How Will We Love? (Youtube 76min Exclusive)

I guess the project got started when I went to Indiana and visited with my grandparents. I took my video camera and sat em down to interview them about their relationship and their lives.
What they had to say was extremely inspirational and obviously turned into a much much bigger project
I wish I knew more people who were in happy successful relationships so that we could, so that I could have a model
The big illusion is there is a residual belief that most of the population that we actually know how to be married and we know how to be parents. But if you look at our society and civilization, we clearly don’t
You can feel deep attachment to one person while you feel intense romantic love for somebody else while you feel the sex drive for a group of people unrelated to either of the other two
So we wanna understand a little about what datings like in LA
Uh, it feels a lot like just putting your head in a toilet and flushing
Do you think marriage can last forever?
Yes
The most significant relationships that I’ve seen are based on something that’s pretty much the antithesis of our culture which would be commitment
We really believe that there is somewhere somebody that’s going to fulfill all my dreams forever
I didn’t realize adultery is as common until after I went through it
When it gets really bad, that’s when it’s about to change.. and most people leave when it’s really bad, so they never get to the change, and I think that’s such a tragedy
I’ve probably interviewed over 500 people or so in the last 5 years. You know, just people from all walks of life
Including, you know, some of the top experts in this field that have spent their lives researching this and trying to help people
Do you guys realize how therapeutic this could be for someone though (woman laughs)
Very few conversations like that take place in this country, and I think that’s a terrible shame
Maybe this movie will make a difference
he was darn good looking
uh, well he’s still good looking, yet (woman laughs)
I guess it was meant to last
He, he treated me with respect and even guys in those days there were a few that didn’t (woman laughs)
We’ve had a lot of good times together, we’ve had a lot of heartaches together
But I guess, eh.. living and loving (man cries)
Having arguments and making up
and that’s eh, pretty much our lives now
I fell in love. Completely, utterly, naïve 19 year old, infatuation, head over heels…couldn’t stop thinking about him crazy crazy…
well he broke up with me
(deep sigh) which was devastating….probably
and the weird thing about it is that I still haven’t gotten over it. I think. And it’s so surprising because
I feel like I’ve grown up so much and I’m, you know, this really together person, but I’m still in love with the guy I fell in love with when I was 19 (laughs) or 18 or whatever.
Have you ever been dumped by somebody who you really loved? and another question was, have you ever dumped somebody who really loved you?
and over something like 95% of men and women said yes to both. Very few people get out of love alive. We all feel the elation and we also feel the despair.
and I often wonder why? Why? Why don’t’ we just walk away when somebody, uh, dumps us. Why go through all this abandonment, rage and frustration, attraction and despair response
The more intensely you fall in love the deeper the wound was in childhood.
My mom stayed with my dad for 17 years in a horrible relationship, my parents fought like crazy, man, it’s just horrible
and when you look a our past, any of our pasts we’ve all had something happen in our lives , early on when we were these wide eyed innocent children
just full of love and full of self expression and everything was possible and everything was new in every moment and then something came along in our lives, whether it be our first relationship, our first heartbreak or the first angry words from a father
whatever it might be, something shut us down, and then there was a series of those events that happened. And you start to realize that the, that that experience you had around that pain, that wound was so severe that you naturally
in your young developing you mind, you say I never want to experience that again for the rest of my life
That would be me (laughs). I’m the luckiest man on the planet dude, I really am dude.. she’s…
Sometimes when I think about what I have with her man it makes me, I mean I wanna…and I have dude, I’ve cried man.. it’s like, it’s not.. it’s obviously not tears of sadness, it’s tears of joy man..
and it’s like, I can’t even believe it dude. I can not believe how God has blessed me dude.
and now we’ve been together for 6 years and we’re engaged and to be married in November and it the most amazing relationship I have ever been in my life
the scary thing is though, sometimes I think I’m just gonna wake up one day and I’m gonna be like this is not real. ha
and that’s the key is a, it’s kinda like max and the mur… the one song, I don’t even know what the name of the song is, but from the first album it’s like (sings) white knuckle softly…
honestly it’s like you hold on, but you can’t hold on so tight that your white knuckling it, that you squeeze it to death. You gotta let it breath you know what I mean
I’ve come to believe that we’ve evolved three distinctly different brain systems for mating and reproduction. One for the sex drive, the craving for sexual gratification
The second is romantic love, that elation and focused attention and craving for a particular individual and the third is attachment, that sense of calm and security that you can feel for a long term partner.
But I think the most powerful reason that you fall for one person rather than another is what I call your love map.
and what a love map is an unconscious list, some of them are conscious, but a largely unconscious list of characteristics that your looking for in a mate that you develop during childhood.
I said I was gonna order one from santa claus (laughs)
order up a wife (laughs)
yes (laughs)
Maybe that’s what everybody should do is start ordering their mates from santa claus
or the womans . (father speaks) their womans?.. or I mean the woman’s can order their husbands
yeah, that what I meant, mates. Girls or boys.
and then, when the time is right…you’re in college or you’ve just gotten a divorce or ah, you’ve gotten older and your spouse has died and you’re beginning to look for another partner
and you walk into a room and there’s four people in the room and they’re all dressed , um, in a way that suites you, they’re all from your general background or you find them all interesting
and you talk to three of them and they’re perfectly wonderful people but it doesn’t light that brain system and then you talk to the fourth and that person somehow fits within your love map
Oh my God I think I just met the man I’m going to marry
and she was like “have you gone out with him yet?” and I’m like “no” that’s a detail. (laughs)
The night we met I told my friend when I got home that I met the man I was going to marry
and boom, that system gets ignited and you fall madly in love
I’ve got, you know, 20 years to find that person, settle down and grow old
because basically companionship when your old is the most important thing.
We all remember our first love. The excitement, the passion and all the mystery. But seldom does that last, and why is it so hard for some of us to move on?
I wrote a song that was pretty intense and sent it to him and he didn’t get it
To have somebody write a song about you like that is, is really nice and really intimate and
and still, and still no response and I don’t know, I don’t know if… I must just be like some crazy person who likes, maybe I just like him because he doesn’t like me, I don’t know
I think that I started to believe that that there was a sense of fate about him
and that we really were destined to be together
I don’t know why he doesn’t like me, and you know I was just thinking I wanted to ask him like point blank, what is your problem?
When you love somebody you are investing your very precious, um, courtship time and energy and
we don’t have much time on this planet and we do need to reproduce and if you invest a great deal in somebody and
then that is taken away from you, you’ve lost very precious, um, biological energy
I truly believe that through all of my experiences that also doing the work, you know, really doing the work, uh, on myself and loving myself is how I attracted, um, him.
I was in a 13 year marriage before I met Nadia and, um, I was pretty certain that the last thing I wanted was to go into another relationship.
I was pretty convinced of that and then along comes Nadia and um my, my pattern in the past had always been jumping from one to the next just to kind of cushion the blow, you know
and so I really, even though my heart was so clear saying wow, you know, this is (makes a whew sound) this is the one you’ve been waiting for there was a part of me that said
“is that true?” or are you just really trying to, you know take the heat off of just, what you’re going through right now
It’s kind of like the go to place for me when I feel… like I need hope
You know like the promise of romance is such a hopeful feeling
I got married when I was 21 with the expectation that it was going to last forever
you know that’s what we, that’s what we are conditioned to believe and think that this is til death do us part
and when you look at what’s going on in society it’s clearly not til death do us part for now a majority of couples
We have impossible dreams expectations for example we really believe that is somewhere, somebody that going to fulfill all my dreams forever
So this is really, this is really like the big problem. Is that it’s a lack of personal responsibility about their own emotional state
and having an expectation that a relationship is going to fulfill missing parts of yourself that it cannot fill the only thing a relationship can fill in you is the relationship part.
It can’t fulfill low self esteem, it can’t fulfill frustrated career ambition, it can’t fulfill anything that’s it not designed to fulfill
But we don’t want to give up the dream so, the code for love in America is very clear, it’s false expectation. We expect something so much…
we expect one person to be, to fulfill all your needs and dreams forever. It might happen once in a while some, you know some people might, but if you look at the numbers half of marriage ends in a divorce
I feel like our society is so like disposable, like if something doesn’t work then like something’s not like you don’t want to fix it you just like whatever, get over it and get divorced
Even from a marketing perspective there is a car commercial out there that says - hey, you don’t like your nose, get rid of it… you don’t like your boss, get a new job… you don’t like your wife, change her out
and their tag line is whatever happened to commitment? Well we understand commitment and that’s why we give you the hundred thousand mile warranty.
Well, my whole point is that that’s clever marketing but also, it ah, it makes a statement about our society
I think that some of the most significant marriages that I’ve seen, the most significant relationships that I’ve seen are based on something that’s pretty much the antithesis of our culture which would be commitment
I think that when people really commit and put their trust, their faith in another person in the context of marriage I think then they have the foundation to build a great relationship
And the big illusion is there is a residual belief that most of the population that we actually know how to be married and we know how to be parents. But if you look at our society and civilization, we clearly don’t
If you look at all the books on our shelves that have written about how to be married, clearly nobody agrees with that, but it’s a sort of unconscious thing
First of all we have to realize that this notion that we have today of a man and a woman living together, sometime with one or two children. We call this nucleus family and is new, is very new it’s like 100 years old.
Didn’t existed before, never. So for the first time now… we, we isolate people, we take them out of their environment and then we take them to the city and we put them in a little room and they supposed to be a family. I mean this is not the way.
Before we had extended family where all the people living together… the young, the old, the grandparents. I mean to separate the grandparents from the grandchildren it is a mistake, we know that.
So this notion, of taking people… a man and a woman out of their environment and putting them in a box and then expecting them to be happy to be alone together, if I can say that, is very weird, is very new
A hundred years ago marriage was just as fragile as it is today, literally just as fragile. A hundred years ago your husband or wife was just as likely to either desert you or die.
Today we divorce instead. In fact, um, historians now believe that modern divorce is just a social a response to a pattern that has always been in the human animal. In fact we are seeing more long marriages today then we did ever in human history
because we’re living longer. We’re now seeing 35 and 40 year marriages. I know a couple that has been married for 73 years. You would have never found that during all of human evolution you really wouldn’t have found that
She didn’t go out with any other fellas and I didn’t take out any other girls and I’ve never had another girlfriend and she tells me she’s never had another boyfriend. And I don’t think she has.
lets see that was 70 years ago, last feb…February the 7th … was 70 years that we’ve been married
This issue of staying together for 50 or 60 or 70 years was unimaginable. This is a new problem that you guys are exploring it’s a new problem in the scope of human history.
I used to think, well, how can you commit to anything forever, really? It just doesn’t really make sense.
marriage to me is not just a piece of paper it’s really sort of a rite of passage. A sacred union that you have with your partner and that’s been lost in our society, in our culture
so back on the vows, even though I’ve tried to evade that and you’ve somehow brought me right back to it, thank you very much, um, on the spot… mr. brickler
I haven’t really thought about my vows actually (laughs) um, I can tell you what it is in our relationship right now that I love and that why I feel like it works is because we always have this openness with one another
we all wanna be in a relationship but when you choose to and you make that decision there is so much freedom, so much freedom and commitment
I was in the Philippines with my family and he was still in Los Angeles and he was going to meet me there and he called me on the phone and he was like, oh you know I’m coming
and I’ve made a slide show of photo’s from the last time we were in the Philippines, he’s a photographer and took amazing pictures of the Philippines on our last trip and I’m like, ok great
and he’s like, so can we get the family together and you know I have a presentation and I was like, sure honey, of course … so, you know, we grabbed my laptop computer and we put it in my parents room
and so I thought, wow, it could be really cool to do this around her… in front of her parents
and he’s holding a sign, a cardboard sign that said “my girl” and then my sisters were like, oh, is this from your birthday because I just had a birthday and I was like no, and then the next slide came up and it was another sign
and it said, um “my best friend” and then the next slide said “love of my life” and then the next slide said “my sweet Nadia please be my wife” and everybody just started screaming ( hear screaming in background)
my mom started screaming, and my sisters were like crying and then he was already down on his knees and he looked at my dad and he said may I have your permission. My dad said by all means
and by this time I’m just in shock, I’m totally in shock… and he pulls out the ring and this beautiful ring that he designed himself and he asked me to marry him and I said yes of course
It was early because we were going square dancing, we always square danced on Saturday night. So we uh, started to, uh, leave and got down to the bottom of the hill from where they lived
and he turned into a country lane and I thought oh now, wait a minute here. And we uh, got to the, down into the lane a little ways and he stopped the car and he kissed me
and handed me a ring box and it had my diamond in it… it was very very a insignificant diamond but to me it was a big as the hope diamond
today there is really a different mindset among people about relationships. I mean in the grandparents day they, marriage what was you did and there was a huge stigma against living together, against premarital sex, against divorce.
Not only stigma but laws a lot of cases so this is how they planned their life, they got married and this is what the culture dictated to them and they didn’t even think of divorce
and of course they probably went through as many difficulties as people do today in relationships but it wasn’t a cause for divorce. Today all of that’s changed and young people there’s no cultural norm divorce is very easy
there’s no stigma against premarital sex very much. Very little stigma anymore against cohabitation, you can do all these things so the culture in those respects is just kind of collapsed
I also believe that divorce is very accepted now so a lot of people, it’s almost like getting married is dating, and then you just break up by getting a divorce
In the early 60’s when divorce was on the rise, people just thought that divorce was just kind of a panacea to anything that was wrong in marriage and then as time went on, I knew
I just my, I intuitively knew that if I continued to help couples dissolve their marriages I was contributing to this disposable marriage mentality and it wasn’t a good thing
I f things just don’t go our way, the hell with it. You know, it’s either disposable, I don’t have time to deal with it, I don’t wanna deal with it, I don’t have the energy and I don’t want to invest the emotion
No matter how hard it is, in most circumstances to work the marriage out, the price of divorce is usually always higher
My parents got a divorce, like, I guess a year and a half ago and my mom is now getting remarried and I don’t know if it’s the right decision really.
So, I guess I’m kinda cynical about myself and about, like, if it will come
I read an article the other day that said that only 16% of all divorces are amicable. That means that the rest of them are divorces where a husband and wife hate each other
and do everything they can to undermine each others success and the children are caught up in the middle of all of this
What was it like watching your parents go through the process of separating?
Um, it was just hard cause they changed completely. Like their personalities completely changed and they were just different
Feelings are the most notoriously changeable things in human kind and you can not hold long term relationships based on the idea
that your gonna be romantically in love with somebody for the rest of your life
And so you think, you think based off of that you think that it’s not possible for 2 people to stay together for a lifetime?
No, I do think it’s possible, I definitely do. I think it’s hard to find it though
I think we’re going to see the same divorce rates we got for a while longer now because marriage is going through a huge transition
from what we call the traditional hierarchical marriage to the new egalitarian horizontal marriage
And with the change of women’s status in society marriage is being profoundly transformed and what I love about the women’s movement is,
I’ve always seen it as a liberation movement for both women and men and that both women and men could move beyond their roles into who they authentically are
We got the idea that you wanted independent women and I struggle with that constantly I think til this day because I’m super independent and I just had to be, I mean, whether I wanted to or not I’m super independent
After world war one we started in on our modern economic lifestyle in which more and more women were moving into the job market as they are today in societies around the world
and as women become more economically powerful they become more socially powerful and more sexually powerful and really that’s what were seeing in so many cultures.
Women expressing their sexuality. I think we’re going to come into America to clearly understand that women’s sex drive is just as strong as men
I found a book written 50 years ago about the American woman but by a British anthropologist
and 50 years ago at the century he said that American woman accomplish everything but one thing, to be feminine… wow.
What do you think is powerful about being a woman or whatever and I remember we had her write her answer down and she kept end of semester or whatever and then she returned it to us
and I remember being shocked and I said something like you can manipulate and control men that’s the power of being a woman and whatever and I remember getting that back at the end and like
that’s kinda horrible like, that’s what I think is powerful like, that’s not cool you know, all of a sudden I felt like my strength is in a different place and you know than just being able to manipulate men you know, sexually or whatever
Women are starting earlier at sex. Uh, they’re having more partners… uh, they’re expressing less remorse for the partners they’ve got, they’re marrying later,
they are divorcing when it’s not a good relationship, they’re having fewer children, they uh, they’re spending much longer time in the job market and um, they are expressing their sexuality
it’s crazy it’s almost like our society is this self fulfilling prophecy where everybody talks about the differences between men and women I certainly think that the liberation of women has created a whole new set of dynamics in terms of relationships
That’s a huge problem, she always wants sex I, I like doing other things, I like waking up in the morning and going to have breakfast (woman laughs)
you know, I like to wake up and you know, after I have breakfast go about my day and do things. She would just lay in bed all day and have sex every single day
and not with most guys, it’s so weird
and she’ll just sit there and just… I, I get really annoyed cause I like to wake up and go she’ll, and get mad at me and force me to lay there with her and I’m just like bored out of my mind
Well I think that women should date more than one man at a time without creating a cockfight you know, and that women should have a flock of suitors until a man has really expressed
that he’s got the same relationship goals that she does and wants to have them and fulfill them with her. This is a paramount importance. Most women are giving up their exclusivity for men
who have not stated that they want the same things that they do and that they don’t want to have them with them. Just because somebody says that they’re not sleeping with other people doesn’t mean that
they have any intentions of marrying you or having a family. And women are often stunned to find out a year into a relationship the guy doesn’t think they’re truly compatible.
We’re in a situation where the sexual and gender revolutions which are all supposed to benefit women really aren’t benefiting women quite as much as one might have hoped. But they are, if you can call it that, benefiting men
in the sense that they’re able to lead sorta the single playboy lifestyle and most young guys at least want to and then, of course, the question is how are they gonna ever change
and when are they gonna make the move and why wont men commit and so those are the big issues of our time
I’ve cheated on every girlfriend I’ve ever been with and I’ve felt bad about it every time
If you want me to be candid, monogamy doesn’t work
I didn’t realize that adultery was as common until after I went through it. Because once I went through it then everybody, all my friends, started to come out of all the closet going hey
I got this problem hey, my husband cheated on me or my wife cheated on me and you know, it’s … it’s more common than people think
The statistics are overwhelming in that sermon I told you where I talked about keeping your word and I talked about adultery I quoted a British study that said something like
70% of men at one point or another, you know, have an extramarital sexual experience. Now that may be, you know, a prostitute one night at a convention one night in Cleveland not an ongoing truly adulterous, you know,
affair of some kind, um so there’s a range of experience. But it is a line that most men, you know, cross. And one I suspect most women know most men cross
I saw a CNN report, was probably about a year ago on a , on the ashleymadison.com website uh, on the billboard in LA that says “ life is short, have an affair”. And I just, you know,
obviously that, you know, fulfills a particular market need. But I just said to myself what a sad commentary on our society and on the marital construct if that’s what influencing, assaulting or if that’s what people need to survive within the marriage relationship
So I go on line and find out that he has a profile on an online dating site that says he’s married and looking for secret rendezvous’. So then I go back to his emails
I start going through his sent files and deleted files and started finding all these correspondence with all these different girls and just realized he had been cheating on me for the past 6 months.
Um, that was one of the most devastating days of my life to find out your husband pretty much had a secret life behind your back
If anything I would love to understand about women is that um, why… why come… why come… why can’t I lie to you because you really don’t wanna know the truth, you know what I’m sayin…
you say “ hey tony, ask me … tell me the truth, tell me the truth. Have you cheated on me?” if I tell you the truth you aint gonna really like the truth.
overwhelmingly there are men that are struggling with this issue, look we are biologically built to want to impregnate the world, you know, I mean we just are…
so that’s, you know it’s a very difficult struggle for men and I think it comes down to being honest in your marriage about what you want and what you need
and how often you want it and need it and a lot of people aren’t willing to have that conversation
she took me to dinner to ask me questions because her and her husband were having problems. She actually cheated on her husband and had an affair for a few months, got pregnant.
He found out about the affair and they didn’t know whose the baby was or who the father was of the baby so for 9 months she had to go through a pregnancy with her husband
and he didn’t know if it was his baby or not until it got tested after it was born I can’t imagine going through something like that
although these three brain systems lust, romantic love and attachment are often inter related in largely mysterious ways they can also be disconnected from each other
you can feel deep attachment to one person while you feel intense romantic love for somebody else while you feel the sex drive for a group of people unrelated to either of the other two.
And this is where the human animal is in a pickle, I mean, all of us at some point in our lives have laying in bed at night and tried to decide what to do about these conflicting emotions
I chose to believe in a man that had left his first wife for his second wife, who left his second wife for his third wife, which was me, who then went on to have affairs
and many things happen during that protest stage foremost, you just love the person harder it’s called frustration attraction and I now understand that is because this reward system in the brain just becomes more active
and you feel a higher dopamine rush its why you can’t sleep at night it’s why you obsessively think about the person um, you’ll drop into their place of work and to tell them you’ll never see them again
you walk out ten minutes later you’re back to say it again um, I mean people do crazy things when they’re madly in love and they’ve been rejected because they’ve got the chemical energy and the tremendous desire to win this person back
In this weekend with Harvel and Helen their was a moment in the room that changed my life forever
And at the same time I was having this incredibly transforming experience and understanding the beauty and the magic my own husband, who I loved was committing adultery at the very same moment that I was there
I mean, why go through all this? But were saddled with a brain system that evolved long ago
Couples have to make the same kind of commitment to sex and the same time of commitment to making time for sex and romance
that they do for anything else in their lives, and if they don’t it’s going to lead to some pretty serious dysfunction
I think for far too long the church has dropped this ball. The church had tried to keep the bed out and I think it’s time for church to bring the bed into the facility and into conversations
and sermons and teaching and to talk about the fact that God is pro sex. He’s the one that invented it, he thought it up. You know, man didn’t make it up.
There have many studies of sexuality in which sex becomes better with commitment and it’s not as good with couples who are still married still sort of uncertain about it
about whether or not they’re going to stay together there’s something about that that makes it satisfactory makes it maybe a discharge makes it somehow sub nurturing but it’s not rich and deep
and spiritual and that when couples solidify their marriages the sexuality deepens, improves and everything gets better I think with the stability and safety comes a passion that you can’t have until you have stability and safety
and there has to be some forthright conversation that goes something like this “ honey, we’re gonna have more sex then you would like and less then I would like, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna figure this out
and this is what it’s going to take, um, this is what it’s going to take to keep us together, this is what it’s going to take to keep me from looking someplace else” and you have to be willing to engage at that level, and , and to reinvent yourselves in that way
There’s a song out, well, there used to be, I haven’t heard it in years but it would be nice to hear and it goes kiss an angel good morning but love her like the devil when you get back home
(laughs) awe, I can take it ma.
I know… I can dish it out too
I know it, I know that…
well give me a kiss and shut this up
I know that
that’s a heck of a kiss
have you ever had like a really serious fight, a huge disagreement?
over the years you’ve gotta have had like one or two
no, no
you’ve never made your wife mad at all. You’ve never come home drunk?
well that, but we don’t fight… and I’ve made him really mad but we don’t fight
really, ok that’s a first lets see… and you guys, you want to tell the truth maybe on this question?
we tell the truth… we disagree with each other, but never really mad enough to leave or, we always figure to forget about it after it’s over with
never had the, uh, I’m going to a birthday party of an ex girlfriend and she really likes me, that’s ok honey if I don’t come home tonight fight?
see, you have to realize, we’ve been married for how many years now, or how old are we… we can’t remember those things
we say that the power struggle is the second stage of marriage which means when it happens it’s to be expected and the culture thinks if you go into conflict
you’ve then gathered the indication that your with the wrong person and we say when you go into conflict that’s an indication you’re with the right person
because the reality is that sometimes the best relationships don’t always feel the best to be in
you’re gonna look at these challenges or these hardships as if there’s some kind of problem in the relationship and that’s actually not a relationship problem
a relationship problem is not being able to work through a problem. You know there’s going to be death, there’s taxes, there are infidelities, there is, you know, god forbid like terrible illnesses
there’s parents that are going to die so if your focus is self gratification then you don’t have the right focus in terms of being able to have a fulfilling and long sustaining relationship
we were raised to believe that love conquers all and it really isn’t true. Love is the first 50% I would say that you need to have a successful marriage, but there’s a whole second 50%,
a whole nother half that you need, or it wont work even if you’re in love. The saddest divorces, by the way, are people who are still in love, but they don’t have that other 50%. They don’t have shared values,
um, they aren’t able to communicate in a way that’s loving and filled with teamwork. They’re just little attorneys, you know, they’re only able to be little attorneys and argue their point, they have to be right
we’ve never yelled at each other, ever in the six years we’ve been together even when we’re going through
I have on the inside
even when we were going through a really hard time, you know, and I was hurt by some things… I don’t think I even yelled at you during that time, so weird
no, no we just don’t go there, no
we don’t ever say mean things to each other, like we’ve never called each other anything mean,
no, I said shut up once jokingly and it was like, whoa, it felt weird and she was like “ I can’t believe you just said that”
but you we’re kidding
I was kidding yeah, but that’s just an example
but it was weird, it was like, don’t tell me to shut up
words hurt, words kill, words destroy relationships and it took me many years as a woman to realize I was just as harmful to a relationship by what I said, my criticism, my judgment, my unhappiness, my blaming
I thought I was protecting my wife by shutting down because I wasn’t expressing all the anger that I grew up with. I thought I was being liberal, do what ever you want just leave me alone.
And it took me ten years to realize what I was telling her was you’re worthless, you’re not worth my attention, and it was just an eye opener because that’s the last thing I meant and the last thing I wanted her to feel.
So when a woman feels distant, or anxious or somehow upset her natural response is to reach out, to initiate contact and if often comes in the form of a complaint. For example, if I call my girlfriend and I say
“uh, I’ve had such a bad day” she’ll say “what? Honey tell me, you want me to come over?“ women hear complaints as an invitation to move closer but a man hears a complaint as sooner or later it’s going to be my fault
The real problem though, is the connection, or the attachment style for men is protect and connect. If they can feel protective, they can make a connection. So when your girlfriend will say something
she’s worried about or something she’s concerned about you want to jump right in there and tell her I’m gonna be there for you, don’t worry about that and you feel protective and she feels safe and secure.
you say to them one day, let me ask you a question, uh, on a scale of zero to ten how much love do you feel coming from me? And if they give you a seven or six or anything less then 10, you say,
well what could I do to bring it up to a ten? And they give you a suggestion, and to the best of your ability you do that and a week later or so you say, ok, zero to ten, how am I doing?
And eventually they’ll give you a nine or a ten and once they give you a nine or a ten, then the next week you can make a request of them, you can say, honey, you know something that would really make me happy?
And you make a request that’s in keeping with your own love language and because they feel loved by you they’re very likely to respond and reciprocate and so they begin to speak your love language.
coming out of my previous relationship where things were remembered for a very long time, I , um, when I first started to have discussions with Nadia, like, it’s time,
we sit down and talk about something that’s just not working I would think, oh boy, what’s the long term effect of this? Is it even really worth me mentioning because, you know, but yeah, I feel it,
I gotta say something you know, or it’s going to build up in me, it’s starting to become annoying so I have to say something and so I’d say it and she’d go “ oh, I didn’t realize that I do that, yeah, um, ok”
All couples who have great marriages have to end negativity. They have to end shame, blame and criticism, just have to do it. It take 3, 6 months, sometimes 2, 3 years for a couple to finally clean up
their negativity and get it out, so we decided to go cold turkey. Today, never again will I ever say a negative thing about you, to you. And we made that as a vow, and for three months
we were in real trouble because (woman speaks: we didn’t have much to say to one another… lot of silence) … not much to say…lot of silence
I had so much growing up to do, uh, for the first 25 years. The years that he was gone to the service, I grew, I grew up to a degree because he had made it easy for me always before
and he has tried to make it easy for me ever since but I was too stubborn to realize that. But after our lifestyle changed I can say it’s been a good life
Incidentally if you looked at Europe, which I spent a lot of time doing seeing what lies ahead for us, the average age for marriage for some guys over there, now the average age is 35 so if you figure
they leave home at age 19 or 20 you got 15 maybe 20 years of living a single lifestyle that has nothing to do with long term relationships or commitment and then the question is,
is it going to be really easy to suddenly for the rest of your life jump into something where your in one relationship with one person for eternity? I’m not so sure and that’s the problem that we face today.
I’d like to be married for 5 days of the week and single for 2 essentially, that’s the way, that would be, and I’m not just speaking for myself
I’m speaking for millions of individuals, you know, to not have to, you know, explain yourself, your actions, what you do.
do you feel like there’s pressure to go outside your relationship and experience different people while your young, kinda live it up?
yeah, definitely. I get that from my parents and my family a lot. They say “ you’re in college, you’re young you don’t know what you want yet” you know.
All the typical things parents say to kids who are in a relationship but, um, I think they’re wrong
So it’s that phase of life that we’re all looking at and asking ourselves, well, does what one does in this phase of life have anything to do with what happens later on
what’s the best thing about being single here on this campus
I think you should ask him that question
I guess the variety of women, going to the clubs and just knowing that any night you could bring a girl home
In a sense the whole club culture is the best thing that ever happened to guys. They don’t have to work for anything. They could just, if they’re half way decent looking they can have their pick of beautiful girls.
Are you looking for a relationship or would you just rather just experience different people?
I’m experienced with different people just because I’m out of relationship and I’m sad and I miss my ex boyfriend alot
So are you going on dates? Are you hooking up?
Yeah, yeah I am (woman says “ all of the above”) yes
Singles that have more sexual partners have a greater likelihood of infidelity in marriage and so we know that patterns that you’ve set when you’re single don’t stop when you get married
I think sex is for 2 people who truly love each other that’s why I think it’s just for marriage and, I just, too many people are doing it just with anyone these days and
Too many people are getting hurt because of it I think
people get burned ( woman says: big time ) you know and um, then they go into the next relationship with some of the effects on how they feel, what they think of you know, the opposite sex or what they think of relationships
I was in a 2 year relationship, um, like last year. I ended it and it’s too much, like, I don’t know, I feel like once your in love and it’s ruined so badly you don’t want to, uh, tell anybody that ever again
The hurt and the pain that is being experienced is probably just catapulted into a new dimension because of the physical relationship, if you took, if they weren’t having sex then yes,
there’s emotional ties and all of that but the sexual experience is a huge bonding between a man and a woman and you just don’t lightly take it away
I think you need to date someone long enough to where the, ( woman says: at least a year) to where the shine wears off. I call it the four seasons approach to dating.
You need to go through at least four seasons together where the shine wears off, where you see the other person on the rugged planes of reality
Now I’m back in a stage, where I am, I mean I’ve only been dating Jessica for 2 months but we’re living together, I mean we’re committed
Don’t be ashamed to pace a relationship in a way that not only builds a great foundation for a future marriage if you end up marrying that person but keeps your eyes clearly seeing what the person is like
so that as time unfolds characteristics of that person or patterns that were at first hidden as time unfolds you see it without so much investment that you overlook it and minimize it and end up ultimately being deeply wounded
I can talk to her intellectually. I can talk to her as a friend. I can talk to her about anything. I’m like, dude, every time I look at her I can not believe how gorgeous this woman is and she’s with me and she’s mine
and she...and she loves me for who I am.  God knows red dog has some shit....I got some baggage.
I knew the Jessica thing was real screwed up from the beginning.  Um, instantly saw that when I met her real early on before they moved to Canyon Lake.
And I went, "Holy shit, Ryan, why are you doing this?" and, you know, it's not his kind of person.
It was a day trip.  My dad and I went down there and we were on our way back and, ah, she tells me  when I get there at the house,
that she's like, "Well, I'd actually like for you to get your stuff and I've decided that I just want to live there by myself.
And I'm puh, I'm like, "Puh" Obviously, like what?  Yeah, I mean basically how it open...it was obvious that...shit, I freakin' opened my heart up wide open.
For the first time in a long time it felt like I met the girl and you know again, I don't believe there is one girl on this planet for us,
But I hadn't connected with a girl like her and haven't in, probably ever.
I think that maybe he is still carry some of the baby boomer generation things over.  Gotta get married.  
Gotta have kids and blah, blah, blah and that's the worst of reason to do any of it.  It's the worst reason. You want to do it for love, and love only.  
Not for money and not for anything else. And, uh, because there's not anything better than a great relationship. That's the best thing there is.
probably not anything worse than a bad relationship in marriage.  His mother and I laughed three days after we were married.  
We were watching the first guy land on the moon, we looked at each other and said, "What the hell did we get married for?"
what do I have to say about the people that have come on to the  film to talk about their relationships?   I really admire what they've done.  
The way they've felt and the way they've expressed it, is extremely moving to me.  
While you're dating and falling in love, uh, any red flags that come up are opportunities to have more depths in your relationship.
If it were up to me, we'd be married.  We really would be, but I've obviously been holding out for a long time for a reason.  You know because I don't fully trust her.
The main way I would judge would be, whether you would want to proceed, is how the two of you handle those.   Because these are examples of the kinds of problems you're going to have in the future.
I guess we have the opposite problems most people...yeah we have the complete opposite most people.   Most people have trouble finding the fun. within...
Mary: ...or having good sex.. Harold:...all the business.... Mary: they're getting good sex and stuff... Harold: ...with their tasks. We were...we're always having fun so it's hard... Mary:...we're always having good sex Harold: Okay, and... Mary:...Why, you don't think so? Harold:...I'm trying to talk.  You always interrupt.
Ask yourself,” Is this a family I want to marry into?".  Again, with the exception being if the person you're marrying comes from a really messed up family, but they've maybe gotten some therapy and they have some handles on it, okay.  
But if they don't have any prospective on it, I'd run for the hills.  
The biggest mistake that Lisa and I've made, or have made, in our marriage is we did not get solid, premarital counseling before we walked down the wedding runner.  
I would encourage everybody and their iguana to get great counseling.
One thing that we talk about all the time is our communication.  We have really good communication. Um, and that's the one thing that all lot of people don't have.  
They're not as honest with one another and are as willing to, ah, sit down and talk about the real issues that matter instead of just, you know, acknowledging that there is an issue and then not doing anything about it.
I think that in order to have a future, we have to learn how to be less self-centered and self-involved and wanting all the immediate gratification.  And zen practice really teaches us that.  
That, you know, one of the really basic teachings that saying in a relationship. Not what are you going to do for me now, but how may I serve you.  
I mean, if she asks me anything, I’m going to say yes. So it's, you know, I can't even...there's never...there's nothing there that she's going to do that I won't do.  
Except when I'm watching football, she'll come and ask me, she'll just, um, she says,” Honey", you know, "Honey, I need you to do this.  Um, whenever you get a chance.  
You don't have to do it right now, but in the next five minutes." You know that type of thing.
Can you go pick up those boxes downstairs and bring them up in the middle of the fourth quarter when, you know, the Falcons are beating the Panthers by two points and they're on the ten yard line.
Cause she doesn't care about the football game, but other than that it's all good, man.
And I can't imagine not having loved anyone else, other than my Lord, than I've loved Grandpa.  He is, he's been my life And because of him, we've acquired a lot of other lives and loves.
Our kids, our grandkids, our great grandkids.  You know, that's love to me.  It can't be explained. And I love you.  Oh, how I love you. It almost makes your heart burst with love.  
And that's why I wish everybody in the world could have that same kind of love.
It frees up your life.  It frees up bound energy, repressed energy, held energy.  You know, but some how, you suddenly feel alive and when you feel alive, you realize, you've missed that, you lost that, and you're alone.
And when you feel alive, everything is alive. The trees, the birds, the rocks, the universe.
I totally have a fantasy of becoming stronger with another person. Feeling like my life has more meaning because this other person is in it.  
Because I have somebody to share everything with.  Somebody who cares if I have success or not.  You know, like all of a sudden that ...somebody who just likes me, just...because of who I am.
It's true, I mean, we talk within our relationship of you know, feeling like we've just fell in love again.   And love is, it's like an indescribable thing.  It's communication. It's caring. It's tenderness.  It's, you know..
wife:...it's... Husband: ...affection.  It's everything. Wife: ...It's knowing that Husband...you know. Wife:...as far as marriage is concerned.  It's knowing that you couldn't be the same without your spouse... Husband: ...right. wife: ...you wouldn't be the same person that you are without your spouse.
Hell, let's break it down to Grandma Brick dog.  The stages in life, you know.
You're born and you're a little kid and then you get in to teen years. If you're lucky
...If you're lucky, you fall in love and then one day, you get married.  And then...
You start building the home, that's another stage.  And then you get so involved, if you have children, that you get so involved with them that you, even though we never did forget each other or did always kissed good night...
ah, you kind of go your separate ways of he was busy with his work and before I started working out, I was busy with the house. And then doing all those things.
 And then the kids start leaving.  And then after their gone that's a complete other stage of your life. Ah, then you have to adjust to it all over again.
Ah, you don't fall in love all over again cause you're already in love.  It's a different kind of love.  It's a more respectful type of love.
I went to visit a man, his name was Sid.  Ninety-two years old.  And, uh, he was dying.
It was his last day of life.  I had seen him once before. Now, you know, it was pretty clear he was going to die in the next few hours.
And I walked in to the hospital room and there was Helen, his wife, by his bedside. I was so privileged to just stand there in that room and to listen to the two of them whisper to each other before he died.
And, and he just kept saying her name, "Oh, Helen. Oh, Helen. Oh Helen."  And she leaned over the railing on the bed and kissed him on the forehead and said,
"Sidney, thank you for taking such good care of me for so long. And he said, "Thank you."  Very fortunate people. You know, to have had someone hanging in there with you for fifty, sixty, seventy years.  
That's a pretty rare treasure.  You know, that's worth it.  That's worth it.  
I think this story hits home with me just because my relationship with my grandparents and knowing that they're in their final stages of life.
And they're very conscious about it.  They're conscious about death and what that means and where they want to go after they leave this planet, which is a beautiful thing.
Um, along this journey, I met a beautiful family up north of San Francisco, the Carlsons, and Richard Carlson had written the book "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff."
Unfortunately, a major event happened in their lives and really disrupted what I think their view was, you know, for a long term, life long commitment.
I suspected that I was a strong person.  You know, just based on, you know, how I've lived, but if you had asked me before Richard died, "Could I  survive living without Richard?"  
I would've said, "No."  He just got on a plane, routine, you know, a routine flight to New York, and on the descent of that flight, he had a pulmonary embolism.
Yeah, it was shocking beyond words, shocking, like.  It was horrifying.  It was a nightmare.   You know, it's a dance, you know, you're a family unit.  
You're a family of four and then one person is all of a sudden gone, well there's a whole dynamic, now we're three women in a home and without our man.  
You know, without a father, without a husband. I mean, if you allow your grief to just do what it's there to do, which is ultimately to heal you, you know from the separation
from the loss that you're experiencing.  It's pretty amazing what, you know, what we know how to do. He wrote "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff."
And I can now say I don't sweat the small stuff. And I can also say, "Yes,  darling you can be happy no matter what."
We're one flesh. When we said, "I do.", we became one flesh and um, we don't take that lightly and we don't take that for granted.
But there's strong parameters and things that help us understand that relationship each day.
I often say a relationship is a mirror in which we see ourselves.  And sometimes, whatever we don't accept in another person, is something we haven't accepted in ourselves.
Unfortunately, people get stuck, on the greed, on the possessiveness, the infatuation.  
So, you know, optimally speaking, there's a beautiful teaching that says, "When you get married, or when you choose a partner, you think well this is the perfect person.  
I’m at the peak of my love.  They say not at all.  This person has come to teach you what it means to love.
do you guys realize how therapeutic this could be for someone else?  Like if you bring a couple on and and ask them questions like this and get them talking and thinking about, like their relationship, you know.  
I guarantee, they're all going to leave here and kiss each other and have the best date they've had in a long time, you know.
As we reflect on this, we're trying to get at that deeper level of the true energy of love.   And I think one of the things we would say about it is it is a vast mystery.  
It is, it is something that, um, emerges in inexplicable ways in inexplicable times, but what we do believe about it is that boundaries help protect this, this energy of love.  
It can emerge in our life and it's setting up that there's a process of care and a way to honor this energy that requires commitment.
You stay when it's the worst.  It's when you maintain that reinforce commitment to stay. Because what we've learned in Imago over the years.
 When it gets really bad, that's when it's about to change. And most people leave when it's really bad.   So they never get to the change.  
And I think that's such a tragedy.  that's why we're still out here, why we're having this interview.  Why we would want anybody to want this.
I don't know why I'm so moved by that, but that's it. I'm alive,  but I'm alive to all my feelings, I'm alive to ...to everything around me.  
Everything in life, but what I think that what I've discovered with Helen is that that experience is available for everybody.  
You don't have to be a misfit, you don't have to go to your cave.  You don't have to pray, you don't have to meditate.
You don't have to go through all this disappointment. But what you have to do is go in a relationship with somebody you fell in love with,
shut the gate, and say we're here until we become each other's healer.  And you don't want to do that I don’t want to do that.  I want to be me, but the me I was, was a half me.
And so Helen won't...she needs the other half of me for herself to be healed.  The part of me that got repressed is unavailable to her.
So she's, I need that so when I lock the gate, I'm to say, "Oh God, okay." I'll stretch into that. I'll do something about that.  
And then you can just see, you know, I look at Helen and I can just see the vitality emerging in her.   It's like a flame.  And when I stretch against a flower.  
And I feel it in me and she was watching me and then I know, we've discovered something. And what we discovered is love and then that's what love is. Love is what gives life to the world.
Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to have the skills and the resources and the ability and the heart and the soul, to sustain that commitment, but some of us are.  
And it's a miracle.  So when we go back to the song of songs.  Who's to say that human love isn't a reflection of the love of God for human beings.  
Because it's the greatest gift human beings possess. The greatest thing given to us, is this capacity for human love. I’m not sure that any of us would want to live without it.
What we're really seeing in the change of marriage is we're moving away from the traditional concept of what marriage is and we are moving into the concept of almost a continual courtship.
I guess my hope for this project is it will inspire people to be more open and honest and conscious about our relationship and ultimately providing a path towards healing and
I also hope that people want to share this with people they love.
You've gone through the innocent stages. You've went through the passionate stages, then you go into this.  
I can honestly say that the stage that we are in now, even though we are not physically well, is the most wonderful stage of all.  Because we can look back on it and see accomplishments.
We can remember mistakes and know that we've grown from them, but most of all it's just been a wonderful life.