https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=wJ-9ON—i9A
If you judge the success of your marriage on your happiness, what do you have when it’s nothing but suffering? What you want to have in your marriage is, first and foremost, a scrupulous honesty. And I don’t just mean that you tell each other the truth, because you can be brutal with the truth. I mean the kind of honesty that’s devoted towards thriving in love. You want someone, I think, in a relationship that you can spar with. Yeah, she’s a very nice type. You got types? Only you, darling. And it’s partly because you have hard problems to solve. And if the person that you’re with isn’t willing to put forward their opinion, then you only have half the cognitive power that you would otherwise have. Hopefully you find someone who’s interestingly different from you, like not so different that you can’t communicate. You know, then your interest stays heightened, and there has to be that tension in a relationship. If you want to have a staring contest with me, you will lose. Here’s the key to a good relationship. It’s not the only one, but watch your person carefully, carefully. And whenever they do something that you would like them to do more of, tell them that that was really good. And mean it, and it’s not manipulative, because if it’s manipulative it won’t work. It’s like you have to say, wow, I’m so glad you did that. You have to be precise. You know, if you’re dating, when you’re establishing a relationship, well, you put some effort into it. You know, you decide that you’re going to go out for dinner, and you dress up to some degree, and you know, you try to present yourself to each other in some half-ways mutually acceptable manner. And you hope that there’s going to be a positive consequence of that, that you’re going to find each other attractive. But then people somehow think that once they’re married, that the same amount of effort isn’t necessary. And that’s wrong. One of the practices that my wife and I have that really helped us a tremendous amount, is we had instituted a policy of regular dates. And that was at her impetus. I was resistant to the idea to begin with, but not for long. When you’re exhausted with kids, when you’re, when you’ve worked all day, and you’re kind of up to here, and you’re tired, it’s easy to drop your, the intimate part of your marriage to number 11 on a list of 10 priorities. When you’re an adult with adult responsibilities, you have to carve out the time, and you have to make a willful effort. And that’s way too important to have it depend on something like unpredictable and arbitrary whim. My rule of thumb, sort of derived from clinical observations, is that you need to spend 90 minutes a week with your partner talking. And that means you’re telling each other about your life, and staying in touch, you know, so that you each know what the other is up to. And you’re discussing what needs to be done to keep the household running smoothly. And you’re laying out some mutually acceptable vision of how the next week, or the next months are going to go together, right? So that, that keeps your narratives locked together, like the strands in a rope. You need that for 90 minutes, or you drift apart. And you need to spend intimate time together, at least once a week, and probably more like twice. And that has to be negotiated. And if you don’t negotiate it, and if you don’t make it a priority, then it won’t happen. You know, what do you want from a partner, fundamentally? Well, hopefully, like I said, you’re blessed with the fact that you find each other attractive. And I think it’s very difficult for the relationship to begin, or proceed, or sustain itself without that. But having that, then what do you want? Well, you want someone that you can trust, you want someone that you can build a view of the future with. And you want someone that you can negotiate with. And that’s very hard to negotiate with people, because they have to tell you what they think, they have to know what they want, or figure it out. They have to tell you what they want. They have to be satisfied when they get what they want, which is also a very difficult thing to manage. And you have to continually update that, because your life goes through different stages. And then if you’re lucky, now and then, you might be happy. And you might have a clear enough conscience, so that in those rare moments where you are truly happy, you can also enjoy it without guilt. And so you aim at something a lot higher than happiness. And then you welcome it, if it deigns to land on you for brief moments of time.