Eli J. Finkel

Tell us why you think couples might decide to do a quiet divorce, or maybe you are in one yourself and what you would like to share about that.

Did the quiet divorce, if you had been in one in the past or saw somebody who had lead to a breakup or actual divorce, how did you know when it was time to call it quits? Why do you think the phenomenon of quiet divorce or the terminology is resonating today? I want to bring into the conversation now Eli Finkel, a psychology professor at Northwestern, host of the Love Factually podcast, and author of The All or Nothing Marriage, How the Best Marriages Work.

Eli, thank you so much for being with us.

Appreciate it.

about the things that our partner has done, we have the ability to, you know, feel gratitude about those things.

And some of it's predicated, obviously, in the objective circumstances, but a whole lot of it is under our control.

We're talking with psychologists Eli Finkel and Tama Bryant about quiet divorce, the phenomenon of lovers becoming emotionally distant and more like roommates.

And we'll have more with them and you listeners after the break.

I'm Paul Eastwick, author of Bonded by Evolution.

I'm here with Eli Finkel, author of The All or Nothing Marriage.

And Eli, what are we talking about today?

Today we're talking about The Kids Are All Right, the influential 2010 lesbian love story from Lisa Chodolenko, which won Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture and Best Actress.

Some of the themes we'll explore are when it's especially hard to get over an affair, whether it's unusual for a gay woman to be attracted to a man, and how role arrangements differ between straight and gay couples.

Yeah, it's straight up.

It's good for me.

So, Eli, who are the key characters and couples in this movie?

We think they're actually bad people.

Political psychologists like Eli Finkel call this affective polarization.

And the cruel twist is that the research shows we wildly overestimate how extreme the other side really is.

The real gap between ordinary people is far smaller than the gap we imagine.

And I write and read and research dating and relationships.

And it's my pleasure to bring Eli Finkel here with you today for this special edition of Talks at Google Modern Romance.

So, Eli, thank you so much for coming.

Thank you for having me.

Um, and so, you know, really trying to take a step back and adopt, um, a third-party perspective.

Eli Finkel has, um, some evidence actually showing that adopting a third-party perspective can be really helpful when you're having conflict with your partner.

Um, and I think that that could probably apply outside of conflict, that just always trying to, to increase empathy, I think is, is another way of thinking about it.

Um, can probably go a, a long way.