Why You Think Your Relationship Is Failing | Dan Savage and Vishen Lakhiani

This guy is someone who just opens your mind up to new possibilities when it comes to our traditional ways of falling in love. And by God, you are gonna love this man. You're gonna learn a ton. But you're also gonna get a little bit uncomfortable and laugh your ass off. This conversation just might have you think about your life and your relationships and your future relationships in completely different ways.

We're told lies about monogamy that if you're in love, you won't want to sleep with anybody else. Well, if that was true, you wouldn't have to make a monogamous commitment. We talk about successful long term relationships. Can we talk about successful short term relationships, which can last a weekend, an evening? The thing I always say to people about to get married is something that most people about to get married don't want to hear, which is, what are you going to do when one or the other of you cheats? When there's an infidelity or adultery? And it's not an if, it's a when. Most likely, because the stats are such that 60, 50, 60% of men and now 50 ish percent of women in long, long, long term committed relationships cheat. All those cheating men and women are not married to each other. I'm often accused by religious conservatives of being some sort of sex radical, institution destroying crazy person. But so much of my advice is about preserving a relationship, valuing the relationship over sort of ideals, about how relationships ought to be, embracing what your relationship actually is and determining whether with what it actually is, it has value and should survive. As opposed to looking at these outside ideals around religion or monogamy or anything else, and saying, well, we fall short of this ideal, therefore our relationship needs to end. Well, maybe the ideal failed you. You didn't fail the ideal. Two people are together 50 years and one of them drops dead and everyone goes, oh, a successful relationship, somebody's dead, Congratulations, your relationship was a success. What if that relationship of 50 years was abusive? What if both partners were neglectful? What if they were contemptuous of one another? What if there was physical abuse and emotional abuse and miserable, unhappy children were the product of that relationship, and yet it's a success. But the two people who were together for 25 years, who had a wonderful partnership around raising a family and then amicably parted ways and had new relationships, oh, they failed. I think that two people can emerge from a relationship, both of them alive, and go on to have other relationships and be able to look back on that relationship that they survived and regard it as a success that if two people are together for a time and it's not a high conflict relationship, and maybe it ran its course and maybe there was a year of unhappiness and conflict and they parted ways and after some time apart they can circle back and they can re establish the friendship. They can look back at the time they spent together and see personal growth and see the value that the relationship itself had, but also the values they came away from it with and feel good about it. Why can't that relationship be a success? Why do we have to slap the failure label on that relationship? I don't think polyamory or open relationships or monogamous relationships are the only way to do it right. I think that's right for some people and monogamy is right for others. The problem is we have put it in people's heads that non monogamy is only something that bad people do. No one wants to think of themselves as a bad person. So people who know they're probably not going to be able to make a monogamous commitment make it anyway because they want to be a good person and then they fail at it. And we should be encouraging people not to look outside, but to look inside and determine what is right for them.