https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=eBoFwqftDyU
What’s your biggest piece of advice for newlyweds? Don’t stop dating. I mean, not other people. Not other people. No, I’m very serious about that. Like, you know, when you’re, to use a phrase that like Mr. Burns would use from 1920, when you’re courting someone, you’re kind of on your best behaviour, you know, hopefully. Insofar as you’re capable of manifesting your best behaviour. And hopefully there’s something shiny and attractive enough about you so that when you are in your best behaviour, you’re tolerable enough so someone just as desperate as you might dare to fall in love with you. And so you do that on a date. And then it’s really easy when you get married to think, well, you know, I did all the hard work already and now we can just settle into, people say settle down. Jesus, that’s a dismal view of marriage. We’re going to settle down. It’s like, you know, how about strive up? That’d be better. And so, you know, the closest that people get to beauty and romance in their life likely is when they’re dating. However distant they still stay from it. And that’s why romance movies are so attractive, you know, because they show people who are peacocking around, let’s say, at their best trying to attract each other. And there’s something very attractive about that. And there’s something romantic about that dream. And it’s easy to think that once you’ve hooked and snared someone, you know, landed them like you might land a fish, that you can just sit on them and they’re yours trapped in your net. And, you know, you can settle down or expand outward or whatever it is that you might be inclined to do. But I would say you don’t want to fall prey to that temptation, you know, and you want to see if you can determine how to not only maintain that commitment to beauty and romance in your life, but to become expert at that. And now you have someone to practice that with, you know, and you could get really good at it. And, you know, if you get really good at it, it’s kind of a miraculous thing to get good at that, because what you find is that if you pay careful attention to romance, you remember who you married. You know, you fall in love with someone if you’re fortunate, you marry them. And when you fall in love with someone, you fall in love with their hidden best. That’s a good way of thinking about it. And they fall in love with your hidden best. Maybe because you’re so careful around each other, you sort of let that reveal itself. You know, you’re letting the light that you would otherwise have hidden under a bush will shine forth a bit. And then, you know, you close it back up because you’re stupid and sinful and careless and irresponsible and all of that. But still, you can see that other. You can see what’s there in that other person, just like when you have a child. You know, you fall in love with that child and you can see you see their eternal essence. That’s really what happens when you have a child. And then that’s, you know, put into your care, which is a real miracle. That’s for sure. And then you can learn how to maintain a relationship with that. And then you can remember who you were with. And then that’s a miracle, you know, that you got the person you wanted, maybe. That miracle that you got the person you wanted. And, you know, if you’re careless about that, you forget that person and they forget it, too. And then you settle into this kind of dry humdrum settling down boredom that also makes you likely to drift, you know, even romantically and to become bored and cynical and to make both of you less than you could otherwise be. And, you know, if you you got to put some work into it, especially. Why? Well, you know, you get married, you both have jobs, maybe you’re going to have kids. It’s very hard to prioritize romance under those circumstances because you’re working a lot, you’re tired, you got responsibilities and you know, maybe you still love your partner, but the romance falls to 11 on a priority list of 10 and you never get past five on the list, you know. And so even though you’d like it, perhaps you don’t have time or it’s not it’s not sufficiently important. It’s like that’s wrong. You know, your kids will benefit from the beauty of your relationship. They’ll benefit from that more than from anything else. And so that it needs to be, I don’t know, is it number one? Might be number one on the priority list to to work hard to work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship. That’s rule. I don’t know, eight, I think, and beyond order. I think it’s it’s a good chapter and there’s some hints in there about how to do it practically. You got to have a date at least once a week. So here’s a rule. You’re married. You got to talk for 90 minutes a week about the domestic economy. That’s annoying. It’s like a management meeting. What the hell is going on in the household? Where where are the finances? You know, what are we doing with the kids? Where are things coming unglued? What needs to be repaired? Who’s doing what job? 90 minutes a week, minimum. You don’t do it. You’ll get a backlog and then you’ll get divorced and then you’ll have those discussions for five years in court. And so with someone who hates you and so with with lawyers taking all your money while you’re doing it. So 90 minutes a week, man, you better talk to each other and clear away the rubbish. And then 90 minutes a week, you better you better have your romantic interlude and you might say, well, I’m not in the mood. It’s like get in the goddamn mood. I mean it like it’s like I don’t really feel like it’s like, yeah, no kidding, because you’re tired and the kids are noisy. And, you know, what’s your point? Like, get your act together and get out of it, you know, and figure out how to get yourself prepared for it. And that’s it’s part of your it’s part of your duty, you know, but but more than that, it’s like, why would you want to lose that? There’s not that how many things in your life are genuinely like revitalizing like like like romance, you know, beauty, music. There’s a handful of things, but that’s definitely one of them. You don’t want to lose that. So at least once a week, you need a date. And, you know, if you’re lucky, maybe it’s three times a week. And if you’re sane, you can probably manage it twice. But once is a minimum. And so you got to make it a priority, man. And you’re going to have to get that 90 minutes of cluttered economic discussion out of the way beforehand, because otherwise it’ll exist as a barrier between you. So you got to have that communication. You have to. You’ll pay for it. You don’t want to do it because you do. You really want to talk to your wife. It’s like, no, she doesn’t really want to talk to you either because because it’s it’s the details, the painful details of life that have to be negotiated. You know, and it’s work. I know, you know, I’m being a bit cynical about that, but you get my point. And people do avoid that. They leave it in the fog. You know, they leave it in the fog. And if you don’t have that 90 minutes of conversation and you’re all ready for your date, that’s when you have that 90 minutes. Yeah. I mean, the last time, Tammy and I had a date at our house, she spent the first five minutes telling me that I wasn’t cleaning the sink properly. Luckily, we only had five minutes of clutter to get through. So and that meant that we’d had an awful lot of conversations because there’s plenty of complexity in a household. So don’t lose that romantic vision, man. That’s that’s a big mistake. But you have to you have to work at it like you have to work at it real hard to keep it alive. But it’s worth it if you can do it. You’ll you’ll see the you’ll see you. What do you see? You see the eternal beautiful spirit of your partner. If you do that right, you can see them at every stages of their of all the time you’ve known them. You can see who they are at all the stages of their life at the same time. It’s really something. Love does that, you know, transforms your perceptions in that way. It reminds you of what’s about about the remarkableness of being alive and the great fortune you have in finding someone that you can weave your story together with and and embark on the adventure of life. But it takes cultivation. You know, it takes cultivation to make that to make that bloom.