Latest / The Voyage Cast: Real Talk on Marriage, Mental Health, & Emotional Growth / The Princess Bride Part 2: “As You Wish,” Gottman’s Bids, and the Difference Between Doing and Answering

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The Princess Bride Part 2: “As You Wish,” Gottman’s Bids, and the Difference Between Doing and Answering · The Voyage Cast: Real Talk on Marriage, Mental Health, & Emotional Growth

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Voyage Cast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I am Eddie, your host, as always, and this is part two of six in the Princess Bride series where we use the Princess Bride to help you have better relationships.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you didn't catch the first episode, that's fine.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Go back and listen to it.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: You could listen to this one first and then go back.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do it in order.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's all right.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this one does pick up where the last one dropped off.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So a quick recap.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Last time we were up on a hilltop.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Buttercup is standing there next to a guy in a black mask, and as far as she knows, he's the dread pirate Roberts who killed the love of her life.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he's just told her, Life is pain.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And anybody who says differently is selling something.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then she shoves him down a hill.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And on the way down, he yells out three magic words.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes right down after him in a comedic thrust off the hillside.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing I left you guys with last time uh was to think about what she actually heard from him.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't say, I love you.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't say, Hey, I'm alive still.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: He said, as you wish, which, if I'm being honest, sounds like a butler, but she knew exactly what he meant.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was a good line, the life is pain bit, but it didn't connect to her the same way because he got pushed down a hill.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the words matter.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Language matters.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It matters how we communicate things to our spouses because one thing is going to connect in a way that something else isn't.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So when you ask to pass the stall, um your spouse might hear something in a way that you didn't expect.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you who this episode's for.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you are the one in your marriage who does everything and says nothing, or you're the one who says all the right things and can't figure out why none of it is landing, this episode is definitely for you.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So consider listening, checking it out, uh, and really investigating what I'm talking about today.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And let's be honest, probably both of you, if you're in a relationship, are having these problems.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But to get there, to get into this topic, we need to go back in time to the beginning of the movie before any of the pirate stuff, swashbuckling, fighting with giants, outsmarting uh geniuses, and sword fighting, investing the best.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: We need to go all the way back to the farm.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So Buttercup lives on this farm and Wesley works there.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's the farmhand.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And she calls him farm boy.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: She never uses his name.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm questioning if she even knows his name at that point, you know, maybe in the beginning.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And she bosses him around all day.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So she certainly feels entitled.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, polish the saddle, fill the bucket, and so forth.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And she's not nice about it.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And every single time, no matter what she tells him to do, he does it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he says those three words as you wish.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the movie, there's kind of this play where you'll see the movie itself, The Princess Bride, uh, which is the story that a grandfather is reading to his grandson.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it kind of goes back and forth at different scenes.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in this next scene, the grandfather stops and tells his grandson and us, the, the, the viewers of the movie, what she eventually figured out about those three words.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the kid interrupts because he's getting worried that this is going to be a kissing book because there's this romantic scene, and it's kind of adorable and hilarious.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's a lot of those great moments.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe you're not the sappy type of guy, that's fine.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're not interested in romance stories.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this is a great story.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said in the last episode, you should really watch it if you haven't seen it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't seen it in a while, probably watch it again because it's adorable.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, anyways, so that's the setup.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll just say it's not a great setup because she's super rude to him for years, and he just loves it, it seems.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, most relationships, you know, I would tell people not to put up with that kind of thing.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: But either way, that's the scene.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of cute.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she she asks for things.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: He gives love through action, and eventually, over time, she learns that his words, as you wish, uh, actually mean I love you.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it took a while to figure it out.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the lesson can't be that words don't matter, because of course they do.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's uh what's actually going on in that scene.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he says those words every single time she asks for something which is adorable and and eventually develops meaning, and she eventually figures out what those words mean, which is kind of important in a lot of couples scenarios where people will say or do one thing and not really fully understand or know how to translate what's being said to them.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes that's kind of my job when I'm in the office with somebody, sort of translating that language.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they're both speaking English, but that doesn't necessarily mean they understand each other.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so there's this little moment on the farm uh sequence that's really easy to miss.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: She asks him to get a picture, uh, and the picture is hanging right over her head.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she could reach it herself, but she doesn't need the picture.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: She just wants him to come over.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's an important piece uh for this next part of the research that we're gonna look at from John Gottman.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Gottman is the psychologist at the University of Washington who spent decades putting couples in a room in his love lab and filming them and coding everything they did second by second.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he calls those moments, those scenes, bids.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: A bid is any little reach for your partner's attention.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: A comment about the weather, a sigh, a hey, look at this, uh, did you see what the dog did?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Anything, right?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of bids are disguised as something else.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a chore, a question, uh, which is exactly what the pitcher is.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bid dressed up as a chore, as a task that she is demanding of him.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's that scene where you see in the movie, you see kind of the turnaround between Buttercup and Wesley.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And what Gottman actually counted uh wasn't the bids, it was what the other person did next.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And there's basically three options.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can turn toward a person, and that can be as small as a grunt that means I heard you, you can turn away from the person, which most of the time just means you didn't look up from your phone long enough to notice that they were in front of you, which unfortunately is becoming a bigger problem these days.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, or you can turn against, uh, which is the annoyed version.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Someone makes a bid, you're clearly misinterpreting it as some kind of threat or offense or whatever, uh, and then you you get annoyed with them.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so in one of his studies, they watched newlyweds in the lab and then went back and checked them six years later.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the couples that were still married had turned toward each other's bids, the the requests for attention or connection, 86% of the time.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: The ones who'd gotten divorced, they did it 33% of the time.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to be straight with you guys um about that number because it gets thrown around a lot, especially if you're in a very psycholiterate or Gottman literate environment.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's his bigger claim, the one you've probably heard that he can predict divorce with like 90 something percent accuracy.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: There were two researchers, Heyman and Slep, who showed back in 2001 that when you build one of those prediction formulas on one group of couples and then try it out on a new group, the accuracy drops way off.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not going to sit here and tell you 86% is the bar.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: What I'd take from it is the size of the gap.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what they were counting was ordinary responses on an ordinary day to stuff like past assault.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Simple things, right?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that finding isn't by itself, by the way.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's a guy named Harry Reese at the University of Rochester who spent basically his whole career on what he calls responsiveness, which is the feeling that your partner gets you, that they value what matters to you, that they actually care.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And his argument is that that that's the thing underneath everything else we study when we study closeness, which I'm pretty sure he's right.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So go back to the pharmaceutical what makes, as you wish, love isn't that it's an action instead of a word.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's that it's an answer.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Every time she reaches, he's there.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the same every time, so she can count on him.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's reliable.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: She reached with a chore because she couldn't say, Come here yet.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: He answered with a phrase because he couldn't say, I love you yet.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Neither one of them was any good at it, by the way, obviously.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it was enough.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it was sweet and romantic and adorable and a lovely scene.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why the three words got through on the hill.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: The line about pain was a true thing he said to her, and just a true thing about life.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: As you wish, was an answer to her bid.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been answering it for years, and she recognized the answer before she recognized who he was.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why I don't love the fight couples get into about actions versus words.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I've sat through so many of them.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I work 60 hours a week, I fix the car, I did this, I did that, I'm at every game, whatever.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: How can you tell me I don't love you or I don't love the kids or I don't love the family?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Well, you never say it.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're both right, aren't they?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: How do you mitigate that?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're both right.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're both pointing at something very real for the couple and for that situation.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the question that actually sorts all this out is a little bit of a different question.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's when I reach for you, do you answer?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Are you there?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna be there?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what kids answer, ask basically.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's maybe not directly that statement, but that's what they do when they're developing with their parents.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you are sitting here thinking about love languages also as it relates.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure this is passing through your head, and that Wesley's obviously an acts of service guy.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you should know a team led by Emily Impett at the University of Toronto went back through all the research on love languages in 2024, and they couldn't find a good support for the idea that everybody has one primary love language, or that matching your primary partner's love language is what actually makes a couple satisfied.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I can actually concur with this anecdotally in my couple's work.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Their picture was more like a balanced diet.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: People need all things, you know.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I think the farm fits that better because the three words are speech and service at the same time.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now the correction, because as you wish, as a bad version, or maybe it's not a correction, maybe it's more of a caution.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you are living in this cautionary tale.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you say it to everything, if you don't have any preferences of your own or ideas of your own, if the price of peace in your house is that one of you always gives in, that is not what Gottman's describing, and that's not what the movie's showing you with as you wish.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Turning toward a bid means you acknowledge it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean the answer is always yes.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can turn toward your wife and say or husband and say, I heard you and I can't do that tonight, or I can't accommodate that right now, or I don't have bandwidth or space or whatever.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can actually have a boundary with your partner.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if your version of as you wish is just going quiet and doing whatever keeps the peace, that's not what we're talking about.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what Wesley did.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's a guy or gal who doesn't want to have any conversation or have any conflict or deal with the hard things.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand sometimes that's survival, fair enough.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: But in the movie and in what we're trying to talk about today, Wesley really wanted the conversation.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: He just lost the first five years of it because he got captured.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know I'm pulling some stuff together for this movie, but look at what Wesley uh does once he's off the farm.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's the dread pirate Roberts now, he's back, he's the man in black, he's presenting as tough, but he's definitely matured from the farm boy he once was.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when he gets Buttercup just to himself for a time, uh he argues with her.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: He tells her flat out when he's when he thinks she's wrong.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he manages to be for her anyways while disagreeing with her to her face, which, let's be honest, is a skill most of us never pick up.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and including me, I've had to learn these skills too.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't something I was just born with, like, oh, I'm good at this, be a therapist, help everybody.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had to learn these things too.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so two things to try this week.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make it practical.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: First one, for seven days, okay, you can do this.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hard.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just count.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Don't change anything, don't announce it, don't tell your spouse you're doing it, because we don't want to make this some kind of weird competition.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just notice, be curious and notice when your spouse makes a bid, when they reach, when they give a comment or or have a sigh, or there's a hand on your back, or a question that doesn't really need an answer, but they're just engaging with you.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's small talk.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then notice how you respond to those bids, whatever those bids are.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you go toward, do you go away, or do you go against?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, second one, second thing this week.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is not hard stuff.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: These are just things you have to be intentional and conscious about.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Make one bid plain.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Find the thing you've been asking for uh that seems to go sideways.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, your version of the pitcher and just ask for it straight.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Don't play games, don't uh be indirect with your communication, just be direct and straight about what it is you're asking for.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can be kind and do that.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can be soft and do that.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can do, as I coach a lot of people on this one, to kind of lower your tone and sort of stretch out your words a little bit, slow things down a bit, right?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Come and sit with me.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want 10 minutes of your time.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can I have that?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I like you.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoy your company.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Come and sit with me.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: That might be a better way to actually say instead of come and sit with me, you know.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Buttercup had to invent an errand to get him across the yard.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can just ask if your partner's not getting it.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some people don't get it right away.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some people aren't gonna get the hint if you say, hey, farm boy, get the picture and it's above your head, and he comes in close and that's the romantic moment that you've needed.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some people aren't gonna get it.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna pick up what you're putting down.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's not an offense.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean they're dumb or dense.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: It just means they're not picking up those clues.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we have to teach people how to love us, and sometimes we have to be really direct and clear about those things.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, next time, uh next episode, we're gonna go to the guy who kidnapped Buttercup Vicini, the Sicilian who fancies himself as the smartest man alive.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he has a favorite word uh throughout the movie.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you know what it is.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and he says it every time something happens that his theory or mind just can't quite comprehend.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end of his scene, he is dead, by the end of his part in them in the movie.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And most people think they know why.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't think that's why.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think what kills him is something careful people do to their spouses every single day.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm pretty sure some of you may have even done it this morning.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's next time.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know I'm giving you a bit of a cliffhanger on how to think of a C differently, but I think this will be fun.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it for this episode of the Voyage Cast.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy these episodes.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we have four more coming out using the Princess Pride to help you have a better relationship, maybe better life with somebody.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that's it.
• 14:51
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• 14:52
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• 14:55
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• 15:02
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• 15:05
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• 15:07
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• 15:09
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• 15:13
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• 15:17
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• 15:20
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• 15:22
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• 15:25
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• 15:27
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• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Goodbye.