Love 2.0: Reimagining Our Relationships  ## Metadata - Author: [[Hidden Brain]] - Full Title: Love 2.0: Reimagining Our Relationships - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/e19b3878-d453-4099-a8e2-280bf8ac6120 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **How Marriage Transformed Over Centuries** - Marriage shifted from economic/political alliances to romantic unions over centuries, changing its purpose and pressures. - Stephanie Coontz explains that love began to replace strategic marriage in the 19th century, altering expectations for partners. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam To understand marriage today, we thought it best to go back to a time and place when marriage was very different. Stephanie Coontz Well, I've been studying the history of family life for many, many years, but I specifically got interested in marriage as we got into these debates about what traditional marriage Was. Shankar Vedantam That's Stephanie Kuntz. She's an emeritus professor at the Evergreen State College and the author of the book Marriage, a History, How Love Conquered Marriage. I interviewed her back in 2017. Stephanie says the earliest marriages had nothing to do with the feelings of two people or their attraction to one another. As you probably know, marriage was much more about economics and acquiring powerful in-laws. Stephanie Coontz Marriage originally arose in more egalitarian band level societies as a way of sharing resources and establishing a peaceful relations with groups that you might otherwise only See occasionally and you might not know if they were going to be friends or enemies. It was a way of circulating obligations and goods. I marry my child off to you, and that means you owe me things, but I also owe you things. Shankar Vedantam Stephanie brought up a famous example from history, the union between Cleopatra of Egypt and Mark Antony of Rome. Speaker 4 Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, siren of the Nile. Shankar Vedantam This is from a 1963 film version. Eli Finkel Richard Burton as Mark Antony, rash, impetuous leader of once invincible legion, dreaded adversary on the field of battle. Shankar Vedantam The Hollywood version of the story portrays Cleopatra and Antony as being very much in love, but Stephanie paints a slightly different picture. Stephanie Coontz There may have been passion, but it was more passion for power than sexual, although sexual probably entered into it too. Shankar Vedantam Cleopatra and Antony's marriage was primarily about strategy. Stephanie Coontz Rome and Egypt were the two most powerful empires in the world, so getting them, anybody who got them together and got an alliance between them would be unstoppable. Shankar Vedantam The story goes that Cleopatra was married to her brother, and without getting into all the details, let's just say she wasn't too happy with that. So she started an affair with Julius Caesar, the ruler of Rome. Cleopatra became pregnant. When the baby was born, he was named Caesarian. The child gave Cleopatra and Caesar a claim to each other's throne. It was something they both desperately wanted. Sounds like an episode of Game of Thrones, right? Stephanie Coontz Well, then Caesar died, and Mark Anthony came along. And, of course, the story tells that she seduced him. But, you know, when you really look at what was happening practically, this was another political alliance. Shankar Vedantam First, as did Caesar, you will marry me according to Egyptian ritual. It's not a condition, it's a reward. Stephanie Coontz You will declare by your authority Caesarian to be king of Egypt, and we will rule together in his name. Caesarian was too young to rule, and Anthony could rule in his place. So it was a great big political alliance, just like Game of Thrones. Shankar Vedantam This marriage strategy wasn't just for kings and queens. There's a common misconception that people of lower classes in this time married for love. Not true, Stephanie says. You couldn't run a farm with one person. You couldn't run a bakery with one person. Stephanie Coontz So people who were bakers married other bakers. If you were a peasant, you wanted somebody who had a good reputation as a hard worker. And that was much more important than this frivolous luxury, is the way it was really thought of, as how attracted you were to the person. Shankar Vedantam A different idea started to become more common in the 17 and 1800s. Jane Austen, the famous novelist, may well have been the trailblazer. For those who don't remember the plot of her book, Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy, who has been promised in marriage to his wealthy cousin, falls instead for Elizabeth Bennet, a woman of modest means. That throws his aunt into a rage. Mr. Speaker 6 Darcy is engaged to my daughter. Shankar Vedantam Now what have you to say? Speaker 6 Only this, if that is the case, you can have no reason to suppose he would make an offer to me. You selfish girl! Stephanie Coontz This union has been planned since their infancy. Do you think it can be prevented by a young woman of inferior birth? Heaven and earth. Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted? Now tell me once and for all, are you engaged to him? Aunt into a rage. Am not. Shankar Vedantam So, Stephanie, talk about this. This is the first glimmers, if you will, of the idea that in some ways love was coming to conquer marriage. Stephanie Coontz This clip you used is perfect because it illustrates the fact that men found it easier to embrace the love match than women did. Men could marry down because they could go out and earn wages. Women had to be very, very cautious. You know, as you could say, my heart inclines to Harry, but, you know, I'd better marry who my parents want me to and the person who is most likely to be able to support me. And so there was a prolonged period of time where men actually were more romantic than women in the courtship arena. Shankar Vedantam By the second half of the 19th century, the Jane Austen model of marriage had taken firm hold in the United States. The idea of marrying for anything other than love came to be seen as old-fashioned. And with the rise of this new idea came another. If marriage was once seen as a partnership between people from similar backgrounds and similar social classes, the new model of marriage began to celebrate the coming together of People who were supposedly radically different from one another. Stephanie Coontz And you got this new theory that love was a union of opposites. Now this idea came that men and women were totally different, and you could only have access to the emotions, resources, abilities of the other by getting married and staying married. You were incomplete without it. ([Time 0:03:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/69d9010f-44d8-4031-902e-52f479fea02b)) - **Marriage Has Climbed Mount Maslow** - Expectations for marriage have climbed up Maslow's hierarchy from survival to self-actualization. - Eli Finkel calls this ascent 'Mount Maslow' and warns higher expectations need more 'oxygen' (effort) to sustain. Transcript: Eli Finkel We wanted to complement our emphasis on love, achieving love through marriage, with a new emphasis on achieving a sense of personal fulfillment in the way of personal growth. So in the terminology of psychology, we wanted to self-actualize through our marriage. We wanted to grow into a more authentic version of ourselves. Shankar Vedantam One example of this comes from the best-selling book by Elizabeth Gilbert about walking out on her husband and trying to create a more meaningful life for herself. We're going to play a few clips from the movies as we chat. And this one comes from the movie Eat, Pray, Love, featuring Julia Roberts. It sounds like she was searching for her true self, Eli. Eli Finkel Yeah, that's exactly right. She, in some sense, helps to epitomize both the strengths and the weaknesses of this modern contemporary approach to marriage where we're looking to our spouse, again, not only for Love, but also this sense of personal growth and fulfillment. And for the first time, you start to see cases where people would say, as I think Liz Gilbert would say, that she was in a loving marriage and he was a good man and treated her well, but she Felt stagnant and she really wasn't willing to endure a stagnant life for the next 30 or 40 years. And she walked out. Shankar Vedantam This would have been unthinkable, of course, a hundred years ago, let alone 500 years ago. Yes. Eli Finkel This would have been a very, very bizarre thing to say. And marriage, you know, it wasn't really until the seventies that you started seeing no-fault divorce laws. It used to be that you had to prove some type of serious mistreatment like abuse or desertion. Yes, it's a very modern idea that we are entitled to a sense of real fulfillment and personal growth through the marriage. And if our marriage is falling short, many of us consider it to be a reasonable option to end the marriage for that alone. Shankar Vedantam You come up with what I think of as a riff on a very famous psychological concept. Many years ago, Abraham Maslow proposed that human beings have a series of different needs that begin with physical security and end with a search for meaning and fulfillment. And you say that a similar hierarchy has come to describe how many Americans think about marriage. Tell me about what you call Mount Maslow. Eli Finkel Well, one of the most exciting things that happened to me in the process of writing the book is I learned a lot about the history and the sociology and the economics of marriage, particularly Reading people like Stephanie Kuntz. Because my primary expertise is as pretty much a laboratory psychologist. I bring couples into the laboratory, and I videotape them interacting, and I follow them over time. But these other disciplines, scholars in these other disciplines adopt a different approach. So I realized that marriage had in fact changed radically in terms of the way we expect it to fulfill our needs in America, that is. And it used to be that marriage was about basic economic survival. We've seen that from Stephanie Kuntz and others. And you can think of that as being at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy toward the physiological and safety needs, really survival-based needs. And then as we track marriage and it becomes more about love, now we're more toward the middle of Maslow's hierarchy. And then in the 1960s and then really up until today, we're in this new era where, yes, we're still looking for love, but now we're toward the top of Maslow's hierarchy where he's talking About things like esteem and self-actualization. And so our expectations of marriage have basically ascended from the bottom to the top of Maslow's hierarchy over the course of American history. And one of the ideas that emerged as I was writing this book is that we can conceptualize Maslow's hierarchy not just in terms of a triangle, but in terms of a mountain, right? And the advantage of thinking of Maslow's hierarchy as a mountain in this way that it brings to mind a number of metaphors related to mountaineering. And one thing that we know when we climb up a big mountain is the views get increasingly gorgeous as you get to the top, but the oxygen gets a little thinner. And so having a successful experience way up there at the top requires that you are able to invest a lot of oxygen, either bring extra oxygen with you on the mountain or invest a lot of time And energy in the marriage to succeed up there. Shankar Vedantam So to continue your analogy, if we want to get to the top of Mount Maslow, but we have failed to bring our oxygen tanks with us, that's what leads presumably to what you call the suffocation Model. That's right. Eli Finkel That's right. That is, it's lovely way up there at the top. And if we're looking to try to achieve not only this sense of love and connection, but also this sense of personal growth and authenticity through the marriage. ([Time 0:15:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68095015-9691-4539-896a-86c6538a5aa0)) - **Why Modern Marriage Can 'Suffocate'** - The 'suffocation' risk arises when couples expect top-tier fulfillment but don't invest enough effort. - Finkel argues high aspirations require substantial time, energy, or external resources to meet. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam That's right. Eli Finkel That's right. That is, it's lovely way up there at the top. And if we're looking to try to achieve not only this sense of love and connection, but also this sense of personal growth and authenticity through the marriage. But we're trying to do it on the cheap. And that disconnect is what I'm talking about when I talk about the suffocation of marriage. Shankar Vedantam What I love about that analogy is it makes physical almost, this psychological process, this effect of our expectations. All of us can imagine what it would be like to suddenly wake up one morning and decide, you know, I'm going to run a marathon or I'm going to climb a mountain, a very tall mountain, without Really any preparation. And we would recognize that it's not just difficult to do, but potentially foolhardy. That is exactly right. Eli Finkel I think if we think about what we're really asking of our marriages these days in terms of the ambition of these expectations, then we realize that if we're too tired or lazy to invest In the quality of the relationship, that of course we're not going to be able to make the summit attempt. Of course we're not going to be able to succeed in meeting those expectations toward the very high end of Maslow's hierarchy. ([Time 0:20:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ce8036cf-3238-4fa3-aba6-6a78526b2ade)) - **A Personal Low Point That Sparked Change** - Eli Finkel recounts struggling after his child's birth and saying hurtful things in Seattle, which became a turning point. - He recalibrated expectations and reinvested effort to recover the relationship. Transcript: Eli Finkel That's right. We went through a hard time. I, in particular, went through a hard time with the adjustment to parenthood. And I, frankly, I think that the reason I had a hard time is the sort of stuff that I'm talking about in the book. I hadn't sufficiently calibrated or recalibrated my expectations to what life would be like with a newborn. And the research on this is, in fact, tricky. Obviously, having a bundle of joy is a wonderful thing, and you love the new baby like crazy, and kissing that little fuzzy head is one of the most satisfying things we ever get to do in Our lives. But the reality is a recent estimate suggests that it's about 33 and a half additional hours a week of extra time, like of care that goes into that. And I would ask the couples out there listening who don't have a kid, where would those 33.5 hours a week come from? And then you're complementing that with some sleep deprivation and frankly, much less time for emotional connection or sexual connection with your spouse. And is it any surprise that the research evidence shows that the arrival of the first baby tends to be pretty hard on the quality of the relationship, on the marital satisfaction, for Example? And it was during that period where we took a trip to Seattle to see my closest and longest term friend, one of these life experiences that has always been a source of bliss and joy for me Throughout the 30-some years of my life at the time. And I was miserable. It turns out that traveling across the country with an eight-month is not anything like traveling across the country without an eight-month And then you're together with your best Friend, and there's all the stuff that you used to do, but now there's an eight-month there, and you're not doing any of those things. And I really had a hard time. I mean, I can't really exaggerate this. I really struggled emotionally with the adjustment. And I said to my wife, and I regret saying this, it's hard for me to say out loud right now, you know, I can endure this. Like, I can get past this, and I certainly love my daughter, but I need to stop trying to have fun. Because if I'm trying to enjoy my life and I'm trying to enjoy you, I keep end up disappointed. And she was very upset about that. And, you know, I made her cry. I'm not proud of this at all. But she cried and thought, what, is this the end of us trying to live a good life together? Are we just going to hunker down and be unhappy together? But the truth is this ended up being the lowest point, but also the starting of where I started to recover a little bit. It took that moment before I started to serious about making life better again. And one of the major ways I did it was by recalibrating my expectations, yes, but also reinvesting in a way that made sure that I was more connected to my wife than we had been. And it took some work. And it did require that we lower expectations in some ways and then try to meet those lowered expectations. ([Time 0:33:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/96ae6df8-f0ea-4c8c-94b2-e48cfe122393)) - **Reframe Partner Behavior Generously** - When partners behave poorly, reinterpret actions contextually rather than as stable character flaws. - Use generous explanations (stress, traffic, exhaustion) to reduce conflict and improve relationship outcomes. Transcript: Eli Finkel Some of your listeners might be fans of Marcel Proust, who argues that mystery is not about traveling to new places, but about looking with new eyes. And the love hacks are exactly that. There are ways that we can try to experience the same relationship, but view it in a different way and therefore be a little bit happier in the relationship itself. Shankar Vedantam So psychologists have long talked about something called the fundamental attribution error, which is sometimes when we see someone behave in a way that we don't like, there's two Ways to interpret it. You can either say this person is behaving badly because they're a bad person, or you can say this person is behaving badly because there's something in the context, there's something Happening around him or her that's causing him or her to behave this way. And one of the hacks that you suggest is to reinterpret negative behavior from your partner in a way that's more sympathetic rather than critical. Eli Finkel Right. And I'm not saying it's magic. I'm not saying it's the easiest thing to do, but I'm saying that with some effort, can get a little better at this. So your spouse is late. Your spouse is disrespectful. I mean, ideally not in a huge way, but your spouse does something inconsiderate. You have a lot of control over how that behavior affects you. And in particular, you have control over whether you want to explain that behavior in terms of something about your spouse that's maybe stable and a characterological assessment. Like my spouse is always such a jerk. You can try instead to say, look, my spouse was a jerk just now, but he's under a lot of stress at work. Or you can think, look, he probably tried the best he could. There was probably some traffic or some crisis at work. I I'm just going to let it ride. Now, I'm not saying these are easy things to do because we do have a default to explain other people's behaviors as elements of their character. But the fact is, and we should be better at understanding this, there are all sorts of things that contribute to why somebody engaged in one behavior over another behavior. And we have some control over the extent to which we interpret our partner's inconsiderate or rude behavior in a way that's more generous and kind. ([Time 0:41:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0b7f1d29-d1ea-44ed-af7c-9b3f32228460)) - **Treat Compatibility As Developable** - Adopt a growth mindset about compatibility: see disagreements as opportunities to develop together. - Treat conflict as learning, not proof of destiny-level incompatibility. Transcript: Eli Finkel She's developed this idea that people differ in terms of how they think about various attributes. So she studies intelligence, for example. And people differ in the extent to which they think intelligence is something that's fixed and stable, and you have it or you don't, versus it's m and it's something that you can develop Over time. Well, it turns out there's a lot of good research now on the extent to which people feel like compatibility in a relationship is something that is fixed. You know, you could call this a destiny mindset. People who think, look, partners are either compatible or they're not, and that's the end of the story, versus more of a growth-oriented mindset who think, look, there's a lot of room Where you can develop compatibility. And in fact, going through difficulties in a relationship isn't a signal that, oh my goodness, we're incompatible people. It's an opportunity to learn to understand each other better and strengthen the relationship through the resolution of the conflict. ([Time 0:43:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b67232d0-9e98-4fe7-a76a-eccd6098b90f)) - **Diversify Your Social Portfolio** - Diversify your social portfolio: get different needs met by different people, not just your spouse. - Sharing emotional roles across friends and family reduces pressure on marriage and increases overall well-being. Transcript: Eli Finkel Right. It's the same logic again, right? So we have this all or nothing approach. We expect these high-level things. And many of our marriages are, in fact, falling short of that. So one possibility is that we try to invest more in the relationship. And the second possibility, which we've called love hacks, is how to be more efficient. But the third possibility, and I actually think we should be pretty serious about this. There's nothing shameful about making these sorts of sacrifices. We should ask less. In what ways can we in our own marriage look to the relationship and see, man, like I have been looking to fulfill this sort of need in the relationship for a long time, and I'm chronically A little disappointed about how we do as a couple and helping to fulfill this sort of need. Is there some other way that I might be able to meet this need I have, either through some other friends or even on my own? And there's some research by the psychologist Elaine Chung that looks at what she calls social diversification. Like, can you diversify your social portfolio, if you will? And she looks at the people we turn to when we're feeling emotions that can help us regulate those emotions. So to whom do you turn when you're feeling sad? To whom do you turn when you want to celebrate your happiness? And she assesses how much people look to a relatively small number of people to do all of those things versus a larger number of people. And she finds across a range of studies now that people who've diversified their social portfolio, that is, turned to different sorts of people for different sorts of emotional experiences, Tend to be a little bit happier. And so with regard to marriage in particular, we've really lumped a lot of our emotional fulfillment on this one relationship. ([Time 0:45:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26ad0a76-eaca-4522-ba43-076061526f7a)) - **Negotiate Alternatives To Monogamy Carefully** - Consider negotiated, consensual non-monogamy if mutual sexual needs aren't met and both partners consent. - It's risky but can reduce sexual pressure and preserve the core household partnership for some couples. Transcript: Eli Finkel One of the places that I consider is in the romantic or sexual domain. So is it reasonable for some people to consider some type of consensual non-monogamy? Now, this is not cheating. That's the whole idea of consensual non-monogamy. This is an understanding that we don't need to have complete monogamy all the time. And you can negotiate an alternative. In fact, among millennials, this is becoming an increasingly common way of thinking about the ideal relationship. So this is an ideal option, especially for people who generally are connecting pretty well and they love each other and they're good co-CEOs of the household together, but they're Really struggling to sustain a mutually satisfying sex life together. Those are particularly good opportunities to consider. Could we reduce some of the disappointment and pressure by opening up the relationship in some ways that we can both agree to? ([Time 0:49:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0ef7d4bd-8949-470a-be17-dda540abdda6)) - **A Two-Word Phrase That Carried Love** - Finkel shares the 'belly full of wine' shorthand he and his wife used to convey deep affection quickly. - Their private shorthand acted as emotional shorthand that diffused tension and preserved connection. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam And it has to do with this song. Thank you. I want to tell her that I love her a lot, but I gotta get a belly full of wine. My majesty's a pretty nice girl someday I'm gonna make a smile. Eli Finkel That's Paul McCartney at the end of the Abbey Road medley. It's like a little 23-second bonus track. And it's interesting. I haven't heard it in a while. And even as I listened to it, as you just played it, I sort of teared up a little bit. Because it's been a very significant song for my wife and me in our marriage. When we were first dating, you know, people are falling in love and they often say, I love you or whatever. But I was very partial to this idea of belly full of wine, right? I want to tell her that I love her a lot, but I got to get a belly full of wine. And eventually saying belly full of wine was our little replacement for I love you. And what was neat about the way we used the phrase belly full of wine is it was able to contain like a whole terabyte of information about love and respect and affection in this like one Second phrase. We could turn to each other and just say belly full of wine and just really communicate so much information in that very little, just those few words. And this is an example of a broader idea that we don't appreciate enough, which is that every marriage has its own culture that has its own language and its own expectations. And we can leverage the features of how culture works to benefit the marriage with a sort of emotional shorthand that can help express affection. And it can be especially crucial if you're going through a difficult time and maybe things are getting a little hot and maybe you're on the verge of a fight and you can say, hey, baby, belly, Belly full of wine. ([Time 0:50:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5bb42319-7335-4964-bcef-7f801385516e)) - **Stories Shape Identity And Meaning** - How we narrate events changes their psychological impact; chapter breaks shape meaning. - Jonathan Adler notes stories give unity and help people feel like the same person across time. Transcript: Stephanie Coontz Mind telling your subconscious to take it easy? Jonathan Adler It's my subconscious. Remember, I can't control it. Shankar Vedantam When we watch these films, we're riveted by the characters, the action, and the dialogue. But we often fail to notice that the way the story is told has a fundamental impact on how we feel. If Forrest Gump didn't have flashbacks, it would simply be a guy sitting on a bench talking to a stranger. If Star Wars had started with Luke blowing up the Death Star, it would be a completely different story. What is true in fiction is true in real life as well. How we tell stories, including the stories of our own lives, has profound consequences for our well-being. Whom we include, whom we exclude, and what point of view we take, all these choices alter how we feel about ourselves and the world. We explored the science of stories and what's known as narrative psychology in a recent episode of Hidden Brain titled U2.0, Change Your Story, Change Your Life. Our guest was Jonathan Adler, a psychologist at Olin College. Today, Jonathan returns to answer listeners' questions about personal stories and how they shape our lives. Jonathan Adler, welcome back to Hidden Brain. Jonathan Adler Oh, thank you so much for having me. Shankar Vedantam Jonathan, we're constantly telling ourselves stories, and even small details are important in weaving the narrative of who we are. I'm going to start by having you tell me the story of your day today. Jonathan Adler What happened since you woke up? Well, this morning I got up. I helped my kids get off to school. They are in fifth and seventh grade, so they are navigating their own autonomy and what they're in charge of, but also attending to the clock. And then I came here to campus, and I had a little bit of time to get some work done. I met with my new first-year advisees over lunch to get them oriented, and then I came here to the sound studio to get ready to talk with you. Shankar Vedantam I have to confess that one reason we ask people this question sometimes is to establish audio levels and to make sure they're sounding good. But in the context of this conversation I'm having with you, Jonathan, can you just articulate for a moment why the stories we tell about our own lives are so important? Sure. Jonathan Adler That story, I don't know, meets any kind of criterion for interesting or important story. And in fact, when we look back over our lives, it's often the big moments that stick around. But the story that I just told you is really all chronology. There's not much more to it than that. But stories actually play a huge number of roles in our lives at the level of the individual, the level of the interpersonal relationship, but also at the broad cultural level. So in my field, we're especially focused on the ways stories provide us with a sense of unity and meaning. So stories integrate us. They make us feel like we're the same person across time and across situations, and they help turn the messy flow of life into something meaningful. But stories are also a vital tool for connection with other people and with communities. ([Time 0:56:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d8449fb-e3c7-422f-b6ad-8bd0c00d3a03)) - **Redemption Versus Contamination Arcs** - Redemption (bad→good) and contamination (good→bad) are narrative arcs with measurable well-being effects. - Adler reports redemption themes correlate with better psychological outcomes. Transcript: Shankar Vedantam You describe two kinds of stories that you call contamination stories and redemption stories. And both these stories have to do with how we are arranging the chapter breaks of our lives. Can you explain what these two are, perhaps with some examples, Jonathan? Jonathan Adler Sure. And these are two of many themes that show up in people's stories. Contamination stories are simply good turns bad, and redemption is bad turns good. So, you know, all lives have good and bad in them, but these themes are very much about where we draw connections and parse the chapter breaks. For example, in the story that I shared with you the last time we talked, it was a story about my experience in college, in studying abroad, and then going into graduate school. And things had been challenging for quite a while. And I really threw myself into my academic work, looking towards graduate school. And then when I applied to graduate schools, I only got into one of the programs that I had applied to. And at the time, that felt like a big letdown. Now, when I look back from a vantage point 20 years later, it's one of the most important turning points in my life. I really found my intellectual passion. I worked with a graduate mentor who really nurtured my career. I met the person who I went on to marry and have children with. Cut that experience into a contamination experience where I was working really hard and it didn't turn out. But when I move the ending of that story later and incorporate what came afterwards when I started graduate school, the chapter, the transition from college into graduate school actually Turns out to be this redemptive story where my one option turned out to be a fantastic pathway for me. Shankar Vedantam The striking thing, of course, here is that the facts of your story are not necessarily changing. It's just where you choose to start and where you choose to stop the story. Jonathan Adler That's right. And actually, even the emotional experience isn't changing, right? Things were hard and later things were better. But I could cut up the exact sequence of not only sort of objective chronological facts, but also the emotions associated with them. And I could cut up that story into ways that would render it with different thematic arcs. And there's real consequences for that. ([Time 1:00:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4b1585e9-7f38-472e-b9fe-bc957ea15855)) - **House Explosion Turned Into Community Support** - Listener Cassandra recounts a home explosion that left family safe and neighbors supportive. - She reframed the trauma into a redemptive ending of survival, community, and even humor. Transcript: Speaker 4 It was in 2005, Thanksgiving weekend, and I was with my family in our home in Texas, and most of us were asleep in bed around midnight when someone came into my garage, planted an explosive Device and blew my house up. We were sleeping but not my daughter, my teenage daughter. She was upstairs sewing. The lights went off and then she saw a flame shoot from our driveway across our u-shaped house to the opposite property and she she ran down the stairs to wake me and my husband up and she Said fire fire she screamed she woke us both up i tried to turn my light on but the power was off and i couldn't understand why the light wouldn't turn on the house was covered in black smoke My husband and i wound up running across the end of the bed and we slammed into each other. I knocked him out. I ran out the bedroom door. I met my daughters at the bottom of the stairs. We ran toward the front door. My younger daughter reached over my shoulder to touch the door. And you know, if you don't open a door and feed the fire, and I was thinking, stop, drop, and I didn't even get the word roll out before the door exploded inwards. It knocked me onto my back. My dog jumped over my prone body. Both of my daughters were now out chasing the dog, and my garage door had exploded, and it was metal, and shards of the door were whizzing towards their heads like saw blades, and I thought, They're going to be decapitated. Shankar Vedantam So, Jonathan, there's more to the story, but what are you hearing so far? Jonathan Adler Whoa. Thank you, Cassandra, for being willing to share that story. And I'm so sorry that happened to you. This is a highly dramatic moment. And it's certainly setting up the dramatic tension. I'm dying to know what happens next. Shankar Vedantam So I think it's fair to say, Jonathan, that at this point in the story, Cassandra's story is pretty horrific. No one would actually want to be in Cassandra's shoes. This is definitely almost a contamination story because it started out with everyone sleeping peacefully at night, and suddenly there's this terrible thing that happens to them. So let me play you the rest of Cassandra's story. It picks up from here. Speaker 4 And I thought, they're going to be decapitated. And luckily the saw blades went around them, by them, over them, and they were untouched. And I could barely see anything because the next explosion just just about blinded me and it blew up my ear eardrums but I could barely see a someone charging through the neighbor's fences Pulling on his pants it was my neighbor Jeff he grabbed my dog he grabbed my daughter and he hustled him into his house now I picked myself up and then I glanced down the street and I could See through my near blindness the Christmas lights of red and blue lights coming towards me. Those were fire trucks. Three hours later, 40 of my neighbors were standing with my whole family and my dog in the street outside my house, watching my house burn to the ground. And one of the neighbors got out his best scotch, and they passed it around. And somebody else got me some herbal tea. Somebody else gave me a bathrobe. Now, I neglected to say that my husband was naked when he was sleeping, and when he came to, and I don't know when that was, and came out of the house, he went and grabbed a bathrobe. And I looked up to this two-story house, and fire was coming out every window like giant orange eyelashes. And there was my husband standing with his back to me, warming his cockles by the fire at the front door. And he was putting on his bathrobe and tying the silk cash around his waist. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. So anyway, as we watched the fire, we saw the explosions. Somebody invited me into the house, our neighbors. We've all recovered. We all are okay. And we're better for it. Thank you. ([Time 1:03:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/46af3391-dd84-44f0-9f5a-544a35185e4e)) - **The Pressure To 'Redeem' Trauma** - Redemption master narratives are culturally potent and can pressure sufferers to 'make meaning' quickly. - Adler warns against rushing to positive spins and urges acknowledgment of real suffering first. Transcript: Jonathan Adler So the research demonstrates over and over that when we're able to take negative experiences and find something redemptive in them, that that tends to be good for our psychological Well-being. But we live in a rich narrative ecology of stories. There are stories all around us. And some of those stories exert more influence over our lives than others. So scholars in my field call these potent stories master narratives. Master narratives tend to be ubiquitous, but invisible. We only see them when we bump into them, like when our life story doesn't fit in some way with the master narrative. And there's excellent work by Dan McAdams suggesting that redemption is an especially potent American master narrative. And I would say, especially with cancer patients, we have a strong master narrative of what it means to be a cancer patient in the United States. Cancer is a battle, and it's supposed to show you how strong you are. And that kind of redemptive spin on cancer has two kinds of impacts on patients. First, if you get cast against your will in a war story, it's going to influence your behavior. So there's research suggesting that the war metaphor might actually lead people to pay less attention to health-supporting behaviors like drinking and smoking less or eating healthier, Right? If you're going into battle, you might not care as much about those things, but those can actually make a difference to your overall health. But second, I've talked with cancer patients who don't feel like cancer made them stronger. And so if cancer isn't some complex gift in disguise, right, if it just sucks, then not only are you sick, but you're not telling a story about being sick that anyone wants to hear. And indeed, there is research demonstrating that Americans love to hear redemption stories and don't love contamination stories. ([Time 1:08:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/62e075a1-d802-4182-82fc-39ac140c0d36)) - **Tell Stories To Regain Agency** - Use storytelling to reclaim agency: you can't change events but you can change their narrative. - Tell honest but constructive stories that support wellbeing and seek social affirmation for them. Transcript: Jonathan Adler Yeah, this is actually something I've been thinking a lot about recently. Certainly one of the things that drew me to the field of studying narrative identity was the idea that you can't always control what happens to you, but you can control the story you tell About what happens to you. And to a large extent, I think that is true. You know, as I've said, we're both the main character and the narrator of our life story. And we do have agency to tell stories that support our well-being. So I don't want to diminish the importance of that at all. But at the same time, our stories don't just exist in our heads, right? Stories are meant to be told. And if you're telling a story about your life that other people don't affirm, it's actually quite hard to keep living out that story, where people lose control over their life stories. Shankar Vedantam Can you talk about how the big events in our lives, weddings, the birth of children, the death of loved ones, how these might be particularly powerful occasions to tell both contamination And redemption stories? Jonathan Adler Yeah, so big events like that, to a certain extent, play into a different kind of master narrative. We call this in my field, the cultural concept of biography, which means in any given culture, there's sort of an expected timeline of milestones. And so when your life coincides with those milestones, there's a socially acceptable pressure for you to narrate those. So I was doing a study years ago where we were reading transcripts of entire life stories. And my students who were working with the narratives said, I can't read another high point that is about a wedding or the birth of a first child. And it's just like, right. Those are such straightforward stories for people to point to as the high point of their life. And indeed, it is often the big moments of our lives that serve as chapter breaks, that serve as anchor points in our stories. But I also want to remind everyone that it doesn't have to just be objective big moments. I've read and interviewed people with absolutely gorgeous, very small moments that have very big subjective meaning associated with them. And so that meaningful conversation over a bowl of Cheerios could turn out to be a high point or a turning point in your life. It doesn't just have to be the big milestone events. It's really about the subjective meaning that we associate with our experiences. Shankar Vedantam We've looked at the reliability of memory in many episodes of Hidden Brain, Jonathan, and it's fair to say that the scientific consensus is that our memories are not very accurate, Even when it comes to the big events in our lives. How much does the accuracy of a narrative in our lives matter? Yeah, this is such an important topic. I guess it depends on ([Time 1:19:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d44d49d6-c255-4449-bad3-3206b9ffc4eb)) - **A Daughter Reframes Her Father's Passing** - Listener Raquel reframed her father's death as him 'taking her place' at age 27, finding protective meaning. - Repeated retellings shifted her grief narrative and helped her honor his traits in herself. Transcript: Speaker 6 In 2014, I had just finished graduate school and I was starting a new job. The day before my 27th birthday, my sister called to tell me that my dad had been in a car accident. Sadly, he passed away a few days later. Fast forward to 2019, I began helping with a grief support group at my church, and I had to tell the story of my dad's passing with each new group. I started to notice things in the story that changed my perspective on it. Since my dad had passed, I had looked on that time with regret for not having prioritized time with him because of my new job. I felt awful that I wasn't able to say a proper goodbye or make time to spend with him in what I realize now were his last days. But as I told the story to the grief group, I remembered that I had had a sense of foreboding actually around my 27th birthday. I had heard stories of celebrities dying specifically at this age, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, and it made me wonder if something might happen to me. And I realized something did happen, but it happened to my dad. Now I look back and I tell a story of my dad taking my place. Maybe I had been the target, that 27th birthday curse coming for me, but my dad protected me. I know there's no evidence for this, but knowing my dad, it's not a stretch to believe that he would gladly give his life up to give us what we needed. So now I see the ways my dad's love for teaching and learning live on in me. ([Time 1:30:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/59c60faf-1b7c-4f02-a3be-dddb12b7ddcf))