Why Avoiding Conflict Can Destroy a Relationship | Adam Lane Smith : #183

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Episode link coming soon. Thanks for your patience and support.

If you grew up in a broken or dysfunctional family, you may have entered adulthood without ever seeing what healthy conflict looks like.

But avoiding conflict isn’t the answer. In fact, healthy conflict can be one of the main ways couples build trust, deepen intimacy, and discover whether they can actually build a life together.

Our guest, Adam Lane Smith, is a former licensed marriage and family therapist, bestselling author, and attachment specialist whose work has attracted more than 1.3 million followers across social media. In this conversation, Adam breaks down the practical relationship skills many people never learned growing up.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why people from broken families often struggle in relationships

• How healthy couples handle conflict differently

• Why avoiding conflict can actually weaken trust

• What conflict reveals about whether someone is marriage material

• How to communicate, repair, and build trust after things go wrong

If conflict makes you shut down, blow up, people-please, or wonder whether you’re capable of building the healthy marriage you never saw growing up, this episode is for you.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

👉 Join the waitlist for our new healing program for young adults impacted by their parents’ divorce or family dysfunction:
RestoredMinistry.com/program

👉 Get the free guide: 10 Tips to Help Someone Whose Parents Are Separating or Divorcing:
RestoredMinistry.com/10Tips

👉 Learn more from Adam Lane Smith, including his Secure Circle, relationship resources, programs, and coaching:
AdamLaneSmith.com

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Joey Pontarelli (00:00)

Attachment Adam. So good to have you on the show, man. Welcome.

Adam Lane (00:02)

I am glad to be here, Joey. How you doing today?

Joey Pontarelli (00:04)

Doing well. I'm really excited for this conversation. I I thought we'd break our conversation kind of into two parts. first, really taking a look at the struggles that young people who come from broken families face in relationships. We've all heard the statistics that if you come from a divorced family, you know, you're two to three times more likely to get divorced. From research I've seen, 25 years of research, it says that the biggest struggle for people who come from broken families is in relationships. So I really would like to deconstruct and break down like, why is that?

And give us a deeper understanding of that. And then from there, from that starting point, I thought we can get into what's the solution? Like how do we actually build love that lasts? And so my my first question for you really is getting to that yeah, that that point of like why why are relationships such a struggle for people who come from broken families?

Adam Lane (00:49)

You know, I have learned through the years of doing this that I can deliver a very dry academic explanation or I can try to teach with a a pale imitation of what our Lord did. So I'm gonna begin with what Lord Jesus did. He taught through stories. I want you to imagine that you're a young child. You grow up not in a house, you grow up in a cobbled together building of plywood, two by fours just leaned on each other.

That is constantly collapsing in on you that you have to endlessly try to prop back up. Your parents sort of halfway through your childhood give up and just leave the pile in rubble. And you have to live the rest of your childhood hiding under little piles of plywood as you can. Now you can see beautiful houses far off in the distance. So you know that houses exist, but you have no idea what they look like on the inside. You have no idea how they're built.

You've never seen a functioning ceiling that was actually level and not collapsing on your head. You have no clue. Now you turn 18 and your parents say, Cool, go build your own home. And you wander off into the forest. Are you going to know how to build a functional house all on your own? Do you think that's likely?

Joey Pontarelli (02:01)

No way.

Adam Lane (02:01)

This is what most people are doing today. The issue is not just you grow up in a family cycle where your family is angry and yelling and yes, maybe drinking.

Yes, there are problems. You might learn negative behaviors, but the vast majority of people can get through those negative behaviors. The vast majority of people can come back to the gospel, learn how to conduct themselves, and at least try to move through. But if you've never seen the inside of a standing home and you don't know how they're built, there are there's almost zero chance you're going to be able to build your own house that isn't just a cobbled together pile of scrap metal and plywood. It's the skills that are missing.

It's how you communicate with each other. There's one skill in particular that I think has been lost over the last hundred years here in the West. It's called repair. After you have a problem with somebody, can you repair? And most people don't even know what I mean when I'm talking about that right now. So the skills that are lost, I believe, is a massive reason that we are seeing that decline in in successful marriages. Is that making sense to you?

Joey Pontarelli (03:03)

It makes a hundred percent sense. And I'm curious, maybe let's go back through the experience a little bit of the young person, you know, who came from a broken family. Like this idea of attachment wounds. May maybe let's start with the i idea of attachment. People might not be familiar with that. So what is attachment and what is attachment science?

Adam Lane (03:20)

Attachment is very simply the way that we connect to each other in a way to get our needs met. We either learn that we can be calm, relaxed, transparent, peaceful, honest. We can ask a lot of questions, we get a lot of answers, and then we build things with other people. It's not perfect. It's peaceful, consistent, and predictable. And that builds what's called secure attachment. Now the research indicates at most one third of adults have received this from their childhood.

Two thirds of adults right now listening to this, probably more actually if they're listening to podcasts about relationships and family divorces, probably more. They are growing up with insecure attachment, which is I'm not allowed to ask questions because it bothers people. I'm not allowed to be transparent because people get angry at me or they misunderstand me. I'm not allowed to ask for my needs to get met because I'm a burden to other people. I can't open up to other people because they'll hurt me or use it against me or lose respect for me. So I have to

Put up a fake front that is always happy and smiling. I have to make other people feel good, or I'll never get anything I need. And I have to play transactional games with other people to try to get my basic needs met for the rest of my life. And that's insecure attachment. That's the skill set of building a very broken house that will collapse on you. And that's where most people are going wrong because two people with that same mismatched skill set going forward with insecure attachment.

That's what people are doing to build their families today. is that is that a clear enough explanation for you?

Joey Pontarelli (04:51)

Yeah, absolutely. And so this idea of like attachment wounds, I know we're kind of circling around this, but for someone who maybe came from a home where mom and dad got divorced, maybe there was an affair, maybe there was a lot of, you know, visible conflict, but maybe there wasn't. Maybe things were a little bit more subtle and one day mom or dad just decided to leave. Talk to me a little bit about what that does to someone's ability to love and ability to like build relationships later in life if they went through that as, you know, a child or a teenager.

Adam Lane (05:17)

So the brain is really, really good at keeping us safe and really, really bad at keeping us happy. That's essentially what we need to know. When someone says attachment wounds, what they usually mean is that in childhood you had experiences that left emotionally painful memories, we believe, in the amygdala, the little almond-shaped part of the brain that retains fight, flight, fawn, and freeze. It's your your it's part of your limbic system that that defends you against scary things.

And we believe the amygdala retains those core memories of what is most frightening, damaging, painful, and harmful. So that when something reminds us of that event, we go into our protective mode instead and then react from a place of safety to get more safety, to make sure we're okay. Now, unfortunately, when we're two years old and we ask Daddy for a cookie and he loses his mind and he starts yelling at us about how don't don't we realize what a hard day he's had.

And how exhausted he is dealing with us and he doesn't have cookies, can't we just leave him alone? The brain doesn't learn, dad was having a bad day. I should probably be mindful of people's stress level. The brain learns I am a bad child who doesn't deserve love or care. So having any needs at all is now tagged as dangerous. Now that young girl, perhaps, goes forward into her marriage and her husband wants to be physically intimate with her, and she is terrified to say, I

I need to be emotionally close to you so that I can be physically close to you. She can't say that because she's afraid he's gonna unload and start screaming at her. Even if he never would, she's afraid he will. So her system says, I should just perform and make him happy, which will work pretty well for the first year or two until either they hit a stressful point in life or they have kids when her drive will crater into the ground and he will no longer feel desired, loved, or respected.

And she never is able to say, if you would just spend ten minutes talking to me, everything would work. That's where we're seeing that breakdown and that disconnect.

Joey Pontarelli (07:21)

So much of what you teach is so simple. Yes, so wise. Like there's so much wisdom packed into it. You remind me of C.S. Lewis on so many levels. He said so much with so little. And and so I love like everything you're breaking down is making so much sense. So I want to go back to something you said about like this skill gap. Like we're missing skills that arguably people from healthy families kind of absorbed osmosis. Like they saw it, they caught it, whether it was, you know.

caught or not, they caught it and they go on and they build these healthy relationships. I've seen that a lot. I know people from really healthy families, they all have really happy, healthy relationships, but you know, not always the case with those Western broken families. So I'm curious, like if you were to maybe narrow into a few of like the skills that are missing most when it comes to a young person from a broken family, what would those few skills be?

Adam Lane (08:07)

So many. My my team and I have I identified hundreds of those skills, but hundreds. Breaking it breaking it hundreds. Hundreds of little micro skills. But if we wanted to break it down into some core ones that people listening right now could could learn and use that would probably game changers. One is what we call solution focused sharing. Quite often people info dump and they just dump their feelings out there in an overwhelming flood that the other person has no idea what to do with. sometimes a wife will hold on to her resentment and sadness and fear.

For six months until she erupts at the worst possible moment, usually about five minutes before bedtime, as the husband's head is easing toward his pillow. Now it's a great time to talk about problems. And then she blows up, and then it's 20 minutes of monologuing to try to convince him to care. But instead, for him, what it feels like is an attack and confirmation that she believes he's a bad husband who doesn't care.

So by the end of that 20 minutes, he's not ready to listen and work. He's actively trying to defend himself from what feels like a betrayal from his wife. Solution focused sharing comes in and says you get two sentences of context about why you're sharing and what you hope to accomplish. You ask their perspective first, then you share your perspective in about three sentences, and then you share what you'd like to do about the problem. Short, concise, and goal focused from the beginning.

Families that do this, you just absorb it and you learn to communicate that way. You don't think about it as a skill set, but families that didn't have to didn't have that think have to think about it. repair, I talked about. I have six kids myself. I just six was just born. you said you're one of six, and that's I hear that. That could be heaven or it could be hell. I'm hoping to make it good with my kids. And so what I do is whenever there's a problem or a conflict, after we resolve it together, there's a whole set of skills there, but after we resolve the conflicts, I go to my kids and say,

Is there anything else from your side we haven't fixed yet? And from my side, we are completely fine. You do not have to walk on eggshells and you do not have to be afraid. All is completely forgiven. And I make sure that we are a hundred percent wrapped up so that nobody's tiptoeing on eggshells for the next three days wondering if they have to make dad happy or not. It's a full complete repair protocol at the end to make sure that we are good. It's full resolution.

Most people have such open ended conversations they don't know where things end and they don't know if they have to tiptoe for a week or not. That's repair, that's an entire process at the end that just tacks on a sentence or two. That's another one. should I give a third?

Joey Pontarelli (10:40)

Please please subscribe. Sure.

Adam Lane (10:42)

So a good third option is practicing curiosity instead of making statements. Families that are more unhealthy are more like a courtroom. You're litigating, you're making statements. You only ask questions if you know the answer. They they always say that a a good lawyer only asks a question if he knows the answer he's getting, so he can control the narrative, right? It's gotcha questions. It's why are you this stupid? Or did you mean to betray me when you did the worst thing in the world possible, right?

It's those horrible questions that get us the narrative we want. That's because we're drawing from our limbic system, fight, flight, fawn, freeze, instead of our prefrontal cortex, our full executive self, the linguistic center of our brain, the empathy parts of our brain, the curiosity based parts of our brain. So regulating our nervous system enough to practice curiosity and asking questions to try to understand. Right. This is so important. I believe.

I I could be wrong, but I believe the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi, I believe, is in there, May I seek to understand more than I seek to be understood. A healthy, secure dynamic allows for peaceful curiosity on both sides. So when when I work with couples, one of the biggest things I have to teach them is to be curious about each other instead of making assumptions and throwing statements at each other trying to force understanding on the other person. The idea is if I force you to understand me, you'll stop hurting me.

And that's actually not the truth at all. It's usually asking curious questions so people feel loved and cared for. Those are just three of the again of the hundreds of skills we absorb in a healthy, securely attached family that are largely lost right now.

Joey Pontarelli (12:18)

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And maybe everyone listening right now, especially if in that spot of like, man, relationships just feel so hard for me. I feel like I'm not capable of building a good marriage and healthy family one day. they might be in this place of overwhelm because it's like, man, hundreds of skills, like and I suck at all of what would you say maybe to that person who is perhaps feeling that way right now?

Adam Lane (12:40)

know, there were there was a lot of rules in the Mosaic Law, and they really distilled down to ten commandments that you needed to know. But even ten commandments sounds like a a lot. When I try to teach my kids, they ten things? I have to remember ten things. So our our Lord distilled it down even further, right? Love your God and love your neighbor as yourself. And then he gave us a third one love each other as I've loved you. Like that's that's really the core of it. So

Love, love, love. The spirit of the law is often easier to remember than the actual law itself. If you can remember the spirit of the law, you're very good. God is that way, he is he is more about the spirit than the letter, and and relationships realistically are more about the spirit than the letter as well. So I will say this the spirit of a healthy relationship is one where everybody has responsibility to be calm and safe, meaning

You could bring things to me and I'm not blowing up or running away. So everyone has to take responsibility for their reactions to be able to stay calm and have a productive conversation. You you do this at work, you need to be able to do this at home too. So manage yourself to at least work level at home when you're having a difficult difficult situation. Number one, everyone's responsible. And number two, if you can show the other person that you care about them, things are going to go so much better. Now

Showing them that you care about them also means they have to receive that care and see it. So you have to be externalizing. The hardest thing I have to teach people is there is very little you can do on the inside of yourself. There's very little you can do with the internal work forever and ever and ever. Some exorcists will tell you that they believe hell is a place where people are endlessly turned inward looking at their own sin because there is no way to go outward and be relational anymore.

That that that it the inward focus is hell itself. I think life when it's inwardly focused becomes hell itself. I think that what we need is to remember that we are relational beings first by design. We must be living in our relationships. And that means if you're a husband and you're guessing, you need to stop and ask your wife, listen, I'm guessing here and I'm probably gonna get it wrong. I want to understand from you, cu honestly, curiously, what

would fix this from your perspective before I scurry around trying to fix it. And one of the biggest things I have for wives is, and they're terrified from this, they are so obsessively guessing, micro-guessing every little thing that their husband could possibly need or want or think or feel. Most of them have been punished as little girls for asking questions from one way or another. So now they're afraid to ask their husband if they can sit down and have a clearing the air session with their husband.

Where they interview it, like a podcast. I I host your husband on a podcast, get a piece of paper, write down notes, take like it's a it's a lecture, ask him questions, ask him everything you've ever wanted to know. Set this up with him beforehand that you're gonna do this, and pitch it to him as would you like to have a calm, peaceful wife who understands you and who can meet your needs in the right way? Then can you help me to feel calm and safe by removing all my guessing?

Can we sit down for an hour or two? Let's order in a pizza or we'll have a meal or whatever it is. Chicken wings works great for this. And we will have this conversation where I ask you everything I've always wanted to know, so I'm never guessing again. It would make me feel safe as a wife, and it would give you the wife you've always wanted to have. Can we do this together? That's a relational fix instead of can I figure out how to make my husband happy without asking him a question that makes him mad.

We have to be relational beings and that's the core essence. Be a relational being. Fix your calm your nervous system enough to be a relational being. Those are the two two commandments I will I will strip it down to to.

Joey Pontarelli (16:26)

No, it's so simple. And I think anyone can start there. And on that note, it seems like underneath all these skills is this ability to deal with difficult emotions, this idea that's you know, psychologists throw on of emotional regulation. Because like you said, if you're all wound up and in your fight or flight, you know, sympathetic nervous system, then it's going to be hard to do any of this. And so is that true that that's a foundational skill? And if so,

Maybe talk to me like I'm a fifth grader. what is the nervous system? How do we calm it? How do we learn the skill of like emotional regulation? If your parents divorce and it shattered your world, I have an invite for you. We're building a new healing program for young adults impacted by their parents' divorce or family dysfunction. In the program, you'll start healing those emotional wounds, practice healthier ways to deal with your difficult emotions, and learn how to build the happy, healthy marriage you never saw growing up.

We're intentionally keeping it small so spots will be limited. Join the wait list or view the details now.

Adam Lane (17:22)

I want you to imagine that you live in a little cabin. You live in a nice little cabin, and your your goal is to keep this cabin beautiful and clean. You have a roommate. He looks just like you, but his hair is wild and unkempt. He doesn't bathe. He he's supposed to sleep in the corner, but he gets up every day and he runs screaming and rampaging through that cabin because he is honestly panicking out of his mind. Ripping things off the walls, kicking over chairs, breaking plates.

He makes an absolute mess and you just can't keep your cabin in order. Do you think you're going to get much progress done on your cabin until you learn how to calm him down and get him settled in his happy little corner playing quietly? There are two entities living inside your brain. Let's say it that way. This is not this is not theology, by the way. There's not two humans in you. It's not that that meme of there's two wolves in you, right? But but there's two aspects of yourself.

We know that the brain almost is two different brains connected in the center with qu what's called the corpus callosum. There's also different regions of the brain, the reptile brain, the mammalian brain, the human brain of thinking, reasoning, all of the good things God gave us. The bad news is that when we get scared and stressed, the parts God gave us turn off and we become a screaming, gibbering monkey with a gun who is determined to get safety from whatever's scaring us.

Whether it's an actual saber-toothed tiger trying to break in the window or it's a ham sandwich that has confused us, we are determined to make sure we are safe. And this is that guy running, screaming through your cabin, destroying everything you love. A real marriage has four people in it: two executive humans, and they're two screaming primal monkey selves who are panicking and freaking out. This is why emotional regulation is absolutely mandatory, because if one of you is managing that.

The other one is still running absolute out of control, destroying. If you are both managing your own nervous systems, you can start building a loving, intimate, safe home where emotional safety exists for both of you. It must, must fall on each individual to begin the process of managing their internal self. Your partner, your spouse can come in and help you co-regulate.

Absolutely, and maybe go from sixty percent feeling good to ninety percent feeling good, but they can't be carrying your load and and quieting your angry self for you. Every adult has to be a functioning adult inside that relationship.

Joey Pontarelli (19:51)

So good. So let's say someone recognizes, man, yeah, I'm not really that competent or great at emotional regulation. Like I lose my cool a lot, I get angry or I get kind of numb and lifeless. What what are maybe a few things that they can do to increase that capacity for emotional regulation? I'm curious maybe what your clients have found like the most helpful tips that would that they can maybe use today.

Adam Lane (20:12)

I walk my th my clients through a three prong approach. First, we start using the physical body techniques. Mental techniques, you know, imagining yourself in a happy little meadow that does not work, right? Meditation doesn't work. affirmations don't work. Prayer, I love prayer, but at a certain level, it is difficult to even remember to pray or form a prayer. So the mental aspects, again, inwardly often don't work. Our our brain does not work very well on itself.

Instead, we have to activate our physical body, which takes control away from the emotional right side of our brain by really investing in deep, intense, prolonged physical discomfort, ice exposure, right? I have a a tensing, relaxing, and breathing technique called progressive muscle relaxation that's actually a little more aggressive than that. Very intense cardio workouts, right? Very intense aerobic workouts.

this is runner's high is one version of this. A very bad version of this is self-harm that people use. It's not suicidal-based, it's usually about harming themselves. And the body says, Whoa, something terrible's going on with my body. I shouldn't be focused on my feelings. I should focus on this. I never advocate for that because there's number one, many better versions of it. And number two, we shouldn't be harming ourselves. But that's why people do it, is because it's a sort of instinctive last resort.

To bring down their emotions. I've I've talked with many men who punch themselves in the face because it's the only thing they have left. That's an absolute last resort, but it's an intuitive thing. Your body takes control. So using your body to take control of your mind, learning those techniques, that's absolutely number one. Number two is deprogramming the fear-based cues that activate your amygdala and limbic system. In the first place, you have to go through experiential practices.

You have to, in other words, talk to somebody and they actually listen to you and care about you. When our Lord commands us to love each other as he loved us, Jesus was one of the most conflict prone human beings on the planet in a good way. He wasn't mean or vicious or horrible, but he created conflict. He said, I do not come to bring you peace, I come to bring you a sword. It will divide people. That is conflict. But he commands us to go into conflict in a loving,

Compassionate, empathetic way that invites the other person to be safe in that conflict with us and then to navigate it. When he calls us to be the city on the hill or the light on the stand, the lamp on the stand, it's it's not look at me, I'm so amazing. It's being in relationships where we make conflict safe for other humans. And they think, why did that go well? No one has ever tried to understand me before.

No one has ever listened to me before. I've never felt safe before. What what did you do? And that right there is the essence of loving your neighbor is to make them safe in a conflict where they've never been safe before. This is actually what spouses are commanded to do is being that love of Christ for each other daily, sometimes hourly if you have to, if it's a tough day, but bringing that love to each other so that we can experience that and and untrain the amygdala from fear.

And calm that angry, scared guy in the corner so that he stays quiet and peaceful, coloring his with his little crayons in the corner instead of ripping the cabin apart. We untrained the fear, what people call healing the attachment wounds, quite often. That's okay. But but it's it's a training regimen. We have to do that. That's step number two. And step number three then is fostering an environment that keeps your nervous system calmed and regulated.

I love going to church, going to mass every Sunday. It's very soothing. I have a prayer shrine right beside my bed the moment I get up, so I have a morning ritual. I have a rosary in my pocket right now. I love walks on my property. I love doing archery with my children. I love talking and walking with my wife. I love time with my good friends. My inner circle includes three good priests that I trust, right? Two Catholics and one Anglican, actually, of all things, if you can believe that. But he's a wonderful man.

Who keeps me on track and regulates me. I I believe in him for that. There are there are so many elements of life that we have to then build in so we can stay calmed and regulated. And realistically, the a good religious life or even a good secular life should include those elements. But first we have to manage our body so we're not freaking out and panicking, so that our mind is regulated, and then we have to clean our relationships.

And untrain the fears that we have before we can build a soothing, structured environment that then keeps us in that way. That's the three prong approach.

Joey Pontarelli (24:53)

So good. I love it. And and I know you have a lot of content, I'm sure, on this stuff, so we can point people that direction later. But yeah, when I look back at a at you know, my life after my parents split, I was just in such emotional pain. I had no capacity to like regulate. And then, you know, I fell into all the wrong habits and that caused even more pain. And so I think this skill, like that that was me as a young person, now as you know, a married man with three kids. I I see similar things in the sense of like, yeah, when stress is high and emotions are high.

It doesn't lead to good things. And so having that skill, that ability to calm yourself and allow, you know, the executive parts of your mind to make the calls and not the crazy person in the cabin, is just so, so huge. I I feel like we don't talk about this enough.

Adam Lane (25:39)

We we fall into sin. I I primarily see three main areas we fall into sin. One time we fall into sin is when we are panicking and afraid and scared and our nervous system is out of control. And we know that there's mitigating factors around our ability to consent during this kind of a sin. When we're when we're upset, scared, depressed, angry, all of those things, that's nervous system dysregulation.

And the church does recognize that there there can be mitigating factors around consent, because you're out you're out of your mind in some facets. Still responsible, but out of your mind in some F in some areas. So managing your nervous system does bring the temptation of sin way down. Another way that we that I see sin creeping in is when a person has very, very low biochemistry that's built on secure relationships. Healthy relationships, when you grow up in them,

You are flooded with a bonding hormone called oxytocin, which makes you feel a sense of belonging and connection. It is hugely important for your immune system, for your body's inflammation, for your your nervous system functioning. It is massively important for your sense of of fulfillment and joy and even feeling like you are loved or feeling lonely. And when you have high oxytocin, it releases a chemical called GABA, G A B A, GAMA aminobateric acid. Just remember GABA, that's that's good enough.

GABA suppresses our cortisol and makes us feel less afraid and less scared. GABA is the signal that says I don't have to be afraid because I'm loved. When you have secure relationships, you also have high, usually vasopressin. Vasopressin's a bonding hormone that says other people will help me when I'm afraid. Other people will be there when I am in danger. You bond through conflict, stress, and fear by overcoming it together with someone and it releases that association.

And then they have high serotonin because they're in a rest and digest s parasympathetic nervous system state. Rest, digest, and connect. So serotonin is a sense of fulfillment. It's a sense of all is good. It doesn't make you doped up and and slack. It it it motivates you actually because now you feel good and safe and you can keep achieving. Now when you have this healthy biochemistry, you are very resilient against sin. But people with insecure attachment usually don't have the the relationships that bring oxytocin.

Or vasopressin. So they have very low GABA, so their cortisol is unregulated, and they don't really much enter their parasympathetic rest and digest and connect mode. So their serotonin is often low, which we associate with anxiety and depression. And so what's left is dopamine, endless binges of dopamine to try to conflict with the unregulated cortisol. And now, of course, sin and temptation is there because you are endlessly in fear and pain.

And the only thing that makes it better is quick fixes right now to escape from that pain and sorrow like you're describing. And that creates an endless spiral of of chronic habitual sin again and again and again that has to escalate now because dopamine one hit doesn't equal the next hit. You have to keep escalating to get the same hit and and going up and up and up. And that's that's the second area of temptation for sin that I see quite often. And the third area is under stimulation.

Even healthy loved people still need stimulation in their life of of oxytocin. Yes, of some dopamine novelty. Yes of vasopressin bonding. We know that the greater vasopressin is there, it's correlated with higher protective monogamous instinct in men and women. So the more vasopressin, the more problems you have solved together, the better things become. John C. Calhoun back in the nineteen fifties did the Mouse Utopia experiments and he showed that if you remove all struggle from a a colony of mice and

They lose all monogamous desire, all protective parenting instinct. They abandon their babies. They groom themselves to be as beautiful as possible. And then they just sit there lead leading these hedonistic lives completely divorced from survival instincts. They need structure and conflict and difficulty to overcome it together to maintain their pack cohesion and maintain what we would consider ethical moral conduct. So those are the three areas of sin, but but all

All of those I see are impacted again and again if a child grows up in an insecure home. Your nervous system's dysregulated, you are biochemically weakened against sin and vulnerable, and you're not getting proper stimulation that keeps you fulfilled lifelong. If you can fix those three things in a marriage, my goodness, you have a recipe for a wonderful structure.

Joey Pontarelli (30:03)

Yeah, no, so good, so good. I love how you break it down to individual skills too, 'cause even like one of the questions as I was preparing for this was like, you know, how do we heal attachment wounds? And it sounds like it's in this direction of learning conceptually the skill and then maybe seeing it performed and then performing it yourself and doing it is that basically the structure you teach people?

Adam Lane (30:22)

Yes. so one thing I've learned through my years of doing this is it's not enough for me to teach on my my YouTube channel and just give you know all that information because people hear it and then they go home and do the exact same thing. I was a therapist for many, many years. Same problem, right? You tell people in a controlled, safe setting what to do, they say, Okay, I'm gonna do it, and they go home and it goes horribly. You you you have to tell them, and that's great, because we are you're cognitive as well. We're cognitive beings. We're not just animals, right? We we were given reason. So they have to understand, but then they have to see it performed.

They have to live in the house and look up and say, that's a roof. that's how you put two by fours together. it's a nail. Wow. Right. And they they have to learn those pieces. Usually I have my coaches do role play demonstrations to show people what that looks like. And then you walk them through exact homework with scripts of go to your partner and say this, write it down and read it off. This three sentences and then stop speaking.

And let them tell you what they think and ask them a question. Ask three questions, in fact. And they have to go through the guided practice to have the experience. Then they have to really like, wow, what does this mean? And they have to kind of process it afterward. But it it's it's all to get to that experiential moment. We are experiential beings who live in our relationships. The things you experience is what shapes you ultimately. So if you can cultivate the right experiences, that's how you shape who you are.

Joey Pontarelli (31:45)

Love it. Yeah. I I do think there's a place for talk therapy, but like by and large, like this sounds so much more helpful. So I appreciate you going into that. So one of the things I think that just thinking of the experience of our audience, one of the things that freaks them out is is this idea of conflict. You you already gave some tools for how to maybe navigate some of that. I'd love to go deeper. But one thing that came to mind, Pat Lincioni, the business author, consultant, he has this exceptional line in one of his books. He says that

Trust makes conflict the pursuit of truth. Trust makes conflict the pursuit of truth. So it seems to me that underneath healthy conflict would be trust. So maybe let's start there with trust. How do you how do you build trust? Especially if someone's hurt you, how do you how do you get to that place where you really trust them? If you know someone whose parents are separated or divorced, or maybe they're in the middle of the process right now, you probably want to help, but you're not quite sure what to do or say in order to help them. And if so, you're not alone. It's a really common struggle.

That's why we created our free

Adam Lane (32:44)

Free.

Joey Pontarelli (32:44)

guide, 10 tips to help someone whose parents are separating or divorcing. It offers really practical, tactical things that you can do or say to help them and especially to help them feel less alone, the top things to avoid saying or doing that might cause harm, and then what they need the most from you during this time. But most of all, the guide helps you feel competent and confident in offering help. And so get the free guide at restored ministry.com slash 10 tips or just click on the link in the show notes.

Adam Lane (33:10)

You know, I I like Pat. I had him on my show not that long ago. and he's got a great point. In fact, I will say this, I'll go even a step further. Trust is only built through conflict. There is nowhere else where trust is built. Trust is not built through nice feelings and hypotheticals. Trust is built through proven consistency that we are safe enough to rest in each other and I don't have to defend. If I let's pretend this. Let's pretend let's pretend I'm your wife. let's pretend I'm your wife, Joey, and we've been married five years.

And I've been griping at you and criticizing you all along. All right. I I just keep like griping and complaining about all these things. After the first year, I've been really complaining and you can't seem to figure out what I need. If I come to you and I say, Joey, I just I don't understand why you're not doing these things. It's I I it feels sometimes like you don't care. I don't know what to do. I really want to like fix this.

I don't know how to make you care, Joey. I don't know what to do. And then I go on this rant for 20 minutes about all the ways you have disappointed me in the last week. And it just escalates, my tone goes up, I get more and more upset. On a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to come back peacefully and have a productive conversation with me? Let's assume it's 10 30 at night. You're in your pajamas, you already have the blankets pulled up, your alarm is set for 5 a.m. for work, and this is where I'm starting.

One to ten, what's what's the likelihood of of Joey coming back flawless? Yeah,

Joey Pontarelli (34:32)

Yeah. Like a negative one, let's say.

Adam Lane (34:34)

yeah, yeah. I've I've almost guaranteed that we're in the worst possible circumstance. If if instead I come to you and I have a history of of doing the wrong things, let's say you have negative trust in me so far, and I come to you and I say, Joey, I have realized I have really made a bad way of our relationship. I have approached you in absolutely the wrong ways. And I would like to have a conversation

Tomorrow at seven o'clock, if that works for you, where we can go through that. I have a new idea for what's going to fix it. Can we set it up for tomorrow at seven? True. And I schedule it. I don't ambush you with it. And you go, okay, we could do that. We meet up tomorrow night at seven, prepared and ready. And I say, okay, here's what I have realized from my side very quickly. I am not conducting myself the way I need to be. I've been really criticizing you. I've been really letting my my fear get away from me. And I've made that your problem. And I don't like the way I have been.

I know that our our ability to solve problems then has been really weak as a result. Before I go on, I'd like to hear from you. It's okay if you agree. is this matching what you're seeing and and what are you perceiving from your side so we can nail the problem down and find a way to fix it? And then I give you I I said that and then I give you all that room immediately to start really explaining. Now let's say that you explain haltingly and abruptly, thinking this is a trap, but you do explain to some extent with me, and I receive it and I go, and you see me get a little worked up.

But then I bring it right back down. I say, okay, I'm grateful that you shared that with me. It sucks to hear. But thank you for being honest. We can't fix it until we start dealing with it. So can I ask you some c some questions so I can understand? And I ask you some very key questions that I'm I'm really just clarity. I'm trying to understand like how much? When did this happen? Why did this make you feel that way instead of this way? I th I thought it was this way, but why did you see it this way? And I'm really clarifying. And every time I kind of go up.

You see me take a breath and come back down. I'm not perfect, but I'm regulating. And by the end of it, I say, okay, here's what I think I'm hearing from you. And I reflect back what I what I got. And it's let's say 90% accurate. And you go, yeah, that's that's pretty much true. Okay. Can I share my side with you? And you go, okay. And I say, okay, now that I've heard your side, here's what I think is happening. And I share my perspective. And it it it sucks for you to hear it, but I've heard you out now. I've listened to you.

And my view keeps coming back to here's what you're seeing and what I'm seeing. So it's not good guy, bad guy. It's different perspectives that that are both missing the key point because we didn't understand. And at the end I say, Does that make sense to you? And you say, Yeah, I I think I can understand that. I I hear it. It sucks to hear, but I got it. Okay. Well, Joey, I I think here's one change we could make that would fix this problem. And I present, right? We're gonna we're gonna do like we did tonight and be a lot more patient.

We're gonna ask each other a lot more questions and we're gonna clear all misunderstandings out so that nothing is misunderstood anymore. And if something goes wrong, we're gonna default to assuming it's a misunderstanding first instead of assuming the other person doesn't care. And I say, Can we agree to both try this together? Can we do this? And you go, yeah, I can give that a shot. Cool. Okay, Joey. That's good. Thank you. That's all I needed. This whole talk took us maybe twenty minutes. We're c very contained.

Is there anything else before we close the books on this one today? Are we good? Are we covered? And are you feeling all right? You go, yeah, I I got it. I got it. This this feels pretty good. Cool. Thank you. I appreciate that. Can I have a hug? Thank you. Cool. Let's go on with our day. Do you want to go grab some lunch? If we have that in 20 minutes, after five years of criticism, disconnection, and blah, blah, blah, on a scale of one to ten, how much have you come to trust me just through that conversation?

Joey Pontarelli (38:10)

Way more eight, let's say.

Adam Lane (38:12)

Eight.

Now let's pretend that I go forward and I follow through on my word for the next six months and on. And if I do fall short on some days, I'm grumpy, I'm confused, but I always come back consistently, take ownership and say, I'm sorry, I let that one slip. That one's on me. Here's what I should have said. And we always get it right the second time. Over six months, how much do you trust me on a scale of one to ten then?

Joey Pontarelli (38:33)

Yeah, right at a ten.

Adam Lane (38:34)

Conflict is the only place we can build trust, but most people don't know how to have conflict.

They think it's inevitably doomed, and that's why they run away from it and do anything not to have it, and that's where marriages fall apart. Conflict is good, but only when we do it the way that we are supposed to with love and understanding.

Joey Pontarelli (38:49)

So good. No, I love everything you said. What I've heard some people kind of say back after that is this I feel like maybe I'm being a doormat or people will take advantage of me if I, you know, act in this way. So what would you say to that objection?

Adam Lane (39:03)

There are absolutely some people that will try to treat you like a doormat. There are. They will wipe their feet right on your face. There's about ten percent of people we know who are fundamentally misaligned for relationships. We know that that's that's the statistic right now. the other groups of people might be at a place where they're not comfortable. They're afraid. They are not questioning those things because they're diving into their fear instead. There are a lot of people that will not work with you.

The goal here is not to be a doormat. The goal here is to get your needs met. Notice I opened with my goals. I opened with my targets. This is to build a good marriage for me and for you also. It's for both of us. We have to build a mutually fulfilling relationship. We cannot be complicit in somebody else's sin by allowing them to continue in sinful behaviors. I just produced a video on this recently about a a good spouse must lovingly call out their partner.

on on the things that they are not doing correct. We cannot be complicit in each other's sin. And that includes enabling each other in abuse or whatever it may be. We must call that out. But this is a beginning place to at least start working through problems and build trust so that you can then start addressing those bigger components. It it does not have to be if I do it this way, I'm a doormat. That that is most people actually beginning from a place of being a doormat already and they're afraid that this is one step further in

If your spouse is the kind of person that will weaponize this against you, you need to know that now. And this is the beginning move for a secure relationship. If they start using this against you as a bludgeon, now there's a different conversation to be

Joey Pontarelli (40:32)

Okay. No, that's helpful. So it does happen. It's rare. But I I think the takeaway that I have from what you're saying is like that is such a wise approach and it's worth a shot. And not just once, but multiple times, like you said over over time. So I think that's so wise. So no, so good. are there any other kind of conflict tips that you teach that if someone's like in the midst of an argument where they didn't do the thing where they set it up tomorrow at seven that they can use in order not to blow up their relationship?

And and I'm not just talking about marriage here, I'm talking in dating relationships too, 'cause I remember, you know, I've heard this from a lot of the young people that we serve. It's a real struggle. Like they just have never seen anyone model this for them.

Adam Lane (41:12)

Keep in mind that when your nervous systems are regulated, you can always always call a pause and talk about what's actually happening. If you're both calm, you can stop a conversation in the middle of the conversation and look at the other person and say I just hate how we're talking to each other right now. I don't like the words coming out of my mouth. I don't like that it feels this way, and I wish that we had started this a different way. Do you feel that way?

You can always stop a conversation in the middle and act like a human being with the other human being. That's actually the essence of a loving, safe relationship is the ability to step out of what feels like a defensive posture and quit guarding yourself. It's it's taking your hands off your crotch so they don't kick you and instead putting your hands up so they know that you're not the enemy. Right? Now if they kick you, that's a whole other problem. But the majority of partners are not going to. They're going to be very confused about why you're no longer protecting yourself. They're going to think you this is a new form of attack.

And they're gonna kinda defend themselves because they're nervous, but if you can honestly convey, I hate that we're fighting right now. I really wanted to and don't make yourself the martyr, but you say, I really wanted I really wanted to come in today and fix something with you. And I really feel like I screwed this up. I I should have scheduled this with you. I ambushed you. I shouldn't have said it the way I did. I I just accused you and that's the last thing I wanted to do. If you can stop in the middle and be a human being.

And let them see you be a human being? Sometimes their empathy circuits re-engage because they're no longer in a fight, and they can actually respond to you as if they love you. But most of us are petrified to be that humble. We were taught in childhood that being humble brings humiliation instead of release, safety, kindness, and warmth. But this is again why we are it's it's not a polite suggestion to be the love of Christ to your spouse.

It is mandatory to be the love of Christ. And for those who are secular, there is no point in being in a romantic partnership if you cannot love one another and treat each other with kindness. There's no point. Give up, go live in the woods and have hedgehogs as your friends. Don't ever get in a romantic relationship again, right? There is no purpose in in forming a union where the entire goal is to give each other good feelings until one of us dies. That's not what marriage is.

It is it is meant to help us achieve goals and targets and legacies so far beyond ourself, our meager our own meager two little hands, when we can support each other into becoming the very best versions of each other, that means sitting there sometimes saying, Wow, I screwed up this conversation, didn't I? But that requires you to be calm and regulated enough to remember that you can do that instead of screaming and taking another swing at your spouse.

You have to sit there and be regulated enough. Back to the back to the nervous system.

Joey Pontarelli (44:02)

Yeah, no, it seems to all revolve around the nervous system. That's just so funny. Which makes a lot of sense. So so good. Okay. I think one of the things that for everyone listening who's maybe in the date they're single, they're dating. we've talked so far a lot about maybe skills that they would acquire themselves that would make them capable, give them a capacity to love well. Awesome.

One of the big other big pieces, as you well know, is mate selection, is choosing a spouse. And so I'm curious, like this matters a lot. I I think a lot of times we've overlooked how important this is. what is your maybe your top few tips on what to look for when choosing a spouse and maybe even how to pressure test it a little bit in the relationship?

Adam Lane (44:44)

Conflict as early as possible and as much of it as possible. Loving conflict, though, where you invite them into a challenging conversation, where you ask probing questions you normally wouldn't ask, where you poke a little deeper and you ask the why behind everything. Questions where you bring up the topics that you don't want to bring up until year eight. Do you know how many women I have email me, Joey, and they say, Adam, I've been dating this man for a year when for for eight years sometimes? When do I ask him if he wants to get married someday?

Right, eight years in, and they still haven't determined if he wants marriage or kids. A lot of women date from twenty-one to twenty-nine, the same man for eight years, only to find out he hates marriage and doesn't want kids. And now at twenty-nine she gets broken up with and she says, my gosh, I thought this was this was the man of my dreams. She is almost at that point a divorcee because they've been together eight years. She's now lost that hope and says, I gave him my best years. And now at thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two.

She is frantically looking for a new husband so she can try to have children together with him because she's afraid of time running out. This is a lot of women who are listening right now. This is a lot of women in the dating world. Ultimately what we have to do is have those conversations that we are afraid of having as early and as often as possible, but we have them politely in a friendly, playful way that invites the other person to ask us the questions in return.

The people that want to have a loving, secure relationship with you are not here to talk about movies and sushi and going hiking and little fun, little activities. They're not here to see how it goes for a year. They're not here to just sort of play happy little games and figure things out and never be serious until six months in. They are here to figure out very quickly, are you someone who wants to get married and have kids with me if that's what people are looking for?

And if so, what does it take to build a relationship and are you capable of peaceful, loving conflict? And then they build trust through peaceful, loving conflict conflict, through very intense personal conversations, through what are your beliefs and why? What what challenges are you facing in your life right now and why? And what are you doing about them? Who mentors you? Who keeps you honest when you don't want to be? On your worst day, who do you call and why? Right? Who around you is challenging you? Where are you struggling?

And what's your plan to get through that? These are conflict-based questions you should be asking in the second, third, fourth dates very quickly. You should be moving into that very fast. Don't be afraid of doing that because what you're doing is signaling to the best people that you will make the best spouse. The best spouse has those conversations every day in a good, loving, winsome manner, right? Not in a miserable, awful fighting up process. It's it's having the good, loving, intimate version.

That's what marriage is supposed to be. So demonstrate the kind of wife or husband you will be very quickly early on. That's

Joey Pontarelli (47:37)

What

I say. So good. One of my last questions before we close down. It seems like a lot of this hinges on the ability to have good conversation. You've already thrown a lot of different tips and skills that we need. But I'm curious, is there anything that we haven't discussed yet when it comes to the that ability to have that deep good conversation that you would encourage people to seek out to practice? Because I think so often then what I see.

At least this is what what it was like early in my family, my you know, growing up is that we our conversations were very surface level. They were never very deep. And I think a lot of people are in that space.

Adam Lane (48:07)

Yeah. Again, there's hundreds of skills I could talk about. But what I will say is this actually practicing. You can listen to this podcast and you can take in all ten, fifteen, twenty things I've suggested, and you can say, Wow, that's a great idea. I'll try to remember that. And then you wait till that first date and then you're too petrified to do it. Of course you are. The wall is too high. You haven't practiced anything. You haven't retrained your nervous system. You haven't shown yourself that people like it. You haven't practiced it with your friends, your family, with anybody else.

You haven't practiced anything. You wait until the absolute worst possible moment where the stakes are highest and you're most terrified and your limbic system starts taking over. And then you think you're going to practice that skill for the very first time, but you're going to completely forget it and you're going to default back to screaming, yelling, faking, people pleasing, whatever it is. Practice, practice, practice, practice. Stop thinking about secure attachments. Stop just listening to podcasts and b and reading books and doing it and start doing. We are relational.

beings, we are not thinking beings, we are not intellectual beings. We are beings of action and interaction. Be a relational being by practicing. Everything we've done today, take one of them

Joey Pontarelli (49:18)

I love it.

Yeah, and and if it's helpful for me, for our audience to use me as a guinea pig, I remember from that reality of like surface level conversations in my family, I remember just kind of pushing the envelope a little bit and like asking a deeper question or making a statement that was maybe a little bit vulnerable with my family. And then I did it with my close group of friends and eventually got to the point where even though relationships scared the heck out of me, I did have some of those reps and was able to do that. But the other thing too that I I've heard you talk about and I think is just so helpful is like, yeah, asking the

Questions mirroring what you're hearing the other person say to make sure you understand them and you know all the other tips that you gave. So, but I love it. Like it's not just about learning the concepts, knowledge is cheap, it's all about the doing. And so I love that challenge going forward. I do want to talk a little bit about what you offer though. maybe the first place to start is like you've gotten people incredible results in their relationships. What's maybe a favorite story that stands out of like, yeah, this person was in this bad spot and they got to this better spot thanks to your help.

Adam Lane (50:15)

I had a young couple come in one time, I'll never forget them. They had just found out that the husband was having an emotional affair two weeks prior and the wife was pregnant about halfway through. He didn't know what to do, if he should leave and go with be with the new woman or stay with his wife, and she didn't know what she wanted either. But it turned out both of them had really severe avoidant attachment tendencies. Both of them avoided conflict at every opportunity. Both of them had been fake. Both of them had really lost passion and connection and they had never built trust.

So when we started really confronting those pieces of themselves that they had never allowed to come out, within one month, they had built such an incredible emotional intimacy, trust, and understanding from just being able to accept each other that he was thrilled to be with her again. And she was able to forgive him because both of them had had the same experience of never feeling loved and not even believing that love existed.

Until they finally experienced it in each other. Now in the months ahead, they built an incredible, amazing marriage and welcomed their child, but they they never would have got there unless they had stopped and looked at what they were both doing that contributed to the loss of trust and intimacy. He still had to take responsibility for his choice, but they could fully recognize that the other person had never been playing with a full deck anyway, so they could find real forgiveness for each other and real love. That's probably the biggest thing I'll tell you.

Joey Pontarelli (51:36)

So beautiful. So if people want to work with you guys, like what do you offer and and where can they find it?

Adam Lane (51:42)

Goodness.

Just Google my name, Adam Lane Smith. I'm on every platform pretty much. AdamLaneSmith.com is the central hub. I'm on pretty much every platform. I run my own podcast. I have everything there available everywhere. But if you're looking for a free community to start working on attachment, I have the secure circle where I teach inside there and have a lot of skill trainings. We have the free library of of YouTube videos available on YouTube, hundreds of them by now. I do offer coaching with myself and my certified attachment.

Coaches as well on adamlingsmith.com. I even have some very, very well-researched, I will simply say over the years of doing this, training programs designed to get people specific outcomes they're looking for. If that's rebuilding trust in a marriage, becoming securely feminine or securely masculine to do your role in your relationship, or even just learning to regulate your nervous system. All of that is available on adamlingsmith.com.

Joey Pontarelli (52:31)

You're the man. It's been so good talking with you. I admire the work that you're doing and I f I found it helpful and I'm excited to even go deeper with with my audience. Adam, I just want to give you the last word. What final encouragement, what kind of final hope would you offer to everyone listening, especially to that young person who is really afraid of repeating their parents' story?

Adam Lane (52:50)

You cannot do this alone. And I don't even mean that religiously. I mean if you are going to be in a relationship with another human being, talk with them. Tell them you're afraid. Tell them that you need help figuring out how to not repeat those patterns. Work together every week. Have a meeting as a couple, like a business, every week about how to make sure you're going in the right direction. Always be clear with each other, but work together openly and transparently to get your goals met. If you can do that, that is 95% of the work right there.

It's just working together like teammates and partners. If you can do that, things will usually sort themselves out.

Joey Pontarelli (53:29)

That wraps up this episode. If this podcast has helped you, feel free to subscribe and rate or review the show. You'll avoid missing future episodes and help us reach more people. And in closing, always remember you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life. And we are here to help. And keep in mind the words of C.S. Lewis who said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.