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Oh hey, it's that lady in the hotel lobby who just took an apple from the bowl of decorative fruit and feels only partly guilty about it. Ali Ward back with another episode of ologies Oh, Love Oh, Who doesn't Love Love Oh? This episode is coming out a few days before Valentine's Day. Love is in the air. It's on the shelves at Walgreens. Soon it will be in
the discount aisle at Walgreens. But it will still be in our hearts and on our minds until probably the day we're dead and return to the earth as scattered molecules, ready to be a frog that loves another frog. But frogs don't get married, and some people do, so let's learn about it. But first little business. So thank you, as always to the Ologies patrons. I am your grateful, humble servant. This podcast would not exist with other folks on patreon dot com slash ologies A dollar a month
gets you in that club. Thanks to everyone for sporting Ologies merch from ologiesmerch dot com. I've said it before. I hope you wear an Ologies shirt or pin or hat and you find your soulmate and then I officiate your wedding and I eat free cake.
Okay.
Thanks to everyone who rates the show and hit subscribe bonus points for leaving a review for me to creepily lurk and read on the show, such as this week's Let's Do It. Ariel Lean says this podcast is one hundred percent worth writing my first ever review. I've gotten sucked into topics. I never thought I would be interested in I'm looking at you postcards. They say. The episodes on snology inspired me to take a leap of faith and eliminate two of the three sleepy medications I had
been taking for years. They say, I feel better than ever. So thanks Ali for putting your heart and soul and a few brock crystals into bringing all of us so much joy. So thank you, Ariel. Everyone else consult a doctor before changing medications. Please don't sue me. Yay, okay? So matrimoniology is it a word? Come on, dad word? Don't go pull on legs here? Hot? Damn? Is it ever?
Kind of okay? First off, the term matrim comes from the Latin for mother, as in to make a mother out of someone gross, But now matrimony is used as jack catchall for marriage stuff and a now deceased psychologist from the Czech Republic coined the term matrimoniology, wrote several books on marriage and relationship psychology, so it exists in literature, I say it accounts. So I enlisted the help of
new intern Harrikim. They helped me track down one of the foremost American experts in the field who happens to teach not in Prague but in La So I just shimmied over to UCLA on a sunny morning and I set up a few mics. I asked this ologist questions that had both adorable and also sometimes very uncomfortable answers, just like a relationship, adorable, sometimes uncomfortable. So he is a professor of social psychology and a researcher at UCLA's
marriage lab. There's a marriage lab, and he's a co author of the textbook Intimate Relationship, and has written innumerable papers on the topic, many of which have really just juicy as health titles such as quote to know you is to love you, the importance of global adoration and specific understanding for close relationships, and how stress hinders adaptive processes in marriage. Oh this is the good stuff. Okay.
So we sat down to discuss romantic intimacy, how marriage differs from non married relationships, what to do if your partnership is going through a little bit of a rough batch, why divorces happen, how movies could save your relation, strategies for popping the question, the darker historical side of marriage. And then maybe per usual, I have a life changing epiphany.
No spoilers, So sit back, commit to this amazing and wild ride with someone who, just technically speaking, in some parts of the world, would be considered a matrimoniologist, Doctor Ben, you are sort of a matrimoniologist.
I mean technically, I'm a psychologist, yeah, And if you want to get more specific, I'm a social psychologist. So there's lots of different kinds of psychology at universities, and social psychology is a study of how human beings, individual human beings are affected by the imagined or real presence of other human beings, which is to say, is a study of the human condition.
That sounds so poetic, but it's true.
We are the ones who study scientifically what it means to be a human being on the planet Earth, within social psychology, in all these different ways that human beings interact. My own interest has always been in intimacy and how people develop and maintain intimate connections, specifically romantic connections, and I have studied that in the context of marriage, but
my interest is broader than just marriage. Marriage is a very convenient place to study adult intimacy because it's where a lot of adults will end up practicing their adult intimacy for large portions of their lives. So I've studied marriage my whole life or my whole professional life for the last twenty five years. But for me, marriage is a case, a specific case of a broader interest in intimacy, in how people experience love and what happens to that experience over time.
So quick background on Ben. He grew up in la but he got his bachelor's in psychology from just this little college called friggin Harvard, then came back to California to get his PhD in social psychology from UCLA, where he's now, of course, a professor who studies intimate relationships. But how did he know that this field was the one and why of all the different facets of social psychology? Why intimacy?
Honestly, because that's what I was naturally thinking about when I when it came time to think what am I going to study. What actually happened is that I got to graduate school in nineteen ninety and I actually went to graduate school here at UCLA, where I ended up many years later on the faculty. And I didn't know what I wanted to say. I knew I loved this
idea of social psychology. I knew that the ways that human beings interact was fascinating and puzzling and compelling for me, but I didn't know what I was going to really study, and I kind of drifted. And a very kind faculty member noticed that I was drifting. Her name was Anne Peplow.
She's still around although she's retired. And Peplow called me into her office and said, hey, how's your first year of grad school going, which she didn't have any obligation to do, didn't need to do that, but she was just very kind and she said, I said, I no, no, I'm studying different things. And she said, well are you studying? What do you want to study? What was it that you actually came here to study? So I don't know. Ah, she goes, why don't you go think about it for a while?
And how could she tell you that you were drifting?
I don't know, I think because I don't know why she took an interest. It was one of the most generous things anyone's ever done for me, though.
And so what did you do when you went and thought about it? Were you dating someone at the time, are you single? Were you struggling in that area.
It's a good question. I had just started dating someone that I had had a long term crush on in college.
Ooh nice.
After college we had gotten together, and so I was thinking about intimacy. I was saying, how do these how do we fall in love with people out of a relationship change? How to someone that you know for a long time suddenly become your partner? How do two people who are strangers to each other go from strangers to needing each other?
Right?
Just see that seems like a miraculous It is. It is a miracle. It is right. There's a person on the If you're a single person right now, somewhere on the planet, there's someone and probably close by, who some years from now you'll say, oh my god, that person touched me. That person is so important to me. I couldn't live without that person. And yet now I have no idea who that person I know. That's insane.
I have a friend named Kathy who she was at a birthday party. Her future husband was there. They never even talked. They met online. A year later they're at the same birthday party. So, yes, my friends Kathy and Sandon, they're in the same photos of this birthday party. This was a year before they met and started dating via Okay Cupid. So now they're married, they have a rescue poodle. Life is wild, is all I'm saying. Just go talk to everyone at every party. Maybe you can smell them.
See what that does for you. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. Also, on my way to this interview, I took a lift because UCLA Parking is just a dystopian healscape. You can see the microbiology episode for more on that. And I was talking to the driver about this episode on the way to record it, and I promised him that I would ask his question right away and not chicken out. So, boy, howdy did I What about you? Now? My lift driver wanted me to ask, Nicholas,
are you married? You have a wedding ring on how many times have you been married? Me?
Yeah, I am married.
Okay.
I have been divorced. I was divorced.
Okay.
I was married to my first wife and we got divorced after I had been studying marriage for a long time, like many many years, and then I married again, okay, and I'm very happily married.
Okay. So you've experienced literally all sides of yes, I have been nice.
I have been a participant in the whole phenomenon. And people ask me, of course, they say, so, you study marriage. You literally have written a book on intimacy. So how is it that you got divorced? And my response to that, I have a ready one, is oh, I understand why I got divorced.
Yeah.
And one of the things that I've studied, one of the things I've studied a long time is that not everything about your relationship, our relationships are controllable m M. That things happen in relationships that are beyond your control. And the idea that if you just work hard enough you can make any relationship work is not true.
Not true.
I don't believe that's true.
And you can say that from a personal and from a scientific perspective.
Yes, it turns out I could say it for I was saying it for a long time from a scientific perspective, and then I experienced it.
That is great as a scientist that you have experienced all those facets. I'm sure that it is not easy as a person, but as an actual kind of objective of observer to other people's behavior, that must be very helpful.
I would have preferred not to experience. Okay, if I could have chose, and I would have preferred very strongly not to experience that.
But and now, what about when you were a graduate student you started turning your eye toward intimacy and then at what point did the marriage lab here at UCLA exist or how did you get involved?
Well, it's an interesting it's fortuitous. It's luck. My career is a cascade of lucky breaks that I didn't do much to create or that I just fell into, and I am grateful for every day. I'm a big believer in luck and circumstance, and as my scholarly interest in the effect of luck and circumstance on marriage, and I've definitely experienced that. So what happened is I came back to end Peplow after a week or so and I said, if I could be paid to think of something that
I already think about, that'd be pretty great. If if my whole life, if my job could be to ponder systematically and professionally something that I would all ponder, that'd be awesome. And what I find myself thinking about all the time that I don't have to be encouraged to think about that I already think about is love? How do people fall in love? How do people fall out
of love? And that latter question is really the one that really puzzles me, because nobody wants to fall out of love, so of course everyone wants to find love. No mystery there. I am someone who is looking for love, real love. The mystery is that once two people find that, how is it so fragile? That's the mystery, because two people who fall in love experience this is amazing, this is great. Do you want to keep feeling this way?
I do. Let's both do that. And if you get married, for example, you don't just want that, you actually promise to do that, and you don't promise it privately, You promise it publicly.
In front of everyone, in front of everybody. Free one you've ever met that means anything to you.
Is now listening to you say this is it? Count me out of the dating market. I'm gonna be with this person here forever.
Nowage marriage is what wins us to deva.
It would be a terrible idea to change your mind. It'd be costly, financially, cousy, emotionally costly, and it's embarrassing.
You're wearing the most expensive pants you have ever.
Worn, very expensive pants, and people are giving you monogram stuff you can't return it.
I know.
So, then what happens from a neurological perspective in terms of like do our dopamine levels go crazy and then they weigh naturally? How do you figure that out?
You know, my interest is not in the neurological level. There are people who study the neurological level and they're saying, and you know, they're saying, here's what goes on rain regions activate. I'm interested in the phenomenological level of experience. So I'm interested in how do people experience a change that they don't want that happens anyway.
In case you're like, shoot, what is the brain cocktail that's making me feel like a walking hard eyed emoji slash egg plant emoji slash peach emoji slash very creepy newish drooling face emoji which they shouldn't have greenlit. Why
do they make that one? It's so gross? Well, neurobiologists at the Loyola Sexual Wellness Clinic say that dopamine, adrenaline, and norapenephrin increase when two people get really smitten with each other, and then our body Dopamine makes you feel euphoric, kind of like Tom Cruise jumping on a couch, while adrenaline and norapenephrin make your heart literally go pitter pat faster, and they focus your attention on this crush you have.
So evidently love lowers your serotonin levels, which these researchers say is common in people with obsessed of compulsive disorders, which tracks if you've ever refreshed someone's Instagram like you're being paid to monitor them and said like why why why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?
Why am I doing this? Stop doing this? So Doctor Bencarney also says that minds are very hard to change, and we've known this for like all of time, but in the nineteen fifties a psychologist named Leon Festinger studied this and dubbed it cognitive dissonance, which is that excruciating
discomfort when you're holding two very conflicting thoughts. So Festinger and colleagues studied a cult that was started by a Midwestern housewife come doomsday prophet who kept promising all of her followers that spacemen were coming very soon any minute to take them all away, and her followers kept believing in her, even though like where are these spacemen? She
was like, they're stuck in like so much space traffic. Anyway, this woman's name was Dorothy Martin, and I really wish that for branding purposes she just popped an extra a in that name just went for Dorothy Marsham. Can you imagine would have been so sick? Anyway, People never tend to change their minds, except anything about I guess love.
About people's love relationships or let's say, their marriages, people do change.
Their mind about their partner.
About their partner, I said, I was going to love you forever. I thought I was going to love you forever. I thought this is the best relationship ever. I'm totally gonna never change. And then people do, even though it's costly, even though they don't want to, even though it's embarrassing. That's a real mystery, and people do change their minds all the time about their love relationships. I thought you
were the one. I thought you were my soulmates. Surprise, surprise, I must have a different soulmate because of you, Ain't it.
Do you even think, as a social psychologist that soulmates exist or is that a convenient thing that we apply to one person so that we don't think about the soulmate that might be on the next train car, even though we're married.
I do not believe in that their soulmates. I believe that relationships are things that people are processes that people work at, and people can work hard to have a good relationship with a variety of different people, and those relationships will be different. So the good relationship you have with some person is different than the good relationship you might have with another person. Okay, there's some research on what is it? What are the impact on what's the
impact on a relationship of thinking about soulmates? Of believing in soulmates?
And it's not that great.
For example, if you really believe in soulmates and then you and your partner, who you think is your soulmate are having a fight, it might lead you to say, uh, oh, maybe you're not my soulmate.
Yeah, and now what was your what was your PhD work? You're it toward? What was your dissertation about?
So after I went back to enn Peplau and said, I think I want to study you love relationships, she said, oh, That's an interesting coincidence because there's this guy that was just hired here at UCLA named Thomas Bradbury. Young guy just was his first job, and he actually studies marriages.
Tom Bradbury was studying newlyweds in the community and then following him over time to see in the first few years, who stayed nearly was are pretty happy, which one of them stay happy, which ones get less happy, which ones get divorced? And he was also videotaping them, so it wasn't just asking them questions, he was videotaping them and coding what he saw in the videotapes.
Oh.
I met him and said, hey, can I work with you? And he said sure. And that was twenty six years ago. And we're still working together because he's still in the faculty here, and we write books together, and we get grants together, and we are still working together.
What's the secret to that healthy partnership?
G It is probably the longest successful adult relationship I've had. And the secret is I think that I lucked out that Tom S. Bradbury happens to be a fantastic person.
Well, I guess that's part of selection.
It's totally selection. Yes, Actually, that's a very good point that one of the things that's coming out from the work that we've been doing the last few years is it really matters who you choose, because where your relationship begins says a lot about where it's going to go.
If I do think that some people are less fortunate, and that the person that you meet when you're feeling ready to get married and the person you're like, oh, wait a minute, I'm ready to get married and you're here and available, and we get along well enough, and I think a lot of people get married that way, and you want to be lucky.
So so the selection of partners sometimes is based on opportunity and not compatibility.
So the only people you can possibly judge your compatibility with are the people that you meet, the people you have the opportunity to meet.
So opportunity comes first and selection and compatibility.
And I actually think that that we've as a culture emphasized selection as if it's a much more active process than it is.
What is happening then when someone picks a partner, what is really going on socially emotionally? What is falling in love? What is that process?
All right, let's talk about that because there's a lot of do's get into that, there's a lot of I think there's a lot of confusion about that process, even though people experience it. If you believe, for example, what dating sites tell you or what matching sites tell you, and then then you'd think that finding a partner is about measuring somebody and measuring their sort of qualities and finding someone whose qualities compatible with your own qualities.
Okay, quick aside. I started wondering what, let's not say the weirdest or creepiest dating sites are, let's just say the most niche. I mean, sure, you've got your data golfer dot com. There's Glutenfree Singles dot com. But what if you only want to date someone with like a speak to the manager haircut up front, but a smoke and pony in the back. Well, you can head on over to Mulletpassions dot com. You can date a goth
at alt scene dot com. There's Naturist Passions. They might have your future significant other who is currently nude but wearing sandals. There's also a site for horse lovers looking for a stable relationship, as endorsed by Oprah herself. So I knew from the time, I had the idea it would put people together who love horses, and it's a perfect map.
Questionings dot com.
Cat enthusiasts can cuddle up via personals dot com. Can you even Maybe you're looking for love but everyone around you is dead because you're a professional in the death industry, Well, don't let your heart grow cold. Just go meet someone new at deadmeat dot com who is alive. Oh, if you're sick of clowning around on Tinder because there aren't enough clowns on it, you can flop those big old feet over to clown dating dot com, whose website makes
the resonant imperative quote everyone loves a clown. Let a clown love you. So go on, get your horn honked.
It turns out that a lot of those assumptions are just false. Oh no, because so For example, one of the assumptions of those algorithms is that similarity is a good thing and it's easily measured. In fact, if you think about it just a little bit, you realize that similarity doesn't help us very much because people are so complicated. I can always find ways that I'm similar to somebody if I like that person, and I can find ways I'm dissimilar to somebody if I don't like that person.
So we can find similarity where we want to find it. Essentially, similarities aren't what's at the heart of attraction and romance.
So what is. But the best research says that romantic, sort of initial romantic chemistry comes from an interaction between two people that involves responsiveness that makes both people feel sort of understood and heard and excited. Oh but it is a behavior, it's a dance. So it's not that there's a kind of person in the world that always makes you feel excited. But there might be a sequence
of behaviors that makes me feel good. And if you and I, or me and somebody, or you and somebody show up at the right context and have the right interaction, you might say, Hey, this is this interaction. It's making me feel interesting and excited and aroused. But if I had met you at a birthday party whereas kids were around, we wouldn't have had that interact and I wouldn't have had that feeling. Oh my god, you see the point.
Yes, so it's really about kind of like a feedback loop.
Oh yes, absolutely absolutely, and that that leads like the best dating advice nowadays, based on research, is don't worry about people's profiles. You know, find somebody that you think is cute enough, and go and interact with them as soon as possible, because the way you evaluate the way that people naturally evaluate romantic chemistry is through how an interaction makes them feel. We don't choose partners the way we choose furniture, okay, because furniture doesn't have to choose
us back, that's true what partners do. So it has to be an interaction, a give and take, and that's actually where romantic chemistry emerges from. I said something, I told, I disclosed something. Oh you know, I came from La. Oh you come from La. And your enthusiasm or your lack of enthusiasm makes me feel a certain way about
the fact I disclosed something. And maybe if you're enthusiastic in the right way, makes you feel good about the fact I shared something, it makes you want to share something else, or makes you want to And then if I go too long without asking you a question, you might say, huh, I was enthusiastic, but now I'm not so enthusiastic. But if I then ask you a question, and now you've shared something. Now suddenly we're building a little bit of the beginnings of intimacy because it feels
good to share, and now we're doing the dance. But it can break down so many different ways.
Well, is that what happens in marriages that are maybe starting to crumble is you're not getting the feedback loop that you expected to get. Maybe your partner seems disinterested or you're disinterested, so you're not giving back to them and they pick up on that. Is that kind of what happens.
Okay, so that's so that's a great question. So we're talking about, you know, how does romantic interest emerge? And your question is is it the same process in reverse as romantic interest declines.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to bomb you out. This just might be good to know for long term relationships. I'm sorry, I'm being a realist here.
My sense is there's a lot going on as romantic interest declines. And here's one of the things. One of the things is that the same behaviors that can be exciting when they're new are not necessarily exciting when they're old. Okay, first kiss doesn't feel the same as the five hundredth kiss. If you're lucky enough to get to the five hundred. Right, So, if what you're in it for is the sense of escalating excitement, escalating excitement is likely to fade. Now, what
happens in good marriages is two things. So let's talk first about not about merges, the climate mergeres last.
Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it. Okay, Yes, let's look at the positive. How do we keep things cute? One thing that happens is people, good couples, happy couples, find ways to the excitement alive. They keep growing together, they keep exploring both each other and the world together, and that keeps they're always wait a minute, even though we've been together fifteen years, even though we've been together fifty years, we just still did something yesterday we never
known before. So there's still something new. There's still something.
New that's that's possible. But that takes effort, and it takes it takes you know, effort and opportunity, right, and like not if you're working very, very hard, if you're struggling financially, you don't have time to say, hey, let's go do something we've never done before.
Right, let's go horseback roun.
Yeah, that's so that'd be so fun. And you know, rich people do that, right, But people who are struggling can't do that. They have to you know, it's just just getting by is hard. But that means that opportunities for novelty is hard. So another thing that that successful couples do in the long term is they find other bases for their bond.
The doc says that thinking someone is foxy is nice, but.
That's the only thing people want from their companions. I also want someone who's dependable. I want someone who's reliable, someone who understands me and will support me when I'm sick, when I'm really in trouble, when it's middle of the night and our kids are throwing up because there's sick. I want to know that you're going to be there
and can watch my back. So good marriages can both keep excitement alive that's totally possible, but also can find a broader base for why the relationship is around with the functions of relationship serves and is it.
Good for partners to sit down and make lists of those interests or check in.
It's great, but most people don't do that. Okay, most people don't do that for a couple of reasons, maybe a handful of reasons. One is, you know a lot of people think, oh, this is just should come naturally, we shouldn't have to talk about it, right, And I don't think that's true, but there it is in the culture that why should we have to talk about it?
A good relationship just happen as opposed to a good relationship, Like so, if you believe in soulmates, you're like, well, if we're soulmates, why should we have to discuss it? My soul should just recognize your soul. But if relationships are an action a process that you have to contribute to, then you know, if you're a whole you're a whole different person. I need to understand who you are and what and that's gonna take work. It's gonna ta communication.
Another reason people don't do it is it can be scary. I'm assuming that we agree about a lot of things. I don't necessarily want to know if we don't, right, because that would be a hard conversation. Why when is the right time to have a hard conversation?
Never?
Never, Like I'm not like, let's see, we could watch British Great British baking show tonight, or we're gonna have a really difficult possibly a difficult conversation. You know, I think Netflix is.
Better slight, soggy books from there.
There are so many people out there who think that you're just a witch who's read their read their minds.
Like, wait a minute, you watch the Grape Bridge. Of course, the third reason is that lots of people don't have the time. Like the truth is that life is very hard and challenging for many many people that it's a privilege to have the time to look at your partner and say, hey, let's talk for a while. You That happens when your life is under control. Many people have multiple jobs, bills to pay, sick family, all sorts of stress in their lives that they're barely staying on top of.
And now it's a lot to ask to say, Okay, by the way, put all that aside and have a heart to heart talk with your partner about their hopes and dreams. There's many people in the world who for whom that would be a luxury that they cannot afford.
So, as Teagan and Sarah have asked, where does the love go? Ben says that day by day, other things just take priority, like work and paying bills and taking care of the kids. And then at the bottom, at the dusty end of the to do list is connect on a meaning full level with your life partner.
So my memories of the excitement of the things that kept us together are fewer and farther between. I still remember them, but I'm like, wow, it's actually been a while since we've been intimate, since we've laughed or told a joke because life has been hard for us, or we've done other things. And then if that's true, if our connection is weaker, then when something's hard or we need disagree, and it's harder to have those disagreements, my empathy for you is weaker. If I'm stressed, I'm paying
more attention to my own needs. It's harder for me when i'm stressed to get out of my own head into your head. And all these factors combined, and so now we're busy, I'm less empathetic. I'm very aware of my own unmet needs. I can't read your mind, and I'm not trying to read your mind, so I don't know what your unmet needs are. It's easy to say if my own needs. But if my needs are unmet, whose fault is it? It's not my fault. I know I'm working hard. I don't know what's in your head,
but I can tell you're right here. It must be your fault. So now I'm mad at you. And now the next time we disagree, well, I get madder. And instead of each interaction building us up, making us more connected, each interaction breaks us down, makes us feel a little bit less connected. And unless we make explicit efforts to try to restore that connection, unless we're able to make those efforts again, the world has to be supporting us.
We might come to a point where you know, I don't feel what I felt, and I don't and you don't feel what you felt, and we don't feel like we can connect even if we wanted to, and so now we feel helpless. And then eventually the costs of staying in the relationship, the emotional costs outweigh the cost of leaving, And though for different people, that calculus is different.
Some people will stay in a bad relationship for a long time because they haven't no where to go, or because they have kids, or they have financial connections, or they feel like I'll never find another partner, so I'd better. I'd rather stay with this partner, even though I'm not very happy. It takes two people to get together, only takes one person to break up.
Oh that's true, And where is the line there? Because I think everyone probably thinks no relationship is perfect. True, So everyone probably thinks that about their own relationship.
Right, I would hope, So I think that is true. Actually, people, you can evaluate a relationship on two levels. And what we find is that people like newlyweds, if you ask them very specific questions about their partner, even newlyweds are willing to say, well, my partner's good at some things, not so good at others. Knowing somebody means knowing that person's strengths and their limitations.
Ah, that old adage, the advice handed down countless generations. To truly love someone is to know in what ways they are useless pains in the ass.
So most people will say, oh, yeah, yeah, ourlish isn't perfect, but it's a great relationship. I love the imperfections of this really relationship.
Like four and a half stars on YELP, maybe.
Exactly, or something like I wouldn't want you know, you know, very, very smart couple. My wife is a couple's therapists and.
She Oh my god, your wife is a couple's therapist and you're a marriage researcher.
No, we have some interesting conversations.
Oh my god, you guys are never getting divorced.
I hope that's true. I think that's true. I think that's true. I think that it's a great relationship. And you know, it took a long time for us to get to this point, but we have good conversations. And one of the things that that she says is, you know, when you commit long term to a partner, you're committing to a set of strengths and limitations. And so if we get back to the idea that the extend that you have a choice and that you make choices, one of the things to think about is can I live
with these limitations right forever? Don't forget You're here for another sort of insight. I think mostly from talking to my wife, not from research, which is I use okay. I used to think that the purpose of communicating in relationships was to solve problems, to solve disagreements. I now think that disagreements do not get solved. Oh they just get managed.
Okay, okay, but what in a scientific matrimoniological sense does that mean?
The purpose isn't that I'm never going to convince you or anyone else of anything. So once you decide okay, convincing another person is just off the table, then it's just a matter of saying, how will we deal with our disagreement? How will we manage Yes, we're going to always disagree about this, and how we're going to manage that. Maybe we'll take turns. Maybe we'll compromise on this issue in my way, but we'll compriise on in this other
issue in your way. We hope it balances out. But once you realize, I think it takes a lot of pressure off a relationships to say, oh, we are not in the convincing business. Oh that's we are not in the convincing business. We are not in the convincing business. We are not in the resolving problems business. Like, oh, this is gonna go away and they will never talk about this again. No, no, no, this is the thing we talk about. That's what kind of relationship this is. This
is the relationship where this is our issue. If I'd been another relationship, we'd have a different issue, but this is our issue. And as you think about the future, you think, can I live with this because we're gonna be talking about this forever or whatever? I love, I can this is a good relation, like this is. I'm very happy with this set of limitations and strength.
But I feel like a lot of people find that their marital discord is financially based, or at least that's what I hear from people. I'm not married. But do you find that in your research or do you find that the finances are really just kind of like a red herring for other lifestyle choices people make.
There's two ways to answer that. I do a lot of research on the effect of financial circumstances on marriage, and the effects are enormous, enormous. We live in a country where there's a great deal of income inequality that has been increasing over over my adult life lifetime. What we've shown in multiple studies is that where you are in the socio economic ladder greatly affects the nature of your intimacy.
What shit also no surprise.
Like, in very specific kind of private ways, the way people interact with their partners very privately is affected by where they are socioeconomically, so that you know, people who are affluent, who have good jobs and good educations, they can evaluate their relationships in a different way that people who are financially struggling and disadvantaged and under resourced can
evaluate their relationships in different ways. That doesn't mean that it's fundamental to specifically talk about finances, like how are we going to spend money, because even couples that are financially struggling, if you're financially struggling, every disagreement is more of a struggle. And if you're affluent, you might talk about finances, but you might also disagree about. Whatever you disagree about is going to be what you disagree about it. I would say that the context of having or not
having adequate resources in your life is fundamental. It changes the kind of time you have together, It changes what you do with the time you have together, and it changes the sort of personal resources you have to do the work of empathy and the work of understanding and compromise everything, all the work that we would call intimate work, trying to get outside your own head and catch capture partner's perspective, deciding when to compromise and when not to compromise.
All that work is harder if you're financially stripped, which is why divorce rates are much higher in low income communities than an upper income community.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Oh, it's a huge effect.
So one of Ben's studies, titled communication that is maladaptive for middle class couples is adaptive for socioeconomically disadvantaged couples showed that depending on where you are socioeconomically, different intimate behaviors produced negative or positive results. So middle class couples who withdrew in conflict had worse conflicts later, while socioeconomically disadvantaged couples who withdrew found more comfort in that as
like a de escalation technique. Now, as for divorce stats, they are definitely higher in lower income families, and some folks would try to say that must be because those demographics don't value marriage as much, and that is a crock of horseshit. So low income and high income people value marriage similarly. But being broke and working several jobs and being stressed and not being privileged is just really hard on people.
So what's striking is that poor communities have lower rates of marriage when they do married, they're higher rates of divorce. So intimacy is challenged by challenging circumstances, right, and intimacy is encouraged by good circumstances, which is why people fall in love on cruise ships because it's easy to have a relationship on a cruise ship. It's much easier to feel romantic when someone's giving you a cocktail that has an umbrella in it.
Well, what about the fact that, or at least the study I read that the more expensive a wedding is, the more likely a couple is to get a divorce. Yeah, is that filim flam so side note. This news broke in twenty fourteen with a published paper entitled quote A Diamond Is Forever and Other fairy Tales the relationship between
wedding expenses and marriage duration. So researchers studied three thousand couples in the US and they found that marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and the wedding ceremony. So spending between two and four grand on the engagement ring is associated with one point three times greater hazard of divorce. Same goes for the ceremony.
Weddings that costs less than one thousand dollars were significantly less likely to end in divorce than nuptials costing twenty grand and up now twenty thousand dollars. Remember from the paleontology episode could fund two dinosaur diggs. I'm just saying this two dinosaurs. Now, don't tell this to a guy named said gustarev, son of a Russian oligarch who married his twenty year old sweetheart Hadya Zakhova in a celebration that cost one billion, yes with a B dollars in
twenty sixteen. So instead of having like your college roommate make a Spotify playlist, their reception entertainment included Jennifer Lopez and Sting, which was definitely selected by their parents. I mean, come on. Also Enrique Iglesias, who, according to simplerry Instagram photos, was wearing jeans and a wallet chain to a billion
dollar wedding. Enrique egregious also ps I googled how to even get married for under one thousand dollars though, and mostly just came up with articles that said literally like take the bus to the courthouse, dummy, or a lopen secret like a celebrity for whom money is no object, or get married in the backyard and have your cousins bring a salad. So it's starting things off without a lot of money, stress and debt a good strategy for staying married.
It doesn't feel fundamental to me. I haven't gone over those data, but it's unlikely whatever's going on there. It's not about spending money on a wedding. It's about other things, right, So you know, maybe if you have a lot of money spent in a wedding, then you also have a lot of financial independence. And people who have financially independent are able to leave their marriages when they got should
they go back? Nobody's arguing that, uh oh, don't spend a lot of money on your wedding because that's going to break up your marriage.
That's unlikely, and our marriage rates going up? Are divorce rates going up? What's happening now in the year that we're in twenty.
Nineteen and the year that we're in twenty nineteen. Here's the trend. The trends are very different for college educated and non college educated people. So if you look at the national trend, it would be misleading because there's two totally different trends. Happening. College educated people are marrying at high rates. They're delaying marriage, so they're marrying later. And that has to do with people postponing child bearing and family formation in order to get their education and their
careers on track. And the evidence of this is pretty clear. So still high rates of marriage, relatively low rates of divorce, even declining rates of divorce, but it's all happening later. So people who went to college or saying, hey, I have men and women are doing this. I have a good education. That means I can setup myself up for a good career. I know that if I can get that career up and running, it's going to have benefits for my family. So I'm going to get that career
up and running. And then once I have enough money and I have you know, my career is where I want it to be, then it's time to settle down. That's what the college educated people are doing. Non college educated people are doing something totally different. They're less likely to marry at all. They when they do marry, they marry earlier. Oh, they have kids prior to marriage and high rates, and they have very high rates of divorce and repartnering and sort of what's called sort of marital churning,
which is multiple partners, multiple long term partners. A totally different thing is happening there, and why because people who didn't go to college they have less reason to invest in education and employment because their opportunities are much more constrained. So like, well, why should I postpone fertility? What am I waiting for?
Am I?
Why should I postpone fair parenthood? So they're much more likely to have kids early. But having kids early and marrying early is associated with higher rates of divorce.
Oh yeah, know that, and getting married early and having kids early, I didn't know that.
It's true. It's very strong, very these are sort of big effects. It's not psychological effects, sociological that people who marry younger. As you can imagine, if you marry in your very early twenties, I mean I was a puppy, when I was.
A garbage fire, I whatever. People are still figuring things out. So if you get married at that age, there's still a lot of change happening that might that your relationship might not survive.
People who marry later are more stable, their personalities are more stable, their careers are more stable. So the person that they meet at that later point, is the relationships are less likely be buffeted by significant change.
And now, what about the difference between getting married versus just long term partnership. What happens in the brain Once there's a certificate in a ring and pictures and a photo album and a registry. What happens to people's relationships?
Okay, so I think that there's a lot of continuity. So I personally, again, as I said from the very beginning, I care about intimacy, and I think that people can have intimacy that feels the same. And if we define it as I'm committed to somebody, I support that person, I care about that person, and that can happen inside or outside of marriage. So what does marriage do? What does a marriage do to change intimacy? Mostly it changes how you as a couple are treated by the world around you.
This revelation is something that even the most well meaning hetero couples likely take for granted all the time, just how important outside support is. And it applies to married and non married couples as well.
So if you present as we're partnered, but we're not married, then the world says, oh well, then you're not participating in an institution, and it's hard for us to know what to do with you at the hospital when you're visiting your sick partner. Legally, what is your responsibility the world that is structured in a way that privileges marriages and people know this. Also, it's harder to break up a marriage than to break up intimate partnership.
Ah.
Yeah, you can walk away from intimate partnership, but a marriage you've got to fill out paperwork. And yeah, it's an extremely expensive and unplaced process. Yeah, from every perspective, it sucks afforded if you can. So what does it do to get married, Well, one thing it does is it says it's claires to the world. We want to be treated as a couple, as a legal unit, as a social unit. Also, from the couple's perspective, if I get married, I'm saying I want it to be harder
to leave. Yeah, I want it to be harder to leave, which says something about your level of commitment, like, I'm more motivated to work through it because uh, divorce sucks exactly, Whereas my motive to work through the hard parts that come up in relationships might be a little weaker, not necessarily, but but it might be a little weaker on average for people who are not participating in the legal institution.
So the process of what does it mean to connect to somebody, to understand somebody, that's the same between any in any intimacy, but the institutional context makes a difference, makes certain behaviors harder and certain behaviors easier.
And how have you seen in your research, because you've been researching this for twenty years, but same sex marriage hasn't been legal the entire time, So in the LGBTQ community, how how have you seen changes sociologically?
Well, I wish I knew more about that. When I started studying intimacy and marriage, same sex marriage was not legal anywhere in the United States, which is that crazy? Which is crazy, But that all happened in my lifetime,
which is terrific and a welcome development. One of the interesting things about the rapid change and rapid acceptance legal acceptance of same sex marriage is that lots of couples, same sex couples who were together for a long time, who never had the option of getting married, suddenly had the option of getting married. And so there was an interesting process which is if we've already been together twenty years. I knew I was going to be with you forever,
but I didn't marriage wasn't on the table. Now that marriage is on the table, do we do it or do we not do it? And there's a study that is left to be done. There's a study that needs to be done there about how that decision is made. Yeah, I haven't gathered that data.
Ben does say that other countries have gathered data on this, and overall, same sex marriages are much less likely to end in divorce than opposite sex marriages, and in Belgium between two thousand and four and two thousand and nine, the average annual divorce rate for same sex marriages was less than two percent and the total rate of divorce
was eleven percent. Now, in Norway and Sweden, the same sex marriage divorce rates are fifty percent lower than opposite sex marriages, but among those lesbian couples do divorce more than same sex marriage among men. Researchers find that women across all types of marriages tend to be the ones to initiate splits because their needs typically aren't being met.
So in the US, over two thirds of all divorces in all couples are initiated by wives because I think women are more socialized to pay attention to their relationships and are more financially dependent on a partnership, so being
in a bad marriage has greater emotional consequences for women essentially. Also, if you're wondering where the data is, the twenty twenty senses will a long last have a space for same sex couples to mark for marriages, which is a tiny victory, especially in light of the current US administration trying to add in a question about citizenship while leaving out questions about sexual orientation and gender identity, which leaves a lot
of LGPTQ people, especially the unmarried folks, unrepresented and underfunded, essentially invisible, which sucks and needs fighting. Speaking of fighting, but in a less valiant sense, I also asked him about what happens when couples, any couples get back together and break up and back and forth, back and forth, kind of like a Richard Burton Elizabeth Taylor married and
divorced situation. Elon Musk married actress Tallulailey twice, divorced her twice. Also, so as a person who has gotten back together with my exes. I asked him for selfish reasons. Ben said that beyond the obvious reasons of absence making the heart grow fonder and forgetting how boring or annoying someone is when they're not around to bore or annoy you, there are some other factors at play when you break up and get back together with someone.
Another explanation is there's certain people who between themselves are managing are struggling to balance closeness versus independence. So they're people who struggle. There's another theory called attachment theory, the idea that different people have different comfort levels with closeness and independence. Some people want really a lot of closeness.
Some people really aren't comfortable with being too close and too dependent on another person, really value their independence, and so there are some people who, in their struggle to balance that, find themselves drawn to a person, but they don't want to be too close, so they push away, but they don't want to be totally close. They come back together, and those people often dance around each other for a long time trying to form that balance.
How important is human and laughter in easing conflict, in establishing those bonds and that feedback.
It's really important. Actually, we've done some of our research has touched on that. And what we did was in one of our studies is videotape newlyweds talking about problems, and you can call these tapes. You can watch the tapes and actually count how many positive behaviors and how many negative behaviors, And you can even say how many positives or verbal behaviors and how and you can also
code the sort of nonverbal behaviors the emotional expressions. But generally people who exchange negative behaviors anger, blaming, in celts, well, that's going to be a bad thing. But what we found was that if those negative behaviors happened in the same interaction where people are being positive as well, and most of the positivity we see as humor and affection, then it didn't matter what kind of the negative behaviors had much less of an effect. So and why here's why.
If we're disagreeing and I'm mad at you, I'm super mad, but at the same time that we're having this mad disagreement, I'm definitely angry. I can also throw in a little joke or a little affection. What's the message? The message is the fact that we're mad doesn't mean I don't
still like you. Oh, But that's the point, is that that's an incredible important message, which is you've hurt me, you've disappointed me, but I still obviously we're still connected and I'm and the positivity is a reminder of that connection. So I think humor can serve an incredibly important function.
And you know, positivity can be especially important if you convenge to find it where it's most needed, which is in the context of a disagreement, being able to say, yes, we're disagreeing and I don't want to let this go, but I'm keeping in perspective like, but still, I think you're cute, and I think that this is fine, and I you know, obviously we're gonna be dealing with this forever because I'm not going anywhere. Yeah, that can be a very powerful message, is a way of reassuring your partner,
even in the midst of the hard part. So again, I think it's complicated, but that humor is potentially an incredibly powerful tool, along with affection, that can help people through the rockiest parts of relationships.
I bet my parents have been married for forty nine and a half years.
That's incredible, I know.
And they're still there. I hear them yucking it up, laughing to themselves, joking with each other.
That's amazing, I know.
And I'm like, and they'll go to bed and then I'll hear just giggling, laughing about what. You know.
The other thing is think about what a joke. A joke is something that surprises you, like a good joke is something that is novelty. So what they're doing is they're surprising each other, right, They're still telling you that, like if I can make each other laugh, they're saying, oh, it tickles me because you're telling me something I didn't know. So they're still finding new things. And a half years later, I know. That's amazing. They're amazing. I know, bottle it up, sell it.
I know.
Well, the reason why they got married is my mom just thought my dad was hot and then it turned out they were both good people.
Okay, so they're lucky too.
I know, they got engaged after a month.
What am I.
Supposed to do with that?
It's well, be lucky, I mean, and try to be lucky. And of course you can't try to be lucky, so you do what you can.
Just appreciate when you are. I guess, but I.
Think the story you know. So if you ask you, there's a lots of research asking long term married couples what's the secret to your success? And I think you know, people will say long term couples will say sense of humor. We worked really hard at it. We just decided we're going to be together, and we were committed and we would never let anything break us up. And that's all true. It's all good, but it's hard to recognize, is how
lucky the long term couples are. I really try to not say, well, it's just it's all hard work, because the implication then is and if your relationship went bad, you didn't work hard enough. Yeah, or maybe you're just too stupid. You just didn't know how to have a better relationship. Believe me, if if it's all about knowing what to do, relationship scientists would all have perfect relationships, right,
And I know a lot of relationship scientists. My best friends are relationship scientists, and we don't always have perfect relationships because it's not only about knowing so i'd be able to it's not enough to read the book. And so it says here I should tell a joke. It's about being able to actually find that joke in the moment, about having problems that are that you can joke about, and everyone's lucky.
Can I ask you questions from listeners? Okay, oh my gosh, Okay, I'm gonna run through is it because I know that you're busy.
Go for it. Lightning round?
Okay, lightning round you ready?
Yeah?
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to a cause of the ologists choosing. And I'm going to tell you about this week's in the show outro so you have more context after the interview because it doesn't matter this week, So I encourage you to listen to the whole episode, including the outro. It's really important stuff. Okay.
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Now onto your matrimoniological questions. These are from patrons. Okay, Oh, so many great questions, and I done some of them. Okay. Savannah Martin Collins and Sonya Karpolovic and some other people wanted to know what's up with common law marriages? Do you see any differences between people who are common law and people who aren't.
Not a lot of great research on that, okay, But let's speculate for a second. What is a common law marriage? It's a marriage that is recognized as a legal partnership even though they've not because of the length of time people have been together. Not every state recognizes common law marriages. I think California, where we're currently having this conversation, doesn't, but I could be wrong about that. I could be wrong about that.
Now, according to legal Zoom, who I imagine is just helping folks navigate through Splitsville, most states do not recognize
common law marriages. This was news to me. So the states that right now do recognize common law marriages include, and I encourage you to do just a tiny imperceptible butt dance if you feel excited to hear your state called ready, Alabama, Colorado, District of Columbia, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah buzzkill. Same sex relationships are never recognized as
common law. Also, there's no such thing as a common law divorce, so you need not below in the public square. Thou hast been ousted from my heart. The law doesn't care. Just pack up and go, Just divvy up. The blu rays crying to some nachos, spend what you would have spent on legal fees on a solo trip to cantcuon don't get beach braids.
We were talking about this essentially, is that the intimacy is the same two people who've never had a wedding ceremony but decided, uh, you're my person and I'm just not going anywhere. The challenges of how we're going to understand each other, how were we going to address our disagreements,
how we're going to compromise the same. Intimacy is the same, but the world the support you get is probably less because if you're not wearing a ring, if you don't if you haven't been saying to the world my wife, my husband, then the world doesn't treat you as a social unit or legal unit, which means you don't have
that kind of support. So that's going to be I think a challenge for the challenges come from outside, and that might and they might be more challenging for common law marriages than for legal and I don't know what the alternative phrase is. Again, the challenges of intimacy are the same, but you're in a slightly different circumstance because people don't recognize the institution you're participating in.
That makes sense. And on the topic of intimacy, many people have this question. Carla Kennedy Wendy Fick said, any hell full tips for salvaging sexual intimacy if one partner isn't interested anymore. Wendy asked what typically happens to the physical part of a relationship? Do some relationships become platonic?
Well, clearly some do, because the answer to the question does this ever happen is always yes, yes, but and if two people are okay with that, then no problem. But if two people aren't okay with that, then a big problem.
So then.
The first step, it seems to me, is to figure out is to communicate, you know, is to talk. There's a lot of research that shows that sexual connection is a subset of emotional connection, and so developing an emotional connection is one really important way to develop us to revive a sexual connection, to say, hey, what's going on? Are we emotionally connected? There's research that shows that you knoweople who can people communicate more effectively have more sex.
So if one partner is unsatisfied with the amount of sex that they're having or the quality of their sex life. Communication is going to be the first step. The other thing that comes up with sexual connection is the role of novelty and self and expansion. There's a theorist, a guy named Arthur Aaron, social psychologist, who has a theory called self expansion theory. Okay, self expansion theory is the idea that the thrill of relationships comes from the thrill
of becoming more than we are. That that's a fundamental motivation, says doctor Aaron. And when I get to know somebody else and we become a unit, well I used to be me, Now I'm us. So now I'm much I'm more than I was, and that's thrilling. But once I become us, if we don't continue to grow, well then we're not expanding anymore. I've expanded to I'm definitely part of us, but we're just who we've always been and
that can get boring. So the way to deal with that is what can we how can we become more? What can we do that's new, what can we do that's different? And that often is a place where sexual excitement comes from too, Like, wow, I see you in a new light because we've done something new. That we haven't done before, even if it's not something necessarily something sexual that we've that we haven't done before. So I've seening opportunities for growth, seeing opportunities for connection. That's a
good way talking directly. The other thing that often gets in the way of sex is people are tired, people are stressed. And if I say, hey, how come we're not having enough sex and I'm not acknowledging what the obstacles that are that are getting in the way for you, well, and that's not going to be a great route because now I'm making another demand. It's actually now another demand. So sometimes you have to take a step back and say, hey, what's going on with my partner? And sometimes sex is,
you know, really a side issue to other issues. People are unhappy or tired or overburdened, and those are the obstacles that have to be addressed first before we can deal.
With sex, which dovetails to a great question from Jessica Chamberlain, Kirsty Chippindale, Elizabeth Goyne, and Lauren Kelly. What role do you find children are the lack they're all playing in marriage. Do you find them more rewarding with or without children? And then other people are like, what do you do when your kids are draining you of your energy?
Right, Well, the transition to parenthood is one of the most profound changes that a person can experience, let alone a marriage. So it is it is a profound change. So there's research on the effect of transition to parenthood
on relationships. One of the one of the findings of that research is that the early years of having kids that are very challenging because kids are very demanding, and that most relationships bounce back after a while once and return to where they were prior to their transition to parent. An implication of that is that having a strong solid connection prior to becoming parents is a great thing. Like that becomes a really important resource because even though you're like, well,
this is a difficult period. We're up all night, our kids are not sleeping, we have a lot of demands. I'm with one kid, you're with the other kid. But we're connected. I know that this is relatively temporary. The other thing that's true nowadays is the expectations for parents, especially college educated parents, are higher now than they were you know a generation or two ago. That parents expect to spend more time with their kids and do more with their kids, and that means there's less time for
the adult relationship. There's less time for the parental relationship. They're only twenty four hours in a day, so something has to give. So the question is, can is making a balance between Let's say you're a great parent. You want to be a great parent. You want to say, hey, I want to give my kids as many hours as I can, but I also want to give my kids access to a great adult relationship between me and my
other caregiver. So that might mean investing in the relationship and putting my kids somewhere, you know, with the grandparent if you're lucky enough to have a grandparent that you trust, or another kind of caregiver, if you're lucky enough to have one, let him go run in a field or let them go run in the street, exactly right, So I mean this is the thing. Of course, we don't let kids run in the street anymore.
So I grew up.
It's how I grew up, you know, And yet that's not considered a lot of things that I did as kid would be considered child abuse now, and oh yeah, neglect.
We just ran into a field and it scraped our knees on barberre offences.
Nobody knew where we were exactly and now, so this is the challenge. It really is a challenge. And so modern parents, especially college educated parents, really do struggle. Have to struggle with how am I going to invest each hour? And the investment in the relationship is still vital and it takes investment. You have to find time to maintain that connection so that you will have that connection to show your kids and to make you better parents for your kids.
Right because it's going to be harder if they're parents. It's going to be harder for them to model a good relationship if they didn't see one exactly.
So people think, oh, well, it's now all about the kids, and I owe that to my kids. You also owe to your kids having a good relationship.
That's good advice, that's great advice.
I tried not to be in the advice business, but I think that's consistent with research.
I got a few questions about proposing. Tina Raudio wants to know why won't my partner of four years propose? And then Kelly Brockington asked, why doesn't Tina propose? And so what Madeline Rogers says, this isn't a question, but it would be pretty great if someone proposed to the certificant other in a patrion question for this episode, also, someone wrote in saying that she is proposing to her partner today. Congratulations, I know that's exciting.
I know.
So Lexi Ganie is getting proposed to by Chalise today. Good job Lexi and Chalise. That's wonderful. Ps I called that listener Schalise after we recorded this. Lexi said, yes, they sound amazing and adorable. Yay, okay, But in proposing, how does a partner, especially in a patriarchal society, who maybe is a woman or is waiting to get proposed, like, how do we decide who decides it's time to ask?
Yeah? Uh, not a lot of good research on this. Yeah, most of most of my research always to place with couples that have that are married. Yea, even if they're most of them a lot of more workers on newlyweds they were recently married. So we asked them though, how did you propose?
You know?
And the couples that we talked to say this, they say, oh, we knew we were going to get married, and the proposal was essentially, you know, theater, like the proposal was a ritual that we liked, but it wasn't fundamental to the relationship, or rather, it was a symptom of the relationship. We have a relationship where he does romantic things to me all the time or she does romantic things, and the proposal was another romantic thing, but it wasn't the
romantic thing. So I think we've built up proposals in the same way we've built up weddings and proms and a lot of sort of rituals as if, oh, it's that's got to be special, and there's nothing wrong with it being special. But a relationship is not about one day, no matter how special it is. It's not about what happened on your marriage on your wedding day, it's not
about even what happened on your proposal day. You know, it can go great or it can go poorly, but what keeps a relationship alive is the day to day process of connection, of managing difference. And so I don't think that it I fundamentally don't think it matters that much. It's nice, it's wonderful, and if you celebrate Valentine's a
and it's nice and wonderful, that's great. And if you celebrate Valentine's a and it doesn't work and it rains, that's also okay, because that's not where the relationship rises and falls. Relationship riz and falls on what happens each day. Now, that doesn't address the question of why people propose or not propose, or what happens when one partner says I want a proposal and the other partner says I'm not ready.
And that's an old story, and that's a story about different people being at different places in terms of escalating commitment and different levels of comfort with participating in the institution of marriage. So it's a complicated institution. It's been many times a very very patriarchal institution. And different people are like, you know, how are we going to define it? What's it going to mean? Is our relationship going to change?
These are hard conversations to have. It's often the case that one person's ready and the other person isn't ready, and that's a difference that has to be managed like any other difference. And some people will say I can't handle this difference and I'm going to leave. I don't want this, this is difference is too much for me, And other people are going to say I can handle this difference, but I do think and this is now me speaking not as a scientist, but as a person
who thinks a lot about relationships. We can't be in the convincing business with our partners. And if you need to convince your partner about committing to the relationship, that's probably not a game you want to be in, right, Okay, So two side notes. I will say that New Years seems to be a time when the old Instagram just fills up with a bunch of marriage proposal pictures. And I was so tickled this year to see two of my dude friends propose to by their ladies and they
both said yes, and it was so cute. And I asked Ben if he had heard any crazy engagement stories at the Usale Marriage Lab, because you figure tons of them, and he said, because of scientific confidentiality, he couldn't tell me. So I asked the Internet and found stories online of folks who proposed these ways you ready, okay, asking forty eight friends to dress up in carrot costumes and chant marry him.
In Unison. There was a zero gravity proposal on a vomit comet plane, so hopefully no onlookers were just kind of barfed from the sentimentality of it. The professional stunt person lit himself on fire, safely but still. And then the worst proposals, the ones I couldn't ever even dream up, involved oh my god, partners faking their own deaths and then having their beloveds called to the scene of this fake motorcycle or pedestrian crash and then springing up live
with a ring on one knee. And yes, more than one asshole on planet Earth thought this was charming and cute to make his future spouse grieve above his fake blood smeared body before then just asking for her hand. And they go from like crying to awkwardly really angry to crying again. It's just too much of a whirlwind. It's too much for the human nervous system. But that being said, I do cry at every wedding I attend all of them. Do you cry at weddings?
I uh cried at my wedding.
You did, sure, that's a good time, right.
I did. I was crying with joy and gratitude and just an emotion because I was very, very grateful and I'm grateful today. I'm very very I feel very, very lucky that I found someone who I think is an incredible person, and I'm grateful every day.
How did you propose?
I proposed. I proposed privately in our house. No jump, there was no JumboTron, there was no flash mob. I had given the matter a great deal of thought. I felt, like, you know, as a scholar of marriage, I had to, you know, make a good case because we were already together, we were already having a good relationship, and I had to say I now have to. I don't want to. I'm not trying to convince you, because I'm not in
the convincing business. But here's why I think we should do this, and why I'm dying to do it, and i want to do it so bad.
I'm a fury. First time question asker, what do you think the essential things a couple must know about each other before getting married?
I think that, uh, at first, you know more, more is better. It's good to know about your partner, okay, but the most important thing you need to know about your partner is how you and your partner interact together. And I would actually say that the most important thing is how you manage difference. It's easy to get along on the things you care about the same it's easy to get along a cruise ship with a cocktail, right,
as we've already covered. So in terms of the future of the relationship, what you want to know is how do we disagree? Are you able to compromise? What you want to know what your partner is is your partner capable of empathy? That's what you want to know. The most important thing. In other words, the most important thing you know about your partner is how your partner engages in the process of intimacy with you. It's not about your partner's sexual history. It's not about your partner's score
on a personality scale. It's not about whether your partner likes Chinese food or opera or ballgames. None of that is the most important thing. The answer your question, Emma is what you want to know about your partner is how does your partner do intimacy? And the fundamental part where intimacy is tested is in difference, and you will be tested because you are different from your partner. Everyone's different from everyone. So how does your partner manage difference
with you? And how do you feel in those moments that's the most important thing you can know.
Empathy is that's such a good point. I mean, that's such a good that's such a fundamental thing. Liz Tong also first time question asker, why does everyone say the first year of marriage is the hardest and do you find that that's true in studying newlywed development.
Yes, it is hard. Well, yeah, it's hard because circumstances tend to be hard. So the transition into marriage involves challenges that once they're overcomes, sort of fade away. So one of those challenges a lot of times it involves some kind of move Moving is always stressful. A lot of people get married, like, oh, we both got jobs in the same city, so we're going to get married, and we're going to move in the same place. We're both graduating from college or grad school, and so we're
getting married and moving in the same place. So that first year is you're not just getting married. Not only are you planning a wedding, often planning a wedding, but you're you've got other transitions. So the first year often has other transitions in it that make it challenging. Oh that's one. Number two, when people get married. There are not just merging two people, they're merging two big social networks and especially their families.
Oh yeah, you haven't talked about in laws, but in laws are a big issue.
So a lot of times when people get married, that first year is where you suddenly think, oh, wait a minute, where are we going to spend Thanksgiving, where we're going to spend Christmas? Whose family? And that. So there's things to negotiate in that first year that some couples have never negotiated. When couples get married, they often will to some degree merge finances, and so now they've got to have conversations about finances that perhaps they didn't have before.
So there's all sorts of new issues raised by getting married that have to be addressed for the first time during the first year. And that's what makes the first year challenging. What we see is newly woods tend to be very happy and then they you know, it tends
to decline. It doesn't necessarily become unhappy, but it declines from its peak, and the biggest declines are early on and then couples sort of find their level, and many couples still find a very high level, but you're it's great that newly whether as happy as they are, because that happiness helps them through those inevitable challenges of that first year of transition.
And then if you are maybe in a little bit of a slump, say you've been married for a while, try to find new experiences together.
New ways of connecting, yes, new ways to discover your partner and to discover the capabilities of yourself as a couple. Now, again, that's kind of a bourgeois piece of advice because it implies all sorts of flexibility that many people do not have, and which is why it's you know, for any people, marriage is hard and it's hard to stay just to
keep it fresh and exciting. But if you have, if you are privileged, and you have the capability, remembering to invest in your marriage, remembering to nurture that connection is a very important thing.
And how do you feel about movie tropes where at the end there's a marriage or are there any movies about marriage that you think are really valuable for people to watch. Oh so, there was a study conducted by some friends of Ben at the University of Rochester and Ron Rogi was the lead author on the study, which had one hundred and seventy four couples watch romantic movies and then talk about them after. This sounds like a genius, cunning plan, right.
The interesting thing about that study is that what they did was they tested three different kinds of matal interventions. One that focused on conflict resolution skills, one that focused on social support skills like how do you support each other? And the third one was just a trivial intervention that they made up. And they said, you know what for the third one, just as a comparison group, we'll just
make up the stupidest intervention we can. Oh my god, this and what we'll do is we'll just say, oh, just watch there's a list of romance romance movies. Just watch them and talk about them, and then we don't can give you any other advice. Whereas the other two interventions that gave people a lot of advice, here's how to deal with the conflict, here's how to deal with so support, hours and hours of advice. The third one was this silly one, and it worked just as well
as the other one. The result, the divorce rate for those couples was cut in half. So I don't know, watch movies and just talk about them.
You love parts. Now, are there any romance movies that he likes?
Well, there is a movie. There is a movie called The Five Year Engagement, Okay, with Emily Blunt, and I forgot Jason Siegel, and the director of that movie as he was making it, came to our lab and hung out and you know, we got to We talked to him in a little bit and he got to see and so in the in the movie, the Emily Blunt character is a social psychologist, and so she has a lab. She goes to her labbing. She's a grad student social psychology. She goes to labing, and he wanted to see what
elateral labining was like. So we sat in So I like that film. It's pretty fun.
Oh that's good to know. I've never had anologist who's had a personal connection like that.
Well, it's fun to be in la. Yeah, because when people, when Hollywood wants relationship scientists to say occasional, give us a call because we're local, not because we're the greatest, because we're lucky enough. This is another example of luck.
Now, what do you hate the most about partnership, about your work about marriage? What is the shittiest thing about the institution of partnership or studying it.
The shittiest thing about marriage or about studying marriage. I mean, it's a tough question. Generally speaking, I am pro marriage when it's good. The shittiest thing about marriage is that it occasionally traps people in bad relationships. And that's super shitty. Yeah, Like, the worst thing about the institution is that it can
be a trap. There are privileges that we associate with marriage because we privilege marriage over other relationships legally, and the lots of evidence that that's true, but it means that there are people. And the shittest thing about marriage is that for a lot of its history it's been a pretty oppressive institution for women, and in lots of parts of the world it still is, where women are
treated as property of their husbands. The fact that for so long, you know, the men who were married to their wives had a right to sexually molest their wives, the end abuse their wives. The fact that still to this day, you know, a ton of abuse happens in secret in marriage. So I mean, seriously, the shittiest thing is that marriage are incredibly bad, are fatal, and especially to women.
Obviously, marriage is different in so many parts of the world, and because Ben's studies essentially westernized thoughts on marriage and intimacy,
we focused on that. But still in so many countries, marriage law contradicts basic international human rights laws, with wives needing permission from husbands to work a job or sign legal documents, and even the nineteen seventies in France and Spain and America, husbands had to give permission for things like applying for credit cards or a business loan, or just a woman's right to leave the house alone. This acide gets even harder to hear, so a little warning
for the next minute or so. In the eighteen hundreds here in the US, husbands were entitled to domestic discipline of their wives, and judges were fine with it, just as long as the whip or stick they used to beat their wives was no wider than a judge's them. This was called the rule of them. Now, in some countries it's still legal and acceptable for a husband to
use violence to discipline 's partner. A UNICEF studies showed that large percentages of women in Afghanistan and Jordan Maali laos have been socialized to agree that a husband is justified in beating his wife if she argues or goes out without asking him. And of course there are practices like child marriages and other brutality, women and girls forced
to marry their sexual abusers to save their reputations. So while one person's associations of marriage might be just pinterest wedding boards of rustic mason jar cocktails, another's association could be financial tension, or deep commitments to not only a partner but to a shared religion, or the celebration of having their love finally legally recognized, or trying to change the expectations of both partners to a union that's more balanced and safe and continues.
I'd like to believe that as a society we are moving away from that, maybe not quickly enough, but still substantially, so that more and more people believe that marriage should be an institution where of equality, where both partners are treated as independent human beings who are choosing to connect to each other, but neither one is property of the other. And I do think that that many people would describe their marriage as that way and try to live that way.
It's not true for everyone, and that is a bad thing as far as the worst things about studying marriage. That'd be much harder because it's a privilege to study marriage. I am super lucky. I mean this on the theme of this conversation is that I just feel fortunate that, like the luckiest guy in the world, that I get to do this, that I get to think about and talk to people like you about something that I care about, and then everybody cares about. You know, I don't have
to convince anybody. What do you studying marriage? Oh that doesn't matter. Why would you do that? No, everyone cares. People really care about marriage. You know, I'm not studying you know, some weird thing I have to even define. You know, it exists. Everyone knows that relationships matter. Everyone's thinking about them, They're surrounded by them. And I get to do that for a living. That's only good.
You get to study other people's distractions. Yes, it's your distraction. Other people's distractions are your focus.
It's true. Well again, I don't think that relationships are a distraction people. I think that's where most people live and work is a distraction. Oh right, areat many people? Their work is a distraction. What they care about is their family. They care about their love, they care about the connection. I want to get back to the couch where I can cuddle with the person that I'm closest to, and work is you know, a means to that end.
We just exposed a fundamental flaw in my whole parents.
Oh wait, I thought a relationship a distraction. I don't think they are. There's many there's life is complicated and people can care about their I also love my job. I do. I love my job, but I I but I wouldn't pick it over in my relationship.
Please picture me right now with those black and white hypnosis spirals for eyes, just falling down a thought chasm, reflecting on my life. Okay, let's move on, and what is your favorite thing about relationships? Your work, marriage? Best thing?
The best thing about the best of about my job is that I get to ask the questions that occur to me, and somehow I have the freedom and flexibility to pursue them in any way that I want. It's again, an incredible privilege that I feel grateful for every day. The best thing about intimacy is that it solves sort of an ex essential problem, which is that each of
us are alone. That the truth is, I can't escape my own skin that fundamentally there's a separation between me and the rest of the world that ends my epidermis. But intimacy is a way of emotionally bridging the gap, of connecting being not just in my own head, but somehow connecting through our skin to somebody else and even across space with somebody else. And that's a miracle, And it's kind of a miracle that exists, but that we've
evolved to have that happen. That right now there's people in the world that I'm connected to that I can feel, I mean, not in a supernatural way, but that they matter to me right now, even as I'm sitting in a room far away from them. And that's an incredible metaphysical miracle.
It's a little magic.
It's a little bit magical. And I believe that it's that a lot of the natural and material world is magical, not because it's supernatural, but because the natural world is pretty amazing.
And where can people find you? Where can they read your words and see your studies?
They can find me at UCLA. They can google my name Benjamin Carney with a K k ar n e y. Our lab is the UCLA Marriage Lab, And that's also googleable, and we have a website where a lot of our work is published.
Cool and oh, for every episode I donate to a particular charity or nonprofit that's related to your field.
I would be delighted. I would be delighted to do that. And there are you know a lot of charities that I think help, you know, victims of abuse escape bad relationships, and I think that they'd be I would love to be able to support them.
Okay, great, well, good, oh well, thank you so much.
For doing this a pleasure.
Ally, Oh I love this so once again doctor Ben Carney of the UCLA Marriage Lab. He's the co author of Intimate Relationships and all around fascinating cool dude, So do google his work. You can look in the show notes and I've put links to find him. Also, more links about things we've discussed are up at aliward dot com slash ologies Now. This week, per his directive, a portion of ad proceeds was donated to care dot org to support their work to end gender based violence, which
affects at least one in three women worldwide. So care dot org says that ending poverty requires addressing the power inequalities between women and men. Girls and boys that underpin gender based violence, and Caro dot org supports the empowerment of poor women and girls in their challenges to enjoy happy and healthy lives and to change the contexts in which they live, learn, work, and raise families. So you can find out more about their programs at care dot
org or at the link in the show notes. So thank you Ben Carney for choosing that. You can find Ologies at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both. Thank you to everyone on Patreon for making this podcast possible. Thanks to the sponsors you can find links to them in the show notes too, and to everyone getting ologies merch at ologiesmerch dot com.
Thanks Shannon Felts and Bonnie Dutch for managing that. Thanks Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for adminting the Ologies podcast Facebook group full of wonderful people. The theme song was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. Interns are the wonderful Harry Kim and Caleb Patten, who
hosts You're Never Too Old podcast about anime and comics. Also, I accidentally called Caleb Patten a finch last week because my brain was done with Thinky Time at that point, so assistant editing and clutch research this week was done by Jared Sleeper of mind Jam Media. And thanks of course to my right hand man editor Stephen Ray Morris for piecing this all together.
What would I do without you?
At the end of the show, I tell you secret, and this week's secret is that your old dad has been to a lot of weddings and I'm usually very very shy about dancing, like weirdly, so like you can't make me do it. I'll hide behind a plant, or I'll grab onto a doorway. I cannot be dragged. I am mortified. And then I swear to God one and a half shardonnay's later, I can't stop dancing. I don't
know chemically how that happens. That is not enough shardonnay to change someone's behavior so drastically, But when it's on, it's just on. So thank you, and I'm sorry if I've ever danced in the back of your wedding videos. Okay for mind Packaderman College Mombiology, zoology, mythology, meteorology, pathology, apology, serology.
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