Thinking About
Relationships

Terry Real tells a story about a husband who came home from the grocery store with eleven of the twelve things on the list. His wife asked where the pumpernickel was. Every nerve in his body screamed to say they were out of it. He took a breath and told the truth instead. His wife burst into tears. She said she had been waiting for that moment for twenty-five years.

My Berkeley dissertation examined three kinds of laughter in middle-aged and older marriages. What the research revealed surprised me — and still informs how I work with couples fifteen years later.

In 2006, I co-authored a museum exhibit that has been in the Exploratorium's permanent collection ever since. It was about the emotional expressions most toxic to intimate relationships. Here's what the research behind it actually shows.

RLT identifies three functional selves that are active in every intimate relationship. Understanding which part of you is running the show in a difficult moment is the first step toward choosing differently.

Terry Real calls it 'normal marital hatred' — the moments of genuine resentment or rage that most couples experience but almost none will admit. The question isn't whether you feel it. It's what you do with it.