According to my guests, Ana Gabriel Mann & John David Mann, love is to a marriage what oxygen is to climbing a mountain: necessary and not sufficient.
Ana is a therapist and marriage coach. John is an author with a unique style that teaches through parable and fable. Together, they've created The Go-Giver Marriage, a book that codifies and operationalizes the work of some of the world's most influential relationship researchers into "5 secrets to lasting love."
Ana and John sat down with me (virtually) to talk about their work, their relationship, and how we can all become more skillful, giving, and successful life partners.
They explained that many of us approach marriage with an unfortunate mindset: when we disagree, there must be compromise.
And therefore the key dynamic to be managed is fairness. We keep score in our heads: who lost this time, and who gets to win next time.
The Mann's share much more generative and pleasurable mindset: The differences between us and our partners are not the unfortunate result of having "settled" in our choice or having made a mistake in the first place -- rather, they are opportunities for us to grow into a larger life than we could possible attain on our own.
In our conversation, we explore why they employ a coaching model over a therapeutic one in helping people achieve fulfilling marriages. And why Ana includes therapeutic elements - history and emotions - in her coaching.
We talk about the purpose of marriage; I challenge them a bit, advocating for an enlargement beyond the atomized individual into concern for the human and more-than-human communities in which our lives are embedded.
We talk about their key influences, including John Gottman, Terry Real, Pia Mellody, and Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt.
And we explore the limits of advice, especially in the context of a history of trauma, and c0nsider how we can model engagement and rationality even when our partner - whether spouse or coaching client or therapy patient - is in a state of amygdala-mediated arousal or collapse.
Enjoy!
Links
The Go-Giver Marriage, by John David Mann and Ana Gabriel Mann
GoGiverMarriage.com
Terry Real
Pia Mellody