Roger Nygard The Truth About Marriage

I'm Connor Beaton and joining me today is Roger Nygaard, who is perhaps best known for his acclaimed documentary Trekkies about the most obsessive fans in the universe. Roger's previous documentary, the Nature of Existence, which some of you may seen because it was quite popular, addressed the impossible subject of the world's philosophies, religions and belief systems. Roger has also directed television series such.

As the Office, the Bernie Mac show.

And his work as a film editor includes Grey's Anatomy, the League and Emmy nominated episodes of who Is America, Veep and Curb youb Enthusiasm. He has also made several other award winning films including the Car Salesman cult film Suckers and a profile of UFO fanatics, Six Days in Roswell. And now the documentary which we talk about on this show, the Truth About Marriage. So Roger and I dive into his documentary and some of the research that came out of this documentary, the Truth About Marriage. And it's really a deep dive look into the many different facets of intimate relationships of marriage, the role that it plays within our society with whether it's still possible, considering that roughly half of North Americans at some point will experience divorce. Why that is what the other options are. Some of the data that has been produced from the research over the last few decades. And in the movie the Truth About Marriage, Roger actually has the pleasure of speaking with some of the leading experts.

Within relationship research. And I think he has The Gottmans, the Dr. John Gottman on here, Jeffrey Bernstein. There's a ton of incredible people that get interviewed throughout the documentary. So it's a really interesting documentary to watch, but we're going to summarize some of it here in this podcast episode. So you are going to learn a good amount about marriage and a little bit about Roger's journey in creating this documentary. So we, without any further delay, please welcome Roger Nygaard.

Good to be here. Thank you.

Yeah, wonderful. I'm looking forward to diving into this topic with you. But before we do that, I have to ask the question, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Oh, man. How much time do you have? I have so many. You want me to give you a list and you can choose? I mean, I had one when I was about seven years old when I first realized I was going to die one day and then then another time when I first took my first vacation. And I don't count vacations when you travel with family, I mean, like going somewhere for no reason other than to just travel and that changed my life. Or when I made a documentary about the nature of existence to ask the question, why do we exist? Sort of working out my own existentialism and finding my. Finally finding an answer. It's like they never end. They keep coming. Which one would you like?

It sounds like. Sounds like there's some really good, good ones in there. Well, maybe, maybe. Maybe the defining moment that sort of propelled you into creating the documentary the Truth About Marriage, which is what we're going to jam on today.

That's my most recent. Yeah. Defining moment was I was such a failure at relationships, and I realized I've got to do something because no one teaches you in school when you're in high school. There's no class on how to have a relationship. You'd think the thing that's going to be the most important thing you'll do in your life is have a relationship forever with somebody. They'd give you a few pointers, and I had none. And I was making mistakes. They kick you out and you have to make all these mistakes. Everyone makes these same mistakes over and over. And so I wanted to just find out why that is and what I can do to improve my own relationships. And so what where I started was I ordered. I went online, ordered a stack of books five feet tall from all of the top psychologists, relationship experts, anthropologists, and started to read. And I took notes. And I felt like I was an investigative reporter trying to solve a mystery, the mystery of human failures in relationships. Because, I mean, we all know the statistics, right? 50% of relationships fail, and the other 50% that we consider a success, because they continue, they don't end legally anyway. The marriage is still. The marriage is still in effect. Those take a lot of work, even. Those are a lot of hard work to keep them going. So something is wrong. Something is. Why is it so difficult? That's what I set out to solve and find an answer for myself. And, you know, you as the viewer get to come along in the documentary.

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I mean, the documentary like it really is. I mean, it looks interesting because you've. You've got some pretty, you know, incredible people that you interview from the experts and, you know, sort of track down. But tell me a little bit about what you sort of found out, because I think one of the interesting things is, you know, marriage rates are down. I think people are waiting longer in life to get married. Divorce rates continue to be something that we know is not only impacting the average person, but is impacting children in our society. So tell us a little bit about how you even started about trying to answer this question about, you know, why. What is the truth about marriage and why do people keep engaging in it? And let's just start to explore this a little bit.

Well, the why, I think, is because we all feel like we want to be chosen by someone above all others to be that special one, the soulmate, the life partner. And we want to choose someone. We want to do that because we're socialized to do it. It's part of our culture. It's innate within us to. To feel, want to feel belonging, to be loved and to express love. So that that's there. It's within us. We want to express it. The problem is that we have these expectations that are out of sync with who we are as a person, as a species. Our innate desires, our needs. What evolved within us is different than what our culture asks us to do and to be. And some people are trying to. We're trying to reach these ideals and that are virtually unreachable. And so we're frustrated when we don't reach it and our partner doesn't reach it. And that frustration is what we have to deal with over and over and over again. The reason that we're so out of sync is because there's something that's called the savannah principle, in that humans evolved on the African savanna. We've been around as a species for about 200,000 years. This idea of marriage as we practice it now has only been around for about the last five to 10,000 years. You know, really only since the 1950s in terms of what we consider traditional marriage, anyways, a tiny slice of human history. So you would probably consider. I do. What we did for 95% of our history is. That's probably more what you call normal than what we're doing now. So what was it? Well, on the African savannah, we lived in small tribes of 150 or fewer. And we know it was about 150 because it's called Dunbar's number. That's the number of people that a human being can keep track of emotionally. And once a tribe or a group or a division in a corporation, we see it now, once it gets larger than 150, they split into two. When you're in a small group, you remember who owes you a favor. You can trade favors. They call it reciprocal altruism or the golden rule. Do unto others. It's the same idea. It's innate in any species that lives in a group. And that's what we do, we're social creatures, so it's natural for us. And what was natural on the African savanna was to share everything these tribes shared. Food, shelter, hunting, child rearing. And what some of the anthropologists that I met and psychologists argue is they also shared sexual relationship. They may have had a special partner, but they weren't so proprietary about their sexual needs. Right now, what has evolved since then is monogamy is the rule, which is different. And monogamy requires a propriety, an ownership of your own sexuality. So it seems very foreign to us that the group might own that and we wouldn't since that change. And that change occurred about 6 to 10,000 years ago when we discovered agriculture. That's when humans stopped being nomads. We started to stay in one place and plant crops. And the idea that, oh, this land, these crops, these animals, and even my wife is how the men started to look at it are my property. And once they started thinking that way, men wanted to be sure. They started thinking, well, I want to make sure that my property goes to my own offspring. How can you do that? Well, one way is to create this social fence around his mate, his wife, so that he could keep track or control her sexual behavior. If he's out working in the fields or hunting, he can't be there and practice what the anthropologists or the biologists call mate guarding, which is what you see animals doing or attempting to do to make sure it's their genetic offspring. But if he can't be there. Well, this idea occurred to humans of marriage. And marriage was thought of, originated, evolved, created to control the sexual behavior of women and not so much men. If you look at the ancient texts like the Old Testament, adultery is more of a sin for women than for men. Women are more punishable for this sin than men. And that's because women get pregnant, and a woman knows it's her baby, right? It comes out of her body. There's no doubt this is my baby. A man can't be sure. You know, there's the old phrase, mommy's baby, daddy's maybe. How can you be sure unless you've done something to ensure that you are the one who gave the sperm to create this particular child? So what does that mean for us now? We're frustrated because who we are as a species is a little bit out of sync with what our culture is and asks us to do. And. And our culture is evolving much faster than we are. And we're adaptable, and we do adapt. And monogamy is what works best for a world with 7 billion plus people than it does maybe it did in those in the ancient times for a group or tribe of 150.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I think, you know, for people that have read books like Sex at Dawn that sort of go through the historical retelling of our own sexual evolution and how we have behaved in relationships in the past versus the present, it is interesting to see that as our societies have shifted out of these 150.

Person groups, that this sort of sharing mentality that naturally existed within our older cultures has faded into the background as we, you know, populate cities of millions and millions of people where that's just not a sustainable practice and that, you know, your social ties start to deconstruct as you merge into these larger cities. I was actually just talking to a friend about this the other day who grew up in Ireland in a small village of about four, three or four hundred people. And he was describing how everybody knew everybody's business. Now there's still very strict social constructs and contracts around relationships and marriage. But it was just interesting because the social dynamics are so much different. And I think that there's a lot of interesting research that's out there. And I think one of the cool things that I love about your documentary is that you actually went through and took the time to really connect with some of the leading experts from many different vantage points. Right. I mean, you talk to people like the Gottmans and Christopher Ryan and Neil Strauss. I mean, you really kind of ran the gamut on getting different viewpoints, some of which I would imagine sort of pointed at this emerging culture of things like polyamory and open relationships and whatnot. And so I'm kind of curious as to, you know, just for the sake of. Just for the sake of time in our conversation today, I'm curious about what surprised you as you went through this documentary. Like, did things sort of play out in terms of why you thought relationships were so challenging and why marriage is sort of like this staple, but very challenging for people to engage in. What was surprising as you went through this process of creating this documentary?

I was continually surprised as I learned there are really simple things that we could be doing differently that would drastically change the trajectory of any relationship towards a happier trajectory. And.

No one's teaching us this. That's what counselors are for, actually. I mean, that's why there are therapists. Therapists are a requirement for a society like ours to help couples and people get back on track emotionally in the old days, the idea of a therapist on the African savannah would make no sense at all. There's no need for it. Nobody had issues the way that we have issues now. They're modern, it's a modern invention. And let's take the polyamorous as one example where I was surprised. I was surprised at how high functioning this couple was. I followed them, I went to their wedding and then checked back several years later to see how they were doing. And what was really surprising was that the reason they do so well as a couple is not because they have sex with other people, you know, as polyamorous. They agreed when they got married, they were going to continue to date other people after they got married, which very few people would condone that in their marriages today.

In general. But the reason that they do so well is not because they have sex with other people. It's because in order to be polyamorous, they had to be very honest with each other about who they are, which means it reduces the number of surprises. There are fewer assumptions. Most people go into marriage making a lot of assumptions. And one of the things I turned up is that the marriage contract that you sign when you get married is really only concerned with one main thing. And that's how you're going to share property legally. It lays out, here's how your property will be shared.

Which includes debts you're assuming, your partner's debts and assets you're sharing. The reason you do that is the purpose is you're sharing your assets for the purpose of raising children. You're making a contract to raise children. But people have all these add on assumptions like they're going to be faithful, they're going to be good listener, they're going to be good in bed as sex, as much as I want, when I want it, all of these things that we assume. And when you find out that they may have a different idea than what you thought, inevitably there's frustration. One of the things that the experts all recommended if you want, if you're thinking, if someone's thinking of getting married, the best thing you can do to improve your chances for longevity and happiness is to engage in premarital counseling. The religious. Religious couples tend to do better than non religious couples in this case in longevity and happiness because not because they're religious, but because they are forced to do premarital counseling. In most cases, whether it's with the rabbi or the priest, they've got to have some sessions where they talk about what their goals and plans are. And one Thing I did is I put in the book, in the appendix I collected, I made a personal priorities checklist. I got this idea from one of the divorce attorneys, Lawrence Bloom, that I interviewed, because obviously, as a divorce attorney, he sees this problem come up all the time. And what they have to do at a divorce or prenuptial agreement is do a financial disclosure. And I recommend that as well in advance as part of your personal priorities disclosure. But he said you should also do a personal priorities checklist where each person has this list. And I put this in the back of the book where you can fill out this checklist and rank what's most important to you. Your children, your partner's children from a prior marriage, your parents, your partner's parents, vacations, shopping, saving, whatever it is, all these things. You rank them and then compare each other's rankings. And also I collected a list of questions that you should discuss, like what helps you most when you're angry? Who should raise the children? What religion should they be raised? Is there any kind of sex that's off limits? How dark should the bedroom be? Is it okay to leave the television on all night when you're sleeping? I mean, just whatever, whatever it is, any possible thing that could be of importance to you, you should discuss with your partner. So if two people fill out this personal priorities checklist and exchange it with the goal of making a partnership priorities checklist, they're going to have a much better chance at happiness and longevity because now they've reduced the number of potential surprises. They know what they're in for, they know the rules of the game. And it's when you sign up to play, play this game without knowing the rules that you're going to have a lot more disappointments.

Yeah, I like that idea. Because I think one of the things that the research does show, my wife's like one of the, one of the most sought after marriage and family therapists in New York. And so we talk about this all the time. And she, she talks about how one of the things that the research points to is that most couples in relationships go to counseling, go to therapy four years too late, and that much of the challenges that they actually face when they do go to therapy and they do start to address some of those challenges is the discrepancy in their desires within the context of the relationship. Right. So I think what you're talking about and what you're saying is a simple yet very profound thing that couples can do, individuals can do, starting to prioritize. Because if you have Something like, you know, communication being at the top or sex and intimacy being very high up and someone else, you know, doesn't really have that as a priority at all. That's going to create a lot of challenge and arguments, I would imagine, in the relationship. And so why. I think one of the interesting questions that you sort of pose in the film is why get married today? And I think it is a very interesting question because if you're not religious and it's not for religious purposes and you have independence financially, economically, the question comes up of why sort of get married outside of just sheer companionship, which you can do in a multitude of ways now. And so based on what you found, based on the conversations that you had with all of these experts, what did you come up with? Like, is there, is there a real reason to still get married in today's culture? Or is, you know, where's your findings that people who are more interested in just connection or, you know, being able to explore sexually are much more prone to leaning into open relationships or polyamorous relationships. So let's just explore that a little bit today for now.

Sure. Yeah. Well, that's a good question. Everyone should be asking themselves, why should I get married? And there are reasons, there are good reasons to get married. There's an upside, certainly, and the first one, as I just discussed, is that if you're, if you want to have children, it's good to have a financial framework in place before you begin that process with somebody. Because this is going to be an 18 year project, give or take, maybe more, depending how long it takes to kick them out of the basement. But there's number one and number two, teamwork. You're stronger than going it alone. It's nice to know somebody has your back. You've got someone to help run the errands, right? It's that simple. You've got a helper number two, financial benefits. Two people can live more cheaply than one. You've got tax savings, inheritance rights automatically. There are various discount discounts that married people can get that single people can't, or retirement plans or family leave or home ownership, etc. There are legal rights like hospital access or being included in your partner's obituary or getting. It's easier to get foreign visas or residence or foreign citizenship if you're marrying someone who has those things.

Also things you can consider depending on who it is and where you're going to live. Also risk diversification if you get sick or injured. You've got someone to help take care of You. One of the psychologists I interviewed, Tai Tashiro, pointed out that men show a 500% decrease in mortality risk when they're happily married. And I said, why is that? And he said, it's because women mostly stop men from doing dumb things.

Left to their own devices, they do risky, stupid things. And women go, no, honey, no, you're not going to ride the motorcycle without a helmet. You've got children now. And another reason, children, children are your legacy. The whole point of being here is to create a new generation that's better than the current one. To pass on what you have, your knowledge, your wisdom, and create a better, a small, growing, better version of yourself. And there's increased happiness. They've done studies that people are generally happier. Social psychologist Benjamin Carney, who I interviewed, said that a happy relationship is one of the biggest predictors of health and personal well being because having somebody near you who cares about you is a very strong predictor of mental and physical health. So there are all these reasons we're designed to have someone who's special. And there's an add on, you can add on the spiritual connection on top of it all. We need to feel love. It's a desire, it's a need that we have within us, it's an appetite that's built in. But you can add on that it's part of maybe perfecting your soul if you want. There's that too.

Yeah. I think one of the interesting things about the way that you designed your approach when it comes to this documentary is actually just sort of looking at whether, like, is this a viable option still? Like, why is it a viable option? Why are people still going towards this and sort of posing a very, very interesting question. I think most especially a lot of men sort of ask throughout their lifetime. I think that there's different conditioning between genders around marriage. But I think for a lot of guys, a lot of the men that I work with, they really are looking at just the basic questions of do I want to get married? Am I going to thrive in marriage? I'm going to thrive as a, you know, as a caretaker, you know, is it possible for me to be sexually happy in one dynamic? And I think that's where I actually really want to go right now. Because one of the things that you talk about in the book and in the documentary is the important.

Of sex within the context of marriage. And so let's talk about that a little bit. What were some of your discoveries about sex within the context of relationships and marriage? Because I think One of the things that's quite surprising is just the sheer number of couples that live in sexless marriages. And I think sexless marriages are constituted as sex less than 10 times per year, I believe is what I had a sex therapist on the show last year and this is how she defined it. I don't know if that's actually like.

The clinical definition, but I've encountered that too. Yeah, one of the psychologists, he put it less than once per month. So it's about the same.

Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I think really when couples have been married for a while for five, 10 years, sex seems to start to dwindle and it isn't, you know, very prominent in relationship. And that's for many couples. And that can lead to all sorts of challenges. And so speak to us a little bit about the importance of sex within the context of marriage.

Well, it's pretty common, commonly common knowledge that the frequency of sex drops off over time in relationships. And I explored that a little bit in the documentary. I asked people, how many times do you have sex per week? What's normal for you? And when they're married? They said about two times a week. Two to three. One, two, three per week is about the average. Then I said, well, okay, but how about when you were single, when you were first dating, how many times? And then it was one, two, three, four times a day. It's where it started off. And why is that? Well, Ty Toshiro explained to me when I asked him this question that we can't, our bodies couldn't physically maintain that level of heightened excitement over a long period of time and be healthy. That fast beating heart, that excitement, that adrenaline, it's hard on the body. So we're designed over time for passion to be reduced and be replaced by compassion. Which is better for child rearing, where we get hooked in at the beginning with all that excitement and then Mother nature shifts it on us. What happens for a lot of people is they miss that excitement and that's why they keep changing partners because they want to. They think, well, something's wrong with this relationship, it's the wrong person. I need to re get capture that original excitement I had. And I guess it's the wrong person, I better get a new person. And they end up repeating the same cycle over and over again because no one, you can't maintain that level of passion with anyone forever. But what happens is that you find someone that you connect with and you start adding other things to the cupboard. Not just passion, but life experiences shared Experiences are just as important. And if you keep trying to trade up, you just end up trading sideways and you throw away all these shared experiences that you had with somebody, and maybe that was a better person for you who you threw out because you're searching for that initial relationship high over and over again. Now, that's not to say that married partners have to be. Have to accept the idea that their. Their passion is going to diminish drastically. There is a their relationship and their sex therapists and passion counselors. I went in, I observed a passion seminar, and I documented this in the book. And I didn't have room in the documentary for this, but it's in the book, a whole chapter on passion and how to recapture the passion. And what they do is they recalibrate polarity.

What they told me is that from their experience, what happens is most couples, when you're together with somebody for a long time, you become more and more like each other, more and more similar. And spark comes from differences. The differential between the masculine and the feminine pole. What works best in the relationship is when you have two partners who are opposites in masculine and feminine. Two masculines don't work well together. Two feminines don't work well together. Whether you're. It's a gay couple or a straight couple or whatever in between, that combination of energies still works better. We're meant to complete each other, not to duplicate each other. So what the passion seminar experts do, Satyan and Suzanne Raja is their name. They help the masculine partner recapture the masculine energy and the feminine partner rediscover her feminine energy. And it can be reversed. Sometimes the man is the more feminine of the two. It's not gender per se, as it is masculine feminine energy. And once they recapture or move back to their pole positions, the spark returns naturally. And it's often as simple as being more aware of what your role is in the workplace. Everybody's masculine and masculine energy is the workplace. And. And so when men and women are all working together, everyone's got the masculine energy going. When women go home, what they need to do if they want to rekindle the spark is switch back into their feminine and be aware of what that means. Once they start to do that. And in these seminars, they can flip that switch back in a matter of a couple hours. It's really pretty simple in teaching men and women how to do that.

Yeah, I think this is one of the things that my wife calls this de rolling, and that at the end of the day, we need to be able to Come home and de roll or sort of take off the proverbial hat that we've been wearing all day. Right. So if you're an executive and you come home, bringing that energy into the bedroom, depending on the dynamic that you have with your partner, can hinder or enhance. Again, like you're saying, if you have sort of two masculine partners, it's going to clash. If you have two feminine partners, it's going to be a little bit different.

But.

I like the direction that you're going here. So what was one of the things that you found in terms of marriage and monogamy? Because I think one of the big questions that a lot of people are starting to have is, is monogamy.

Healthy?

Is it possible? Is it something that we are meant for? And I kind of heard you at the beginning of this conversation sort of alluding to the fact that from an evolutionary standpoint we didn't begin as monogamous sort of sapiens. Right. And so where did you land in the documentary? Like what did the experts have to say about us as monogamous creatures?

Yeah, you're accurate in your summary that what they believe. Many of the anthropologists and psychologists who look back at human history theorized when they looked at the evidence that we were not monogamous in these tribal situations and the way that they would try to substantiate that was to look for modern day equivalence. And they found tribes that are still existing in that sense where monogamy is not the rule for these tribes. And they tend to be matriarchies where women are in charge and men are kind of their helpers, they're as important, but women are the center of the tribe. They are responsible for finding about 80% of the food through gathering. And if someone's responsible for 80% of the tribe's food, they're pretty important to the tribe. And women lost a lot of that position in the ranking in their societies when we began farming and men took over the farming because mussels were more important to digging and plowing and planting. And so a shift occurred toward monogamy. And the reason that we shifted away from this tribal sharing into monogamy, it happened over a long period of time with a lot of setbacks and trying different things. The interstitial stage that occurred first was polygamy because over time, if you're, if you're shifting to a propriety situation, eventually they're going to be some men that have more property than other men. You have lords and barons and kings, sultans, pharaohs and they get more of the goods, which included women. They would have as many as 5,000 concubines, women and wives and concubines, maybe one or two or three special wives, and then thousands of concubines. And. And the problem that occurred for society is that when you have 5,000 women that are all being hoarded by one guy, that leaves 5,000 young men who are frustrated without access to women. And that's really bad for society. So what had to happen, and even the king began to realize, this is bad for my ruling. If everyone's unhappy, I'm not going to be ruler for much longer. So what happened is monogamy became enforced. One man, one woman for everybody, including the king. And then that meant that polygamy was replaced by monogamy, or what could more accurately be called serial monogamy. That's what we do now. When you have a new one, you got to get rid of the old one. In the old days, when you got a new one, you kept the old one. You just started collecting wives. But now we do them one at a time, and monogamy works better for our current culture than polygamy would work or open sharing. And because of that, though, we still have a lot of needs and desires and.

Feelings within us that are innate. And so you have a lot of cheating and a lot of denial. And the more you suppress your needs, your desires, the more they're going to pop up in some other way in frustration or cheating or lying. And that's what was interesting to me about this polygamous couple or polyamorous couple, how they didn't lie to each other about anything. They didn't have to. There were no surprises. There's no need. There's no need for them to cheat. That didn't mean they have sex constantly, all the time. What they would do is, for their particular situation, they would have what they called situational polyamory. They would be monogamous with each other until they decided, let's have a polyamorous weekend or whatever. And they would discuss it in advance what the rules are. Both have veto powers, and then they would do do what they've agreed to. That doesn't mean everyone should do this by any means. Monogamy is still a good solution and probably the best solution for couples. But the hard thing is being honest about who you are, what your needs are, and how can you address those within a monogamous relationship.

Yeah, I think. I mean, I kind of. I'm going to extrapolate what I think you're saying, which is regardless of the relationship status, whether you're single, whether you're polyamorous, whether you're in an open relationship, whether you're married, it sounds like what you're saying is most, almost everyone agrees full transparency is, is, is the sort of best route towards a healthy, connected relationship.

Yeah. But that is very difficult to do in our current situation, society, culture. We're not really set up. We're set up to fail.

Yeah.

We are set up to behave in a certain way. We have these expectations because they're out of sync. Then the only way you can achieve them is to suppress or withhold or, you know, look at, just look at when you went on your first date, you put on this, your best self, right? You want to impress, so you put on a mask of your best self and that's who you present. And the other person does the same. And then eventually one of those masks are going to slip and you're going to go, what? I thought you were this other person. And this is really disappointing and frustrating to me to find out that sometimes you get really angry or whatever it is that you feel like you've got to hide from somebody. So what do you do? How do we solve this? And it really is about, first of all, acceptance. Acceptance of yourself, who you are, what your needs are, and being with somebody who you can tell them who you are and what your needs are and you can accept your partner. The Gottmans were pretty clear about this. Julia Gottman said that 69% of relationship problems are never solved. They're just addressed and accepted. And then you move on. You know, your partner, he may never be able to pick up his socks to the degree that you want him to, or she may never give you the control of the remote 100% of the time that you want to have. Whatever it is, eventually you just have to accept. But I wrote a chapter in the book on truth and lying and sometimes is it better to lie? And what does it mean to lie? There's that age old question, do I look fat in these jeans? Well, clearly the answer isn't necessarily 100% the truth in that situation, because our partners are also looking to us for support and validation. And really in that case, honey, you look gorgeous is probably the best answer, regardless of the truth. Unless maybe the exception would be if there's a health issue.

Honey, let's talk. We need to get you to the doctor.

Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate what you're saying because I think one of the things that we talk about all the time is transparency is challenging, right? It's a taxing endeavor. But I think most people really want to be successful in relationships. And a lot of people are wanting to be in a close, connected, intimate, monogamous relationship with someone that, that they can share experiences with, they can share life with, but they also want to feel fulfilled, you know, with. Within the context of connection and communication and having the boundaries respected and having, you know, great, great sex. It's, you know, I think all of those things are important to people. And I think one of the things that I really took away from, you know, the just the sheer volume of interviews that you did with people, it was really quite striking and just how sort of repetitive the theme was of finding the courage within the context of relationship to be able to be transparent, whether you are, you know, sort of two months in or 20 years in and being able to grow and evolve. Because I think that's one of the things that. And we didn't have a chance to touch on this, but this sort of evolution of a monogamous relationship that if you get married when you're 20, who you are then and who you become at 40 are two radically different people, you know, and you grow and you evolve. And a lot of the relationships that survive that longevity of monogamy are surely the couples that are able to be transparent about where they're at and the transition that they're going through and to be able to do that together as a couple, as a unit.

So listen, let me add a thought to that. John Gottman said that relationships naturally deteriorate unless you put conscious effort into them. And most people don't. They assume the relationship will take care of itself. But if it's naturally falling apart over time, well, of course you're going to become more distant or things are going to get worse and harder. So why as a culture, don't we maybe require or suggest that. That it's normal for everybody to meet with a counselor once a week as part of our lives, or once a month where there's not. Maybe you're not even going there just to solve problems. You're going there to just check in, hey, how's it going this week? Let's talk about what's up, how are you feeling? And a neutral.

Engaged person to help you objectively evaluate things and offer suggestions and just to check in and make you both feel like you're. You're getting along, you're doing well, and it's a good thing. We talked about this And I went to counseling for the first time in my life after I went through a very difficult breakup. I was driven to it, really, but because of the pain, the intense physical pain that, that accompanied break breaking up from someone, that's how I knew it was love, right? Because it hurt so much. And I loved it because I got to listen. I got to get to meet with someone and talk to someone who had to listen to me, who was objective, had good ideas and gave me good solutions for how to feel better and how to be happier.

We turn to our friends usually, and they're not the best equipped to offer suggestions and advice. And just like your wife says, Dr. John Friel said virtually the same thing that couples, when they come to him for help, it's usually four or five years too late. So, like coming in, going into the ER and saying, I broke my leg five years ago. Can you fix it? Well, it's going to be. It would have been a lot better if you came in when you broke your leg. And we could have. You're not, you're never going to walk the same again if we've got to rebreak it and reset it. And so if you are really, maybe a couple is very good at communicating already and staying in touch daily. If there's one thing that I could say to any man who's listening, men, the masculine, make sure you daily check in with your feminine partner. She needs that. She needs 15 to 20 minutes of you actively listening and recognizing her and her feelings. Just simple as, honey, how was your day? Or honey, how are you feeling? And then shut up. Don't try to fix anything. Don't offer any solutions. That's the natural thing. We want to offer solutions or suggestions, but that makes it worse. She's processing her emotions of the day and needs to verbalize it to feel better, to get this emotional, this relationship vitamin that she needs. And if you're not giving that to her, she's not going to feel as fulfilled as she would like. If you do give it to her, she's going to feel a lot better. Everything's going to get better. The relationship, sex, your life, it's. And you're going to give, be allowed to do a lot more of the things that you've been having trouble getting permission to do. Everything will go better when she's getting this need fulfilled. Honey, how was your day? And then shut up.

So good. So good. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I wish that we could go longer and get into some of, some more of the data and the research and the interviews that you did. But I think that this is a good taste for people. So. So for everyone that's out there listening, definitely head on over. You can check out the Truth About Marriage. And where, where can people find it, Roger?

It's on your usual video locations, websites, Amazon, itunes, or you can go to the website thetruthaboutmarriage.com I've got some links there for the video and the book.

Wonderful, wonderful. I really appreciate you and your work and the insight and just the attention, the detail that you took in this documentary. And I look forward to having you back on the show whenever you produce another one and looking forward to our next conversation.

No pressure at all. Thank you.

Yeah, wonderful. So for everyone that's out there, definitely head on over. Check out the Truth About Marriage. It's a great film. Don't forget to leave a rating and review until next week. This is Connor Beaton signing off.