Communication Won't Fix Your Relationsip | Yael Schonbrun

Psychologist and couples therapist Yael Schonbrun explains why better communication skills alone won't prevent misunderstandings in close relationships. Drawing from her clinical work, she reveals that couples actually misunderstand each other more than strangers do, because familiarity creates cognitive blind spots and naïve realism makes each partner assume their perspective is objective truth. She introduces perspective getting—actively asking your partner to share their experience—as a more effective alternative to the common advice of trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes. The conversation covers practical strategies for breaking out of the victim-villain cycle, using repair rituals after conflict, and recognizing how stress and hunger lower our threshold for fighting.