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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
18:23
The Philosophy of Marriage and Dating
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Hello, everybody.
It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
I hope you're doing very well.
Ah, sadly, the Tomcat is no more.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
Katie Holmes is filed for divorce.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
It is the world's largest philosophy show right here, ladies and gentlemen, and we're doing celebrity gossip.
Deal with it!
So, I mean everything is a learning opportunity and in all seriousness I think it's very important to have some insignificantly important discussions about values before you start dating, before you move in together, before you get engaged and certainly before you get married.
Why should you listen to me about marriage?
No particular reason.
I had a whole number of failed relationships before.
I met the woman who I have married and I 10th year wedding anniversary is coming up in a couple of months.
I'm overjoyed.
I get happier and more in love with my wife every day and we're never getting divorced, so hopefully a few things I've done right which I can share with you.
Okay, so you've got to have discussions about values.
Sexual attraction, the frisson of romance and pursuit and all of these things are great and fun and exciting.
They are building your castle on sand if you attempt to make those the foundation of your relationship.
You've got to have the conversations up front.
The very first date I had with my wife, you know, obviously she looked at my forehead and she said, based upon that expansive skin, I can tell you're a total player.
And so she said, no, but I'm looking for not a fling, not a, not dating.
I want something serious.
I'd like to lead to marriage and so on.
Perfectly valid.
We had great conversations about it and so on.
So, you know, make your needs known up front.
Number two, It's really, really tempting to fall into the stereotypes of the genders.
Really, really try to avoid them.
You know, there's a, men are just afraid of commitment.
Men are not afraid of commitment, I guarantee you.
Men are afraid of the court system and of getting divorced, and they're afraid that things are just going to go turn really bad.
I mean, divorce is bad for everyone.
For men, you may not end up seeing your kids that much.
Half your income or more is going to go.
You're not going to get a chance to get remarried very easily.
I mean, it's just a huge catastrophe.
So, it's really when men aren't afraid of commitment, men are afraid of divorce.
And, you know, it's 50% likely that you will get divorced and it's not like the remaining 50% of marriages that where there's not divorce are all perfectly happy.
So, you know, really work to raise your odds.
Women are not shallow and manipulative.
You know, whatever cliches you have in your head, really try to turn them aside and open up the possibility for greater, deeper and more honest communication.
So let's say that you have met someone, you really, really love this person, you want to get married and so on.
I mean, don't even think about it before you have discussions.
Have these as soon as possible.
You know, people fill up their first dates talking about all kinds of annoying, humorous anecdotes and trivia, and I backpacked through Queensland and I went to pick grapes in the northern steppes of the Thailand wastes.
I went to this school, and it's nothing.
Who cares?
This is nonsense.
Who cares about this stuff?
Just let it go.
This stuff doesn't matter at all.
What you need to have, you know, you don't spend a job interview talking about the weather.
And as Seinfeld has said, a first date is just a job interview that lasts all night.
So talk about your values.
Talk about what you want out of life, what you want out of a relationship.
Do you want children?
If you do want children, how are you going to raise them?
How are you going to discipline them?
What's your approach to religion going to be?
What's your approach to conformity going to be?
Because these are really, really important things, right?
There's this continuum.
We all live somewhere on this continuum.
It changes from time to time.
There's practicality on the one side, which is just conformity and getting along and so on with people.
Going along with the general nuttiness of society.
And on the other hand, it's like pure principle.
And you know, we all oscillate.
I try to cluster around the principled side.
Other people are more around the pragmatic or practical side.
And unfortunately, we live in a society where principles and practicality are not even on speaking terms.
So where do you sit along that continuum?
Right?
So if you are not a religious believer, how are you going to handle religious beliefs of other people in the extended clan or the in-laws and so on?
You know, are you going to, how are you going to raise your kids?
How are you going to educate them?
All of these kinds of questions really, really need to be answered.
Question I asked my wife on our first date was, you know, hey, what was your childhood like?
How are you disciplined?
Do you like it?
Do you think that's okay?
Do you think it could have been better?
What would you have changed?
And so on.
These are all very, very important questions.
I mean, for two reasons.
One is that they will predict to a large degree how the person is going to behave in the future.
But they also give you a real insight, a window into the level of self-knowledge the other person has.
Right?
So, I mean, to take an extreme example, if my wife-to-be had said, I was beaten every other day, and I liked it, it was good for me, it made me a better and stronger person.
I'm with Nietzsche on this one.
Well, it would have been great.
My next phrase would have been, Jack!
These are important things to know, whether the person has insight and knowledge, is willing to correct, and so on.
Now, another very, very important discussion to have before you start dating anyone is the acceptance of conflicts.
You know, sexual desire and the frisson of romance will overwhelm the conflict for the first couple of months, usually four to six months is when the endorphins are racing madly through your system saying, let's merge, minimize all discontent.
But you're going to have conflicts.
You're going to have disagreements.
You need to have a methodology for resolving them.
I mean, come on, of course you do.
So, ground rules, right?
We don't raise voices.
We don't call names.
We don't walk out on conversations.
We don't slam doors.
We don't throw things.
You've got to just have those basic rules.
It's just those basic rules.
I mean, to win a coffee cup or to win more than a, you know, win a coffee cup, you answer a skill testing question, agree to all these rules.
How much is a coffee cup worth relative to your entire relationship, the future of your children, your genes, your offspring, your pre-no-genitor and your genetic future?
So it's the acceptance of, look, How are we going to resolve our disagreements?
What's our approach going to be?
We're going to talk it out.
We're going to try and find win-win and so on.
Is it going to be more on the pragmatic side or more on the principled side?
And you also have to have a failsafe mechanism.
So if we, you know, we're going to have disagreements and we'll work on them.
If we cannot find a way to resolve our disagreements, what are we going to do?
Is there a third party that we consider very wise who we're going to sit down and talk with and agree to abide by his or her judgment or at least Take that as input.
Do we agree to go to counseling if we really hit a roadblock?
But of course the whole point of having these conversations ahead of time is you don't end up with these roadblocks.
There's so many things that can be avoided and evaded and never become issues if you discuss them up front.
If you blindfold yourself, cross your fingers, you know, rub your lucky rabbit's foot and then hit the gas.
You're gonna crash.
But there's so many things.
Just open your eyes and stop, you know, driving looking in the rearview mirror, facing backwards while in the trunk, and you will have a great chance of avoiding obstacles.
But you have to talk about these things ahead of time.
Money, money, money.
And this is very, very important.
Money, sex, and housework, and parenting, of course, big things that rupture marriages and relationships.
What's your approach to money going to be?
Are you a spender?
Are you a saver?
How much do you want to retire early?
Are you the kind of guy who likes to burn through his money as it comes in and live for now and this and that and the other?
Very, very important.
What about health?
What about exercise?
What about a commitment to be there for the long run for your partner and your children?
What is going to happen if there's weight gain?
I mean, what is our approach to that?
All of these kinds of things.
You can just discuss this stuff ahead of time.
And the amazing thing is, if you discuss this stuff ahead of time, it generally tends not to come up as significant issues in the long run.
If you're older, well, what if we want to have kids?
Like, if you're in your mid to late 30s, just what if we want to have kids and we can't have kids?
What are we going to do?
Would you like to adopt?
Did we do some other approach or whatever?
Are we going to go without kids?
All very, very important.
How are you going to manage the finances, the money?
Are you going to merge and blend your paychecks?
Is it going to be one big pile of goo money that we all scoop out of?
That's very important.
Very important.
Who's going to actually pay the bills?
Who's better at financial management?
Who's better at managing all of those complicated, biting, swirling, sparky monkeys called regulations and taxes and all this kind of stuff?
Who's going to be really good at that stuff?
It's usually good.
I mean, one of the things that's great about marriage is the division of labor.
Some people are really good at some stuff.
Some people are really good at other stuff.
The division of labor is one of the things that makes marriage so amazingly effective at just helping to move your life forward.
But there has to be these kinds of discussions ahead of time.
So, so, so important.
Do you want to buy a house?
Would you like to rent?
Do you want to live in an RV?
Do you want to fold newspapers into pirate hats and stand outside in the rain?
All of these things have to be discussed ahead of time if you want to avoid these kinds of problems.
Nobody's saying that these things are written in stone and can't ever be changed, but it's really important to have the discussions ahead of time, just as a basic starting point.
In-laws.
In-laws are another huge problem in marriages.
Not all in-laws, I'm sure some are wonderful, but in-laws are very important.
They can be kind of intrusive, they can kind of get into the marriage, they can be kind of bossy, and if you don't have a good relationship with your parents, or if your girlfriend or fiancé doesn't have a good relationship with her parents, if there's not good boundaries, mutual respect, and all this kind of stuff, You need to figure out how you're going to deal with that stuff ahead of time.
If you have a difficult relationship with your parents and you spend a day or two with them and then you come back like a smoking heap of childhood incinerated wreckage, it takes a little bit of time to rebuild.
And how are you going to deal with all that kind of stuff?
And that comes back to, you know, how was your childhood?
Was it good?
Was it bad?
I mean, it's all a mix for everyone, right?
What was the good?
What was the bad?
What have you learned?
And what kind of relationship do you have with your parents now?
Is it one of these perpetual, they're the boss, they know better kind of relationships?
Or has it flowered into a mutual respect of equals where they give you the wisdom of age and you give them the freshness of youth?
These kinds of things can all be resolved ahead of time.
How are the children going to be disciplined?
Touched on this before.
Very, very important.
How are the children going to be disciplined?
All children are going to do stuff that you don't like.
You're going to do stuff that your children don't like.
How is this stuff going to be resolved?
Absolutely essential.
Are you a spanker?
That would be a deal-breaker for me, because I'm on the principled side of the non-initiation of force, so no yelling at children, no name-calling of children, no threatening of children, no spanking of children, nothing like that, not even a whack on the hand, anything like that.
In fact, we are now at the point as parents where there's actually no negative consequences for my daughter, and that's working out just beautifully.
Now, when it comes to parenting as well, how are the children going to be raised physically, not just philosophically, but physically?
Who's going to stay home?
Is it going to be the husband?
Is it going to be the wife?
How are you going to deal with child care if you both want to work?
And please, please, people, if you're going to try and make these decisions without your children's input, which I think is, you know, when they're infants they can't give you much input other than crying and peeing in your eye, but what you need to do is look at the science.
Look at the science of what is most beneficial for children.
At least have one person home for the first couple of years.
I think that's very, very important, if not downright essential.
So, how is that going to work?
When it comes to money, again, I'm sort of jumping around a bit, when it comes to money, it's also important to remember, you know, if you're going to merge body fluids and you're going to merge DNA, you're going to produce a child, you live together and all that, the idea of, you know, separate bank accounts and I'll pay the mortgage this month and you pay it next month, to me this just seems like withholding.
To me, if you're going to get married, You know, for God's sake, get married all the way.
You know, just merge and blend and become the two-headed hydro monster with one grabby body.
That's just, you know, I think that's what's worked for me.
It certainly is what's worked for my wife.
There is no mine and yours in a marriage.
I think this is really important.
Okay.
Housework.
Housework.
Again, a continual bone of contention for many, many couples.
Just as a personal experience.
You always hear about how women do more housework than men, and I think that's true, but you don't often hear about how men generally bring in more income than women.
You know, there's a balance, right?
Housework is absolutely essential.
Bringing in the extra income is also very helpful.
So that's just something you don't hear of as much, but this to me is very important to recognize both parties' contribution.
If you're a guy who's bringing home less money and your wife is doing more housework, then get off the couch and help her out.
I think that's really important.
Also, it's not generally considered housework.
All the stuff the guys do outside the house, barbecuing, mowing the lawn, fixing the driveway, the gutters, and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, that counts.
But I think standards, right?
So if you're going to marry a woman and she's like, well, there can't be a speck of dust in the house every day.
Everything has to be perfect.
And you've got a crap in a plastic bags on the golf course far away.
That may be something that you want to negotiate a little bit ahead of time.
You know, life creeps up, chaos overtakes and standards inevitably falter, particularly when you have children.
I think that's really, really important.
But have discussions about what to you is a good house.
And if a good house is like Architectural Digest could, and Martha Stewart on a PCP anal binge could come in and find no fault with my house any time day or night, that is going to be a huge amount of work, which means you've got to get A huge amount of money and pay people to clean up or expect to never see your wife because she'll be doing a Ray Bradbury covering the crime clean fest from morning till night and morning again.
That's not where you want to go.
You want to have discussions.
Some people like little things.
Some people are comfortable with the dishes in the sink and do it in the morning.
Some people like, well, I can't go to bed with the dishes in the sink.
These are kind of things that need to be discussed ahead of time because if you can discuss them ahead of time, then they don't become these bones of contentions.
There are so many marriages like those Newton machines, you know, back and forth with the clickety clackety balls.
And not in the fun, you know, robot sex way, but in the incessant conflict nag nag nag way.
That's not good.
The other thing I think that's really, really important.
I use this metaphor in one of my early podcasts.
So in the interest of environmentalism, I will recycle.
One of the things that I experienced, and remember it's all about my experience, one of the things I experienced when I was younger and dating, even younger and still dating, was I always got this feeling like some woman would fall in love with me because she had excellent taste and she was, ah, you're great, you know, great conversationalist, smart guy, you're caring and all that, sensitive and all that.
And then, you know, we would get into a more serious relationship, and then it would feel like a lot about me needed to change.
And I would always have the same conversation.
It's like, I don't understand this.
I mean, you had your pick of all the cars around.
You had 20 car dealerships.
You have hundreds of different models of cars.
And you test drove all of these different cars.
And then you settled for the bald, sporty, red tour of the colonies accent guy, me.
And you said, okay, well, I've test driven all these cars.
I've reviewed all of these cars.
I've read Lemonade from cover to cover.
I'm going to choose this car.
And then she would take me, this car home.
She'd take out her welding goggles and her clamps and her change monkeys.
her change monkeys, and she would say, great, now I'm going to change this Steph-bought car into a boat.
And she would say, great, now I'm going to change this Steph bought car into a boat.
And I would always feel like, well, if you wanted a boat, why did you bring home a car?
And I would always feel like, well, if you wanted a boat, why did you bring home a car?
And that is something that you have to give up.
And that is something that you have to give up.
You have to give up the desire to change the other person.
You have to give up the desire to change the other person.
The reason we have such a strong desire or incentive to change other people is we don't have these conversations ahead of time.
If you have the conversations ahead of time, first date, second date, you know, deal with it.
Have the conversations, and then you know what you're getting, and you won't have a stronger desire to change it.
That I think is really, really important.
The moment I began having these conversations up front, my dating life got incredibly more efficient for me and for the other people.
And then when I found the right person, it's clicked, and it's worked perfectly ever since.
That's really what I'm trying to share.
Romantic love, passionate love, marital love, monogamous love is the best thing in the world in my experience.
I'd really like to help share all of that good stuff.
So, these are just some brief ideas and thoughts.
I really, really welcome your comments.
Also, I guess it's the last day of the month, June 2012.
I just wanted to remind you, this show, it doth require the donations.
And, you know, I ask for 50 cents a show, not much.
I've put in tens of thousands of hours learning about all of these various topics.
I've worked really hard to become a good communicator.
My wife takes off time from running her career to come with me to various speaking engagements with my daughter, which is fantastic.
It's the only reason I really can do them, otherwise I wouldn't spend that much time away from either of them.
So this show does require your support and your donations.
It's really, really important to be able to You know, exchange value for value, be reciprocal.
Especially since I've done a bunch of Peter Schiff shows and a bunch of other speaking engagements, you know, we are getting, oh my god, I mean, 200 gigs, 300 gigs of downloads of the shows just on the server.
We have to upgrade the server, it costs a couple of thousand bucks.
I'm always running out of bandwidth, but we're going to really overbuy, get 20 terabytes of bandwidth a month just to keep up with the demand.
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My goal is not wealth, but the enrichment of humanity as always.
So thank you again so much for everyone who supported, for everyone who will support.
This is Stephen Molyneux saying
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