Original subtitles

[lighthearted music]

I'm Doris Bergquist and

my age is 100 years and six months.

In 2012, I visited my grandmother, and I asked her about marriage.

And her cranberry pie recipe,

but for our purposes, we'll focus on marriage.

Why did you choose Carlton my grandfather as your husband?

[Doris] I have no idea except that I wanted to get married.

That's what people did, they got married. [chuckles]

He came up to call on me for a date one day.

Carlton knocked on the door and he said,

"Nygard's the name." [laughs]

We didn't even know who Carlton was, even. [laughs]

But he, he joined the family.

[Roger] Courtship and marriage have gotten a little more complex these days.

My grandmother got me wondering why marriage is so difficult.

We all know the statistics.

Marriage rates are down, divorce rates are high,

and over time people become more and more unsatisfied in their marriages.

Why is marriage so difficult for people?

To find out, I talked with a few experts.

Ty Tashiro is a psychologist who studies modern relationships.

Well, part of the reason that it's so hard for

people to be married is that it's hard for them to be married now.

And so, marriage has been around for about 5,000 years,

and really only in the last 150, 160 years of that,

that we have the expectations that we have for marriage.

So, we want our partners to not only be

our spouses and co-parents, to run a household together,

but now we want them to be our best friend.

We want emotional gratification.

Uh, we want tremendous sexual satisfaction.

There's all these factors that play into

what people want in a marriage now

and it's really a lot to expect from anybody.

On a daily basis, I'm basically helping people

solve the problems in their love life.

Why is marriage so difficult for people?

It's never been easier to, to be distracted

or to wonder, "What if?"

As information technology has improved

our lives in many, many ways,

it's also managed to make them more difficult.

That's probably the biggest reason

why marriage is somewhat in jeopardy.

I call it "paralysis of choice."

We're evolved to be fascinated by novelty.

Newness in food, in travel, in art, in music, in friendships,

in myriad aspects of our lives.

We're also attracted to novelty in our erotic lives.

And, um, so when you define marriage as

"forsaking all others till death do us part,"

that runs directly counter to our nature as a species.

[Roger] To track down one of the most influential researchers in

the field of human sexual behavior,

I traveled to the foothills above Málaga in Spain.

Why is marriage so hard for people?

We're not geared up for long-term relationships,

instinctually, behaviorally, emotionally,

and yet, we've sort of been gradually pushed into this way of living together.

And, uh, so it's difficult. It doesn't really work

with our, our emotions and likes and behaviors.

[Roger] I found William Doherty in Minneapolis, my original hometown.

Almost 0% of engaged people

think they are ever going to get divorced.

It is the myth of being exceptional that if I could wave

a magic wand I would try to help people explode that myth...

that they are going to be immune to these forces.

Because I think wedding planning is actually the beginning of a marriage.

And so, pay a lot of attention to how you work out

your decision making, your responsibility there,

how you deal with your families.

Start to, start to problem solve, which is what marriage is partly about,

right now, because once you announce, you are in a new world.

-[Roger] It's kind of scary. -[laughs]

I don't know if I want a new world. I like the world I'm in.

-Right. That's the exceptionalism, right. -[both chuckling]

Marriage vastly reduces

the possibilities for the future of your life.

Talk to me about this concept of the leftover women in China.

The leftover women stigma is women who have not been

married by the age of, some say 27 some say 22,

are called leftovers. And many women internalize

this stigma and become very desperate for marriage.

How could someone be expired at 25?

I think it's a stigma that comes from 5,000 years

of culture around, "what is a woman's role in life?"

Part of it would be what society is telling them.

You're not a whole person until you get married.

You're missing something, you're missing your other half.

But the fact of the matter is, marriage is really just another relationship.

For a while there you wanted another brother and sister,

so you kept on asking me to get married

or dad to get married or dad and I to get married,

so you could get a brother or a sister.

Did you start to realize that a lot of people

have kids and they're not married?

I have two biological children with

two different parenting partnerships.

What I chose to do as an alternative to

conventional marriage, is to have a parenting partnership.

All the benefits of being married and building a life together and investing

together and having children, without the weather pattern of,

of romance and intimacy, that seems to be at the heart of most divorces.

I believe in marriage, I think it's kind of a gift

and it's magical and it's the ideal.

But what about the rest of us? [chuckles]

If you don't meet your soulmate, then it's quite high stakes

to have a family and base your whole entire life

on a system that you're not maybe sure about, but this

parenting partnership is an alternative to

not having a family or rushing into something.

[Roger] In Seattle, Dr. John Gottman was once a mathematician

wondering if there were ways to quantify relationships,

and then his wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, helped him organize

his data, so it could be used for teaching.

The Gottman Institute is really about repairing, restoring relationships.

If you don't work on a relationship,

if you just let it go, it deteriorates.

69% of problems

that couples struggle with are perpetual problems.

They never ever go away.

Part of the answer is, really, acceptance.

-You have to learn how to dialogue with those problems. -Right.

I'm a marital couples and singles therapist.

[Roger] Why is it so hard for us to do everything right in relationships?

We don't have the skills to have relationships.

We think they come naturally and they don't-- And people don't like

when I say they are skills, they say that's artificial. No, we need to know that

just like there are skills when you go to college to learn a trade,

you need to learn the skills to stay married.

There are thousands of marriage experts,

but I also talked to my friends, which is usually my first stop for questionable advice.

[Ada] Doug and I have been married 19--

-No-- We've been together 19 years. -[Doug] Twelve.

I, I said 20.

No, we're going to be 20 next year.

So, we're 19 years in, it hasn't been a perfect relationship.

It's been a roller coaster. We call each other, "The work in progress."

-It's pretty much what our marriage has been. -Yeah, it is a work in progress.

-I do the work and she makes the progress. -Yeah.

[Roger] Doug Williams and I worked together on TV shows like,

"The Mind of the Married Man," and "The Bernie Mac Show."

Why shouldn't I get married? What's the worst thing about marriage?

Having to deal with somebody else's problems and make them your own.

So when you're with somebody you inherit all of their problems?

Health problems, emotional problems,

-their past history and-- -And don't leave out credit.

-Their credit problems. That's all yours now. -It's all yours.

[Roger] Joe Yannetty and I wrote a movie together about car salesmen called, "Suckers."

Having someone who has access to all your stuff all the time.

I hate people touching my stuff.

If you get married a third time,

-something's going to get broken. -Yes.

[Roger] My pal, Steve Fromstein, ended up in this film,

mainly because he let me use his green screen.

-Okay. -We were engaged to be married,

and I asked a friend of mine, "Uh,

when you go to sleep with your wife,

you ever worry she might kill you in the middle of the night?"

And he said, "No." And then I--

That's kind of when I realized I was in the wrong relationship.

Had she ever done anything that would give you a reason to be so worried?

Well, you know, you mean, like, hitting

or slamming things or climbing over

my-- the wall to get back into my place?

-Yeah, I guess. Yes. -She did all those things?

You could read the restraining order.

If I told you, you can only have one car for the rest of

your life, you'd be like, "What kind of deal is that?"

If I told you could have one food, "What kind of deal is that?"

But I'm supposed to tell you, you can have one woman

and you're supposed to go, "That's what I was thinking!"

Charles Darwin was faced with the same marriage conundrum.

So he made a list. On one side he wrote the reasons not to get married.

Things like: freedom to go where you like, choice of social activity,

bro time, not forced to visit relatives, less expense, anxiety

and responsibility, less quarreling, more free time to do

things like read in the evening,

you don't get fat, and you don't have

to move to be near the wife's family.

On the other side, he wrote reasons to get married.

Things like: children, companionship,

love, you get a homemaker,

your conversation and your music collection improve,

it's good for your health and it's better than a dog anyhow.

He wrote this stuff, not me. Admittedly, he's better known for other things.

The right side was much shorter, but it was a deeper, weightier list for Darwin.

And so, he got married and had ten children.

Apparently, it worked out for him, but what about the rest of us?

What happened in the past with human relationships?

[Robin] For 200,000 years, humans were nomadic,

they wandered around, they shared everything.

That way of life was very similar to what you see

in our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. And natural,

I think, is what, what we were for that first 200,000 years.

That, that is what suits people better in terms of emotions and, and instincts.

Our species was organized as a sharing economy.

No one owned the land.

-No one owned the animals. -Is it communism?

It's essentially a socialist, uh, system.

They had these, what we call, these institutional marriages.

People married those that they were more or less assigned to marry.

And they were oriented to a larger community.

I don't think women started living in men's houses,

in the house that the man could say, "This is mine,"

um, until about 6,000 years ago. Marriage came later,

when we could write, we could draw up contracts.

It was a way of making alliances.

In the earliest societies that was the way two bands decided,

"Oh, we don't have to fight when we meet, because we have relatives in both groups."

[Matt] Once we got into agricultural societies

and particularly pastoral societies with herds of animals,

where the huge disparities of wealth opened up,

then we became very polygamous.

Polygamous societies are also very violent societies.

And the reason for that is basically because when one man

is monopolizing a few hundred women,

there's a few hundred other men who are not getting women at all.

How did understanding the concept of agriculture

change the way people behaved sexually?

It created a sense of propriety.

And now the woman has to belong to me,

because I want to leave this stuff to my sons.

[Fara] If you look at the Anglo-Saxon laws on marriage and sex, for example,

which are not very much influenced yet by Christianity,

they are very influenced by the idea that men own women.

And women can be bought and sold, and if you sleep with

another man's wife, he can kill you.

But also, if you want to make recompense, you have to

bring him another wife and go buy one somewhere.

Nobody in those days went up and said, "You know,

I don't feel like I'm getting my needs met here.

I feel like there's an imbalance between us,

and this marriage is much more favoring you."

Or, "I'm tired of your demands on me

for a degree of openness that I don't feel like offering."

I'm using modern-day vocabulary

to describe inner experiences and interpersonal expectations

that would be laughable in a prior generation.

-When did we start marrying for love? -As soon as you begin to get

institutions like banks, that you don't have

to marry other people to get money, and political institutions,

so it doesn't depend upon your family alliances.

It's, really, only in the past

160 years that people started to marry

for love, so it's a really unusual phenomenon

because you didn't have to worry so much about survival.

In many societies, love was considered an anti-social act.

It was literally, you were disobeying your parents,

you were betraying the ideas

for how you made society work. It was subversive.

The woman in the past would say, "He's not much of a talker,

he doesn't listen to me very much, but he's a good provider, he's a good man."

For the man who would say,

"She doesn't want to have sex all that much and she's

kind of bossy around the house, but she's a good mother,

she's a good woman, she's faithful,

good churchgoer."

-[Roger] "Good enough." -"Good enough."

[Roger] Okay, so, things have changed.

Instead of marrying the whole tribe,

marrying one person for love is a modern invention.

What percentage of people believe in soulmates?

Gallup asked people, "Do you believe in soulmates?"

And 88% of respondents, uh, said that, yes, they do.

Too many times we have overly romanticized fantasies

about what our partner shouldbe like,

[Roger] Okay. So there's a problem with high expectations. Whose fault is this?

[Marni] The blame game. That's a big one. Blame the parents,

blame, you know, men, if they're women blaming men, New York men.

Blaming women, blaming their exes, blaming everybody.

But if you're seeing the same thing happening in your relationships,

what's the common denominator? It's you!

I can't write a book with the title, "It's Not Them, It's You."

-Who's gonna buy that? -[Roger chuckles]

But sometimes, I can tell you, I see people

who I worry for them-- They will, they will be single indefinitely

until they work on themselves.

-Can someone else make you happy? -No one can make you happy.

You need to come into a relationship

with your own happiness. Someone can enhance your happiness.

If you rely on the other person to make you happy, eventually, you're going to be

unhappy, because if someone has the power to make you happy,

they also have the power to make you unhappy.

Having a realistic and accurate sense of what sort of animal you are

is the necessary first step

to any sort of intelligent navigation of life.

Homo sapiens is the most sexual animal on the planet.

Animals don't have sex anywhere near as much as humans do.

-Why are we so horny? -In our species, sex was co-opted for social purposes.

Possibly as far back as our last common ancestor with chimps and bonobos,

five to six million years ago, because both chimps and bonobos

also use sex for non-reproductive purposes.

Are we feeling frustration because

our culture is asking us to behave in a certain way

that's out of sync with our true human nature?

Yes. That's the base of the, of the problem.

And I think the nearer we get back to trying

to structure society in a way that

our instincts work with,

the easier it's going to be for everybody concerned.

There's bound to be a lack of sync

between what we're culturally imposing

upon ourselves and what we're naturally inclined to do,

because culture can change much faster than genes can change.

So, is it safe to say that...

humans used to live in these societies where they shared everything.

Agriculture, the discovery of agriculture

changed our culture, and our culture began to evolve faster than we did.

And so, we are now asked to exist in a way to reach

these ideals that are unreachable, that are not

in sync with who we are, and so, everybody's frustrated.

Right. Civilization has been this amazing scam,

because civilization is constantly telling us

that we're almost there.

When computers are going to free up all your leisure time.

Oh, no, cell phones are going to free up all your leisure time.

You're going to live in this Utopian future

that we never get to. We're working more than we used to.

We're working way more than hunter-gatherers work.

If you compare where we are now as a species to where we were 15,000 years ago.

We're worse off in most respects. Our health is worse,

our-- People say, "Hunter-gatherers only lived to be 30 or 35." Bullshit!

Hunter-gatherers lived into their '60s and '70s.

We had it really good before agriculture. Jared Diamond,

the author of "Guns, Germs and Steel," said that

agriculture is the worst mistake in the history of the human race.

Is it foolish of us to expect so much from love marriages?

These expectations of love no longer work,

in a world where men and women

are increasingly equal, and desire equal

and collaborative, not specialized, relationships.

But you know, I've studied low expectation marriages over the past.

I think in most cases we want high expectations.

High expectations help us live up to them.

They just have to be realistic expectations.

[Roger] How long are relationships meant to last?

They are meant to last as long as it takes to bring up a child.

Anyone who's been in a relationship more than

a few years knows that it's not a relationship.

It's a series of relationships with the same person,

and it's not even the same person, because they're changing.

What's telling you a relationship is doomed

or a relationship is going to succeed?

Emotional stability is one of the most powerful

predictors of whether somebody will have

a stable and happy marriage in the long run.

We found that by observing the way a couple interacts,

we can predict with over 90% accuracy whether they'll stay together

or break apart, and if they stay together, how happy they'll be.

And a lot of it is based on the way they talk to each other.

Even about how the day went, but especially during conflict.

'Cause in disastrous relationships,

people are pointing their finger at their partner, and being critical, and saying,

"Here's what's wrong with you.

As far as I can tell I'm pretty much perfect.

But your defective." Whereas in great relationships,

they're pointing their finger at themselves and saying,

"Here's what I need, honey.

And here's what the recipe is for success with me."

By the way, they present the problem, and how it unfolds,

we can tell whether they're heading one way or another way.

It's how they fight, and whether they fight with the level of respect, and that's critical.

We found people at stable and happy relationships,

they had five times as much

affection, humor, interest in one another,

empathy, as the negative stuff: the anger, the disappointment,

the hurt feelings, you know, the sadness.

Positive could be: laughing at your partner's joke, it could be

touching them on the arm as you pass by, affectionately.

A negative could be: ignoring them,

rolling your eyes, sighing passive-aggressively.

So you want 5 positives at a minimum but 15 is even better.

The ratio of positive to negative of

great couples was 20 to 1. It's even higher.

[Pat] How many people are here for a relationship?

[Roger] Dr. Pat Allen has been giving relationship seminars for over 40 years.

Be careful about having intercourse too fast,

because he needs to miss you.

He needs to chase you, he needs to see

that you love you more than you love him.

-[Roger] Who should pay when dating? -Whoever asked for the date.

I believe that the man should pursue in the beginning.

But it's the women who are deciding

how a relationship gets started.

She's sending out the signals to be approached.

She ran. I chased her.

-She caught me. -[laughs]

It's good if you can pick up signals as to which pursuits

might bear some sort of fruit.

I think the cleanest contract on the planet

is a prostitute's contract, and the only difference

between a prostitute and a wife is a blessing.

And the prostitute doesn't have to do laundry.

How did the creator create us?

He created the man as a giver and the woman as a receiver.

This is the act of procreation, it goes like that,

the man gives the seed, the woman receives the seed.

She has the egg that's fertilized.

In our closest relative, the chimpanzee,

ovulation is advertised big-time.

Females grow an extremely swollen,

very red bottom when they are sexually fertile.

And as a result, the world beats a path to the door of said female.

And she mates with pretty well all the males in the troop.

There is what's called "sperm competition" going on.

As a result of that, chimpanzees have evolved gigantic testicles.

Because the more sperm you've got, the more chance

you have of winning in this sperm competition

that goes on as a result of this open ovulation.

Men, nearly all of their sexual activity

is aimed towards trying to make sure that their sperm don't end up

in competition with sperm from another man inside that woman.

So, if a woman has sex with two or more men,

then, for a while, she's going to have sperm competing for

the prize of any egg that she might produce in that period of time.

[Roger] Are there more than one type of sperm?

There's some with great big heads, some with two heads,

some with two tails, some with a coiled tail.

They're there to compete, as ways

of getting in the way or killing off the sperm from other males.

They're doing a job in helping the male make sure

it's his sperm that fertilizes an egg

rather than some other male's sperm.

And this has a huge influence on the way men and women behave.

They don't know it's happening, don't know they're doing it.

They're responding things like jealousy

and, uh, subterfuge and all sorts of other things.

[Roger] When Robin Baker published his findings about sperm in 1991,

that it's mostly an army, and only 1% are there

to actually fertilize an egg, it was hugely controversial

because it implied that humans are designed to be promiscuous,

that women's bodies promote sperm Warfare,

collecting sperm from multiple donors,

So that only the very best sperm can fertilize

her egg. What does this mean for human behavior today?

There's this fascinating distinction between the competition

between males happening between individuals, versus happening between sperm.

[Roger] What's more valuable, the sperm or the egg?

What's more valuable? In terms of biological material, the egg,

'cause it's many thousand times bigger than the, than the sperm.

Let me see if I've got this right.

The woman has the control

because she is the keeper of the egg.

On a micro level, all the sperm want access,

but the egg plays hard to get and puts up barriers

so only the most serious one gets in.

The same thing is happening on a macro level.

All the men court the best women.

She puts up barriers, demands quality

and sincerity, so only the most serious suitor gets through.

If you ask men and women what the perfect age of

a partner for a sexual relationship is,

and you ask them at different ages,

the women will basically say a man of roughly the same age as them.

As they get older, the man they want gets a bit younger, obviously.

But the men basically say 22, full stop.

Even if they're 85. It's reflecting the fact,

of course, the basic biological fact

that a man is pretty well as fertile

at 65 as he is at 22. Whereas that's simply not true of a woman.

Old men like to start new families with young women.

Society certainly makes you want to feel bad if you don't date

someone your own age. And society's right to,

because society's interest is not the same as your interest.

Society's interest is that you obey the social rules

and don't pinch other people's wives or daughters.

I felt like the next step was to talk to more couples about how they are

experiencing marriage and relationship issues.

I started bringing my camera whenever I got invited to weddings.

My goal was to follow the trajectory

of several marriages to see what happened afterward,

after the honeymoon stage.

It's my second marriage. I got married at 20.

[Roger] How many times do you plan to get married in your life?

This is it. I planned once. Wait till you see where we are.

I mean, we are essentially getting married in a sewer.

It's an aqueduct, but it could be considered a sewer.

[Michaela] I have never been in love before I met Frank.

I found out I really loved him when I go to go away from him.

She left for four months and I realized that I,

I liked my life better with her in it than without.

[cheering and applauding]

[lighthearted piano music]

We're in the process of getting a divorce.

Yes. It's a piece of paper. It's uncontested.

-We're both in agreement on it. -Why did you decide to end the marriage?

It worked, we both were really happy until, um, we weren't.

-[laughs] -And we both have changed a lot.

She had career aspirations that were off the charts.

-I'm not kidding. -I couldn't work.

So, I feel like I was here just for you.

Five years later I got so busy with my work that

-I basically didn't do anything for you. -[chuckles]

-It kind of flipped. -Mm-hmm.

-Completely. -How does it feel to have been the wife?

Well, I wasn't really--

Well, I did clean the house a lot back then.

-[laughs] -That's true.

And I really got annoyed when she would come home

and she'd say, "There is a little piece of paper on the floor."

And I go, "This entire house is clean

and you see one piece of paper,"

and it was, it was like a husband coming home.

-Will you get married again? -Yes.

-She will. -I hope so.

You want to find a new better version of Frank.

-Yes. -Younger version.

-[both laugh] -What's next?

We do talk a lot. We're actually better friends

now than the last year of our marriage.

Has divorce liberated your friendship?

I think we can be more honest about things

because it doesn't involve each other.

Like, if she's dating a guy now, or if I'm seeing a girl,

we can talk about that 'cause it's not affecting us.

And it's also nice, because if I don't want to listen to him,

-I just don't have to anymore. -No.

[jovial music]

[Roger] The next wedding I was invited to was definitely

one of the most unique. It was held at a fairy convention.

[Angela] Being friends first is probably the best way to enter

into a romantic relationship, because you watch

this person that you put on the back burner

for, for years and years.

And, uh, you get to know them really well.

We decided to get, uh, married...

Well, let's see, decided to get married is such a funny word.

I think it's almost like deciding

to accept that the rain has come in.

-[lighthearted guitar music] -[chuckles]

[Angela] Hey, Daddy.

[Jordan] I will love you the rest of my life,

and I'll do everything I can to be the right person for you.

You're amazing.

-I hope you like to hang out with me more. -[all laughing]

Falling in love with you was like falling with gravity.

I feel so safe, so capable and ready to be your partner.

Though loving you can sometimes feel

like I'm on the Moon, you are home to me.

I love you.

-That was really good. -[all laughing]

I wrote it in the car.

[all laughing and cheering]

How did you get Jordan to commit to you?

Uh, I told him he could do whatever he wanted with anybody else.

That broke me, that was it, instantaneous.

Polyamory is sometimes hard in reality.

So, when she said, "Sure, try everything,"

I was like, "Great," and then within a few months I was like,

"You know, you're my everything. I want to try you

-a lot more, and just do that." -[chuckles]

[gentle guitar music]

[Angela] This is Southwest Eugene, Oregon.

We moved to the country to learn permaculture and to get away from the city.

[Jordan] We are in a school bus that I converted

into a cabin, living on a community piece of land.

In order to help support the people that are living here, I came up with

this idea for the goblin markets,

which is a backstage party for the people that

spend most of their lives working the festival circuit.

This is the Mud Arena where the hot mud wrestling takes place.

Multiple people get into the mud pit and fight each other like gladiators, usually naked.

[Angela] Our culture, the way that it demands

we behave towards one another, is deadening.

The boundaries are meant to be pushed and that-- and when that happens,

I think people feel more alive.

I actually think at the root of polyamory

is really just the urge to return to tribe.

I have friends that I really like sleeping with. [chuckles]

Like, we've been sleeping together for ten years

and we go on specific dates to do that.

Do you feel that your expectations have changed since

you were married versus now?

We're more in tune with each other now,

and what our needs are and what our boundaries are.

[Jordan] When you're younger, it's so much about you and your partner communicating

about all the ways that you're disappointing and freaking each other out.

-[Angela] Yep. -You know, when I got into this relationship I knew her

so well already, and so, when she says, "This is my need,"

it's not coming at me as a surprise or curve ball,

because I didn't invent this princess in my mind to be her.

I got her. You know, I married the person that I expected to marry.

Now, it can just be like, "I'm happily married

and I can take you to bed," if I wanted to, you know,

but, like, let's just be friends first. Let's figure that out.

-Yeah. -And if that doesn't work, then I don't really want--

-I don't-- I'm not really interested. -Yeah, we like

sleeping with friends. We don't like sleeping with strangers.

Later on today We'll have lunch with a friend and lover of ours

who is a lot more polyamorous than we are.

I don't feel like when I'm going beyond our relationship

that I'm somehow looking for something that he isn't providing me.

There's one of the, like, poly-mission statements is,

"People are not needs machines." Like, you don't put the quarters in

and get the need out, into the humans that you're spending time with.

Like, you're just there to, like, explore the connection.

The secret to making a polyamorous relationship work is talking.

You know, how do you incorporate their autonomy with your needs?

And things like that, and it's just this ongoing... ongoing negotiation.

There's always a revision of contract. I say "contract" loosely.

-It's just kind of like the-- it's the social agreement. -Yeah, it's just a term.

[Roger] How do you promise to love somebody forever...

-You don't. -...when things are changing?

You don't. That's not realistic.

That's not realistic in any culture, that

-is so rare and-- -[Roger] But that's what everybody does.

-They're lies. -Yes, that's,

-that's weird. -They're optimistic liars.

Realistically, that doesn't work out. You promise to love people

and treat them well and do your damnedest.

-Yeah. -That's the best you can do.

[Jordan] The whole purpose of all of this is to try

-other options. -I mean, this is kind of a lifelong journey.

But I did imagine success because we're a good team.

I feel like there's a demographic that's still being undeserved.

I flew to Brazil to track down the most single person I know,

to represent the single perspective about marriage and relationships.

He actually learned how to sing in Portuguese to attract women.

♪ Single, single Single, single forever ♪

♪ I wanna be single forever

♪ But I don't wanna Die alone... ♪

I used to rap in English and Spanish back in the States

as a hobby, and for fun and carnival.

My Portuguese has got really good.

2008 I did a funk song. It came out hot. I started shopping it around

the favelas and in the streets, and got good feedback.

And then started recording more and started performing.

And now this is, this is my passion.

I'm in love with Brazilian women, all of them.

I'm like Indiana Jones for the golden booty,

you know what I mean? And I think I found it in Rio de Janeiro.

What do you find attractive in a woman?

I like a big, big ass, juicy ass,

particularly the size of basketballs, uh, with no waist.

If the ass grows bigger, it's fine. As long as the ass isn't growing wider.

I love the caramel complexion, long hair,

the sexy gestures, hot blood. No facial hair.

Green eyes is beauti-- it's a plus if you have them, but if not,

I mean, that's something-- I don't, I don't want to be too demanding.

That's all the physical qualities. I like a girl who's street, yet elegant.

Who fucks a lot, Who's faithful. A key thing for me is a girl who's humble.

Someone who's opinionated, but yet understands at the end of the day

that Don B. knows best. [chuckles]

The girl who's very cool, who's athletic, who's smarter

who has good genes, who's a good breeder. A well-rounded girl. I want someone that's like me.

♪ Rio, yeah, Rio de Janeiro...

We're not designed to be with the same person for six years.

If you turn on the Discovery Channel, you'll see, like, you know,

female spiders and shit trying to kill the male if they stick around too long.

I think the normal natural length of time

that two people are meant to be together for...

There's two reasons in life that women come back to men: dick or money.

There is no difference between prostitution

and between a regular fucking modern-day date.

They want Grey Goose and cranberries.

They want, fucking, they want, you know,

taxi cab rides, they want dinners.

You got fucking Valentine's, and then you got the birthday,

then you got the anniversary, Then the six-month anniversary.

And then you got dinner for two, then you got the movies for two,

then she wants Milk Duds.

Is it necessary to lie to keep a relationship healthy?

Unfortunately, I think it is. Why? Because women give us no other choice.

If a girl's going to ask me, "Do you look at other women?" Yeah, I look at other women.

It's natural, I'm not going to lie and say, "You're the only

one for me, I only have eyes for you."

That's just a fucking fairy tale, that's not real, man.

Love is important too. According to Freud,

he said man needs work, love, and some other shit.

What you do with your girlfriend is you make love. That's the person

you want to watch a DVD with, you want to cuddle with,

you want to have dinner with and talk about life with.

The other chicks are, are nothing more than sex.

It's just a nut. You know what I mean? You can't, you can't...

But then it's very hard to explain that to a woman.

I think I fall in love every fucking day. I see a fat ass on the street with

a chick with green eyes and no waste. I really love her. I really truly love her.

I really love her, once I nut, if I still feel that way towards her,

that could potentially be real love. Get that fucking vagina, man.

Absolutely. No questions asked. Get that, go get that motherfucking vagina.

♪ Get that vagina Get that vagina ♪

♪ All around the world I All around the world I ♪

♪ Get that vagina Get that vagina ♪

♪ Get that, get that, get that

[Don] I got married. We had a baby, and now we have, we have a family.

[Roger] How did Don Blanquito, who wanted to be single forever, get married?

[Don] And I was not anticipating this, and I was not in the mood for it.

I was on the battlefield for fucking 15 years,

whatever it was, just going, going strong

representing for mankind, reprodu-- on the reproduction

tip, and just being a fucking animal and a maniac.

I met the one girl who just captivated me.

-She had all of the ingredients. -[Yasmin] He's not a normal guy.

He have a lot of girls, have a crazy life, a lot of drink,

parties, for he change a lot life, a new life, my dreams.

He have a family, and stick together, and I fight for this.

[Roger] Did you fight for this marriage to happen?

Yes, for sure. [chuckles]

-It's not easy for marriage. -Yeah, she went in for the kill.

-[laughs] -I think she's a pit bull, man. She's not a chihuahua.

-This is a fucking pit bull. -I think I saved your life.

-You did save my life. -You probably go in Brazil,

have a lot of kids with different woman--

-Get shot. -Then, probably, or in the jail

or in the hospital because you drink a lot.

I save his life. You never said thank you for me.

Thank you, mi amor, I love you. Thank you for saving my life.

And the best part about Brazil is that I brought a piece of it with me.

My daughter was born in Botafogo, my daughter is Carioca. And I'm

so proud to have a daughter that's Brazilian and from Rio,

but things happen for a reason and at the right time.

If it were up to me, I wouldn't have a baby at that time.

-You don't, you don't plan it. -I plan.

It's my decision, because this I know, the woman's the boss.

I plan my daughter and she born, everything is, I want it.

-Really? -Yeah.

-That's fucked up. -[Yasmin laughs]

-No-- -And now you so happy, can you imagine your life,

-you no have your daughter. -No, that's what I'm saying, like, you know, like,

if you were to ask me, "Do you want a kid next year?" I'd say that's fucking crazy.

-I want to wait ten more years. -[Roger] Is he a good father now?

He's a really good father.

She saw a good thing

-and she grabbed it. -[laughs]

I grabbed it too, you know what I'm saying? Listen, I'm grateful.

I'm grateful at the end of the day, would I do it again?

Absolutely, the exact same fucking way.

♪ I do it all over again

[Don] Listen, man, if I can get married,

and I can create a family, you know,

fucking, anything is possible.

[Roger] Even the most single guy in the world found love,

an attraction greater than even he could resist.

What causes attraction between individuals?

We look at facial characteristics. We look at bodily

characteristics. There's, there's sense.

There are smells that, uh, that tell you

that you've got a, a genetic future for your children.

Genetics is the basis of a lot of attraction.

We think we're choosing a mate, we're choosing

to have children, we're choosing to get married or not,

but in reality, this is all programmed

for genetic reasons.

You feel, uh, that you like this particular person,

you have no idea why, but somewhere inside your body

there's some sort of chemical signal coming through that's saying,

"Yeah, this one has got good genes.

You know, you should like this person."

There are subconscious mechanisms for determining

who is going to be a good...

father to your children biologically.

This has nothing to do with whether he has a good job,

whether he's going to stick around, whether he's good-looking even.

Women have mechanisms for sensing

the genetic signature of a man's immune system.

There's even a study that was done by Claus Wedekind

in Germany called, the, the T-shirt study,

where women selected the best smelling T-shirt

that guys had worn for a couple of days, and it turned out

the T-shirt that smelled the best was worn by

the man who was most genetically different from them,

on the genes of the major histocompatibility complex,

which is the genes of the immune system.

How important is kissing

to determining whether someone is right for you?

This is a way for humans to assess

whether another person has, uh,

immunological system that's mismatched to yours.

So, you actually don't want to mate with somebody who's

really good at being immune to the same diseases as you are.

You want somebody who's really good at being immune to different diseases

than you are, because that means your offspring

will be more diverse in your immunological system,

and that would improve their chances of survival.

People don't look for their clone.

And so, all of the matching algorithms on dating sites are completely wrong.

We're looking for somebody who's really, pretty different from us, but very interesting.

There's been a movement from online services like eHarmony

that are profile based, and online services like Tinder.

Tinder lets you scroll through people, look at their pictures,

and if you like the way they look, find out if they're close by and then go meet them.

And that's pretty great, actually, because it boils it down

to the only thing that matters, which is, if you sort of like

how they look, and are they close?

What are men looking for in a woman?

Guys want a woman who has a beautiful face.

This could be a woman who has symmetrical features.

To be genuinely asymmetric is a worrying sign

in a potential mate, 'cause it means there's a mutation.

Men's eyes pick up congruence in the body,

waist differences, because they're passing their gene pool

on to the healthiest woman.

And we now know that beauty is congruence.

People tend to agree about who's attractive and who's not.

-All around the world? -Yeah.

So, the hottest person in Japan, for example,

rated by Japanese people, will also be the hottest person

when rated by people from United States.

Women are looking mostly at a man's resume.

Young women want status and security

because they're on estrogen, they're building families.

Women's criteria for what they find attractive in men

changes depending upon where they are in their menstrual cycle.

So, women who are ovulating, for example, are much more attracted

to men who openly display a certain kind of genetic vigor,

with the square jaw and the muscles

and the broad shoulders and all that kind of thing.

Whereas when they're not ovulating, they might be more attracted

to someone who doesn't, uh, display those things, but displays,

uh, trustworthiness and seems safer.

So, they sort of like the bad boys when they're ovulating

and the good boys when they're not ovulating.

Which is why men find women so incomprehensible,

he's like, "Wait a minute, a week ago, she was into me

-and now she's not, why?" -You got to wait till next month.

Men are terrified of women that want to get married.

When they find a woman that doesn't want to get married,

it's a challenge.

So how do you demonstrate that you don't want to marry?

I live my life as if I enjoy my life.

Someone who's happy in their life.

They're not looking for someone to be their hero,

to save them, to rescue them from their misery.

If someone says, "Hey, I'm having trouble attracting other people,"

-what do you tell them to do? -Project confidence.

Confidence is by far and away the most attractive quality to both sexes.

Key piece of advice for a man is: have a plan, be a guy, take control.

Before a guy even touches a girl,

before a husband even touches a wife, he's got to touch her soul.

Otherwise, why do people pull muscles and why do people mess up

their joints? Because the joints aren't warmed up.

-We've got to warm up our love muscle, is that-- -Exactly, exactly.

How do we warm up our love muscle? By touching the soul.

How do you touch the soul? Communication.

When you're first getting to know someone, the most important thing is

that you avoid debating them. You don't want to argue.

You don't want to talk about money, 'cause it's a slippery slope.

You either sound like you're bragging or sound like you're broke.

Bringing up past relationships.

You don't want to talk about the past.

Sometimes men do this because they want to impress women,

but they talk about themselves a lot.

And they'll come back and they want to go out with the woman again,

and the woman does not want to go out with again,

because she's interpreting that as lack of interest in her.

[Neil] When I was out there doing "The Game," meeting people,

I was never worried about that great looking

underwear model guy, ever. That was not competition.

I generally found people who were less attractive who wanted to feel

like they are more attractive, would go off with that guy.

And the people who already weren't worried about their attraction,

uh, 'cause they were gorgeous, might talk to me, 'cause they wanted to feel smarter.

So there was always something that people are looking to get, some unmet need met.

So if you want to seduce somebody, if you can identify

their unmet need and provide it,

-that's the way in? -Identify their unmet need...

let them know you have it and not provide it.

[laughs] 'Cause once you've provided they're done with you.

[Roger] Who's the boss, more often than not,

in relationships, the man or the woman?

-Women. -The woman.

-Women. -Women.

We're in charge.

I like to think it's me.

The saying that I have is,

Norma wears the makeup and the pants in the family.

-[Roger] Who's the boss in the relationship? -He is.

See? He is.

-[Roger] For how long? -For how long? About an hour.

I'm a figurehead, which is, uh, a very old and ancient custom,

where you stand around and smile a lot and are blamed for things that go wrong.

I'm the hand. I move pieces around.

The woman is the boss.

I have absolute say at the end,

-but I don't say anything. -I'm David's current wife,

Dutchess is his ex-wife...

-and-- -[Roger] And you all still live together?

We all live together. We co-parent together.

They had three children together, and we all raised them here in this house.

They're just gonna do what they're going to do, and our job is

-just to hang tight and just live with it. -[Mony] That's your opinion.

You need to say what you want, and if he loves me, he will comply.

How can you identify which one is the boss?

The one with the veto right. Checks and balances.

You guys ask for a lot of things even you know you shouldn't get.

Even when a guy is the boss, the woman is the boss of the boss.

It's like, maybe the man is the boss until the woman gets really upset.

Sometimes the man might have a different opinion, but if she's not happy,

he's not happy, and then he might have a change of opinion.

The man has the last word. You know what the last word is?

"Yes, sweetheart. Yes, sweetheart."

-Why is this the case? -Because once

he gives her what she wants, she'll let him do whatever he wants.

If a man is not giving her her spiritual needs,

then her material demands are going to be endless.

You are simple creatures compared to us.

We are the center of the human race

but you have conned us.

Man have conned us into thinking we're on Earth for you.

You're on Earth for us

and the kids, and if you do a good job we'll keep you alive

when you're an old fart.

[Claire] If you're expecting that emotion

is going to win out, you're absolutely right.

Women tend to come from a more emotional standpoint

if there is a conflict or a problem.

Women have a better way of being able to manage their feelings.

So, therefore, women may appear to have more power and be more in control.

The reason that men honestly don't think they're the boss

is because women internally make the compromises

before the discussion goes on.

women are pre-negotiating before they even get to the negotiating table?

One of the things we try to teach women is to say,

"Well, I actually don't want to do this.

I want to do these three or four things."

And not be afraid to, to say one of the four things

that he might not like, but then let him make some choices there.

That's the way to go back and forth.

Every relationship is partly a power struggle,

because people in a marriage

are sharing resources. There's a lot more negotiation

in contemporary marriage than there ever had to be historically.

And whenever you have more negotiation, as opposed to its one person say,

you have more opportunity for conflict. And it requires

higher interpersonal skills, more interpersonal competence

to negotiate, than to have things like, "This is my say and that's your say."

Why do women get the power roll, power position in marriages?

Every woman that you know, if you were to go out and do

a survey on this documentary with women

about how many guys do they have in their phone

that they could just call up right away

and come ask, to ask the penis...

another guy, "Come and get the coochie." See how many would come right away.

-Pretty much all of them. -Pretty much all the guys in their phone.

That's every guy in their phone. Now, go to a guy

and ask him, out of all the women in his phone,

which one could he call, and they would come over right away and give him coochie.

-He'd be lucky to have one. -Exactly.

For a woman who wants penis, they're readily available.

For a man who wants a vagina, you got to work a lot harder.

So, if you are in control of the more valuable item,

you're going to have the power in a relationship.

Right. He who has the gold makes the rule.

The power struggle stage is the bridge to real life love.

Now, you can't get to real life love until you go through the power struggle,

but people leave and get divorced at the power struggle stage instead of working harder.

[Roger] Tell me the secret. How can I get more out of the negotiation

with my partner, so I get more of what I want?

If you want more of what you want,

give her more of what she wants.

Because then she's going to be in a generous mood.

[Roger] We have some pretty strong agreement that the woman is the boss.

I think it may have something to do with logic versus emotion,

because emotion will always trump logic, love always wins.

Did Carlton say he loved you when he married you?

Oh, we didn't discuss that. Compatibility comes first.

You have to get along in order to live together.

-[Roger] What is love? -[Matt] It's a desire to monopolize,

sexually and socially, another individual.

Most people think it's just their feeling,

"I feel a loving sensation, so therefore I must love."

If it's not followed up by action, that you can clearly see

this person is behaving in a loving way, then I don't think it counts.

Where does the modern world get it wrong?

Because they've merged two bodies, and they think

love is connection of two bodies.

That's not love. That's physical infatuation,

it has nothing to do with love.

What is love? Love is giving.

When do you feel best? When you're giving love or when you're receiving it?

The feeling good comes from the fact that you're giving it, 'cause it's coming from you.

Because you can't feel their love. What you're feeling is yourself loving that person.

Men don't fall in love when they receive. They fall in love when they give.

Women do not bond when they give, they only bond when they receive.

So, women that are nervous, give away sex.

Do you know why?

Puts them in charge.

There's always strings attached to love.

It's like, "I love you,

if you're honest, if you're faithful

if you communicate, if you respect."

It's almost like you are, um, addicted when you're in love.

what are love addicts addicted to?

Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine.

[Bonnie] The oxytocin, it's called the cuddle hormone.

It makes us feel safe and bonded.

They get married, then she goes off the pill, gets pregnant.

And then?

She finds the guy repulsive.

She doesn't want to sleep in the same bed with him.

So, how do they conceptualize that? They see that as,

"Oh, that's the stress of the kid.

It's just we've been married too long,

whatever, the relationship's gone sour." No.

It's just that you were short circuiting this biological chemical...

interaction. And now you're not anymore.

-By being on birth control? -By being on the birth control pill.

And now the woman's body is saying, "No, that's not the right partner for you."

It doesn't matter if he's Brad Pitt.

It doesn't matter if he's a millionaire, it-- All these things

that, that the conventional theorists will tell you are, are essential

to women's attractive-- attraction to men.

Those things are overridden by the biological attraction.

Couples should go off the pill for at least

a year before they make any long-term commitments,

because they might not be compatible.

[Roger] Of course, we have to talk about sex.

How important is sex to marriage?

Extremely important.

Extremely, extreme-- Sex is extremely important to marriage.

[laughing]

Sex is extremely important to marriage!

Sex is as important to the relationship as it is important

to the people who are in the relationship, some people,

they don't have a high sex drive. It's not something--

They would prefer comfort, they prefer a different kind of connection.

In life you need sex just to, just to

maintain mental composure, chemical composure.

The longer you don't come, have you noticed that the more fights occur?

You start to become, go crazy.

You start to get angry and your head starts to go nuts.

So, I feel that ejaculation is, is, is-- all of the sudden,

like, once you come, the relationship gets better.

There's such a thing called NSB,

which stands for Nasty Sperm Buildup,

and that will change a whole man's demeanor.

And so, you got to express that, it needs to be expelled from the body.

He gets cranky if he doesn't get sex.

So, if I want a smooth marriage and I want to, you know,

not manipulate but get what I want, then I know that, like--

-You got to give it up. -You better give it up.

[laughs]

It's so funny that even that phrase is a scarcity,

like somebody taking something from you.

It's like, no, it's really a gauge

of our relationship.

Even if a couple is very conflictual and they fight a lot,

the sex is the glue that keeps them together.

Couples that I worked with who stopped having sex,

they don't feel married, they feel like roommates.

They have to have sex a minimum of once a week to stay chemically bonded.

The first marriage...

our sexual relationship was almost like a reward,

like, if you're being good,

then-- Or, "You didn't upset me, and you've been good, I'm going to bless you."

You would get upset, and I would recoil,

and I couldn't recover, but who wants to have sex

when they in that mindset, not me.

It's your responsibility to your partner

to service them, because if you're the only-- This is the only

place where you can get this one thing that you really want.

And sometimes you feel like you really need,

then you need to be able to get it when you want it.

The problem is that I'm always tired because... [laughs]

-So-- -She can always blame it on the kids.

Sexual freedom and the way that we take that for granted,

it's really something that's born in the 18th century.

Before that, everyone agrees that sexual freedom

is a bad thing, is a dangerous thing, that sex outside

marriage shouldn't be allowed in the state

and at the church. And ordinary people put a huge amount of

effort into policing and punishing people for that.

Then in the 18th century,

there occurs the first sexual revolution. For the first time

people start to articulate the idea that

what they do in their own bedrooms as consenting adults

-is no one else's business. -What's the normal number of times

for a couple to have sex per week?

-I'd say three. -Two or three.

-Once, twice. -Probably once or twice.

I think the reality is one and under for married couples.

-What do you think? -Um...

-Yeah, about that. -I'd settle for twice a year at this point.

25% of marriages in the U.S. are sexless.

But then if you add in couples where they're having sex

out of duty or out of guilt or out of responsibility or out of

some kind of religious duty,

my guess is at least 40% of marriages in the U.S.

are sexually dead or, or not doing well.

How many times was it when you were single?

-It was a once, twice a day. -A day.

[laughs]

-Three times a day. -Five or six a day.

Like, we have in Judaism, two weeks on, two weeks off

as cold turkey, anytime that the menstrual week

and one week after, that is completely taboo.

I've had people that make love every 25 years.

If the couple is happy,

it's fine. If one person

thinks there's a problem, that's a definition of a problem.

[Roger] What causes passion and how do we get it back when it's gone?

Mother Nature only gives us a cocktail about maybe three years of this hot

chemistry between two people. "Oh, my God.

I'm so in love, and I merge with this person, so it can get

babies out of us, and then it's gone in like three years,

and then we're kind of left in this relationship."

Why can't we have butterflies in our stomach for our partner forever?

Short answer is, is you would die, that would actually

become toxic to your body over time, to keep releasing

that level of hormone. When you're madly in love with somebody,

it's actually hard to live the rest of your life. Uh,

you're distracted, uh, you tend to obsess about them.

The masculine, feminine dynamic is really important

to relationship, in order to have real spark,

to have real attraction in a relationship,

it requires polar opposites. To create really strong attraction,

you need a strong masculine and a strong feminine energy.

That's where the, the polarity and the spark comes.

Sometimes women think that that's a weakness to be feminine.

Most men don't want a very masculine woman.

Attraction plus an obstacle equals passion, right?

You think of all the great love stories in history, Romeo and Juliet.

"No, you can't be together. You can't possibly be together."

You think of any story, you know, along those lines,

there's always an obstacle, the family, distance, war, whatever it is.

Well, what do we do when we marry someone or when we have a

long-term relationship with someone, we remove the obstacle.

So then what happens? Passion diminishes.

So, to rekindle passion you've got to place obstacles back in your path?

Right, relationships that are long-distance, relationships

where one or both of the partners is away working often,

relationships, which are very tumultuous, right?

"You don't love me." "I do love you." And then make up sex, right?

You got to fight all the time.

Those things are functional

for maintaining passion because they constantly create distance.

[Sheila] when we had first met, Norma moved across the country.

-So our entire relationship was... -It's long distance.

...was me staying up till four o'clock in the morning with a thesaurus

trying to write two sentences that were clever and witty and

bright and smart like she was, and just subtly romantic.

The function of sexual attraction is to close distance,

but once you've closed the distance,

then that pole is gone.

And that's as, as natural and unavoidable

as, you know, when you eat, hunger's gone,

of course it is, you satisfied the hunger.

-Sometimes need space. -Need some space. You do need space.

Space is definitely a thing, and also just, like, to breathe deep and just

leave, you know, blaze a J, whatever you got to do.

We're just fucking... [exhales]

-Woosa. -And miss each other, because we have

a very intense marriage.

When passion fades over time, is there anything we can do to rekindle it?

Some of the best research comes from Art Aaron and his colleagues

who have found that doing a new activity together

that's active and fun and novel to both partners--

-Like taking up skiing or golf or what? -Those are great examples,

dance would be another thing. And some of these studies,

they just haven't bounced around on those, uh, little bouncy balls

that kids will bounce around on. It's a totally ridiculous

activity, but these couples that have been married 20, 30 years will report

these feelings of euphoria and these feelings of passion

that sometimes have faded over time.

But it's got to be something that you both wish to pursue.

It's something that seems to involve a bit of

physical activity and something that's novel and new.

Breaking your routine and doing something different.

After we get married,

we often stop doing the very things that got us

to fall in love together. And habituation,

then we experience, not only the good side of habituation, which

is the security, but the downside,

which is boredom and taking each other for granted.

Have fun. Don't forget the-- Think about the first time

you met, you didn't come with a serious demeanor.

Pleasure is natural. And if you look at children running around,

they get pleasure from everything. That's our natural state.

[Roger] What about monogamy, is it difficult to be monogamous?

You're in Noah's Ark and you got one chick there, do you think he'd be monogamous?

Anybody can be in a monogamous relationship for three years.

Then the need for diversification comes up,

and that's a chemical issue.

what percentage of mammals are monogamous?

very few, fewer than 2%.

Most birds are the other way round,

most birds are monogamous, and very few

are polygamous, about 90, 95%

of birds are socially monogamous.

But in the 1980s when genetic fingerprinting came along,

we discovered that although they were socially monogamous,

they weren't always faithful. There was a lot of

infidelity going on. That a pair of swallows

bringing up a brood of chicks would be bringing up chicks that

had not been fathered by that father, or some of them hadn't,

if he was a low status male with short tail.

If he was a high-status male with a long tail, then the chances are

that they were his kids, and indeed the kids in the nest next

door were his too, you can immediately see parallels here,

that women when they are unfaithful tend to choose high-status males.

How much are people cheating on each other sexually?

When I was doing my research, we gave it

a figure of 10% of children

don't belong to their father, on average.

Why is monogamy the rule?

The central organizing principle of hunter-gatherer societies

-is sharing and egalitarianism. -Everybody shared everything.

Food, shelter, childcare, protection from predators.

-And probably sex. -And probably sexuality.

So, any one of the children could belong to anyone,

a father could, could, could treat any,

-anybody as their child. -And do, in contemporary

-hunter-gatherer societies. -If you were to withhold sex,

would that be seen as antisocial behavior?

-Quite possibly. -If monogamy is so difficult,

-why do people actually do it? -Western civilization

went through this extraordinary change where it

gradually and painfully, and with lots of setbacks,

imposed normative monogamy even on

aristocrats, and why did we do it?

We probably did it to pacify society, to re-divert people's

energy from the battle for women

to the battle for economic growth.

Until very recently, monogamy has only applied to women,

like, even, you know, you look at Biblical times,

whatever, adultery is defined as having sex with

another man's wife. A married guy could have sex

with slaves, with concubines, with prostitutes, as long as

he's not having sex with another man's wife or unmarried daughter.

-Property issue. -Exactly.

In a vibrant tribal environment,

everybody needs to know that they're all kind of in love

with each other, that that's part of what keeps it strong,

that's part of what keeps a tribe strong.

There's a, a term that's called skin hunger,

-the hunger for connection -Infant mortality rates.

Some of them can be traced

to the fact that they weren't held enough.

-Yeah. -We need to be touched and not just by one person.

It's no different than demonstrating any other type of

discipline that's necessary in life.

Are you saying that monogamy is unnatural,

but it strengthens us by giving us a test?

Being in a healthy, monogamous relationship

makes it more likely for you to succeed, than if you're

going to continue to try to take on the world on your own.

If you fuck another people, I kill you.

-[clapping] -[laughs]

[Roger] What is the definition of cheating?

Knowingly demonstrating behavior that the other person

-would consider to be cheating. -Any time you spend more time

and energy with another person or thing: golf, tennis, work,

a person, than your partner.

-Keeping secrets from your spouse. -Broken agreement.

The only way you know you love yourself or anybody else

in the contracts you're willing to make and keep.

And the contracts do not necessarily mean you're monogamous.

Cheating is not-- There are-- I have women finding women for their men.

I have no problem with open relationships.

I think that you cheat with your eyes.

I think once you desire another woman or another man,

-you're already cheating, -[Marni] You know, you're fantasizing

about somebody else in your-- when you're having sex.

Is that cheating? Not really.

I know people do it, but would your partner

be happy to know, "Oh, what are you thinking about?"

And you're thinking about, you know, your coworker.

As soon as a person covets another man's wife,

he is stealing from that other man. As soon as a woman covets another man's husband,

she's stealing from another woman. Like, I tell women,

you know, we dress modestly.

[Roger] Are you breaking up relationships?

[Noel] No, there's unfaithfulness

and there's discovered unfaithfulness. When it's discovered,

there's a lot of rigmarole that comes with it. A lot of marriages can

suffer, breakdown. Undiscovered infidelity,

there's no evidence that it has anything other than a positive impact.

The affair is their marriage preservation device.

It's a modern construct, cheating. Uh, it sounds bad.

It's like promiscuity. It sounds, sounds like

something you shouldn't do, but it's part of being human.

And even the buzzwords, unfaithfulness.

Like, I haven't lost faith in my marriage.

-I just, I just got drunk, you know? -Right.

-Why do people cheat? -Because their needs aren't being met.

The woman would rather be a mistress to a powerful man,

than married to a beta.

-[Roger] Are you allowed to get a massage with a happy ending? -[laughs]

-Would that be cheating? -I'm pretty sure I'm not, uh, but I'm not--

Oh, I think if you asked I would say, "Yes, you can do that."

-I think if you were in Thailand and you said-- -Are you fucking kidding me?

-I was just in Thailand. -[laughs] I know, I, I know.

But you didn't ask, you should have asked, if you had asked--

Temptation would be always there,

every flower going to look prettier than the home.

But you have to remember, this is only one

flower, the home, they, they take care of you.

The other all look good, but, but maybe very poison.

[Roger] Okay, what other specific things can we do

to improve our relationships and marriages?

Two things, be kind and ask for what you want.

love in fairness, right? Love, "You're special to me,

I care about you. And I want to be fair with you."

Those are the most important two things.

How important is honesty in a relationship?

Honesty is the most important thing

in any relationship, being honest, open and forthcoming.

Way overblown, you know, honesty is one of

those mythologies, again, that we put out there.

If you didn't have dishonesty in relationship, it wouldn't get out of

the starting gate. You know, you wouldn't have gotten through the first date.

For a good marriage it can't be all honest.

You don't say things that are going to hurt someone's feelings

under the guise of, "I'm being honest with you."

The idea of honesty implies that there's only one truth.

And if you don't tell it, you're being dishonest.

In any relationship, in any life, there's always multiple

things going on, and we select what we're going to tell

our partners and what we don't. The question is:

on what basis do we make that selection?

Honesty in a marriage has to be buffered with sensitivity.

We want to tell our partners things that maintain closeness,

that allow ourselves to be known accurately.

I had a female friend a long time ago who asked her husband

if she was the most attractive woman he'd ever dated.

And he didn't say yes. She did not like that answer.

And I thought, "Why did you even go there?"

That's just the question you shouldn't ask.

Let him volunteer that, but don't ask that

-if you can't handle the answer. -Wasn't the right answer on his side,

"Of course you're the most beautiful, honey,"

even though-- even if it is an outright lie.

People look to their partner for confirmation, right?

And sort of to help their ego, and to make them feel better about themselves.

So, if you're really honest, you can cause long lasting damage.

Maybe there's a good rule of thumb. The last is always the best.

I think that's a great rule of thumb.

No very serious discussions

-after 10 p.m. at night. -Or...

-Or after a drink or two. -...after you've been drinking.

No fight should last longer than 15 minutes.

-Yeah. -Because if you're fighting more than 15 minutes,

you're not fighting about the issue anymore.

Is it okay to be dissatisfied or have conflict in a relationship?

It's absolutely wonderful [chuckles] to be dissatisfied.

That's how the relationship grows.

It's a very American view that conflict is an indication

that the relationship is not good. And the function

of conflict is mutual understanding.

So, over time, conflict helps us

to learn how to love one another better.

If you're not fighting, it means that at least one

person is keeping things to themselves.

And then they get triggered by an event of some, some kind that

makes them recall all these times that they were aggravated.

I teach people how to fight fairly by an appointment.

If you have an idea, a want, an opinion, a suggestion,

a thought, a need, you have to make an appointment.

"Honey. I have an idea about where to go,

what to do, when to do it, how to do it.

When would it be convenient, today,

hopefully, for you to hear me?"

"Not today." Okay, write it down, capture it

while it's a hot specimen. And then the next day,

"Is it convenient for you to hear my idea from yesterday?"

And if he doesn't ever want to listen to you,

you're not in a relationship.

Men are allergic to woman's emotionality.

So, instead of getting upset with men,

just say, "Thank you for sharing."

And that way, they'll get used to telling you.

-Reward the good behavior. -Try not to get reactive,

because then he'll never tell you anything again.

Before you react to your partner's expression,

whatever they're upset about,

ask a question, and make it a big broad question.

Something like, "Help me understand this. What is it

that's the most upsetting part about this for you?"

When the wife says, "I'm sick of picking up after you,

I'm sick of being everybody's maid around here."

What she's probably feeling is overwhelmed.

And so, if he picks it up with,

"I have been doing so much better with my socks.

This is the first time in the last eight days

I have left those socks on the floor.

And now, that's when you're coming at me."

After that conversation didn't go anywhere,

she could go back and say, "I feel bad about that fight we had.

what I am is overwhelmed and needing your help."

There's a pretty good chance he's going to sign up.

If he went up to her and said, "I just

appreciate everything you do for me in the family,

and I realize I've probably been letting you down."

She would probably melt.

If someone's kind of upset, or...

Speaking, I ask them what they want, one of four things,

which is: do they want me just to listen,

do they want advice,

do they want space, or do they want just loving touch?

Men and women dealing with stress very, very different.

What ends up happening is that when one starts talking

about something that she's upset about,

something that's a problem for her.

And she wants to release the emotion,

she wants to get it out, she wants to be heard,

she wants to be understood.

As soon as he hears the problem,

he jumps in and wants to fix it, 'cause he wants to help.

Unfortunately, him fixing it

makes her feel that she's not being heard, which creates

more emotion, because the emotion gets amplified.

So when woman start to say, "[sighs] I don't like my work today.

My boss is, you know, terrible."

A lot of the men, at this time, should be just,

"Oh, honey. I know you work very hard.

It's okay, you know, come, let me give you a hug."

That will solve everything. To make women feel loved,

you need to let them feel like you, you hear them.

But most of the time, men will say,

"Man, that really sounds bad, but why don't you just tell him,

why don't you just, you know, quit?"

Did you hear the tone? It sounds like

you accused me not doing well enough for, for me.

I just venting to you, and then you tell me I'm bad.

So, I get angry. So, we will start an argument here.

Once I've been heard and I feel I've been listened to and that we're on the same page,

then I can have a logical conversation about it.

Be mindful of your toxic thoughts

that get in the way, those extreme all or nothing ways of thinking

-that are not so charitable. -What are the toxic thoughts?

One example would be the all or nothing trap. And that's basically like,

"You never, ever care about what I think about anything.

You always have to be right.

You never pick anything up. You're always selfish."

If you would attack your partner's character in a fight,

calling them names, saying, "You're so lazy.

You're so selfish."

That goes to who that person is, and that leads to very

bad feelings. So it can linger and maybe never go away.

So, it's better for me to say, "I don't like the clutter versus

-you're a slob." -Absolutely, the more that I can make it

my problem, not in a manipulative way.

"I" is much better than, "You," in terms of dealing with conflict.

I'm describing me. I'm not describing you.

So what I'm doing is I'm opening myself.

I'm making myself more vulnerable

so that you can understand what's going on with me

without feeling blamed or even disliked.

David's great at talking, David is not good at listening.

I, I listen to you. You can't tell me I don't.

You snore.

And I have to keep--

-"Babe, honey, honey, you up?" -One thing...

-[laughs] -...the one thing

is, is that it depends on when you're talking to me.

The one thing to really build as a skill

is that ability to listen non-defensively

when your partner's upset with you.

Really communicate to your partner, "When you're upset, baby,

the world stops and I listen."

If you want to connect better with your spouse

sexually and in other ways,

try 15 minutes a day...

of friendship conversation, just the two of you.

The kind of conversation that you have when you

call your friend, or you go out for breakfast with your friend.

Those are the conversations that couples stop having.

No logistical talk, no problem solving and no conflict.

Ask your partner about their dreams,

the dreams for how they want to live their life,

their dreams for what gives their life purpose and meaning.

why is it so important to women that you spend listening time?

Listening time is time that you have to invest for sex later,

I think. There's a way to listen.

And guys don't listen very well, 'cause guys want to advise,

and women don't want your advice.

Which is kind of like consulting somebody

and then not wanting their opinion.

They want somebody to just shut up and listen.

The other thing that you can do that's really helpful is express

empathy, not everybody knows exactly what that is.

Empathy is guessing at what somebody's feeling

and then saying, "No wonder you're feeling that."

I've learned three things in marriage that have helped me tremendously,

especially when I want to watch games or when I want to do something is,

"What? [sighs] For real?"

You just keep running those, because women need things to keep them talking

and to keep them doing them. When you go against those, you create tension,

but when she comes home, if you can just say,

"What? No. For real?"

That just throws another log on the fire.

She keeps talking, she keeps doing what she's doing,

-and you get peace of mind. -How many minutes per night

do you have to spend listening to her to make sure she's happy?

Well, she sets the time on that, you don't have any say-so in that.

And it's whenever she wants it, you give it to her.

And, uh, there are things you can do

to probably lessen that time.

Like, sometimes I'll try to finish a story off for her.

Like, she'll start out, "You know, uh, Jane got fired today."

"What happened? She slept with Joe, didn't she? Yep, I knew that was coming.

But, hey, let's check this out." You have to, you know, kind of

massage to get the time, to get out of the time.

First of all, when you talk to a couple, I ask the guy,

"What hurts your wife?" Not what hurts you.

See if he knows, and then I ask the wife,

"Did he represent you accurately?" And she says either yes or no.

So, we see right there, if he understands what his wife is

hurting. The same thing with the wife, "What hurts your husband?"

And if she can relate that, if she can't relate that,

"You guys, no communication." So, what? There's no chance.

Number one, never ask him what he feels psychologically.

"Are you happy? Are you sad?" That's mothering.

Only ask him what he feels if he's puking or bleeding.

-What should men be doing? -Never ask her what she thinks,

unless you're doing business with her and you both get paid.

Tell her what you think, what you want, your opinion,

your suggestions, your ideas, and then ask her

-how she feels. -How can I choose a better partner?

What is it that you want in a partner? List the traits and characteristics

that you desire.

We do this in class sometimes with my students, and they'll list

dozens of things that they want in a partner.

The hard part comes when I say, "Now, be really focused

on the top three. What are the three things, three traits or characteristics

that you really want in a partner that you can't live without?"

And a lot of times, then, when you ask students,

then, to think about, "Well, what were your previous partners like,

and did they possess those characteristics?"

They'll say they had none of them.

Should I stop looking for a nice figure in a woman

and focus on emotional stability?

If you are a perfectly rational being, Roger,

I think that would be be a good idea, but I always say, uh,

"Kissing your partner shouldn't feel like eating your veggies."

In the Kama Sutra, they say that the three principle aims

in a man's life should be:

wealth, virtue, and love.

And that you can't achieve the any heights of one of them

without simultaneously pursuing the other two.

So, you can't actually be completely and totally in love,

if unless you were trying to be

a, a wealthy and virtuous man.

That most undervalued tool that enhance emotional health,

after 23 years of being a psychologist, is gratitude.

Being grateful for the person who you wake up next to.

I think forgiveness is essential in, in a marriage, because where the fuck you going to go?

You're still going to wake up next to that person the next day.

I think, now, our fights are a lot less intense than they used to.

We deal with broken glass, all kinds of crazy shit.

-I'm Brazilian. -Yeah, she's Brazilian. In the beginning.

'Cause it's just, fucking everything was a goddamn fucking, you know,

level five hurricane. We've had a million fake breakups,

We've fucking-- She goes to moms,

or, or we immediately walk out, slam the door.

"Fuck you, I'm signing the papers." And it never goes anywhere.

We're still back in the same goddamn place, and we're in love.

-We have a plaque in the kitchen which I can show you. -With the rules.

Quotes the house rules, Mama's rules.

-This is my rules. -[Don] One: be kind, forgive quickly,

tell the truth, love each other, and have fun.

We used to do things to have fun. This is not a boring marriage, it's not suicide,

marriage is not a death certificate, marriages is, is,

is a new chapter to life, marriage is living.

[Roger] What advice do you have for somebody considering marriage?

You will absolutely know it in your bones

if you've found someone that will work for you.

And if you spend a lot of time convincing yourself about it,

-it's not the right person. -It's not a good idea.

Before anyone gets married,

I think they should do premarital counseling.

-[Roger] Did you do that? -No, uh, we did, but we lied.

-[laughs] -'Cause a lot of times, people don't ask the questions

about how you're going to handle finances

and children and infidelity.

What if nobody gets married anymore,

if they go to counseling first? [chuckles]

cleanliness of a house, aspirations and goals.

We didn't have any goals. I started having tons of goals.

My husband had zero goals. And that was the--

-hard for me. -Yeah, but I've grown up since then. I'm a big boy now.

I think the person should have to list three references,

and you should be able to call those references and find out

what was the reason the relationship didn't work out.

"Hey, I checked your references out,

all those relationships ended great. Let's move forward."

But if it comes back, "These people want to kill you."

That's a [laughs] recipe for no.

The number one warning sign is having a problem with anger.

Both women and men have to really protect ourselves

from people who are emotionally abusive.

A lot of the men I work with, you know, they say,

"I just want to have someone who's low drama,

someone who's not that high maintenance,

and someone who makes my life easier and better."

Religious couples actually tend to be a bit

more stable over time.

And researchers think part of the reason is because

there's an agreed upon set of rules

and agreed-upon expectations in the relationship.

So, it's not necessarily anything inherent in the religion,

but just the fact that the social rules are very well laid out.

So, the key to success in a relationship is going in knowing all the rules?

Yeah. I wish you could know them all. You can never quite

know all of them, of course, but if you know some of

the fundamental ones, that's, that's certainly helpful.

Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest emperors of the Roman era said,

"Our lives are dyed the color of our imaginations."

I hated the idea of marriage, I hated the concept of marriage,

I hated the idea of monogamy. And, uh,

I think the lesson, then, is usually the things

you fear the most are probably the things you most need.

[Roger] Here's the big question: Why should I get married?

You know, there are many reasons to be married that have nothing to do with reproduction.

Uh, you can ask any gay couple about that, right?

Taxes, uh, visas, living in foreign countries,

the hospital visitation rights, inheritance.

To be in their partner's obituary, to be able to talk to the doctor,

and to have the kids not be embarrassed.

When you bring children, and you educate them to be upright fine human beings,

to build society, to contribute to society.

You never die because your legacy lives on.

If you think back on your life and the greatest moments of your life,

the times when you had the most fun, the most memorable,

they always involve other people.

It's not usually just you. [chuckles] You and your cat,

you and the Grand Canyon. [chuckles]

It's usually you, friends, family, a partner.

You want someone that you can share things with.

it's so worth it when you get that balance right.

Where you're actually sharing your life with somebody who--

You're both putting the effort in, and you're enhancing each other's lives,

and amplifying the experience. You have this person who

you get to share all of the minutiae that,

actually, on your own maybe wouldn't have been as fun.

But getting to share it with somebody is very fulfilling.

[Roger] In case you just missed it,

that was the answer we've been looking for.

Marriage is a legal contract, primarily having to do with sharing money

or property or your estate.

There is no legal requirement that you have to

stay with somebody forever or be loving or be monogamous

or a good listener. The basic underlying reason

people get married is to agree to share their resources,

mainly for the purpose of raising children,

but regardless of whether you get married or not,

it's this simple, life is better shared.

The sunset is more beautiful when you experience it with somebody.

Even if a relationship doesn't last as long as you like,

or it's difficult and painful, you still experienced life together.

Success in a relationship means you learned

what that coming together was there to teach you.

So, open up and share your life with somebody.

[upbeat guitar music]