iCubed For Couples: Greg Stewart Revolutionary Approach To Relationship Communication

Are you ready to transform your relationships with the most important people in your life? Join Juliet Clark as she sits down with author and counselor Greg Stewart who explores his latest book, I3 For Couples. Greg unpacks the core concepts of his iCubed framework – Information, Interpretation, and Intensity – and shows how couples can use it to improve communication, resolve conflict, and deepen connections. He also breaks down practical tools like the HWR grid and the Stop-and-Schedule technique to navigate different challenges well and build a more fulfilling
partnership.

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iCubed For Couples: Greg Stewart Revolutionary Approach To Relationship Communication

Welcome to Promote Profit Publish. I’m your host, Juliet Clark, and we have another author guest. This is the second book he’s released in about four months, and it’s just in time for Valentine’s Day. I’m sure if you’re looking for solutions for couples, you’re going to love this interview. Before we get started, I want to remind you to go over, we have one of our free trainings this Friday. You can sign up at BAMagTraining.com. This month’s guest is Joie Gharrity, and she’s going to share superstar strategies to transform your influence into earnings.

I know for a lot of people, it’s hard. They don’t know what the secret sauce is. They don’t understand that this is a long-term build. I heard an interview with another author on The Megyn Kelly Show that talked about the frustration of some people who go into this influencer industry because the people who train them lead them to believe that it’s instant gratification. They get frustrated and quite often go broke trying to be that influencer. Show up for Joie’s event. It’s about an hour. Once again, it’s at BAMagTraining.com.

Our guest for the second time is Dr. Greg Stewart, who lives in Rockwell, Texas, and is currently a full-time telehealth counselor, executive coach, and consultant. He has a B.A. in Organizational Leadership from Cornerstone University, a Master of Divinity from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, an M.A. in Counseling, and a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision. His dissertation was The Relationship of Emotional Intelligence to Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment. If you saw his first book, I³ Information Interpretation Intensity: Unlock the Inner Strength Behind Your Negative Emotions, that was the first one in the series. That one was about information, interpretation, and intensity, and a lot about owning your triggers and working on healing. This day is about couples. Stay tuned while Greg and I talk about his new book.

Introducing Greg And His New Book

Greg, welcome.

Thanks for having me. How are you doing?

I’m good. I’m so excited about your second book because I’m going to tell you something about Greg that you probably don’t know, he writes books faster than anybody I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen people write books fast, but they’re not good. His are good. There are so many people who go to those workshops that are like, write a book in a weekend, and they’re the worst books ever. You got busy on a weekend and wrote a book, and it’s pretty darn good.

Thank you. I’ve been talking about it for so long with so many people, I just had to sit down and just do the dump. In these two books, it was easier. Maybe a book I haven’t done won’t be so easy the next time, but these two were pretty easy like that.

You were going to do more of a leadership type.

That one will be just like, it’ll be easy too because I’ve done so much.

What I’m excited about is that you could write that for men that are like late teens, early 20s. I just heard this great interview with Megan Kelly on the collapse of parenting. They referenced that age group and that men need it in that age group. Back to you. What inspired you to write I³ Information Interpretation Intensity: Unlock the Inner Strength Behind Your Negative Emotions for couples, and how does it build on that previous work that you did?

I stumbled upon it because several months ago, before I wrote this book, I was only on LinkedIn as far as social media. When I realized, I got on all the social media, and I started just doing videos, reels for Instagram and stuff. I wanted to shake it up a little bit and do some variety. When I would do a section for I3, I was thinking, this would be great. Why don’t I do an I3 for couples? because it’s the same principle but a different way to apply it.

I started just doing short videos. I’d hold my dog just for something different, or she’s just sitting there staring, and I’d do a minute or so video. At the top, I just put I3 for couples. As we all do, I woke up at 3:00 in the morning, just sitting there, and I’m like, “I should write an I3 for couples,” and it just took off from there.

I didn’t do anything with it then. One weekend, we went to a conference. We messed up on the timing of it. I had all day to do nothing. I just sat down on my laptop in the hotel, and I just went to town. I wrote 80% of it in four days. I just stumbled upon that. I wasn’t intentional, just stumbled upon, like, I had to write I3 for couples.

Understanding The I Cubed Technique

You guys, if you haven’t looked at his Instagram, I swear, Instagram is like my evening thing that I do for my spare time. He’s doing a good job with it. Can you explain the concept of I³ Information Interpretation Intensity: Unlock the Inner Strength Behind Your Negative Emotions and then how it specifically applies to couples?

The cube comes from, it looks like I3. A lot of people pronounce it I three, but it’s I³ because I was a math major in college. It’s three I’s, information, interpretation, intensity. I’ve been using that little technique for 25 years because it’s almost like I3 is like the Panama Canal. The first lock has to fill up with water before the second lock opens, so the first lock is information. The rule is that it is illegal for me to have any interpretation, or any opinion, or any intensity, any emotion, until I have all the information. It is because what do we do as humans? 

As soon as we hear a piece of information, we don’t challenge it, we don’t check it, we don’t question it. We just do the whole bias thing and just accept it, and then immediately have an opinion and emotions. What I’ve learned to do just with my own self is like, there’s a lot more information. I haven’t talked to the other person. I need to get more information, so I would stop myself and not have any opinion or not have any emotions until I got all the information.

Once that fills up and I say, “I have enough of the information,” then interpretation is, I just start with negative, neutral, positive. The challenge question there is, “Is there any other way of looking at it?” Because again, our mental model just spits out an opinion, and we just go with it, instead of saying, Stop, because obviously, it’s going to be, most often, negative. We don’t stop and say, “Greg, is there any other way of interpreting what Juliet said?” I come up with all the statements, so, negative, “She meant this. She meant this, is it true?” Neutral or positive, “She could have meant this.” All the different types of interpretation to the information, that’s where critical thinking is.

Finally, once that block fills up, then it’s basically intensity. Intensity is simply, “ What’s my response now?” Truly, “How much emotional energy do I need to respond to it?” A lot of us have way too much emotional energy. It comes from all these assumptions. That’s just the technique. We just say, “I’m not going to have any opinion or any emotion until I have all the information.” Just that one, imagine if we applied that to our culture. On social media, like X or something, “I’m not going to have an opinion until I have all the information.”

That’s where it came from. That technique I would apply to the first book, I³ Information Interpretation Intensity: Unlock the Inner Strength Behind Your Negative Emotions, because I just like the title, and then laid out the whole counseling process. Same thing with couples, husbands and wives, we assume things. We don’t have the information about either our spouse or our children. Especially in the interpretation, “Is there any other way to look at it other than your spouse is a demon?” It’s just looking at it differently. It’s a technique that can be applied. It’s like the summary of the entire book, just use this technique. It is a surefire way to use a lot of the material in the book itself. That’s where it came from.

That’s amazing because I think the longer you’re married, the more you know how to push those buttons and get a reaction. It sounds like you can use this with the whole family. I’m like, when my kids were growing up, daughters are drama, they would come home, tell a story. I’d get in that mode, like, trust but verify, because that’s only one side of the truth, and it sounds very dramatic.

There’s a couple of proverbs in chapter 18. One says, “He who answers a matter before he hears it is a fool in their folly,” which means you answer, you give your opinion before you hear the whole thing, you’re a fool. Another one says, “The first to plead his case seems right, until another one comes along and examines him.” It’s like a trust-but-verify process. It’s wisdom principles.

In the book, you discuss the importance of differentiating between emotional goals and paths. How can couples practically apply this concept to improve their relationships?

As opposed to I³ Information Interpretation Intensity: Unlock the Inner Strength Behind Your Negative Emotions, and just talking more generally about emotional goals, I immediately get into the two main emotional goals for couples, namely for men and for women. The main emotional goal for men is to feel significant, respected, successful. The main emotional goal for women is to feel security, safety, stability. We choose pathways, which ties into the relationship. We choose pathways in order to achieve those goals.

In our marriage, a guy will choose, honestly, we’re shallow. We’ll choose, it literally comes to our wives. We feel the most significant with our wives in the relationship of intimacy, and admiration, and stuff. With our wives, it has to do with, to achieve the goal of security and safety, it’s through the pathways of conversation, intimate conversation, not just small talk, honesty and openness, affection, and such. When we get triggered, the buttons are pushed. It’s when, from our spouse, we feel that those two main emotional goals are being blocked. “You’re not making me feel significant.” That’s our complaint. “You’re disrespecting me,” a guy will say. A lot of times a wife won’t, she will say, “I don’t feel emotionally safe with you right now.”

That’s just the terminology we use. It’s based in that, our emotional goal is being blocked. There are other ones again, but just start with, when you’re upset, you’re angry, ask yourself, “What emotional goal is being blocked?” Start with those words, or synonyms of those words. Maybe not security, but emotionally safe. Not significance, but respect. It’s probably there where you feel your emotional goal is being blocked. What pathway are you going to take? That’s honestly where affairs happen. When we’re not having those goals met through our spouse, we will make the mistake and seek it elsewhere. It’s always about the emotional goal that they’re trying to achieve.

Using HWR Grid To Make Good Choices

That’s interesting. You introduce RHWR, rational, healthy, wise, and right, the grid inside of your book. How can couples use this tool to evaluate their behaviors and choices?

A lot of times, let’s say you and your spouse are arguing, and it comes down to, obviously, when we get emotional, we’re trying to win the argument. Rational, healthy, wise, and right come in when we are making sure the path we choose is rational, healthy, wise, and right. In order to feel significance, “I’m going to work 60 hours a week.” Great, but that pathway is not healthy. Arguing with your spouse, instead of saying, “I disagree with you,” and making it personal, I say we’re all, as humans and couples, accountable to, but we can also appeal to, rational, healthy, wise, and right.

When you are having a discussion, you say, “That is not rational.” When you say, “That’s not rational,” or “That’s not healthy,” instead of just disagreeing with you, they’ve got to prove that it is rational, that the thought is rational, or that it is healthy. When we can appeal to it, we’re both accountable to it and can appeal to it. When we’re arguing, a lot of times what happens is, on any topic, there’s a main point. My main point about buying the van or my main point about buying the van is this. The main points about that topic normally pass rational, healthy, wise, and right.

What happens is the second phase, which are all of the emotional statements, opinions, and that orbit around the main point. Like, “My mother.” “What about your mother?” Again, you’re talking about buying a van or the accusation or generalization of, “You always get your way.” It’s a statement that orbits around the main point. You go to the main point, What is rational? There’s my main point and your main point. It becomes two goals. You say, “I’m okay with that, as long as.” and you give your main point. I say skip past all of those other statements that orbit around the main point and get to the most rational, healthy, wise, and right solution moving forward. It’s being submissive to the principles of those words.

That is so funny, because growing up in my household, whenever my dad said, “Your mother was combat boots,” we all knew all hell’s breaking loose. It’s that getting personal and needling. Should you say, I’m going to just push back a little bit, I’m sure you have a word for it, should you tell a woman that she’s being irrational in the midst of all this, or is there a better word?

There’s a way to say it. For instance, you don’t say, I don’t say you’re being irrational. I’m saying that that statement is not rational. It’s specific to what was just spoken versus, again, like using a generalization. It is because what do we always do? It’s like, You’re too committed to your job. How do you prove or disprove that? But the generalization goes out there. Versus, like, you can’t say, You’re being irrational, because that is a generalization. You’ve got to stick to the specific statements, actions, or whatever the case is. You don’t do that.

Thank you. I thought saying something like, “That doesn’t feel rational to me. Could you clarify that? Because I’m not connecting the dots,” or something like that, that makes it a little less. I don’t know what it is with us women. Just don’t call us irrational. The book touches on the concept of blind areas in relationships. What advice do you have for people that have those? Because obviously, I think every relationship, even with ourselves, sometimes we have big blind spots. How do you approach that in couples?

With couples having blind spots, it’s either they’re not seeing their own contributions to the issue, or it’s a different, like, a double standard as far as intensity, like your offense is greater than my offense. Or you’re not seeing how you’re projecting onto me. For example, from past hurt relationships, I ask people, If your spouse is saying they don’t trust you, and it’s not because of you but because of past relationships, that’s why that’s a blind area. It is because I’ve done nothing wrong, but you are operating, as far as the level of trust with me, as if I did.

A lot of it has to do with that carryover effect from past experiences onto the present topic that we don’t realize. Secondly, it’s just in the whole process, like in the first book, realizing that our negative emotions, our first-blush response, is to burn all the energy on the object or the person that caused the negative emotion. We just churn all of our energy by judging the action and their character motives. Where we’re blind, though, is realizing that we have to go inside and figure out what’s being exposed. It is because what’s being exposed is that I’m feeling insecure overall about, let’s say, my looks, or I’m feeling insecure overall about my success. I am basically just needing my spouse to fill in that vacuum. My intensity is very high toward my spouse on a small thing they did or didn’t do, expectations.

What’s happening that I’m blind to is that I have a vacuum inside of me that I’m needing them to fulfill. I talk about when it comes to identity and worth, that a lot of times, when it comes to identity and worth in couples, that’s where we say we take things personally, especially from our spouses. When we take things personally, it means that I am needing you to validate me, pursue me, accept me, whatever, or adore me, because, honestly, I don’t adore myself. I need you to fill it in. That’s a deep one, but that’s where any insult or lack of pursuit, we take it personally because our value and worth are tied to and dependent on, contingent upon, that person pursuing me. It is because I don’t feel valued or worthy just in my opinion of me.

A lot of even super healthy people don’t realize how much. I always say that I don’t need my wife to pursue or validate me. I want her to, but I don’t need her to. It just decreases that intensity. Without proactively going after that, I don’t care who you are or how healthy you think you are. If it’s a need, not a want, then we respond with exaggeration. We just put the walls up, and we don’t even accept the want. That’s a very unhealthy way to respond, rational, healthy, wise, and right, by putting a wall up and not even pursuing the want.

That’s a lot of the blind spots. It’s what’s happening in the basement of our hearts, both in impacting our identity and worth and in bad past experiences, like big T or little t trauma, that are getting dumped on this current situation. In my book, I talk about the basement. On the surface are all the emotions, insecurity, anxiety, fear, worry, or depression. In the basement are these concepts, identity, worth, and trauma that are playing into our current relationship, and these things aren’t being addressed or healed. That’s what a lot of both men and women are blind to.

Stop And Schedule To Avoid Escalation

I’m just thinking in my own situation, when things get heated, I say, “Can we take a break here?” because I’ve seen the power of how those words can destroy as well when I was growing up. That’s my ten. I know it irritates people in the heat of the moment to say, “Stop. Can we just, like, regroup in an hour?”

You make a good point. That is the first actual technique I give to couples because 99% of the couples who reach out to me, what do they want to work on? Communication. That’s always the thing. What I say, so what logically happens? I say every couple has topics to discuss, that’s not the issue. When we discuss those topics, we hurt each other’s feelings, and then now we have to have an entire other conversation to recover from the hurt. I say, so literally, the first step in marriage counseling is to not cause further damage. I say literally that technique, but to your point, I say the person who does stop is doing the right thing. What triggers the other spouse is they assume that we’re never going to revisit it again. It’s just, basically, they feel stonewalled. I use stop and schedule, which means, Let’s take a break because we don’t want to escalate and cause damage. Can we revisit this in two hours?

If the schedule happens, then it soothes the other partner who is an active problem solver. The person who’s stopping is doing the right thing, but they need to understand that we need to promise we’ll revisit it. Otherwise, it’s going to feel like, “When can we talk about this? Never.” Never revisit. If we do stop and schedule, and the only way it works, I said, literally, you guys never have to escalate again with this one technique. It’s very hard to implement, but with stop and schedule, you’ll never have to escalate again. Just, you have permission every time, “Let’s step back, not cause further damage, and then come back.” Even if it’s fifteen minutes, “Let’s take fifteen minutes and grow up a little bit,” or half an hour, or two hours, or tomorrow at 7:00. That’s an incredibly powerful thing. It’s the first technique I give to couples, but it has to have the schedule piece or else it doesn’t work.

I would imagine the schedule piece, when you circle back around to it, also builds trust that this is the way we can safely communicate. I have to ask because you said, “Let’s grow up now.” I used to mediate between my ex-husband and his ex-wife all the time. I would literally say to them, “This is like your sixteen-year-olds are fighting. Where are the adults?” I would make them, like, go to your rooms, We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Not really go to your rooms, but let’s just separate for now. Is that true that in trauma, you both go back to that time where that trauma is interacting?

Sure. There may not be any trauma. It’s just what’s happening is that in our frontal lobes is where all critical thinking is. What happens when we experience those emotions, insecurity, anxiety, fear, worrying, and oppression, is our energy gets pulled from our frontal lobe into our amygdala, which is the emotional brain, and that’s normal. The issue is it’s getting pulled from the frontal lobe. We’re not thinking clearly, we’re just being emotional. In those emotional statements, there’s not logic. The wisest response is the emotional mind plus the logical mind combined together. What happens is when we get upset, there’s no logic, which comes across as childish. We have to calm down and get that energy back up into the frontal lobe. That’s technically what it is.

I want to follow this up. You mentioned the importance of balancing grace and truth in relationships. How do you balance that inside of a relationship?

Whenever there’s a disagreement, we have points that I say turn those into two goals. I have a goal. You have a goal. Same thing with grace and truth. I say grace and empathy, kindness, whatever you want to call it, grace and empathy without truth and boundaries and change or whatever is enablement. You want to be kind and gracious, but if you don’t set boundaries and bring truth, then it’s enablement. Truth and boundaries without grace and empathy is toxic.

In every difficult conversation, you have to accomplish both goals, which simply means you have to make statements that are grace and empathy, like, “It’s OK. We will figure this out. I absolutely love you. You are safe with me.” True statements, like, “This will change now.” It’s kind of a both-and. My first book, I talk about in our culture, it used to be, like, back in the 70s and 80s or 60s, 70s, and 80s, that there was way too much truth and boundaries, like accountability. The kids, people, felt like it was toxic, like they could never succeed. The pendulum has swung way to the other side with the whole DEI and everything else. It’s starting to pull back because we’re seeing the ramifications where there’s just grace and empathy without any truth, logic, or boundaries.

I was going to say, can you write this for politicians?

Yeah, so, it’s just swung the other way, but now it’s stopping because all these companies are giving up the DE because it’s so far, there’s just no truth or boundaries or logic to it. It’s starting to swing back as grace and empathy without truth and boundaries, it’s like we have to accomplish both goals at all times. That’s what that means.

Find Greg’s Book And Improving Relationships

I think in the companies, I don’t think you can have profit without truth and accountability inside of a company, or it’s just bad. Greg, I³ for Couples will be out on February 4th, just in time for Valentine’s Day. You guys can go buy his book, I³ Information Interpretation Intensity: Unlock the Inner Strength Behind Your Negative Emotions. His first book is more a dive into your own self. Where can we find you if we want to reach out and find more or even have you come out and speak to our audience, our company? Where can we find you?

On Amazon. I always put out, like, on social media, just search for I3 book and that’ll get you to my book, because there’s I3 for a computer chip, so don’t search for that. I3 book I can do for search, but go to my website, BecomingMore.com. Simple. I have a contact page on there, and reach out to me, and let’s connect. I’m all over social media, too.

You are. Especially go check him out on Instagram at @dr.gregstewart. Greg, thank you.

Thank you, Juliet. Great being here. Bless you. Thanks for having me.

Important Links

• BA Mag Training
• Becoming More
• Greg Stewart on Instagram
• Greg Stewart on Facebook
• Greg Stewart on X
• Greg Stewart on TikTok
• Greg Stewart on LinkedIn
• Greg Stewart on YouTube
• Amazon
• Instagram
• I³ Information Interpretation Intensity: Unlock the Inner Strength Behind Your Negative Emotions

About Greg Stewart

Dr. Greg Stewart lives in Rockwall, TX and is currently a full-time telehealth counselor, executive coach, and consultant.

He has a BA in Organizational Leadership (Cornerstone University), a Master of Divinity (Grand Rapids Theological Seminary), a MA in Counseling (GRTS), and a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision (Regent U).

His dissertation was The Relationship of Emotional Intelligence to Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment.

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