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May 14, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:38
Real-Time Relationships: The Logic of Love
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Welcome to Keith Knight Don't Tread on Anyone and the Libertarian Institute.
Today I'm joined by Stefan Molyneux, host of freedomain.com and the author of Real-Time Relationships, The Logic of Love.
Mr. Molyneux, where is the best place for people to get a copy of this book?
Well, it's available on my website and thanks for having me back on.
Nice to chat again.
It's available on my website at freedomain.com slash books.
Sounds good.
Links to that will be in the description below.
On page 270, you say, the reason I call it the RTR, real-time relationship, is because it is all about telling other people in the moment how you feel.
Why is this a productive approach to relationships?
Yeah, it's interesting.
When I grew up in England, I lived in this apartment building, sort of a low-rise apartment building, with sort of paper-thin walls.
I suppose it was not the most elevated circles in society as a whole.
And I just remember hearing couples fighting and yelling and not getting along and escalating and all that.
And I just remember thinking very clearly at the time, like, what's so tough about just being nice and getting along?
What's the big barrier?
Why would people fight?
Why would they yell at each other when they claim to love each other?
Why would they have all of these?
And of course, my mother was a single mother.
She went through these relationships, and there were conflicts and problems, and I just saw a lot of fighting.
And it was kind of hard to comprehend, like, why people would get involved in these negative relationships, why they would claim to love each other, but yell at each other and call each other names.
And then, of course, I had my share of relationships in my teens and 20s, and then I got married in my...
Early 30s, and I've been very happily married for now over 23 years, and we've never raised our voices at each other, we've never called each other names, and we maybe have a conflict that's not particularly major once a year, and we actually end up closer because of that, because every successfully resolved conflict gets you closer.
Like, if you're in a business relationship, and every time you successfully negotiate, you end up...
And there's more trust.
Like, trust is not the avoidance of conflict, but the resolution of conflict.
So, in the general approach that I've had in life, it's not particularly mine.
This comes out of Socrates or it comes out of Freud, which is sort of the two things that you need in life to be happy is happy or positive or good or moral relationships and a productive, meaningful occupation of some kind.
Now, those are the two things.
I won't guarantee you, but it's...
Pretty close to the best shot that you have.
Now, of course, libertarianism focuses on political freedom and economics and some philosophical foundations to the non-aggression principle, but it's not common for there to be a lot of libertarian focus on relationships.
In other words, libertarianism focuses on, sorry, this is a long sideways answer, but libertarianism focuses on political freedom, economic freedom, economic productivity, which is great.
But that's the work side or the labor side aspect, meaningful occupation side aspect to life.
And that's important and it's good and it's important to focus on.
However, we spend a lot of our time not working.
We spend a lot of our time trying to love and be loved.
And of course, when we retire, like I never used to think about this, I'm kind of in my late 50s now.
So not that I'm on the verge of retiring, but you think about those, you know, 65 to...
80 or 85, there's 15 or 20 years that it's really going to be about your relationships, not so much your heavy productive labor side of things.
And so there's a lot of time that we spend loving or trying to love or trying to be loved, and how can we make that as happy and productive as possible as well?
What's the other half of life as a whole?
And, of course, the other thing is that I wanted to write this book because We have, well, we have very little control over our political freedoms.
You know, we can go out and march, we can sign petitions, we can make cases, we can vote, we can do all of these things.
And on the voluntarist or anarcho-capitalist side, Those are not always considered the most productive uses of our time.
We have more control over our occupation, but then again, our occupation, we may have government licenses or requirements which could change, and we saw over the course of the pandemic how licensing boards could be used to suppress dissent.
So even in our productive arenas, the laws can change, the licensing can change, the taxes can change.
I mean, think of all the people who poured all their energies into creating We have less control over our productive labor, and we have very little control over our political freedoms.
But what we do and say in our relationships is 100% under our control.
And I've always been kind of drawn to working on philosophical problems where you have more control rather than less control.
Because otherwise your will is just kind of like, it's like this sea that's going up against this pier that you just can't take down.
You just keep slamming yourself into things that you really can't affect.
And so philosophically speaking, I've always been drawn to where you can bring the most free will and choice into your moral decisions, into your life.
You control what comes out of your mouth.
You control who you date.
You control who you make your boyfriend or girlfriend or who you get engaged to, who you marry.
You control who you have children with.
These are all things under your control and they have, I mean, arguably the most impact.
On your happiness.
You know, jobs come and go.
Careers come and go.
Friendships come and go.
Your parents age out and die when you're in middle age, usually.
But your romantic relationship should last your whole life.
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