Episode 11: Right Brain Relationship
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PC7NKPstyNi08TNfYcyaT
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/james-christensen-podcast/id1757976298
In this episode, James Christensen and Steve Thatcher team up to talk about how your right brain can save your relationship.
Have you ever listened to David Foster Wallace's commencement speech "This Is Water"? There's a haunting phrase where he describes the feeling of "having had and lost some infinite thing." That sense of endlessly chasing something you can't quite grasp captures how many of us approach our relationships - especially men who've spent years trying to solve their marriage like it's a problem to be fixed.
This isn't about reading one more relationship book or finding the perfect communication technique. It's about understanding that you've been using the wrong part of your brain.
The Map Versus the Mountain
In "The Master and His Emissary," Iain McGilchrist reveals something profound about how our brains work. The left hemisphere is a specialized engine for narrow focus - categorizing dangers, opportunities, and solutions. The right hemisphere takes in the bigger picture, allowing space for ambiguity and the messy reality of human connection.
Here's the problem. Many of us, particularly successful professionals, live almost entirely from our left brain. We can crush it in domains with clearly defined wins - closing deals, writing code, building businesses. But when we turn to marriage or intimacy, which don't follow a black-and-white playbook, we falter.
The left brain loves maps. It perfects them endlessly. "My map is so good," it says, while never actually going outside. When reality doesn't match the map, the left brain yells at the mountain for being in the wrong place.
Sound familiar? How many times have you thought, "Well, is she just allowed to do whatever she wants?" The answer is yes. People are allowed to make their own choices. You are too. And all your efforts to move that mountain haven't worked because the mountain is still there.
The Control Brain Problem
Sometimes it helps to think of it as the control brain versus the relational brain. The right brain has no problem letting the left operate when needed. But when the left takes over, it completely shuts down the right.
This is why couples have the same argument for decades. The left brain ignores context and history. It thinks, "I've tried explaining this to my partner for five years and it didn't work, but today's the day!" It cannot grasp that human beings are dynamic creatures who refuse to be controlled.
When you shift to your right brain, you immediately understand that of course your partner will fight for their freedom. Every human being rebels against pressure and control. Yet we get stuck in cycles of pressure and rebellion, two people locked in a power struggle that can last decades.
When Doing the Dishes Backfires
The left brain is obsessed with causality - if I do X, then Y will happen. This drives the "nice guy" syndrome - if I do what my wife wants, she'll do what I want. It's why a man might do the dishes thinking it will lead to sex, then feel resentful when it doesn't work.
But here's what actually happens. Say doing the dishes improves your wife's environment from a 50 to a 51. But while you're scrubbing, you're stewing in resentment, thinking "this better work." That controlling energy drops the relationship quality to a 35. Then you wonder why the dishes didn't work.
The left brain doesn't understand that how you feel about your partner matters 100 times more than whether you did the dishes. It has no idea what love or care actually mean. Those are complete mysteries to its mechanical worldview.
