Jordan Peterson on romantic relationship ( 2 hours )

We we've got a hypothesis that we're still working out that's supported to some degree by the relevant literature so imagine that you're looking for a stable partner right so you might think well what do you want in a stable partner and at least in principle one of the things you don't want is too much mismatch between you and that person on the five fundamental Dimensions so for example if you're really extroverted and You have a really introverted partner you're going to engage in continual conflict about how much social activity the two of you should should

be uh should should what subject yourself to and it's very very difficult for people who broadly differ widely differ on those Dimensions to come to consensus because it's not just a matter of opinion right it's really a matter of different if you're looking at extremes of really different types of people and The thing about introverts is they just don't enjoy large scale social interaction that much one-on-one they're often fine but in a group they don't like that and they it tires them out whereas a real extrovert it's like you isolate them and and they just

Wither on the vine because a huge part of what actually motivates them in a positive way is Tangled Up with social interaction and so if you're an agreeable person and you have a Particularly disagreeable partner you're also going to run into problems because the agreeable person will say whatever you want whenever and the agreeable per disagreeable person will say well I'd like to know what the hell you want for a change and be much more harsh and much more demanding in the situation and the agreeable person is going to find the disagreeable person harsh and

unpleasant and the disagreeable person is going to find the agreeable person wishy-washy And unable to stand up for themselves and again that's a that's actually one of the primary sources of tension between men and women because women tend to be higher in agreeableness than men it's about half a standard deviation which is quite quite a quite a uh quite a large difference by psychological standards and so um what it what that means I probably haven't got the statistic quite right but I think I've got it about right what that means Fundamentally just so you have

some sense of how large uh uh an effect that is is that if you have a group of men and women and you pick out random pairs the woman is going to be more agreeable than the man 60% of the time so that's not an overwhelming proportion but it's reliable and it's quite it's quite large by psychological standards so there's the problem with agreeable with conscientiousness well if you're conscientious you're industrious and Orderly and orderly people seem to be sensitive to disgust which is something we'll talk about in detail later we've had a hard time

specifying exactly what makes industrious people industrious because it's hard to come up with an animal model for that sort of thing and there's no theoretical model but our latest uh idea is that my it's not my idea it's actually the idea of my graduate student Christine broy um is that Industrious people find it um unpleasant and unsettling to to not be doing something so it isn't so much that industriousness makes them happy or fills them with positive emotion that would be more extroversion right because extroversion is the positive emotion Dimension it's that industrious people can't

stand sitting around doing nothing and you know this is speculation but you know human beings are obviously always engaged in the exchange of Labor Especially the reciprocal Exchange of Labor and you can imagine that um in a in a community where everyone knows everyone the people who work hard are going to be pretty irritated on a fairly chronic basis with the PE people who are completely unproductive and my suspicions are that plenty of people who were completely unproductive in the history of of our of the evolution of our species were wiped out by people who

were unhappy with their lack of Productivity and so I think generally speaking human beings have this sense of ethical obligation with regard to one another to share labor and people who are conscientious really really feel that so they feel bad if they're not busily working on something that's productive all the time and so the advantage to being with someone conscientious is well they're going to work like mad but the disadvantage is they're they're going to work like mad So you know if you're looking for a partner that you want to relax with or have fun

with or who isn't uptight then a conscientious person is probably not a very good choice on the other hand if you're a conscientious person and you're living with someone who's really unconscientious that's good because they might be able to help you relax but you're not going to be happy with them because they don't work nearly as hard as you do but even worse on the orderly Dimension you know some of you have had roommates and maybe you're more orderly than your roommate what does it mean means you're annoyed by mess before they are and you

don't have to be annoyed by mess much before your less orderly roommate for you to be the one that's always running around picking things up and so actually one of the things that's emerged from the psychometric analysis is that women are slightly more orderly than men and I suspect that has Something to do with the UN what would you call it inequitable distribution of housework because even if you're imagine that your proclivity is to be triggered by disorder 25 seconds before your partners well you're going to end up it doesn't take much difference for you

to be the one that's always concerned about the mess first so anyways and so if you're a really orderly person and you live with a dis orderly person well good luck getting along with them they're Going to regard you as like uptight and and uh uh over concerned with details and and uh and well and unwilling to relax that's for sure and they're going to regard you as well just a bloody mess and how can anyone possibly live with someone like you and so so another reason why it's useful to understand your personality is because

I think it gives you a better crack at finding someone that you can actually live with over the long run and we don't know what The optimal I don't think you want to live with someone who's exactly like you because then both of you have the same strengths and weaknesses and there's a bit of a problem there right because maybe an agreeable person can use a bit of disagreeable person around them to balance each other out and vice versa right so we don't understand the optimal balance for for for long-term thriving in a relationship but

I think we do understand the fact that if you're too Different in your tra that those that where you're different is going to constitute a chronic source of conflict strange so what advice can you give to people who are looking to have a strong and meaningful and Lasting relationship with someone well the the first thing is to decide if that is really what you want is that fair do you think to say I don't I don't I want to be single forever do you think that's realistic or Fair assessment of Oneself um I think that

that's for most people a Pathway to Insanity yeah you know the psychoanalysts used to think that and we all think this way in some ways that you're sane because you're well put together in your psyche is well structured right it's internal somehow inside your head but and there's some truth in that but here's a here's a more accurate Viewpoint I think you Outsource most of your sanity because it's too complicated and So what you do is your parents you to be vaguely acceptable to other people and then you're surrounded by other people your whole life

and then every time you go off the rails a little bit even just a little bit people signal to you like you make a joke it's not that funny and people don't laugh and you think oh well you know I should probably rethink my sense of humor a little bit or pay more attention or you tell a rambling story and you notice that everyone's like lost In the distance so if you're civilized enough so that people don't shun you and you have people around you then they're going to be always telling you how to not

be too insane well if you're alone you drift you drift you know and you'll drift in the direction of your biggest weakness and so you know there are some people maybe they're introverted and disagreeable they're they're not cut out for a lot of social contact but we're social animals man Right to the core and and it's a sub optimal solution for for the vast majority of people MH um I think that people are having a harder time finding like let's call them more permanent relationships is because it's become increasingly easy to have fleeting casual sexual

relationships I mean Tinder is a revolution right it's a revolution in sexual behavior and it's certainly not obvious that it's a is it A social thing is it just technology is this what people want to be be doing cuz you you think the yeah in some ways but the technology has enabled this fleeting sexual oh definitely definitely and and that's we don't want to underestimate how radical a technology that is that's especially especially for men I do feel that deep down that all these people men and women alike are always longing for something more meaningful

well I think I think that That's generally the case I mean you know part of the reason for relationship is sexual contact obviously well that's that you you don't necessarily need a relationship for that but that's not the reason to to be with someone the reason to be some with someone there's a lot of them so one is well kids who have two parents do far better period the read data on that is Crystal Clear doesn't mean that there aren't many single parents who struggle To do a wonderful job that's not the same thing it's

an average issue so you need plus it's a lot of work to have kids you know you kind of need to divide up the labor especially in the first year or two you know cu the woman is completely overwhelmed in the first year and she needs somebody around to take care of her while she's taking care of the kid fundamentally or at least that's the way it looks to me so so there's that you need a stable basis for Children and takes them a long time to mature and they need to learn that relationships are

trustworthy right so there's utility and stability there but then also you kind of want to tangle your life together with someone you know because you have someone to well it's like two ropes that are Tangled together it's stronger especially during times of weakness and you have two brains instead of one and that actually turns out to be really Helpful when things are complicated and and it builds a solidity into your life and a and a and a reality into your life to have someone who's along with you on this very long voyage and so I

think that deepens your life in a way that isn't really possible with fragmentary relationships as a single person definitely and then there's more to it than that it's like I think of wrestling there's this scene in the Old Testament where Jacob wrestles with an angel he's Wrestling with God actually which is quite an interesting that's what Israel means right wrestling with God yeah that just blew me away when I learned it it so the true people of Israel are those who wrestle with godest yeah it's not believe exactly so whole different thing man it's a

whole different thing isn't it like fear from God what it means that's what I thought well it from from from the work I did in the last couple of months looking at this and I looked Into it quite deeply it does mean wrestling essentially and it does derive from that scene in the Old Testament where Jacob wrestles with God that's when he gets the name Israel and his hip is dislocated right permanently he has a permanent limp after that it's no joke but I think of marriage the same way like people think well they lived

happily ever after it's like that's not what you want in a marriage you want someone to contend with you know because You learn through that wrestling you know like you learn where you're an idiot and where you should stop being and and vice versa so there's a that's the spiritual aspect of marriage it's it's the fact that you have to contend with someone under all sorts of circumstances theoretically is a what would you say it's a it's a manner of promoting psychological or you could say spiritual growth and it's genuine you know that's why marriage

is a Sacrament In most human communities right it's it's stamped both by the state and by the sacred authorities because it's not just a physiological Union that's what animals do and I mean there's nothing wrong with the physiological Union but it it has to be placed in the context of everything else a human being is and I do think it's dreadful for people not to have that and do you think it's it's it's become harder for people to have meaningful lasting relationships or has It always been this hard I feel like um I thank God

that I'm not dating now because I feel like it must it's it seems like it's miserable out there right now well it's hard to try to meet people it is hard for although you know it's easier to meet people because there's more ways of meeting them right but the ways of meeting them is are more shallow my in my clinical practice I would say that the rise of the internet dating option has Overall been good for people who are looking for a partner now there is some speculation and some evidence that it lowers the transaction

price of separation and divorce you know because one of the reasons you don't separate or you don't get divorced is like well you going to find someone else and if it's easier to find someone else then perhaps you're more tempted to sever the relationship so maybe you lose in one place where you gain in the other But I think think there are different kinds of hard that it is you know it's hard for couples to figure out how to manage two careers M it's hard for women to figure out how to get educated and get

their career launched at the same time that they're finding a partner and having kids CU women have this tight time frame you know I mean they've got to get a lot done by the time they're mid-30s for sure and so it's it's not much time you know it's like 15 years Really from the time you're an adult it's you better get at it it's not very long right so I think there are new challenges that have Arisen that weren't there for previous generations but but previous generations had it hard in other ways that's very true

yeah like dying or in child birth for example in fact people also need to like understand how to make a relationship work like it's not just magic you need to kind of put in the work to make it work it's Hard put in effort and compromise a lot of times on like if you live by yourself you can do everything the way you would want if you live with someone else then there's compromises to make but in the long picture it's better for you well that's that's it that's it there's sacrifices to be B in

the short term you know and I mean people have to the effort issue is like well when you're in love with someone you're going to organize your schedule and make them a Priority and you know that's in some ways a fleeting State although it's not necessarily as Fleet as people think it is but whatever it's it's obviously a priority then you get married and you know you kind of get accustomed to having each other around and then everything else is more important and the relationship drifts to the bottom and then people get dissatisfied and they

start looking for excitement and Adventure otherwise well You can't do that you have to prioritize the relationship like my observation clinically has been for a couple to maintain their relationship without it deteriorating they have to spend 90 minutes a week together talking about their lives about how the houses run about what they've all been doing to keep their stories caught up right that's not really even that much by no it's not it's not it's not that much but but and which is a good thing you can Actually do it and then they need to spend

at least one time having a date and two is better one is necessary two is better you can't aim for a lot more than that because you know life is very busy and if it's going to be sustainable it has to be realistic but they need to make time for each other twice a week and and talk in like in a non-romantic way just practically about the domestic economy and about everything that's Going on and that keeps people tied to each other and updated and so that's sort of your minimal commitment level if you don't

want things to deteriorate you want someone I think in a relationship that you can Spire with and it's partly because you have hard problems to solve and if the person that you're with isn't willing to put forward their opinion then you only have half the cognitive power that you would otherwise have you know and hopefully you find someone Who's interestingly different from you like not so different that you can't communicate and you have to be careful of that but interestingly different and then hopefully they have the ability and the will to express their opinion and

and then well then it's you know then then your interest stays heightened and there has to be that tension in a relationship you know people think well I I want to get along perfectly with my partner it's like no you you probably Don't you just get bored then you go looking for trouble and so you want a little bit of trouble in the relationship and a little bit of mystery and a little bit of combativeness and and the ability to to exchange opinions forthrightly and and I trust her which is a huge element I mean

when when we finally did decide to get together permanently we were both in our later 20s and you know one of the things that I had learned by that point and insisted To her about was that we had to tell each other the truth and she took to that wholeheartedly you know and um for better and for worse because truths can be harsh does that include like does this outfit make me like that yeah well the truthful answer to that is I don't answer questions that are likely to get me in trouble yeah so um

my I have a son who will answer honestly and it's infuriating but then I realized if you Want the truth talk to tamler tell you well that's the thing you know it's it's useful to know um truth is empowering truth tellers are charismatic and you know actually both my sons are like brutally honest which is disconcerting but but it's I can see that it made them very formidable and and because of people trust them and the friendships and just it gives them a and you've written a lot about this well you know if if I

tell my wife that she looks good In an outfit she knows that I mean it yeah and so there's some utility in that and then if you're silent and say I don't answer questions that she she goes and she knows well sometimes sometimes you know she'll say you know do you like this and I'll tell her that I don't and and you know and that doesn't necessarily make her happy in the moment but um but if I do say I like it she knows that I mean it and you know I actually Like her sense

of style a lot so it turns out that 90% of the time it's pretty easy for me to say look I think you look great and mean it and uh you know she's a fairly harsh standard Bearer too like she's she's insisted that I stay in whatever reasonable physical shape I happen to be in you know that was that was something that she's very demanding of and I would say that it's the same from my side and um and we've been good At negotiating which is you know what do you want from a partner fundamentally

what what do you want and need I mean the first thing is is that well hopefully you like I said you're blessed with the fact that you find each other attractive and I think it's very difficult for the relationship to begin or proceed or sustain itself without that but having that then what do you want well you want someone that you can trust you want someone that you can Build a view of the future with and you want someone that you can negotiate with and that's very hard to negotiate with people because they have to

tell you what they think they have to know what they want or figure it out they have to tell you what they want they have to be satisfied when they get what they want which is also a very difficult thing to manage and you have to continually update that because your life goes through different stages and well your Attraction wains as we all know at our stage of life not fatally necessarily for yourself but but no but you will go I mean you will not be 25 forever so so that that has to be renegotiated

yeah well and you have to work at that too you know and and that's something that people also don't understand because they tend to think that well that that all romantic interaction should be SP aneous it's Like well if that's your theory then you might as well just give up right now if you're going to get married because that like the only reason you can think that is because you don't have enough responsibility to make romantic entanglement virtually impossible and what happens when you're married especially when you have little kids is that and and you

both have a job let's say is you're so busy that the probability that you're going to find Time for spontaneous Mutual interaction is decreases to zero and so if that's what you're hoping for then you're never going to have it and so what you have to do is you have to make time for each other and you know if you're dating um when you're establishing a relationship well you put some effort into it you know you you decide that you're going to go out for dinner and you dress up to some degree and you know

you try to present yourself to each other in some Halfways mutually acceptable Manner and you hope that there's going to be a positive consequence of that that you're going to find each other attractive but then people somehow think that once they're married that the same amount of eort isn't necessary and that's wrong I would say more effort is necessary on the same front and you have to think it through it's like you know if you don't want to be bitter about the intimate element of your relationship how much Time do you have to spend together

each week and my my rule of thumb sort of derived from Clinical observations is that you need to spend 90 minutes a week with your partner talking and that means you're telling each other about your life and staying in touch you know so that you each know what the other is up to and you're discussing what needs to be done to keep the household running smoothly and you're laying out some mutually acceptable vision of how the Next week or the next months are going to go together right so that that keeps your narratives locked together

like a like the strands in a rope you need that for 90 minutes or you drift apart and you need to spend intimate time together at least once a week and probably more like twice and that has to be negotiated and if you don't negotiate it and if you don't make it a priority then it won't happen in all likelihood and then well well then you don't have it and that's a Catastrophe because there's not that many things in life that are you know intrinsically what would you say engaging and meaningful and pleasurable and also

bonding all of that and if you let that go then well part of you dies and part of the relationship dies and well then there's always the possibility of becoming attracted by alternative entanglements which which you would do if you had any Spirit left right I mean that's the thing is if well if you're Not if you're if you're relationship at home is entirely unsatisfying sexually what are you supposed to do with that nothing are you supposed to just bear it I mean in one way the answer is yes because it's your marriage but in

another way is well what that's all the fight you've got in you you're going to just let the erotic element of your life die and and accept everything that goes along with that because you're not willing to cause a bit of trouble to Ensure that it's maintained and you know and we're not very good at thinking these things through consciously and I mean people are bad at negotiating period as far as I can tell but they're particularly bad at negotiating things that are deeply private how much do you want your partner to know about you

anyways it takes a lot of trust to have a real conversation about what you need and want how do you find on that topic the Love of your life that's a good question I was asked that multiple times on my tour three times in a row in fact because we asked people to use this slido gadget that's a popular question to very it always came up to the top and I got asked that three times in a row and I didn't have a good answer and then I thought why don't I have a good answer

I thought oh I know why cuz that's a stupid Question so so why yeah why because it's it's putting the cart before the horse here's the right question how do I make myself into the perfect date you answer that question and you will not have any problem answering the previous question it's like what I want in a partner if I offered everything I could to a partner who would I be you work on That ask that question just ask just ask yourself okay I have to be the person that women would want okay what do

they want clean that's not a bad start reasonably good physical shape so healthy productive generous honest willing to delay Gra so you dance with a woman it's like what's she doing what are you two doing well it's a Patterned you're there's patterns happening around you that's the music patterns patterns of being that's the music now can you align yourself with the patterns of being gracefully that's what she's checking out and then can you do that with her and then can you do that in a playful and attentive Manner and keep your bloody hands to yourself

for at least a minute and so can you dance In a playful manner it's like you can go through this in your imagination and you know you'll know you know and then you think well how far am I from those things and the answer is usually man it's pretty horrible Abyss separating you from that ideal but the harder you work on offering other people what they need and want the more people will line up to play with you and so it's the wrong question it's like how can I be the best partner possible and then

you Think well if I do that people will just take advantage of me and that's the non-naive objection right because the naive person think well I'll be good and everyone will treat me right it's like the cynic says no I'll be good and someone will take me out and then you think well what do you do about that objection and the answer is well you factor that in and that's why you're supposed to be what is it as soft as a dove and as wise as a serpent It's like I know you're full of snakes

I know it maybe I know it more than you do but we'll play anyways and that's the risk anyway that's right voluntarily right it's like and what's so cool about that is that even though the person you're dealing with is full of snakes if you offer your hand in trust and it's real you will evoke the best in them yeah and that's true even I've dealt with people who were pretty damn Criminal criminal and pretty Psychopathic and sometimes dangerously so and you tread very lightly when you're dealing with someone like that especially if they're intoxicated

and even then your best bet is that alert trust it's the it's the only it's fact the only thing I know that I had one client who was a paranoid he was paranoid psychopath that's a bad combination he was a bad guy man he had like four restraining orders on him and restraining orders don't work on the Sort of people that you put restraining orders on and he used to be harassed now and then by you know a bureaucrat in a bank with with delusions of power and he would say to them he he used

to kind of act this out to me when I was talking him he'd say I'm going to be your worst nightmare and he it yeah and he would do it he had this obsessional Psychopathic Vengeance that was just like right there paranoid to the hilt and paranoid people Are hyperacute so they're watching you for any sign of Deceit or manipulation and they're really good at it cuz like they're 100% F that's what paranoia is it's 100% focus on that and even under those circumstances if you step carefully enough you can maybe you can avoid the

axe that's a good thing to know if you ever meet someone truly dangerous uh absolutely I believe in that that being fragile nevertheless Taking that leap of trust towards another person even when they're dangerous especially when they're dangerous if you care if there's something there in those Hills you want to find then that's probably the only way you're going to find is taking that risk that's actually why people get married you know just so you know because this is built into marital vows I'm not leaving ever no matter what it's like Okay well that definitely

puts a boundary around our arguments right because I can't say every time you manifest one of your flaws which you're likely to do just as often as me well enough of this it's like that's horrible man if your whole life is well every time you get get out of line I'm I'm out of here it's like how the hell are you first of all you're not going to admit to ever doing anything wrong second you're going to be on Your you're like a like a scared cat the entire relationship because well who knows it could

just come to an end at any moment it's like you know people say well if you're if the possibility of divorce is open it makes you free it's like yeah that's what you want you want to be free he really really so you can't predict anything that's what you're after it's a VI wow and it says look I know that you're trouble me too so we won't leave no Matter what happens well that's a hell of a vow but that's why it's a vow right that's why you take it in front of a bunch of

people that's why it's supposed to be a sacred act it's like what's the alternative what's the alternative everything is mutable and changeable at any moment well go ahead you live live your life like that and see what you're like when you're 50 Jesus it's dismal two or three divorces your family's fragmented you've got no continuity of Narrative it's and it's not good for the kids not by any stretch of the imagination and so it's a form of voluntary enslavement I suppose but it's also equivalent to the adoption of a responsibility and there's more to it

than that if you can't run away then you can solve your problems because it might be okay well I'm stuck with you so how about we fix things because the alternative is we're going to be in a boxing match for the Next 40 years that's the alternative so and you think you're going to fix problems without something like that hanging over your head there isn't a chance you'll just avoid them because that's what people do it's really hard to to solve problems especially in a relationship we're having a fight and I find out that it's

you know because you're you were abused by your uncle when you were five or some godamn thing you know it's like it's very frequent That that sort of thing happens you there there's the partner your partner is you know manifesting some weird anomalous Behavior you just can't make heads or Tales of it it doesn't seem related to what you're doing at all they don't want to talk about it and so as soon as you bring it up they get mad then you bring it up again they even get mad and they tell you that they're

not going to talk about that or they're going to leave and so maybe you're Really really persistent because you're kind of a son of a [ __ ] and then they break down and cry you know and then they have this horrible memory that comes flooding forward that's completely you don't know what to do with it and then you have to sort it out it's like you think you're going to do that unless there's a good reason you have to know we better sort this out or we're going to be carrying it around for the

next 40 years that maybe is enough motivation so You'll actually try hard to solve a problem it's a lot easier to say well sorry we're not going there but then good you'll have it every day every day every godamn day for the rest of your life see there's some there's some additional problems with divorce that people don't really grasp when they're young like the idea that you can be divorced once you have children that's kind of a stupid idea CU you can't you can you can you can find a limited Substitute for your initial freedom

but if you if you have kids and you try to get divorced the probability that that's going to demolish your life is very very high first of all it's incredibly expensive so one or both of you is going to come out of that poor and your market value has declined let's say you're the woman who takes the kids your market value has declined radically you're going to be poorer the man he's Just as screwed because he is now an indentured servant and there's no escape from it so it's and it's not so bad if you

can negotiate a peaceful separation and some people can but lots of times if you have a terrible relationship it's not like negotiating a peaceful separation is all that easy but if you're at each other's throats good luck to you I think it's roughly equivalent to having non-fatal cancer it is not pleasant it's a 10-year process 15-year Process it'll cost you $250,000 and it'll tear a big chunk out of your life and also it will really disrupt your relationship with your kids and you know you bring kids into a step parent family they do not do

as well stepparents are not as good parents as biological parents and the data on that is clear now obviously there are exceptions because there are terrible biological parents and there are wonderful step parents but if you look In aggregate it's not that easy to care for children you need everything you can binding you to them and if they're someone else's children mostly they get in the way of the person that you love right well if I'm let's say you have a child I'll be right out let's say you have a child and I want to

go out with you every second you spend with that Child is the second you don't spend with me and and there's going to be a price for that I'm not going to be happy about that and and if I have a child you're going to feel exactly the same way you might say well no I love children it's like yeah yeah sure sure you do I doubt it you might love your child and and you know it's pretty specific the way that people love children so and the rate of abuse for kids in stepparent families

is way higher than it is in biological Families there's not even any comparison um you've said that a marriage must be based on trust and transparency and being Shackled together how and for how long should you get to know someone how to set a foundation oh well you know there's no there's no simple answer to that um I think that you should know someone well enough so that you can so that you know if you can Negotiate with them and so that you have started to formulate a vision of your joint future that you can

both look forward to with enthusiasm and confidence so and of course that's going to depend to some degree on your level of maturity but that means you've considered such things as do you have a sufficient number of joint interests and are you oriented in the same direction with regards to how you're going to handle your joint Careers and possibility of children and the the manner in which you're going to interact with your in-laws and you you have to start thinking about you have to start considering your life together from the perspective of practicality and economics

I would say so it can't just be that massive erotic attraction that's associated with with love although I think that's extraordinarily important and you're unbelievably fortunate if you have that and you should do everything You can to maintain it which and that takes effort that takes real effort and will but you need to Ally that with with maturity and intelligence and the maturity and intelligence is okay we're going to put our lives together what's that going to look like at the level of detail how are we going to handle our finances where are we going

to live um what are our joint plans going to be Etc one of the things that my business partners and I plan to do in in what Would you say that in uh as an analog the self authoring Suite is that we want to develop a an online program to help people negotiate their relationships and and so it would actually provide an answer to this question in a more comprehensive manner is that imagine that if you want to set up a household with someone then there's a lot of things that you need to get straight

and you either do that by bringing your unconscious assumptions to bear on the Situation and perhaps clashing where they don't match or you sit down like a conscious and aware and articulate couple and start to negotiate what your joint responsibilities are going to be and so that would be well um who's responsible for the meals and when and what are you going to eat and who's going to get groceries and who's going to pay the bills and who's going to do which part of what household chores there are to do and how is that going

to Be laid out fair and so you should get to know you should get to know the person that you're with well enough so so that you can start discussing the real practical issues of life and determine whether or not you're capable of of negotiating that and I don't think that necessarily means that you should live together because the evidence is actually quite strong at least the last time I looked that people who live together are more rather than less Likely to be divorced now that might be that might have nothing to do with the

actual Act of living together it might be that people who are more likely to get divorced are also those who are more likely to merely live together but I don't think that's a great solution for reasons I won't get go get into now and with regards to being Shackled together is that that's a complicated one and and I learned this at least in part from Reading Carl Yung and the idea there is That unless you've really made a commitment to someone like a lifetime commitment and that that's a serious commitment one that you're not going

to back out of you're not going to take the relationship with the seriousness that's necessary to make it of the highest possible quality and sustainability across the course of your life and it's really important that it is of that high quality and sustainability because the relationship especially when it starts To produce children is a a machine let's say a machine that you jointly operate that adds immensely to the quality of your life and the depth of your life I mean you you have the rope and strand of your life and your partner has the the

strands in the Rope of his or her life and then those are tied together to make a stronger rope and then that unites you across time and then you undertake massive adventures together and some of that is the establishment of a household And the establishment of joint careers and the maintenance of each other's mental and physical health and the maintenance of a high quality sexual life and all of that very very challenging to do all of that and then the joint production and and care of children which which sets you up properly for the last

half of your life so like I'm 55 now you know and um both my kids just got in engaged in the last month so that's pretty bloody amazing And they're both setting up households and um and they're stepping into adulthood and I'm fortunate enough to have them in the city that I live in so hooray for me that's so bloody uh fortunate that I can hardly believe it I mean we've helped them out and tried to make it um what would you say to make the possibility of their living here be something that's viable but

I'm absolutely thrilled that they're going to be around and I'm looking forward Immensely to having grandchildren and and like what else are you going to do when you're 55 you know and you're going to be 55 it's going to I might have 40 more years like what am I going to do with those years well so I have a good marriage thank God for that and that's partly due to the outstanding moral quality of my life my wife who I'm also extraordinarily attracted to and uh you know we've built a life together and we've had

kids together and we're happy With our kids and we had plenty of of struggle with our kids because one of our children my daughter had serious serious health problems which she seems to have managed to resolve partly as a consequence of her own Brilliance um but you know we've set ourselves up now so that our children are respectable and mature young adults so thank God for that and they've got Partners who we both really like and they're going to Have children and well hooray you know that means that this next part of my life is

going to be something that I can advance into with a with a fair bit of Hope and and and excitement and the idea of having little kids around again is thrilling because I really like little kids they're really really fun and so the the shackle together is more like it's a it's it's it's such a I may have even said that but it's such a cynical way of looking at it it's more like what You've produced is an unbreakable bond between two beings and that that makes both of them both of them better in every

way if it's based on if it's a relationship that's based on trust and genuine communication that's very difficult thing to attain because you have to be willing to tell the truth and the truth is generally a horrible thing you know I mean it's easy to tell truth when everyone wants to hear what you have to say but it's very difficult to Tell the truth when no one wants to hear it least of all yourself and so marriage gets a very bad rap in our culture and so does child rearing and I think that's absolute catastrophe

because really being in a long-term relationship a marriage let's say and having children that's 2third of of your life even if you're a highly career oriented person that's 2third of your life and I'm a highly career oriented person and my family has been unbelievably important To me and has also been something that's enabled me to be very effective in my career because my house has being a sanctuary for me and thank God for that especially over well many times in my life but especially over the last year so you should you should get to know

someone long enough to know that you too can negot tell the truth with each other communicate and negotiate because the most important part of a relationship is the fact that you can tell each other The truth and negotiate it's a great thing to know with people like in your relationships here here's the key to a good relationship it's not the only one but watch your person carefully carefully carefully and whenever they do something that you would like them to do more of tell them that that was really good and mean it and it's not manipulative

because if it's manipulative it won't work it's like you have to say wow I'm so glad you did that And you have to be precise here's what you just did that I thought was great and oh boy that's so nice that you noticed I can't believe that you noticed it's like you know you do that 20 times and the person will be like the rat that's just pushing the lever for cocaine you know so but no I'm serious it's it's Skinner established this BF Skinner noticed this a long time ago reward is intensely uh useful

in terms of modifying Behavior but the problem is Is that it's really hard to notice when things are going right right because you're kind of primed to notice when things are going wrong and so you use threat and Punishment more often as agents of of shaping the people that you're around because you know when everything's going right it's like what are you going to say everything's going right it turns to zero you just assume it and that's that's not good that's not good you want To pay attention and if the if your person your children

your your wife your whoever your mother your sister if you want them to if you want to rectify your relationships with them and I'm not saying to do this in a manipulative way it won't work but if they do something that's promoting Harmony and peace and good will it's like attend to it tell them that you noticed it's like it's so useful and you have to get rid of your Grudges and your resentment to do that right because you don't you're kind of mad at your sister and then you notice she does something good you

think there's no godamn way I'm going to reward her for that so you ignore her when she does something good it's like that's brilliant that is cuz then you've just punished her for doing what you want and people do that with their kids all the time you know because they let the kids dominate them then they get Resentful then the kid will run up to them to show them something that's kind of spectacular and they'll they're not happy they'll like oh yeah that's you know I'm I'm I'm working you know little kid is all sad

about that and he's just learned something so and it's not perhaps what you want them to learn and so you have to keep your your relationship with your children pristine and that means that you can't hold a grudge or resent them and that means That you have to help them learn how to behave so that you like them and that way if they if you like them and you're kind of sensible and maybe your partner also likes them so you know you got a consensus going there there's a reasonable possibility that other people will actually

like them too including other children and then the world will open up to them you know then you'll bring them to people's houses and the people will actually smile at them and Give them a pat on the head in instead of thinking oh my God that Brat's coming to visit again I wonder what he'll break this time you know and that's just a horrible thing for your child to experience repetitively in situation after situation all they learn is that adults have a false smile but they're really lying all the time God it's like a bit

of hell and there's a lot of children who are trapped in that it's really awful to see I can see kids like That when I walk down the street you know it's like they're little doomed things and there they are and you know they're screwed in 15 different ways and there's no way out of it it's really awful so I would not recommend that you do that it's better to notice that you're a bit of a monster or a lot of a monster and notice that you are much happier with the people around you when

they behave in accordance with reasonable social social norms and then You actually feel genuinely connected to them and you want to work on their behalf so that everything works out but if you think you're a good person and that you'd never do anything that was harmful to your children then you can just forget about that because you'll never take it seriously enough to actually learn there's a sacrificial element in maturation right you have to sacrifice the plur potentiality of childhood for the actuality of a frame And the question is well why would you do that

well one reason is it happens to you whether you do it or not you can either choose your damn limitation or you can let it take you unaware when you're 30 or even worse when you're 40 and then that is not a happy day you see I see people like this and I think it's more and more common in our culture because people can put off M maturity without suffering an immediate penalty but all that happens is the Penalty acrs and then when it finally hits it just Wallops you because when you're 25 you can

be an idiot it's no problem even when you're out in a job search is like well you don't have any experience and you're kind of Clueless it's yeah yeah you're young you know it's no problem we can that's what young people are like but they're full of potential okay well now you're the same person at 30 it's like people aren't so thrilled About you at that point it's like what the hell have you been doing for the last 10 years well I'm just as clueless as I was when I was 22 it's yeah but you're

not 22 you're an old infant right and that's an ugly thing an old infant so the the Reon part of the reason you choose your damn sacrifice because the sacrifice is inevitable but at least you get to choose it and then there's something that's that's even more complex than That in some sense is that the problem with being a child is that all you are is potential and it's really low resolution you could be anything but you're not anything so then you go and you adopt an apprenticeship roughly speaking and then you become at least

you become something and when you're something that makes the world open up to you again you know like if you're a really good plumber then you end up being far more than a plumber Right you end up being a good employer not not that plumbers I'm not putting plumbers down it's like more power to Plumbers they've saved more lives than doctors so hygiene right so you know if you're a really good plumber well then you have some employees you run a business you you you make you you train some other people you enlarge their lives

you're kind of a pillar of the community you you have your family it's you can once you pass through that Narrow training period which Narrows you and constricts you and develops you at the same time then you can come out the other end with a bunch of new possibility at hell at hand and Yung talked about that he thought that the proper part of the proper path of development in the last half of life was to ReDiscover the child that you left behind as you were apprenticing and so then you get to be something and

regain that potential at The same time very very smart well he was very very smart so that's very wise very wise thing to know so y sacrifice we'll we'll talk more about that too you get to pick your damn sacrifice that's all you don't get to not make one you're sacrificial whether you want to be or not that's a good thing to know as well so even though it's rather you know it's a rough thing to figure out you can go to university To not be something instead of going to University to be something and

and that's it's Pleasure Island and the price you pay for it especially in the US is debt and you're enticed into it because the administrators can pick your pocket so they they rob your future self while allowing you to pretend that you have an identity right very nasty and you can't declare Bankruptcy with your student loans in the US it's indentured servitude and it is it's precisely Pleasure Island it's exactly that and so tuition fees have shot way out of control and part of the reason that universities don't make more demands on their students and

let them get away with all the things they let them get away with is because they're basically why the hell would you chase them out they are $100,000 or more so so they can do whatever they want as long as you get to sell them to the salt mines right so and you know it's not the only reason because the other thing that's happened is that the rate of technological transformation is so fast now and the rate of turnover of things is that it's it is genuinely harder for people who are say 18 to 20

when I was a kid roughly speaking the kind of rough Patch for for for life was probably 14 to 17 something like that now it's I think it's 18 to 25 something like that and I I think the reason for that is is that all the jobs that the bloody hippies complained about being doomed to in the 1960s have now disappeared their problem was oh my God I'm going to go have to work for a corporation and get a salary for the rest of my life you know and then I'll just end up in it

with a pension and That'll be my whole life it's like well it seems like a lot better deal than an endless round of part-time Starbucks jobs so you know some of it is that it's it's just it's it's there's a space now in our culture that that is lacking for people to make that transformation from from adolescence into adulthood and so it's just it's it's the cost of that is for stalled it's not a good thing it's not a good thing do you think This is affecting uh employers maybe in choosing younger people for a

job and be saying that they they're seeing this slower maturation or this saying this person's got a degree from UFT but I've heard about things that degrees aren't worth it well the there's a couple of problems with the degrees is that everyone has one that's the first one which so because scarcity matters obviously um the second thing is is that the match between the degree and the Workplace has become less and less self-evident you know what should happen when you go to university is you should learn how to think and formulate arguments you should learn

to think speak and write that's what the human ities are for they're to make you dangerous right because if you can think and speak and write you're deadly in a complex job you're exactly what's necessary but if you don't have that it's like what the hell good is the Degree so I mean degree in English literature doesn't prepare you for a job it could make you think write and speak which prepares you for any complex job and that's what's supposed to happen but increasingly I think that doesn't happen and the the ERS are waking up

to this very rapidly so and they're I mean they've already known that most for most complex positions they have to train their people now they're thinking well why do I have to bother with the degree If I'm going to train them if it isn't bringing anything of value you see this in even Fields like law we also seem to be tightly selected for the capacity to cooperate and compete so that multiplies our cognitive ability that's a huge part of it and then we're also we also seem to have constructed ourselves so to speak through sexual

Choice into these General problem general purpose problem solving creatures and so we've internalized some of the darwinian Process so you think well most animals will produce variants of themselves physically and then most of those variant die but human beings have built a l built a mechanism let's say that's like a game engine I think that's a really good you know how there are game engines now that people have devised their their their computational devices and you can take a game engine and you can generate games with it like computer games so um the game engine

is a Mechanism for producing games well that's what our brains are like our brains are game engines for producing games and so what happens is that that when you think you produce an avatar of yourself you produce a fictional world that that Avatar inhabits and maybe you produce multiple fictional worlds and multiple avatars that's the you that could be tomorrow which is what you're doing when you're planning and you walk the Avatar through its potential roots And those that look good you keep and those that don't look good you kill and so you can then

you can embody the ideas that you keep and act those out and hopefully the idea is that when you embody them you're successful and you don't get killed and so we're select we've also SE that when we've been selecting each other for cognitive prowess we've been selecting ourselves for the ability to generate avatars out of ourself and kill them instead of Dying it's unbelievably brilliant and and that's really akin to the human discovery of the future right the future is a place where variance of you could exist it's something like that and other animals don't

seem to be able to do that so we're very sneaky and well so far it doesn't seem to be working too badly although we haven't been around for very long right I mean human beings of our particular subspecies about 150,000 years something like that which is from An evolution ar time frame it's like it's nothing you know it's 280 year old man it's not very long there's another way of representing it the dragon of chaos stands for the potential that surrounds us inside of that there's the unknown the unknown that you actually come into contact

with right that's the unknown as it actually manifests itself in your world as something you don't understand instead of just the potential for that because we say look you know Perfectly well that as you're here there's all sorts of things you don't know everywhere but where are they well they're not manifesting themselves at the moment they're only in potential but you could we could have a discussion that that became argumentative and then all of a sudden it would be as if emissaries of that unknown had entered the space and that's the unknown that's defined in

relationship to what you know that's what you actually experience Instead of it only being potential it's a tough thing to get because they're both unknown right you think well how can there be two different categories of unknown well latent and manifest that's a good way of thinking about it you know you in a relationship it's going sta but you know that sooner or later something will come up okay up from where why up well from from beneath well what do you mean beneath well it's from it's from your complex the person you're in a Relationship

with in in with is complicated and complex that's implicit in you it's it's inside your conceptual structure that's that's a way of looking at it now and then when there's a disagreement it will manifest itself and you know that you know that there's still trouble Brewing ahead in a relationship always and that's part of what keeps them alive there's an interesting piece of empirical work done on this a while back So you might think well what does the optimal relationship look like in terms of positive and negative emotion you might say well Utopia nothing but

positive interactions it's it's like no imagine you get people to code the interactions they have with their partner during the day you know you sample it you say was that interaction positive or negative and then what you're trying to do is predict the longevity of the relationship okay So here's the data if it falls under five positive interactions to one negative interaction the relationship doesn't continue fair enough twoo much negative that's easy to understand if it exceeds 11 positive to one negative the relationship doesn't why no challenge right what do you want from your partner

Bliss no no no you don't you want periods of Peace punctuated by a good fight and that because that means You respect them means you have something to offer each other and it means that you're both growing and so you don't want the fight to be too dramatic because well then you Retreat you can't settle it but the person that you can completely map and who only does positive things for you it's like a you don't know that person person B they're not communicating with you nor you with them maybe they're just subordinating themselves to

you or you to them and You're not growing you want someone who can it's a real relationship is a wrestling match it's a grappling it's a grappling phenomena that you both emerg transformed from and that's what people want they don't want to push over not not unless there's something wrong with them know a narcissistic person who never wants to be challenged will want a partner who does nothing but deliver exactly what they're told to deliver but they will mistreat them beyond belief And perhaps deservedly so what's my advice to young men seeking a woman for

marriage and family yeah well okay fine that's the same qu second question that's that's pretty straightforward man I mean you can't eliminate the necessity of being attracted to one another that's important and that's mysterious you know um so for example here's a funny thing if you want one of the things we know that attracts people to one another is bilateral Symmetry and so if you take men and you rank them by the symmetry of their faces and then you give the asymmetrical men t-shirts to wear clean t-shirts for a day and the symmetrical men clean

t-shirts to wear for a day and then you give the t-shirts to women and you have them rate the the odor the women rate the odor of the symmetrical men as more attractive than the odor of the asymmetrical men and then and there are other uh factors that determine sexual Attractiveness that are based on biological factors that are so that deeply embedded in terms of smell for example so uh women also tend to uh not be sexually attracted to the o to the scent of men who's who have if I remember correctly it's RH factors

that would make for potential trouble in childbirth and the often the the reason that the women give for not preferring the scent of those men is that they smell too much like their brother it's Something like that so there is weird mysterious things that determine whether or not people are sexually and physically attracted to each other and I think it's very important that that's part of a marital relationship the next most important thing is trust man it's like there there's no marriage that's successful without trust you guys you got to tell each other the truth

and one of the reasons that Yung believed that marriage as a and an oath and a Carl Yung as a bond was necessary it's really wise it's like you know telling the truth to someone is no simple thing because there's a bunch of things about all of us that are terrible and weak and reprehensible and shameful and all of those things and they kind of have to be brought out into the open and dealt with and you're not going to tell the truth about yourself to someone who can run away screaming when you reveal who

you are and so the the marriage bond is Something like okay here's the the deal I'm going to handcuff myself to you and you're going to handcuff yourself to me and then we're going to tell each other the truth and neither of us are going to get to run away and so our once we know the truth then we're either going to live together in mutual torment or we're going to try to deal with that truth and straighten ourselves out and straighten ourselves out jointly and that's going to make us us more powerful And more

resilient and more and deeper and wiser as we progress together through life and and I think that's absolutely brilliant because if you leave a backd door open man you're going to use it that's for sure and the oath is there and this was yung's commentary on the spiritualization of of the human parir born by Christian marriage for example which which emphasized uh the the what would you call it the subordination of both members of the Marital Union to a higher order uh personality that was embodied in the figure of the logos so the the idea

is that in in the Christian marriage for example the man isn't the boss and the woman isn't the boss the boss is the mutual personality composed by the seeking of Truth in both of them and that's conceptualized as their their joint subjugation to the logos and that is absolutely dead on man it's like the ruler of your marital life should be Your vow to tell each other the truth because like in hard times during your life when you've done something stupid and idiotic that might take you down and you don't have anybody that you can

turn to you know if you have a partner that you can trust you can go say Hey you know I made a big Financial mistake man and it's really torturing me and I feel like a complete idiot and it's really dangerous and the person there is going to help you figure out what to do about It and they're going to know that when they make a stupid mistake and they're bloody well going to that they can come and talk to you and that you guys are going to work your way through it and that's a

big deal and there's a couple of things our culture gets really wrong wrong and one is it devalues marriage that's really a very bad idea because marriage is marriage is like a third of your life and maybe more and kids are a third of your life and your your your Life outside of marriage and kids is a third of your life you know approximately speaking and to miss any of that is a massive massive mistake now having said that I will also say that for some people missing one or more of those is necessary because

they have a reason you know maybe they're brilliantly creative artists and they need to devote themselves entirely to their career or they're outstanding in some way and so they need they can Justify the sacrifice of one part of that Tri out of being to another part but for but generally speaking it's a very dangerous thing and and it it it shouldn't be done and also kids get an absolutely terrible rap you know because kids are delightful if they're well behaved one of the chapters in my new book is called Don't let let your children do

anything that makes you dislike them and you can do that especially if you discuss it thoroughly With your spouse your the person that's helping you discipline the kids and children are the best company because they're really enthusiastic about everything they love doing new things they really love you so they're happy that you're around um all you have to do is make sure they're not too hot and they're not too cold and they've had something to eat and they're not too tired and you don't expect them to stay engaged in something for longer than They can

manage cuz we used to take our kids when they were little out to restaurants for example and they could sit there no problem and behave really nicely when they were two and three but they couldn't do it for more than about 45 minutes you can't push your luck but I also noticed with little kids is that they got antsy and unreasonable about 5 to 10 minutes before the adults did too it's just the adults were too stupid to notice the kids would notice right away So um so back to marriage well you look for someone

that you're attracted to that you love and then you look for someone that you can bloody well trust and then you tell them the truth and and that way maybe you can get through life and you can have someone to weave the Rope of your being with and together to make to make your joint rope stronger and you can have some continuity in your narrative and you can have children and then you can have grandchildren and like You can have a life man and there's nothing you're so fortunate if you can manage that and so

okay so there's that one so what's my advice to young men seeking a woman for marriage and family yeah well and also you know marry someone you think would be a good mother and that has enough sense generally speaking to know that she wants children now some women don't want children and fair enough and some women perhaps shouldn't have children that's also Possible but the general rule of thumb is especially once a woman's you know in her mid 20s if she doesn't know that she wants children or won't admit it unless she has a viciously

important reason then she's not oriented properly psychologically she she she isn't she doesn't know what's important in life now that might also be the case with you and it probably is but as a rule of thumb that's a really good one I'm not I wouldn't consider myself either naive or Particularly optimistic person I don't think I'm either of those but this isn't actually an idea this is one of the only ideas that I've ever found that I really believe to be Rock Solid I actually think that it's true and and it's very optimistic because it

says you can use your sense of meaning to calibrate your progress through life it but but there's rules you have to aim at the highest possible good that you can conceive now and and that's subject update because What the hell do you know but you start by aiming at the star you can see rather than the dimmer one that you can't yet perceive and then you decide that you're going to do that honestly right there's that that's a big decision so the first decision I think in some sense is a decision of love you're going

to decide that being is worth while and that you're going to work for its betterment and that's a decision that's based on love and the second decision is based on Truth having made that decision you're going to play a straight game having made those two decisions I think that you can allow your sense of meaning to calibrate your pathway and then what's so interesting is that you hit a state that's as close to paradisal as you're going to hit right away because being engaged like that it's better to be engaged in the solution of a

complex problem than not to have a problem at all and that's that's no different than Saying it's better for there to be being than non-being because being is a problem and so if you want to have no problems then you have no being and and you could say well being is so miserable that maybe that's the route we should take and fair enough but maybe you can have your cake and eat it too you can have the damn problem it can be a problem worth solving and you can be so engaged in solving the problem

that it justifies the fact that the problem Exists and then you get then you get to have you get to have the problem and the solution at the same time and maybe that's better than not having the problem at all and I believe that because one of the things I have seen and I've seen this so interesting been so interesting when I've been lecturing to people especially more recently and and this has also manifested on you itself on YouTube I'm talking to people a lot about responsibility and it's young men in particular that seem to

be responding to that and I think that's partly because I think that young women in some sense have their responsibility map already laid out for them it's it's also less voluntary in some sense for women because they have more complicated problems to solve in the first part of their life right because they have to get the family problem solved but Whatever I've been talking very in a very delineated man about responsibility which is a strange thing to sell to people but responsibility is what gives your life meaning and so then you might say well then

take on Ultimate responsibility and what happens you have an ultimately meaningful life then you might say well if your life is ultimately meaningful doesn't matter if it's punctuated by tragedy or even predicated on tragedy it's worth It and I think that's true and everything I've seen indicates to me that's true every time I get my clients to take on more responsibility you know and it isn't an injunction you're a bad person you should take on responsibility it has nothing to do with that you can Define the damn responsibility it isn't something that that someone else

should impose on you it's not a matter of doing what you should do in some abstract manner it's it's not that it's the Choice of what game you're going to play and you know you can play the game of the Seeker I would say and if you play that game then everyone wins and it's the best game you can play and so the the the answer in some sense to the tragedy of life to the catastrophe of life to the fall is to adopt the responsibility of mortality that goes along with that and to play

that game maximally and paradoxically it's in the willingness to do that that the solution Emerges and I don't you know I have done my best with every single thing I've talked to you guys about I have done my best to do what doeski does in his novels which is I make a proposition and then I spend months or years trying to figure out if I can take the bloody thing apart if there's something wrong with it because I want to find out I want to hit it with a hammer and see if it breaks and

what I've been trying to do is to tell you all the things that I've gathered let's say or or laid out or articulated or discovered over the last 30 years that I have not been able to break with the biggest hammer that I could take to them and I guess that's the fundamental one is that I I believe that the the um the idea that lurks in these images derived from very different cultures it's the same idea life is suffering right indisputable What do you do about that you you voluntarily accept it and then strive

to overcome the suffering that's a consequence of that and you do that for you and you do that in a way that makes it better for other people and then that works and one question might be well how well does it work and the answer is you the only way that you can find out is by trying it that's it that's the existential element of it the proof is to be derived By the Incarnation of the attitude in your own life no one can tell you how it will work for you it's the thing that

your destiny is to discover that and you have to make you have to make the decisions to begin with It's like because you can't do this without commitment you have to commit to it first that's the act of faith that that kard was so insistent upon you have to say I'm going to act as if being is good I'm going to act as if truth is the Pathway to Enlightenment I'm going to act as if I should pursue the deepest meaning possible in my life and there's there's reasons to do none of those they're real

reasons so it's really a decision but you you can't find out what the consequence of the decision is unless you make the decision I think the same thing happens when you get married by the way said if you think you might leave you're not married and then you think well the Marriage didn't succeed it's like well maybe you were never married because the rule is you don't get to leave and there's a reason for that rule now I'm not saying that there aren't situations where there should be exceptions made for that that's not the point

the point is that there's some games you don't get to play unless you're all in and the other thing that's so interesting about being alive is that you're all In no matter what you do you're all in this is going to kill you so I think you might as well play the most magnificent game you can while you're waiting because do you have anything better to do really why not pick the best thing possible that you could do why not do that maybe you could justify your wretched existence to yourself that way I think you

could that's what it looks like you know People find such meaning in the responsibilities they adopt it stops making them ask questions about what life is for if you have a newborn child for example like unless you're really in a bad way psychotically depressed or or maybe your personality really needs some retooling you stop thinking about anything but ensuring that that baby is doing well and if someone comes along and asks you an existential Question about your commitment to that the right response is why are you asking me such stupid questions when when the when

this this is manifesting itself right in front of your eyes like how blind can you be that isn't a time for for questions about the meaning of life that the answer is right in front of you and if you can't see it it's not because life has no meaning it's because you're blind I mean that's what the image of of of the virgin mother and the child is All about it's like what's the answer to the meaning of life here's an answer it's like well I'm going to criticize that well go right ahead you know

it's like it's like what what you're you're like a you're like a what do you call that a termite knowing on a temple there's no there's no utility in that sort of criticism you're it's blindness and it's the same thing with regards to the path of the hero it's like it glistens in front of You and you can criticize it it's like fine put the cart before the horse and and see how far you get so I thought to bring full closure to the class I was trying to solve this ter terrible puzzle that confronted

me for and many other people about how it was that human beings got themselves in such a tangle about what they believed such a tangle that we were pointing the ultimate weapons of Destruction at one another which by the Way we are still doing and I thought okay well I understand that we need our belief systems they Orient us and that means there will be conflict between belief systems and that can be a catastrophe and that's being played out everywhere again in very many ways what's the solution to that well one possibility is there's no

solution it's just Mayhem all the way around could be the case but it seemed to me as I delved into it that the proper solution to that was to live properly as an individual because you're more powerful than you think way more powerful than you think I mean God only knows what you are in the final analysis you're blind to your own weaknesses but you're also blind to your own strengths and so then I think well if you got your act together it'd be better for you and instantly it would be better for your family

assuming they Wanted you to get your act together and not everyone does but and then it would be better for the community it's like how far could you take that if you stopped wasting time and if you stopped lying and if you oriented yourself to to the highest possible good that you could conceive of and you committed to that how much good could you do well I would say why don't you find out so that's what I think you should do you Should find out you don't have anything better to do and there's nothing in

it as far as I've been able to tell there's nothing in it but good so maybe you could sort yourself out so that you wanted nothing but the good and and then maybe you could help make that manifest in the world and maybe we wouldn't have all these terrible problems then at least we'd have few fewer of them and that would be A start so it's the it's the the answer to the problem of humanity is the is the is the Integrity of the individual that's the answer so and states that are predicated on that

realization are healthy so and states that aren't are doomed to stagnation and catastrophic collapse and personality that are predicated on self tyranny and the tyranny of Others are doomed and doomed to collapse so and then you think well what's the barrier and the barriers is are you willing to accept the responsibility and part of the answer to that is reduce the damn responsibility until it's tolerable you don't have to fix everything at once you could just start by fixing the things that you could fix or you could even do it more You could do it

with even less self-sacrifice you could start by fixing only the things that you want to fix God you can get a massive way that way so do it see what happens that's what you should have been taught in University right from the beginning it's like aim at the highest good tool yourself into something that can attain it and go out there and manifest it in the world and everything that everything that comes your way will Be everything that comes your way will be a blessing and so all you have to do is give up your

resentment and your hatred I know that's a hard thing to give up because you have plenty of reason for it that's probably a good place to stop so it's a pleasure when both of us were very ill over the last 3 or four years and my wife almost died and so did I and all that unfolded over a period that lasted A few years and we were apart for a lot of that and when we came back together we were quite distant from one another partly because well I was still quite ill and Tammy was

still recovering and well many things had happened in the interim to say the least and it wasn't a straightforward thing for us to put ourselves back back together as a couple we the will was there we had had a practice of consciously dating for Decades so when we first had little kids and this happens to people who have little kids we found that we were separating intimately and that's because when you're at that stage of your life and you're developing your career and you have little kids it's like sex is priority number 11 on a

priority list of 10 and you only ever get to Priority five and so it's not that it's unimportant it's that it it becomes Displaced and that's understandable but it's not a good medium to long-term solution it has to be moved back up the priority list to some minimally acceptable degree and the question is that you have to negotiate as a couple is what is that minimally acceptable degree and people hate having that conversation because people will act out sexual acts say that they'll never talk about which is a strange reality um when I was working

as a Clinician I used to have these conversations with my clients especially now and then I would have both my client and their husband or wife in the office with me to talk over issues like this and one of the things I would ask them which they absolutely hated was well h often should you have sex and they would come up with all sorts of reasons to not give an answer to that question like well we don't want to make it so formal and we don't really Want to uh we don't want to take the

spontaneity out of it and it's like yeah really you're having a lot of spontaneous sex are you really that's actually you've been married 10 years 15 years that there's so much spontaneous sex that you just don't want to mess with that it's like why are you in my office so so that's just delusional and so but it was still very difficult to pin either of them down and I suppose that's because you know maybe The husband says well 15 times a week and the wife says once every two years and that's and neither of them

want to admit that that's what they want or need and so they won't talk about it and so you have to Corner people if you're a treacherous therapist and the way you do that is by starting with something absurd it's like well how about once every 2 years and both of them pretty much agree almost instantly that that's Probably a little on the scarce side and then you might say well why how about four times a day and virtually without exception although not always both parties agree that that's probably aiming for the Stars let's say

but then now you've got people nicely trapped because you know it's somewhere between four times a day and once every two years and then you can pull in the walls it's like well how about six times a week or how about once every 3 months And you know that's a lot closer right still not that close but it's a lot closer and generally my experience was that people who have relatively productive and engaged and multi-dimensional lives settle on something very varying between once to three times a week and that's that's a close approximation and I've

also noticed that couples who aren't intimate physically about once a week at minimum things tend to deteriorate Across time and the relationship tends not to hold I've also noticed that unless you spend about 90 minutes a week listening to and talking to your partner about practical matters of the domestic economy and your shared life you also build up a huge backlog of undisclosed communication and 10 years from now that will fall on you in the form of a divorce case and you'll spend all the time you could have been talking at home talking in court

which I wouldn't Recommend and so and I also think it's very difficult to to get that 90 minutes or 120 minutes or whatever it happens to be a week of intimate time together unless you first sort out the 90 minutes or 120 Minutes of necessary communication but it's worth the discussion it's like you could ask yourself first all right hypothetically you could have what you wanted but first you have to admit what It is is and that's a hard thing to think through right cuz you really got to face yourself when you when you ask

that question cuz you have to ask yourself well what's the minimum sexual commitment I seem to require so that I wouldn't be tempted say to stray and you might say to yourself well I'd never be tempted to stray it's like never is really not the right answer in that situation right because it it sort of Means in some sense that you're already 3 orders dead so I don't think it's actually a moral virtue to assume that no matter what you wouldn't be tempted to stray and I'm certainly not saying that the Temptation is a good

thing or that the straying is either but the proclivity to want to if you're completely deprived might be the vestages of a virtue it means you're you still got to spark inside you and so you might say to Yourself well believe it would be this this is what I seem to need and want and then maybe your partner could ask herself or himself the same question and then maybe you could have a discussion about now that's an awkward discussion but and there's some rules for that too it's like be willing to talk about it 20

times and do it really badly because you're not going to do it very well to begin with and 20 times Isn't that man many if you're going to make love to your partner let's say three times a week for the next 30 years that's 30,000 times a dreadful proposition that is but talking about that 20 times is probably not that much of an investment given that degree of return so and it is useful to allow yourself and your partner to understand that that's going to not be an easy conversation that you're going to do it

Stupidly and badly and one of the things I used to tell my clients encourage my clients to do that's not tell them encourage them to do was to schedule dates if they're married and their objection was always the same it's like well we did that before we got I got married so I didn't have to do that anymore it's like really that's why you got married did you tell your wife that before you got married that I'm going to get I'm going to marry you so that I Never have to spend it a single moment

for the rest of my life ever thinking about how to be romantically interesting to you what do you think shall we get married it's like that's generally not the offer that's on the table and if you think that all of that romance is going to manifest itself spontaneously it's like well what what what do you think you're in some sort of delusional Hollywood fairy tale it's like that's not going to happen it didn't happen When you were single or if it did it rarely happened it's certainly not going to happen when you're married you have

to put some you have to put some time and attention to it and then you might think well how could we make it go so that if we put time and intention to it it would be so clearly worthwhile that we' never have a second's doubt about whether or not it was a good idea and that's a good thing to aim at and after Tammy and I Were so ill and separated we had spent a lot of time practicing dating and we had got good at it and that's what we had when we were recovering

from death and coming back together and that was great that was a great thing and you know they say practice makes perfect and so if you really want something like you really want something why not aim at it and if you really want Something and you're aiming at it why not communicate about it and dream you know you can dream together you can think well if we had the Romantic life we wanted what would you want that's something to ask your partner what would you want something to ask yourself if I could have what I

wanted that's to knock and ask right and to seek if I could have what I wanted what would it look like you know And and then you can stumble forward stupidly and approximate getting it and with some practice maybe you'll get it and what a good deal that is and then you know maybe you won't be completely old and worn out by the time you're 40 and completely devoid of any interest in your partner and cynical and bitter and searching around for an alternative and carping about how appalling your wife is to your friends And

that's a pretty damn dismal old alternative to a bit of dreaming and some communication and so and I think you I think not only can you do that within an ethical framework I think that if you don't do it you're not operating within an ethical framework so it's perfectly reasonable to pull up the sexual impulse let's say and elevated to the status of the highest Ethical Endeavor a strange way of thinking about it but but the alternative is just not what anyone wants so let's say um you're having an argument with your partner and you

say you're a stupid person and you've always been a stupid person and as far as I can tell as far into the future as I can see you're going to remain a stupid person so what are they supposed to do what are they going to do when you say that they're Going to cry like if you mean it they're going to get angry if you mean it and they're not going to like you very much and why is that well it's like you it's it's assault basically the only way really the only thing that you

can do in a situation like that is walk away ignore it respond in kind or it degenerates into violence that's it because there's no discussion you haven't left the person anywhere to go you've gone right to the top of their Hierarchy and said everything about you is wrong and worse than that all the mechanisms that we could use to correct it won't work so those are fighting words so don't do that unless you want to have a fight so then you might say well what would you do instead and the answer is deliver the least

amount of information you possibly can and so let's say you come home and your person is watching TV and you were kind of hoping they'd greet you at the door you Can't you shouldn't break down into tears and say you're a stupid person you've always been a stupid person and you're going to be a stupid person in the future you should say I have this peculiarity and that is that when I come home I don't have enough confidence to just be happy I would like you to come and say just shut the TV off for

2 minutes come to the front door and say hello then you can go back and watch your TV would it be okay If you did that and they'll think well you'll have to pay for it somehow but then they'll they'll probably do it and so but the thing is is you got to specify the routine that you want transformed at the highest possible level of resolution and you want to you want to recommend the minimal necessary change that will satisfy you so you can't say if you love me you'd know how to greet me at

the door H not helpful CU They're stupid right and so are you so you have to spell it out it's like what do you want exactly what would make you satisfied and then you have to have your person like grud inly practice that a few times and you have to let them do it very badly and also in a bad temper and then you have to reward them for it and then maybe 3 months later they'll do it properly so you you need to know that because that's what people are like it's Very hard for

them to learn new things and they're very resistant to it but they're very responsive to reward so another thing this is partly what BF Skinner figured out so when he was training rats and he wanted rat to do something one of the things he would do is he put maybe he was going to train the rat to climb a a little ladder and I mean he could get rats to climb ladders and then climb across like the little monkey bars and then spin around three Times and then you know whack a ball and then eat

something like he got incredibly complex Behavior out of rats and the way he did that was patience so he put the ladder in the cage and the rat would just run around doing rat things and then it would put its hand on the on the first run and Skinner would give it a pellet and so he did you know after even once the rat's going to be like stand in the immediate vicinity of the ladder and then the frequency with Which it's going to go like this is just increased so then it does it again

bang pellet well soon the rat is just going like this right so then you wait until the rat tries the other hand so you give it a pellet then well then it's going like this and then because it's going to get bored it'll go like this it'll hit the next stair bang you give it a pellet soon the route's climbing and doing all the little things you want it to do now the problem with that is you have to be Patient you have to wait till the rat does what you want okay that's more relationship

advice wait till the rat does what you want and then reward it and it's unbelievably useful and I like it's also extraordinarily positive I mean I'm being you know comical in so far as I can manage that about the situation but people love reward and they love attention people love attention more than anything else and so If you're you watch through the day and when your partner does something that's good say man that was good or something like that you can be inventive and then they'll do it more and if you do that a whole

bunch like for a year they'll be doing things that are good for you just all the time but you have to be patient which is very annoying and you have to suppress your response to only respond to negative things you know because what we know about the expectancy models is That a deviation from expectation produces a burst of negative emotions you know so you come home and the whole house is clean but there's like I don't know the dog has shed on the rug or something and the person Overlook that's it's like you're not going

to see the clean house you're going to see the rug with the dog fur on it you're going to say why didn't you clean up the rug with the dog fur and they're going to say good luck getting me to clean up the House again and you know because the thing is is the exceptions stands out and what's done doesn't and the reason for that is you can just ignore what's done because it's done it doesn't get in your way so it gets invisible really quickly so you really got to watch that tendency one of

the things n said was that if you really want to punish someone you don't punish them when they do something wrong cuz they expect that that's not a punishment they expect that They might even be relieved by it you want to punish them when they do something right because then you'll really hurt them and so that's something to think about and if you're in a relationship man if someone's done something right do not punish them you do that two or three times and that's it and you're not going to get them to do that anymore

so judiciousness watch what they're doing if something happens that good that's good notice it and you know If they've done a bunch of things don't concentrate on the things they did wrong that's not smart it's really hard on them too like this in some sense this sounds manipulative and self sish you know because I'm teaching you how to train your partner but but you should also teach them how to train you because it would be really nice if you could come home and the person would say well what did you do today and you say

you know here's a bunch of things I did and They said you they say well this looks really good and that was great and why don't you do some more of that and you're like oh boy it was a great day and so you know you can train them to train you properly and that's a really helpful thing especially if you do it over a few years you know you can that's how you have a good relationship cuz you're both clueless as hell to begin with you don't know even what would make you happy much

less what would make the Other person happy and so you got to figure these things out bit by bit and then you have to inform each other and then you have to be patient enough to let your partner do these things really badly I'll give you another example sometimes sometimes I I see couples sporadically in my in my clinical practice I'm not a couple counselor and so but sometimes when I'm working with someone there's an issue That needs to be discussed with with both people because otherwise it's just stupid and one of the things I

often recommend to people especially once they have kids is that they set aside to use an we're just not doing that you know that's what we did before we got married um they'll say well my partner would never go for that um they've got a bunch of excuses why that isn't going to work and so I've heard all those excuses I Know all of them and then maybe I convince them yeah yeah sure I know this is stupid it's awkward it's it's it's uh artificial that's okay just try it once so then they go and

try it and then they come back and they say we had an absolutely miserable time really we had a miserable time we couldn't agree on what movie to go to and then you know she took me to her movie and I really didn't like it and so we fought all the way home we're never doing that again And I say well really you've got 30 years 400 Days that's 12,000 days okay so you're not going to do that you're going to spend the next 12,000 days without having any real romantic evenings and interactions with your

spouse that's your plan and I like doing I like doing arithmetic with my clients they hate that they hate they hate arithmetic it's like well no that sounds like a bad idea said okay well would you like some romance in your life or you Just done with that well well really like you know people can go for a long time with no romance at all say well no maybe we'd like some of that well how much once a year well no once a month well no once every two weeks well sometimes people are really busy

it's like okay that beats the hell out of zero once a week twice a week okay whatever we're going to we're going to start with a range okay what would a good evening look like like if you could Both get exactly what you wanted what would it look like well then they have to think about that because the the previous theory was my stupid partner should know what I like and that's what their the partner is thinking too it's like good luck with that because no they don't have a clue especially if they're men they

don't have a clue so you have to tell them what you want and how they could deliver it and vice versa which is very awkward And horrible and then you have to practice it for 6 months cuz you know it takes a lot of practice to do something sophisticated really well and then if you do that it's like poof you got it for the rest of your life how many chances do you think you'll have in your life for for like a serious high quality intimate relationship what do you guys think how many chances are

you going to have for that four okay that's good that's good Yeah I would say you problem pop out at about five okay two down so okay so you know that's not that many chances plus you get old quick you know by the time you're 45 you're not going to have a family and well you can do that sometimes if you're male if you're female maybe but it gets pretty rough and you're looking probably at that point at a fair bit of inv vitro and that sort of interaction it's tough It's hard on people so

you know not only Do you not have that many chances you don't have that much time so you got to get it right so if you get it wrong it costs you like maybe it'll cost you 5 years 5 years is a long time so and three fiveyear costs is like you've lost things there that you can't replace okay so that's one part of it is you don't have that many chances and it's costly to to burn up the time okay the second thing is a divorce is very Complicated like it's not so bad if

you get divorced to someone who's reasonable but often the reason that you're getting divorced is that one or the other or both of you aren't that reasonable and what that might mean is that you might be negotiating with someone whose basic goal is to make sure that you don't have another day of success in the next 20 years and if that's their goal they will attain it so and there's lots of ways people do That and they usually do it by holding their children hostage and people will definitely do that they do it all the

time you know so you want to avoid that and then you know then of course it's hard on the relationship you have with your children and like that's those are probably the most relation important relationships you have in your life you know it's like might be parents might be siblings might be your your partner might be your kids But I think when it comes right down to it your parents are old and so are you but your kids aren't and they're just as close plus they need you and so you start twisting and messing that

about boy it's hard on your psyche it's hard on the kids too so you know so then I'm just thinking about that and what you said about how that's a cost if you if you mess it up that and that's like a 5year cost that's that's cost you right oh and it might be a 15year cost if You're in a custody battle and it'll cost you a quar of a million dollars right or yeah but like is it then would you say like being a psychologist that it's better for people to like pursue a relationship

that's like not good they continue to do that and possibly incur further cost than it is to just cut it off because it wouldn't divorce okay it's a complicated question what I would say is don't make the kind of mistakes that get you into such a stupid Relationship to begin with okay cuz that's the answer to that question and the way you do that is by trying not to delude yourself any more than is absolutely necessary and that means when you're in the damn relationship tell the person the truth and try to figure out what

the truth is for you and don't put up with any nonsense and stand up for yourself and also aim towards the good you know if you do all those things then your relationship is probably going to Work if you're trying to do all those things really and you have a partner that will not do that then leave but it's a rare person who won't do that if they're stepped along the way properly and they learn how to do it now not everyone's like that cuz you do run into some people who are basically devoted towards

Mayhem and trouble you know but usually you know a person is a balance of striving for the good and you Know messing about in the hell and you know you're both like that when you start a relationship and you try to tilt it towards the good and then you won't run into that problem so but you have to do that right from the beginning of the relationship you know it doesn't take that much to corrupt a relationship so that it's not really salvageable enough mistakes three or four acts of infidelity you're done you're not going

to come back from that because the Fundamental element of trust has been remove and then you can't communicate with the person because you don't know if they're telling you the truth and then you don't know if you're dealing with reality and if you're not dealing with reality with your partner it's like good luck fixing that it's like you're working on a ghost car while the real one is sitting in the shop with the motor out you know it's not going to get you anywhere so a lot of the issue is Don't get in the trouble

to begin with if you are in the trouble well then you try to straighten yourself out and see if you can fix it well if you can't your options aren't great and it depends on the particularities of the situation now know I have people that I counsel it's like leave that person and the rule is they're lying to you they aren't aiming up and you won't be able to tolerate being with them for 10 years without becoming resentful Alcoholic and homicidal so that's a bad outcome there's nothing you can do to avoid it so you

might as well leave but you know you have to have that sorted out it has to be the truth cuz it's no fun it's no good to leave someone who's struggling in a in the Lurch you know and you think well I'm with this person they're not going anywhere you know maybe they have an alcohol problem and they're resentful it's like but I'm all they've Got well they bloody well better want to to fix that because you're not going to be able to fix it all that'll happen is you'll end up in the same place

now if they really want to fix it more than anything and they're willing to tell the truth about it and willing to interact with you then there's a ghost of a chance you might pull through it but it's very hard to fix someone and it's really hard to fix someone who does Not want to be fixed and there's lots of people like that so I'm just going to say like a personal anot with my parents divorc was with three so um I know that a lot of people say like you're harming the kids if you

uh get divorc and i' I've had to deal with a lot of like the tension between like choosing your parents and which one to agree with but um when everyone asks like do you like are you upset that they got divorc I'm like I I see how much They fight now and I can't imagine having that happen like 247 and being in that hous yeah well I mean this is why there isn't an answer to the question there's it depends on the particularities of the situation and so a lot there's there's lots of situations where

a general answer doesn't suffice but I would say it is this is a tough one I can tell tell you what's happened since the divorce loss got got liberalized the first thing that happens Is that all of you are going to be divorced at about the same rate as people would have 30 years ago because rich people still get married and they generally don't get divorced poor people do not get married and that's like 60% of the population and it's ramping up quick and there's no evidence whatsoever that that's anything but catastrophic so kids who

are raised by single parents do not do as well now that doesn't mean there aren't some Single parents who are doing a stellar job obviously there are and there's some married parents that do a terrible job that's not the issue the issue is the bulk of the evidence and the bulk of the evidence strongly suggests that children who are raised with two parents do better well du why well why it's impossible to raise children Jesus they're expensive they're troublesome they're smart and they're useless you know so and you've got them For 20 years it's like

you're going to do that by yourself sure you are you know you're going to be working at a horrible job 40 hours a week or more like a retail job for example where they just treat you like a slave and then you're going to go home to your miserable kids exhausted it's like that's not fun and you know it's increasingly the norm for huge chunks of our population like elitist liberal types like all of you for example don't Pay much attention to what happens to people who are actually poor but as far as I can

tell it's been a bloody catastrophe for them you know there's an old saying when the upper class gets a cold the lower class gets pneumonia and you know the thing about that saying it's true it's like it's not a metaphor it's literally the case if an epidemic sweeps through a population the population dies from the poor people upward CU they're Sadam Stressed so you know I would say with regards to marriage I've been married a long time it's just about it's 26 years now you know and I've noticed a bunch of things about marriage one

is two brains are better than one and so if you actually communicate with your partner cuz they're not like you it's like you have a corpus colossum between you you know and they'll tell you things that you don't understand you know like when you're being stupid you know in a Typically feminine way theyere are typically masculine way or in whatever stupid way you manage to be stupid they'll point that out to you you know and that can be really helpful even though it's extremely annoying you know and they can help you make decisions and they're

a good place to they're a good place to confess to you know and it's really helpful when you're trying to figure out how to disciplin children so that you're not a pathetic milk soop who Lets them run all over you or some Tyrant who you know likes to beat them with a stick when they sneeze you know hopefully you kind of find some Pleasant Middle Ground in there and it's a lot easier to do that with two people then with one and then they can spell you off when you're exhausted particularly useful if you have

small children cuz you will be exhausted when you have small children you know plus The Narrative of your life has Continuity and that's nice you know and if your home is set up properly it's actually a pleasure to go to it you know it is a it is a buttress against the chaotic and and uncaring external World cuz the external World in many ways doesn't give a damn about you you know you know so if you go home and it's set up reasonably well it's like hey you've got somewhere to belong that's not so bad

um just a another um another related situation that is personal relevant for Me and might for other people too that um in in many situations like when something bad happens uh you know okay yeah I've got to do some kind of reparative thing right and uh so say it's like a health scare you go okay I got to work on my diet and then it's a divorce it's like all right well I got to work through why I didn't think I was headed for a divorce for the last 20 years but now it just happened

and but but in some Situations people know they got to repair but they don't want to get something that would actually be repairing so they go to people who are specialists in like other areas of of like personal psychological dealings and stuff like that anything but divorce like attention deficit work on your attention skills or like work on these uh or like um assertiveness training or something like that but like they're not they're like they're diligently avoid Voiding the heart of the matter and what would you make of that and and if you were in

a family with somebody like that is there something you could do well you know some situations are like Humpty Dumpty right there's no putting it back together yeah now but again in terms of avoidance of those situations it's like you think about that hierarchy again well divorce is a low resolution high impact solution cuz it just tears a chunk of that hierarchy out and throws It away that's a lot and it's costly it's going to hurt you okay so then you think well what what might you do instead of that and the real answer is

solve the damn problems as they arise you know and that's hard and it requires drilling down it really requires drilling down so one of the things I want to build for example which I haven't built yet it's kind of like going to be like this future authoring thing that you guys do I want to build a Problem solving Matrix for for couples cuz like because here's how not to get divorced from your wife figure out how to set the table properly now what does that mean it's really really complicated it's like who's going to cook

when are they going to cook why are they cooking how should you respond to it who buys groceries what are the groceries going to be who's going to put them away how do you say thanks when someone does something for you in the Domestic environment and what's happened and this is part of the death of God roughly speaking is that the roles are gone okay and what that means is you better be awake because it turns out that running a kitchen in a house is unbelievably complicated and difficult and so you have to negotiate how

to do it and you're a terrible negotiator you don't know how to decompose the damn problem to the point where you could solve it you won't admit what you want You won't admit what you're like you won't pay any attention to what actually irritates you you know so you like to think that you're nice and easy to get along with but you're not and so you know I treat people who have post-traumatic disorder or symptoms of post-traumatic disorder and so let's say they got post-traumatic stress disorder because again because a relationship collapsed on them suddenly

which is quite common you know they get betrayed Or someone leaves them suddenly and then they don't know what to do because especially if they're conscientious because then they just tear themselves into pieces trying to figure out what they did wrong to bring about that event and the reason they're doing that is because they want to retool their perceptions and their actions so that the probability that they'll have the same experience again is minimized and their mind won't leave them alone till They do it and no wonder right because if you fall into a big

pit and you get really hurt the first thing you should figure out is how to not fall into big pits anymore and your mind is set up exactly for that and so what you do with someone who's having problems like that so maybe they're waking up at the middle of the night obsessing about what went wrong is you walk them through it you do a situational analysis first because one Of the oversimplifications that people make and this is especially true for conscientious people is if something bad happened to me I must have done something to

deserve it now that's actually a pretty functional idea because it suggests that there are things about your behavior that you could change that would make the better but the problem is is that say if it's the collapse of a relationship and you've been with that person for 8 years Or or longer well you did so many things with them that the idea that you did something wrong pretty much extends to every single thing you ever did with them and that's how are you going to fix that and so that's part of the trauma actually the

the trauma is 80 million snakes all at the same time it's like well forget it you don't have time to go through all that material and so partly what you do is with people and this is What you should do with yourself too is you do a situational analysis it's like don't be assuming necessarily that the thing that happened to you only happened to you because of what you did or didn't do there's all sorts of factors at play so one of the things that sometimes I do with clients is if they were in a

relationship and I can get some reasonable personality information about both of them I can point out where they were temperamentally Incompatible you know like if you're a highly conscientious person and your partner is very very low in conscientiousness it's like well good luck to you to how the hell are you ever going to work that out because you want everything to be exactly where it's supposed to be and you're working all the time and your partner could care less whether things were where they supposed to be and they're not going to work and you can

butt heads about that Forever the probability that you're going to shift it you know except to some minor degree is very very low and so so sometimes you end up with someone with whom you get along very well on one temperamental Dimension and you're an absolute catastrophe on the other four and the probability that you're going to be able to mediate a huge temperamental difference is extremely low you wouldn't expect yourself to mediate a huge intellectual Difference right you're going to make the other person smarter or maybe you smarter depending on who you're with it's

like no probably not bit maybe so you do a situational analysis and so what you're trying to do is to extract out information from your past and your present that will enable you to conduct yourself properly into the future and so that's another example of the pragmatic element of of thought well then within the brain Itself apart from the major subdivisions which which which we just described there are minor subdivisions and here's a bunch of them listed the cod8 nucleus the cerebral cortex the huge newest part of the brain that's about a square square meter

if you unfold it it's all folded up and most of the processing occurs right on the surface that's that's the idea anyways the thalamus that's a place where a lot of the information in the brain appears to be Integrated um the cerebellum helps you with balance and the sequencing of complex motor activities the hippocampus that's the one we talked about before one of the things that the hippocampus does seems to do is compare your model of the world as it's unfolding with the model that that you desire to be occurring and then keeps track of

mismatches and if it detects a mismatch then it disinhibits other emotional and motivational centers and that's the Beginning of your response to the unknown so one of them is the hypothalamus I'm going to concentrate on it for a bit it's a little tiny part of the brain that's pretty much at the top of the spinal cord see it's really small compared to the rest of the brain now it turns out that if imagine this is a cat brain for a minute and you take off the whole cat brain except for the hypothalamus which which People

do you take off the whole cortex for example um and then the cat's still alive if you do it carefully but it doesn't have much of a brain and so you might think well that cat would just do nothing but it cat's actually pretty functional if it's reduced just to its hypothalamus and that's because the hypothalamus is an incredibly important part of the brain and it provides what I would say constitute the major frames the major psychological frames and so so Like a a decorticate cat can still eat and drink and regulate its body temperature

and engage in defensive aggression and if it's female it can still mate male can't because the male mating behavior is more complicated um and as long as you keep it in a bounded environment it can function reasonably well it's hyper curious though which is very weird because you wouldn't expect a cat with no brain to be curious about every anything but a Cat with noin brain is curious about everything and that seems to be because part of the reason that you aren't curious about something anymore is because you've investigated it and you've built a representation

of it that's functional and that functional representation then stands for the thing itself and then you can ignore it and so you learn to ignore things they're they're interesting to begin with and then you learn to ignore them and so one Of the things that I think artists do if they're great artists is remind you that there's more to things that than you see now that you've learned to ignore them so you get a kind of a hallucinogenic painting of flowers like van go might produce like his famous irises which I think sold for like

$220 million or something outrageous it's like what van go is trying to show you is what those flowers looked like before you thought you could see them cuz now you flower And you walked by you know you don't see it at all because you're off to get a peanut butter sandwich or something you don't have time to glory in the wonder of the world you know you you've got something practical to do so so all right so we're going to zoom in on the hypothalamus here and what you see of course when you zoom in

on the hypothalamus is that it's not a thing it's a whole bunch of things and then it's one of those horrible Whole bunches of things that are made out of even more bunches of things and they're made out of more bunches of things and what's really interesting about going down the body from an analytic perspective is it doesn't seem to get less complex as you go further down you know like some of the I should actually show you that I haven't showed you that little video of uh DNA fixing itself e oh I better show

you that it's so cool it's Ridiculously cool so you definitely need to see it so like that's just so ridiculously mind-blowing that it's almost unbearable I mean to think about that as Clockwork even is is a pretty strange idea because all those little things walk over obstacles it's like how the hell does that happen they're just m molecules so it's so cool cuz when you go down you'd think simple but you know and you know he said at the beginning When they were taking that when the little machines were taking that DNA apart that he

didn't show the error correcting you know they there's other little machines that go along and see if everything's okay and if it isn't they cut it out and put a right piece in it's like yeah things we don't understand there's no shortage of them that's for sure okay so what I'm doing in some sense is walking you through a Psychophysiological or representation of PJ's developmental process I would say um so I wanted to zero in on the hypothalamus because it seems to me the thing that sets the most basic frames and so we'll go ahead

with that so you see that it's made up of all these little parts and so it's called the hypothalamus more for convenience than because it's a homogen enous set of structures because It's not a homogeneous set of structures and this is something to consider very carefully when you're thinking about the terminology that psychologists use or that you might use to describe your own behavior because you know you can roughly there is a psychology of motivation and there's a psychology of emotion and you might think well emotion and motivation are categorically different entities but they're not

in fact there's no such thing as a Uniform set of motivations and there's no such thing as a uniform set of emotions and the distinction between a motivation and an emotion is unclear to say the least and that's partly because the physiological substructures that subsume what we call motivations and what we call emotions and it's not like there's a motivation Center that's that's homogeneous the closest is the hypothalamus but it's made of structures that are qualitatively different and Then the emotions because I I have to use that descriptive terminology because we have to communicate it

about it somehow there's all sorts of different structures in the brain that contribute to emotional expression and they're not even in the same place much less much less composed of identical structure or function so you know we have these short hands that we use to divide up the world but they're they're Awkward and untenable as the level of resolution increases but anyways I'm still going to go with motivation and emotion because it's a useful simplification but you can see with the hypothalamus that there's all these you know complicated little subsystems in there and then I

showed you that video to show you just how complicated the subsystems are all the way down to the really to the molecular level how those little machines manage what they do is Completely Beyond me you know to call it Clockwork when those little things that walk can walk over obstacles it's like clockwork does one thing you know only click click click click that's all it does no exceptions this thing walks over obstacles to get where it's going it's like who knows what's going on down there but it works well enough so here we are weirdly

enough