Transcript
00:00:00The most popular topic that I teach is about relationships. It's about love, falling in love,
00:00:04staying in love, making friends. That's what people most care about. A lot of young people
00:00:10in their 20s today, they say, yeah, I have goals and direction, but I don't feel like there's
00:00:15significance. I don't feel like I am loved or I don't know who it is. 62% of relationships now
00:00:22start on the apps. It's overtaken every other way to do it and it should be easier and it should be
00:00:27more fun and it should be more interesting and it's harder. I wanted to fall in love and stay in love
00:00:34when I was in my 20s and I remember when I was 23 years old thinking to myself,
00:00:37I'm ready to get married. We're going to do something slightly different for this one year
00:00:41commemorative episode of Office Hours. We're going to have actual office hours. So that's where we
00:00:46start. This is your time. Hey friends, welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks.
00:00:57I'm the host of this program that is now one year old. I'm delighted to be with you for the 53rd
00:01:03episode of this show that we conceived of as a way to bring the ideas of behavioral science to you
00:01:10in ways that you can use. The mission of the show, the mission of my work, my life,
00:01:14is to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love, using science and
00:01:19ideas. I want to bring you into that as well, which is why I'm doing this podcast and I'm so grateful
00:01:23to you for following the show and sharing it with a couple million of your close personal friends.
00:01:30I've been doing this this whole year. What a delighted it's been. We're going to do something
00:01:33slightly different for this one year commemorative episode of Office Hours. We're going to have
00:01:38actual office hours. Now, these, the people I'm with right now are not my students at Vanderbilt
00:01:43University, but they are the age of my graduate students. As a matter of fact, people who are really
00:01:48dedicated to the mission of their lives, real strivers in real life in their 20s, dealing with
00:01:54all of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, just like all of you who are watching this show,
00:01:59whether you're in your mid-20s or like me and you're mid something, that's not 20s. I want you
00:02:05to use the material that you see in every episode, but especially today, I'm delighted. As always,
00:02:10please do feedback on what you see, officehours at orthobrooks.com. That's the email address for
00:02:16the show. Also, leave comments. We read all the comments, even if they're mean. We read those
00:02:21comments too. And I don't feel bitterness toward you. Really, I don't. I want to talk to you today
00:02:27about, well, the subject that most people ask me about almost all the time, practically every day,
00:02:33as a matter of fact. Since I've been teaching in the science of human happiness at Harvard and now
00:02:37at Vanderbilt, the most popular topic that I teach is about relationships. It's about love,
00:02:43falling in love, staying in love, making friends. That's what people most care about. And if you go
00:02:48back through history, you will find that the greatest philosophers, everybody from Plato and Aristotle
00:02:53through Thomas Aquinas into the 20th century, what they usually come to is the conclusion that
00:03:00if you were to try to find the motive behind human life, the reason that we exist, it's real,
00:03:06it's to love and be loved. And that's what I want to talk about. How do we do that better?
00:03:10So funny that the basic motive of human life needs a manual, but everybody watching us knows that
00:03:16that's the case. We're going to start by getting to know a little bit our friends here. And then I'm
00:03:22going to talk a little bit more about the importance of love from a scientific perspective,
00:03:27just for 10 minutes. Then we're going to look in two different areas of love that are most salient
00:03:32for people in their 20s, friendship and romantic love. What are the biggest problems, the biggest
00:03:36challenges? No, the biggest opportunities, because love is the ultimate entrepreneurial act.
00:03:43Can you be a billionaire in that? That's what really matters. Forget the money. Let's take the value
00:03:49that it actually brings. And we're going to talk to our young friends today about where they are in
00:03:53their journey. Maybe we'll talk about where I am in mine, and we'll find some of the secrets as well.
00:03:58Hi, everybody.
00:03:59Hi.
00:04:00Welcome to Office Hours, and thank you for joining all of us in this community. I'm looking forward
00:04:04to hearing what's on your minds and talking about these big ideas. And let's start by
00:04:08getting to know each of you. Where are you coming from? What are you doing? Let's start with your
00:04:12names, your rank, and serial number. That's not it. That's a different thing. That's if I were taking
00:04:17you captive in a time of war. Let's start right here. Hi, I'm Jake. I live in D.C. I work in higher
00:04:24education. So excited to be here. That's great. Thank you, Jake. I'm Daniela. I live in Virginia,
00:04:30and I have the privilege of actually working with you, Arthur. And so I'm really excited to be a part
00:04:36of this conversation with, you know, actually seeing how this content interacts with us.
00:04:42Yeah, that's great.
00:04:43Yeah.
00:04:43I'm Carolyn. I'm located in Pennsylvania, and I just love any conversation about meaning in life. So I'm excited.
00:04:51And full disclosure, you're a Ph.D. student, soon to be a Ph.D. in developmental psychology. So you
00:04:55and I share the same passions and toolkit.
00:04:57That's true.
00:04:58Exactly right. Congratulations in advance on finishing your Ph.D.
00:05:01Thank you.
00:05:01Big accomplishment. Love to see it.
00:05:03I'm Michael. I'm 27 years old. I live local here in Virginia. I live in Fairfax. I'm in business
00:05:10development for a government contractor. And yeah, excited to be here. Excited to talk about
00:05:14all the stuff I'm really interested in. I've been following your work for a while, Dr. Brooks. So
00:05:19excited to get into it.
00:05:20Thank you, Michael. And you're a little bit different than the rest in so far as that you're married.
00:05:24Yes.
00:05:25And I think you're the only one among us. You and I are the only married men here, right? Is that right?
00:05:29Yep. For about three years, married in 2023.
00:05:32That's great.
00:05:33Hi, I'm Laura. I'm also 27 and live in the D.C. area. I do grant and education
00:05:39work for the last few years. And I'm excited for our conversation.
00:05:42Let's grant and education work.
00:05:43I worked in grant writing for a while for a public school district. And now I do grant
00:05:49consultant work.
00:05:49Oh, for nonprofits mostly, right?
00:05:51Nonprofits, a lot of institutes of higher ed, some nonprofits. Yeah.
00:05:56That's great.
00:05:57Mm-hmm.
00:05:57Good. Welcome. Last but not least, Griffin.
00:06:00Yeah. My name is Griffin. I've been living in D.C. for about four years. I work for a nonprofit in
00:06:06the early child education space. I also teach meditation and yoga. I do a lot of community
00:06:11building and love to touch grass, get my hands in some soil.
00:06:15Yeah. And full disclosure from Griffin, the only one of, I think all of you, who has no social
00:06:20media presence. Is that correct?
00:06:22I also don't.
00:06:23You don't use social media either. Oh, okay. So there's two of you who don't. You're both
00:06:27countercultural. Are you, Jake?
00:06:28I'm pretty on there.
00:06:29You're pretty on there.
00:06:30Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:31I am the opposite end of the spectrum.
00:06:33Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, which, which actually puts you firmly in the mainstream
00:06:37of, of, uh, so, okay. Well, good. We're going to get into all of that because all that plays into
00:06:42the willingness and ability to have the kind of relationships that we actually need. Obviously,
00:06:46that's an important thing. Let's start by talking a little bit about the science of,
00:06:51well, the science of, of love, how we understand it, why it actually matters and how it relates
00:06:56to happiness, which is the central topic in this show. As some of you know, my latest book is on
00:07:01the meaning of life and meaning is one of the macronutrients of happiness. I use that as a,
00:07:06as a metaphor, the macronutrients of food or protein, carbohydrates, and fat,
00:07:11those are the building blocks of anything that you eat actually. And you got to get that right.
00:07:16If you want to have good health, if you want to have good nutrition, well,
00:07:19the same thing is true with happiness. It has three macronutrients, the things you need in balance
00:07:23and abundance. And those three things is everybody watching the show, but you probably know this as
00:07:28well, are enjoyment. You got to enjoy your life from day to day and moment to moment. Satisfaction,
00:07:33which is the joy from accomplishments with struggle, finding satisfaction in your achievements and
00:07:39activities. But most importantly, it's meaning. For a long time, psychologists kind of split meaning off from
00:07:45happiness. And they said, how do we balance happiness and meaning? You can't be happy if you don't have
00:07:50meaning, if you don't understand the why of your life. But that's the hardest question of all.
00:07:54And that's the biggest crisis that I find in people, particularly under 35 today, weirdly started
00:08:02saying after about 2008, my life feels meaningless. There's lots of data that go back decades. Do you
00:08:09find your life meaningless? And usually between 10 and 15% of the young adult population would say that.
00:08:15Not very much. These are people that were suffering from, you know, mood disorders, from generalized anxiety
00:08:20or clinical depression. But that started to tick up after 2008. It's almost as if some diabolical force
00:08:28had entered our lives around 2008, 2009. I can't think what it is. Can you?
00:08:33Yeah, that's right.
00:08:34Whatever it is, it doesn't happen to be sitting on this table, but this is the only table in America that
00:08:39doesn't have an iPhone on it or a device, a smartphone on it. When the devices started to enter the picture,
00:08:45people started, especially young adults who didn't remember the before times, started more and more
00:08:50and more to say, my life feels meaningless. I mean, you can find some meaning, but it, for some reason,
00:08:57got harder. Now, this is something that I started to see as a behavioral scientist in my research,
00:09:02but also in my teaching, because I teach graduate students. My students are your age. They're not
00:09:08undergraduates. They're not 18, 19. They're, the average age for one of my students at the Harvard
00:09:14Business School for the past seven years is 28, as a matter of fact. And they were more and more likely
00:09:20to suffer from this, like, lack of ability to answer questions like, why am I alive? And for what would
00:09:26I give my life? That's kind of a meaning quiz that I give my students, and they're like, I don't know,
00:09:33those questions don't have any answers. And that gave a rootlessness to it. So I
00:09:37started studying this topic. That was the macronutrient in trouble. You know, just as if
00:09:41you go back 10 years, nutritionists started to study protein because they realized that's what was
00:09:46missing from people's diets. Well, I started looking at meaning because that was the macronutrient of
00:09:51happiness that was really missing from people's lives. The first thing I needed to do in that research is
00:09:58define meaning. I just defined happiness. Now I got to define meaning. Meaning is made up of three basic
00:10:06parts as well. I mean, to say, go get the meaning of life is kind of broad. It'd be like, go sit in the
00:10:12mouth of the cave and find a guru. Okay. You know, I've done it. But, you know, not everybody's going to
00:10:18hit the Himalayas in the same way. And so it's much easier if you actually can come up with a better
00:10:23definition of what are we looking for? What are we looking for? What's meaning? The three parts of
00:10:28meaning are coherence, purpose, and significance. Coherence means an answer to the why question.
00:10:34Why do things happen the way they do? You got to have an answer to that. I mean,
00:10:38things are happening around us all the time. Your life will feel meaningless if your life feels random.
00:10:43This is one of the things that we know really well from decades of research in psychology.
00:10:48But if you have a theory about why things happen, then you have a theory of coherence of life. And
00:10:52that gives your life a sense of meaning. It might be that it's the, it's the laws of science. And so
00:10:58some people are radically physicalist scientists in particular, right? Carolyn, this is one of the
00:11:03things that we see, right? Especially social scientists like you and me. Some people will say,
00:11:08it's the hand of God. It's the will of God. That's why things happen the way that they do. Now,
00:11:12personally, I'm a scientist who believes in God. I get both of those things. Some people who don't
00:11:18really are not very scientifically oriented, and if they're pretty secular, as a matter of fact,
00:11:22they'll, they'll, they'll fall into theories about conspiracies, like doing your own research on the
00:11:27internet. And they'll say, why do things happen the way that they do? Shadowy figures with power.
00:11:32Uh, conspiracy theories are a way to find coherence. And that's a way to look for meaning,
00:11:38which is a search for happiness. So it's important to recognize this, that if you have a family member
00:11:44who's going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories on the internet, don't yell at them and
00:11:47say, you moron, recognize that this is fulfilling a human need for these people. That's coherence.
00:11:55The second is purpose. Purpose is not the same thing as meaning. It's a subcategory of meaning.
00:12:00And that's the answer to the why question. Why am I doing what I'm doing in my life?
00:12:06Many people don't know. I mean, I'm just getting up in the morning and scrolling my phone and
00:12:12going to work on Zoom and dating on the apps and then looking at YouTube shorts. I don't know.
00:12:18Why am I doing it? I don't know. And if you can't answer why you're doing what you're doing,
00:12:23you don't have purpose. Purpose is goals and direction, which you need so you can make progress.
00:12:29Human beings, homo sapiens are intensely progress oriented. We're making progress toward a goal.
00:12:35We're happy. By the way, that's one of the reasons that people feel so happy when they're on a
00:12:39successful diet is because they see the scale fall a little bit every day. It's like so awesome.
00:12:45Making progress, making progress. When people are training for a marathon, they're happier than when
00:12:49they're not because they've got goals. They've got direction and they're making progress toward those.
00:12:54They're not so happy when they hit those goals because then you think that you're going to be
00:12:59cosmically happy forever, and that's not the way your emotions work. That's called the arrival fallacy.
00:13:05Anyway, be that as it may, purpose is really important. And so when I set my students up to have even
00:13:13kind of arbitrary goals, they feel better about their life. The last one is significance, and it's
00:13:18arguably the most important. Significance is the answer to the why question. Why does my life matter?
00:13:24Why does my life matter? And that leads to the question, to whom does my life matter?
00:13:29Because to say, my life matters, but, and you can't say to whom, it's meaningless.
00:13:36Your life needs to matter. You need to matter to someone, to some entity, to something. It's got
00:13:42to matter in a particular way. This is one of the reasons that people have more meaning in their life
00:13:46when they have children for the first time. Because that baby who's completely helpless, you matter to
00:13:52that baby. And you're showing yourself every single day, even at two o'clock in the morning,
00:13:56when you're waking up and the baby's screaming, you're like, I can't stand it anymore, but I matter.
00:14:01I matter. And that's a huge and fundamental sense of meaning, which is why people's lives get so much
00:14:07more depth when they have children for the first time, because of this channels that we're talking
00:14:10about. The psychology is pretty simple. But that really is the question of love. That is the question of
00:14:17the motive of living, which is to love and be loved, has to do with significance, which has to do with
00:14:23meaning, which has to do with happiness. This is how it all hangs together. This is the most important
00:14:30one. And that's what I want to talk about here today, because that's the one that's most in crisis
00:14:35when I'm looking at the data on why people say my life feels meaningless. A lot of young people in
00:14:40their 20s today, they say, yeah, I have a theory about why things happen the way they do, and
00:14:46I have goals and direction, but I don't feel like there's significance. I don't feel like I am loved,
00:14:52or I don't know who it is. And that gets down fundamentally to a bunch of different silos. One of
00:14:58them is love of the divine, sort of a religious idea. One of them is love with family, especially
00:15:06with parents, right? When you're in your early 20s, it's more salient with your parents than with your
00:15:11kids, because most people don't have kids yet. But the two biggies are friends and partners, romantic
00:15:17partners. Those are the two biggies. And those are the two that are most in crisis. Really depressing
00:15:23statistics. When you ask, for example, how many people know you well, the number's been going down
00:15:29now for 20 years. Not coincidentally, since we've seen the influx of technology that mediate our
00:15:36relationships, more and more and more young people, up to half of people under 30 say, no one knows me
00:15:43well. That was an answer you never saw 30 and 40 years ago for people your age. That was an answer
00:15:49you'd only see from men my age. You know, men over 60 would be like, yeah, nobody knows me well. Are
00:15:55you kidding me? What about your wife? Especially her, right? I mean, that was kind of the lonely old
00:16:01guy thing. And now we're seeing it increasingly for people under 30 because of the mediation of the
00:16:06screens that are actually in people's lives. And the second, perhaps even more alarming, is the fact
00:16:12that romantic love is harder and harder to come by. That couplehood is harder to get. And it should be
00:16:16easier. We have more access to the world. The world is flat. I mean, on the screens, you're supposed to
00:16:21be able to meet so many people in the proliferation of dating apps. 62% of relationships now start on the
00:16:27apps. And it's overtaken every other way to do it. And it should be easier and it should be more fun
00:16:33and it should be more interesting. And it's harder for some particular reason. And the result of it is that
00:16:40people in their twenties are about half as likely to be married as they were 30 years ago.
00:16:44They're about a third less likely to be in love. They're a third less likely to live together
00:16:48outside marriage. Every way that you want to measure it, romantic couplehood has declined.
00:16:57That's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about those two big problems and how we can
00:17:01turn them into opportunities. I want to hear about your experience with these things, your suggestions on
00:17:07these ideas and ways that we can actually bring better ideas on friendship and love to more people
00:17:14around the world who are in their twenties today, or maybe not in their twenties, but are grappling with
00:17:19these ideas. So that's where we start. This is your time. So I'm looking forward to any way that you want
00:17:25to um, any direction that you want to take it. Um, what is it about starting with friendship and then we'll
00:17:31get into romance a little bit later. What is it about friendship that feels like it's getting harder
00:17:36today than it might have in the past? And I realize that you don't have the same amount of perspective
00:17:40that I do. Huh. But then again, I'm not in the friend market in the same way that you are.
00:17:46Who wants to talk about why it gets, it's actually harder today than it's been in the past in your
00:17:49experience? I can talk about it. Please do Laura. I recently moved to D.C. Yeah. Or Chicago. And
00:17:56it's the first time in my adult life that I'm like moving to a new city. Obviously you do for college,
00:18:01but in college it feels different just because you're all in the same boat, right? You're 18 years
00:18:04old. Everyone's looking to make friends. This time I'm in a new city and it's hard to figure out
00:18:10where to start with meeting people. I am lucky that I have like a couple mutual friends in the city
00:18:14that I've been able to introduce me to them. But other than that, it's, you know, do I join a club?
00:18:19You know, do I try and join a sports team? I haven't played sports in a long time.
00:18:23That's a little scary. Yeah, it's daunting, right? Like I'm gonna play volleyball. I'm not ready to play
00:18:27volleyball. But you just, you're not sure where I think to start with the making new friends at this
00:18:33age. I'm not sure if that's like new because of screens, but it's just you're in your late 20s.
00:18:38It's different than making friends at 18, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of the friend architecture
00:18:42is built in when you go to college. Exactly. And then you, and then you have to go build it for
00:18:46yourself once you're out of college and in a new place, right? Which is weird, yeah. Have you felt
00:18:49lonely since you've come to DC? You know what? I have like a couple of really good friends in the
00:18:53city, so I haven't. But I could, I do want to branch out and try and meet people in this new phase of
00:18:58life as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Making adult friendships is a, is a, is a uniquely
00:19:01difficult experience. I think DC, I'm curious other people's means is it's particularly difficult
00:19:06given how transient this place is. Yeah. I feel very blessed to have a very abundant
00:19:10friend community through the different community groups that I'm a part of. And I've also had to
00:19:14like grieve a lot of relationships that have moved on to their next chapter, whether that be through
00:19:18going to graduate, graduate school or going back home or getting a new job. Um, it's, and it's
00:19:23interesting. And I also work largely remotely, which I think, you know, at a different time,
00:19:28that wasn't something that we did. So you don't get that typical like water cooler chat that used
00:19:33to happen. But let me ask you a question. Are the friends that you actually have and the blessed
00:19:38abundance that you have of friends, are they coming through your work or coming through the fact that
00:19:42number one, you're not on screens and number two, you teach meditation and yoga. Yeah. Where are your
00:19:49friendships coming from? Yeah. You know, I think part of the, the gift that I've been able to receive
00:19:53through engaging more deeply in those spaces is I've gotten really clear on what my values are and who
00:19:58I want to surround myself with. So through climbing, through spending time outdoors, through yoga
00:20:03and meditation, I've been able to, to find folks that, that I do feel really know me and, and hold
00:20:09space for me the same way that I can for them. And in a lot of ways, you know, like our tension is our
00:20:13spiritual currency. Like that's like why we pay it. And because we're spending more and more time
00:20:17on screens, I think that takes away from some of like the interpersonal connection that we get to have
00:20:21just by sitting in the room together. Hmm. So you're validating Laura's question
00:20:26about whether or not she should go to volleyball. The answer is yes.
00:20:28One thousand percent. You can come climbing with me too, if you want.
00:20:31Yeah.
00:20:33Let's go right here, Jake. What's your idea? What's your thinking on this?
00:20:35I think, Griffin, I think you make a really cool point about like kind of starting inward
00:20:40and then moving outwards and finding the people who kind of share that. I think I've kind of
00:20:45been in a similar place as you, uh, Laura, I've been living in the city since 2017 when I went to school
00:20:51here. Um, and then worked for, um, my school for three years after that. And then until I finally
00:20:59moved to like a hybrid remote position. And I think I was still in the city. I felt so lonely in your first
00:21:06couple of months. Um, after that, I think I wanted to do the same thing that you did. And I think finding
00:21:12what I valued, finding what my, um, what my passions were. You talk about values. I think
00:21:17thinking about, thinking about things I'm strong in, the things, things that give me joy individually
00:21:23helped me find a group of like-minded people, whether that be volleyball.
00:21:26What did you do?
00:21:27Improv.
00:21:27Oh, cool.
00:21:28Right on.
00:21:29Um,
00:21:29Did you have an interest in that before?
00:21:31I've been, I've been doing theater, um, since I was a kid.
00:21:35Uh huh. Uh huh.
00:21:37Yeah. And then once I, once I kind of graduated college, I, I, I stopped doing that. I was always
00:21:42surrounded by people who, who, who graduated from my school and, and I was in an office. So I, I felt,
00:21:46I felt like I didn't have to kind of pursue that because it was kind of built in there. Once,
00:21:52once that kind of structure was pulled out, I wanted to find that again. So I think, um,
00:21:58through improv is where I found a, a group of like-minded people.
00:22:01Yeah.
00:22:01We just want to make people laugh. We just want to play on stage.
00:22:04Yeah. Um.
00:22:05This is a theme that's really emerging here, that this is, is, is where we do these things.
00:22:09Daniela, come in on this. Tell me about your experience. Your family is all here, right?
00:22:13Uh, yeah. My nuclear family is here.
00:22:15Your family of origin, as they say, right?
00:22:17Yes.
00:22:17Yeah. Yeah. How does that actually impact your, your, your ability to create a friend group?
00:22:21Yeah. Actually I was noticing something kind of bleeding into this conversation that I feel with
00:22:26social media, we've kind of become this hyper optimization culture where it feels like it's
00:22:31harder to make friends because even when you hang out with friends, you're hearing, oh,
00:22:35let's do the same activity together or, oh, I'm going to get better at rock climbing so that we can,
00:22:40I can go rock climbing with those people where when I'm with my family and I notice the way my parents
00:22:45hang out with their friends, they hang out, like they invite them to lunch and they just like sit,
00:22:50you know, and there's like an old man that's falling asleep on the couch and they still just
00:22:53enjoy spending time together, you know?
00:22:55Have it with his open mouth nap?
00:22:57Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:58It's like my dad's best friend.
00:22:59I think I'm ready for one, you know?
00:23:02Yeah. Um, and so I, I want to have more of that. I think we've lost a bit of that of just asking
00:23:08your friends to hang out and do, you know, just do nothing, you know, go in the supermarket,
00:23:11whatever.
00:23:11Does that sound like fun?
00:23:12It actually does. Is that crazy?
00:23:14Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:23:15It does.
00:23:15I think parallel play is like a parallel play.
00:23:18Nice. Nice.
00:23:19Which is what toddler boys are really good as parallel play. And so little toddler girls
00:23:24will look at each other and play with toddler boys. They'll play side to side.
00:23:26Yeah.
00:23:27So no kidding. So just doing nothing.
00:23:29Yeah.
00:23:29Doing nothing.
00:23:30So even, for example, Partyful, you guys know that app?
00:23:33Yeah.
00:23:34Yeah.
00:23:35What is it?
00:23:35It's an app that, um, it allows you to create an event and then you just send that same
00:23:40event to everybody and just invite three mutual friends. It's become a thing where it's,
00:23:43you even, you make dinners with your dinner plans and then like 15 people show up to your
00:23:48dinner with your friends. You're like, well, I didn't know it was a numbers thing. You know,
00:23:51you just want to just want to have dinner with your friends. So I think that's interesting.
00:23:55Yeah. I'm not as bullish on Partyful actually.
00:23:57Yeah.
00:23:58I think, I think it's, it's become so big and popular that it's, it's taken away from the
00:24:03intentionality of like me sending you an individual text or an invitation to come have dinner with me.
00:24:08That's what you're saying about Danielle.
00:24:09Yeah.
00:24:10Yeah.
00:24:10Well, let's get to you, Michael. So, um, your situation is also quite different. So Danielle's
00:24:16family of origin is here. Your family of election is here. You're married man.
00:24:19Yes. Yeah. My family, my family of origin and family of election. Yeah. Both in, in the Virginia
00:24:24area.
00:24:24And how does actually being married make it harder or easier for you to have the people
00:24:30who know you well, who are not, you know, sharing your bed?
00:24:32Right. Yeah.
00:24:33I mean, I'm assuming you live with your best friend.
00:24:35Yes. Yeah, for sure. Live with my best friend for sure. I think it's a little bit of both.
00:24:39I think, uh, in some ways it's easier to, to make friends just through association almost. So,
00:24:44you know, my wife's friends and then you meet their spouse or meet their partner. And then it's kind of,
00:24:48uh, a vetting concept in a way with that too, you know, cause it's like, okay, well,
00:24:52I like, I like you, you know, so I'm most likely going to like your partner.
00:24:56Is that true? I mean, I, I hear a lot, people will say the problem with being married is that,
00:25:00you know, you, you, you, you get friends for free that are married to your spouse's
00:25:05friends and they might be okay. They might not be right. I think it's a different level for sure.
00:25:09I mean, I think, I don't know many of those, uh, friends in law almost that I'd say know me really
00:25:16well, but I would say my, my tight friend group. Um, I, I think I'm blessed in that way too,
00:25:21just with living in this area and growing up in this area and still living here and having so many
00:25:25friends, uh, geographically close to me that also I'd say know me really well.
00:25:30Um, I think the challenge in this phase of my life is kind of just becoming maintaining those
00:25:35friendships at the level that they always have been just with my time getting pulled into so
00:25:40many different directions between my spouse. And then each of us have really big families too.
00:25:44We're both one of six and they all live in this area. So, um, just constantly, you know,
00:25:49having a, a family event on the weekends and stuff like that, and still, uh, making time for all of
00:25:55those individual friendships I have to keep them at the same, uh, intentional level that they,
00:26:00that they have been is kind of where my struggle.
00:26:03Okay. So it can, it can make, you know, being, being married and having your families here can
00:26:06make it easier or harder to find people you're not related to who, and, and, you know, friendships
00:26:11with people you're not related to, these have a specific magic to them because you choose these
00:26:17people. These are the people that actually know secrets that your mom never will.
00:26:21Right. Right. So if you don't have any besides your mom or your siblings and all that, it can
00:26:25actually be quite isolating. And I've heard people say that before. Right. Yeah. From a big family,
00:26:30everybody's from the same compound. You don't have people from the outside who know you deeply in the
00:26:34same way that your friends actually do. So it can be easier or harder. You gotta do the work. Right.
00:26:38Right. Yeah. And I think I have family members that struggle with that too, especially those that
00:26:42have a lot of kids now too, and, you know, getting pulled into it's, it can be an excuse almost of,
00:26:47okay, well, we got this family event, we got this thing and you can quickly lose time to have with
00:26:53those friends that you are really close with and you can really share deeply with in a way different
00:26:58than your, your family. Right. And you belong to a religious community as well. Right. And is that
00:27:02important for building friendship for you? Yeah, I'd say so. Um, I'd say through that, that's more,
00:27:07I think the maintaining a lot of the friendships, like having a Bible study with all my really
00:27:11close guy friends, you know, that's a really good way. And it's like built into my routine
00:27:16where I can maintain a lot of those relationships. And I hope that that kind of grows and becomes a
00:27:21way to meet new people. But I would say just kind of being, being involved in like the young adult
00:27:25ministry at my church, you know, that's a good way. And another way of kind of, okay, we already have
00:27:30this built in thing in common. That's very important to us. It means a lot to us. And so we know off the
00:27:35bat, okay, we at least have that, that thing in common, you know, we have all the same values.
00:27:39Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:27:40Charlie and your situation is a little different too, because you're out of state getting your PhD.
00:27:45And it's funny because people remember, Laura talked about these, the architecture of friendship
00:27:50in college, which is so unbelievably tight. And you get there when you're 18 years old,
00:27:54you're all super lonely and freaked out. And, and there's a funny thing in psychology that,
00:27:58that you and I both studied called a fading affect bias, which is that you remember the past better
00:28:04than it was, even though you see the present as worse than it is. So that's, that's a negativity
00:28:10bias versus fading affect bias. And so almost everybody remembers their first semester at college
00:28:14as better than it was. You were calling home and crying to your mom and holding back. Now you see
00:28:18your friends at your five-year reunion going, it's so great. It was so fun when we first met.
00:28:22And, and that's because you retain the stuff that was really good for you. And you get rid of the
00:28:25stuff that no longer serves you, which is the loneliness at the time. The reason I bring this up is
00:28:29because people have their, you know, their deepest friendships when they're thrown together.
00:28:34But graduate school is different, isn't it? Tell me about the difference of graduate school
00:28:38and the deep friendships you make or don't.
00:28:39Yeah. I think what's interesting about grad school is that you get very tunnel visioned into
00:28:45what you do. And so you're trying to keep up with your old friendships of your friends who aren't in
00:28:49grad school. And now it feels like you can't relate to them as much because you're so tunnel visioned
00:28:53into studying one thing. And it's boring to talk about grad school all the time.
00:28:56But it's all you want to talk about, right? And I think like the twenties are so chaotic. Like what
00:29:04you were touching on earlier of like, when you're in college, you are all in the same space and then
00:29:09you all go different directions and life goes really, really quick. And it's crazy. Like the twenties are
00:29:14crazy and chaotic. And I think there's like this temptation of if I'm not in the same circumstances as
00:29:20everyone else, then like, I can't be friends with you. Like I have a lot of friends who are getting
00:29:24married or having their first kid. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like did our friendship just end when
00:29:28you walk down the aisle? And like, I mean, that's like maybe a harsh way to put it, but it feels like
00:29:33there's this temptation that like, we have to be in the same phase of life to be friends. Like we can't
00:29:39relate to each other anymore. And actually like what's been really beautiful about graduate school is that
00:29:45I'm in a community where a lot of people are having kids and that adds so much to my life.
00:29:50And it's not the friendship I may have selected for myself. So like, I think similarity is a really,
00:29:56really big piece of friendship, but I also think difference is huge. And like, that's what pushes
00:30:01me to grow is like the people who are given to me in the place I'm living in, not just the people I
00:30:06would seek out for myself and the experiences I want to have.
00:30:08So what are you doing? Give me an example of what you're doing to specifically to keep real
00:30:14friendships in your life. Tell me about your activities that do that.
00:30:18Yeah, I like, so when I got to grad school, there wasn't like a very big community around
00:30:24me. So I started hosting Sunday dinners. I'm like, come over and I'm going to make chicken
00:30:28every single Sunday because it's all I know how to make. But yeah, just having people over for dinner
00:30:34and kind of like what you were talking about earlier, like we just desire to talk with people
00:30:38and be with people, like more than like doing something, just like being. So I've started to
00:30:43tell people to bring people that I don't know to these dinners too. And like kind of fostering
00:30:48a sense of community of a bunch of random people who all happen to be in Pennsylvania together.
00:30:53Are you an introvert or extrovert?
00:30:55I'm an introvert.
00:30:56You are.
00:30:57Yeah, so this is hard for you.
00:30:57This is hard for me.
00:30:58Yeah.
00:30:59How long did it take you to figure this one out? You're in your fifth year of graduate
00:31:02school. Were you doing this in your first and second year?
00:31:03This was my first year. Yeah. So I am super introverted, but I love people. And this is
00:31:09why I studied people. But as soon as I got to grad school, I was like, all right, we need people here.
00:31:15Like grad school's hard. It's not going to be fun if I'm doing this alone. So I was like, all right,
00:31:19we need to get the people together and just kind of started inviting whoever I would meet randomly.
00:31:23Really? That's interesting. You know, that's the technique of people who do really well,
00:31:27is that they move to a place and they pretend they've been there for 20 years.
00:31:31We started doing that. My wife and I have moved 20 times since we've been married.
00:31:35Um, I'm not in the witness protection program in case you're wondering.
00:31:38And, and, and we've done this because, you know, we've been active and changed
00:31:43locations and professions so many times, but we noticed that we were lonely the first year or two.
00:31:48And so we started acting as if it were year three, four, five, or six when we're actually in year one.
00:31:53And so within the first couple of months, we'll start holding dinner parties and we'll start inviting
00:31:57people over to our house. And what we'll find is that we'll meet people who are coming over to our
00:32:01house that we meet and say, come on over. And they'll say, I've lived here for 20 years and
00:32:05I've never actually done that. And they're so grateful as if you, you know, you relieved their
00:32:10own, their own sense of loneliness. Do you find anything like that?
00:32:13Yeah. I think I have a lot of friends who want there to be plans and they don't
00:32:19like making the plans. So like to be the person who's making the plan sometimes takes a burden
00:32:24off of them. And they're like, this is exactly what I was looking for, but I would have never done for
00:32:28myself because I didn't want to take the risk. So if I can like bear the risk of rejection for them,
00:32:33it like gives them the space to show up and have fun.
00:32:35Yeah. And so these are people that you kind of know, and these are friends. They're not close
00:32:40friends. They became close friends over time. So like the more they would come to dinner,
00:32:44then we would like go get coffee on Tuesday morning before class. And so it started out as just like a
00:32:50once a week thing. And then it turned into much more of a friendship, like the more time we spend together.
00:32:54Mm-hmm. Which is the way friendships are supposed to develop. So none of you will say you're living
00:32:59in the place where you grew up, right? And, and, and you're living in the place where you kind of,
00:33:03you're not really. I mean, you were, you grew up every place in the world, didn't you? Yeah.
00:33:06Yeah, we just moved here four years ago. Yeah, four years ago. That's right. So you're the only,
00:33:09is anybody else grew up in this, in this area? So the rest of you kind of are transplants to this
00:33:15particular area. Um, so let's start with you, Laura. Do you have a best friend?
00:33:20I do. Who's your best friend?
00:33:22I have two, I would say. Uh-huh.
00:33:23I have one from childhood and one from college. Cameron is my best friend.
00:33:27Cameron's your best friend. Yeah.
00:33:28She's from childhood or college? Childhood.
00:33:29Really? And, uh, and do you maintain that best friendship?
00:33:32Yes. What does that mean? How do you do that?
00:33:34We are on FaceTime most days.
00:33:35Really? Yes.
00:33:36You talk almost every day.
00:33:37But we've always done that. We went to college in two different places.
00:33:40So we got really good at keeping in touch long distance. Right.
00:33:43And we even FaceTime when we're living in the same city together.
00:33:46You do? Yeah.
00:33:47So this is something that really comes naturally to you.
00:33:49It does.
00:33:50And you didn't drift apart at any point?
00:33:52No, we're of course closer when we're living in the same city,
00:33:54but I would still say we're very close now.
00:33:56That's great. Yeah.
00:33:57And she would say the same thing?
00:33:58She would.
00:33:58How has her life changed? Did she get married or anything like that?
00:34:01No, she, um, recently got out of a very serious relationship.
00:34:03So she's single again for the first time in a while.
00:34:05Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:06And I was FaceTiming twice a day, right? Yeah.
00:34:09Hey, you got to talk to your best friend.
00:34:12That's great. So, and, and for some people that's really, really hard.
00:34:15Um, what about your girlfriend? Do you have a best friend?
00:34:17Uh, I, well, I feel like I, you know, my mom would be mad if I didn't say my siblings
00:34:20were my best friends, but yeah, no, yes, I do.
00:34:22Is your mom watching this show?
00:34:24She told me to send it to her later. Yeah.
00:34:26She'll watch it at some point.
00:34:27Okay. Um, and you do love your siblings, I'm sure.
00:34:30Very dearly. Yeah.
00:34:31Yeah.
00:34:32No, I, I've, I've had best friends at different points.
00:34:34I feel like I've been, been fortunate to have done a lot of different
00:34:37growth throughout my life, which has also resulted in me having different phases.
00:34:42And I've had to actually go through the challenge of grieving friendships that, you know,
00:34:47at one point were my best friends and those relationships no longer serve me.
00:34:50I feel grateful to be very present where I am in my community here.
00:34:53So there are people now that are in like my DC ecosystem that I consider best friends.
00:34:57And there's people that, you know, you asked that question.
00:34:59I thought of kid, you know, friends that I grew up with in Chicago and people I went to high school
00:35:04with and their relationships have changed over the years, but certainly people that I, I feel
00:35:08the ability to be vulnerable around and share experience with.
00:35:11Yeah. So these are two different models.
00:35:12We saw two great examples of the two classical models.
00:35:16And what you find is that women typically are able to name a person more and men are like,
00:35:21hey, it changes, you know, and, and this is great, but it can also be a problem as the years go by.
00:35:27Because as those networks, those kind of orbiting networks, they start to move,
00:35:33they're the, the entropy actually gets more pronounced, which you find that the danger is that, that you
00:35:38might find that those best friendships are less, are less close than they've been in the past.
00:35:43Whereas I bet you that when you're my age, Laura, that you and Cameron are still gonna be buddies.
00:35:48I bet you are, which is really, really good.
00:35:50We met in first grade, so we're a long time.
00:35:52That's great. You met in first grade.
00:35:54We did.
00:35:54That's really, really something.
00:35:55Yeah. But that's something to work on.
00:35:56That's something to actually keep your eye on and, and to make sure that the entropy
00:36:00actually isn't working, you know, because you're obviously highly social person and very, very,
00:36:05I mean, I just met you and I feel very comfortable right here, right now.
00:36:07You make people feel comfortable, which is good for a meditation yoga instructor,
00:36:11but to make sure that, that you can continue to have a particular intimacy with other people as well.
00:36:15Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, we were mentioning, you know, I don't have social media.
00:36:18One of the benefits of that is being able to keep in touch with people. I've, it's a, it's an ongoing
00:36:23resolution and goal that I have to be better at keeping in touch with friends via,
00:36:27via, you know, picking up the phone.
00:36:28Right.
00:36:29Um, I'm not very good at it.
00:36:30Yeah. Yeah, no, I get it.
00:36:31Um, uh, Carolina, you're an introvert. Do you have a best friend?
00:36:36I, okay. I don't know how to answer that question.
00:36:37Like I have very close friends, but I don't like ranking.
00:36:41So like, yes and no.
00:36:43Do you have an orbit of best friends?
00:36:45Yeah. I have like a really good group of friends.
00:36:48A tight group of friends that you wouldn't, who are watching the show and you wouldn't want to rank them.
00:36:52Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to be like, oh, this person. And then like, what the heck?
00:36:55Like, yeah, no, I got it. I got it. Yeah. And that's so, but these are people you've
00:36:58known a really long time.
00:36:59I would say most of my close friends are either from college or grad school. So I moved elementary
00:37:06schools and so I don't have like the kindergarten best friend or first grade best friend. Um,
00:37:10but I think a lot of my close friendships started really in college.
00:37:14Yeah. And so you've done that. Who else wants to weigh in on this one?
00:37:17This is, this is a question that I'm always very interested in.
00:37:20Do you have, um, Michael, do you have a best friend at work?
00:37:23Best friend at work?
00:37:25That's the number one predictor of not wanting to quit your job, by the way,
00:37:29is being able to name a best friend at work. Number one predictor.
00:37:33Yeah. I'd say I have a best friend at work. I guess, I guess I'm, I'm just kind of trying
00:37:37to weigh like, uh, what that means compared to like my actual best friends. And that's,
00:37:43that's like nothing close. I just started a new job in January too. So it's like not,
00:37:48it's a little bit fresh, but yeah, compared to like my best, best friends, like it's,
00:37:53it's not even close in terms of personally, I mean, he knows my wife's name. He knows I have
00:37:57a big family. He knows a lot of that stuff.
00:37:59Yeah. He knows you have a big family and he knows your wife's name. That's not
00:38:03particularly intimate at all. And you can actually get that off the internet.
00:38:05Right. That's true.
00:38:06Yeah. That's true.
00:38:07That's true.
00:38:08I think. Okay.
00:38:09But it is interesting. And, and, uh, that's a piece of your book too, is like the amount of
00:38:13time you spend with those coworkers and compared to, um, how often you see your friends or your
00:38:19family or whatever. And it's, it, it, it has really got me thinking, you know, how much time I,
00:38:24I am in a room with these coworkers all the time and how close we really are is really interesting.
00:38:30Thought provoking.
00:38:30Yeah. What, um, what I'd like to, you know, open this one up to anybody who wants to answer it.
00:38:36What's the, what's the hardest thing that you're finding right now? What's the thing that troubles
00:38:40you the most about friendship? What is the thing that is the biggest challenge? What would you like
00:38:45to change the most when it comes to the friends that you actually have and the friend group that you're
00:38:48trying to maintain? I feel like I have a pretty close knit, um, group of friends right now, but
00:38:56I feel like I've had like a circle every two or three years. And, and I feel a lot of guilt about
00:39:06the kind of circles in the past that I haven't been like keeping in touch or being as good of a friend
00:39:11of two. What would it mean for you to be a better friend? Talk to them.
00:39:17Yeah. Go to, uh, go to their things. I, I feel like there's just a lot of, I, I, I think I kind of
00:39:22grieve the, the friends that I've lost. I think there's also part of it that it seems like that I
00:39:31shouldn't have lost them that easily. Uh-huh. And what do you think is it responsible for that?
00:39:36I'm scatterbread. Well, you just let it, you just, it was torpor. It was just, you know,
00:39:41is that right? And look, I understand how you feel. Yeah. People have really, really,
00:39:44really loved and just lost touch with, and you realize I just lost touch with, how did I lose
00:39:48touch with that person? Yeah. And, and you feel like as you, I feel like I didn't do the work
00:39:52because I was too, I was paying attention to things that were less important. Not even less important.
00:39:56I just feel like I have also another group of friends and I feel something sometimes like I am
00:40:02not super intentional. I feel like I'm pretty surface level with a lot of my friends. Why do you think that is?
00:40:08I don't know. Just a feeling I have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You'd like to go deeper, but you don't know how?
00:40:12Yeah. Uh, no. Yeah. How, how does one go deeper in a friendship? How do you do it? What's the take? What's the trick?
00:40:19You drink. I'm just kidding.
00:40:24Sharing interests.
00:40:27Yeah. I think, I think you have to be able to ultimately be vulnerable, right? And I think
00:40:31that's a lot easier said than done. Like a lot of us, including myself, in a lot of respects,
00:40:35like we wear this mask of vulnerability. It's as a mirage for what real vulnerability entails.
00:40:40If somebody once called me out or something and it still affects me to this day, they were like,
00:40:44Griffin, you're very vulnerable about the things you've done, the work to process and not about the
00:40:48things that you haven't. And I think that, you know, with friends, when inviting people into your
00:40:51lives and you like kind of have to lift the veil of delusion, like that can be scary and challenging
00:40:57for sure. So tell me more, go deeper into that. About what's scary and challenging? Yeah. You know,
00:41:02I mean, I guess I'll speak for my, myself in this. Uh, I'm, I'm conscious of the view of how other
00:41:09people view me in the respect of like how I'm seen in the community, how I am extroverted,
00:41:13how I can hold space. And I think what's holding space mean? For me, it means being,
00:41:20being able to create a container for somebody else to feel vulnerable or to share, to express,
00:41:25you know, in a, in an open hearted way. Right. And I think I can often feel like a hypocrite sometimes
00:41:31because I am in spaces where I get to offer that, that service or that gift. And then I don't always
00:41:38afford myself the same kindness behind doors. And so that's actually proved to be a challenge in my
00:41:43own work with romantic relationships is there's a certain level of depth I can get before I perhaps
00:41:48like self-sabotage because I'm scared of like fully being seen by somebody.
00:41:52So are you better at going deep in your platonic friendships than you're in your romantic relationships?
00:41:58Yes. For sure.
00:41:59How interesting. Interesting. But one key point on that, however, is that I think what Jake is
00:42:04expressing is that he wishes that he had gone deeper with other people to anchor a relationship
00:42:09that would actually last. Is that fair to say?
00:42:11Yeah. Are you skating along the surface a little bit where you like skating along the surface? I also
00:42:16really like resonate with like just being vulnerable myself. Like I think, especially with improv and
00:42:22performance and like theater and comedy, there's like, there's a vulnerability that I can afford for,
00:42:28for certain parts, but...
00:42:29Yeah. I, I was at a dinner party in Madrid last year. And, um, the woman who was holding it,
00:42:36I didn't know, I didn't know her. I'd met her once. My wife and I'd met her once. It was four couples,
00:42:41plus my wife Esther and me. And the woman is holding the party. We're just eating around the table. And
00:42:4820 minutes in, she said, "Have any of you come really close to divorce?" And the whole place was like,
00:42:58and my wife's like, "Awesome, game on." And, and the whole point was, are we doing this or not?
00:43:05Are we doing this or not? Are we going to be friends or not? And if it's, you don't want to,
00:43:09cool. Right. But, but go deeper, go home. Right. Right. Isn't, is this the solution?
00:43:15This is what you're more comfortable with than in the, in the depths of your heart,
00:43:19which is romantic, but we'll get to that in due course. Is this what we're talking about? Would you,
00:43:23if you went to an inner party and somebody said, "Jake, what are you most afraid of? Lay it out."
00:43:30And there were a bunch of people that you barely knew. How would you feel?
00:43:33I think if it's somebody I didn't know, like I'd probably give them some answer.
00:43:37Would it be BS? I think it would be less BS than
00:43:42telling it to somebody who probably knows me a little bit more. Like somebody I'm in a community
00:43:46with. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm not going to see them ever again.
00:43:49Yeah. Uh huh. It's interesting because some people would say, if it's a stranger,
00:43:54I'm not going to tell them the truth. Some people would say, if it's a stranger,
00:43:56it's the only people who get the truth. Yeah.
00:43:58Um, let's sum up here a little bit and then let's go on to the thing that, that, that Griffin just
00:44:03introduced, which is the fundamental difference between the romantic friendship and the platonic
00:44:08friendship. You've raised seven points. Let's see if you agree with the seven points that you've raised
00:44:13here. Okay. The seven lessons. Number one, the architecture of friendship has to be built once
00:44:19you're past college. It's just not going to happen spontaneously unless it's built in a community that
00:44:25you grew up in, right? If you're new to a particular place, you got to do it. As Carolyn talks about,
00:44:30you got to make the chicken. That's the architecture of friendship.
00:44:33Okay. So the lesson number one is make the chicken. Lesson number two is that screens don't do this
00:44:39very well. I, you wouldn't know, but trust everybody else that screens don't do this very well.
00:44:45What does this well is lesson three, which is interest and activity does this. Common interest
00:44:52and activity are actually how you build the architecture. The architecture is around the
00:44:56people that are studying together. For example, we're going to get together for dinner. This is one
00:45:00way to do it. Another way is through religious community. And that's a particularly good way to
00:45:03do this because it's not just another, it's not a hobby. Like Catholicism is not known for being much
00:45:10of a hobby, right? I'm not sure that's a great hobby. It's a way of life is what it comes down to.
00:45:17Lesson number four is that friendship can be easier or harder if it's around family, if family actually is
00:45:25involved. One way or the other, you've got to do the work is what it comes down to. So being married or
00:45:30having family of origin there can make it easier or harder. It's not, your results may differ. One way
00:45:36or the other, you have to do the work. Number five that I'm hearing from you is an intense focus on
00:45:42what you're doing in your career can be incredibly isolating. And so strivers are going to suffer.
00:45:48If you're a striver, you're going to suffer is what it comes down to, which means you got to do the work
00:45:53even more, right? Then, and, and, and by the way, your striving is no substitute for love,
00:45:57right? On the contrary, I can tell you from a million different case studies that the most
00:46:01successful people who strive all the time wind up incredibly lonely because that will not bring you
00:46:06love. The sixth idea is that maintaining close relationships, close relationships, if not best
00:46:13friendship is really important. You have to do the work. And part of doing the work with best friendship
00:46:18is actually going deep. You can't do it by talking about, you know, golf, unless golf is your big
00:46:26interest and your passion. If it's your religion, the whole point is do indeed go deeper, go home.
00:46:31It's a, it's a good set of lessons are gaining from, from, from, from the group. All right. This in the show
00:46:38notes, folks. All right. Let's move on to a harder, harder subject. One that's scarier for a lot of
00:46:44people. I know I just heard people go, which is romantic relationships. It's, um, it's a funny thing,
00:46:52um, among my students that they find it more baffling than almost anything else. It was a source of
00:46:58fear and tension for me when I was in my twenties, but it was all I wanted to do is all I really cared
00:47:03of. That's what I most cared about. I realized that my core competency in life was that I wanted
00:47:08to fall in love and stay in love when I was in my twenties. And I remember when I was 23 years old,
00:47:13thinking to myself, I'm ready to get married. Not right now. I'm ready to meet the person that I'm
00:47:17going to marry. And right after my 24th birthday, I did. And it took me two years to close that deal.
00:47:23She wasn't ready yet or she wasn't ready with me yet. And, and, and we did, but that was a pretty
00:47:29common thing. And it was somebody who didn't speak my language. It was somebody who wasn't even in this
00:47:33country. It was, I, I packed up and moved to Spain and learned the language because I said,
00:47:39I think I can, I think this is it. Right. And that's not all that weird for people in my generation,
00:47:44but that's a really, really unusual type of thing for people in your generation.
00:47:48Now that doesn't seem intuitive. And the reason is because you're way more international
00:47:56than people my age. You have way more resources. You think more in a flat world. You're more
00:48:02cosmopolitan than people my age ever were. And yet it's sort of harder to do that romantic
00:48:07entrepreneurship. What changed, what made it that you kind of shut down this market in a particular way,
00:48:13besides just the apps. Can you talk to me a little bit about why falling and staying in love seems to
00:48:19be harder now than it did 35 years ago? What's the story of that? Did we wreck the world? We boomers.
00:48:26I mean, what do we do by making houses expensive? I don't know the whole mechanism here. It's all
00:48:31economics probably. Right. Why does it seem harder?
00:48:34Obviously, we can have a whole discussion about the disconnectedness that we're seeing as a result of
00:48:39online dating and apps and all that stuff. I also think to some extent, we're living in a less
00:48:45compassionate society. And I think this is a bubble that we're in. These are people who are doing the
00:48:51work. And similarly, I surround myself with people who are very compassionate and do the work. But
00:48:54I know you like to go back to the root of words a lot. I think that can bring us closer to truth. And
00:48:59even the word compassion, it means to suffer with. And I think reintroducing the humanity back into
00:49:05love and to society and creating a more compassionate world, it allows you to tap into a piece of yourself
00:49:11that realizes that collective human experience, that realizes that we are all
00:49:16wanting to love and to be loved. And I've noticed that in this very tribalist, politicized
00:49:24world that we're currently in, it's harder to love thy neighbor or to introduce compassion to somebody
00:49:30that you maybe disagree with. Well, practically speaking, is it harder to date somebody of the
00:49:34other party? Is that what you're saying? For me, yeah, it would be. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I knew my
00:49:40future wife's politics. I don't think we discussed it
00:49:43at all. Well, part of it is because we didn't speak the same language, so.
00:49:47But truly, I mean, that would have been a lot less germane to the experience. What about you,
00:49:52Danielle? Your parents, do they know each other? Do they care about each other's politics when they
00:49:55were dating low these many years ago? No, not at all. Yeah. So I'm reporting it now.
00:50:00Yeah. Yeah. And so that, and that's kind of part and parcel what you're talking about here,
00:50:04right? And every dating profile you see their political party. Really? Yeah, yeah. And people
00:50:10care? Yeah, super. And do you care? Do you care? Yeah. I would say so, yeah. Yeah. Do you care, Laura?
00:50:16I care. I care. You care? For sure. Yeah. It's an ideology thing rather than a party thing. Yeah,
00:50:21for sure. But do you care? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. You wouldn't date somebody who disagrees with you
00:50:27I don't think they did me. Well, that's very different. No, this is a very, this is a really
00:50:31important point, right? Because what you just suggested is that you would, but she probably
00:50:35wouldn't. No, I probably wouldn't either. What about you, Carolyn? I, I'm not super political,
00:50:45so I don't know. Like, it doesn't matter as much to me. Like, I do think values in general matter,
00:50:51but I don't know if I like align values with like a particular party or not. So, but I will say,
00:50:56like, I've seen people on the apps, like, immediately swipe no, and it's like, oh,
00:50:59this person's this. And I'm like, whoa, wait, you don't even know anything about them. Like,
00:51:04moderate doesn't mean moderate on the apps anymore. It means conservative. So, I don't know. It's,
00:51:09it's really interesting to watch people when they're deciding on the apps. So, it's really
00:51:12interesting. I want to dig in on this, Griffin, because you said two things that are slightly in
00:51:16conflict. Number one is that you said that the polarization of our society in general is making us less
00:51:23tolerant toward each other, and that's extinguishing potential love. Right? And number two is that you
00:51:29said that you wouldn't date somebody outside your ideological. Well, that doesn't mean I wouldn't
00:51:32love, like love. I mean, I think that that goes back to platonic versus romantic. No, no, but,
00:51:36but I'm talking about romantic. Oh, sure.
00:51:37Okay. So, so the whole point is that you, you sort of regret the fact that we're in a polarized,
00:51:42where a difference of worldview would extinguish the potential for deep passion and love. But at the
00:51:49same time, you fall prey to it as well. Oh, yeah. And you have the presence of mind to recognize that.
00:51:54Yeah, yeah. Do you regret that? Do you wish that that weren't the case for you?
00:51:58Absolutely. I mean, like Ram Dass has this beautiful notion of like, we're all just walking each other
00:52:03home. Like I would, like I would love to live in a society and in a world where like there was this
00:52:09just deep abundance of love that we all extended to each other. It's hard to hold both. Like it is,
00:52:13they do operate in conflict of each other. But I think that is ultimately a reality
00:52:17that a lot of kids are growing up with and myself included.
00:52:20So, you're not saying you wish you lived in a world where your potential partner agreed with you.
00:52:26You wish you lived in a world where notwithstanding disagreement, love were abundant enough that it
00:52:30didn't matter. Is that what you're saying? Yeah.
00:52:33Because that's what Ram Dass was saying. Yeah, yeah.
00:52:35Right? Yeah.
00:52:35That's what it means to walk somebody else home, is you're walking somebody who's not you home.
00:52:41And potentially somebody who completes you precisely by not agreeing with you, right?
00:52:45Yeah, yeah.
00:52:46And yet it's so hard. Yeah.
00:52:47And yet it's so hard.
00:52:49Yeah. I mean, I do think, you know, when, when two souls come together, right?
00:52:52Like it is not out of, uh, fulfilling something that each other is lacking. It is like a mutual
00:52:57abundance. Like, like when two perfect souls meet, it is not because one is lacking in something. It
00:53:02doesn't like sound like a completion. Like those souls are already complete in their own right.
00:53:05And it's a magnification of each other's light and each other's love.
00:53:08But they do fit together.
00:53:09Yes.
00:53:10Where what one person has, the other doesn't. And that's the point.
00:53:13Which is one of the reasons why their literature is so clear in relationships
00:53:17that people who are different are more attracted to each other than people who are the same.
00:53:21The initial match comes from sameness, but that doesn't lead to a long-term attraction.
00:53:28You're, you know, looking in the mirror is not hot, right?
00:53:32And so, and, but, but this is, there's an antagonism that we, you feel and that you
00:53:37regret that we built into our society. Is that number one?
00:53:40I would, yeah, I would agree with that.
00:53:43I'm not sure we're gonna be able to sort that one out.
00:53:46Um, but I share the regret that you have for that for sure. What else? What's that,
00:53:50what else is making it harder today? What else is going on here?
00:53:54I feel like it's a lot of the anxiety that people have for sure. Like the, the skyrocketing
00:53:58anxiety, I feel like is, I can't really speak for, I've been on off the market for a little bit, but
00:54:02like, how'd you meet your wife by the way? Um, we met through mutual friends freshman year of college.
00:54:08So you didn't meet on tech. We re-met at tech. So it's kind of a long story, but she,
00:54:12she was at my 16th birthday party. So I met her first there. She crashed my 16th birthday party.
00:54:16Did she like you? She, yeah, she liked me. We were both dating. We were both dating different
00:54:20people at the same time, at different times. But yeah, I liked her enough. I was like,
00:54:24she's fun. She's cool. And then we re-met like first week of freshman year.
00:54:29And you're married by the second week of freshman year?
00:54:32Pretty much. No, we held out for five years.
00:54:34Yeah. Okay. But you fundamentally didn't meet on the apps. You met, you, you met through,
00:54:39once again, you talked earlier in the conversation about the importance of
00:54:43religious community and, and, and communities of interest in friendship,
00:54:47but it's also true for romance as far as you're concerned, right?
00:54:49Right.
00:54:50Okay. Yeah.
00:54:51So that's the key. Anyway, continue.
00:54:52Yeah. No, and I think, um, so I, I.
00:54:54Anxiety.
00:54:55I imagine it's the same with, with romantic relationships, but I see it with friendships too,
00:54:58with like trying to get to know new people. And my wife and I talk about this a lot.
00:55:01She's a school counselor. So she's very, I want to know you deeply from the second I,
00:55:05I meet you and everything. And she's helped me get to more of that level when it comes to meeting
00:55:10people. But we really try to get to know, you know, ask, where are you from? You know,
00:55:15tell me about your family, tell me about your friends, what do you, you know,
00:55:17what do you do for work? All these different things. And it's frustrating when that's not
00:55:21reciprocated where it's like, well, don't you want to get to know me? Are you going to ask me some
00:55:25questions about me and, and our theory, our working theory is kind of, um, a lot of that anxiety kind
00:55:32of makes you not in a prideful way, but kind of makes you self-absorbed where you're focused on
00:55:37coming off, you know, in a good way and not embarrassing yourself, I guess. And, uh,
00:55:42it kind of makes you so focused on, okay, what's my answer going to be to this person that's
00:55:46really trying to get to know me deep? What's the, what's the root of that? Why is that? I mean,
00:55:51if romance is harder now because of anxiety, we would conclude that anxiety and self-absorption
00:55:57are higher now than they've been in the past. And, and this is completely consistent with the work of
00:56:01Jean Twenge, who teaches at San Diego State and she does work on narcissism. She says that narcissism is
00:56:06much, much, much higher in people in their twenties than it was 35 years ago. And is that,
00:56:11is that a controversial assertion? Do you think that's true? That there's more narcissism?
00:56:16I believe it.
00:56:16Why?
00:56:18I think maybe people are self-conscious because they're like recorded every second of every day.
00:56:23Okay. So tech, tech is the reason for that increases in self-absorption and anxiety?
00:56:28No one goes to the club and dances anymore because they're afraid they're going to get recorded.
00:56:33That's a, that's a thing.
00:56:34It's really a thing.
00:56:35Yes. You're recorded every second of every day. And all of us, we grew up in a time where like,
00:56:39we probably had smartphones that were recording videos of ourselves at 12.
00:56:42Right.
00:56:42Right.
00:56:42We're being recorded right now.
00:56:43Right.
00:56:44Right.
00:56:44Right.
00:56:44Right.
00:56:45Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh. What, how else is tech creating the problem
00:56:49of self-absorption and, and anxiety? How else is, is the, is the proliferation of tech and personal
00:56:54devices and social media doing this? Because it has to be playing into it as well. Besides just this,
00:56:59the self-consciousness of thinking that something that you say or do right now might be played back to the whole
00:57:04world in 10 minutes. Right. Bad enough. Well, yeah, tech starts becoming tailored to
00:57:09yourself, like the, for you page. Uh huh. And so then you not only are spending time
00:57:14doing scrolling, but you want it to serve you. So then you kind of walk around the world with that
00:57:19notion a little bit. Like how will this person serve me instead of how can I love this person?
00:57:24So do you see, do people and people your age generally recognize how difficult and dangerous
00:57:32it is to, I mean, how, how, how, how troublesome the tech actually is in creating more anxiety and
00:57:37self-absorption? Do people recognize this? That's the, that's the irony of the experience.
00:57:41Everybody knows this? Is this something everybody knows that, that, that the, the smartphone is
00:57:45making love harder? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
00:57:48They not know that? Do they do know that? I don't know if they know that.
00:57:52I've seen data that suggests that they do know that.
00:57:55Yeah. I think a lot of people, whether love or not, I think, I think most people
00:57:59know their phone usage is a net negative experience and they still, I mean, they like,
00:58:04I'll go as far to say like big tech has like colonized our minds, right? Like we're addicted
00:58:07to it. Like we know it's bad for us, but we still engage in it. How do you meet people,
00:58:13potential partners, because you're not on using tech, you're not using social media? How do you do it?
00:58:18Honestly, it's hard, but it's just like people that are in
00:58:22my like friend group or through other people. Yeah. So I'll be transparent. I've never been
00:58:27on the dating apps. Um, but it's hard. That sometimes means you're just not going on dates.
00:58:32Is it harder, but better?
00:58:33I don't know. I, I, it's hard to like make a comparison because I don't have a reference
00:58:37point. Like I only have my experience to speak from. I've found that the people I go on dates
00:58:41with, like, it ends up being very like present because a lot of those people are also probably not
00:58:45on the apps. Um, and it doesn't feel like there's this competition to be against like everybody else
00:58:51who's on the app. Because I think one of the things with the apps is that like you get on them
00:58:55and you see one person, you go on a date with them, you're disappointed by that date maybe.
00:58:59And then you're like, oh, but I can go back to the apps and find somebody else.
00:59:03And like, so you just keep going and like looking for more and more of what you want.
00:59:07Paradox of choice.
00:59:08Yes. Yes. Um, and then you don't find what you want. And so you're constantly disappointed.
00:59:13Um, and it becomes like this cycle versus like when I go on a date with someone, sometimes I'm like,
00:59:19wow, this date is so much better than I thought it was going to be because I didn't have this notion
00:59:23of like, oh, there's all these other options for me. Like, let me invest in this experience,
00:59:28um, and make the best of this because it might be my only date this summer or something.
00:59:32So, I don't know. But.
00:59:35What about you Griffin? Cause you're also not on the apps and you're also not using social media.
00:59:40Yeah. I mean, I think it's a lot of, how do you meet people?
00:59:43A lot of my, my, like the communities and worlds in which I operate in, um,
00:59:49in the wild, I guess, you know, you could say like, I mean, through, through the different hobbies that
00:59:54I have, I've met a lot of different people through going to, I go to a lot of, you know,
00:59:57friends house parties and whatnot. And so I met people through that. I agree. I, you know, I agree.
01:00:01I think that it's interesting. Like I know a lot of my female friends and even male friends who do
01:00:06have like social media, they'll be able to create a whole profile of who this person is before the
01:00:10first date, just by like having, you know, what college they went to and like what their job and
01:00:13like, and so I go in pretty blind to a lot of these dates to the extent that like, I know what they
01:00:18look like, but I don't really know anything about them. And I think that does create a space of like,
01:00:21I can show up maybe more authentically, but I've also struggled in a lot of ways. Like I,
01:00:26so I can't even, you know, dating is a challenging experience, but it's not because of that. What is
01:00:31the challenge? Um, I think, I mean, there's, I think you referred to it before. Yeah. It's hard
01:00:37for you to go deep for sure. Why? I think it's, you know, it's, I can go deep in certain respects
01:00:42and not in others. I think one of my challenges that I'm exploring in therapy now is, um, how I learned
01:00:49what romantic love was. Um, and for me, that ultimately was through a lot of like film and
01:00:56media. Did your parents have a good marriage? It was a complicated, uh, marriage. My dad had
01:01:01multiple sclerosis before I was born. He was in a wheelchair my whole life. Um, and it placed a great
01:01:08challenge on my mom to be a caretaker for her children and for my father. So I, um, I received an
01:01:13abundance of love from my parents. I did not observe a romantic loving relationship between my parents.
01:01:18That's how you had to learn from other ways, et cetera, et cetera.
01:01:20And it created this very fantastical idea of what love should be in my mind, which doesn't
01:01:24always match up with that relationships are hard. Um, right. And it requires you to.
01:01:30Yeah. You saw the Disney version, which is they lived happily ever after. And it turns
01:01:33out in real life, you have arguments and it's really not that great all the time. You're married.
01:01:38Yeah. Love is a choice.
01:01:39Love. Well, and also there's an argument every day over something. It depends. I mean,
01:01:42your results might differ. I'm married to a Spaniard. There's a, there's a fight every hour.
01:01:48We disagree is what it comes down to. Tell me more about what's on your mind.
01:01:54What's the biggest problem? I mean, as, as you know, from, from dating right now,
01:01:59I mean, we talked about anxiety and self absorption in tech, et cetera.
01:02:01What's the biggest barrier as far as you're concerned?
01:02:03I've been dating my partner for, um, about eight months now. And we met through
01:02:08improv through my, through like my community. I was on the apps before that. Um, and I think
01:02:14I do, I, I do share this with a lot of my friends. We were all like, we're on the apps. We're all
01:02:19like tire fit. We're like, uh, I gotta get off the apps is, is, is everybody is.
01:02:23This is interesting. Is this, everybody say the same thing? Are you on the apps?
01:02:27Mm-mm. I'm in a relationship.
01:02:28You're in a relationship. Were you on the apps?
01:02:29No. Okay.
01:02:30My partner in person.
01:02:31Nice. So, uh, almost everybody I talk to, are you on the apps, Daniela?
01:02:35Hey, I, I've been here and there.
01:02:37You've been.
01:02:39So, so I don't talk to any young people today who say, I love the apps. Nobody says that,
01:02:46that I talk to. And which is one of the reasons that app developers are getting much
01:02:49better about trying to inject more human friction into the algorithm. And they're getting much better.
01:02:55I'm very bullish on some of them, as a matter of fact, but, but that's a very common
01:02:59experience that people have. And that was yours.
01:03:00Yeah. Um, I think when I was on the apps, I, I very much told myself, like, I'm not going to
01:03:08find the person I'm going to marry on these apps. I'm just going to find somebody who like.
01:03:11What were you looking for? That entertainment?
01:03:13Yeah.
01:03:14Fun times?
01:03:15Yeah, kind of. Um, and then I think I found the person who I, I, I love through community first and
01:03:23through shared interest and the close friendship first. I think that really made me like being
01:03:30friends with her and then kind of evaluating like, oh, what am I, what am I doing? What am I doing on
01:03:35these apps? Um, I think finding somebody like who I, I think she forced me to really care.
01:03:42Right. Um, and yeah.
01:03:44So if you're dating for entertainment, that's probably suboptimal, right? Is it better? Did you
01:03:50believe it's better to date with a purpose of wanting a long-term relationship or is, is that a
01:03:56completely valid motive for dating with respect to happiness? I'm not talking about morality at all.
01:04:00With respect to happiness is let's have a good time. I date to have a good time.
01:04:03I think I was, I was dating just to, yeah, just like see, just to have somebody to like do things
01:04:09with, um, just some panionship. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but then I think I would get just bored easily.
01:04:17And I think that's just something that I have been really reflecting on lately, uh, with myself,
01:04:23especially because somebody has come to my life who I really do care about and she cares about me.
01:04:27And I think, um, that's made me more vulnerable. If anything, I think that vulnerability piece
01:04:34with the apps, I think the apps allowed me to kind of reinforce that part of me that was like,
01:04:39I don't need to be vulnerable. Uh huh. Uh huh. Nice. She's watching. This is very promising.
01:04:44Yeah. Okay. She hates how I talk on podcasts.
01:04:49Uh, you want to add anything to this? I haven't, I haven't actually asked you any
01:04:55really uncomfortable questions about this yet except whether or not you're on the apps, but
01:04:58what, what is it that makes it hard? Well, I think what you're saying about,
01:05:02uh, it's difficult to be vulnerable. Yeah. It goes into our friendships and dating.
01:05:07And this has got to get back to what Laura was talking about. Why is it
01:05:10hard to be more vulnerable now than it was in the past? Because everything that you do,
01:05:14it becomes public immediately. Right. I mean, maybe not showing up on a video,
01:05:19but the whole point is everybody knows everything about everybody. Right. Okay.
01:05:22Yeah. What I said before, kind of an obsession with, not an obsession, but you are looking more inward
01:05:27than outward. You're spending less time in nature or kind of looking at, you know, making yourself
01:05:32smaller. You're just, you're stuck in your own bubble a lot. I think it could also be comparison.
01:05:37I think with like social media today, like it's so hard not to compare to the relationships around you or
01:05:42like friendships around you or what everyone's doing, the friend groups are doing around you. And I think
01:05:46that's not a challenge. Like never before were you seeing what everyone you've ever met one
01:05:51time was doing on the weekend, you know, and the stress of that added on to it.
01:05:56Yeah. That sounds, that sounds really, truly terrible. That sounds like a nightmare. Um, what,
01:06:02what do you want? What do you want in a relationship? I mean, what, what, where do you want it to go?
01:06:06What do you want the end state to be? I mean, look, I could go back in human history and say
01:06:12what human biology and evolution suggests is that you're going to get a permanent pair bond and
01:06:19have a family that's relatively happy. And you're going to have a pair bond that lasts until one of
01:06:24you dies. I mean, that's what, and that's been sort of the, at least the ideal. Nobody goes to their
01:06:28wedding day and says till death or, you know, discontent, you know, hits us too hard and we, and we
01:06:34decide to break up. So you tell death to us part, you know, that's the whole idea. But what today in
01:06:39dating, in your cases, those of you who are single, what do you want? What do you want, Griffin?
01:06:47Um, I've, I've quoted Ram Dass already once before. He's good. He's worth quoting twice.
01:06:52Yeah. I'll give him, I'll give him. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. He, he, I mean, he says,
01:06:55Timothy Leary, I'm not so, his best friend. I'm not so sure, but Ram Dass. Yeah.
01:07:00Um, yeah. Oh yeah. Ram Dass says, uh, to say, if you were to, if I say, I love you, um,
01:07:06what that means is that you are the stimulus that allows me to tap into a piece of myself
01:07:10that realizes that I am love. Um, and I think some of us are spiritual in this space for me, that is
01:07:18deeply profound in this recognition of non duality, right. And that, uh, we are all love and we are all
01:07:26divine. And I think I pray that at some point in my life, I will come into contact with a partner that,
01:07:33you know, magnifies that light. And that is that mutual recognition.
01:07:36And that's permanent. That's what you want. You want to find the person who is,
01:07:41plays that role in your life permanently. Sure. Yeah. One and done.
01:07:44I, yeah, I think there is a difference between lust and love and I've, I've had my experiences with
01:07:48lust for sure. That's, that's part of the biological human experience as well.
01:07:52Yeah. But you do, in other words, to, to, it's very beautiful what you said.
01:07:56But, but, but, but, but let me just translate it. You want to find your permanent pair bond.
01:08:03Yeah. Yeah. That's what you want. That'd be nice.
01:08:06Jake. I want to make someone laugh for the rest of my life.
01:08:09Yeah. It's all like a permanent pair bond to me.
01:08:11Yeah. And make somebody a mother and make somebody right.
01:08:17I'd love to. Yeah. I just, I'd love a house full of laughter.
01:08:23Yeah. And, and not just yours.
01:08:25Not just mine. Yeah.
01:08:26I've heard enough of that. Yeah.
01:08:28Okay. It's, it's, it's very similar. It's a similar answer. Is anybody going to give me a
01:08:33different answer of what the end goal of a romantic, of the right romantic relationship actually ought to
01:08:39be, which is a permanent pair bond is falling in love, staying in love for the rest of our lives.
01:08:44Is that what you want, Laura?
01:08:45Mm-hmm.
01:08:45Yeah. Daniela?
01:08:47Yeah. I have a question. I mean, how would you define a pair bond and, you know,
01:08:51distinguish it from like a toxic, you know, bonding?
01:08:55Well, a pair bond that we're talking about, one which actually is healthy and true and good,
01:09:01is one that is axiomatically not toxic. Yeah.
01:09:03You know, it's one in which there's plenty of laughter and which you complete each other spiritually.
01:09:07Right. That doesn't mean that there's no disagreement because there's two human beings
01:09:11and there's going to be plenty of disagreement that actually goes into that. And nobody goes into
01:09:15a relationship unless you got all of your information from Disney, which by the way,
01:09:18might be the problem, right? Yeah.
01:09:20Because you got from the media, the concept of what a healthy relationship was all about. It's
01:09:24iron sharpens iron, as it says in the Proverbs. That's an ultimately the case with a,
01:09:29with a pair bond that works. But that's what I'm talking about is one in which,
01:09:33what do they used to say? Ride or die. That's what I'm talking about.
01:09:37Right. As opposed to die and then stop riding, which is what a more toxic relationship would be
01:09:42about. I know your answer.
01:09:44Yeah. You've made a, you, you wrote the contract on earth and heaven and you too,
01:09:48Carolyn, is this the, is this the goal? That's the goal too. Yeah.
01:09:51But why did I ask all, all of the six of you this? Because people might don't know this about you.
01:09:57They don't know this about you. They think that you're somehow trivial in your pursuit,
01:10:03as they say. That it would be that you, you want something different than people my age do.
01:10:08Why? Because you date differently. And because your experience of love is different. And because
01:10:12the stimuli and what you say is different. And what the media reports on you is different.
01:10:17But it isn't different, is it? You want the same things that we did, don't you? You might get it in
01:10:22a slightly different way. And you're more frustrated in the way that's being delivered today. But that's a
01:10:27really, really important insight, I think, for everybody to understand, isn't it? How important
01:10:32is it for you to be able to articulate that in the dating market right now? To say, what if you
01:10:37put on your dating profile? Those of you who have, none of you have dating profiles anymore. There's
01:10:41no dating profiles in here anymore. But what if somebody said, my goal, ride or die? I mean, it's true.
01:10:47What would happen if you said it?
01:10:50It might not go well.
01:10:51No, no. But why not?
01:10:54I don't know. It seems really intense.
01:10:57Yeah. Go deeper, go home, right?
01:10:59Because it seems like there are people who do kind of put that on their profiles. And I don't know,
01:11:03maybe that does work out for them. But they're still on the apps when you see them. So it might
01:11:06not be working out.
01:11:07It's a good point. It's a good point. No, no, it's a revelation. No, no, for sure.
01:11:12Yeah.
01:11:12So, yeah, it just seems intense. Because I think a lot of people our age, like, it is ultimately what they
01:11:19want. But that is a long process to get there. And so what you first look for is like, do we get
01:11:24along? Can we laugh? Like, do we laugh at the same jokes? And like, you go for the less intense
01:11:29stuff first. Because again, like vulnerability, it's hard to actually get to the point of like
01:11:34marriage and like for the rest of your life. So if somebody just puts that on their profile right
01:11:38away, it's kind of like, right, not okay. So basically, it's the same thing as if you were,
01:11:43if you went in, you came in too hot on a friend's show, you'd scare people off.
01:11:47Well, also, these apps are gamified, right? So if you're, if you're playing the game
01:11:52effectively, you know, that's probably not your best strategies to come out
01:11:56guns blazing, because they might scare people off.
01:11:58Yeah, right, right. Okay, so I get it. But this also raises one more point. I think it's important,
01:12:05which is that the, and a lot of you have actually sort of said this, that the focus, the core
01:12:11of the romantic relationship actually is friendship. It's really, it is, isn't it? I mean,
01:12:16you want somebody you can have laughs with, right? You want somebody who's gonna be your soulmate,
01:12:22which is the same thing you were talking about in the depths of your friendships, right? And you,
01:12:26you told me you're married to your best friend, right?
01:12:28Yeah, we were friends before we started dating. And, and you're trying to find somebody that you
01:12:32actually like, that you actually like as a person. And so the key is actually finding deep friendship,
01:12:38right? The literature on this is very clear that people think in Disney films that the secret is
01:12:44staying passionate for your whole life. The secret to the happiest marriages is called companionate love,
01:12:51which is another way of saying is, is living with your best friend, which there's no greater privilege
01:12:55than living with your best friend. So you have to find somebody who might be your best friend
01:12:59before you find somebody who's your spouse. And that's not coming in too hot, right? Is that what
01:13:04we're talking about? Is that a fair conclusion than what we're looking for?
01:13:07Yeah. Yeah. I think it's putting the cart before the horse in a lot of things, in a lot of ways.
01:13:12I think it's the end goal, but I think the journey there is also something really lovely.
01:13:18Yeah. So I think wanting to skip to, to, to marriage, to ride or die is you, you skip over a lot of really
01:13:26great things. Yeah, for sure. Got it. Good. So, and then this gets us back to where the conversation
01:13:31started, which is what is actually getting in the way of friendship. And that's an antagonistic culture
01:13:37that has insufficient compassion and that has a lot of polarization in it too. It's the inability to look
01:13:43into somebody else's eyes who disagrees with you or who might be very different than you and say,
01:13:47that's a human being. That's another me. Yeah. Right. And I think there's a tremendous amount
01:13:52of spiritual bypassing, you know, in today's society as well. Like not even a conscious neglect,
01:13:56but a neglect nonetheless to do the work, right? Like, I think we have to recognize that in this life
01:14:03we have to do healing. Like a lot of us have to heal from different traumas, different pains. And
01:14:08that has only served me in, like, I think your growth is directly correlated with how much suffering
01:14:13you're willing to endure to some extent, right? Like I've grown a tremendous amount
01:14:17by the challenges and the griefs that I've had to encounter in my life. And those have only
01:14:21magnified my relationships. I've loved more deeply every time I've fallen in love. Um, I think as a
01:14:27result of that. Yeah. Which one more statistic, the average person before they find their permanent pair
01:14:33bond has her or his heart broken five times. I'm a few short. Which is, uh, keep, keep going.
01:14:41It's like lather, rinse and repeat. No, no, seriously. I mean, that's a really important
01:14:44thing in much the same way that, um, entrepreneurial businesses tend not to be successful before a few
01:14:50failures along the way. This is actually how we learned you got lucky, didn't you? Yeah. Super lucky.
01:14:54I, yeah. Yeah. It's like, you never came up on the first try. Who are the outliers there?
01:14:58Eight, nine, 10 times. It's crazy. There might be a, there might be a pathology that's involved
01:15:05in some of the larger numbers. Some of these cases, something else we did. Anything else anybody wants
01:15:09to add before we come up with, uh, with our, our, our group's rules for successful love and dating?
01:15:15All right. Let's, let's give, let's try this on. Number one, what is sickening our society today,
01:15:20our inability to actually see each other as people. The polarization is also killing what is the fuel of what
01:15:26we most deeply want in our souls, which is to connect to each other in this romantic way.
01:15:31Polarization is the enemy of romance first, number one. Now we gotta fix that, but I guess that's a
01:15:41different episode. Second, the way to meet each other ideally is through mutual interest as opposed
01:15:47to straight up tech, right? It's something that we're both really interested in because we wanna connect
01:15:52over some area of values or interest. This is what connects human beings in general,
01:15:57which is the same point that we made for friendship, which leads to the third point,
01:16:01which is that the basis of a good romance actually is friendship. So think about friendship first.
01:16:08And I recommend by the time that everybody's married, like me and Michael, that you'd be thinking
01:16:12about friendship last too, because the last thing you do as you take your dying breath is to look into the
01:16:17eyes of your best friend, which is great. Um, the fourth idea is that what's really pulling people
01:16:25apart besides just the tech per se and the mediation of relationship with screens is anxiety and self
01:16:29absorption, which once again are being accelerated by the overuse and misuse of technology for sure.
01:16:35As Daniella puts it, and we talk about it in our work, it's all me, me, me, me as opposed to looking
01:16:41out into the world. What William James called the me self versus the I self. What the technology is,
01:16:47is massive mirrors and there's nothing that's actually more antagonistic to romance than looking in the
01:16:52mirror. And last, the last idea is that they're the permanent pair bond is what people still want,
01:16:59you know, and don't let anybody fool you. They'll let anybody tell you that something's changed.
01:17:04They'll let anybody tell you that kids these days don't care about the serious things because I see
01:17:09a lot of seriousness here around this table. They want the serious business of falling in love and
01:17:15staying in love of loving and being loved, which is the business of being alive. Thank you.
01:17:21Thank you. And thanks to all of you. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you for staying with us
01:17:27on Office Hours, our show dedicated to love and happiness. This has been a wonderful year for
01:17:33all of us that work with me, Daniella and me, and our happy little band of happiness warriors,
01:17:41but all of you too. Please stay with us. Please recommend these ideas to friends. Like and subscribe,
01:17:45as they say. Look for us on social media as well. Even though social media isn't perfect,
01:17:49we can use it for good things. And most importantly, I hope you find the love that you have in your heart
01:17:55such that you can enjoy it for yourself and share it with other people.
01:17:58That's what it means to be fully alive. See you next week.
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