When I tell people about Rethink Perfect, Why Relationships Fail, their first reaction seems to be that people and their relationships are too complicated to work out why their relationship fail and because “we are all different”. Well here is my reply to their concerns.
In the book I refer to relationships being like an aeroplane and it possibly has a flight box recorder like a plane. And that we can investigate each and every failed relationships if we so desired.
Well, maybe we are even more than a machine, more than a simple recorder. But for now let’s look at two simple parts of a person and see what we get.
Our Ears
How many people do you know that enjoy being shouted at or demanded of in a tone that is laced with expectations? None that I know of.
Our Mouth
How many people do you know that could claim that they had never raised their voice or tone in anger to try coerce someone to acquiesce to their demands? None that I know of.
But wait! These two parts of people are not compatible and when put together are likely to put stress on the workings of the relationship.
As you can see this is not rocket science and you do not have to be Sherlock to realise that aggression and demands do not work well with people in relationships. That is, all people in all uses. Or at least all the people that I know and all the people that I can think of.
It is understandable that demands and aggressions occur because of our mouth but not acceptable because of our ears.
Rethink Perfect, Why Relationships Fail, is simply built around these two parts of a person and has a series of rules, tools and agreements to prepare for these two mismatched parts when put to use in a relationship. And has been put together by the investigation of what I call our Black Box Recorder that we all have and when investigated by an “independent” source, can reveal a mountain of information, useful for exposing the common problems that occur in failed relationships and allow for the common solutions to be proposed.
rethink PERFECT 
I think the “black box” analogy does quite work in this context.
Planes and buildings for that matter are engineered and pilots are recorded as they interact with the plane.
Relationships I think are much more complex given societal, family, workplace, educational, media, time and drug influences etc combined with two individuals in the relationship make for an almost infinity of variables that engineering principles would go into meltdown with.
Air crashes can often be narrowed to one malfunction that could not be recovered from. Whereas malfunctions in relationships can often be recovered from.
However I do agree there are broader common denominators present in a failed relations and vice versa with relationships that seem to “work”.
FYI I have added this to the end of my post to conclude it and bring it more into context.
“And has been put together by the investigation of what I call our Black Box Recorder that we all have and when investigated by an “independent” source, can reveal a mountain of information, useful for exposing the common problems that occur in failed relationships and allow for the common solutions to be proposed.”
Interesting Sherlock! But I think you may be underestimating the capacity of our brains. Over the years its workings have been compared with a lot of analogous items such as a switch board, and the latest is with a computer but no computer yet has been able to match our overall workings. Speed yes, but not its overall power.
We have a tremendous capacity to recall information and the context it was created and delivered in. In a lot of ways our recall is far superior to a black box but the analogy is that if we were to rationally and objectively (as close as possible) we could discover so much about ourselves and our relationships, both positive and negative that would help us maintain and restore present and future and possibly even past relationships. However most fail to go there in their investigation continue on and are destined to repeat the same mistakes that led to previous failures.
From watching those flight investigation programs I beg to differ on your point that flight disasters are narrowed down to one malfunction. On the contrary they seem to uncover a series of errors and faults that occur and end in a crash. And as all items are created by people, human error is still one of the largest causes of plane crashes, I believe.
You say malfunctions from relationships can be recovered from. How many failed relationships that you know (divorces) have been recovered from? Failure in this case is plane crashes and divorces or partnership bust-ups.
Flight investigations are not done by the owners of the plane but by an independent body whose whole purpose is to find and identify the causes as to why the plane fell out of the sky. We do not have any such body available for relationship failures, just the two parties pointing the finger at each other. (when you think about it, probably the same two fingers that caused the crash in the first place)
to answer question: 1 x malfunction = 1 x poor behaviour
so a black box is only used when there is a catastrophic failure.
so in a relationship, why wait for a catastrophic failure, before you learn your mistakes.
—
I’d argue relationships can recover from a malfunctions i.e. and get back on track, often the stronger for it.
Aircraft safety has a very extreme intolerant towards malfunctions and therefore goes to extreme lengths to avoid malfunctions happening in the first place. But at the same time they invest massive amounts in R&D to improve safety and reliability of aircraft.
Therefore if an airline was to wait, each time, for learning to flow into the black box before they implemented improvements in safety, then I think a whole lot more planes would have fallen out of the sky.
so yeah sure use the black box, to learn from one’s catastrophic relationship failures – though the rest of the time one has the opportunity to be more pro-active and learn from each and every little malfunction – so that, hopefully there, is no catastrophic failure.
So pilots are far more valuable than black boxes and they contirbute (when still alive) to the majority of malfunctions and catastrophic failures.
AKA get a couple ot talk aout their failed relationship and we will find out why they fail.
I believe there is a common red line that runs through most failed relationships
“so in a relationship, why wait for a catastrophic failure, before you learn your mistakes.”
I use your catastrophic failure to investigate you black box and now plough that info into safe garding future relationships.
Why did you not recover from your malfunctions?
The Black box is so valuable because when a plane crashes most of the occupants die and valuable info is lost that could be supplied by the pilots and crew.
The best thing about failed relationships is that most couples still survive and the wealth of info is still present.
Our Black box is present every day of our lives and available to anyone that is willing to do the research. I have spent 26 years doing that research.