https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=cJt367qCHAg
You’ve said that a marriage must be based on trust and transparency and being shackled together How and for how long should you get to know someone how to set a foundation? Oh, well, you know, there’s no There’s no simple answer to that I think that you should know someone well enough so that you can So that you know if you can negotiate with them and so that you have started to formulate a vision of your joint future that you can both Look forward to with enthusiasm and confidence So and of course that’s going to depend to some degree on your level of maturity, but that means you’ve considered such things as Do you have a sufficient number of joint interests and are you oriented in the same direction with regards to how you’re going to handle your joint careers and the possibility of children and the the manner in which you’re going to interact with your in-laws and you you have to start thinking about you have to start Considering your life together from the perspective of practicality and economics I would say so it can’t just be that massive erotic attraction that’s associated with With love although I think that’s extraordinarily important and you’re unbelievably fortunate if you have that and you should do everything you can to maintain it Which and that takes effort that takes real effort and will but you need to ally that with With maturity and intelligence and the maturity and intelligence is okay. We’re gonna put our lives together What’s that going to look like at the level of detail how are we going to handle our finances? Where are we going to live? What are our joint plans going to be etc? one of the things that my business partners and I plan to do in in What would you say that in? as an analog to the self-authoring suite is that we want to develop an online program to help people Negotiate their relationships and and so it would actually provide an answer to this question in a more comprehensive manner is that Imagine that if you want to set up a household with someone Then there’s a lot of things that you need to get straight and you either do that by bringing Your unconscious assumptions to bear on the situation and perhaps clashing where they don’t match or you sit down like a Conscious and aware an articulate couple and start to negotiate what your joint responsibilities are going to be and so that would be well Who’s responsible for the meals and when and what are you going to eat and who’s going to get groceries and who’s going to pay? The bills and who’s going to do which part of what? Household chores there are to do and how is that going to be laid out fair? And so you should get to know you should get to know the person that you’re with Well enough so that you can start discussing the real practical issues of life and determine whether or not you’re capable of Negotiating that and I don’t think that necessarily means that you should live together because the evidence is actually Quite strong at least the last time I looked that People who live together are more rather than less likely to be divorced now that might be that might have nothing to do with the actual Act of living together It might be that people who are more likely to get divorced are also those who are more likely to merely live together But I don’t think that’s a great solution for reasons I won’t get to get into now and with regards to being shackled together Is that that’s a complicated one and and I learned this at least in part from reading Carl Jung and the idea there is that Unless you’ve really made a commitment to someone like a lifetime commitment And that that’s a serious commitment one that you’re not going to back out of You’re not going to take the relationship with the seriousness That’s necessary to make it of the highest possible quality and sustainability Across the course of your life And it’s really important that it is of that high quality and sustainability because the relationship Especially when it starts to produce children is a machine Let’s say a machine that you jointly operate that adds immensely to the quality of your life and the depth of your life I mean you you have the rope and strand of your life and your partner has the strands in the rope of his or her life and then those are tied together to make a stronger rope and then that Unites you across time and then you undertake massive adventures together and some of that is the establishment of a household and the establishment of joint careers and the maintenance of each other’s mental and physical Health and the maintenance of a high quality sexual life and all of that very very challenging to do all of that And then the joint production and and care of children which Which sets you up properly for the last half of your life. So like I’m 55 now, you know and Both my kids just got engaged in the last month so that’s pretty bloody amazing and they’re both setting up households and And they’re stepping into adulthood and I’m fortunate enough to have them in the city that I live in so hooray for me. That’s so bloody Fortunate that I can hardly believe it. I mean we’ve helped them out and tried to make it What would you say to make the possibility of their living here be something that’s viable? But I’m absolutely thrilled that they’re going to be around and I’m looking forward immensely to having grandchildren and like what else are you gonna do when you’re 55, you know and you’re gonna be 55 It’s gonna I might have 40 more years like what am I gonna do with those years? Well, so I have a good marriage thank God for that and that’s partly due to the outstanding moral quality of my life my wife who I’m also extraordinarily attracted to and You know, we’ve built a life together and we’ve had kids together and we’re happy with our kids and we had plenty of Struggle with our kids because one of our children my daughter had serious serious health problems Which she seems to have managed to resolve partly as a consequence of her own brilliance But you know, we’ve set ourselves up now so that our children are Respectable and mature young adults. So thank God for that and they’ve got partners who we both really like and they’re gonna have children and Well, hooray, you know, that means that this next part of my life is going to be something that I can advance into with a with a fair bit of hope and and and excitement and the idea of having little kids around again is thrilling because I really like little kids they’re really really fun and so The shackle together is more like it’s a it’s it’s it’s such a I may have even said that but it’s such a cynical way Of looking at it. It’s more like what you’ve produced is an unbreakable bond between two beings and that that makes both of them Both of them better in every way if it’s based on if it’s a relationship that’s based on trust and genuine communication It’s very difficult thing to attain because you have to be willing to tell the truth and the truth is there generally a horrible thing You know, I mean it’s easy to tell truth when everyone wants to hear what you have to say But it’s very difficult to tell the truth when no one wants to hear it least of all yourself And so marriage gets a very bad rap in our culture and so does child rearing and I think that’s absolute catastrophe because really Being in a long-term relationship a marriage, let’s say and Having children that’s two-thirds of your life. Even if you’re a highly career oriented person that’s two-thirds of your life and I’m a highly career oriented person and My family has been unbelievably important to me and has also been something that’s enabled me to be a very effective in my career Because my house has been a sanctuary for me and thank God for that especially over on many times in my life but especially over the last year, so You should you should get to know someone long enough to know that you too can tell the truth with each other Communicate and negotiate because the most important part of a relationship is the fact that you can tell each other the truth and negotiate You