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During a 2024 episode of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert asked actor Ryan Gosling to describe the rest of his life in five words. Gosling thought for a moment and answered: “Run it by Eva first.” He was referring, of course, to his wife, Eva Mendes.
The audience laughed. It was an fun answer, and Gosling’s timing was perfect. On the surface, it sounded like the familiar joke about the husband who knows he had better get permission from his wife before making plans. But I heard something else.
I heard a man whose imagined future already included another person. He could not describe what the rest of his life would look like from his perspective alone because his life was no longer organized entirely around one person. His decisions would affect Eva. Her wishes and plans would affect him. Their future would be something they created together.
That is not the loss of personal freedom. It is the beginning of partnership.
The difference between loving someone and including them
Most people assume that loving another person automatically means including that person in their thinking. Unfortunately, loving someone and including them in your thinking these are not the same thing.
You can love your partner deeply and still make decisions as though you were the only person whose experience mattered. You can feel committed to your marriage while routinely deciding what is sensible, important, safe, affordable, or worth doing entirely from your own point of view. Your partner enters the picture later, usually when they object. At that point, you may explain why your decision made sense, and you may be entirely sincere when you say:
- “I wasn’t trying to upset you.”
- “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
- “It wouldn’t bother me.”
- “I thought this was the most logical choice.”
All of that may be true. It also misses the problem.
The question your partner is asking may not be, “Can you defend the logic of your decision?” Your partner’s question may be: “Did I exist in your mind when you made that decision?” That is a very different question.
Two kinds of early training
There are many exceptions to what I am about to describe. Women can operate from an intensely individual perspective. Men can be highly relational and attentive. Same-sex couples can develop exactly the same imbalance, and personality, family culture, trauma, class, ethnicity, and many other factors influence how we learn to relate. This can also be a difference if one partner is raised in a more collectivist culture and the other one is raised in an individualistic culture like we have in the US. Still, there is a common pattern worth examining.
Boys and men have traditionally received more training in independence, competition, self-reliance, and personal agency. Think of the social world surrounding many boys’ sports. You belong to a team, but much of your value is tied to performance. Can you hold your position? Can you win? Can you tolerate pressure? Can you prove yourself?
Girls and women have traditionally received more training in affiliation. They are often expected to track the emotional life of friendships, notice subtle changes in relationships, maintain connection, and consider how their actions affect other people.
A large research review involving hundreds of responses found average gender differences in these directions, with men reporting greater agency and women greater communion. These differences were averages of course, not individuals, and, fortunately, the gaps have narrowed over time.
Add in the strong individualism of American culture and it is not surprising that some people unconsciously enter adult relationships with an implicit rule that sounds something like this: “If it doesn’t matter to me, it doesn’t matter.” Their partners may arrive with a different rule: “If it matters to you, it matters to me because you matter to me.” These two people can love each other. They can also drive each other completely crazy.
“It wasn’t important to me”
Suppose one partner agrees to host relatives for a week without checking first.
When the other partner objects, the response is: “They’re family. I didn’t think it would be a problem.” Or perhaps one partner makes a significant purchase, changes a family plan, takes on a new obligation, or does something that affects safety. The explanation is usually some version of: “It made sense to me. (What is your problem?)”
This is where many couples become stuck. The first partner is defending the reasonableness of the decision. The second partner is describing the experience of being excluded from it. The more one explains, the more the other hears: “My reasoning counts. Your experience does not.” The excluded partner may become more forceful in an attempt to establish that the issue matters. The decision-maker may then feel criticized, controlled, or treated as though nothing they do is ever right.
Now we have moved from a practical disagreement into a familiar relationship pattern. One person is fighting to be considered. The other is fighting to defend themselves from criticism. Neither is listening very well by this point.
The developmental demand of partnership
Robert Kegan, in In Over Our Heads, wrote about the mismatch between the complexity modern life demands of us and the mental capacities we may have developed to meet those demands. Intimate partnership makes a surprisingly complex demand.
It asks you to remain a distinct person with your own values, preferences, judgment, and boundaries. At the same time, it asks you to hold another complete person in your awareness.
You must be able to think: “This is what I want.”
And also: “This is what my partner may want.”
Then you must consider: “What will my choice create between us?”
I think of this as the movement from a one-self identity toward a two-self identity.
A one-self approach says: “I decide what makes sense based on what I know and value. You can respond once I have decided.”
A two-self approach says: “I still know what I value and prefer. Because this affects both of us, however, my information is not sufficient. Your reality must enter the process before the decision is complete.”
This does not mean replacing “I” with “we.” A relationship without a sturdy “I” becomes fusion, appeasement, or control. The task is to develop a larger identity, one capable of holding both.
Your partner does not need to care about the same things
One of the most useful sentences I say to couples is: “It does not have to matter to you in the same way for it to matter to the relationship.” Imagine that your partner is concerned about something you would not find upsetting. Your first impulse may be to explain why the concern is unnecessary. You may even be correct that the objective danger is small, the expense is manageable, or the social slight was probably unintentional. None of that determines whether the concern belongs in the relationship. You can say: “I would not react to this in the same way. I understand that it affects your sense of security, so we need to take it into account.”
Understanding is not agreement. Taking your partner seriously does not require adopting every conclusion they reach. Research on conflict has found that people fare better when they experience their partner as understanding them, even when the disagreement itself remains. Feeling understood signals that the relationship is still intact and that one’s experience has a place inside it. This is one reason “just validating feelings” is not a trivial courtesy. It answers the deeper question: “Do I still matter to you when we see this differently?”
Why this can be especially difficult for some
If you’re sense of self-worth depends on your performance, you may experience a partner’s unhappiness as evidence that you have failed. Once your partner expresses their unhappiness with your behavior or decision, your shift to defense, or guilt, or shame can take over remarkably quickly.
One partner says: “I felt left out when you made that decision.”
The other partner hears: “You are selfish.” Or: “You are a bad partner.” Or the ever-popular: “Here is today’s installment of Everything You Do Wrong.”
Once that failure alarm is activated in your partner, they may explain, correct details, minimize the problem, or point out what you did wrong. From inside their experience, they may be trying to restore fairness and defend their basic goodness. From inside your experience, they are once again making their intentions more important than the impact on you.
This is why the movement toward a two-self identity is not only cognitive. It is somatic, something that is felt, not just thought. This mindset becomes part of your internal operating system. To do this, you have to learn to remain present while your partner is disappointed, angry, hurt, or frightened. You must discover that hearing how you have impacted your partner does not require collapsing into shame or surrendering your own point of view. A useful response might be: “I can feel myself wanting to defend what I did. Before I do that, I want to understand what the decision was like for you.” That is not capitulation. It is emotional strength.
Consultation is not asking permission
Ryan Gosling’s answer was funny partly because our culture still treats a man consulting his wife as though he has handed over his membership card in the League of Independent Adults. There is an obvious difference between consultation and permission. Not every decision belongs to the couple. Each person should have areas of privacy, discretion, friendship, interest, and personal authority.
It can help to distinguish among several kinds of decisions. Some choices are personal. They primarily affect you and remain yours to make. Other choices are yours, but your partner deserves timely information because the consequences affect them. Some require genuine consultation. You may retain substantial discretion, but you need your partner’s perspective before proceeding. Still others belong to the partnership. They involve shared resources, family commitments, significant risks, or consequences that both people will have to live with. Maturity lies partly in knowing which kind of decision you are making.
“Run it by Eva first” need not mean, “Ask Eva what I am allowed to do.” It can mean:
“My future is connected to hers. I cannot think accurately about it while pretending I am the only person in the room.”
Before making a choice that could affect your partner, pause long enough to ask:
- What matters to me here?
- What might matter to my partner?
- What effect could this choice have on our life together?
- Is this mine to decide, something to communicate, something to consult about, or something we must decide together?
You do not have to predict your partner perfectly. In fact, confidently assuming you know what your partner thinks can become another version of leaving them out. The important step is recognizing when your individual perspective is not enough information.
You can then ask your partner: “This is what I am considering. How would it affect you?” A partner who is consistently represented in this way no longer has to campaign for significance each time a decision arises. They begin to feel: “I exist in your mind even when I am not in the room.” That is one of the foundations of emotional safety.
Two people, separate and connected
The goal of partnership is not to abandon individuality. Nor is it to make one person responsible for preventing every uncomfortable feeling in the other. A satisfying relationship requires two people who can stand on their own feet and hold the other in their care. It requires more than loving your partner. It requires carrying an active awareness of your partner into the choices that shape both of your lives. In Collaborative Communication, this is what I call two-self capacity: the ability to keep yourself and your partner accurately represented in your awareness, particularly when your needs differ, and to create a next step that does not require either person to disappear. A strong relationship needs a strong “I.” It also needs a mind large enough to hold “you” and “us.” And sometimes, it helps to “run it by Eva first.”
Explore further
Watch Ryan Gosling Ryan Gosling take the Colbert Questionnaire the Colbert Questionnaire. The exchange about Eva comes near the end of the segment.
For a humorous look at the one-self system in action, see Sindhu Sindhu Vee’s comedy routine’s comedy routine. The segment on winning in marriage starts about 10 minutes in.
Robert Kegan’s In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life explores the developmental capacities demanded by modern work, relationships, and society.
The Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale offers a simple visual introduction to research on how close partners become incorporated into one another’s sense of self.
For readers interested in the research on feeling understood during conflict, see Gordon and Chen’s study, “Do You Get Where I’m Coming From?”.
Interdependence theory provides a broader research framework for understanding how commitment can shift decisions from immediate individual preference toward consideration of the partner and the relationship. An overview is available in Rusbult and Van Rusbult and Van Lange’s review’s review.
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