Season 2, Episode 21: Tools for Couples Relationships in an Era of Climate Change

Climate Change and Happiness

image credit|Stavrialena Gontzou

Season 2, Episode 21: Tools for Couples Relationships in an Era of Climate Change

In the first of a series of conversations on families and relationships, Thomas and Panu focused on the dynamics of couples relationships in an era of climate crisis. They discussed “eco-couples issues” ranging from small disagreements about daily acts to deal-breaker choices like whether to have children. Panu suggested that these were not simply “lifestyle choices” but rather “life-constituting choices.” Thomas shared his way of combining couples therapy techniques with his expertise about people’s environmental identity and values. As Thomas noted:

“... when we're debating with our significant other about some ecological behavior or political stance, we're really arguing about how we're showing love to ourselves and to the planet… So my love for nature is conflicting with your love for nature in some way. And then it starts to conflict with my love for you and your love for me…”

Listen to learn tools to maintain a secure connection with your partner while also working through the healthy tensions brought on by being two people trying to live ethically in an often unsustainable world.

Links

• Kasha Patel Feb 14, 2023 Washington Post: Is your partner worried about climate change? You might be surprised.

• Alison Kaplan March 31, 2023 NY Times: When Climate Change Melts Your Relationship: Everything was going great until I told him to dump his kerosene lamp for an LED.

• A new short film Reckless by Pella Kågerman captures a young couple fumbling with first relationships amidst a dystopian future world.

• Erica Berry (2021) Why We Need More Climate Change Love Stories. Outside Magazine

  • “Fiction, in other words, can help us visualize how to better love during a crisis. And when that fiction unfolds in speculative futures, it’s the love stories that make our bodies feel like we are there and, in the process, motivate us to fight for a better world back home.”

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty: Please support the climate change and happiness podcast see the donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Thomas Doherty: Well, hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, our podcast. This is a podcast for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other environmental issues. And this is a place to be with our personal side. The personal side of these issues for us, our emotional responses. And Panu and I support each other as we talk about our own lives, and things that we're doing. And so these podcast episodes are a little window into our conversations.

And we've been talking about family, couples, relationships. Our own lives. Our own families. Our own couples relationships. And there's been a lot in the news lately about “eco couples issues.” You know, couples having debates and conflicts about their sustainability behaviors. And it gets into all kinds of issues about how we live and our lifestyle and whether we have children or not. So we're going to talk about this. We have a plan to talk about couples issues, and then also at some point about family dynamics. So all of you listening here are in some sort of family dynamic in your life. And many of you are also in couples. So I hope you find this helpful. And we're coming at this from a therapeutic perspective. And a real [life] perspective. And a philosophical perspective. So Panu, you know, what's top of mind for you, as we jump into this idea of, you know, if we want to call this eco couples conversation? What's top of mind for you?

Pihkala: Yes, in places like Finland, we already have some physical impacts of climate change. And some people are more impacted by this, like the Sámi people in northern Finland. And some fishers, for example, in south Finland, and so on. But where we really already see climate change impacts is in human relations and social dynamics. And increasingly so. Over the years, I've been concerned about how to respond to the impacts of climate change on our human relationships. And I sometimes lead workshops, or discussion groups. Mostly I do research and advisory reports and talks and that sort of thing.

But in the groups, I've heard from young people that there are often some disputes between them and some of their older relatives in relation to environmental politics and climate politics. And this clearly is a factor which affects their well being. They are sad about the disputes in their relationships. But of course, they don't want either to give up their climate values, so to speak. And generally, it seems that in our communities and societies, we would need much more social talk about how to deal with these issues, which come to our living rooms and kitchen tables. But I know, Thomas, that you meet people in person, much more than I do. And I've got the impression that there's lots of different kinds of impacts of climate change on human relationships. So what's on top of your mind when thinking about this issue?

Doherty: Yeah, thanks, Panu. I think today, we can focus on the couples. The one to one relationship with our significant other. And then also realize that that takes place in the context of our family as well. You know, for young people, they're doing double duty. They're teens, adolescent teenagers, young adults, and early 20s. They're finding their own way in the world. Their own environmental identity might be different from their family of origin and the values and the behaviors. So in the best of times, we get along well with our family. And our family shares similar values. And we, in fact, are supported and loved by our family. And we all deal with these things together.

But then sometimes our knowledge and what we see in the world, diverts us from our typical family style practically in terms of the decisions we make about food we eat, and where we live, and politics. And all this sort of stuff. And we know we live in a polarized time. So, because of that our significant relationship is really important for us. We need to be with someone that shares our values. That we can be safe and secure with. And puts a lot of pressure on our personal relationships. Whether we're in a teen relationship. A young relationship. Whether we're in a just easy romantic relationship. Or whether we're committing to each other or getting married or thinking about long term or children. That's a lot of pressure. And the short story is that people don't have the tools. They don't have a lot of tools and concepts to talk about this. So they assume they know about their partner, but they have misunderstandings. And so there's been great stories in the media recently. Kasha Patel had a story in the Washington Post on Valentine's Day. You know, about partners worrying about climate change. [See show notes.] And Alison Kaplan had a story in the New York Times about a couple. The modern love column is about a couple disputing over the kerosene lamp that the male of this couple had on his sailboat. And whether they should have an LED lamp. [See show notes.] And it's a small thing, but it stood for all kinds of other stuff. So I think that's one territory that couples relationship dynamics.

Pihkala: Yeah, I definitely think so. And couples are, of course, people of various ages, as you say, Thomas. And some pretty fundamental decisions are made by couples, between 20 and 40 years, roughly speaking. For example, where to live and how to live and what will be the professions. And will they try to have children or adopt children? And in all of these areas of life, climate change is starting to have an effect. And people can have different takes on what would be the desired form of life. So also discussing with Finnish family therapists and social workers, who meet families and couples, they say that couples do sometimes end up in even strong disputes because of differences in climate values and desires.

Doherty: Yeah. So, you know, the tools that we've talked about in the podcast, you know, the idea that I have an environmental identity. A sense of my identity in relation to nature and the natural world. And it's built by my life experiences and where I grew up, and, you know, my family of origin. And where we lived. And my education. And where we traveled and our social class and our experiences. And some families have really ecological values. Other families have more utilitarian values about using nature. Some families are conservative. Some families are progressive. And so I find when you give couples of any age. It could be teenagers. It could be any age. If you give couples some tools to talk about each member of the couple, it doesn't matter. It could be gay or straight. Or different cultural backgrounds, different diverse couples. If you give them some tools, like even just okay, there's three kinds of eco values basically, for people. Your personal concerns about yourself. Concerns about other people. So altruistic values. And then ecological values. Concerns about the natural world and the web of life, right? Those are three different kinds of values. And like, for any given issue, you're talking about, what's the dominant value for you in relation to that issue?

Like in Allison Kaplan's essay in the New York Times about the couple arguing about the kerosene lamp, the young woman is really coming at it from an ecological and altruistic value about other people. And the guy is saying, well, I like this. We like this lamp. It's very, you know, it's very helpful for us. It's nostalgic. And so coming at it from more egocentric. And the woman realizes, yes, I like the lamp too. It's really pretty. It reminds us of the old days, when we're in the sailboat. And we love this. But you know, how do they sort out the different values because, of course, kerosene is a dirty fuel. And it would be better to transition to an LED lamp. But once you give them some tools, then they don't personalize it. Because otherwise it's like you're either with me or you're against me. You don't support me. I mean, this is an insight from couples therapy. And this is good for all of us to hear and remind ourselves. But whenever couples are talking, it's like watching a movie with subtitles. And the subtitles underneath whatever their conversation is along the lines of, do you love me? Do you care about me? Can I trust you? Do I feel safe with you? Every couple's communication has that as a subtext. And we forget that. And we argue about, you know, whether kerosene is better than some other fuel. And we intellectualize the whole thing. And we miss the core of our connection. So, anyway, so once you start giving people some insights to that, it goes a lot better.

Pihkala: Yeah. Thanks for sharing all that. And I really liked the subtitles idea. Subtexts. Speaking in codes. There might be different metaphors used here. And one part of our condition as a kind of “climate hostage,” as you have said, Thomas, is that we have to try to negotiate between individual responsibility and the need for structural reform. And this is something we discussed at an earlier episode of this podcast about ecological guilt, for example. But it has surfaced in many episodes. And it's tricky. In many ways, there's different public discourses and social norms about it.

And also, in this very interesting story about the kerosene lamp, that dimension was also present. The male character was more like saying that, you know, we have to put things in perspective. And it can't be that we have to get rid of this lamp. There's so much bigger things going on. And actually also, the man had quite strong ecological values in the end, when there was discussion about what he was doing for a profession and during free time, and so on. So these psychological and psychosocial dynamics about individual responsibility and dynamics of ecological guilt, I think that's something which might be also very helpful for people, if they get more tools about how to think about those dynamics. And how to communicate about them. Otherwise, it can easily become that people start blaming others for not reacting the same way to this dilemma as one does, himself or herself.

Doherty: Yeah. I mean, it's a good point because often, it's kind of common sense. But we tend to connect and partner with people that have similar values to us. So part of it is reminding the couple that, oh, you actually share all these values. And you're mostly on the same team. But, again, we have different priorities at different moments. And there's many different kinds of environmental values. And we may agree on our experiential values about wanting to be in nature and go camping or go sailing. We might agree on animal rights and different political things. But we might disagree, disagree on a technological point about what strategy we think is better.

You know, the stereotype is the male oriented person in the group is more technological and more logical and wants to focus on science. And the female oriented person is more emotional and relational. And that holds up in relationships across different genders and sexual orientations. But it isn't always like that. And that's a microcosm of the larger environmental debate in our society. Because environmentalists debate all the time about, you know, like, should Germany stop its nuclear reactors, or not. It's in the middle of stopping its nuclear reactors. A lot of people think that's the worst thing to do right now. We need nuclear power in terms of the transition. But, you know, people are super passionate on both sides of that issue. And so, there's no right answer there. It's a real pragmatic question. But that in a microcosm happens in our relationship, whether we're deciding whether we want to recycle plastic bags or use kerosene in the lantern when we're on our sailing trip.

Pihkala: Exactly. Exactly and these basic emotion communication and value communication skills of saying sometimes things out loud, of course, can be helpful. Saying like, I really appreciate that you care for the environment. And I know that we have differing opinions about this particular issue at hand. But I want to say to you that I'm not, you know, blaming you for being totally wrong here. I just want to discuss this thing, which is important for me. Now, this is very, very roughly speaking out loud but you know, making these things audible. And not just presuming that the other knows what you are thinking.

Doherty: Exactly. This is kind of basic couples health, right? You know, people can't read your mind. So you do need to let them know what you're thinking and feeling and you need to compliment them. And it's much easier to get someone to change or align with you if you compliment them first. and focus on the positive. Just in any kind of, you know, social program. Even in your relationship with your significant other. What I find is some of the couples therapy ideas that are already out there are just perfectly useful to apply in an eco context.

One of the things I do when I work with couples is have this kind of protocol when they're trying to make plans for the future. Like maybe on your anniversary, you might want to plan your next year of life together. And so actually like a client made this up and when I help them with it, and I've used it since. But, you know, it starts with celebration. What's working well? What are we happy about in our relationship? Visioning is the next step. Where do we see going in the future? Like what would be happening in the future. And then commitment is like, okay, what part of our visions can we actually commit to. Like, you have a vision, you want to do this thing. I have a vision. Can we commit to some piece? We can't do everything we want to do, but can I commit to some of your vision, or my vision. Like whether we're going to travel or make a life decision. And then contract. You write it down. You have to write it down. Because if you don't write it down, people will remember things differently. And that will lead to conflicts later. And that works really well with couples in all kinds of contexts. Start with the positive. It gets people feeling good, their vision is quite creative. The commitment is more practical. It's like, well, you want to travel around the world in a sailboat. I don't know if I can commit to that in my life right now. So what can we do, you know, that we can commit to. And then we have to write it down. So six months later, we don't remember it differently. Where I said, I thought sailing might be nice, sometime in the future. And you heard me say, we are going to go sailing next summer, you know. So, you know, so anyway, the writing down but you don't start with the writing down. Because that's too limited. The writing down just comes as kind of a record. But very much applies to what we want to do in our lives, you know.

Pihkala: Yeah, that's great. And reminds me of many things I was part of when I was younger. Including some counseling sometimes with couples. I'm not a professional counselor. And some of these communication skills courses for couples we went to when we were young with my wife. And we've been married over 20 years. So that's a long time since now. But it reminds me of the peer group impact, which is of course, a very universal phenomenon. But perhaps that would be something also in demand for climate and ecological matters. Having more of these peer group realizations that “hey, we are not actually the only couple who are finding it difficult to make decisions about whether we should have a second car or no car at all. And what are we gonna do with traveling by plane when one of us is much more sensitive about climate emotions or flying than the other is?” So perhaps peer group information might be helpful.

Doherty: I think it totally is. And, you know, listeners can think about that. Talking to their larger partner groups. But you do need some tools and you need some rules of engagement. Because otherwise, the polarized energy comes into the room. And our own insecurity comes up. A couple of things you had mentioned earlier in our conversations I wanted to get to Panu. I mean, recognizing that, you know, some of these behaviors like turning off lights and recycling and physical things, they're defenses. They're psychological defenses. We do these things to help manage our anxiety so they really are important for us to do. And when we're prevented from doing those we don't feel good. And then when our partner doesn't honor those, we don't feel good. You know, if we're sharing a space with someone.

But there is an emotional piece to this. And I like this idea that lifestyle choices isn't the right word. It's too small. But I think you said these are life-constituting choices. Like these are choices that build our life. You know, help us to embody our meaning and our sense of ourselves. So these things are I don't know that I like that word life-constituting versus lifestyle. Because lifestyle just sounds like consumeristic product stuff. But life constitutes more than no, I'm building a healthy life for myself.

Pihkala: Yeah. Thanks for observing Thomas. That came to my mind several times when there was some writing about couples. And especially the reproduction issue. If that is described as a lifestyle choice. I don't think that it does any justice to the magnitude of those issues and decisions. So there are also other issues, which can be seen as life-constituting. But that's definitely one. And something we discussed in this podcast, with Jade Sasser at an earlier episode. And I would recommend listeners to return to that or find that if that's new for you. And, of course, there's huge loads on that question, both for the couple, but also for their extended families and their social surroundings. So still, we human beings have this tribe orientation quite deep down I think. And the decisions of whether or not to try to have kids, evoke quite strong emotions and also unconscious processes, I think.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah. So the decision about whether to have a baby is the ultimate life-constituting decision, right? Because we're actually creating a whole new life that's going to want to, you know, constitute itself as we go here. And yeah, that's a huge one. Yeah, we recommend listeners go back to our episode with Britt Wray. And then with Jade Sasser because we got into having child decisions quite deeply. And it really is a decision. It's not only just a yes or no, but it's also a why. And how, and if we did it, what would it look like. And so it's a multifaceted decision. So yeah, we have all of these behaviors.

One of the things that's also helpful even with little behaviors, small ones, is that I, you know, they're ceremonial behaviors. So this is a thing that I've talked about with people. And they find it helpful. So if I go to Starbucks and get a coffee, or a latte, and then I have this disposable cup, you know, when I do that, I always have a rule of trying to use the cup, again, sometime. I like to reuse things. And not just use them once and throw them away. And that's just a little ceremony that I have. I mean, it doesn't necessarily change the world, for me to reuse that cup, or wash up plastic bags and reuse them. Or just any of these, these things that we do, you know, might not change the world. But it's important for me. It's a ritual. It's a ceremony. It stands for my values. And I like to, you know, give myself permission to do that. Even if other people aren't doing it. So, it's helpful for couples to realize that their partner might have a ceremony. A thing that they do. That isn't necessarily as important to us, but I'll do the ceremony with them. Because it's a way for us to be connected together. It doesn't hurt to reuse things. It's not a big thing to do that. And then if we can be flexible, and realize we are hostages in this situation, and we can't control. So sometimes we can't do the ceremony that we want. We can't live the life that we want. I mean, that's the dilemma of all of us.

70% of the population of the planet cannot live the life they want. Based on what we know people want. And what the government's and what people in power are allowing us to do. We cannot live the life that we want. And that is just an existential dilemma of the modern world. Because certain people are stopping us from doing that there's a lot of oppression in the world. But anyway, realizing that, you know, having some shared rituals that help us to constitute our values and realizing that partner A might focus on this part of sustainability. And Partner B might focus on this. And then we become a team. So you use your strengths. And I use mine. You know, if we want to travel on a vacation. And you can figure out the sustainability and the carbon footprint. And I'll figure out some of the personal interactions in our health. You know, for our diet. For lifestyle choices. Where we live. We can divide and conquer. And kind of work as a team with our different values and strengths. That's a better place to go than clashing and fighting.

Pihkala: Yeah, exactly. Appreciating the other so that he or she feels supported. And there's a joint project. And rituals are a very interesting topic. And it would be lovely to do an episode on that topic on its own. And there's certainly many kinds of ceremonialistic and ritualistic behavior in our everyday lives. And also in our environmental behavior. Recycling, for example, is a very common thing that people talk about in relation to their environmental behavior. And as you say, Thomas, it can be important for people as also an anxiety management tool. And I agree with what you say. And of course, then when one looks at the big picture, sometimes we have to be careful about only using recycling as a sort of single action bias. Or a tokenistic thing to do, so that we disregard other more impactful choices in our lives.

So that's what happens in Finland, at least sometimes. Also, people try to go behind the fact that, you know, “I'm recycling so well, but please don't criticize any other aspects of my life” in relation to the environmental impact. So just as a side note, this theme of recycling. But the very fact that it's an embodied thing to do, I think, has a lot to do with its significance. And many things related to environmental impacts are pretty abstract. So I think there's a clear impact. So I think there's a clear need for these embodied things. And I guess one could draw a link to couples here also. That there's a need for embodiment of things. You know, flowers, rings, and cups of coffee. And these things which every person who is in a relationship knows that they can be much more important than what their actual size is.

Doherty: Yeah we're getting at the classic couples therapy material here with the whole love languages, right? That's the whole piece here. Anybody who's done couples counseling may have come across that whole concept of the love languages. Whether I do, you know, words were positive words of affirmation to my partner or acts of service or quality time or touch and sexuality, gifts and tokens. And, you know, cards. And to be in a couple, you need to be able to understand and speak your partner's love language. And how they show and receive love. And then that overlaps with our eco language, right? Our environmental identity. That's why I keep telling the therapists I'm training, you know, eco couples counseling is a big area. Really a lot of people need help in this area. So a lot we're gonna put some there's a lot of nice writing.

Erica Berry is another one of our guests that we spoke with regarding her book Wolfish and about her ideas about women and nature. And she's written very eloquently about relationships. And again, some of these news stories that came out around the Valentine's Day, Earth Day news cycle. We'll get at this. I saw just the other day I really nice short film, through the New Yorker short film program. Pella Kågerman, I'm not pronouncing her name right, is a Swedish filmmaker. A short film about a very young adolescent relationship. [See show notes.] A couple that are trying to work through a breakup in the context of a dystopian, you know, climate change future world. And it spoke to the challenges of, you know, the teenagers and the young young people out there. That is just hey, these are the first relationships I've ever had in my life. And I'm still trying to figure out how to be in a relationship with another person. Which is hard. And we get our hearts broken. And we don't know how to communicate. And we get with the wrong partners that hurt us. And things like that. And then we're also concerned about this, whether we're going to be live and a decade kind of thing. And so that film helped to capture I think a little bit of that too. Us as old people, you know, older people, we've been through a lot of this already. But we forget what it's like just to have our first relationships with people. There's a whole, you know, sequence of this for our listeners that are listening in.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for the tip. Pella Kågerman's film is new for me even though she comes from the neighboring country of Sweden. And there's a great history of Swedish cinema from Ingmar Bergman to other directors. And some great stuff of human relations and couples relations depicted in those films. And now it also extends to ecological conditions and dystopias or utopias. And one of Erica Berry's great writings deals with how we also need climate fiction love stories. [See show notes.] So this brings us to the basic fuel of couples' love, this kind of basic theme that we have ended many episodes on. And we need some things to live for. And amidst all the things that are going on in the world, we do have the possibility for love in our relationships. And if we can believe in the possibility of love also in various possible futures, that will be highly motivating. That's one of Erica's great points in that essay and brings us to some fundamentals about couples.

Doherty: Yeah. So that's a good note to end on. You know, so when we're debating with our significant other about some ecological behavior or political stance, we're really arguing about how we're showing love to ourselves and to the planet. So we're really arguing about our love for nature. And my love for nature is coming out differently than yours. If we can stay with that it is super helpful. So my love for nature is conflicting with your love for nature in some way. And then it starts to conflict with my love for you and your love for me, as well. So all we need is love as they say. But yes. It's what's most important at the end of the day. And if we can keep that we're going to be much better off. So listeners, I know some of you find this helpful because we're human. And so we'd love to hear from you. Couples and things that are helpful for you. Please send us a message you can find us at climatechangeandhappiness.com. And you can send us messages and ideas. Find our Patreon there and support us. Thank you very much. Good luck with your relationships. Panu, have a good evening.

Pihkala: Take care everyone. Thanks again for the discussion.

Doherty: The Climate Change and Happiness Podcast is a self funded volunteer effort. Please support us so we can keep bringing you messages of coping and thriving. See the donate page at climatechangeandhappiness.com.