Hello and welcome to Revolutionize your love life. Do you

want to know more about love relationships? What makes them

work? How to create the one of your best dreams?

Do you want to be in a really healthy juicy,

love relationship? In these podcasts, we will give ideas and

practical advice to light your way. Whether you're looking for

a love partner already in a relationship, you wish could

be better or leaving one that has run its course.

There will be something to inspire empower and support you.

Revolutionize your love life is a fortnightly podcast where you

will access the knowledge and wisdom of love experts and

relationship coaches from across the world to help you find

true fulfillment in love. I am your host, Heather Garbett.

Welcome. Good morning. I'm here today with Geraldine Murphy who

is a relationship coach. She helps women and couples uncover

the magic in their relationship. And even if they've been

together for a long time, she can make vast improvements.

She's done it for herself with her husband and found

it's much more fun to make a struggling relationship work

than to get divorced, which she has also done. She's

a massive believer in making the most of what you've

got rather than replacing it with someone new, something new.

Hi, Geraldine. Welcome. Hello. How are you? Thank you for

having me on Heather. Oh, you're welcome. I'm, I'm, I'm

really good. Thank you. It's fresh after Valentine's Day. So

we're all feeling flushed with love and wanting to share.

So today we're going to talk about negative biases, expecting

the worst in the relationship, expecting the worst response and

the negative habits that can be destructive in relationship and

being too busy and taking each other for granted. Should

we look at the first bit first? Yes. Yeah. It's,

it's one of my favorite topics which sounds weird for

negative bias really. Um, but it's the one thing that

I think if, if we could be trained in schools

or trained anywhere in life to even know that it

exists, it would make a huge difference to, to everybody,

everybody on earth. It would just be crazy because we'd

act and react so differently to each other. I'll explain

what it is. Negative bias we were born with. Um,

and this goes back to dinosaur times when we were

cavemen. Um, we are born with this part of our

brain that protects us and this has not evolved over,

you know, hundreds of thousands of years and it's the,

the little bit in our brain that when you were

running around with your club and, and being chased by

saber tooth tigers and things like that. If you heard

a rustle in the bushes, you could either assume everything

was fine or you could assume that there was trouble

and you just had to bolt. Um, and the people

who assumed it was fine sometimes got eaten. So we

ended up with these genes that, that protect us and,

uh, and often unnecessarily. Um, so you have this part

in your brain that doesn't know all the only job

it has is to protect you and keep you alive.

Of course, nowadays, we don't, we're not getting chased by

tigers. Um We are in physically, we're really rarely in

physical danger, but we still have this, this negative bias.

You know, we have this, this part in our brain.

It's in, it's the Amygdala, it's right in the middle

of your brain and it fires off when you see

something that scares you or you see anything at all.

Really, you will automatically look for the danger in it,

especially if it's anything new or any change. And I

think things like texts are amazing for bringing this out.

You can see a text and you will automatically look

for the danger or the bad in that. And that

is your negative bias and it's completely natural. It's unfortunate

but it's completely natural. So it can relate to emotional

threat, not necessarily physical threat, it can relate to any

sort of um, threat that you feel to your. Well,

being absolutely. And that's when it happens most often. Um,

because in reality, there's very little physical threat that we

have in our lives. Um, the majority of it is,

is emotional threats and it's not even emotional threats. I

mean, I have done it myself getting, you know, um,

you know, you get a text through from somebody that

you are expecting bad news for, from, or you not

quite sure and it might not be bad news when

it does come through. But you look at it and

you're like before you even see any of the body

of the text, you kind of like, you know, hairs

can go up on the back of your neck, you

can start feeling a bit tingly. Um and this is,

you know, it's the same, it happens with all sorts

of different things. The brown envelopes that used to be

a good one, didn't it? You don't get that many

the tax man and you see the envelope and think,

oh my God, what's what's in this assuming the worst

every time? But we also do that in relation to

our partners. And this is because it's naturally there. I

mean, there, there's really easy, easy ways to combat it,

but it's a muscle, it's something that you have to

practice and know that, you know, be aware of it

and learn how to catch yourself, you know, and the

more you catch yourself and correct it, then it just

becomes something that you get better at and it gets

easier. Yeah. Yeah. The, the one do you mean the,

the would be and how you yourself? Yeah. Well, there,

you know, your partner is out and they are, they're

late for dinner. You've got dinner ready and they're, they're

not back and you haven't heard from them and you

can start assuming that they are. Um, they're, they don't

care, they, they got chatting to somebody at work and

they didn't, you weren't really that, you know, you're not

as important. This dinner isn't as important as anything as,

as it should be. Um, but actually you can kind

of know that this, this is my brain working trying

to protect me. But actually the chances are I don't

have enough information here. Ok? He hasn't called, he's late,

anything, you know, it could have a flat tire or

it could have whatever phone could be out of charge.

The chances are, it's not any of these things because

if you look back, uh, this is another good technique

looking back at whenever you thought something bad was gonna

happen. Did it, did it happen? How many times have

you looked back and have you thought? Oh God, this

is this, this is terrible. This what if this happens?

This is going to happen and it doesn't happen and

all that wasted energy that you've expended on, on the

pain and the worry and the stress and the trouble

is, it's a bit like having a baby. You forget

about it, you know, when it's done you tend to

forget and you don't record it and then you go

on to the next one of like, oh, this always

happens and actually you think, well, the last 12 times

it didn't happen, it did turn out better than expected.

So, it's so, I actually write those things down and

stick them on the fridge. Sometimes this happened. This went

well, this went well, this went well, actually things are

working out for us and if you soothing yourself, yeah.

And, and, but educating and retraining this so we can,

we can hop over this Amygdala and, and just uh

it will always be there. It will always want to

do its job, but we don't need to trust it

in the same way as we did. Or at least

it's not even just, it's the blind trust of it

where you going to panic. This is what always happens.

Um And then I react. So the thing of husband

being late and then he comes in the door and

you're uh you didn't, you didn't call, you didn't. This,

this always happens. It's always like this, you don't care

about this dinner or whatever. And when actually, if you

had, if you look at all the information, you think

actually, I don't have this information, he's not back. He

is not answering his phone, the phone's probably dead or

whatever. And when the energy is completely different, when it

does show up and you're not firing off this negative

energy back at him where he's possibly been standing in

the rain, changing a tire or something. Do you know

what I mean? So he is not going, it's not

going to add insult to injury. Exactly. And then, and

sorry, sorry, I'm talking about you. But you can't, that

negative energy has happened. So if you haven't caught it,

it's, it's not gone, it's, it's happened and you have

created like, did you ever wake up from a dream?

And you're annoyed with somebody? And you think I, I

dreamt that I had an argument with them and you

still have that energy in your body when you get

up and you're still annoyed with them maybe an hour

afterwards. And you like, why, why am I annoyed with

this person? I need to and then you work out

and you think, and it didn't bloom, it happened. So

there's something you're saying here that's really important about soothing

ourselves, really being, um, an adult to ourselves and saying,

hold on, you know, is this really the way I

want to react? Is this really what's happened? You know,

I've got all of these ideas. None of which could

be true if I just calm myself down and wait

and I know that I can trust him. It's not

that he's doing this on purpose. All of my previous

experience of him is that he doesn't stay out on

purpose to ruin my dinner. You know, then you can

be calm and then you can be responsive and warm

when he comes in. Gosh, you're late. Darling. What's happened?

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And it makes me think. Oh, go

on. No, no, go on. Well, it makes me think

about little childhood patterns. You know how we first experienced

love when we were little that will overlay this Amygdala

reaction. So if you first experienced, um, emotional connection has

been shouted at and slapped, that's what you'll expect. So

that will feed into expecting the worst. Yeah. And it

just reinforces it. I'm making it an extreme to make

the point. But, you know, if you've experienced connection as

absent, like, um, your parents are too busy to be

with you, then you won't expect good attention. You won't

expect to be loved and cared for in an attentive

way. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And, um, because the Amygdala situation

is already set up. You know, it's already there, it's

already happening. You have to kind of actively work against

that. But as a child, you can't, you know, you

rely on your parents to, to be the ones to,

to help you with that. Um, but being in this

situation with your Amygdala as an adult and not realizing

that it is negative bias and it is natural is,

um, being quite childlike. You know, it's not moving forward

and not developing yourself. And this is a really funny,

I love this funny trick with the Amygdala and this

dinosaur bit of your brain is actually a bit stupid.

It's a bit dense. It's so old. It's not able

to count backwards. So if there's ever something you need

to do, like, um, I use it for getting in

the sea, in the cold sea, you want to go

in the sea, but your body is give you, the

longer you avoid going in the sea, the harder it

gets to get in that you've been there. Have you?

Everybody's been there like I know it'll be nice once

I get in there. But, oh, I don't really want

to and then I'll give it five minutes or I'll

go and get ice cream first or whatever and you'll

never get in to see if you say 54321 do

it. It switches off that bit of your brain. It

can't cope with counting back, but you have to go

straight in then. That's a brilliant trick. It is brilliant.

And then again, it's another one of those, the more

you use it, the easier it gets. And I have

used it once for going out, you know, those vertical

slides of death. Terrifying. Yeah. And I remember I had

Noah, my youngest, my youngest boy with me, we were

at this, just this kind of park thing when we

were doing that kind of stuff. And I was like,

I'm determined to go down this because he's looking at

me because I need to be brave. I need to

be a brave mom and because I'm an older mom,

I was like to be, he doesn't see that. But

I was like, I'm not going to be the one

that doesn't do that. I'm going to do it and

he couldn't look. But I did that several times because

I was like, oh gee I don't want to go

down this thing. I was like 54321 go. And I

was telling everybody do it this way, this way you

get down. But once you've done it several times, second

time is always easier. Third time easier again, you start

to rely on your own, you, you start to know

that it's just a muscle, it's just a, it's just

to do it. You know, you just do it. You,

you build your own reassuring experience. Yeah. Yeah. So you

break up that, you know that I love that thing

with the sign up thing. So you, you, when you

have a negative experience, you create a pathway and every

time you go over that pathway, you create, you go

deeper into the trench and it becomes more of a

pathway. So you scribble it out when you change that,

you know, you interrupt the pathway and the more you

interrupt it then that you create new pathways. So it's

all, it's like, you know, the other analogy is the

muscle creating that muscle where you, you create a new

habit but you keep doing it, keep doing it and

then you have a good new habit. That's brilliant. That's

brilliant. So we can do that in relationship too. We

can calm ourselves down. So we're not being reactive from

Amygdala or negative childhood experiences making meaning. That's negative. Brilliant.

That's brilliant. So what about the negative habits? You just

mentioned that, that what, what about the negative habits that

can happen long term in relationships that diminish it? Yeah.

Yeah. These are really interesting actually because most of these

negative habits, people don't even realize that they're doing it.

It becomes such a part of them and habits are,

there's, they can be so good and so bad. So

you can just have something that you don't even hear

yourself doing. And I had somebody talking to me recently

and um, she, her husband, um he, he, he doesn't

eat, he doesn't eat a wide range of food. Um

So it's, it's quite child type food in her opinion

and, and she feels this comes from his own family

and his mother. And um, so she comments on it

almost every meal time, it drives him nuts. So this

causes tension and friction. Um And as far as, as

far as this girl is concerned, it's kind of his

um his problem, you know, it's, but it's kind of,

it's not realizing that it's actually causing problems for both

of them really. You know. Um, so we're sort of

looking at that, um, and saying, well, this is, this

is also responsibility that she's taken on, which she doesn't

need to because it gives her pain as well talking

about it. So, we were, we were sort of saying,

well, why don't you just don't worry about it. He's

not your kid, you're your own person, let him do

his own. And, um, it's, we're just sort of exploring

it. We're not far into this, but it's, it, now

it's just starting to realize how often it comes up,

you know, and you, well, you, how often do you

eat? It's such a, you know, um, and so it's,

it's, um, once this has taken out the equation, this

is going to become a much, much easier relationship and

meal times will be much easier because there is the

thing of, um, she gets upset over what makes a

comment, it's jokey comment that set that sets him off

and then he's upset about, you know, not being enough

enough choice for him kind of thing. And then they

have this, it ruins meal times and meal times are

meant to be special. You know, I love food. I

like meal times to be good and calm. And, um,

so this taking this out of the equation where it's

not her responsibility. If he wants to moan about the

food, fine no problem. It's not her thing. She just

look after her own meal. It's gonna make life a

lot easier. So there's this sort of sense of being

a bit controlling, being a bit parental, um, thinking that

we know best and that it's ok to comment. Um,

even joking, it's barbed and it's demeaning, um, embarrassing and

shaming for the other person. I guess there's a point

where we might need to look at where that's coming

from. You know, do, does she feel it reflects on

her because he chooses to eat like that in a

restaurant? And is that what is going on? You can't

conjecture right now. But I, I would like that to,

if that was me, I would think, OK, why am

I doing this? Where's this coming from so that you

can ease, ease out of it as well as just

deciding I'm not going to do that anymore? Yeah. Yeah.

No, that is, that is an interesting point as well

and, and also where his reaction to it as well

because it's not meant to be mean. It's never intended

to be a judgment. Um, it just is read like

that. So we, the way this is more of the

negative bias that you expecting somebody to say when somebody

says something, you're expecting the negative slant on it when

it's not intended that way either. It's sort of, you

know, it's, it's complicated, isn't it? You know, this is

what I call the ratcheting conversation. Like you start here,

there's a trigger, there's a trigger, there's a trigger and

before you know it, you're, you're up here and banging

the bell, you know, and that's how, yeah, that really

happens in relationships where they just build on each other

and you build this, this habit of something that annoys

each other. And so, you know, nice meals that you

have this nice situation where you're meant to be, go

out and have a lovely time and then it ends

up not being a nice time because something bad happened

and it's something to do with the habit, which obviously

we were talking about earlier as well. Um So yeah,

it's, uh, it is really, it's really interesting that tweaks

in habits can really make quite a difference but also

finding out what's going underneath them. Mm. Brilliant, brilliant. Thank

you. So, the last point we want to talk about

is busy, sort of taking each other for granted, becoming

part of the furniture. I mean, it's, it's pretty obvious

that's not gonna be positive. But tell me more about

that. Yes. And, and it starts off with being, it

starts off as a positive, you know, that you can

rely on each other and, you know, you feel so

safe and comfortable with, with that person that they'll be

there forever. You feel like you, you're rock solid and

that can turn into just really taking each other for

granted because the kids are screaming and business is screaming

and this is happening, that's happening. So you, you're working

hard for your goals and maybe building business and you're,

you know, the kids have to be looked after and

sent to school and then you end up maybe with

parents that you're looking after or whatever and then the

kids are starting to leave home and actually get to

a point where you think, I hardly know this person.

I haven't had a really deep and, and fulfilling conversation

with them in four years. You know, and, and that's,

that's quite sad when that happens. But again, it's something

that can be reversed and without a huge amount of

its effort, that's, you know, that's what you have to

put, what you haven't been putting in is now what

you have to put in an intention to make things

better. Yeah. Yeah, because it is, it is better to

make things better than to part, in my opinion. Not,

it's not always the case, but it, it is definitely,

I always think, well, it's, if you're thinking, is it

time to, to leave or, or break up maybe six

more months and actually work at it and see if

you can, if you can get back to it because

when you can get back to it, when you can

actually bring back that relationship, it's so much better than

it was even when you first met because you have

these layers and depth and history and, you know, each

other so well. And now you have, you know, now

you maybe have a bit of money and now you

have the house to yourselves. You've got all those things

that you didn't have for a lot of the time

in the interim. It's like, wow, it's time to reap

the rewards. Don't just get divorced. It's like, let's get

the fun time zone. Yeah. And I think, I think

you're right. You know, that, that's a, there's so much

of what you said. That's right. But that last bit's

also triggered thinking in me about letting the fun go.

You know, if you, if you don't have things like

that, you both enjoy doing it, it will become barren.

So if you like dancing, you go dancing, you know,

it's for Ian and I, we love our dancing. Uh

I love art. He likes to come to see exhibitions.

I think there, there's something happened with the lockdown as

well. We got out of the habit of doing nice

things because you don't, we weren't going out, but we're

doing it much, much more now and it just makes

such a difference. Yeah. Yeah. Life experiences are just, um,

they're really, you know, they're like the rewards for all

the work and the, you know, and, and just going

out as a couple when you're out there is, it's

just kind of special because you can share these special

things and you have, you know, each other so, well,

everybody around you is a stranger and which, you know,

can, can really bring new things into your relationship as

well when you start chatting with people. And it's really

lovely. You just develop more memories, you know, for chatting

about when you go home. Otherwise you sent them to

the TV. Yeah. Yeah. Much in the same old, same

old. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Oh, thank you so much,

Geraldine. It's been really lovely to talk with you. And

how can people contact you if, if this is for

them? Oh, yes. Um Yes. Well, you can, I have

my own um Facebook community there where I have um

I run some events, some free events. Um I, if

you want to find the magic in your relationship and

uh improve your communication and deepen your um intimacy and

connection with your partner, then come to my page and

uh and I'm also, I'm also on um on Facebook

my personal profile as well that you confront me. I'm

Geraldine Murphy. Yes. So that's lovely. What's the name of

your community? It's uh what is the name of my,

put it in the chat in your own number? I

know what you mean. Thank you so much. See you

again soon. Bye for now. Bye bye. Thank you so

much for listening to this episode of Revolutionize your love

life. I'd like to know what has been your biggest

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so much again for listening and we'll meet again on

the next episode of Revolutionize your Love life.