Tell me, from a girl’s point of view, what do you really want from a guy?” asks Steve, who has accompanied her for moral support.
“Well, when I first moved out here from Tucson,” Janet begins, warming to the theme, “I wanted a guy with looks, security, caring, someone with their own place, someone who said bless you or Gesundheit when I sneezed, you know? And umm, someone who liked the same things as me, but not exactly, and someone who loves me.”
“Tall order,” he answers.
“Yeah, I scaled it down a little,” she admits, her disappointment deflating both expression and voice.
“Well, what is it now?”
“Someone who says Gesundheit when I sneeze, although I prefer bless you, it’s nicer.
Depending on the speaker, lectures can be a joy, but, the efficacy of the lecture, as a teaching method, is in doubt.Photograph by…
Project-based learning, or designed thinking, doesn’t just help students “get” the material in time for a good grade on the test; it also helps deepen their appreciation for what they learn.
I never got any help, any kind of therapy. I never told anyone.
“Trauma is a time traveller, an ouroboros that reaches back and devours everything that came before. Only fragments remain.”
“But as any Freudian will tell you trauma is stronger than any mask; it can’t be buried and it can’t be killed. It’s the revenant that won’t stop, the ghost that’s always coming for you. The nightmares, the intrusions, the hiding, the doubts, the confusion, the self-blame, the suicidal ideation—they didn’t go away just because I buried my neighborhood, my family, my face. The nightmares, the intrusions, the hiding, the doubts, the confusion, the self-blame, the suicidal ideation—they followed. All through college. All through graduate school. All through my professional life. All through my intimate life. (Leaked into my writing, too, but you’d be amazed how easy it is to rewrite the truth away.)Didn’t matter how far I ran or what I achieved or who I was with—they followed.“
3. Less is always more. Simplicity is almost always the answer.
4. There is nobody you can’t empathize with once you’ve heard their story.
17. Philosophy isn’t about understanding life. It’s about thinking with clarity.
28. Your attention is the most important asset you have. Be deliberate with it.
41. The goal of an ideal partner isn’t to complete you. It’s to augment you.
77. Life is short. Don’t tolerate bullsh*t. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
I asked 1,500 people for relationship advice, and kept getting the same answers.
1. Be together for the right reasons
I asked people who were on their second or third (or fourth) marriages what they did wrong. Where did they mess up?
By far, the most common answer was “being with the person for the wrong reasons.”
Some of these wrong reasons included:
Pressure from friends and family
Feeling like a “loser” because they were single and settling for the first person that came along
Being together for image—because the relationship looked good on paper (or in photos), not because the two people actually admired each other
Being young and naive and hopelessly in love and thinking that love would solve everything
As we’ll see throughout the rest of this article, everything that makes a relationship “work” (and by work, I mean that it is happy and sustainable for both people involved) requires a genuine, deep-level admiration for each other. Without that mutual admiration, everything else will unravel.
2. Have realistic expectations about relationships and romance
You are absolutely not going to be absolutely gaga over each other every single day for the rest of your lives, and all this “happily ever after” bullshit is just setting people up for failure.
Romantic love is a trap designed to get two people to overlook each other’s faults long enough to get some babymaking done. It generally only lasts for a few years at most.
True love—that is, deep, abiding love that is impervious to emotional whims or fancy—is a choice. It’s a constant commitment to a person regardless of the present circumstances. It’s a commitment to a person who you understand isn’t going to always make you happy—nor should they!—and a person who will need to rely on you at times, just as you will rely on them.
3. The most important factor in a relationship is not communication, but respect
Communication, no matter how open, transparent and disciplined, will always break down at some point. Conflicts are ultimately unavoidable, and feelings will always be hurt.
And the only thing that can save you and your partner, that can cushion you both to the hard landing of human fallibility, is an unerring respect for one another, the fact that you hold each other in high esteem, believe in one another—often more than you each believe in yourselves—and trust that your partner is doing his/her best with what they’ve got.
4. Talk openly about everything, especially the stuff that hurts
If something bothers you in the relationship, you must be willing to say it. Saying it builds trust and trust builds intimacy. It may hurt, but you still need to do it. No one else can fix your relationship for you. Nor should anyone else.
5. A healthy relationship means two healthy individuals
Understand that it is up to you to make yourself happy, it is NOT the job of your spouse.
Shitty, codependent relationships have an inherent stability because you’re both locked in an implicit bargain to tolerate the other person’s bad behavior because they’re tolerating yours, and neither of you wants to be alone.
A healthy and happy relationship requires two healthy and happy individuals. Keyword here: “individuals.” That means two people with their own identities, their own interests and perspectives, and things they do by themselves, on their own time.
6. Give each other space
Be sure you have a life of your own, otherwise it is harder to have a life together. What do I mean? Have your own interests, your own friends, your own support network, and your own hobbies. Overlap where you can, but not being identical should give you something to talk about and expose one another to. It helps to expand your horizons as a couple, but isn’t so boring as both living the exact same life.
– Anonymous
7. You and your partner will grow and change in unexpected ways; embrace it
One theme that came up repeatedly, especially with those married 20+ years, was how much each individual changes as the decades roll on, and how ready each of you have to be to embrace the other partner as these changes occur. One reader commented that at her wedding, an elderly family member told her, “One day many years from now, you will wake up and your spouse will be a different person, make sure you fall in love with that person too.
8. Get good at fighting
What Gottman does is he gets married couples in a room, puts some cameras on them, and then he asks them to have a fight.
Notice: he doesn’t ask them to talk about how great the other person is. He doesn’t ask them what they like best about their relationship.
He asks them to fight. Pick something they’re having problems with and talk about it for the camera.
And from simply analyzing the film for the couple’s discussion (or shouting match, whatever), he’s able to predict with startling accuracy whether a couple will divorce or not.
But what’s most interesting about Gottman’s research is that the things that lead to divorce are not necessarily what you think. Successful couples, like unsuccessful couples, he found, fight consistently. And some of them fight furiously.
He has been able to narrow down four characteristics of a couple that tend to lead to divorces (or breakups). He has gone on and called these “the four horsemen” of the relationship apocalypse in his books. They are:
Criticizing your partner’s character (“You’re so stupid” vs “That thing you did was stupid”)
Defensiveness (or basically, blame shifting, “I wouldn’t have done that if you weren’t late all the time”)
Contempt (putting down your partner and making them feel inferior)
Stonewalling (withdrawing from an argument and ignoring your partner)
The reader emails back this up as well. Out of the 1,500-some-odd emails, almost every single one referenced the importance of dealing with conflicts well.
Advice given by readers included:
Never insult or name-call your partner. Put another way: hate the sin, love the sinner. Gottman’s research found that “contempt”—belittling and demeaning your partner—is the number one predictor of divorce.
Do not bring previous fights/arguments into current ones. This solves nothing and just makes the fight twice as bad as it was before. Yeah, you forgot to pick up groceries on the way home, but what does him being rude to your mother last Thanksgiving have to do with anything?
If things get too heated, take a breather. Remove yourself from the situation and come back once emotions have cooled off a bit. This is a big one for me personally—sometimes when things get intense with my wife, I get overwhelmed and just leave for a while. I usually walk around the block two or three times and let myself seethe for about 15 minutes. Then I come back and we’re both a bit calmer and we can resume the discussion with a much more conciliatory tone.
Remember that being “right” is not as important as both people feeling respected and heard. You may be right, but if you are right in such a way that makes your partner feel unloved, then there’s no real winner.
9. Get good at forgiving
To me, perhaps the most interesting nugget from Gottman’s research is the fact that most successful couples don’t actually resolve all of their problems. In fact, his findings were completely backwards from what most people actually expect: people in lasting and happy relationships have problems that never completely go away, while couples that feel as though they need to agree and compromise on everything end up feeling miserable and falling apart.
To me, like everything else, this comes back to the respect thing. If you have two different individuals sharing a life together, it’s inevitable that they will have different values and perspectives on some things and clash over it. The key here is not changing the other person—as the desire to change your partner is inherently disrespectful (to both them and yourself)—but rather it’s to simply abide by the difference, love them despite it, and when things get a little rough around the edges, to forgive them for it.
10. The little things add up to big things
Of the 1,500 responses I got, I’d say about half of them mentioned at some point or another one simple but effective piece of advice: Don’t ever stop doing the little things. They add up.
Things as simple as saying, “I love you,” before going to bed, holding hands during a movie, doing small favors here and there, helping with some household chores. Even cleaning up when you accidentally pee on the toilet seat (seriously, someone said that)—these things all matter and add up over the long run.
11. Sex matters… a LOT
But sex not only keeps the relationship healthy, many readers suggested that they use it to heal their relationships. That when things are a bit frigid between them or that they have some problems going on, a lot of stress, or other issues (i.e., kids), they even go so far as to schedule sexy time for themselves. They say it’s important. And it’s worth it.
12. Be practical, and create relationship rules
Then there’s how relationships actually work.
Messy. Stressful. Miscommunication flying everywhere so that both of you feel as though you’re in a perpetual state of talking to a wall.
The fact is relationships are imperfect, messy affairs. And it’s for the simple reason that they’re comprised of imperfect, messy people—people who want different things at different times in different ways and oh, they forgot to tell you? Well, maybe if you had been listening, asshole.
The common theme of the advice here was “Be pragmatic.” If the wife is a lawyer and spends 50 hours at the office every week, and the husband is an artist and can work from home most days, it makes more sense for him to handle most of the day-to-day parenting duties. If the wife’s standard of cleanliness looks like a Home & Garden catalog, and the husband has gone six months without even noticing the light fixture hanging from the ceiling, then it makes sense that the wife handles more of the home cleaning duties.
It’s economics 101: division of labor makes everyone better off. Figure out what you are each good at, what you each love/hate doing, and then arrange accordingly. My wife loves cleaning (no, seriously), but she hates smelly stuff. So guess who gets dishes and garbage duty? Me. Because I don’t give a fuck. I’ll eat off the same plate seven times in a row. I couldn’t smell a dead rat even if it was sleeping under my pillow. I’ll toss garbage around all day. Here honey, let me get that for you.
13. Learn to ride the waves
The man said something like, “relationships exist as waves, people need to learn how to ride them.” Upon asking him to explain, he said that, like the ocean, there are constant waves of emotion going on within a relationship, ups and downs—some waves last for hours, some last for months or even years. The key is understanding that few of those waves have anything to do with the quality of the relationship—people lose jobs, family members die, couples relocate, switch careers, make a lot of money, lose a lot of money. Your job as a committed partner is to simply ride the waves with the person you love, regardless of where they go. Because ultimately, none of these waves last. And you simply end up with each other.
Our education system is based on the idea that we can learn things once, and that they’ll then stay in our minds throughout our lives. That’s far too optimis...
“Repetition is the only way of ensuring that something will stick”
“Mohamed understood that the people who make the best impressions aren’t aiming to impress others. They’re focused on connecting with others. By acknowledging that he was scared, he made himself human and vulnerable. He showed that he cared about what the audience thought of him and understood their perspective.”
“Good communicators make themselves look smart. Great communicators make their audiences feel smart.”
But is really, really useful if you want people to actually read your writing.
1. Write the headline
It all starts here. Writing the headline first forces you to hone in on what you want to talk about. Make the headline 3-10 words. Write the headline in plain English as if you’re describing what the article’s about to a friend. We’ll talk more about headlines in a second.
2. Write the description
One or two sentences that describe what the article is about. It’s the subtitle you see in our articles and the text you see on Facebook below the headline. This further hones in on the topic and keeps you focused on the core idea.
3. Write your draft
This is the toughest part. Why? Most people are deathly afraid of writing and having their thoughts read. That’s why this draft is important. Accept that it will suck. That’s ok. Just start writing. Write anything. “I don’t know how to start, but I’m just starting now.” Literally write that.
Motion creates emotion. Accept that this is a dump and that it’ll suck. Get all your thoughts on paper. Do not worry about how good it is. Even if you only want a 300 word article, write as much as you want here.
4. Incubate
Take whatever time you have to walk away from your work. Could be 2 minutes or 2 years. Whatever. Just get away from your work.
Ironically, not focusing on a problem actually helps you come up with new ideas — it’s called fixation forgetting (#showerthoughts). This step is incredibly important.
5. Edit
This is where the magic happens. David Ogilvy, the greatest copywriter in the world, once said, “I’m a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor.” Editing is where we turn crap into gold.
6. Cut
The first part of editing is cutting useless words and sentences. For most people, that means cutting the first 25% and last 25%. Since grade school, we’ve been programmed to write to hit a certain word count.
That’s wrong. Every single word must be necessary. Nothing more, nothing less. Don’t use 1,500 words to explain something if you need 500. Too many words dilutes your message.
7. First sentence
Next, make the first sentence punch the reader in the face. First sentences need to cut through to the reader. In a world where people’s attention is hard to attract, the first sentence must be undeniable.
8. Create the slippery slope
The sole purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence. The sole purpose of the second sentence is to get you to read the third sentence… and so on.
Lead with a personal story, give hints about what’s coming later, or pose a question. Give people a reason to keep reading.
Example: “I spent the last 30 days eating nothing but Soylent, a new age powdered meal replacement. Why would I do something so stupid? I’ll explain. But first, if you aren’t familiar with Soylent, here’s the gist.”
9. Write simple
Around a 7th to 8th-grade reading level. A great post has C+ writing and A+ storytelling, insight, or analysis. Use Hemingway to tell you your grade level. Contrary to what your 5th grade English teacher used to say, don’t use flowery, overly complicated language.
10. Use short sentences, paragraphs and simple words
A general rule is to keep paragraphs around 2-4 sentences. Keep sentences around 25 words or less. This makes your writing easier on the eye. Which of these 2 pageswould you prefer reading?
In his famous Letters to Shareholders, where Warren Buffett writes about the complex insurance industry, Buffett averages 13 words per sentence. Even the most complex topics can be simplified.
11. Don’t use too many adverbs
Adverbs (words that end in “ly”) weaken your words. I yelled at the boy is better than I angrily yelled at the boy. The road to hell, Stephen King once wrote, is paved with adverbs.
12. Go back to your headline
90% of people will read your headline without consuming your article. Yet, people rarely spend time perfecting their headline. Write 25 of them. Show your headlines to a few friends and ask them which one they would click on. Select one of those. When you have your headline written, you have spent ninety cents out of your dollar.
13. Pick your image
Don’t make it your logo. Make it clicky. Use Google if you want, but you may be violating copyright laws. Be safe use Unsplash.
14. Copywork
And finally…need inspiration? Do copywork. Find a blogger, author, or poet you like and write out their work by hand. See how they structure their writing. Feel their texture.
I spent two hours a day for 6 months copying my favorite authors. It worked wonderfully. You don’t need to do that, but just copying a few sentences before you start your work will help.
“According to the standard or neoclassical school (essentially a 20th-century updating of Adam Smith), people, in their economic lives, are everywhere and always rational decision makers; those who aren't either learn quickly or are punished by markets and go broke. Among the implications of this view are that market prices are always right and that people choose the right stocks, the right career, the right level of savings -- indeed, that they coolly adjust their rates of spending with each fluctuation in their portfolios, as though every consumer were a mathematician, too. Since the 1970's, this orthodoxy has totally dominated the top universities, not to mention the Nobel Prize committee.”
“Thaler spearheaded a simple but devastating dissent. Rejecting the narrow, mechanical homo economicus that serves as a basis for neoclassical theory, Thaler proposed that most people actually behave like . . . people! They are prone to error, irrationality and emotion, and they act in ways not always consistent with maximizing their own financial well being.”
“Thaler, who grew up in Chatham, N.J., the son of an actuary, wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Rochester on the economic "worth" of a human life (public planners tackle this morbid theme frequently, for instance, in determining speed limits). Thaler conceived a clever method of calculation: measuring the difference in pay between life-threatening jobs like logging and safer lines of work. He came up with a figure of $200 a year (in 1967 dollars) for each 1-in-1,000 chance of dying.”
Hello, and welcome to our startup. We hope you’re enjoying your complimentary snifter of vaporized coconut water. Once you’re done, please place th...
“Care for a nap? Well, you are more than welcome to take a quick, refreshing nap in one of our many nap pods. You will be lulled to sleep by the soothing sound of our 23-year-old founder softly whispering startupy things such as, ‘Disruption,’ and ‘Like Uber, but for horses.’“
The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.
David W. Orr
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