Aug. 31, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:33
5615 RULES OF (MARITAL) ENGAGEMENT!
In this lecture, Stefan from Freedomain examines the dynamics of conflict in marriage, offering guidelines to enhance communication and understanding between partners. He likens conflict to a game governed by rules, emphasizing the necessity of recognizing different conflict types—win-lose versus win-win scenarios. Through practical examples, he illustrates how couples can navigate disputes by addressing underlying issues and fostering open dialogue, free from blame. Stefan discusses the significance of honesty and integrity in communication, advocating for prompt resolution of grievances to prevent resentment. He highlights the importance of adhering to established agreements as a foundation for trust. Ultimately, the lecture provides insights into cultivating a resilient and fulfilling relationship through constructive conflict resolution and mutual commitment to shared rules.GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND AUDIOBOOK!https://peacefulparenting.com/Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
And I had a question from a live stream the other day, which I will attempt to do some reasonable justice to here.
And the question was, what are your rules for fighting in a marriage?
What are your rules for conflict in a marriage?
Well,
The first thing to understand about conflict in a marriage, and this is really conflict in any reasonable relationship, is that you have to play by the rules.
Conflict is a game and there are rules.
Clearly, you wouldn't play chess with someone who just made up whatever rules they want, who threw the chess pieces at you, who put mercury in your drink or roofied you.
You would not sit down and play chess.
So, a conflict is a game, a sport.
You try to win, of course, but you have to play by the rules.
So, there are two kinds of conflicts in a relationship.
The first kind is when you know you're right and you have to win.
And the second is you're not sure if you're right or not and you're open to some sort of win-win situation.
So, a conflict, for instance, where you know that you're right
And you have to win is your girlfriend wants to go to some grungy party where there's going to be a bunch of lowlifes in a really bad section of town.
Right?
So that would be an example of that is a win-lose and you have to win.
And what I mean by that is if you don't win, then the relationship probably won't continue.
To take a more extreme example, if your wife comes to you and says, hey, I want an open marriage.
Well, that is a debate or a conversation or an argument or a fight or conflict that you have to win and there is no compromise.
You can look for a win-win situation.
If she's feeling lonely, spend more time with her.
If she's feeling isolated, spend more time socially with people.
If she is feeling starved of affection, find ways to bring more affection to the relationship.
But if your girlfriend wants to go to a skeevy party with a bunch of thugs, and if your wife wants to open up your marriage so that you can sleep with a police station, well, then that's a fight and you kind of have to win.
If your wife or your husband, let's say your husband, let's flip it around a bit.
If your husband has a friend who is bad for him, right?
If your husband has a friend who is bad for him, if your, if your husband's friend constantly gets him drunk, wants to take him to strip bars, enjoys doing, you know, coke off the Hooters girl's butt crack, well, then you got to win that.
And that's not a compromise situation, right?
If every time your wife spends time with person X, Y, or Z, she's stressed, tense, unhappy, miserable, aggressive, unseated, unhinged, dissociated, whatever, then you're going to have to pry her out of that unhealthy relationship.
And that's not a compromise situation, right?
So there's win-lose conflicts, which
Are, I would say, to the death in that if you fail, the relationship is significantly jeopardized, right?
So if your husband hangs out with some skeevy guy who offers him drugs and constantly wants him to get him to sleep with strippers, take him to strip clubs and get him lap dances, I mean, taking extreme examples, but, you know, this is important.
If your husband keeps going out with a skeevy guy who tries to get him laid by strippers, then your relationship is not going to survive that, right?
So, that's really a fight to the death.
So, it's really important to know which you're in.
Now, another kind of conflict is you and your wife are kind of annoyed with each other and you don't know why.
Right.
So you'll have some surface story, you know, like I put my book down here and you've moved it again and you're always moving my stuff and, well, you never do the dishes.
And well, why can't you put your laundry in the hamper?
And why do you keep bringing your muddy shoes into the room, uh, and into the room by the garage?
And he said, well, it's called a mud room.
It's supposed to, why don't you just eat them, do it outside.
And you know, why do you keep eating the last peanut butter without telling me and, you know, whatever, right?
Like just a little surface crap, right?
That's obviously.
A sign of something more significant and deeper that's going on.
So in those situations, the first thing to do is to recognize, of course, that the surface topic is not the actual topic, right?
Nobody gets that mad if somebody finishes the peanut butter.
Nobody gets that mad if there is a pair of sweatpants on the floor by the laundry basket, right?
It's unimportant, not worth fighting about, life's too short, that kind of stuff, right?
So then you have to say, okay, well, the rules are
Don't lie, right?
So if you're annoyed at your partner and you're picking at unrelated things, then you're lying.
So if you wake up annoyed with your partner and you're just kind of looking for stuff to be upset about, well, that's a form of lying.
Because if you wake up annoyed and then pick at your partner, you're pretending
That you were fine, and then whatever your partner did or didn't do put you in that bad mood.
Whereas, in fact, if you wake up crabby with your partner, you're upset with your partner, you're angry with your partner, maybe you had a bad dream that's significant about your marriage or something like that.
But if you say, no, no, no, it's about the laundry, it's about the peanut butter, it's about the towels on the floor, it's about you never putting your toothpaste cap back on the toothpaste tube, you know, then you're lying.
And don't lie, right?
So one of the rules of conflict is don't lie, right?
If you're not willing to compromise on an issue, don't lie and say that you are.
But if you're annoyed with your partner for some reason, and then you pick at things, then you're lying.
You're saying the issue is the laundry on the floor.
It's not that I'm annoyed at you for some reason.
Now, if you are annoyed at your partner for some reason, the rules of engagement are, you say, I'm annoyed with you.
I don't know why.
I'm not saying it's you.
It could easily be me.
It could be any number of things, but I feel this annoyance towards you.
Not saying you did anything.
I feel this urge to make it about the toothpaste cap on the toothpaste tube, but I know that's not really it, because the feelings predated that, and I'm just looking for something.
So, I don't know what's going on.
I'm sure you haven't done anything wrong, or if you have, it's an accident, but I do feel annoyed.
And then the rules are, okay, well, when did it start, and what happened, and how things been going, and is there anything else?
Is there anything in your past?
Is there, like, you just have this curiosity about where the feelings started, and what's been
Going on, right?
It's all perfectly reasonable.
And that's, that's the rule.
The rule is don't pick at the surface stuff and be honest.
Because when you fight about the surface stuff, you're lying to each other.
And because everyone's lying, the conflicts can never be resolved.
A, because everyone's lying and B, because you can't respect people who just lie in that kind of way or to that kind of degree.
So you have to make the commitment to tell the truth in a conflict.
I'm annoyed at you, I don't know why.
And the honesty is that feelings are not proof.
Just because you're annoyed with your partner does not mean that your partner is objectively annoying in some fashion, right?
And that's one thing.
So the other rule, of course, is that feelings are not proof just because you're annoyed.
And you've heard me say this a million times in call-in shows.
I'm annoyed.
I'm not saying you're annoying.
I'm just saying my experience is of being annoyed.
Maybe it's valid.
Maybe it's not.
But that's right.
We don't know for sure.
If you know for sure why you're annoyed, then you should say why you're annoyed.
So that is honesty.
It's really, really important.
And humility, right?
I don't know why I'm annoyed.
Now another rule that's important is don't hold on to grievances and redirect them to other things.
So let's say that your partner, you were at some dinner and your wife kept correcting you on inconsequential things while you were trying to tell a story.
Well, that's annoying, right?
That's annoying.
And if you find that annoying,
Well, you probably don't want to deal with it in the moment because you're at a social engagement.
So you repress, not suppress, you repress your emotions.
You say, we'll deal with this later.
And then on the way home, you can say, I felt a little annoyed at this.
I think this is why, tell me what you were feeling, what you were thinking and so on.
And you have that discussion, but you don't hold on for two days and then snap at her about something unrelated because that's lying.
Right?
So if you know,
Why you're upset, then you should, as soon as reasonably possible, talk about the upset and what you feel, and possibly why, and so on, at least as a theory.
So, you have to have integrity and to be honest, right?
If you're annoyed at someone, well, I mean, you can try and talk yourself out of it if it's just something minor, but if you remain annoyed at someone, then you should be honest about it, and you should be honest about it as soon as possible.
Because otherwise it spills out in unexpected ways, and then you're kind of in the wrong.
Well, you've been mad at me about this for two days, why didn't you say something?
And then the other person has to say then, right, to be fair, I just found out about this, I didn't know, or maybe you did know but didn't say anything.
If your partner notices that you're annoyed or seem a little short-tempered, then they should say, are you feeling short-tempered?
I'm noticing this, so...
Just being honest in the moment, the longer you let things fester, it's like an infection.
The longer you let things fester, generally the worse they become, and the harder they become to determine the source of, because it all gets muddied and murkied in the past.
And of course, if you're mad at your wife for correcting you a bunch of times about inconsequential details while telling a story, if you're annoyed about that, and
You don't say anything about it, that annoyance is going to come out in other ways.
And you end up not actually getting to the root of the issue, or at least it's going to take a long time.
And it's, then your wife has a legitimate reason to be annoyed, which is, well, you were annoyed with me and you didn't say anything.
And you picked at me about my cooking for three days.
Like that's just also annoying.
Right?
So that's important.
Now you shouldn't get into relationships where the first one, the win, lose, fight to the death of the relationship stuff is going on.
You should get all that stuff resolved.
Before you get married.
After you get married, then you have to have the commitment.
No name-calling, of course.
No aggression.
You can get frustrated and so on.
A little bit of raising voice is not the end of the world, right?
But no yelling, no name-calling, no insults.
You have to be ruthlessly honest if you're annoyed.
If you know why you're annoyed, be direct about it.
If you don't know why you're annoyed,
Be direct about the fact that you are annoyed while also being honest about the fact that you don't know why you're annoyed.
It really all just comes down to having the basic rules and, like, no yelling, no insults, no escalation, no dredging up things that you've already solved.
Like, you have to, once you say something is solved, then it has to go into the memory chest, never to be dug.
Back out.
In other words, if you work through some particular issue, then it can't come back later as a proof of anything, right?
Because otherwise, then there's no point working through anything if it can just be dug up and resurrected and reanimated and regouled into the current discussion.
And you'll find, very interestingly for me, and this has been the case, and I'm sure it'll be the case for you as well, you'll find that if you are annoyed at someone and you say, I'm kind of annoyed, I'm not saying it's your fault, but I am feeling annoyed.
And if you do it in a non-aggressive fashion with the humility and honesty of saying, I don't know why, then you actually don't end up with escalations.
You don't end up with things getting worse and snowballing.
Because when you avoid conflict, then it just comes out in ways that are much more complicated and confusing and hard to figure out the source of.
And then you just end up in this quagmire or this quicksand, which is generally a huge disaster.
So yeah, know which fights are deal breakers and have those before you get married.
After you get married, all the fights, all the conflicts are
To do with annoyances along the way, usually the result of misunderstandings or some sort of past issue that is interfering with the current productive relations and so on.
If you are just relentlessly honest, then you're constantly defusing these bombs before they aggregate and end up going off in surprising ways.
So, really, really work on that.
Just be honest.
Honesty is a sign of self-confidence.
Honesty is a sign of respect for your partner that they can handle it.
And you just have to be honest.
To jump to conclusions and say, well, you pissed me off when you did this.
And you were bad for it and so on.
Well, there's a lot of complicated stuff in emotions in marriages.
And once you marry someone and you say, I love you, then you cannot impugn destructive motives to them.
Right?
When you marry someone, you say, I do, you're saying, I love you for who you are.
And then you can't just later, after you say, I love you for who you are, impugn or impute all of these negative motives.
So that's another rule, which is don't hallucinate negative motives for people.
Well, you just did this because you're spiteful about my success.
And like, they don't impugn negative motives because that's just a form of mysticism and you don't have the knowledge and you'll never get confessions.
Even if there might be unconscious negative motives, you'll never get the confessions of that.
If you attack someone for their motives ahead of time without any proof, well, would you like that in the court system?
If somebody were to say, are you guilty of this without any kind of trial or without any kind of advocacy or without any cross-examination or anything like that?
So, a trial has rules, of course, right?
And sports have rules, and all games have rules, and even war, I mean, has rules, right?
I mean, the rules around prisoners of war and torture and, you know, name, rank, and serial number, all that kind of stuff.
So, yeah, don't break the rules, man.
It's absolutely not worth it.
Relationships are agreed-upon rules.
A contract is an agreed-upon rule.
And games are agreed-upon rules.
In tennis, you get two serves.
In pickleball, you get one.
These are the agreed-upon
Upon rules.
And you can't play the game called relationships, called marriage, called love, called parenting, if you can't agree on the rules.
And civilization is when we negotiate rules and then we stick to them, right?
I mean, if you use a credit card, the rule is you pay the credit card.
Bill.
And civilization can't function if people get the benefit of saying they will follow rules and then have the option to not follow rules.
So the most foundational rule is that you have to have rules that you call the other person on, right?
So if the other person says, oh, you did this because you hate my cat, and it's like, well, no, no, we don't, we don't make up motives, right?
If you start raising your voice and say, no, no, no, we don't, we don't raise voices.
Okay.
Right.
If there's name calling, no, no, no, we don't.
Right.
So you have to have these agreed upon rules and that a relationship is the set of rules that you agree on in the same way that you would not play a game of chess with someone who could make up their own rules.
You wouldn't play a game of hockey or tennis or
Baseball was someone who could just make up their own rules.
And so a relationship is the rules.
Like the game of baseball is the rules of baseball.
The game of squash is the rules of squash.
A gold medal is given to the fastest runner.
That is the rule of the Olympics.
You don't just make it up and say, well, I have the biggest calves, therefore I get the gold, right?
That's not what people are training for, and that's not what they are entering the game for, and nobody would enter a game where the rules could be changed at will.
And so, when you have rules that you've agreed on, if you break the rules,
You are ending the relationship.
I don't mean if you slip up and you get called on it, and then you correct, right?
That's fine, right?
Right?
If somebody says, in pickleball, they try to take a second serve, and they say, no, no, no, second serves are for tennis, not pickleball and squash, then, oh, sorry, sorry.
But if you want to play pickleball with people, which is one serve, and you say, I'm going to take two, they won't play with you.
They'll just be like, well, no, it's one serve, right?
I mean, if you say in chess, the queen can move like a knight, or the king can move four squares instead of one, well, that's not chess, right?
If you want to play chess with someone, chess is the agreed-upon rules.
And a relationship is the agreed-upon rules.
And so, if you go into a relationship with agreed-upon rules, and you break those rules, you are breaking the relationship.
A relationship isn't proximity, it isn't sex, it isn't what's called love, it isn't any of these things.
A relationship is...
The rules that you agree on.
A marriage is the rules you agree on.
What do you agree on?
We're going to put no others before us, before each other, and monogamy, and love till death do us part, and better and worse, sickness and health.
These are the rules.
These are the rules.
And the marriage is the rules.
That's what makes marriage different from being boyfriend-girlfriend.
Boyfriend-girlfriend, there are no particular formal rules.
There should be rules that you agree on, right?
But when you were a kid, right?
What did you always say?
What was always the problem?
The problem was you play tag, and I touched you.
No, you just touched my shirt.
Well, that counts.
Like, you're just trying to agree on the rules.
There's no game of tag where I saw you, therefore you're it, right?
I mean, that's not touch tag, whatever, right?
And so the rules are the game.
The rules are the interaction.
You can't interact with anyone without rules.
I mean, you can't have a conversation with someone without following the rules of grammar and meaning and
Not both talking at the same time and using the same language.
There are tons of rules, even just in having a conversation with someone.
So, civilization is rules and love is rules.
And if you can't stick to rules, you can't have relationships.
If you can't stick to rules, you can't have love.
If you can't stick to rules, you can't have a marriage.
Because rules and your willingness to stick to them is what generates trust.
And you can't love if you can't trust someone.
If someone is just random and they're nice to you one day, nasty to you the next, they kiss your cheek one day, they scream at you the next, they massage you one day, they smack you across the face the next, right?
Then you can't love that person because you can't relax enough to trust and their behavior is not predictable enough to be virtuous.
Because virtue is
Excellence in consistent goodness, right?
I mean, any blindfolded fool can hit a hole in one from time to time in golf or mini golf or whatever, but it's being able to do things consistently that is the mark of excellence.
I mean, you've seen these guys who just throw a basketball from one end of the court to the other and sink it.
Well, that's just an accident, right?
So, consistency in virtue is sticking to the rules.
And so you have to stick to the rules or you don't have a relationship.
Rules are life.
Rules are love.
Rules are civilization.
Rules are the free market.
Rules are
Trust.
Rules are predictability.
Rules are civility.
Politeness is a series of rules and standards.
If somebody tells you a secret and you promise to keep the secret, you have to keep that rule.
And if you really desperately want to tell the secret, then you have to get released from the secrecy in order to tell the secret, because then it's no longer a secret.
Yes, it's fine, you can tell Bob or whatever, right?
So, all of these things are really, really essential to understand.
If you can't follow the rules, you can't have relationships.
You can have proximity, you can have conflicts, you can have entanglements, you can have codependency, but you can't have a relationship.
If you can't follow the rules, you can't have virtue.
If you can't have virtue, people can't trust you.
If people can't trust you, they can't fall in love with you.
Pair bonding occurs when you are certain that someone will follow the rules.
And again, that doesn't mean perfectly.
Right?
I mean, every now and then, everyone drifts a little bit over the speed limit, but that's a little bit different from turning your will deliberately into oncoming traffic, right?
So, life is rules.
I mean, our body has to follow particular biological rules.
We have to get air, food, water, shelter.
I mean, it's all rules, right?
And people who say I love you and are unpredictable are saying that they deserve the results of integrity while retaining the ability to commit fraud.
Right, so if a woman says well I love you and then acts randomly and expects you to love her,
Then she's defrauding you because she's acting in a way that can't be left while demanding that you love her, right?
So this is kind of fraud, right?
So rules are just absolutely essential.
If you can't agree on the rules, you can't agree on anything.
If you can't agree on the rules, you have no particular interactions.
You're just like a bunch of, you know, if you take a bunch of rubber balls and just throw them really hard at the ground and they just bounce randomly, well, that's your relationship.
There's no predictability.
There's no rules.
There's no game.
And it's fundamentally boring.
I mean, imagine a game of chess where you could just make up whatever rules.
There'd be no point playing.
None at all.
And so when the rules break down, the game breaks down, the love breaks down, the marriage breaks down, the life breaks down, and of course the civilization breaks down too.
So we don't want that.
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