Reading this column, I was able to figure out that John Gottman was the man in TikTok video #5 that I recommended in a post on October 15th. I titled it "When your partner makes a bid for your attention."
The TikTok user didn't identify the speaker and seems to have just taken a snippet of this 47-minute video put up on YouTube by The Gottman Institute.
The snippet in question was about the "Day one" prescription "Make Contact." Here's Hannah Betts on her Day One experience with Terence:
Monday, day one, involves 'turning towards'.... Say what? “ ‘When one person attempts to initiate a small connection by making a bid,’ ” reads Tez “ ‘— it could be physical or verbal, overt or subtle — and their partner then responds in one of three ways. Either they turn towards that bid, turn away from it, or turn against it.’"...
The 12 hours of turning that ensue are interminable: Terence forever twinkling his eyes at me, initiating regulation six-second snogs and pressing his clammy forehead against mine....
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18 comments:
She doesn’t like Terrence enough to make the exercise work.
What a sad tale! If the contempt she showed toward her partner during the 7 days didn't kill the relationship, her hanging out their dirty laundry in the London Times was surely the death blow.
The Gorman’s’ first observation is that contempt kills relationships. Based on the first couple of paragraphs, this relationship is doomed. Is she trying to be funny? She comes across as both vile and petty. Run, Terrence.
@Eric Hammerbacher — you posted a comment that was obviously meant for a different post. I'm going to move it there and delete what you put here.
"What a sad tale! If the contempt she showed toward her partner during the 7 days didn't kill the relationship, her hanging out their dirty laundry in the London Times was surely the death blow."
Unless he enjoys her humor... and if he doesn't, they don't belong together.
I bet he's in on the joke. Come on, he's got to be. The stuff about his feet...
"Feet" tag added to post.
Look — Betts has been writing humorously about her relationship with Terence for years. He's clearly okay with it, participating, and encouraging.
Think of all the husband/wife comedy teams. It's not done with displays of mutual respect. That said, don't try this at home. Leave it to professionals.
If you don't think Betts is funny, maybe it's cultural difference. It's the London Times. The verbal jousting is crueler, I believe.
I have Alley Oop shaped feet with toe nails that a podiatrist once said they sould be classified as claws. My grandsons get a kick out of watching me trim them with wire cutters and smooth them with an orbital sander. Yeah I know. It explains a lot.
"The verbal jousting is crueler, I believe."
Absolutely true. We lived in London for two years. Unlike Americans, the Brits feel no societal pressure to appear to be polite. The national sport is the put-down (called locally "taking the piss out" of another).
"Taking the piss" is a phrase worthy of of some research. As I recall, it originated from observations of the effect of morning micturition on a morning erection. Does your OE dictionary cover it? If not, try Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable.
"The duo’s latest outing, The Seven-Day Love Prescription, Tezzer’s new bible, hits the shelves at the end of this month."
When I read that sentence, I understood that Betts was writing something like a review for the new Gottman book.
Betts is using a humorously exaggerated style to show an affection for Terrance. Both act in ways that make them unsuitable for anyone else. It reminds me of those, I guess rom-coms, of the 30's and 40's. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, or the Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy.
Gottman's method seems absurd, and both Betts and Terrance seem insufferable. That's the gag.
" Does your OE dictionary cover it?"
The OED doesn't specify the dynamics of how or why the piss is taken out (inside the metaphor), but it does have the phrase, within the entry for "piss."
The Americans started it:
2a. Originally U.S. to —— the piss out of: to —— to an extreme degree. Cf. to —— the shit out of (a person or thing) at shit n. and adj. Phrases 2.
1929 E. Dahlberg Bottom Dogs v. 98 He would knock the piss out of him.
1934 H. Miller Tropic of Cancer 83 That boss of mine, he bawls the piss out of me if I miss a semi-colon.
1971 H. S. Thompson Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) 24 I told him that we had a Vincent Black Shadow. That scared the piss out of him.
1998 Independent (Nexis) 7 Nov. 16 What irritates the piss out of me is when I see people pick up my book, and then just put it straight back down again.
b. colloquial (chiefly British, Australian, and New Zealand). to take the piss (out of): to make fun (of), to mock, deride, satirize; = to take the mickey (out of) at mickey n.1 7.
1945 Penguin New Writing 26 49 The corporal..sat back in his corner looking a little offended. He thought I was taking the piss.
1953 M. Crosland tr. ‘F. Marceau’ Flesh in Mirror xxxiv. 245 Divorced, I would still have thought about them, still tried to take the piss out of them.
1958 F. Norman Bang to Rights 116 This only made us take the piss out of him the more.
1971 B. W. Aldiss Soldier Erect 49 ‘Come on, Wally, like—I don't think you ought to take the piss out of the poor sod!’ Geordie said. ‘He's got his living to earn.’
1978 R. Hill Pinch of Snuff xiv. 145 When Hope replied ‘He's a Hungarian’ he thought at first he was taking the piss.
1995 i-D Nov. 29/2 ‘I don't think people realise how tongue in cheek we are,’ says Johnny. ‘We take the piss out of everyone, really.’
2004 Jockey Slut Feb. 107/1 It's quite anti-establishment from an Irish point of view, the way it takes the piss out of the church.
I don't agree that Gottman's method is absurd. It does sound awfully difficult if your marriage is on the rocks, though. If you already view your partner with contempt, if you already despise him, how are you going to look him in the eye without his seeing that? Are you that good an actor? I get the "fake it till you make it" idea; that's pretty solid, if you're doing relationship maintenance. But does it actually work for relationship repair?
Two more things.
We had friends who touted the 6-second kiss many years ago - or at least the wife did. They're divorced now, though I have reason to believe it wasn't because of this. But when they were together and doing this thing at least once a day, it seemed so contrived to us; we just couldn't make it not seem silly. This was when we were barely more than newlyweds, do maybe there's a sweet spot?
And - I once read a book called Lube Jobs that was specifically about how to maintain your relationship sexually. It was cute and funny, and its whole point was "if you love him or her, sometimes just fake it till you make it, in any of these suggested ways." But it was predicated on the love existing.
It didn’t strike me as humorous, only mean, simply because she never took a jab at herself. I kept thinking she would write about something funny she tried, or say something that was so preposterously over-the-top that it would have been funny. Instead it just seemed bitter to me. Maybe I’m not British enough, but I think I’m fine with that if it looks this mean.
From Wikipedia:
"Take the piss" may be a reference to a related (and dated) idiomatic expression, piss-proud, which is a vulgar pun referring to the morning erections which happen when a male person awakens at the end of a dream cycle (each about 90 minutes in length throughout the night) or may be caused by a full bladder pressing upon nerves that help effect an erection. This could be considered a "false" erection, as its origin is physiological, not psychosexual, so in a metaphoric sense, then, someone who is "piss-proud" would suffer from false pride, and taking the piss out of them refers to deflating this false pride, through disparagement or mockery.[5][6] As knowledge of the expression's metaphoric origin became lost on users, "taking the piss out of" came to be synonymous with disparagement or mockery itself, with less regard to the pride of the subject.
"Okay, remember when I said that all marriages are savable? Well, it ain't gonna happen for you guys...
[A]s a therapist, I'm not allowed to tell you what do to. But, uh, as a human being with two fucking eyes in my head, yeah I think you should get divorced as soon as possible.
This is some catastrophic shit."
Call the blighter Terry.
Terence makes people think of Terence and Philip.
Also, people have problems spelling it.
The first rule of spicing up your relationship is not writing in newspapers about spicing up your relationship -- or about your partner's "sexual repertoire."
Howard, with his best comment evah, wins this thread!
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