What is the force that pulls people in relationships toward the familiar stance, “I can only depend on myself”? A couple says they want to be together. And when they’re cooperating, they genuinely do, and they accomplish great things together with an aura of love and synergistic harmony. But when they get sufficiently scared, there’s a strong impulse to withdraw…to retreat…to “go it alone” — whether that refers to a particular goal they can’t agree on, or to their entire relationship — their goal of enjoying life together. Even when one partner is critical and blaming, and appears to be pursuing the other for reconnection, I usually find that there’s an augmenting script playing in the back of their mind… a growing doubt that it might not work — that they might wind up better off alone. Hence, the desperate bids for repair that often backfire. I think that game theory — in particular the game called “The Stag Hunt” — can shed some light on why there is so much fear of trust in couples’ relationships. You can catch a big stag with cooperation, and you can catch a rabbit alone. Either way, you eat. But what we really fear is starving — catching nothing. And that happens when cooperation goes sideways… when anti-synergy makes 1+1 equal zero or negative 10. When the fallback of operating like a single person is nowhere to be found. Your partner is off catching rabbits solo, and your stag, that you needed help catching, escapes. Or, you’re both trying to catch totally different stags, having mistaken them for the same animal. Or worst of all, the hunt never begins at all because endless arguments never produce a shared agreement for unifying your efforts. A lot of couples’ fights are really about what they’re aiming toward. What are they doing with money (their stored energy)? With free time together? With where to live? With parenting? With life? But unfortunately, the underlying issue of different goals gets buried under layers of two-way vilification and pathologization. Both sides can feel that the other suffers from varying forms of madness or badness, when in truth they simply have different preferences, which either can or cannot be sufficiently aligned such that they can enjoy life “well enough” together. And it’s the fear that alignment might not be possible that scares couples away from having the very discussions that would answer that question and resolve their uncertainty. In this video, I apply The Stag Hunt metaphor to couples, and offer several perspective shifts for when finding a common aim is challenging. I answer the question of when the best outcome is, in fact, to “hunt rabbits” (do their own thing) rather than cooperating toward something big. I explain why relationships that allow for the option of pursuing separate individual goals are ironically more likely to make genuine cooperation toward lofty, shared goals truly possible. I talk about why maturity entails letting go of the “survival belief” that, in families, there need to be winners and losers. And I offer some strategies for couples moving away from blame and shame, and looking honestly at the fundamental problem of unaligned individual life goals.

“Don't judge me.” “You're being judgmental.” “This is a judgment-free zone.” We bristle at the word “judgment” and being judgmental, because we intuitively and reflexively sense real danger there. But in truth, every day we’re continuously making decisions and distinctions in order to live the lives that we want. X is better than Y. We choose this and not that. We let someone in, and keep another out. What really IS the difference between harmful/immoral/defensive judgment vs squarely looking at reality in order to decide what we include and what we exclude based on qualities that we determine are good for us or not? Just labeling it something else like "discernment" only goes so far. Separating the light and dark sides of judgment with semantics doesn't do the work of explaining what the difference actually is. The Tarot deck doesn’t shy away from the word “judgment”, including a card by that name which actually points at healthy discernment. And in our society we give someone the title of “judge” when we entrust them to make good and fair decisions. So what really is the difference between the light side and the shadow side of judgment? In this brief video, I relate this important distinction to the drama triangle, which I think is a complex of the dark side of interpersonal judgment.