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April 17, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
24:06
MARRIAGE MAKES YOU ONE FLESH!
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So this was a caller.
His audio was pretty bad, but his question was, he feels in great competition with his girlfriend.
Actually, she was his girlfriend.
They're taking a hiatus. He wants to get her back.
He felt a lot of competition with her when she would do well in her career versus his career.
And we went back and forth a little bit about the background of the relationship.
But then I told him this about how to solve competition in romantic relationships and I think it's well worth listening to.
Before you get married, you are in mating display mode.
Now, in mating display mode, you wish to show to your prospective wife and the prospective mother of your children, you wish to show that woman that you're really good at gathering resources.
If she's really good at gathering resources, does your value go up or down?
Down. Right.
Once you wife her and you mother her, right, you turn her into a wife and a mother, is there any competition about who's providing the most resources?
A few years down the line, I would hope there wouldn't be, but...
Well, when you have children, right?
The fantasy that you work part of while raising and homeschooling three to four children, I don't even know what to say about that.
I mean, unless she's immortal and doesn't sleep, I just don't have any clue how that could even remotely happen, and I think it would be cruel to try.
I just talked about this in my show today.
You just do whatever is best for your kids.
What's best for your kids? It's a beautiful, wonderful, clean, pure physics of parenthood, right?
When you get married, you say, whatever is best for us as a couple.
And then when you have children, that realigns to whatever is best for your children.
And it is not best for your children to have a mother trying to raise them, homeschool them, and work part-time.
I mean, that's just not best for the children.
I mean, there's no question for me as far as that goes.
Oh, but I need to show them working.
No, no, no. They understand that work happens, right?
You need to be there for them.
And so if you simply organize your life around what is best for your children, then if she's a really good mother, is that bad or good for you?
Well, it's excellent for me.
It's excellent, right? And if you're a really good provider, is that bad or good for her?
Very good for her. Very good, right?
So, when you get married and you have children, you move...
There's overlap, of course, right?
But you move into complementary spheres that you go to work in order to pay for your wife and your children and all of the joys of family life.
And so, your success is her success.
If you get a new contract, you get a raise, you whatever, right?
You win the lottery, then your success is her success.
If you have chosen a woman who is a really great mother, and I would imagine that she's got a little bit, or in fact, probably quite a bit of self-work to do to get that own mama demon out of her head, or at least to manage it, but if she's a really good mother, that's not a negative for you, that's a huge positive.
So you're both working In your complementary spheres, and there's no competition.
But right now, you are in a sense in a male-to-male relationship.
But when you get to a husband and wife and a father and mother relationship, there is no competition in that way.
You're not competing with her to be a better parent, right?
And she's not competing with you to be a better provider.
You're not competing with her to be a better mother, to put it another way.
And so this competitive element is going to fall away when you get married and in particular when you have children.
Because if she does really well in her career, that's a threat to you.
Do you know why? Because she's essentially working so that she's pricing me out of still being attractive to her because she could earn just as many resources.
There's certainly that aspect that if she's making a lot of money, then the value that you provide goes down.
But also, if she starts making a lot of money, how does that impact her actions as a mother down the road?
Do your future children want Mega Millions mom?
Making a ton of money.
No, they prefer her to be present.
Right, because the more money she makes, the more tempted she's going to be to continue working, right?
So I would imagine that you would have some concerns or fear or anxiety or resentment towards her earning potential.
Because, you know, this is some old Eddie Murphy routine from sort of many years ago.
Where he's like, yeah, who are you going to date when you make $10 million a movie?
Are you going to say, hey, I just made a movie.
Here's $10 million. And she comes home from her hairdressing job and is like, I made $40!
That's not going to play, right?
So if she's making a lot of money, then putting your kids in daycare or having nannies or whatever it is becomes...
A more rational calculation.
And so her increase in income is a negative towards her commitment to the children.
In other words, if she doesn't make that much money, then she's going to look at the kids and it'll be like, fantastic, because if I go to work, I just take all the money I make and hand it over to a daycare or a nanny or, God forbid, have my insane mother raise them or try to.
But... If she makes a lot of money, then she looks at her kids and she just sees dollar bills draining away from them, or I guess pound notes in this situation.
So to me, the fact that you would resent, it's not in a sense you who's resenting any of her success or feeling in competition.
There is the element of income and your value as a provider, but there is also your relationship with her and the children becomes more complicated the more money she makes, if that makes sense.
It makes sense.
I think the income issue could be more prominent down the road, for sure.
I think in the current dynamic as we're contending with whether or not the future contains us getting back together, is that my The pit in my stomach that I feel that is conflicting with me wanting the best for her is that if she's chasing many opportunities at once to advance her career, it feels like I'm having to compete with the world for her attention.
And so it feels like I am not being put on the same level of priority for time and attention, as in a deep bond, as a broad bond with lots of people who could give her more opportunities or more job exposure or things like that.
Which was exactly her complaint, if I understand it correctly, about when you got the job prior to your breakup and you were less available to her, right?
Yeah, pretty similar, yeah.
Right, right. Yeah, many, many, many years ago, when I wrote a play and produced the play and directed the play, I had a person, a woman who was a set designer, and we dated a little bit, and she was constantly going off on the weekend to do set design stuff, to learn about set design, to scout things for set design and so on.
And I just remember thinking like, gosh, you know, this is, you know, we have a relationship here, at least the possibility of one.
And, you know, this, this, I mean, she was, she was working harder than I was and I was producing it directly to play, which if it had failed, I wouldn't have been able to go back to university.
So I'm glad it didn't. But yeah, it's, it's a, it's a sort of a, it's a funny thing that the more that she is pursuing material success, the more challenging your relationship becomes because by competing with For resources, you are entering into a male-male relationship.
I mean, I know that that sounds kind of gay.
I don't mean it in that way, of course.
I'm just saying that the dynamics are different.
The dynamics are different.
You know, Julia Roberts made, what, like $15 million a movie, $20 million a movie.
So does it make sense for her to pay for nannies?
It certainly does.
I mean, and certainly everyone around her is desperate for Julia Roberts to make movies.
Like, her agent who gets 10% maybe gets like 1.5 million dollars when Julia Roberts does a movie.
So of course, he wants her to pay the damn nanny and go make a movie.
But Taylor Swift, I think she just broke up with her long-term boyfriend and she's right now in her mid-30s.
It's probably been five years since my infamous tweet from hell.
And of course, everyone around her wants...
Still the best tweet of all time, by the way.
I'm sorry?
Still the best tweet of all time, by the way.
I think so. It certainly was interesting and just shows you just how unpredictable things are on the internet because of all the things I posted, I wouldn't have guessed that one would be the one that was thermonuclear.
Everyone around Taylor Swift is making money and the last thing they want is for Taylor Swift to settle down and have kids.
And this is particularly true for women, a little bit more, is that women tend to want to please those around them a little bit more than men.
And so, yeah, she's got everyone out there encouraging, go on tour, man.
You know, you've got to do it now.
You know, you were locked down during the pandemic and now this could be, who knows when the next restrictions are going to be or there could be another pandemic or you never know.
You've got to tour now. Everybody who makes money off her tour desperately wants her to tour.
Everybody who makes money off her selling albums definitely wants her to write and record new albums.
And also, they know that her best songs come out of breakups, so they actually have a financial incentive to break up her relationship because then all that tortured pain comes pouring out.
She's a really good songwriter as well.
So, yeah, it's kind of tragic.
So, yeah, for me, it makes perfect sense that you'd be in a competitive relationship with your girlfriend.
And that all goes away when you get married and have kids.
Now, if you get married, and before you have kids, obviously there's a gap, but you get married, then before you have kids, then she'll still be working, of course, and that will be to help save up money.
So that she doesn't have to work when she has kids.
Now, of course, she may want to say, well, gosh, you know, what was the point of going to school if I just end up having kids?
And it's like, well, yeah.
It's one of the big questions of the modern world, right?
a highly educated slash indoctrinated female population or you can have a birth rate that sustains a civilization but you really can't have both because once a woman gets the education she wants to put it to use which means you know she gets educated into her early to mid 20s and then she wants to have a career and then she doesn't want to settle down until she's in her 30s and then even if she's been with the guy for a long time it can be tough to conceive even in your 30s and so on so Yeah, it's just one of these basic realities that we're all trying to wrestle with and struggle with, but yeah, it makes sense.
The competitive element that you feel at the moment, to me, seems perfectly natural, but that's not going to be the case when she stays home with your kids.
Then each of you winning in your particular sphere is a net win for the family as a whole and a huge win for the children in particular.
I think that helps with the questions as a whole.
Yes, yeah. If I can just follow up one final part.
So, in the interim period before a wedding would be executed and kids come along and she loses the competitive streak, is there any way to dissipate that competitive spirit while we try to rebuild?
Well, how long after you get married do you think you'd want to start trying for kids?
Looking at a realistic timeline of getting a home in the UK, it would probably take a
year to get married and get a house and then hopefully within the next year after that.
So give it maybe two or three years.
Two or three years, okay.
So if you're both working towards getting a house, then her success, given that she's already married to you, then her success...
Is of benefit to the family, right?
Yes. Right, so if you're...
Imagine you're in competition with someone for a job, then it's win-lose.
But if you both get hired, then you can only win when the other person wins, in a sense, right?
So, I mean, to take a silly example, if you're on single bicycles and you're racing, then...
It's win-lose. If you're on a tandem bicycle, like the two seats and the two pedals, then you both have to pedal, right?
So when you're in competition with her, it's almost like a single bicycle thing.
Once you unite and you are one flesh, right?
I mean, there's a reason why marriage, as you know, is referred to in Christianity as man and woman become one flesh.
And the reason for that is that one flesh means you don't compete with each other.
You are a team. You are a system.
I'm currently strolling around.
Now, my legs are not in competition with each other, right?
They are both needed so that I don't have to hop, right?
They're both needed and they're both working together to have me strolled around because I am one flesh.
So I don't sit there and say, well, one leg should be stronger than the other and one leg should be longer than the other and whatever it is.
They both work complementarily to move me So, you become one flesh when you are married.
And if I exercise, it's not like, well, my heart wins but my liver loses.
Or, you know, my circulatory system wins, but my eyes fall out, right?
I mean, it's one system.
Assuming I don't injure myself by exercising, the exercise is good for all of me.
There's no part of me for which the exercise is the opposite of good.
Now, all of me wins when I exercise.
If I go for a run or I play tennis or whatever, all of me wins.
Well, that's a man and a woman, one flesh.
If I'm playing against someone who's not me, then it's win-lose, right?
He wins or I win if we're playing for points or whatever, right?
Now, if we're just batting it back and forth for exercise or, you know, just the loosey-goosey practice that you sometimes do with these kinds of sports, then you can't lose.
And, you know, even when I've been involved in competition, sometimes I do well.
You know, there's a bit of random factors in sports, it seems.
So sometimes I do well. Occasionally, I won't do well.
And so I'll come off and go to whoever's judging the competition and they'll say, did you win?
And my answer is, well, I certainly got my exercise, right?
So I didn't win, but at least I got my exercise.
So I'm probably not telling you anything you don't know.
It's just more of a reminder that when you are married, you are one flesh.
Not one part of you can win at the expense of the other.
You're both in the same boat, to use a sort of annoying analogy, right?
And you can't sink one side of the boat without sinking both sides of the boat.
You are one flesh.
And before you go through that process, if you haven't really had it modeled, and it doesn't sound like she's had it modeled because her mother went crazy and her dad went AWOL, so she probably hasn't had it modeled.
Maybe you haven't either. I've been pretty fortunate, to be fair.
Oh, okay, good, good. So you've had it modeled.
If something great happens to my wife...
Something great happens to both of us.
If something bad happens to me, something bad happens to both of us.
We are one flesh. And children literally are one flesh combined from two people.
And the marriage is the child of the union.
It is one flesh. It is the offspring of the vows.
And you are no longer yourself.
And again, I hate to be annoying, like, oh, I've been married for 21 years and blah, blah, blah, although I have been, and hopefully that gives me some credibility.
But, you know, when I wake up in the morning, I think, oh, you know, well, what does my family want?
What does my family need? And my wife's the same way and so on.
And you're just not yourself.
It's a union.
You're not isolated.
You are, you know, like this old Platonic idea that you are separated.
In the ether and you try and find your soulmate with whom you link back up in the world.
And that's, you know, an analogy and all of that, I think, but although you never know how seriously Plato took this stuff, but you are rejoined.
You know, a marriage is one person with four legs and there's no conflict in terms of winning or losing.
You don't exercise and say, well, my muscles are stronger, but it's really hurt my heart.
It's like, well, then you're doing it wrong, whatever you're doing, right?
Maybe it's you've taken too many steroids or something, right?
But in marriage, the only winning and losing is together.
There is no competition.
Because saying that you can win at your wife's expense or your wife can win at your expense It's to deny the basic fact that you are one flesh.
And if you deny that basic fact that you're one flesh, I don't think you're really married.
Like, I think you can say the words, you can go to the ceremony, you can eat some bad cake, because it's almost always bad, way too much icing.
So you can do all of that, but you're not married if you think there's any asymmetry in your marriage.
I mean, let's say you're married, you have three kids, and you win a million quid in the lottery, right?
Is your wife jealous?
No. No!
Because who won the money?
You both did. Both did.
Yeah. You both did, because you won flesh.
Having a marriage that's composed of just two isolated people, as is bizarre to me, as this claim that the two or more personalities can inhabit one brain.
Would you like to meet my little girl?
That's insane!
But no, you're one flesh.
You are united.
And you produce one flesh, which is each child's person from the union.
Of the two of you. You lose your individuality.
You lose your atomic nature.
You lose your island rock structure, which we generally have from our mid-teens until our mid-twenties or when we get married.
And you return to that state of blissful union that we have as children, if we're lucky, if we have great mothers who Cuddle and kiss and breastfeed and all that.
That's blissful union, right? You are one flesh with your mother.
And then we go through this period of isolation, which is fine.
I mean, it helps develop your individuality and your own thoughts and so on.
But it's kind of like watching a whale jump out of the water.
It's pretty spectacular, and that's what you take pictures of.
But the whale is going to rejoin the water.
It's not just going to keep going up, right?
And so we have this union when we're little.
Where we are not isolated, but we are part of a system of mother-child.
And then we grow out of that, as we should, so that we have something to offer that's individual to the future mother of our children.
And then, like a whale breaching the water, we have this period of individuality, then we fall back into union with the woman of our dreams, with the love of our life.
And then, every step you take, you take together.
Every victory you have is combined.
Every disaster you have, you weather together.
You are one flesh.
So the competitive element is because you're looking at this as two individuals that win or lose independent of each other.
But that's not marriage.
And again, I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
It's a fine thing. Again, we have to have some individuality.
Otherwise, we're just some generic NPC blob that could be with anyone or no one.
But this is all prior to marriage.
You get married. You're one person with four arms and four eyes, if that makes any sense.
So I hope that at least gives you my perspective on the matter.
Thank you very much, Stefan.
You've really helped there, and over the years you've done more for me than you'll ever know.
So thank you. Well, I appreciate that.
That's very kind to hear, and I thank you for these great questions.
Great questions. All right. Should we do another?
Should we do another? Let's have a quick scope and see, shall we?
Nice to drop by and have these chats with people.
And look, they have now become Utterly randomized.
They are completely and utterly and totally random.
You never can plan or predict them in any way, shape or form.
I will try to get back on a more regular schedule, but I have about 16 flaming knives up in the air in the juggling act of Free Domain at the moment, so it's a little tougher to plan.
But I'm almost done the audiobook, and then things will get a bit back more onto a regular schedule.
All right, well, I will stop here.
I really appreciate everyone dropping by today.
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You can download the living heck out of my History of Philosophy series and my last book called The Future, which will help make my book, The Present, a little bit more comprehensible.
Comprehendable? Yes. So, thanks everyone so much.
Have yourself a wonderful... I'm sure I will talk to you this weekend.
Love you guys. Thank you for keeping me on the air.
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