In this monologue, Dr. Taraban argues that modern marriages often fail because they are expected to serve an unsustainable number of roles—partner, best friend, lover, therapist, and co‑parent—without the support of extended kinship networks. He likens the marriage to a chain whose strength is limited by its weakest link, noting that when a partner fails to meet one expectation (e.g., sexual exclusivity), the whole relationship can collapse. He observes that the nuclear family now functions as an entire village, a structure that lacks the communal resources once provided by extended families. Taraban also explains how a partner’s perceived value diminishes once they satisfy a need, using a plumber analogy to illustrate that once a problem is solved, the helper becomes less valuable. Finally, he points out that expectations continuously rise, and as individuals acquire more optionality, relationships become increasingly costly if they cannot keep up with evolving needs.
Chapters
Well, I think most marriages fail. Oh, this is going to be a good one. For a number of reasons. One touches on something that I said earlier, which is that marriage has become too many things. In my opinion, marriage is fundamentally a very humble institution. It was not designed to support being married to a co-parent who's also your best friend and also your passionate, your mistress or your passionate lover who is also your therapist and etc., etc. And we have this all-or-nothing mentality where we expect our partner to be exceptional in all of these different fields. And just like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, sometimes with men, it's often they step out of the relationship and they break that sexual exclusivity and everything else gets thrown out the window, which I think Might be appropriate in some cases, but is generally not in the best interests of everyone involved. It's like, why not potentially get rid of that weak link and see if there's enough strength in the rest of the chain? So that's one reason, is that we want our partners to be too many people, and that has to do with the fact that we don't really live in communities anymore and we don't have an extended kinship network nearby. And so it's like the nuclear family is now an entire village. And that's not something that is very sustainable. Another thing to keep in mind is that the value of a partner changes over time as our goals evolve. And it all— the value of a partner also changes as a function of them giving us what they— what we want. This is a really difficult reality emotionally for people to deal with. But think about it like this. When is a plumber more valuable to you Before he fixes your sink or after he fixes your sink? Before. Yeah, before. No one continues to pay the plumber after he fixes the sink. Like, you'll pay him once for the job, but then it's like you don't want him to stick around. You're not going to keep paying him. And on some level, he became less valuable to you because he did what you wanted. That's really tough to deeply, emotionally appreciate, that it's the natural tendency for people to value those less as a consequence of discharging our expectations and desires. Interesting. And that's, of course, what we want in a relationship. We want someone to give us what we want, but then once we have it, we want them less. Yeah. Oh, shit. Well, also expectations rise too. That could be. Now, the counterargument is people might say, no, Ryan, that's just being very, you know, mercenary about the whole thing. People can have gratitude for the good that you've done. It's like, yeah, to an extent. To an extent. Like, the game doesn't run on gratitude. Like, you can't bank on something that you did 20 years ago. To keep a relationship together. Well, you kind of. Yeah. So it's like the way that relationships work is people constantly have new needs and wants and they're constantly expecting their partners to fulfill them. And if they don't for too long, then the relationship becomes inappropriately expensive, especially relative to other potential optionality that person has.
