Reaching Agreement to Repair Broken Relationships

Key takeaways

• Scientists are learning more about neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to continue forming new neural pathways.

• John Grey says couples can harness the power of neuroplasticity to reach agreement and repair broken relationships.

• The same process can make you a better negotiator in business settings.

Over the past 30 years, Stanford-trained psychologist John Grey has pioneered a radically different approach to couples counseling that he claims has a 95% success rate—and it’s all about neuroscience and the ability to “rewire the brain,” as he puts it. 

Instead of meeting for one hour a week, couples spend three or four days doing an intensive retreat at Grey’s home in Sonoma County, California. And instead of kvetching about each other, they learn tools and exercises that, through repetition, literally build new neural pathways in the circuitry of their brains—in ways that help them collaborate and reach win-win outcomes. Grey’s method harnesses the power of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change and adapt.

Grey, a pianist, studied music composition before earning a PhD in psychology at Stanford, and says in some ways training your brain to succeed in a relationship is analogous to teaching your brain to master a piece of music. Grey is also a technologist, and at Stanford he co-founded the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. In addition, he has published three books and released a series of improvised solo piano works, and his work with couples was featured in a documentary.

Interestingly, Grey says the same process of rewiring the brain can improve our ability to negotiate and reach agreements of all kinds—in our personal and professional lives.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Why does a retreat work better than conventional once-a-week marriage counseling? 

In order for the tools I teach to cohere and produce results, it takes a couple of days of intensive focus. That seems to be the sweet spot for neural integration to start happening. By day two they generally start to feel better. Three or four days in a row is the optimal amount of time for this process to generate solid results. There's a certain amount of time required for this behavioral and emotional rewiring to adhere in the brain, and a certain amount of repetition in using these tools for couples to start feeling hope and positive connection again.

What do you mean when you talk about rewiring the brain?

Couple repair is largely a process that involves building new neural pathways in the brain’s emotional attachment circuitry. This is located mainly on the right side of the brain. The work I do involves uploading new patterns in there, in order to change, in a reparative way, how that right brain attachment circuitry works. Once a couple has these tools, they can use them to function securely instead of insecurely.

Can you talk about secure versus insecure functioning?

A lot of how couples function is unconscious and based on whether growing up they originally got secure wiring in their attachment system in the right brain. Those who did, the lucky ones, tend to automatically use secure attachment patterns in their adult relationships. They are those amazing couples that somehow just stay happy together. The rest of us need to upgrade our thinking about relationships, learn better communication tools, and rewire our attachment circuits. Luckily, this is all possible to do.

How do those childhood attachment issues affect people as adults in a marriage? 

Most of us were not fully wired in our childhoods to be securely attached, so that insecure circuitry gets unconsciously applied in our adult relationship. I see the same general patterns again and again. I can listen to a couple for five minutes and pretty much guess what's really going on in their attachment wiring, what early insecurities their brains are automatically projecting into their marriage. I could probably even accurately tell you how often they got held as a child under the age of two.

The neuroscience of attachment research started over fifty years ago studying parent-child attachment. In the last couple of decades, research started to look at how this works with couples. If a couple functions insecurely, it’s nobody’s fault, it’s just that the attachment wiring in their right brains keeps triggering unnecessary distress and this never gets straightened out, because they don’t have the tools to do that.

What happens when someone gets triggered?

The amygdala, the fear and survival alarm part of the brain, gets activated and takes over both body and mind. The primitive survival brain hijacks our emotionally intelligent higher brain. And that is exactly the wrong thing for your relationship, because the frontal part of the brain is exactly where our collaboration circuitry is located. Empathy, understanding, being able to listen and come up with ideas that could work for both people, all such pro-relationship functions reside up in the frontal lobes. But that gets shut off. It’s important to know what to do to protect your relationship when this happens.

How did you come up with the idea of approaching couples counseling from the perspective of neuroscience?

I was trained as a research psychologist at Stanford, so I have a research orientation that to me is more useful than just a theoretical orientation, because I go with the data over theory. A lot of stuff in traditional therapy is what we used to call “psycho-theology.” For me, it’s about practical results. Also, I'm a technologist. This goes even to the point where I wrote a little app for my clients to remind them how to repair things.

My approach is practical. It's a tool-based approach. I’m coaching couples to use tools and repair things that have been plaguing them for years, so they can really collaborate and get win-win outcomes in those situations that have been difficult for them. Thirty years ago, when I developed my intensive retreat approach for working with couples, all my therapist friends ridiculed the idea. Now I often get referrals from therapists.

What’s an exercise you use with couples? 

One thing I do to train people to collaborate and get to win-win is an exercise where they have to switch roles and be the other person. Instead of "Tell me what you heard," you have to take on the alternative identity. You get what is going on with the other person, not just on the intellectual level, but the emotional level, the way an actor would get a role and really do it. It's a game changer. It gets you into two-party thinking like nothing else.

Another tool is collaboration. How do we get to a win-win as a couple? You’re dealing with a two-brain system. The brain over there in your partner’s head processes information differently than the brain you have. You need to be able to engage in two-party thinking. Since the '60s, we’ve had what I call Love 2.0, which says you should take care of your own needs emotionally, and don't depend on someone else. I talk about a Love 3.0 model, which takes into consideration that attachment is a thing—because it is. You have to operate in an interdependent way, not just an independent way. How can we collaborate to get to win-win as a couple? If you don't go for a win-win, you're not maximizing shared happiness.

That phrase, “win-win,” is one of the core principles of negotiation science. Are there parallels between marriage counseling and business negotiation?

Even a business partnership will fall apart if you aren't operating securely with the full set of rules for win-win. If you're trying to merge a company and you don't do it right, it's not going to last. So part of win-win is fully engaging in two-party thinking. I certainly am expected to know what I want the outcome to be, but I also need to know as much as possible about what makes the other person tick, what makes them feel good about a deal so that I can come up with an idea that could bridge that gap. Ideally the other person would be doing the same thing.

Could the tools you use with couples also improve other relationships—for example, with people at work? 

Yes, of course. Most companies are replications of family systems. So all the emotional attachment stuff learned in childhood comes into play, all the different personality styles and patterns. How do you exert influence? What's your habit? Do you go at things analytically? Do you debate a lot? Do you give in a lot? Do you need to control everything? There are a lot of things that play with the same circuitry because we're emotional beings. We want to connect with others at work as well and be recognized and seen for who we are and what we're doing.

Have you ever coached people in business situations? 

For a few years I went to Europe and worked with string quartets. I was treating them as a family unit. It's the same stuff. Not as intense, but it's there. It's still at the root of everything. It's the upsets, who's being listened to, who's dominating, whose feelings matter, whose doesn't. It's all there.

What’s your success rate? Do most couples who do a retreat end up staying together?

I'd say with 95% of couples there’s a shift, a palpable shift where they feel reconnected. That’s true regardless of how complex their issues were. Those issues can include infidelity, various forms of financial betrayal, secrets, or just getting to the end of the rope where they can't do it anymore. I work with difficult cases, people who have been unhappy for years, maybe decades. These are cases that other therapists are freaked out by. The upsets have compounded so much. But about 95% manage to repair their biggest issues. They feel hope. They're feeling different. People will ask, “How does that happen? How’s it possible that you can work with a couple that’s been miserable for decades and in three days they're different?” It’s because we work with their right brains.