSimon Sinek36:44

        ... of me, and then I'm gonna lose this person who's meeting my needs. But in so doing, they are now either forming a relationship with somebody they don't fully know, or worse, they always feel a little bit distant and like they can't get close. And that ultimately will be the undoing of the relationship, and the accusation is, "It's like I don't know you. You, you know, it's like y- your walls are up," whatever the terminology and euphemisms are. Because I think to your point about this childhood getting our needs met, it's so seductive when you find it.

    25. HHDr. Harville Hendrix37:16

        Mm-hmm.

    26. SSSimon Sinek37:16

        Or at least it's even seductive when you project it that-

    27. HHDr. Harville Hendrix37:20

        Oh, yes

    28. SSSimon Sinek37:21

        ... I think very often we become afraid, so afraid of losing it that we, we choose not to be our full selves. Which, if we take the commitment to see the other person's needs met, one of the needs they have is to know who they're dating.

    29. HHDr. Harville Hendrix37:34

        Yeah.

    30. SSSimon Sinek37:35

        And so there's sort of the requirement to be honest and transparent. That doesn't mean necessarily on day one. You don't need to tell everybody everything on day one, but, but, but-
13. 40:39 – 46:27

    Sabotaging Receiving: When You Reject What You Want Most

    1. HHDr. Harville Hendrix40:39

       "Peter, would you just stop and let Mary tell you what she wants?" And so she said, um, "Well, what I would like is when you come into the door, that you would come find me. I'll be in the kitchen. And you spin me around and hug me, and tell me how grateful you are that I came home and fixed dinner." I said, "Do you think you could do that?" She had just said that. Then he said, "Well, sure, I can do that." So I said, "Let's enact it then, so you move up from thinking to enacting." So he did. First time he did it, sort of clumsily.

    2. SSSimon Sinek41:16

       Yeah.

    3. HHDr. Harville Hendrix41:16

       So we did it, uh, about the third time he got it down, and he was having fun doing it and was appreciating it. And she said, "No. No, don't, don't, don't hug me anymore. I don't, I don't want it anymore. You don't mean it. You just don't mean it." I was watching him. He did it perfectly.

    4. SSSimon Sinek41:35

       Yeah.

    5. HHDr. Harville Hendrix41:35

       His tone of voice was warm and loving, and he was apologetic for not having done it before. He saw this could really be fun. He would really like to make that a part of their life. And the more he said, the more she said, "No, no, no."

    6. SSSimon Sinek41:49

       Interesting.

    7. HHDr. Harville Hendrix41:49

       "I'm not going, uh, to do it." So I had this gut thing and I said to her, "Mary, would you tell me what would happen if you accepted his appreciation now?"

    8. SSSimon Sinek42:01

       Yeah.

    9. HHDr. Harville Hendrix42:02

       And she said, "Oh my God, my mother would tell me that you don't deserve that, and if you get that you should be ashamed of yourself-"

    10. SSSimon Sinek42:11

        There we go

    11. HHDr. Harville Hendrix42:11

        ... "for asking."

    12. SSSimon Sinek42:13

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    13. HHDr. Harville Hendrix42:13

        So a voice from her hippocampus showed up.

    14. SSSimon Sinek42:18

        Yeah.

    15. HHDr. Harville Hendrix42:19

        And she said, "I c- my God, I didn't even know that was back there." And she just broke down and cried.

    16. SSSimon Sinek42:25

        Yeah.

    17. HHDr. Harville Hendrix42:26

        "I didn't know. I can't even receive what I want because if I do I'll disappoint my mother and my mother's dead. How crazy is this?" And well, it's not crazy. It's normal human stuff that gets triggered-

    18. SSSimon Sinek42:41

        Yeah

    19. HHDr. Harville Hendrix42:42

        ... around the critical issues. Then I said, "Okay. Well, now that you've got this clear, would you be willing now to let, you know, Peter come over and really hug you?" And she said, "Please do." [laughs]

    20. SSSimon Sinek42:55

        That's delightful.

    21. HHDr. Harville Hendrix42:56

        So the breakthrough, see, she could not receive what she wanted.

    22. SSSimon Sinek43:00

        Yeah.

    23. HHDr. Harville Hendrix43:01

        Now, the reason I wrote a book on that was I had 20 couples in the same impasse, and I didn't know how to get them through it 'cause I didn't know that they had an unconscious rejection-

    24. SSSimon Sinek43:12

        Yeah

    25. HHDr. Harville Hendrix43:12

        ... of their wishes.

    26. SSSimon Sinek43:13

        Yeah. So my, my experience was I dated an amazing woman who her love language was acts of service, and she loved to make me dinner, right? And which was very nice, and she's a better cook than me, and it was a, it was a wonderful thing, but she wouldn't let me do the dishes. I always wanted to do the dishes. If she cooked me dinner, which I was super grateful for, I wanted to contribute, and I wanted to do the dishes, so it was egalitarian in, in the construction, and she always refused. She goes, "No, no, no. I'm making you dinner, and I'm doing the dishes. That's part of dinner." And it was very uncomfortable for me, and where I had to learn to receive love is I had to learn to put my own sort of desire aside and be like, "Well, this is how this person wants to express her love for me. I have to learn to receive it." And I did. I, I always was uncomfortable with it, but I, I learned to accept the love rather than be insecure about that I wasn't contributing. The relationship, um, didn't survive, and we took a long break where we didn't talk for a long time. And then when we got together again, we sort of re- reconnected, and she said to me, "I owe you an apology." And I said, "What, what happened?" She goes, "In this time that I've had to think about our relationship," she said, "I was so hell-bent on taking care of you and giving you my love that I didn't give you the space to show me love back 'cause you wanted to do the dishes as your expression of love, your act of service."

    27. HHDr. Harville Hendrix44:37

        Wow.

    28. SSSimon Sinek44:37

        "And I denied you that opportunity."

    29. HHDr. Harville Hendrix44:39

        Yeah.

    30. SSSimon Sinek44:40

        And-
14. 46:27 – 47:23

    Equal vs Egalitarian: The Secret to Relationship Balance

    1. HHDr. Harville Hendrix46:28

       I like, I like that distinction. I hadn't thought about that. I use the word equality a lot, but I can see how egalitarian makes it a kind of teamship-

    2. SSSimon Sinek46:37

       Yeah

    3. HHDr. Harville Hendrix46:39

       ... um, rather than a transaction.

    4. SSSimon Sinek46:40

       You've been doing this for a long time, and, and-

    5. HHDr. Harville Hendrix46:43

       Only about 50 years. Yeah

    6. SSSimon Sinek46:44

       ... only about 50 years. You said something early in the, in the, in our conversation which really I think was so accurate and so right. I can't remember the exact words, but that dating is constructed around the norms of the day or the culture of the day.

    7. HHDr. Harville Hendrix46:57

       Yeah.

    8. SSSimon Sinek46:58

       And so-

    9. HHDr. Harville Hendrix46:58

       Yeah

    10. SSSimon Sinek46:58

        ... it does change, and it changes from city to city, country to country. It changes in, with time because it is a construction of its time. It is not some deep biological normal thing, this thing called dating.

    11. HHDr. Harville Hendrix47:11

        Right.

    12. SSSimon Sinek47:11

        I'm very curious.

    13. HHDr. Harville Hendrix47:13

        Right.

    14. SSSimon Sinek47:13

        Over the course of 50 years, how have you seen dating change for better and how have you seen dating change for worse?

    15. HHDr. Harville Hendrix47:21

        So I don't think I have a terribly

15. 47:23 – 51:29

    Dating in the Digital Age: The Case for Smelling Your Date

    1. HHDr. Harville Hendrix47:23

       sophisticated answer to that, so, uh, let me just qualify what I'm gonna say with it. I think dating paradoxically was better when people met physically face to face long ago, uh, sort of like I did. I mean, you can't meet on the telephone, but you can meet on a Zoom or you can meet on a, a, a dating site. There were no dating sites as I grew up. We all are noticing of the s- of the separation of the personal as the rise of technology has increasingly contributed to more and more indirect attempts to meet people, um, through some technological encounter rather than through a personal experience.

    2. SSSimon Sinek48:12

       Right. I think that's a fair statement.

    3. HHDr. Harville Hendrix48:14

       And, and I think it'd be great to have dating sites in which after you scour the field, but to move once there is a connection of some kind, to move into the personal immediately rather than, you know, spend some time getting acquainted with or even going to Zoom-

    4. SSSimon Sinek48:32

       Yeah

    5. HHDr. Harville Hendrix48:32

       ... or doing all that sort of stuff. The more impersonal, the fewer cues you have. Now, I know, you know, technology is really not the problem. It's our use of technology. That's the problem. There are things you can't pick up-

    6. SSSimon Sinek48:47

       Yep

    7. HHDr. Harville Hendrix48:47

       ... uh, except face-to-face.

    8. SSSimon Sinek48:49

       You're just advocating IRL, in real life.

    9. HHDr. Harville Hendrix48:53

       I, uh, advocating what?

    10. SSSimon Sinek48:55

        In real life. Telephones, you know, FaceTimes, they're perfectly valid ways of meeting somebody, they're perfectly valid ways of fostering relationships you're already in. But what you're saying is nothing can ever replace the magic of face-to-face when in, in courtship and getting to know someone, because so much is revealed that is subconscious when we are with someone that eventually will show up if we find ourselves in a relationship.

    11. HHDr. Harville Hendrix49:19

        You're in an energy field. Right now, you're in an energy field. If you and I were in the same room, our energy fields would be intertwining, and we would be feeling each other in different ways from-

    12. SSSimon Sinek49:31

        Yeah

    13. HHDr. Harville Hendrix49:31

        ... the way we are now. We're still feeling each other, but it's mediated through this distance of the screen. So it's not as-

    14. SSSimon Sinek49:39

        It's not as rich

    15. HHDr. Harville Hendrix49:40

        ... as formative.

    16. SSSimon Sinek49:40

        It's not as rich.

    17. HHDr. Harville Hendrix49:41

        And not as rich.

    18. SSSimon Sinek49:42

        Yeah.

    19. HHDr. Harville Hendrix49:42

        Um, but, but it's okay. I mean, it's just different ways. But the realm of intimacy is a realm of intimacy, and that requires seeing, touching, holding, feeling. And that I'm fine for people to scour the world to find the right person, but then go see them, get together, and-

    20. SSSimon Sinek50:00

        Yeah

    21. HHDr. Harville Hendrix50:01

        ... smell them and touch them-

    22. SSSimon Sinek50:03

        [laughs]

    23. HHDr. Harville Hendrix50:03

        [laughs] ... and all the kinds of things.

    24. SSSimon Sinek50:05

        You heard it here first. The next time you go on a date, make sure to smell the person you're with.

    25. HHDr. Harville Hendrix50:09

        Exactly. Smell them.

    26. SSSimon Sinek50:11

        Harville, my favorite guests are people who teach me something, you know? And I love to have people on here who know stuff that I don't know, and I get, and help me think through things. I so appreciate you letting me go through it with you. I am definitely smarter and richer about relationships now, and you've given me so many good thoughts about even how I want to approach my own relationships moving forward, and the construction that my commitment to the relationship, assuming that I think someone is worth it and they think I'm worth it, because it is a lot of work to commit yourself to see that the other person's wants, needs, and desires are met, is a beautiful, beautiful thought. And I hope that I and everybody else finds the person that they wanna make that commitment to.

    27. HHDr. Harville Hendrix50:50

        Yeah. That would be wonderful.

    28. SSSimon Sinek50:52

        And you clearly did.

    29. HHDr. Harville Hendrix50:54

        Clearly did. Took me a while to work through the anxiety and, and mine, mine was working through the anxiety of vulnerability. And my biggest need was visibility, but my biggest defense was vulnerability, which made visibility impossible. So I was a saboteur to my own journey, and we had to talk long enough until we felt safe enough in the conversation-

    30. SSSimon Sinek51:20

        Yeah
16. 51:29 – 53:40

    When Needs Become Wants: Life After the Struggle Ends

    1. HHDr. Harville Hendrix51:29

       And now Helen and I, we, we don't have any struggle. We walk around playing and kidding. I don't have a sense of a need. She doesn't have a sense of a need. We may have a want, like, uh, "I'd like to go for a walk," or, "I'd like to go out to dinner," or, "I'd like to have pizza for dinner," but we don't have needs.

    2. SSSimon Sinek51:46

       Yeah.

    3. HHDr. Harville Hendrix51:46

       The needs were cut off with the gratitude. And so all that's left is just our diversity and our difference, which becomes negotiable. We can say, "Oh, so you want X?" Like the bedroom and the temperature every night is a conversation, but it's a fun conversation.

    4. SSSimon Sinek52:03

       I like that. [laughs]

    5. HHDr. Harville Hendrix52:03

       If this heater would just work for us better. [laughs]

    6. SSSimon Sinek52:07

       I love-

    7. HHDr. Harville Hendrix52:07

       You know, we live in a heater

    8. SSSimon Sinek52:08

       ... I love, I love this, Harville. I love this. And I'm thinking my- I'm- I've done the same thing where I desperately seek being seen, but don't give people, uh, insight enough to see the thing I want seen. So I'm-

    9. HHDr. Harville Hendrix52:19

       Yeah. Yeah

    10. SSSimon Sinek52:19

        ... clearly sabotaging. I'm clearly not gonna get the thing that I want, because I won't show them the thing that I want to be seen. Uh, it's such a beautiful, magical paradox. I love, love, love the idea that you have no needs left, and it's only just wants. And how wonderful is that? We should all aspire to have a relationship where our needs are completely met and all we have left is wants. Beautiful. Harville, I'm so glad you said yes. I, I really [laughs] I think you're the best.

    11. HHDr. Harville Hendrix52:44

        Oh. Well, thank you. I'm so glad that you asked me. I never have an idea of being interviewed by you, but just saw, met you at TED, and it was like, "I met Simon Sinek, the guy that I admire so much."

    12. SSSimon Sinek52:57

        Aw, you're too kind.

    13. HHDr. Harville Hendrix52:58

        And then I, now I got to spend a whole hour with you, so that's pretty-

    14. SSSimon Sinek53:01

        Oh, all my needs are met.

    15. HHDr. Harville Hendrix53:03

        All your needs. [laughs]

    16. SSSimon Sinek53:05

        [laughs] I hope to see you soon, and maybe, maybe we can do this one day in person.

    17. HHDr. Harville Hendrix53:10

        Oh, I would love that. I would love that. And I'm available anytime.

    18. SSSimon Sinek53:13

        And I'll, and we'll get to smell each other.

    19. HHDr. Harville Hendrix53:16

        This is the most fun-

    20. SSSimon Sinek53:16

        [laughs]

    21. HHDr. Harville Hendrix53:16

        This is the most fun conversation I've, I can remember having.

    22. SSSimon Sinek53:19

        Oh, thank you so much.

    23. HHDr. Harville Hendrix53:20

        Um, thank you.

    24. SSSimon Sinek53:21

        As always, thank you for watching. If you liked this episode, please subscribe to A Bit of Optimism for more interesting guests and even more interesting conversations. New episodes drop every Tuesday. But if you'd like more optimism right now, click here to watch another episode. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other.

Episode duration: 53:40