Every marriage ends, it ends in death or divorce, but it ends. If something 50% or more of the time ends in pain and heartbreak, it's actually reckless to do it. Everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow.
Today's guest is someone that I've been dying to sit down with ever since I came across this work. It is meaningful, it's powerful, and the best part about it is that it's direct and to the point. Our next guest is the author of How to Stay in Love. Please welcome to On Purpose, James Saxon and James.
It is great to meet you. It is great to meet you. Love connecting with you offline for a few moments just before we started. And I mean it, I've been watching your clips, watching your interviews, thinking you have so much value to share with our audience.
And I know this is your first time here, but I hope it's going to be the first of many. So thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm a fan of the work, and I've always found your conversations to be something that actually moved me forward in my own thought process.
So it's really, really lovely to hear from your team and to come and sit down together. Yeah, thank you for saying that. That means the world. I want to dive straight in, James, because I think we all hear this statistic, and I want to check if it's true.
Is it true that 50% of marriage is ending divorce? It's actually a little over 50%. Yeah, it's a frightening statistic when you hear it, because I've often said it, it actually creates the legal supposition that marriage is a negligent activity. In the law, we have this idea of negligence and recklessness.
So negligence is a failure to perceive a substantial likelihood of harm. And recklessness is a conscious disregard for a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm. And you could make the argument that if something 50% or more of the time ends in pain and heartbreak, that it's actually reckless to do it. And I'm always vexed by the thought that how do we gauge the success of something?
And so divorce is clearly a failure of marriage to sustain. But then you have to think, if over 50% of marriage is ending divorce, how many people are unhappy with the decision they made to marry but stay together for the children or because they don't want to give away path or belongings? If you're conservative and say it's another 10%, maybe 20%, now we're talking about something that has a fail rate of 70% or so, that to me is just shocking. It's stunning.
But the statistic that people don't talk about is that 86% of people who divorce are remarried within five years of their divorce, which to me actually speaks to the importance of marriage, that someone who's gone through this process, it's ended in a manner different than what they had hoped for, right? And they still, okay, let's try it again. And what does that say about our need for that connection, how important it is to us as humans? So yeah, but the unfortunate news is that that is a very high fail rate by any regard.
Yeah, and I think most things, if you heard something had that fail rate, you'd probably not even try. Even remotely. Even with anything, right? So if someone said, hey, this investment has a 50% chance of failing or going wrong, you'd probably not consider it.
Of course. Why do people still get married? I think probably for a number of reasons. I mean, one is it's assumed for many years that it's the right thing to do, which is in and of itself strange because the supposition that one should marry in the face of those statistics is shocking.
And even the fact that it's considered in delicate, like if someone said to me, oh Jim, I'm getting married, the proper response is, oh congratulations, that's wonderful. But it would be perfectly reasonable to say, really why? Why? Like why are you doing that?
Like what is the problem to which marriage is a solution? What is the reason that this particular permutation of a personal religious and or legal relationship is important to you or to your soon-to-be spouse? But it would be considered terribly rude. I would never in polite society say to say, why are you getting married?
Because it just feels like such a pessimistic view of things. But it isn't pessimistic if you look at the numbers. And I actually think it's an interesting thought exercise for people to have. You know, why am I getting married?
What is the problem to which marriage is a solution? We look at any other technology in our life. You know, this mic stand, you know, the glass of water. And I can say, okay, the problem to which this is a solution is it would be awkward for me to hold a microphone in my hand and we need to amplify our voices in some fashion.
So you can answer the question pretty easily. But marriage, even asking the questions considered rude. Yeah, I've never thought about it like that. And I might be thinking about as you're saying, it's fascinating that we've confused the emphasis on a wedding versus a marriage too.
So you spend more time planning your wedding than you do preparing for a marriage. Well, I jokingly talk about the wedding industrial complex, you know, that it's a billions of dollars business. And of course, like what about it wouldn't be appealing? I mean, weddings are, I love it.
They're a variety of things. I get misty eyed at weddings. Nothing about my job has made me the slightest bit less excited about a wedding. The idea of two people coming together and standing before family and friends and saying, I found my person.
Out of eight billion, I found my person. You know, how could you not get sentimental about that? It's such a beautiful thing. But you know, saying I do isn't saying I can.
Like at best, it's saying I'll try. And we just don't, we don't say that out loud. And I think we might be poor for it. I think it would be better if we had a more honest and realistic view of marriage because there's nothing more fun than getting married.
But being married is much more challenging. And we spend so much time in the excitement and the sort of pheromones of, you know, we have this cake and we're gonna have this. Which by the way, of course, it's so much fun. Like any event with cake, I'll go to.
But it really is something that we would do well to take the being married part from the beginning more seriously. Yeah, I've, I've officiated a few weddings and there's never been a time when I haven't not wanted to cry. Like I'm trying to hold it together and the only thing in my head is don't cry, don't I? I wasn't.
You could do it. It's so hard because I'm the same. I love love, I'm fully present. It's something that gets me right in my soul.
Point your hearing for it. Yeah, and I love hearing the speeches and the vows and you know what? I'll share a personal experience. My oldest son Noah got married a couple of weeks ago.
Oh, wow, congratulations. Wonderful. Exactly right. He has good health insurance.
And she wouldn't know. A lot of that good reason. See, he's my son, so he's, and he's also a lawyer. So he's thought it through and she's a lawyer, so.
But I knew I would be very moved by it. I'm, I'll let you in on a secret that I'm, I'm very sensitive. You know, I, for someone who's been described as the sociopath you want on your side in the courtroom, I'm actually, I think my super power is that I'm extremely sensitive. And I'm very prone to tears and I'm very prone to, usually tears over things that move me.
And my son and his now wife, after he used to saying that because his girlfriend for a long time, that was fiance and now it's wife. They wrote their own vows. And I fully expected that I would get teary out during this ceremony. But when she was reading her vows to him to hear someone talking about this little boy that I helped raise to a man and saying, you know, you're the strongest man I know, like you make me feel so safe.
Like I could not, tears pouring down my face because it was just such, it felt like a finish line of sorts that felt like, oh, okay, like that's the man she sees that man. Like I know I don't see my own kids clearly, nobody does. We all think they're the most beautiful hands and wonderful. But to have this really intelligent young woman, you know, looking at my son and saying like you're a hero to me was one of the most powerful emotional moments in my life.
And I found myself as I do at every wedding, just cheering for them, just hoping they'll defy every statistic in every odd and they'll keep the feeling they have at that moment. Yeah, and at the same time, it's that paradox, isn't it? Because I think I got married nine years ago and still with my wife and we've been together for 12 years. And now I look back and I think to myself, I didn't know, I didn't have a clue what I was saying.
Like I said, I love my wife that day and that I believe that, you know, we were meant for each other and everything. And I had no clue, like the last nine years have been so much more illuminating about a commitment I made. And it's almost like I made a commitment with far less information, far less insight, far less growth. And so what I wanted to dive into with you, and there's so many things I want to impact from everything you've just said, but I want to help our audience understand from your perspective and from your insight, from your experience, like, we've just talked about the most beautiful moment and hearing you describe your son's vows and that moment, it's, they can't be anyone who's listening right now who isn't just thinking, oh, gosh, that's beautiful, I love that.
And then you're someone who's seen countless couples break apart. Yeah, I mean, my day job is facilitating the demise of unhappy marriages and I've done it for 25 years at the highest level and, you know, I'm very glad it has not taken out of me, my appreciation for love and my appreciation for how important romantic love is and how beautiful of a connection to people can have. But yeah, I have seen good people at their absolute worst and I have seen intimacy weaponized in the most brutal ways. And so I see the risk that we take, but what it causes me to be very mindful of is how brave it is to love, because you should be scared to get married, you should be scared to love anything, like to love anything is sort of insane, because every marriage ends, it ends in death or divorce, but it ends.
And to love anything is to open yourself up to the inevitability of losing it. And so there's a good argument to be made that you just should never open yourself up that way because the pain that will come is so great. And yet we love, we love constantly, because the reward of it is so amazing and so beautiful. And that's why, you know, if you're not scared, it's not brave.
It's only brave if you're scared and you do it anyway. And so a wedding to me feels brave, like the marriage you just described, you and your wife are nine years in, so you're not newlyweds anymore, the honeymoon's passed. Yeah, especially if you have children, we have children that it's real. Yeah, we haven't yet.
Okay, so that's another chapter. So what you'll see though is even what you're saying now that oh, these nine years were something different of a journey that I anticipated. And I promise that the next nine and the next nine, and the next nine, you have no idea, you have no, none of us do, you know, my grandmother used to say, if you wanna make God laugh, tell him your plans. And so I, but the idea too, again, of having a partner in that, of someone who, like I'll hold your hand, you'll hold mine and let's do this together because it's so much better, you know.
And I don't think I can learn everything I need to know about myself, like I need help. I need people who see my blind spots and love me and are cheering for the good in me, you know, and forgiving the weakness in me. So there's something to me about, again, even in facilitating the demise of unhappy marriages and seeing how wrong this can go, it's like, you know, in the presence of death we're most aware of the beauty of our life and in the presence of illness, we're so aware of our good health. I think doing what I do has made me appreciate love in a very deep way.
There's such a truth in what I'm hearing from you and even sensing and feeling from the way you're sharing, what you're sharing and it's so interesting because if someone's scared before they get married or before they're full in love, we usually tell them that's a bad thing. We usually be like, oh, no, no, you should be sure, you should know, right? Like, you don't know and it's almost like, well, no, how could you? Like, it's putting yourself, you know, it's trying to get someone to hold your heart and hold this fragile, vulnerable, deepest part of yourself and not knowing if they'll be able to hold it probably.
Yeah, in two decades. You know, I'm 52 years into my journey of being a human being and I'd like to think I'm starting to become myself, starting to understand myself much better. And that's after, you know, a long time of reflection and therapy and all those things. So it's so hard to know yourself to then know another person, you know, and then to be in such an intimate tie with this person.
And again, in a way that requires a tremendous amount, if you're gonna do it right, a vulnerability, candor, bravery, just the ability to say, you know, I mean, it really is almost a discipline, like the trading what you want now for what you want most. You know, what you want most is deep, long-term connection with this other person. Sometimes what you want now is just like, let's get through the day, let's not have an argument or a difficult conversation. But sometimes, you know, just like we have to go to the gym, just like we have to lean in to these uncomfortable things.
And that's a lot of what my writing is about, is about the idea of leaning into moderately uncomfortable conversations for the good of the long-term relationship. Because, you know, it's so easy to want to have your day-to-day go smooth in your relationship that you start telling each other what the other person wants to hear and not, you know, sharing what's really going on in your head and in your heart. But I think what we really want is long-term deep connection with another person, we can't do that. We have to be disciplined.
We have to say, okay, I'm going to be radically candid with this person about what's going on. A lot of what we've touched on so far is this really root emotion, like what's really happening beneath the surface. And I wonder not what are the top three reasons people get divorced that they say in the courtroom, or that they may say the first time they meet you or to their therapist. What are the three top three root reasons that you have discovered that lead to someone getting divorced?
Yeah, the most common question anyone who finds out what I do for a living, ask me, other than, oh my God, you must have some great stories. And usually, they're very pleased because I'll tell them one more outrageous ones, like when they cut the car in half of the chain saw and said, okay, you pick which half you want. You know, things that were true stories. That's crazy.
Okay, you'll have to tell us. You'll have to tell us a new one. Yeah, you know, I've got a lot of fun at a cocktail party because I have a lot of those. But really what people are asking, I think they want me to say, oh, cheating, or financial impropriety, because that gives us a sense of control.
Okay, I can monitor my client, but my client comes at me, but I can monitor my spouse or partners, whereabouts using my phone. And I can be vigilant about, you know, like keeping an eye on what's going on with them and other people. And it gives us a sense of control. Yeah.
Okay, I'm worried, you know, it's a huge piece of a lot of divorces. But, you know, okay, I can try to monitor finances and stay actively involved in it so we never have that happen. But really underneath those things is what, you know, those are the symptoms, not the underlying illness. And I think the underlying illness, it's maddening for people to hear, but I think it's a disconnection.
I think the number one marriage killer is disconnection. I think we fall in love incredibly fast and we fall out of love and we fall into those big marriage killers much more slowly or really kind of the way that people go bankrupt, very slowly and then all at once, you know. And by the time you've gone over that cliff, I actually think it may be too late to do something about it, which is why I'm very big on the idea of like preventative maintenance and not getting to that place. But I think disconnection from your partner, from yourself, from your true self, you know, I think I've been representing people in court for 25 years in divorces.
And I think the most dangerous lies we tell are the ones we tell ourselves about what's making us happy, what's not, what's important to us and what isn't, how we've changed and how we've stayed the same, how our partner has changed and how we feel about it. We lie to ourselves about those things so that we can sort of navigate a comfortable day-to-day reality. But long-term, I think that is a very, very dangerous thing. So I would say disconnection from yourself and from your partner.
I would also say that the biggest marriage killer is we stop seeing our partner and we stop making them feel seen because I think we become blind to the things we see most often, you know, whoever discovered what it was in a fish, you know, like I have a couch that I've had for, I think probably 20 years. I couldn't tell you what color it is because I sit on it every day at some point, but I've just become blind to it because it's just there, it's a couch, it's always there, you know. If I got a new one, then I would probably be reminded of it. But I think it's the same thing.
In a long-term relationship, there's a temptation to say, oh, I found it. I found this person, we did the thing, we're wearing the rings, we connected to each other, we're good. I can't worry about that anymore. I can worry about all the thousand other natural shocks the flesh is there too, you know.
And in fact, like this thing, this connection is so important that, you know, when you think about when you're dating someone, you feel interested and you feel interesting. And those are both equally intoxicating. It's lovely to sort of dive into someone. Like this is our first conversation, it's exciting for us.
Like we're kind of a mystery to each other and we know a little about each other enough that we were interested, but we wanna know more, you know. And when you feel interesting, like it's lovely, it's lovely to have someone say like, then what did you do and where did you grow up? And you know, like it makes you feel sort of, oh yeah, I guess I joke because every summer we have lost student interns who come to the firm for a couple months and share their talents with us. And I always feel so proud to be a lawyer when they're around because it's something they aspire to so much.
And you know, it's my day job for so long that I sometimes forget like, oh yeah, like there was a time where the only thing in the world I wanted, it was like everything I did was I wanna be able to someday walk into a courtroom and say, James Jackson for the plaintiff, you know. And then I do it, I've done it so many thousands of times that it's really easy to forget that what a privilege that is, what a goal it was and I achieved it. And when you're around people that are chasing that same dream, you say, oh yeah, I forgot. And I think it's the same phenomenon in marriage.
Like there was a time where all of us went, I just wanna find someone. Like I wanna find my someone, I wanna find someone who loves me and sees me and I'll love them and they'll receive my love. And then you have it and you just kind of, okay, I got that now and I'll move on to other things. So I think when you feel, you know, there's, I always say about New York City that there's a kind of loneliness in New York City that I don't see in a lot of other cities because you're so surrounded by people and yet you feel very alone sometimes because everyone's sort of, you know, in their lane and you know, it's a city where you know, someone can just fall down in front of you and people just keep moving, you know.
And it's so odd to be surrounded, like when you're home by yourself, if you feel lonely, it seems situationally appropriate. But if you're sitting in a room with hundreds of people and feel incredibly lonely, that's a very different kind of loneliness. I think when you are with the person who's supposed to be your deepest connection and you feel lonely and alone, that's a very unique brand of misery. So I think a lot of that comes from not feeling seen anymore.
And I think that's something that kills marriages in a real way. Yeah, yeah, I like those two and I, and I appreciate those answers so much more than the surface answers of, we will talk about cheating and we will talk about money at some point, but I much prefer the disconnection the lack of being seen as points of contention because I think you're spot on because when you didn't wash the dishes, someone felt like you didn't see them. When you forgot to pick up something on the way back from home, they felt you were disconnected. When you sat on the couch both watching the same show, but never looking at each other, you felt unseen.
Like that's what you felt, that's what was going on. And that phenomenon, that reality, I think actually can be flipped in the other direction to our benefit because, you know, you've been married, I don't wanna put you on the spot, but you've been married nine years. I'm willing to bet that if your wife was here and I said to her, when do you feel most loved by Jay? Like tell me some moments, tell me some things he does that makes you feel loved.
I bet, there's some answers you would know, like he listens to me when he cares for our family member or whatever, but I bet there'd be some that you go, really that, like that little thing, like that to me is such a beautiful expression of like what a mystery it is, you know, but there is something about these little gestures, like you give the example of like the dishes in the sink and it is, that's like a death by thousand paper cuts, it's this little thing that's like, yeah, I don't care enough about you to do this and I don't value your time enough, like you can feel that way, but also the act of like doing the dishes without being asked to do that is such a, the opposite, it's such a sense of like, oh no, I did this because I love you, like I did this because I don't want you to have to do it, like and there are so many little things when you're in love and when you feel loved that I bet your spouse like they're still going right now, right now, the wife told me before, so you know, and I'm pretty sure everyone goes through this, so my wife gets in the bed before me, maybe by a couple of minutes, she's brushed her teeth, she's done everything, she's going to bed, I'm just about to get in bed and she's like, can you give me some water? And it's like that. If I snap and I go, no, get it yourself, like I'm getting into bed too, right? Or if you get the water before she even asks, and you say before you ask, I knew you'd want a little thing, like that's such a feeling of, oh, like you didn't, you know, or even if you just get the water and put it on the nightstand and don't look for credit and you just do it.
And you know, I had a client, I talk about it in the book, who I was talking to her after, we'd been a many miles together, it was a very ugly divorce and we were sitting outside of the courtroom and I said to her, because we'd been some miles, so you start having more casual conversations. And I said, you know, was there a moment that you knew the marriage was over? And she said, yeah, I remember it and I said, what was it? And she said, there was this granola that I really like and I used to have it for breakfast, I put it on my yogurt and I would have that every day.
And they only sold it at this one store and my husband used to always get it for me. And whenever like the bag was running out, magically like a new bag would be there. She's like, it always made me feel loved. It always made me feel like, oh, like look, like he, and he wouldn't even say like, oh, I got you, you're granola, like we were prone to do as men.
You know, we're like, I opened that jar. We love that. But he didn't even look for credit. He just would do it.
And she said like, it just always made me feel so, like he sees me, he knows what I need. He tries to get ahead of it. She said, one day the granola ran out and I thought, oh, that's strange. And she's like, I didn't get my own because I thought, oh, no, no, maybe he's just didn't notice, you know, in a couple more days went by and granola never got replaced.
And she said, and I thought, okay, this is over. Like it's starting to move in the wrong direction. I actually remember thinking like, what a powerful moment. But what a very relatable one, you know?
The funny P.S. to that story is I said to her, was there anything like that that you did for him? Yeah. And without hesitation, she said, yeah, blow jumps.
And I spit out my coffee, like I literally spit coffee across the courthouse hallway. And I said, really? She said, yeah, she said, you know, when we were like dating and first married, like it was just something I did a lot, like it was, you know, it didn't take terribly long and I always put him in a great mood for the day. And you know, he would like text me later and be like, oh my God, this morning was so fun.
And she goes, and then for some reason, like, you know, once the kids came and stuff, we didn't have as much time alone together. And she said, I didn't really have much occasion. And so I would say, like, well, we'll wait till tonight and then we can both, you know, we'll have sex and we'll both enjoy it. She's like, but now I think about it.
And I think like, oh yeah, like that was probably like the equivalent of granola. No, I'm not saying these are the same. I think they're quite different. But whatever it is, like whatever that little thing is, not that that's little, but whatever it is that your partner does for you, whatever kindness they show you, selfless kindness that they show you, whatever gesture of warmth and love and prioritizing your joy and pleasure, that's so important.
And it's so easy to lose it. It's so easy to just not even know that you lost it. Yeah. And I think it's so important that there's recognition, gratitude and reciprocity for it.
Because I think often when someone's doing something for a long time, it's like the couch. You stop thanking them, you stop noticing it, you stop honoring it. And that part is equally as important because that person at one point will feel underappreciated. And these are such, they're simple.
These are such simple things. Like it's so easy. But it is that. It is so easy.
It's not the birthday or the wedding anniversary. And that's what we put so much on is these giant gestures. But the truth is, if you texted your wife right now and just said, I married the prettiest girl in the world, like, what does that take? What does it take?
My wife would just send me a picture of making a funny face. Yeah. You got a good one. That's lovely.
But I bet it wouldn't be something that's uncommon for you to say. I think that what does it cost? What does it cost to just take a moment and say, you know, I'm so glad. I'm so glad I have you.
I'm so glad you chose me. Like, what does it take? It's such a low percentage move. And if that's the secret, like if that's the thing that keeps that connection, wired, like, what if it's not these giant things?
What if it's not, we have to go on vacations at this, or do we have to have a date night and it has to be very formal? What if it's just these little gestures that at the beginning of a relationship, you feel them in your toes? I mean, you know, you're just the feeling of intoxication when someone sees you and admires you. Like, it's such a beautiful feeling.
Why would you not just try to maintain that? What do you have to lose? Like, if you did that, the worst thing that could happen is they don't really notice. And that's okay.
You're not much poorer for that. You know, it's a low investment. So much of this is based on, at least so much of what we grew up on. Like, for me, for example, my mom, incredible woman, breadwinner of the family, cooked a fresh breakfast luncheon in it every day, dropped us to school, helped us with our homework, everything that's good about me is to do with my mom.
And, but when your mom does it, you assume that's just what life is. And so when I married my wife and my wife also loves cooking and it's part of our love language, but to me, getting a hot meal was normality. And so even though my wife showed it as a way of showing love, because I had it for my mom, it's like a base level expectation. You're the fish in the water.
You just don't see it. And it took me a moment when I would actually watch my wife cook and then not only did my appreciation for my wife change, my appreciation for my mother change. Realizing what it took to do that for all those years, but it's almost like- And what a gift that is. What a gift.
What a gift that loving your wife helped you love your mother in a different way. That's what I mean when I say like this transformative power of love is that, you know, I remember when my sons were first born, my admiration for my then wife was so like, because she wasn't just this woman I had dated in college or this woman I had met. She was like a mom, you know, like, and you love this little organism, the same amount that I do. And like, so you do like have so many occasions to deepen your connection to this other person, which deepens your connection to these other people, you know, in your life.
But yeah, I think that we certainly, and you know, I have to say when you were talking about, you know, growing up in a home where mom, you know, made these lovely meals and then to be married to a woman who does the same. And so to you, this is sort of, you know, normal. You can take it for granted. Right.
You can easily take it for granted. But that's also very often how people end up in very negative relationships. So if you grew up in a home where your mother or your father or both had substance use disorder, you think, oh, this is how a man is, men drink, you know? So you're much more prone to marrying someone who also has substance use disorder and looking at it and saying, oh, no, that's just what men do.
I have represented victims of domestic violence and intimate partner abuse for 25 years. And I've represented perpetrators of domestic violence. And I'm not excusing anyone's abuse of anyone else, but 99% of the time in my experience, they grew up in a house where there was abuse. They grew up in a house where violence and intimate partner abuse was how you treat someone or how you were treated by someone.
And they just don't see how toxic of an environment this is. So sometimes what you just described is a way to deepen connection and love to your partner and to your mom. It's also that same phenomenon, that same cognitive habit that can create in us. Like we may be repeating the patterns that we watched the people around us, like mothers and fathers and grandparents, the way they communicated with their spouse.
There's no class in love. Like I can tell you with certainty, I've used algebra very few times in my life. I have had almost no use for so much of dividing fractions that was taught to me. But there was never a class about how to love, how to be loved, how to be in a deeply connected relationship with another human being.
So you really just learn on the job. And you learn by watching the people around you. And if you have people around you that do it well, it's an incredible blessing. This is a gift we can give to the world is to demonstrate how to love and be loved.
Like I often talk about in the masculinity crisis that there's been a lot of discussion about how there are not as many role models for men, young men who want to look at what should a strong capable man look like? What does, you know, we talk a lot about toxic masculinity, but what does non-toxic masculinity look like? I'm interested in that. Like what is it, what is the positive masculine?
And I found myself thinking about most of my examples of it came from literature or film, you know, like characters who were strong protective men, self-sacrificing, putting themselves below in terms of importance that people who they were, they were to protect or love. And so I think we have, we need each other so much as a core unit, a family, a society. And then just as a world, like we need to, to be able to look to examples of how to love and how to receive love. And we don't, there is a, I think, a tremendous absence, a drought of that.
You know, I know a lot of unhappily married people. And not just as a function of my professional life. I know of my friends who are married, I can really only think of a handful who I look at them and go, oh yeah, that's good. That's really good.
And they're really glad they're in it. But man, when you're around it, like it's like the warmth of the sun, like it's such a beautiful thing to see that in practice. And we need to find ways, I think, for young people, we're even newly connected people, like people who are thinking about marriage to be in the orbit of that, to learn from it. Because we just can't, we don't teach it.
I don't know that we could necessarily teach it in a textbook. You can read all the books you want about swimming, but you learn in the pool, you know? And I think we're, you know, we break in relationship and we heal in relationship in this only way. Yeah, I mean, talking about the masculinity piece, I was reading that the two times men are most likely to cheat or when their partner's pregnant.
And when the first child is born or when a child is young. Makes sense to me. That's consistent with my observation. Yeah.
I've something of a PhD in infidelity, having been a good wrestler so long. And I've seen it from both sides. And I'd love to talk about why. But I think the- I have a theory.
Yeah, the fascinating part to me is that I spoke to a lot of men as well, friends who haven't cheated, but they talked about how when they had their first child, just how hard it was to be second priority to their partner. And when we talk about we can't teach a class, to me it sounds predictable and something you can prepare for because no wonder you're going to be second priority because there's this helpless little baby that demands attention. And you actually want that baby to have that priority. Because then you start feeling guilty about why do I want this?
And why do I feel that way? But, you know, again, I think it's a perfectly understandable feeling. Yeah, it's an understandable- And it can be articulated to your partner in a way that doesn't create a defensive reaction, I think. Because you want your partner to love that child that much and you love that child that much.
But yet, there is something about losing a little of your love and attention that is hard for me. And what a lovely thing for someone to say. Like if it's said the right way, if it's said, well, I'm feeling neglected, of course the response would be, well, what do you want me to do? Like I got two hands, there's only so many hours a day.
I'm sleep deprived, my body's a train wreck right now. What are you? And now I got to worry about you. And that's the script, that's right.
And an understandable script. Like I get that frustration of how a woman would feel in that situation. And yet, perhaps if it was parsed differently, the feeling of like I admire so much what you're doing. Like I'm falling in love with you all over again, watching you spin these plates that are so important to both of us and giving our child this gift that only you can give.
And yet, I have to say, and maybe I'm selfish and maybe I'm foolish and maybe I'm a child myself, like I just, I miss something about the warmth of you. And I hope we can find a way, you know, to take time to like see each other and connect to each other. It's so interesting how, if you just, and maybe it's because my job is to sort of parse argument, you know, that maybe it may be uniquely qualified for this. But I find myself thinking that almost any of these sentiments, there's a way to parse it that I think it can actually deepen connection.
And it doesn't bring a defensive response because if you say, you know, well, yeah, not sex lately, like we're having so much less sex than we used to, like what's going on? Immediately your partner's response is gonna be, well, you know, you've been working all the time and you know, when you come home, you're tired and I don't know that you want to. You want me to initiate? Like what am I supposed to do?
And now we're just having this thing. Whereas if you just said, you know, like I miss like feeling connected to you, you know, like I love like the smell of you and I love the feeling of your warmth. Like I got it, we have to like, I have to really make time. I haven't made time for that.
Like I really have to, I really want to. What partner wouldn't hear that and go, oh, yeah, that's important to me too. And let's, you know, like, yeah, let's make a point of doing that, like I really don't think this has to be. But again, perhaps it's a function of the times we're living in, we're so hyper-partisan all the time and we're so on the defensive all the time from everything and everyone, you know, that perhaps we're just not approaching those interactions the right way.
And I'd like to think that those same phenomenon can be spun in a direction that can reverse that. Yeah, it's almost like we only know how to share our emotions through a negative lens. I even not doing this enough. We used to do this, where's this gone?
And all that language is looking at the gap, the scarcity, the missed opportunity, whereas what you just said was, hey, I'd love to connect again or hey, I'd love to, you know, make some time for this again. Yeah, remember when we did it up? Like, wasn't that so good? I was thinking about it the other day, you know, that we went for that walk and how nice it was.
Yeah, it's a positive thing to move towards. Right, and now we're there again. You know, it's, I've always, one of my favorite phenomenon is, you know, we've all been to like a dinner where there's a couple of couples. One of them, you're just like, man, there was some kind of fight on the way here.
Like they just got that. There's this energy between them of like, you know, terse, you know, you're like, I hope they're not like this all the time, but it might have just been on the ride over. And if found is an experiment, is if you say to that couple, so how did the two of you meet? Yeah.
There's a softening that happens very quickly, because all of a sudden they're in telling the story, they're transported back to, oh, I was here and she was in the dorm and we met and we run it. And they're remembering, you know, they're remembering this early, you know, that connection. And I think if we use that in our current relationships to instead of saying, hey, we're not, like you said, focusing on the gap, instead bringing us back to, you remember when we did this? It was like, God, that was so fun.
I remember that so much. Why stumbled on this picture on my phone? You know, Apple just suggested this one for me. Look, remember that?
You know, and you go, yeah, we should, you know, we have to make time to do that again. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't go? Oh yeah, that was really nice, you know?
And then even if there is some resistance, even if the person says, well, we can't really afford to go there again right now, or oh, you know, it's everything going on at work right now, it's such a bad time. There's at least this shared intention, shared experience of going back to that. I mean, why do we, as a species, take a million pictures on our phones? Because we wanna like hold onto it.
You know, I went to a concert, I tend to not go out a lot at night because I get up so early, but I went to a concert recently. And it was my first time being at a concert in many years. And everyone had their phones, you know, their recording, you know, whatever song, you know. And I found myself thinking, like, do you think that that little box is going to capture this?
This giant room we're all in, and the vibration of this music, it was a nine inch nails concert, so it was like really heavy. And I just thought, like, you're missing the whole thing. You're missing the whole thing because you're trying to hold onto something that you won't be able to hold onto. This will be a poor, poor copy of something.
So maybe just, you know, again, at that human desire to capture it, so you can have some small taste of it again in the future. Maybe there's a way that that can be used to like reconnect us to who we were, what we felt, and maybe bring it back to the present. Yeah, absolutely. There's, it's such a part of that passing of an argument as you talk about it, and part of the ability to initiate.
I feel like at the root of it, there's a struggle that we have with our ego, where it feels like we don't want to be the one to look like the beggar, or look like the needy one, or look like the weak one, and so there's this ego. The vulnerability. The vulnerability. I would say I struggle with that in every relationship.
My longtime assistant, Teresa, it's been with me a long time, she's a wonderful, wonderful assistant, and she's really the brains of my office, you know, she keeps the machine running. And I actually have times where it's hard for me to say to her, because I'm moving so fast between things like, could you heat up my lunch for me? Now, she has offered this a million times. Like she's happy to be of assistance to me in any way.
Like she's a wonderful resource in that regard. And she's by nature, that kind of person. Like I see it in a relationship with her husband and her kids. Like she just, nothing makes her happier than feeding her family or feeding the people around her.
And everyone who calls my office is like, oh my God, Teresa's the best. Like they all love her, because there's a warmth. And I still have a hard time, even with such permission. I still have a hard time being vulnerable enough to say, I need help, because that's what I'm saying.
Like it's a minor thing I'm asking for help for, but I'm saying I need help, and it's hard for me. It's just hard for anyone to do to say I need help. Because there's a vulnerability, there's this fear, that what if the person goes, well, I don't have time to do that right now? And then that pain, like that's such a child wound, you know, that feeling of like not wanting something and not getting it and asking for it being brave enough to ask for it and not getting it.
I certainly understand that pain. Yeah, and it's one of those ones that you almost have to be willing to go to with the right partner. I feel like with the right partner, with the right person, you almost are willing to go there more often because you know they're not judging it. Like with someone like Teresa in the assisting capacity.
But I think you'll fix that by the step of trying because every time you are vulnerable in that way and the person shows up, that becomes a less terrifying and a deeper intimacy, I think, like a deeper connection. And so to give that example, when I've allowed myself to say like, I'm sorry, I'm going a million miles away. Is there anybody who could just like heat up my lunch? And she goes, of course, oh my God, of course.
And then she takes the extra step of like she puts it on like a nice little tray and she brings like a little drink along with it and like she puts a little, you know, a little chips next to it or something. And then I feel so loved, like legitimately loved. I feel legitimately seen. I feel like not only did you give me what I asked you for, but you gave me like more.
And that is just one example of like a relationship that, you know, and of course then I feel that way now about her. Like if she ever says like, oh, I need some time off for this. I'm always, of course, of course, because she always shows up for me. I always try to show up for her.
I want to reciprocate that. So I think again, it's a muscle that we have to exercise for it to get stronger and stronger and stronger. But that's where in a long-term relationship where you've both been brave enough to do that and to show up for each other. That's where I think you have these people that have this like, like they're just thick as thieves, you know, they have this bond that's never ends up in my office.
Yeah. If you were designing a contract for marriage, for modern love, what would you put in it? Oh, wow. I'm a lawyer, so we tend to be verbose in our contracts.
I would put specific behaviors. I would put a mandatory weekly check-in and I would even create a structure for it. I would say that every week I want to share with you and I want you to share with me something I did this week that made you feel loved. And then I want you to share with me something that made you feel less loved or less seen or where I got it wrong.
Like I want you to tell me where I got it wrong, bravely. And then maybe praise Sam, which tell me something I can do for you this week that would make you feel loved, that you think might make you feel loved or that might be because I want to be good at this job. Yeah. Like I want to be good at this job.
And it's a job. Like loving another person, it's a career, you know, it's a vocation and I think you have to be brave enough to talk about those things. And so I would put that in a contract. I think that's not a hard thing to do.
It doesn't cost anything. And I think that it wouldn't take a lot of time necessarily. And it would stave off a tremendous amount of things. I would also commit to or pledge to, to hear the things that we say to each other as coming from a place of love and connection.
You know, even when we say something, the other person might not want to hear that it's coming from a desire to protect the bond. So I would say that is a very worthwhile and worthy pursuit to say, look, we've decided we want this particular permutation of relationship. You know, love is loaned. It's not permanently gifted.
And so if we want to protect and preserve it, I think saying to each other that we have to have this unflinching ability to kind of hit send now, like say to the person like, hey, you know, this thing's little and I never want it to get big. But then you also have to be willing to hear that as coming from a place not of you're doing it wrong, but from a place of I want this to stay wonderful. This is important to me, you know. And I think if those provisions could be complied with, I think that would be very helpful to people.
I also think, again, you know, in romantic relationships and you know, this is, I think part of the reason why cheating becomes such an issue, you know, sex is the glue, like it's the glue. Like sex is incredibly important to people. Like the, I mean, it's the difference between having a roommate and having a spouse, you know, like there's a romantic element to it. There's a sexual element to it.
There's a physical, not even purely sexual. There's a physical element to it. I can't tell you how many men tell me, yeah, we stopped having sex, always started having it very infrequently. Some women, but mostly men.
And I can't tell you how many women have said to me in the context of divorce, that yeah, like the only time he ever touched me was sex. Like it was just pray, lose sex. The only time he ever kissed me was a pray, I mean, come on, when you first start dating, you can make out for hours. Like literally there's just nothing more lovely than just the kissing this person.
When's the last time people really made out with their spouse, you know, or just like held their hand or just touched the nearness of them? Good relationships, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of this physical connection. And so again, I don't think you have to write into the contract, any particular frequency or specifics of what sex would need to look like.
But I think you have to make somewhere in that contract, especially if I'm gonna take a pledge that you're going to be my partner in this, in this physical aspect of things. If we're going to be monogamous, you know, I used to say in the context of dating that if you're going to rob me of solitude, you owe me companionship because I enjoy solitude. So you have to be better than that. And companionship is better than that.
So if you're gonna rob my solitude, you owe me companionship. If you want us to pledge to each other, that we will be each other's sexual outlet. We will be each other's sexual connection. We will be each other's intimate touch connection.
Again, by intimate touch, I don't even necessarily mean sex. I, you know, there's an intimacy in holding someone's hand. There's an intimacy in having your hand on their leg. You know, anything you wouldn't do to a stranger on the subway, put it in that category.
And I think that if we're going to have rules in the relationship, which I think there are good reasons for, then we owe it to each other to see where that is. Now again, controlling for the possibility that that's okay if that shifts, I think it's okay. Like, I don't think if you sustained the electricity of the initial physical bond people have, like when you're first dating someone and your hand brushes theirs and you're just like feeling your tongue. Like if you did that for nine years, man, you would never get anything done.
You just wouldn't, like society would crumble because we'd all just be like, oh my God, she walked past me and I smelled her hair. You know, like you just would have that intoxication all the time. But let's not throw the baby out with a bathwater. Like let's remember that there is some importance to this.
It's what makes that relationship a unique and special relationship. And I think it's very easy for people to find surrogate activities, whether it's pornography, whether it's, you know, infidelity, whether that's with a person who's a sex worker, whether that's in the context of an affair, even whether that's in the context of an emotional affair versus a physical affair. I think it's all about starting to say, okay, I'm not getting what I need in this relationship anymore. And it's going to be hard to have that conversation.
So I'll just have this little thing instead. You know, I can't have a meal right now, so I'll just have like a little snack bar. But if that becomes the staple of your diet, you know, I see this a lot with men in pornography and I hear from a lot of my female clients that say, like, yeah, he started like being much more into porn. And I think that that is a surrogate activity for a very real need in all of us, but for whatever reason is no longer being met.
Because again, we're no longer the perfect thing we were. Like, perfect is the enemy of good, you know? And so I think we have to be conscious and communicative about when the physical aspects of our relationship are changing. And again, in a non-defense invoking manner.
So you don't say, why don't you ever hold my hand anymore? Like, the last thing I wanna do is hold your hands. Whereas if you just grab my hand and just go, like, I just wanna hold your hand for a minute. Like, who wouldn't go, okay.
Like, yeah, that's nice, you know? Yeah, and that's why you say that cheating's actually a symptom, not a root. You don't believe that it's the reason marriages and you don't believe it's the root of the issue. It's actually because there's a disconnection.
Yes, I have a very high degree of confidence in that. I think I spend a lot of time with the cheated and the cheated on, you know, or the cheater and the cheated on. I spend a lot of time with every permutation of infidelity. And I've talked to people in very candid ways about their affairs, men and women.
And there's an emptiness and a sadness in people that have gone that route. Sometimes it's surprising because they will say, yeah, they said nothing to do with my wife. Like, they said to do with me, like, and how I felt. Like, it wasn't her, she was loved.
I've always loved her, I still love her. I just needed this, you know? And they didn't really see, like, in that moment, they weren't thinking about their commitment. They thought, well, that says nothing to do with that.
This is just like a human need, like, I'm hungry, so I'm gonna eat. And again, these are powerful forces in us, you know, the desire for sex, the desire for food, the desire for, like, these are basic core human things, you know? So I think infidelity is something that is a function of disconnection and a function of how fraught the conversation is with your partner about desire and how it changed. I mean, how much do we really understand our own desires?
You know, it's, there's something mysterious about it. You know, like, why do you like dark hair or blonde hair? Why do you like, like, why do any of us have these weird preferences? You know, like, but they're there.
You know, and maybe they're rooted in, you know, Freud is right, they're rooted in some, you know, very basic childhood things, or, you know, maybe they're purely chemical, you know, it depends on who you ask, but they're a mystery to us. I mean, I certainly know it's a mystery to me. Like, I don't, like, why are breasts so appealing? Like, they don't really do anything unless you're an infant, you know, like, they're just, and yet they just make me happy, you know?
Like, I don't know, there's something in me that's like, ooh, you know, like, that finds those appealing. So what is it? I have no idea, you know? What is it that when I see a man who has, you know, stubble or a nice beard on his face, I don't feel any desire towards that.
And yet, many of my female friends or gay friends are like, oh, I love that's so sexy. Like, what is that? Well, it's just in us, it's just part of us, you know? So I think that's what makes it hard to articulate, you know, to our partner when it's not being met.
Maybe we don't even realize because we're not looking at ourselves close enough. Yeah. That's why I think the marriage contract that you just laid out is so important. Because it's so, and also a big part of it is a lack of understanding of men and women.
Like, when you said a few moments ago, you were just like, you know, people have desires, we have a desire to eat. Like, you know, it's the same thing. It's like, as a man, that makes a lot of sense in our brain. And the compartmentalization also makes a lot of sense.
Like, like, I've always said to, when I'm talking to my friends who are girls who are having trouble and dating, and I'll be like, yeah, he sees this is this and he sees this is that. Like, they're not connected, but I'm a man that makes sense. And it's almost like we have such a limited understanding. And I'm not saying it's only gender-based.
Of course. But there's such a limited understanding of how the human brain and mind work. Because someone's saying, well, no, I put the commitment above my desire. Because the commitment's more important.
The other person goes, well, yeah, I just let my desire slip above the commitment. But you can have both. Like, I genuinely believe you can have the desire around the commitment. Like, both can be fulfilled, you know?
With each other, you mean? I think so. Of course, you know, there's a chapter in my book called Go Without or Go Elsewhere. And that essentially says that most people, if they're unwilling to actively communicate with themselves and with their partner about what's going on with their desire sexually, then you have two choices and they both suck.
Go without or go elsewhere. Nobody wants to go without. And going elsewhere is a very fraught terrain. But it's not surprising to me that the conversation about this has become so challenging.
Because we live in a society that rightfully made some big, big changes in the last 50 years to what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman, right? Like, that is fraught terrain still, right? I mean, growing up, you know, in my generation, you know, you're either Richard Simmons or Clint Eastwood.
Those are your two choices. Like, you either were, you know, very stoic and very... Or you were gay. That was what the two choices were.
Or you were a feat, you know? And now, thankfully, one of the beautiful changes that I think has happened in society is we recognize that all of us have, if you want to call out the masculine and feminine in us, we all have varying ratios of it. And we've changed what it means to be a man and to be a woman. But we've kind of treated Dantruff with decapitation.
Because we've said, hey, these fixed models of what is a man and what is a woman and how do men behave and how do women behave and what is a man's natural tendency? What is a woman's natural tendency? We realize those were prisons and those were creating unequal and unjust outcomes. So I applaud that we've taken the step to go, all right, but not all men, okay, but not all women are that way.
But we've gone so far in over correcting as we as a species are prone to doing that I think now we're not... It's like scandalous to acknowledge what you just acknowledged, which is when I'm talking to a group of women who I'm friends with. And I say, they're describing something that a man in their life did. And I go, oh, I know exactly what that.
No, he saw this or, oh, no, he thought that. They go, really? Like I have a Rosetta Stone language, they don't speak. And by the way, it goes the other way.
Yes, 100%. Like there are so many times, I will listen, I have an office full of women and sometimes of different generations and they'll be talking to each other. And it's a small office. So I can hear their conversation.
And sometimes I feel like I'm like Margaret Mead observing like the Anamomo, you know, like I'm just like a cultural anthropologist who's been dropped into a different planet, you know? Cause they're talking about like, I had one of them said something the other day about, she was describing a date she went out on. She said, oh, he did that thing. Like when I got up from the table, he kind of went to get up and didn't know if he should get up or not, you know?
And the other young woman goes, oh, I love that. You know, and I thought, that is the weirdest. And yet I get it, you know? Like because it was like a vulnerability and also a sense of chivalry, but also a sense of like being self-conscious.
And I thought like, God, if you said do a guy, you know, here's, I'm gonna be your new dating coach. I'm gonna be your new pickup artist guy, you know? Like maybe this is my next career, you know? And you point out these strange little things, you know?
But to do that, we have to acknowledge that, you know, there are limits to our understanding of the opposite sex and that there is some difference between us, again, hormonal, biological, on a very basic level. And, you know, I think even men's experience of sex, I observe as a man and as friends of many men, it's like much more reductionist and simple. Like we're very like, you know, it's like eating, like it's like, oh, it's great. Yeah, like I'm loaded the gun, you know, we're good.
Whereas like women in my experience and observation, it's like, well, what feels good like one day, two days later doesn't feel as good. And again, some of that is probably hormone. But I think like learning to navigate a relationship, perhaps same sex marriages have less of a fraught relationship with that because you understand each other's perhaps biology in a different way. But I think opposite, you know, heterosexual relationships, we are really trying to navigate a creature that has some distinct differences from us physically and harmonally.
And I think without good communication, how are you supposed to learn that language? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you hear this a lot as well. We're like, after a while, he just didn't want to communicate.
We're like, they just didn't want to communicate. We're like, what you're suggesting is still part of a healthy relationship dynamic where you can initiate something. And even if it's not met immediately, there's a sudden point at which there's a conversation. But it wasn't on the first date.
Yeah. It wasn't on the first date. Like, see, that's the thing that I think makes marriage such an interesting entry point for a conversation about love. Because I don't know that they do correlate.
Agreed, yeah. And I certainly don't think there's causation. I don't think marriage makes you really love each other more deeply or more likely to be fidelis. I don't think it does that at all.
It may have the opposite effect. But what it does give us as an entry point into, we were at some point so enamored with each other that we said out of the 8 billion options I'm picking you. I mean, that is a gigantic, like I live in New York City. There's a lot of restaurants.
Sometimes I am paralyzed by the number of choices. When I go, okay, I'm gonna order something. There's so many options all within three blocks of my apartment. 8 billion options and you chose this person and they chose you.
So at some point, there's this abundance of goodwill, this abundance of connection. And when I wrote the book, it really wasn't meant for people who were in crisis. It was really meant for people who were not. It was meant to be a wedding gift.
It was meant to be something you give to engaged couple. To say, it's like you just got the new car. Here's how you maintain it. So that it stays, because this is a car, you're gonna drive for the rest of your life.
So don't you wanna take care of it? If I said to you, you're gonna have one car for the rest of your life, you would change the oil. You would do routine preventative maintenance because this is the only car I'm ever gonna have. And if it starts to fall apart, it's the only car I have and I don't wanna walk everywhere.
So I am going to take very good care of this. And so I think leveraging, like when you say people say, and I hear it all the time, you're absolutely correct, like, hey, just stop talking to me. Is that a function of the fact that the way we were communicating wasn't productive? It made this person feel defensive, it made them shut down, like because at some point you were still connecting.
And so there was a story you were writing and you lost the plot. And that's okay, like I love to read. And I read at night, it's sort of like my brain's signal to go to sleep. And I have to tell you, so many times, I'm reading and I'm tired and I'm in bed.
And I realize I don't remember what the last couple of paragraphs were. So I have to sort of stop and go, okay, let me go back. Let me go back to where I lost the plot. That's what I would say, is that if you're at a place in your relationship, where unfortunately one or both of you are not communicating anymore, I don't think the answer is keep going in that direction.
I think the answer is, where did we lose the plot? And then I think there are some ways to try to correct back to it. You won't be surprised to hear that when people tell you the story of their life, they're usually the hero. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so when people come into my office and they tell me the story of their marriage, David Byrne in the Talking Heads said, facts all come with points of view, and facts don't do what I want them to. And I think that my career has been a real example of that. Totally true. Because you do, it's actually how I know I'm probably gonna get along with the client, is if when they tell the story of their marriage, they're neither the hero nor the villain.
Yes, yes, yes. Like if I said to you, tell me about your marriage, and you said, here's the things I think I do right. And here's the things I could get better at. And here's the things I'm abysmally bad at, and I'd like to get better.
We're in a good place, we're in a good place. But that's not happening when you go to get divorced, that's the point. It's like, when you go to get a divorce, usually I've got a halo, they've got horns. Of course.
Let's get after it. Yeah, of course. Could you wanna get someone on the side? And then I have a similar, I mean, I coach people and couples and work with people, and like you said, people lie to their kind of therapist coaches in that lane.
That's for sure, because someone will come to me and say they have their heart broken. And then as time goes on, they'll send me emails that the other person sent them. And the emails actually seem really thoughtful and comprehensive and very emotionally intelligent and articulate. And you're like, wait a minute.
What happened? You told me that this person was the devil. And I'm reading their emails, because you had to share them with me because of some context. That's what I said.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you need them for somebody. I don't even know, sometimes you even know that you're lying. Like you're just so caught in your view of the thing and we hold onto that so tight, you know?
Like, cause again, I feel like if we can acknowledge that we're a mystery to ourselves, that that feels powerless and frightening. I mean, so much of what we do wrong, we do for a feeling of control. Yes. Yes.
I think that might be the secret is to like learn how to find, you know, there's an axiom that if you don't learn how to find joy in the snow, you'll have less joy in your life and precisely the same amount of snow. Like, so I feel like if you don't learn how to find joy and peace in chaos, you will have less joy and peace, precisely the same amount of chaos. Yeah. Cause chaos is the lack of control, you know?
So I think that's a big piece. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I learned a lot of similar lessons in the monastery when I'm totally digressing.
We were on this two to three day train journey in India from north to south, 48 hours roughly, with a bunch of stops. It's a long journey and the toilets are so dirty in India. I don't know if you ever been. It's like a toilet on a public train in India is like walking into a sewage system.
And so I decided I'm gonna fast for three days. Like I'm not gonna eat because I can't. I don't want to use the box. I don't want to be an obsession, yeah.
And so, and I'm getting off at the stops to meditate because the train, a public train in coach is like... Yeah, your parties, right? There's like, no, like, and I've, we've got, I'm meant to have a bunk, but I have my seat because everyone's sitting next to me. There's people sitting on the floor, lying down on the floor.
They've got their cycle, they've got their tires, they've got everything. So I get off at the stops to meditate and then my teacher goes to me after all, he goes, what are you up to? And I go, what are you doing? And I go, what are you doing?
And I go, oh, I'm like, I'm getting off, I'm like, well, I'm going to get a spot meditating because it's a long haul and it's like 10, 20 minutes and then I jump back on the train, when I hear the trains, when I hear the trains, and he goes, do you think life's gonna be the chaotic train or do you think it's gonna be the peaceful start? And I was like, oh, I got it. It just like learned to meditate on the train. You just like, it's your point.
It's the same as I learned to meditate on the train. But I think there's value, also like in the context of what we're talking about, because it's very funny to me when people say, you know, we've been having some rough patches in our marriage and we're gonna go on vacation together. And I think there's value in that or undivided attention. But I don't think, it's like why those TV shows like The Bachelor and things like that, like it's not hard to feel in love with someone when you're on a beautiful, idyllic setting and you have nothing to do all day except sort of love on each other, like with in bikinis and shorts.
Like the hard part is in the midst of all of the day to day, how do we maintain connection? How do we find peace in the storm? Because life is constantly going to be the packed train and the storm and the chaos. So how do we maintain that depth of connection?