The reading from our wedding I remember most clearly is a passage from Kahlil Gibran's beautiful book, The Prophet. We were drawn to it then, and I still am now. The end of the passage offers one of the most beautiful, uplifting, and—at the time—surprising perspectives on marriage.

"And stand together yet not too near together:

   For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

   And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."

From the outside, marriage often seems like a complete merging—becoming one, but perhaps also losing part of yourself in the process. I love that this passage says that two people can and should unite and support each other without lessening each other individually. We retain what makes us ourselves while being stronger together.

The image of the oak and the cypress has stayed with me ever since our wedding day.

The full passage from the Prophet is below:

  You were born together, and together you

  Ay, you shall be together even in the

  But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

  And let the winds of the heavens dance

  Let it rather be a moving sea between

  Fill each other's cup but drink not from

  Give one another of your bread but eat

  Sing and dance together and be joyous,

  Even as the strings of a lute are alone

  For only the hand of Life can contain

  For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

  And the oak tree and the cypress grow

Related Ideas to Grow Not in Each Other's Shadow

The 4 Horsemen of Relationship Apocalypse

Grow not in each other's shadow

Phubbing is snubbing people for your phone.

We've probably all experienced it—heck, we've probably all done it at one point or another—or at least it's likely familiar. It could involve someone in a restaurant waiting for their friends to put their phones down, a family gathering where people are no longer talking to each other, a teacher without the attention of their students, or a child failing to get the attention of an adult who's trying to process some messages on their phone.

Research on phubbing, mostly since the word was coined, says it largely has the effects you'd think it would. The effects vary with who's being phubbed and who's doing the phubbing: bosses and employees, family members, parents and kids, or partners. Whoever's phubbing who, snubbing is a suitable root word for it — it's not so nice to feel snubbed.

I learned about phubbing from the Mind over Tech community, which also publishes a newsletter on forming better digital habits.

The word phubbing has the unusual distinction of being created for an advertising campaign to sell a dictionary.

See, for example, Knausenberger, J. et al. (2022). Feeling Ostracized by Others’ Smartphone Use: The Effect of Phubbing on Fundamental Needs, Mood, and Trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883901

For more phone annoyance, see Halfalogue.

Phubbing, you may have spotted, is a portmanteau

Phubbing

Being clear is not just being helpful. It's actually being kind.

Being unclear about expectations, fuzzy on what you really need, or skirting around an issue, is actually unkind — it sets people up to fail and creates problems in the future.

If you don't give clear feedback, you're holding that person back from improving.

If you say two weeks, but you're really expecting one week, you'll resent it when it's not done in time.

If you say it's really fine when it's not, you'll continue to be upset about how things are going.

Clear is kind is a simple reminder, though by no means always easy, of how being clear in your communication is the generous, brave, helpful, and kind thing to do.

I learned clear is kind, and unclear is unkind from Brené Brown in Dare to Lead. She said she first heard it in a 12-step meeting. I borrowed the dancing emphasis from the always excellent Eva-Lotta Lamm.

Clear is kind

There are both constructive and unproductive ways to argue. One classic unproductive style is what Philippa Perry, in The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, calls fact tennis. With fact tennis, the goal can seem more like scoring points over your opponent rather than actually finding a workable solution — facts are hit back and forth until one person wins when the other has no more reasons left to counter with. But of course the argument isn't resolved and the result is a hollow victory and a still frustrated loser.

For a more productive argument we can reframe from winning to understanding — we can seek to share how we feel about it, and to understand how the other person feels about the conflict and their point of view, and take that into consideration. When we have a greater understanding we can move forward together to find a workable solution. As Philippa explains "Finding out about differences and working through them is about understanding and compromise, not about winning."

Fact tennis

John Gottman and colleagues identified what he calls the four horsemen of the apocalypse for relationships. They are called this as, left unchecked, they can spell the death knell to a once healthy relationship. In fact, they found that by watching just 3 mins of a conflict conversation between a couple they could predict whether they would still be together years later with over 90% accuracy.

Criticism: framing problems as the partner's defect

Defensiveness: counterattacking, whining, being the innocent victim

Contempt: talking down from a position of superiority, insults, eye-rolling, name-calling — the most dangerous of all

Stonewalling: withdrawing from the conflict, refusing to engage

In my first draft of this sketch I left it at that, but it felt a bit negative to leave it hanging on everything we do that's wrong and harmful. Fortunately, there are antidotes to the four horsemen, the traits they saw the masters at relationships use instead. The Gottman Institute explains the four horsemen and their antidotes in more detail.

Watch John Gottman explain the four horsemen in his own words.

The 4 horsemen of relationship apocalypse

We know it intuitively: we trust each person we meet to varying degrees. The trust battery is a metaphor that helps you think about and visualise these trust levels.

The concept is from Tobi Lütke, the CEO of Shopify. He explains, for example, that when a new colleague joins your company the trust battery between the two of you may start out at around 50%. Each time the new colleague acts in a way that earns your trust that level increases, and if they let you down the trust battery level goes down. It can be long and slow to fill up the trust battery yet quick to drain. Each time we interact with someone we are subconsciously considering the level of their trust battery and that level affects how we respond to people.

Lütke says at Shopify they found it a useful way to surface and talk about trust in reviews without it feeling too personal.

I learned about it from the excellent book It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work

The trust battery: A handy metaphor to think about trust

The evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar identified that an average person’s social network appears to follow simple scaling laws.

Our networks grow from our closest friends—whom we would seek personal advice or help from in times of severe emotional and financial distress—through our superfamily (or close friends), to our acquaintances (or clan), whom we might invite to a party, and to our most casual friends (or tribe).

At each level, the number of people typically increases by about a factor of 3. So you might have 5 close friends, 15 in your superfamily, about 50 in your clan and about 150 in your tribe.

The 150, with some variance, seems to be around the limit for the number of people we can keep track of, reasonably call part of our social network, and maintain as a cohesive group. This may be partly due to the limits of our memories and the effort it takes to maintain relationships.

There are many instances of the ~150 in action, for example, in challenges of transitioning companies as you exceed 150 employees while maintaining cohesiveness, the size of Neolithic farming communities and the basic unit size of Roman armies.

The number is actually 148, but 150 is catchier and seems fine between friends.

Dunbar’s number: 150

The boss yells at the employee, the employee yells at their spouse, the spouse yells at the child, the child yells at their younger sibling, the sibling yells at the dog, and the dog pees on the rug. This scene is an excellent example of Emotional Hot Potato, where the "hot potato" emotion makes its painful way through each family member.

Bad moods can be contagious, as can anger and anxiety. Our innate empathy can naturally transfer a bad mood from a coworker to ourselves.

Emotional hot potato can also be a form of projection where we attempt to rid ourselves of an unpleasant emotion by transferring it or attributing it to others. By handling the hot potato of the anger of a teenage child, for example, the parent may find themselves seething while the child feels better having passed on the potato. Ouch!

I learned the term from Lawrence Cohen in Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence,  Ballantine Books, 2012.

This sketch features in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures

Don't compare your front of house with others' back of house

Emotional hot potato

Whenever I think of the convenience of someone doing something for me I usually conclude it’s easily worth a tip. So I have taken to adding one. Then hopefully they’ll be happy to do it again in the future too.

Volunteer your own booking fee

It achieves nothing but bitterness. I am yet to witness an occasion where saying "I told you so" or an equivalent led to a net positive effect.

Never say “I told you so.”

Ask for what you need or it’s on you if you don’t get it.

The frame change for me was that you’re not owed anything. It’s on you to help yourself and help others out in the process.

Ask for what you need

A little nugget of wisdom from a book I read long ago called Technotrends by Daniel Burrus.

Don’t fix the blame, fix the problem

Great practice for research. Good practice for life too.

Prefer open-ended questions

When someone gives you a compliment, accept it.

I learned this after I disagreed with a compliment someone gave me, which took a generous compliment for me and made both of us less happy.

If someone has a compliment for you, whether you agree with it or not, it's their view, and the least you can do to accept it gracefully.

Or as Kevin Kelly says: "Denying or deflecting a compliment is rude. Accept it with thanks."

Relationships sketches