Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E281: One Brain: The Neurobiology and Theology of Marriage w/Arthur & Ester Brooks | Lila Rose Show

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E281: One Brain: The Neurobiology and Theology of Marriage w/Arthur & Ester Brooks | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

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  There's sort of four secrets that could save almost every
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  marriage. OK, let's do.
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  It submission is not a one way St.
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  The happiest marriages are those in which men and women submit to
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  each. Other Well, I submit to you a
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  lot and you don't even know. The most common thing that men
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  get wrong is not trying to listen to understand, and that's
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  the left brain, right brain thing.
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  I realized that he was my idol. I was dependent completely on
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  him for my happiness. The moment I said no, no, no,
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  you're going to #2 God's gonna be #1 I felt like somebody had
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  died. Our marriage changed completely.
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  Hey guys, thank you so much for an amazing 2025.
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  The show grew by leaps and bounds and that's all because of
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  you and I couldn't have more fun creating this content for you.
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  So make sure you hit the subscribe button.
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  Also leave this video a like in a comment.
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  I read all the comments. Also we have our Patreon where
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  right now where you get to pick free merch of your choice if you
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  become an annual member. So go check that out at
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  patreon.com/lila Rose show. Arthur and Esther Brooks,
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  welcome to the podcast. Thank you.
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  I'm so glad you guys are here. Thanks for coming on We're.
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  Delighted to be here. Congratulations on the success
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  of the show. Thank you touching.
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  People all over the world. Thank you.
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  It's been a true honor and it's a huge honor to have you on, and
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  I think we might be the first podcast to have you on as a
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  couple. Yeah, I think that's true.
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  Podcast is the first one that you have been in my show.
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  We have a show in Guadalupe Radio, which is based here in
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  Los Angeles. And I had Arthur a few times in
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  Spanish. He speaks very good Spanish.
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  So Arthur Brooks. So 34 years with you.
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  I mean, it's I should have picked up something.
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  No, yeah, when we we got married in Spain.
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  So he he speaks Spanish. With Barcelona for decades.
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  Amazing. I'm a huge admirer of both of
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  you. I first saw your work, one of
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  your first books. I mean, you've written out what
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  is it over A10 books, What are? You at now 1616 books Amazing.
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  Well, you're, I mean, somebody has to count. 16 is amazing new.
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  York Times bestsellers And what is so striking about the two of
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  you together is you're witnessing the beauty of
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  marriage and the happiness that comes through marriage as well
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  as the life lived well. And so that's what I'm excited
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  to explore today. Your story.
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  You have AI think a talkie give together, falling in love and
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  staying in love. So we'll hear about that and
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  then just this huge body of work on happiness.
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  I was on your website and I saw I mean, I've already had seen
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  this because everybody from the Dalai Lama to Oprah loves you,
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  Arthur, and of course you by extension Esther.
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  But Oprah saying that you taught her how to be happy?
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  She's pretty good at it already, actually.
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  I think she has a natural talent for it.
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  But she was pretty interested in the intellectual basis for how
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  we can get happier. Because this is really, I mean,
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  we all come out, I mean, happiness is a funny thing.
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  We all have our our natural tendency.
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  We have a baseline. I actually have a test that we
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  take on the people take on my website to find out kind of what
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  their baseline is. And then what we want to do is
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  understand that, find out what the big challenges are so that
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  we can get happier. And that requires some
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  understanding of science and changing habits.
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  And, and that's really what my work is all about.
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  And that's what she got interested in.
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  That's what Oprah got interested in.
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  So we wrote a book together about that, as a matter of fact.
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  It's amazing, the Harvard Happiness study which you've
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  referenced. I know a lot in your work.
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  The. Harvard Study of adult
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  development. The Harvard.
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  Study of developed adult development.
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  Excuse me? It's marriage, relationship,
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  lifelong. That is a huge secret.
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  Yeah, it is. And So what you find is that
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  when that study started in the late 1930s with with students at
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  Harvard College, which is the undergraduate part of Harvard
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  University, and that wasn't very representative.
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  That was, you know, white men at Harvard.
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  And so it was actually expanded to people who didn't go to
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  college and then it incorporated their spouses and children.
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  So it became very representative.
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  And now it's been going for 90 years and so almost 90 years.
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  And and so that follows people all the way throughout their
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  lives to see what predicts happiness and health and old
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  age. You know, there's a kind of a
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  crystal ball, what can you do when you're your age or even our
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  age that will predict if you're 80 or 90 years old that you're
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  going to be happy and healthy, Healthy and happy and well is
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  what they call it. And there's seven things that
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  predict it. Some of them are pretty obvious.
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  Diet, exercise, smoking, drinking, in other words.
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  Non-smoking. Yeah, I know for sure.
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  I mean, it's like what they find is not smoking, obviously,
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  because you know, if you, if you're a lifelong smoker,
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  there's a 7 in 10 chance you're going to die of a smoking
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  related illness. And that's not a happy way to
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  go. You can't be very happy unless
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  you're an incredibly unusual person.
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  If you're dying of emphysema, drinking is neurotoxic and
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  dangerous. And there's not, I mean, it's
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  the old research that you have a couple of glasses of wine a day.
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  It's wrong. It's what it comes down to.
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  And the number one predictor of your marriage melting down is
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  misuse of substances is in that study.
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  And then exercise and diet. Don't eat like an 11 year old.
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  And, you know, pick up heavy things and run around for Pete's
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  sake. I mean, that stuff's pretty
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  obvious. But then the last three are keep
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  learning, keep an open, active mind.
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  Reading is super helpful. So people who are curious and
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  learn, they're much happier and healthier.
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  Find a way to deal with your problems.
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  Get good at some way of dealing with your problems.
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  And so everybody's thinking, well, get a psychoanalyst.
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  No, not necessarily. Get a prayer practice.
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  That's the best possible way as a relationship with the divine.
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  It's like actually your your friendship with God.
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  But get good at it. You got to practice it.
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  And last but not least is love. Happiness is love.
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  By far the most important and by far the most frequent.
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  Successful example of love leading to happiness and
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  Wellness is a long term marriage.
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  Was that though? Of all of those different 7
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  qualities, love was the would you say the pinnacle, the most
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  important washed everything else.
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  It washed everything out. Of the world, like love is
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  happiness is love is what it comes down to.
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  You can it covers a multitude of sins, yes.
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  I mean, it's a biblical, of course, but the whole thing is
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  it's like, even if you're a lifelong smoker, don't do that.
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  If you're married happily then. You're, I mean, it's just so
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  critically important and you know, there's some people who
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  aren't and they're people with religious vocations, for
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  example, and there's some people who just never find the one,
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  right. Some people who have
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  unsuccessful marriages. I get it.
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  I live in the world. Those people can be very, very
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  happy with extremely close personal friendships.
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  So it's love and and then of course, the best you can get is
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  when you're married to your best friend, which I.
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  Am it looks like you guys are. Yeah, totally.
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  How many years married Esther? 34 years.
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  We had a very interesting in our marriage.
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  We met in France, we were both musicians at the time and after
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  that we just found out. If you want, we can tell the
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  story. So I'd love to hear the story
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  because this is the falling in love and staying in love to be
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  happy for life, I mean. So we.
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  Quixotic tale, to be sure, yeah. Right.
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  Yeah. So it was 8/19/88.
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  I mean, it sounds really far away, but it was 1988 and we
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  were, we both met in Dijon, France.
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  I'm originally from Barcelona, Spain.
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  He, he's from Seattle. And we met at a brass festival.
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  We were both musicians. I used to play the trumpet, he
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  used to play the French horn. And he was on tour in Europe and
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  I, I came from Barcelona, Alona to Dijon and to the Burgundy
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  region region. And we met there for a couple, a
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  few days. He has he, he has talked a lot
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  and, and, and wrote about how the first time he saw me.
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  So he, you should say that. I'm not going to say that it's,
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  it's embarrassing just for me to say it.
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  But anyway, we met in we met in the summer and then in
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  Christmas, around Christmas, I went to visit him in New York.
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  I. Saw detail You spoke 0 words in.
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  English I spoke 0. Charming.
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  And I spoke no French, no Spanish, no Catalan.
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  He loved you. But it was like we were well.
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  I was a 24 year old. Yeah, we were.
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  Very. Even though we didn't speak the
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  same language, there was something, the best way to
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  explain it. I always say when I was with
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  him, even though I didn't understand what he was saying,
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  but I felt at home. You know that feeling that you
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  are at home, that you are not? You feel so good to be safe.
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  It's exactly safe at home. So anyway, so after that summer,
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  non speaking, not not communicating in a normal way,
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  it was mostly science and, and a lot of laughing, He went back to
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  New York, I went back to Barcelona, but at around
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  Christmas time, I came to visit him in New York.
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  And, and so we spend a week together or something.
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  I, I have to say that we were not practicing at the time.
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  So then, right? After practicing faith.
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  Not practicing our Catholic faith.
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  Certainly practicing music. We're practicing music.
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  And then so after that Christmas together, I went back to Spain
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  and he found out that there was an opening for an orchestra in
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  Barcelona for the the classical orchestra in Barcelona.
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  It's called Orchestaciuta de Barcelona.
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  And so he said, I'm going to apply and see if I get the the
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  addition. And he actually got the job and
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  a year later, Long story short, a year later, we were living in
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  Barcelona. So after that we lived together
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  for two years. Took me a while to close that
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  deal. It took me.
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  Were you trying to close the deal the whole time or you?
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  Were I knew I knew I knew we were going to get married from
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  the before we spoke the same language.
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  I knew this. How did you know that?
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  Because I don't know, it's funny.
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  Yeah, and that's the same thing. Like I felt at home.
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  Yeah. You knew that I was home too,
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  right? And that's how you expressed it.
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  Yeah. But I came from a culture of
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  very secular, ethnically Catholic, but non practicing.
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  And they're like, you live together.
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  There's you should never marry because you never know what's
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  going to happen. That that was my thinking, but I
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  knew I wanted to be with him. So I never thought about getting
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  married because that was not even in my background.
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  My siblings didn't get married. My friends nobody got married
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  but he. Europe is so modern, yeah.
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  It really is. It really is so modern.
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  But you know, the whole idea it was you didn't have anybody who
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  was saying that marriage is the pinnacle of how a man and a
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  woman. Can love each other, but.
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  This was and it was no sense that it was Sacramento.
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  So I was raised in a strong Christian home and I knew it was
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  Catholic or no, I was actually an evangelical Protestant.
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  I converted at 16. Wow at. 16.
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  Yeah, I had a a mystical experience at the Shrine of
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  Guadalupe as a teenager and and. OK, sorry.
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  Can we hear that? Really.
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  Quick. Well, I mean to say, I was on a
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  music trip. I was a super serious musician.
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  That's all I cared about was music.
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  And I was on a music trip. What instrument?
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  French Horn and I was in at the shrine of Guadalupe.
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  They were marching us through just for tourism.
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  And you've been there to the basilica?
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  I haven't. Been yet?
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  She's on her wall here. I adore her.
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  I've not been yet. We almost went this last fall.
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  We weren't able to go, but we planned to go.
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  You got to, I mean, so I have a huge devotion to Our Lady of
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  Guadalupe. And, and she was looking at me
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  and I was Protestant. I mean, it meant nothing to me,
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  but I couldn't get out of my head.
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  And I realized, I discovered at the age of 16 that actually I
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  was 15 at the time. And I, I went back to my home in
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  Seattle and which was where I grew up and started the process
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  of conversion. My parents thought it was, well,
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  probably better than drugs. And, and they have a lot on
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  their minds. And, you know, that was, and,
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  and, and I wound up going to the Catholic Church.
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  I didn't know any Catholics, as a matter of fact, but I was
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  really home under those circumstances.
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  But the whole point is I was well formed in a Christian home.
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  And what do you do? You, you fall in love.
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  And when you're in love with a woman, you marry her and then
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  you have a family. And that's what happiness comes
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  from. Is that kind of love?
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  That kind of institutionalized love?
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  Is that belief? I've got a comment before we go
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  into when the marriage get we get to the marriage and then the
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  staying in love for 34 years. You saw Esther and you fell in
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  love and you were just ready to go and you saw Our Lady of
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  Guadalupe in Mexico City and you sounds like you fell in love and
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  you just thought, whatever this is, I want to, I want to commit
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  to the greater picture of faith here.
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  Then I know I mean. And now, of course, after many,
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  many years, and she's my spiritual director, she's my
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  guru, she's Our Lady of Guadalupe.
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  No, her, this one, Esther. Yeah, Esther.
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  Well. After after you.
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  Are Our Lady, Yeah, yeah. Totally.
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  And and, but, but part of it is that life is about understanding
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  and making commitments, you know?
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  And it's not like I'm some sort of weird arch person, right?
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  You know, commit to anything on the spur of the moment.
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  You get to choose once, but really it's a question of
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  discovery. It's not a question of
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  invention. It's funny because there's these
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  two, as a behavioral scientist, I study entrepreneurs a lot and
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  entrepreneur. There's two schools of
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  entrepreneurship. 1 is the invention school and the other's
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  the discovery school. So did, did, did, did Steve Jobs
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  invent the iPhone or did he discover the iPhone?
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  And and I'm completely persuaded that entrepreneurship in the
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  business of life is all about discovering the truth because
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  the truth is there. Now part of that is because I'm
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  a Christian. I believe that the truth is
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  extant that that that essence precedes existence.
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  You exists, but you already had an essence because God has a
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  plan for your life and your job is to discover it.
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  That's the that's the joy, that's the journey, that's the
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  adventure, that's life itself. And so I've gone through life
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  with this idea that I'm going to that I'm discovering this thing.
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  And when and you know, if you're waiting to discover something
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  made Lewis and Clark knew it was the Pacific Ocean, right.
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  And and when I when I saw her, it's like I I went home after
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  that week and Dijon, you know, I said dad, I call my dad at the
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  moment. I think I'm going to marry.
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  He says, great, I want to meet her.
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  I said, well, I got some problems.
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  You know, I got some problems. She doesn't speak English.
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  She doesn't live in the United States and she doesn't know
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  this, nor am I sure she believes in marriage.
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  And so there was it was a project.
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  Let's just say it was a project. OK, I want to explore the
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  project, but I've got to ask this whole idea of knowing
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  through discovery. And first, you're open to the
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  discovery. You're kind of primed.
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  You have to. It sounds like part of it.
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  You were primed for the discovery in Mexico City because
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  you were already formed and inculcated in this Christian
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  home. Not that God couldn't obviously
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  give us, you know, any moment of, of revelation because God
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  can do that at any moment. Yeah, redirect us for sure.
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  But grace builds on nature, so you were already sort of formed
• 14:51
  to perceive the spiritual things as a good and and see in the
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  eyes of Our Lady something deeper to bring you even closer
• 14:57
  to Jesus Christ your Son, right? Similarly with Esther, when you
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  first saw her, you were already primed for marriage because of
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  your faith. It's not.
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  I knew I was going to get married for sure.
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  There was a 0% chance. That's a very good.
• 15:07
  Point. It's really hard to find good
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• 15:13
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  everylife.com/lila. There was a 0% chance that's.
• 16:47
  A very good point. But I but I want to ask both of
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  you this because it sounds like you also had this feeling of
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  he's home, even though you weren't fully realizing what
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  that looked like. So many people when they are
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  maybe even open to marriage and they're dating or they're just,
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  it could be a job search. It's either to Our Calling, like
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  what is my calling? What is my cause?
• 17:06
  Certainly what is my, my relationship, there's confusion
• 17:10
  because they meet someone, they think there's a spark or there's
• 17:13
  something special. Then it's totally all wrong.
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  They meet someone else. There was no spark, but then
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  they sort of get to know them more and they're like, this is
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  all right. I, I think this idea is very
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  beautiful. If you see someone you know and
• 17:24
  it's so simple, it's clean. There's, there's this vision
• 17:27
  there and confidence, but not every very few people, maybe not
• 17:30
  very few, but not many people that I talked to have that
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  experience. Why is that?
• 17:35
  Well. Particularly today, right?
• 17:37
  Yeah. And so I I would say two things.
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  A lot of times you think that that's what it is and it isn't.
• 17:44
  That's possible too. You say, Oh yeah, because we get
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  infatuated with somebody, but that's the wrong person.
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  That can also happen. And sometimes I think that
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  that's what I see with the young people that I know and I talk
• 17:58
  to. There's, there's a, there's a
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  fear of rejection, there's a fear of, of failure and that
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  kind of paralyzes a lot of people.
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  Would you agree with me about, about just taking the risk,
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  saying no, I'm selling like I'm like, I did.
• 18:14
  I'm selling my car and my trumpet and I'm going to New
• 18:17
  York because I really, I want to be home with this guy.
• 18:22
  And, and, and I'm, I was not a religious person.
• 18:25
  I was not, but I had that thing and I took a risk.
• 18:28
  And I remember when the plane landed in New York, this little
• 18:33
  least jungle 25 year old from Spain, never been in in New
• 18:38
  York. And I was thinking, is he going
• 18:41
  to pick me up? If he's not picking me up, what
• 18:44
  am I going to do? You know, I was thinking so I I
• 18:48
  was a risk. I mean, it was not I was not
• 18:50
  gonna die. I would have done something, but
• 18:52
  I didn't speak English. I didn't know if you and he told
• 18:55
  me he was gonna come, but he told told me over the phone and
• 18:58
  we didn't speak the same language.
• 19:00
  No cell phone, right? No cell phones?
• 19:02
  No. Of course, that was 19891988.
• 19:06
  1980. 8 So no cell phones. I had a cousin who spoke English
• 19:10
  and spoke to him and told him if you're not there I'm gonna come
• 19:13
  and get you. Basically, that was my, my so.
• 19:18
  So there's so two things there. There is a risk you can make a
• 19:23
  mistake. I could have landed in New York
• 19:26
  and he couldn't have not been there.
• 19:28
  And then, OK, so you, you move on.
• 19:31
  I, I, I was, I was prepared for that, you know what I mean?
• 19:35
  And it would have, it would not have been OK.
• 19:37
  I would have been heartbroken, but but I would not have died
• 19:41
  and I would have come, you know, after that and I would, it would
• 19:46
  have been okay. And I knew that in the back of
• 19:49
  my mind, I knew there was a risk and I was willing to take that
• 19:52
  risk. And the same thing with him.
• 19:54
  He he took the job in Barcelona and moved to Barcelona.
• 19:59
  That was a risk and it could have gone wrong because
• 20:03
  perfectly, but but it's OK because even, even when, when
• 20:07
  things go wrong, you just, you learn from it.
• 20:10
  You, you just get better, you get stronger and you you should
• 20:14
  never stop trying. That's your life as a start up
• 20:18
  and your life really is an enterprise.
• 20:20
  You're the founder of the, you know the the enterprise.
• 20:22
  That's your life. That's what God lets you do.
• 20:25
  And, and, and the idea of not treating your life like a start
• 20:27
  up, what a waste. But that requires a bunch of
• 20:30
  risk. I mean, you're an entrepreneur,
• 20:31
  you've got a business that you're running here.
• 20:33
  I mean, this doesn't, you know, this, this the Lila Rose podcast
• 20:36
  doesn't run on whale songs and happy thoughts.
• 20:38
  I mean, it's a business and, but, and that's a risky happy
• 20:41
  thought to keep it going. Lots of friends, lots of
• 20:43
  friends, folks, but you know, that's really an important thing
• 20:46
  because that's part of the adventure.
• 20:48
  And, and, and I think this is a big cultural shift that we've
• 20:51
  seen. So I, I now teach 20 somethings.
• 20:53
  So my students are all graduates students at Harvard and they're
• 20:57
  MBA students and, and masters of public policy students.
• 20:59
  So they're on average 28 years old.
• 21:02
  And life is quite different than when we were in our mid 20s back
• 21:05
  then. I mean, we, we found all kinds
• 21:07
  of technological ways and cultural ways to defray the, the
• 21:11
  risk that goes into every part of life, including the risk that
• 21:15
  comes from building your life from love up the foundation of
• 21:19
  your life is love. It was riskier in the 80s and
• 21:22
  90s. It was a riskier business.
• 21:23
  And you know, the one of the problems with a lot of dating
• 21:26
  apps, for example, which are getting better, to be sure, but
• 21:29
  one of the problems with them is they're, they're dedicated to
• 21:32
  taking risk out of the experience.
• 21:34
  And when you de risk your life, you also de adventure your life.
• 21:38
  You make your life. There's less risk means less
• 21:41
  reward. That's a problem I.
• 21:44
  This is so compelling and we talk about dating and
• 21:47
  relationships on the show all the time.
• 21:48
  We even have dating panels. We're doing a call in show now
• 21:50
  like so this is like the topic, right?
• 21:53
  But you guys were you are entrepreneurs, both of you, and
• 21:56
  you were entrepreneurial, like you were saying, in love.
• 21:59
  And that meant willing to take big risks for big rewards,
• 22:01
  knowing it might not pan out. And then you're going to keep
• 22:03
  moving. It's not like you're going to
• 22:04
  give up on marriage or give up on love.
• 22:06
  You're going to be heartbroken in New York or you're going to
• 22:07
  go to Barcelona and the girl doesn't want to marry me.
• 22:09
  This isn't going to work out. And then you're you're going to
• 22:11
  have to keep trying. I think the fear most people
• 22:15
  have just getting into marriage to begin with today is the fear
• 22:18
  of the risk, right? All of the risks.
• 22:21
  And so you know, to your point, you, you de risk, then you also
• 22:24
  de reward. You lose the the lower without
• 22:26
  the possibility for the low low. You lose the possibility of the
• 22:29
  high high. But at the same time, what about
• 22:31
  the role of prudence in all of this?
• 22:33
  Well, Prudence is funny, right? Because that's a dose of Peeper
• 22:37
  who writes in the four cardinal virtues and every serious, you
• 22:41
  know, viewer and and listener to this show needs to go read the
• 22:44
  four cardinal virtues of Peeper. And the first of those virtues
• 22:48
  in that book is Prudence. Prudence isn't being cautious.
• 22:52
  Prudence is choosing the right path at the right time, is
• 22:55
  reacting in the appropriate way. That's what prudence means.
• 22:59
  And so. Always to to to see the picture
• 23:03
  and they just say what is the good thing to do right now?
• 23:07
  So it's not just eliminate prudence does not eliminate
• 23:09
  risk. You know, do what's most safe.
• 23:11
  It's not being over the cautious.
• 23:12
  On the contrary, you know, we have.
• 23:13
  Two of our kids are military. Two of our kids are U.S.
• 23:16
  Marines, and you know, they, they don't, they teach him to be
• 23:19
  incredibly prudent, which sometimes means going and
• 23:22
  kicking down that door. That's the prudent thing to do
• 23:25
  when you're a Marine, right? Because that's the appropriate
• 23:28
  thing. Prudence involves actions many
• 23:30
  times it doesn't only involve an inaction.
• 23:33
  So. When I met her, the prudent
• 23:34
  thing to do was to go all in. To go all in, that was the.
• 23:37
  Prudent thing, otherwise you would have lost an opportunity
• 23:41
  to something really great and that's not prudent.
• 23:43
  Yeah. And be like, yeah, you know,
• 23:46
  and, and this, this idea that there is a path for you, that
• 23:50
  there's a plan for you, there's this that's the, the, the, the
• 23:53
  underlying sense of the supernatural, which even though
• 23:56
  you weren't religious, you had a sense of the supernatural.
• 23:58
  You had a sense of an antenna to the divine that would only be on
• 24:02
  when the circuit was closed. And the circuit is closed when
• 24:05
  you have this marriage, when you have this relationship.
• 24:08
  I've got to ask, had there been a risk that either of you had
• 24:12
  taken in love before each other, where it didn't pan out
• 24:17
  obviously, but it showed that you were willing to take the
• 24:20
  risk, or did you buy God's grace really the first risk you really
• 24:23
  took was each other. I had a boyfriend before I took
• 24:26
  a risk. Super long term.
• 24:28
  Yeah, it didn't work, Didn't work up.
• 24:31
  And you were heartbroken. I remember when we broke up.
• 24:35
  It was the end of the world that day, you know, or that week I
• 24:39
  remember and my sister taking care of me and the whole thing.
• 24:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. And but then like there's.
• 24:45
  Someone better for you? Yes.
• 24:46
  Did she say that? No, my sister didn't say that,
• 24:51
  but but but it is the truth. And so yeah, it happened.
• 24:54
  You had you had a little relationship.
• 24:56
  But nothing serious. Yeah, just because it wasn't
• 24:58
  the. It wasn't the one.
• 24:59
  This was your. Biggest risk and your biggest?
• 25:01
  Yeah, this was. I've never met the one.
• 25:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And again, I'm a lot more binary
• 25:07
  in my thinking than she is. She's a lot more Shades of Grey.
• 25:10
  And that's that's actually quite common between men and women
• 25:13
  actually. That's that, that women are are
• 25:15
  they're a lot more, they're a lot less binary than men are.
• 25:18
  And a lot of the time, which is one of the ways that we're so
• 25:20
  complementary and so and so important that we be together.
• 25:23
  It's one of the reasons that that people tend are often very
• 25:26
  unhappy when they're not partnered in this particular way
• 25:28
  because there's not somebody to complete you.
• 25:31
  Partnered in a way. Male.
• 25:32
  Female. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:33
  And you know, and, and, you know, in marriage, for example,
• 25:35
  you're supposed to complete each other.
• 25:37
  I mean, that's biblical, but it's also psychological.
• 25:39
  It's biological. That's the case.
• 25:41
  And, and one of the one of the reasons for that is that men
• 25:43
  have a much more developed left hemisphere of the brain.
• 25:47
  And that's more sort of logical, binary black and white thinking.
• 25:51
  And women have a much stronger right hemisphere of the brain,
• 25:54
  which is Shades of Grey, mystery and meaning.
• 25:57
  And, and you got to have two hemispheres.
• 25:59
  We all have two hemispheres to be sure.
• 26:01
  But this whole idea that she's the right hemisphere on the left
• 26:05
  hemisphere, sort of metaphorically speaking, the
• 26:07
  corpus callosum, the connective tissue between the hemispheres,
• 26:10
  that's our marriage. That's how we're really linked
• 26:12
  together. And so, you know, 1 flesh for me
• 26:15
  as a, as a, as a scientist, one flesh means our brains, our
• 26:20
  brains, we have one brain. We're one brain.
• 26:23
  And also we have qualities that are different, you know, like
• 26:27
  men and women. That's another thing that it's
• 26:30
  I, I believe is a problem for people to find to, to find their
• 26:35
  spouses because, you know, it seems like we cannot say that
• 26:41
  men and women are different and we have different qualities and
• 26:44
  we have and, and, and so we are supposed to find the person that
• 26:48
  complements us, right? And, and so, and in my case, in
• 26:52
  my generation, we, we were really brainwashed about women
• 26:57
  have to be like men and be, be less women and, and motherhood
• 27:03
  is a, is just a burden in all, all these lies that we keep, we
• 27:07
  still keep telling girls. And, but deep down, I think
• 27:13
  people, my generation, we knew the truth.
• 27:16
  We were able to see the truth. We would see the truth in our
• 27:20
  families. We would see the truth in the
• 27:22
  culture. And I think more and more we,
• 27:25
  we, you cannot see the truth in your families or in the culture
• 27:31
  because nobody's telling you these things.
• 27:33
  And, and then there's a lot of frustration, girls, women, when
• 27:37
  they get to a certain age and they realize, wait a second, I
• 27:40
  have this truth. I can, I can understand this
• 27:43
  truth in me. Nobody has told me but you're.
• 27:47
  Always super sensible, though. I have to say, you're a very
• 27:50
  sensible person. I mean, you lived in this card,
• 27:51
  a hardcore communist, atheist culture, and which I was not
• 27:55
  down with. I was never down with that at
• 27:57
  all. But you would.
• 27:58
  I remember you laughed at it. I mean, you followed a lot of
• 28:00
  that because you're, you know, fish is in water, right?
• 28:03
  But you laughed at it, remember you laughing at it, which gave
• 28:05
  me hope. It really gave me hope that
• 28:08
  whole time when, by the way, when I was cutting corners, we
• 28:11
  were living together before we were married because.
• 28:13
  And that's the thing, Lila, here's the thing.
• 28:15
  I got to ask you a question so. Here's the thing.
• 28:16
  Yeah. Ask me, you know, it's like so
• 28:18
  we we we have this really super successful marriage.
• 28:21
  I mean, she's really the last person I lay my eyes on as I
• 28:23
  take my dying breath. I'm Don Quixote and she's duel
• 28:26
  Tinella. I mean, it's like this is it's
• 28:29
  great, but but we made we started off with a mistake,
• 28:33
  right? We started off by living
• 28:34
  together for two years. How does that work?
• 28:37
  How is how, how is that possible?
• 28:39
  And look, if I had said, no, honey, we're not going to live
• 28:43
  together. We're going to do this the right
• 28:45
  way, the way that I was raised, she would have said, like, see
• 28:49
  ya so. Well, I don't know.
• 28:52
  I don't know what I we don't know.
• 28:53
  For sure. I know you, I know you, I know
• 28:55
  you've been like, what's what's up with the lady?
• 28:56
  Of Guadalupe would have appeared to her.
• 28:59
  But I don't know. I mean, how does that we don't
• 29:00
  know? We don't know how to, we don't
• 29:02
  know how to deconflict that. After 34 years, we still can't
• 29:06
  deconflict that as we've talked to our kids.
• 29:08
  I mean, our kids know and we tell our kids no, that's the
• 29:10
  wrong way to do it. I mean, we got the resurrection
• 29:12
  because of the crucifixion and we got the crucifixion because
• 29:15
  of the fault. It's like the oh, happy fault.
• 29:17
  I mean, that's the whole story of all of our lives, right to to
• 29:20
  any degree is that we, we send and then God brings about a
• 29:24
  greater redemption and a more perfect plan, which is crazy
• 29:27
  that that's God's economy of grace.
• 29:29
  And also you didn't, well, you knew, but you didn't know.
• 29:32
  So you knew don't have sex before marriage, but that wasn't
• 29:34
  your, you weren't really raised with that.
• 29:36
  It's not like you're like, this is actually completely foreign.
• 29:38
  This is the right thing to do, right thing.
• 29:40
  To do just go with your feelings, with your desires and
• 29:44
  whatever you know, that's, that's that's how we still, but
• 29:48
  still like I still have my family, my siblings, my friends,
• 29:51
  they all live like this. Wow, You know, it was so for me
• 29:55
  that was so great that I had him who would just like take me away
• 30:00
  from that so that I could grow in my relationship with God and.
• 30:05
  They all laughed at the American.
• 30:06
  And they all laugh at me. I mean, you know, oh, you're
• 30:09
  married. Oh, you go to Mass.
• 30:11
  Oh, OK, OK. Say hi to God.
• 30:14
  When we think the whole plan, the master plan was get married
• 30:17
  and then we're going to raise our family Catholic, that's the
• 30:21
  plan. But it was a staged plan.
• 30:23
  And it wouldn't, it wouldn't have been, you know, all at
• 30:26
  once. It would have been impossible,
• 30:28
  so I cut corners. But that was the plan, and so we
• 30:30
  moved back to the United States. After we got married, we
• 30:32
  emigrated. Together, but you forgot so.
• 30:35
  So then we lived together for two years.
• 30:38
  And then one day he came home with a ring and he got on his
• 30:42
  knee and he asked me to marry him.
• 30:46
  And, and I remember he was shaking.
• 30:48
  He, he didn't know he was going to say no, you know, yes,
• 30:52
  living. Together.
• 30:52
  And I don't know. I mean, that's ridiculous.
• 30:54
  Because because I always would talk and would say I don't
• 30:57
  believe in marriage. We don't need to get married.
• 30:59
  We are so well like this. But then you came with a ring.
• 31:02
  By the way, it was the wrong ring.
• 31:04
  He he, he bought instead of buying like the diamond ring for
• 31:08
  the he bought. He bought a wedding, wedding
• 31:11
  band. He.
• 31:12
  Was ready. He was like, we got an official
• 31:13
  anyway. And so, but immediately I said
• 31:18
  yes. So I saw the truth.
• 31:22
  I saw that was it. And I said yes.
• 31:25
  So maybe I mean what you back to the question you asked Arthur,
• 31:28
  which I want to hear your answer on that because you know, you
• 31:32
  say, well, it wouldn't have worked.
• 31:33
  It wouldn't have worked. You said, well, maybe it would
• 31:34
  have meaning the living together before her.
• 31:36
  You're like, well, we had to do that because that's the way she
• 31:38
  was wired and what how she was raised.
• 31:40
  But you're saying, well, maybe not, maybe it wouldn't.
• 31:42
  Who knows? It's hard to say, but it's so so
• 31:44
  my answer is, it's a mystery, like so many other things.
• 31:46
  You know, we were reading the other night.
• 31:48
  We were reading Job together. We read the Bible together a lot
• 31:53
  at night and and we were reading the 30th charter of Job.
• 31:56
  In the 30th charter of Job. Job has God in the dock.
• 31:59
  All this bad stuff happened to Job and he remained faithful,
• 32:03
  but then he has he talks to the whirlwind.
• 32:05
  You know, God deigns to have a conversation with Job and, and,
• 32:08
  and Job says, you know what gives?
• 32:11
  Come on. I mean, it's like I you, you,
• 32:13
  you were even saying to the, you know, to Satan, the dark one or
• 32:17
  whatever that his interlocutor in the beginning of Job that
• 32:20
  that I was your boy and then you did this to me.
• 32:23
  Why? And God says, well, OK, I'll
• 32:25
  tell you. I mean, you deserve to know.
• 32:26
  I mean, obviously, because you know so much, because you
• 32:29
  understand why I made the heavens and the earth.
• 32:30
  So I'll tell you. I'll explain this mystery too.
• 32:33
  It's very clear God is messing with Job to say it's a mystery.
• 32:37
  So until you understand why I created the heavens and the
• 32:40
  earth, you're not going to sort this one out.
• 32:41
  And this is one of these weird mysteries of all these things
• 32:44
  about why something that we're not supposed to do leads to the
• 32:47
  best thing ever, Why something that we're not supposed to do
• 32:50
  leads us to lead to live a fully Catholic life in which we're
• 32:55
  telling young people about these great sources of joy.
• 32:59
  And also God doesn't ask us to understand, but he's asked us to
• 33:04
  trust. And that's another thing we talk
• 33:06
  a lot about that trust is such an important thing, especially
• 33:10
  in in our relationship with God, of course, because but also in
• 33:15
  marriage. That's another, I think another
• 33:18
  problem that that I have a talk on, on submission and mutual
• 33:24
  submission in marriage and what does that look like etcetera
• 33:27
  and, and everything. All of this is very good.
• 33:30
  But I think there's has to be a base of trust before you can
• 33:34
  build and you can love like completely sacrificially in a
• 33:40
  marriage. And, and of course, and with
• 33:42
  God, if we stop trusting, that's when we start controlling
• 33:47
  things. That's what when we start eating
• 33:49
  from the forbidden tree and that's when, that's when bad
• 33:53
  things start happening. So in our case, in your
• 33:56
  question, what happened? What would have happened if I
• 34:00
  had, if you had asked me before that and I had said, no, we, we,
• 34:06
  we shouldn't even try to understand because that's the
• 34:10
  way God let it happen. And that's the and I think one
• 34:15
  of the reasons is so that we can talk to younger people about
• 34:20
  marriage without being judge mental without, without telling
• 34:25
  them we are so much better than you are because we did all the
• 34:28
  wrong things. And and I think only that is
• 34:33
  worth. Probably just we we do pre cana
• 34:36
  now. Having gone through these you.
• 34:38
  Know 36 or 40 couples at a time and you know, they're about 60%
• 34:42
  of them are living together. I mean, they're, they're in
• 34:44
  there and the reason that they're in Pre Cana is because
• 34:46
  they have to be or their priest won't marry them.
• 34:48
  And it's a big retreat center, a legionary retreat center in near
• 34:52
  where we live in Northern Virginia.
• 34:54
  And, and so they're packed in there and they're like, you
• 34:57
  know, they're, they're, they're just gritting their teeth and
• 35:00
  getting it done. And we get up there and we say,
• 35:02
  look, we look like this really traditional Catholic couple.
• 35:05
  We've been together for a super long time and, and all is well,
• 35:09
  we have kids, we have grandkids. Isn't that great?
• 35:11
  We go to Mass every week. We go to Mass every day, right.
• 35:15
  But I got to tell you something that a lot of you are living
• 35:18
  together and so were we. So you got to ask what nerve,
• 35:22
  what, what gives them the right to actually stand up here and,
• 35:25
  and, and talk to us. And I say, well, there's a
• 35:27
  number of reasons #1 they asked us to #2 it doesn't matter where
• 35:32
  you start, what matters is where you wind up.
• 35:35
  And #3 we learned a lot over that particular experience that
• 35:38
  we want to talk to you about. I think one of the reasons that
• 35:44
  now we're doing things together is because we, we have realized
• 35:47
  that people want to know and, and, and it's not that we have a
• 35:52
  perfect marriage because there's no perfect marriage.
• 35:55
  And we fight and we have discussions.
• 35:58
  Every day we have a fight. 10,000 fights.
• 36:00
  Yeah, it's like. It's Spanish and she it's a form
• 36:03
  of communication. How you?
• 36:04
  Irritate him, he irritates me. I mean, this is all it's OK, but
• 36:10
  but I think people want to hear OK, so how do I do this?
• 36:15
  How do I get over these irritations and these and this
• 36:18
  lack of trust and this what, how can I do this?
• 36:22
  And so that's one of the reasons that we start doing things
• 36:26
  together, because there are other reasons because we see
• 36:29
  that there is really interest and people really want to know
• 36:32
  and want to hear. And maybe we can give something
• 36:36
  because our beginnings were so messed up.
• 36:39
  And now we have we're finding, we're still finding the not the
• 36:44
  perfect, there's no such thing in this world in this earth, but
• 36:48
  like as close as possible to to the best that we can do in our
• 36:52
  lives here. And and so this is so important
• 36:57
  that that it started with a weakness, with something broken,
• 37:03
  something wrong. And it's progressing.
• 37:06
  And we're getting, we could say we're getting better and
• 37:09
  happier, right? Because it's not.
• 37:12
  Yeah. It's not completely perfect.
• 37:15
  It can never be perfect until, you know, we are in heaven.
• 37:19
  So. Yeah.
• 37:20
  Looking for perfection Looking for happiness from endpoint of
• 37:24
  happiness. Is Bad Religion.
• 37:26
  The reason that we want happiness but can't get it is
• 37:30
  because we're made on earth to get to heaven, and that there is
• 37:35
  an ultimate point of happiness where there is bliss that's
• 37:37
  unending, where there's joy that doesn't stop, and that's heaven.
• 37:40
  And the fact that we want that on earth is the hunger that
• 37:43
  shows us, that reveals to us the existence of that.
• 37:46
  So you want a perfect marriage, but you're not going to get it.
• 37:49
  The whole point is that you're trying to get to heaven.
• 37:51
  That's your struggle to get to heaven right there.
• 37:53
  It's evidence that it's true. And the perfect love and
• 37:56
  communion that we get in heaven. It's like the culmination love
• 37:59
  being back to the happiness study.
• 38:01
  I know it has the other name but I didn't get earlier.
• 38:03
  But anyways, the end game is love and being loved into love.
• 38:07
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  That's weheartnutrition.com and use the code Lila for a full 20%
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  porn for good. Back to the pre cana and what
• 39:52
  you said something that you said, Esther, about the
• 39:54
  forbidden fruit and that temptation of not trusting
• 39:57
  because that was at the garden, right?
• 39:58
  Adam and Eve in the garden and Eve just didn't trust the snake
• 40:02
  is like, you're going to get all these special powers.
• 40:04
  And why did he tell you that? And she's like, yeah.
• 40:07
  And so it was a lack of trust that was the cause of the first
• 40:10
  sin, right? And that really toppled the
• 40:12
  whole, you know, the whole peaceful harmony that we had in
• 40:17
  the in the garden with God. We walked in total harmony with
• 40:19
  God, and then we. Have sin entered the world and
• 40:21
  death and all the curses, But it was a lack of trust.
• 40:24
  And so back to that couple. Because again, we, we talk on
• 40:27
  the show, we have this, this comes up all the time, you know,
• 40:29
  not just hookup culture, which is more of an extreme, but yeah,
• 40:32
  cohabitation. Most people today live together
• 40:34
  before they get married and they think, well, it's not a big deal
• 40:37
  because we we're going to get married.
• 40:38
  You know, I think about personal friends of mine, they're like,
• 40:40
  we wasn't a big deal. We're going to get married.
• 40:42
  So let's just focus on that in the future at some point, you
• 40:46
  know, we're, we're basically married already.
• 40:47
  It's like common law, you know, in their minds to some to some
• 40:49
  degree, but that marriage certificate does matter.
• 40:52
  And most importantly, the marriage before God matters that
• 40:55
  this is a this is whether it's a natural marriage or it becomes a
• 40:58
  Sacramento marriage, that this is for life, you and me
• 41:01
  exclusively permanently until death to us do us part.
• 41:05
  And so I, I'm curious if you have a message for people about
• 41:09
  maybe one more thought for especially people that are
• 41:12
  either younger in the situation or people that know people that
• 41:15
  are like this, where they think, well, it worked out for you
• 41:18
  guys. You know, they're doing, they're
• 41:20
  crushing it. Like, look, he's in there in
• 41:22
  love. Like it's so beautiful.
• 41:24
  And, you know, so let's not make too big of a deal over this
• 41:27
  morality thing about sex before marriage because Christians can
• 41:31
  get too hung up on this morality thing.
• 41:33
  Yeah. Well, OK, so in order to answer
• 41:36
  that, can I answer that? Question.
• 41:38
  Yeah, yeah. I'll do the science you, you do
• 41:39
  the way you're going to start to answer that.
• 41:41
  Question. OK, so then I, I would like to
• 41:44
  go to that place, that point where he asked me to marry him.
• 41:48
  And then I said yes, but then I said but not in the church.
• 41:53
  And so we got married in the justice of the peace.
• 41:56
  I, I was not there yet. I was slowly he was bringing me,
• 42:01
  but I was not there yet. OK, so we got married in the
• 42:03
  justice of the peace. And it took us 18 years after
• 42:06
  that for us to get married in the church.
• 42:10
  So it was a long process, but what happened, I mean, I had to,
• 42:15
  you know, it had to happen, but it was very long and you wish it
• 42:18
  had not been so long. But what happened is that how
• 42:23
  can I summarize this whole thing?
• 42:26
  There was a point in my life that I realized that in order
• 42:31
  for me to really love my husband or anybody really true love,
• 42:38
  sacrificial love, I had to let God into our marriage.
• 42:44
  I had to open the doors to the divine.
• 42:49
  So the source of love, so that, and when I did that, my love
• 42:53
  became instead of being a human love, selfish, needy, it became
• 42:59
  divine. It became pure love, sacrificial
• 43:02
  to the point of that I could, he could do bad things to me, but I
• 43:07
  would not stop loving him. And most important?
• 43:10
  I haven't done bad things. Well, yeah, you're pretty good.
• 43:12
  But anyway, I'm not going to say the bad thing.
• 43:15
  Annoying. He's not going to tell everyone,
• 43:17
  but. The thing but.
• 43:19
  The. Most people bank robber or
• 43:20
  something, yeah. Most importantly, oh, what was I
• 43:23
  going to say? Oh yeah.
• 43:24
  Most importantly, that I realized that he was my God.
• 43:31
  He was my idol. I, I was dependent completely on
• 43:35
  him for my happiness. So, and if he didn't give me
• 43:38
  exactly what I needed in every exact moment, I was unhappy and
• 43:44
  I was so needy and I was so like, it was not, it was not a
• 43:48
  it was very selfish. The moment I said no, no, no,
• 43:52
  you're going to number 2 and God's going to be #1 God's going
• 43:57
  to be my #1 love, our marriage changed completely.
• 44:02
  And that's what I tell people that are not married.
• 44:07
  This is the love, like marriage, married love is not just a
• 44:13
  mundane thing. It's a it's, it's, it's
• 44:16
  something, it's the closest thing to the love of the
• 44:20
  Trinity, to the love between God and, and, and, and, and Jesus
• 44:25
  and, and so, and especially because we that love creates
• 44:31
  fruit and brings fruit and, and anyway, so the moment we, we let
• 44:37
  this happen and then what happens is I don't need him to
• 44:42
  be happy. I have a relationship with God
• 44:46
  so that I can make him happy with my love or better said, so
• 44:51
  that I can love him in in a non selfish way.
• 44:56
  And so and that doesn't happen suddenly one day you say, Oh
• 44:59
  yeah, OK, that happened. No, this was a process.
• 45:02
  But I remember that it was kind of like I, I like a death.
• 45:07
  That false idol that I had with him was was dead and.
• 45:12
  He was your idol. He was my idol.
• 45:14
  It's incredible as that sounds after.
• 45:16
  And this is after 18 years of marriage.
• 45:18
  After 18 years, you ever met? And you had kids, too.
• 45:20
  Everything I. Had kids and everything.
• 45:21
  Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, we had kids and.
• 45:23
  What inspired this new? Well, she was going to mass
• 45:25
  already. She was.
• 45:27
  Yeah, but it was a very slow process.
• 45:29
  It was not. Just it was a very gradual
• 45:30
  thing. Very.
• 45:31
  Gradual. A lot of evangelical
• 45:34
  Protestants, my my background, they believe in this kind of
• 45:37
  like road to Damascus experience, you know, one and
• 45:40
  done and you take Jesus into your heart and that's it.
• 45:43
  Nothing is No, no, no. It's this constant, this like
• 45:46
  unfurling of the born again experience, which is every
• 45:49
  single day when you're Catholic. I know that you were praying a
• 45:51
  lot. Oh, yeah, no, no.
• 45:52
  And for I was resentful for years because when we moved back
• 45:55
  to the States and we started having children and I was going
• 45:57
  to Mass, we're going to have a Catholic family.
• 46:00
  And I was teaching the kids their prayers when they were
• 46:01
  little and I was taking them a lot of a lot of times you didn't
• 46:04
  go and they would be like, oh, that poor man, obviously a
• 46:07
  widower with his children. You know that.
• 46:09
  And. So you would take the kids to
• 46:11
  math on Sunday? And.
• 46:13
  You would stay home. I would go for a run where you'd
• 46:15
  be like, I'm not doing this. I'm just kind of a sassy thing.
• 46:17
  It's my Sunday, I can rest. No, you take them and.
• 46:21
  You know, knock yourself out, man.
• 46:23
  This is what you're going to do. It was bad and I remember I was
• 46:25
  one in. 18 years of that, sorry. No, no, it was in the middle.
• 46:28
  Little by little by little you were going.
• 46:30
  More later. I started going on Sundays.
• 46:33
  I convinced her to send the kids to the Heights, which is the
• 46:36
  Opus Day school in in in Maryland, and it's great.
• 46:41
  It's great. It's.
• 46:41
  Great because they evangelized the entire family.
• 46:43
  They were on my side. Yeah.
• 46:45
  And we were like, mom. Come to I know the first day
• 46:48
  that I went to Mass on Sunday Mass, my kids were telling
• 46:52
  everybody around us in the pews. My mom, my mom is here.
• 46:55
  So it was like. How old were they?
• 46:57
  How old were they at that? Time.
• 46:58
  How old were they 2? And four something before our
• 47:00
  daughter came along, as a matter of fact, before our daughter was
• 47:03
  even with us. But they you know, I remember in
• 47:06
  the prayers of the faithful where the priest, you know, they
• 47:08
  give you they you know, you pray with as a congregation.
• 47:11
  And then at the end, the the priest says, and now we pray for
• 47:14
  the you know, the on in the silence of our hearts and and
• 47:17
  they always give you one second. I'm like, hold on bother.
• 47:20
  I need time and I'm here and it would always be bring her home,
• 47:24
  bring her home same prayer, same prayer, same prayer years, same
• 47:28
  prayer and finally I had I got this answer.
• 47:31
  It was the funniest thing where God said stop bugging her about
• 47:35
  me, just keep bugging me about her.
• 47:38
  Wow. Right.
• 47:40
  And so I just kept bugging him. That's Saint Monica.
• 47:42
  I know that's Saint Monica's whole day, but that was, that
• 47:44
  was. She didn't say that, Saint
• 47:46
  Monica said. No, St.
• 47:48
  Ambrose said to Saint Monica. I stop, stop telling Augustine
• 47:52
  about God and and start telling God about Augustine.
• 47:55
  So. But I was bugging God about her
• 47:57
  instead of and I stopped bugging her about God.
• 48:00
  What did it feel like? So you would take a two and a
• 48:02
  four year old to mass without your wife?
• 48:04
  And even Marina and. Even when Marina came along, our
• 48:07
  daughter. What would that?
• 48:08
  What would that feel like for you?
• 48:11
  You're in love with this woman. You're you're a family.
• 48:13
  You know you'll adore her, but there's this huge piece that's
• 48:17
  not. I kind of felt like it was just
• 48:19
  a question of time, kind of like I felt it was a question of time
• 48:23
  before she'd marry me. I felt like these things are a
• 48:26
  question of time. I felt, and again, you know, I,
• 48:29
  I could have been wrong and there could have been heartbreak
• 48:31
  involved in this, right? I realized that there's risk,
• 48:33
  but that's the start up life. There's risk and you got to be
• 48:37
  all in. You got to be all in for the
• 48:38
  long run too. And Neil, there are couples who
• 48:42
  truly love each other until the grave and, and one never brings
• 48:45
  the other one in. This happens a lot.
• 48:47
  It does, you know, I saw, I mean, I, I know a lot of
• 48:50
  Catholics, serious practicing Catholics whose spouses are not
• 48:53
  Catholic and they want more than anything for their spouse to
• 48:56
  become Catholic. I mean, the president, Vice
• 48:57
  president of the United States talked about that recently.
• 48:59
  Yes, he did. Practicing Catholic.
• 49:01
  And they, they, they say, well, what about your wife?
• 49:02
  And he says, well, hoping at some, some point, she'll cross
• 49:06
  the Tiber. I think that was his words,
• 49:08
  right? He's joking, I get it.
• 49:09
  But. But he means.
• 49:11
  It I know that joke, man, I know that joke.
• 49:13
  And I was his age when she started when when it started to
• 49:18
  get more serious and when the these prayers can be answered,
• 49:23
  there's a whole point. And I had faith.
• 49:26
  And sure enough, it was the great, the the greatest miracle
• 49:28
  of my life. The greatest miracle.
• 49:30
  How did you see his faith? Was it a threat to you?
• 49:33
  Was it annoying? Was it annoying?
• 49:35
  Annoying. It was annoying.
• 49:37
  When I saw faith in other people, it was annoying.
• 49:39
  What are they doing? But we had this experience, we
• 49:42
  had a funny kind of inflecting experience where, you know, my,
• 49:45
  my, my own faith was, had developed.
• 49:46
  I mean, I had a childish faith and then and then over the, when
• 49:50
  the kids were little and she wasn't practicing and, and with
• 49:53
  this one really very, very strong experience where, when no
• 49:57
  separately, where one day I was teaching at Georgia State
• 50:00
  University in Atlanta in those days and this office building
• 50:03
  downtown and, and I, I was during my lunch hour, nobody was
• 50:07
  there because academia, it's like, you know, tumbleweeds
• 50:10
  going down the halls and it's like crickets.
• 50:12
  And, and I was there by myself, you know, writing a paper, doing
• 50:15
  some academic research now lost in the annals of time.
• 50:18
  And I found in my desk drawer my rosary.
• 50:22
  And I hadn't prayed the rosary in 10 years, prayed the rosary
• 50:26
  in a long time. It's not that I was against it,
• 50:28
  just hadn't done it. I thought I had nothing to do
• 50:30
  over my lunch break. And so I did, prayed my rosary
• 50:32
  for the first time in 10 years. That night of September 13th,
• 50:35
  1999, I went home. I was working super long hours.
• 50:40
  I was like a gnome, which is when you're an assistant
• 50:42
  professor just trying, desperately trying to get
• 50:44
  tenure. And I went home and we were
• 50:47
  living on a third floor condominium in Atlanta and it
• 50:50
  was a hot day. It was in September and, and we
• 50:52
  had the windows open because our air conditioner had broken and
• 50:55
  our 16 month year old fell out the window from the third floor
• 51:00
  and, and broke his, he fractured his skull in a lot of places.
• 51:05
  And, and that was the day I had prayed the rosary and on that
• 51:11
  and, and, and they were in the, she was in the ambulance with
• 51:14
  him and, and I was behind it. We, we thought he was going to
• 51:17
  die. And, and I kept praying the
• 51:21
  rosary all the way to the hospital.
• 51:23
  I picked it up again, you know, and we got to the hospital and
• 51:27
  the the pediatric neurosurgeon looking at us as we don't know.
• 51:30
  I mean, it's doesn't it's not good.
• 51:31
  It's not, it's not good. I mean, it's like 5 fractured.
• 51:35
  I mean, it was horrible and it was in an intensive care and
• 51:38
  and. They were interrogating us.
• 51:41
  They're asking us, how did your son fall out the window?
• 51:43
  Did you throw him out the window?
• 51:44
  I mean, it's just awful. And, and, and he lived that
• 51:50
  night and that next morning. The pediatric neurosurgeon was a
• 51:53
  guy from India, He said this is a miracle.
• 51:58
  He was a Christian guy, he said. But he says this is a miracle.
• 52:01
  Those are the words. That he survived the night.
• 52:03
  He survived the night. Even just the night.
• 52:04
  And now how old is he? 20. 727 has two kids and and I
• 52:09
  asked, I asked doctor, Doctor Narayan was his name.
• 52:11
  I said Doctor Narayan, how will we know if it's going to be OK,
• 52:16
  just brain damage, How are we going to know?
• 52:18
  He said, well, probably when you see his Sats, in other words,
• 52:25
  you don't know. And he's a weird dude.
• 52:27
  I mean, he is a weird dude, I have to say, but not because of
• 52:29
  that. And, and that was another
• 52:34
  miracle, right? It was from Our Lady, Guadalupe,
• 52:40
  the Rosary. These are all from Our Lady.
• 52:43
  Every supernatural experience, every metaphysical experience,
• 52:45
  every cosmic weird thing. I'm a scientist.
• 52:49
  I'm not a superstitious guy. I'm not a sentimentalist at all,
• 52:53
  but these weird things have this common root in my life.
• 52:57
  And. And then that really stimulated
• 52:59
  you. We put up, we put up a crucifix.
• 53:03
  Yeah, I got that done. It's like, right.
• 53:06
  Can I put up a crucifix? That's.
• 53:07
  Almost the cost of the the baby. What was your what was that
• 53:11
  experience like for you? What was that feeling like
• 53:13
  you're in an ambulance? You think your son might be
• 53:14
  dying? Well, I remember that that day I
• 53:17
  prayed to God. We were.
• 53:21
  He was in the car behind. I was in the ambulance.
• 53:24
  So I prayed. I prayed desperate pray.
• 53:28
  Yeah. And but that was not because I I
• 53:36
  always believed in God. What I was not ready to to do is
• 53:40
  to practice a religion is to be part of a church.
• 53:45
  That that's what I was not ready to.
• 53:47
  That that was the. Falsism in Spain is a
• 53:49
  complicated business. Yeah, Catholicism in Spain.
• 53:51
  Yeah. And that, that was the brainwash
• 53:53
  is the against religion and church and all that stuff, not
• 53:58
  so much about having your own God.
• 54:00
  And over there are all my friends and my culture.
• 54:03
  We all have. We all believe in God.
• 54:05
  They're all spiritual. But not religious, but not
• 54:08
  religious exactly. And so that was me.
• 54:11
  So that day I prayed, of course, to God, but that was not my
• 54:16
  conversion to our church. It was the.
• 54:19
  Beginning it helped. One of the things that was very
• 54:22
  hard for me, my conversion is to understand the importance of the
• 54:28
  church, what that the church is the the actual body of Christ.
• 54:33
  And I didn't understand that until later on.
• 54:36
  And because that was that was something that was a big
• 54:41
  obstacle for me to practice the church because I always
• 54:45
  associated the church with corruption in, you know, Middle
• 54:49
  Ages, whatever in Spain, civil war, all these ideas that you
• 54:55
  especially in Europe, you also see associate the church with
• 54:58
  the right wing fascism and all this kind.
• 55:01
  So that for me was an obstacle always, always, always.
• 55:05
  So, so as the more I, I learn about the church, I, I, I ended
• 55:10
  up getting a master's degree in theology at the Augustan
• 55:13
  Institute. And one of the things that I
• 55:16
  learned there that I'm so happy is to love the church, to
• 55:21
  understand what the church is, to understand the need for the
• 55:25
  church in your conversion, in your practice of your faith in
• 55:28
  your relationship with God. I didn't have that.
• 55:32
  So this, this tragic thing happened, which was not tragic.
• 55:36
  At the end, all I did was to pray to God.
• 55:38
  It's like, I don't know, a Mayan could be praying to God's Son.
• 55:43
  You know what I mean? It's like it was not, it was
• 55:46
  not. It was Jesus came later in my
• 55:49
  life. Did Jesus come before the church
• 55:51
  though? For me.
• 55:53
  Yeah, because you, you, you were spiritual God and even your
• 55:56
  son's about to die and you're praying and so, and your
• 55:59
  husband's very religious. He's going to Mass and all this
• 56:01
  stuff. Then you, when did Jesus come
• 56:04
  into the picture? Because.
• 56:05
  It came in later when I started learning more about our church.
• 56:10
  So it was two and two and two. Jesus and the church were were a
• 56:13
  team Jesus. 1st and the and the church later like Jesus, I
• 56:19
  always heard was a great man. Like my mother Jesus was a great
• 56:23
  man. I don't know if he was God, but
• 56:25
  he was a great man. So that was my idea.
• 56:27
  But but Jesus was there. But when I would pray, I would
• 56:30
  pray to the Father. I would pray to God anyway,
• 56:33
  everybody. CS Lewis's conversion was kind
• 56:35
  of like this too, you know? CS Lewis says he was a he.
• 56:38
  OK, OK, I'll be a deist. OK, I'll be a got it.
• 56:41
  There's just too much stuff I can't explain.
• 56:43
  So I'm going to I'm embrace the idea of God, but the other stuff
• 56:47
  is a bridge too far. I mean, all these things seem
• 56:50
  like they're kind of invented and all that.
• 56:51
  And then little by little by but this is how this is little by
• 56:55
  little how you get pulled in ultimately.
• 56:57
  And this was the, this is what I always believed had to be the
• 57:00
  plan. I I mean a thought had this
• 57:02
  sense that this had to be the plan.
• 57:04
  That she'd get. She was, she was kind of being
• 57:06
  carried away softly on this stream and you had to keep
• 57:08
  plodding away there. Was no other way.
• 57:10
  There was no other way. There was no other way because
• 57:12
  this was the, this was my, as we social scientists say, my pair
• 57:16
  bond mate, which is a kind of a not very sentimental way to say
• 57:20
  this is like a like a, a wood stork where you have one mate
• 57:24
  and if your mate dies, then you're alone.
• 57:26
  But you went in, eyes wide open. You.
• 57:29
  Knew, right? I mean, you knew you were
• 57:31
  marrying someone who wasn't interested in practicing
• 57:33
  Catholic faith. You were potential.
• 57:36
  The potential. You married the potential.
• 57:39
  And look at her now, I mean. I know, I know because she's way
• 57:42
  more sophisticated than I am When I have, when I have
• 57:44
  theological questions, I don't, you know, I don't Google it.
• 57:46
  I feed my Google on this because she knows she has graduate
• 57:50
  training in this stuff. She's she's laughed at me.
• 57:53
  It's a funny thing. I remember this that what, when
• 57:54
  the kids were at the Heights at the school that and, and you
• 57:58
  were going to Sunday Mass. And then I realized that during
• 58:00
  the week you're starting to go a little bit more to daily mass.
• 58:02
  And then just, I don't know when it happened.
• 58:04
  It was like one of these weird time warp things When I I I just
• 58:07
  it occurred to me one day my wife is a daily communicant
• 58:11
  going to. Confession.
• 58:12
  Yeah. So what?
• 58:14
  Oh yeah, What did that we? Had gotten married to the church
• 58:17
  by this time. Yeah, this was after the 18
• 58:18
  years, yeah. After the 18 years, we, we, we
• 58:21
  landed at the Heights and for I was thinking just because they
• 58:27
  were so countercultural and they had, they taught the boys to be
• 58:30
  men. That was my thing.
• 58:33
  And he probably had other oh, I had.
• 58:35
  Very different thoughts about that I thought.
• 58:37
  But that was my thing actually. When?
• 58:39
  Yeah, Anyway, so you. Didn't like that or you like
• 58:41
  that? Loved it.
• 58:41
  And I just, I really believed in this, the, the philosophical and
• 58:45
  theological underpinnings of it, because I really believed that
• 58:48
  they were on my side to bring our family together.
• 58:50
  So you were doing the heights in part for Esther like to try to
• 58:54
  get her more inculcated? Mostly the, the reason we went
• 58:57
  to the Heights is because one of our boys was always punished in,
• 59:02
  in public schools. He was the guy who was like
• 59:04
  always in the principal's office because he was misbehaving so
• 59:07
  much. And somebody told us you need to
• 59:10
  go to the Heights. You guys are Catholic.
• 59:11
  So you can go to the Heights. They they they they are they
• 59:15
  teach men to they teach boys to be men and they anyway, so
• 59:19
  that's going to be good for my boys.
• 59:21
  So then that was my reason for going to the heights.
• 59:23
  They would teach them to be real men and but little by little
• 59:27
  that that change and kind. Of felt they were going to be
• 59:30
  good for real glue, real Catholic glue for our family.
• 59:33
  Yeah, that. That really reinforced I just
• 59:35
  went, yeah, I had a spiritual director who is a priest of Opus
• 59:39
  A at the time in downtown Washington, DC I was president
• 59:42
  of the American Enterprise Institute in those days, which
• 59:44
  is a think tank. I remember, I think we're in DC
• 59:46
  around the same time, actually. I don't know if we ever crossed
• 59:48
  paths, but I would go to the Catholic Information Center too.
• 59:51
  Yeah, and the, and so the director of the Catholic
• 59:54
  Information Center was my spiritual director and and I
• 59:56
  told him when I first got there, it's like Father.
• 59:59
  That was the first. Year I'm not married in the
• 1:00:01
  church and he's like, we got to fix that.
• 1:00:04
  We have to. We have to fix that.
• 1:00:05
  Like, too sweet right now. We got to get on this.
• 1:00:09
  And. And by that point, you were
• 1:00:10
  sympathetic to the idea. Yeah.
• 1:00:12
  Oh, yeah. It was like, OK, let's do that.
• 1:00:14
  So. We did.
• 1:00:15
  And so we surreptitiously, we didn't Saturday morning and we
• 1:00:19
  went to Saint Peter's on Capitol Hill and we didn't have a
• 1:00:23
  witness. It was just Father Arnie,
• 1:00:25
  Pamela. And and so we had a one another
• 1:00:28
  priest, a parochial vicar there and the cleaning lady were our
• 1:00:30
  two witnesses. We didn't tell our kids.
• 1:00:32
  We kind of eloped, but without telling our kids why they were
• 1:00:37
  little and the and the whole it wouldn't, it wouldn't have been.
• 1:00:39
  Yeah. I mean, maybe.
• 1:00:41
  It was complicated. It was.
• 1:00:43
  Complicated. Yeah, it was complicated.
• 1:00:45
  They would not have they were you.
• 1:00:47
  Were already married to them, so yeah.
• 1:00:48
  Yeah, exactly. And we told them later when they
• 1:00:51
  were able to understand that. Yeah.
• 1:00:53
  And all our kids got, you know, all our kids.
• 1:00:55
  Are and we didn't need to have a big celebrate.
• 1:00:58
  It was just us. We needed to do that and and
• 1:01:01
  that would that. That went to an Indian
• 1:01:03
  restaurant for lunch afterward on the way home, Yeah.
• 1:01:06
  But it was gradual for you, Esther, it sounds like.
• 1:01:08
  So there's not like the Road to Damascus moment or it was more
• 1:01:12
  just you would you? But you were, you were open
• 1:01:14
  enough. You were.
• 1:01:14
  The kids were going. He was practicing.
• 1:01:16
  You started to go more. You're in this Catholic school
• 1:01:19
  and before you know it, you're getting your masters.
• 1:01:21
  Yeah, in theology. And you're like all in.
• 1:01:24
  You're like daily communicating. You've been daily communicating
• 1:01:27
  for a long time now. Another thing that I would say,
• 1:01:29
  especially if we want to convert hearts, is that it, it was for
• 1:01:34
  me, it was not so much what people would tell me.
• 1:01:37
  It was what people would do. And I would see that joy, that
• 1:01:44
  people that had that trust and that belief and, and I wanted
• 1:01:48
  that. I wanted to be that joy.
• 1:01:50
  I always, I've always been a very, very, you know, happy
• 1:01:53
  person and optimistic. And I'm not like a depressive
• 1:01:57
  personality, but I, I, I would see that in, in people's that
• 1:02:02
  had that strong faith, that joy that, that they were able to,
• 1:02:06
  that they would love me even though they didn't need anything
• 1:02:10
  from me. I that, that to me was very that
• 1:02:14
  that was the most important thing.
• 1:02:16
  Another thing that I remember, like I, I've always been on
• 1:02:20
  boards, the schools and I always been involved in whatever we do,
• 1:02:23
  right? And because I didn't work at the
• 1:02:25
  time, I had the time to do that. So I would, we would be meeting
• 1:02:30
  like a committee, like mothers, the gala, whatever.
• 1:02:33
  And I would say it was 950. It was mass and everybody, not
• 1:02:38
  everybody. Most we just get like, like an
• 1:02:43
  excitement. They would get up and we'd go to
• 1:02:45
  Mass. And I said I won that.
• 1:02:48
  It was like as if they were going to see their boyfriends,
• 1:02:51
  you know, like it was like it's time to Mass and they would stop
• 1:02:55
  everything. We were in the middle of the
• 1:02:56
  meeting and I said, wait, I need to talk to call the caterer.
• 1:03:00
  Which one do I call? They were all gone and I said I
• 1:03:03
  want this. Whatever they have, I want.
• 1:03:06
  More important than the caterer. Something more important than
• 1:03:09
  anything in this. World the ultimate meal of that
• 1:03:11
  math, right? So that, so it's so it was very
• 1:03:14
  gradual. Gradual.
• 1:03:16
  I would see how people that would strong faith behave, which
• 1:03:20
  I had never seen in my life by the way, because the Catholics
• 1:03:22
  that I would know were not. Very.
• 1:03:26
  Yeah, lukewarm and not, not, not attractive, but that was so
• 1:03:30
  attractive to me. And and especially there were a
• 1:03:32
  few people that just I want to do, I want to have that.
• 1:03:37
  And so that was another thing. Did you, Arthur, did you ever
• 1:03:40
  have a Christmas morning feeling with her?
• 1:03:42
  Faith just blossoming? But it did it so slowly, it
• 1:03:45
  sounds like, though there wasn't really a big moment.
• 1:03:48
  There was there were moments where we would do something for
• 1:03:50
  the first time or the first time that we prayed the rosary as a
• 1:03:52
  family. Yeah, this is what I've always
• 1:03:57
  wanted. And I knew this was something
• 1:03:58
  that I wanted. I mean, I envisioned that this
• 1:04:00
  was a goal. I mean, I'm very goal oriented,
• 1:04:03
  very teleological person. And you know, goal orientation
• 1:04:06
  is characteristic of people who who are sort of have an
• 1:04:10
  achievement mentality. And so this is one of the
• 1:04:12
  things. What's that?
• 1:04:13
  Would you say choleric? You're a.
• 1:04:14
  Choleric. I'm a choleric melancholic for
• 1:04:17
  sure. And and you know, happiness, by
• 1:04:19
  the way, is very hard for me. It's much easier for her than it
• 1:04:22
  is, which is why she doesn't study happiness.
• 1:04:25
  You're a sanguine temperament more naturally.
• 1:04:27
  Yeah. And and so so we complement each
• 1:04:30
  other and we we're both very high affect, which is to say
• 1:04:34
  that we both have salient, both negative and positive affect
• 1:04:37
  mood. And you know, and and these
• 1:04:39
  temperamental things make it. And that's one of the reasons
• 1:04:41
  that sometimes it can be daggers drawn, right.
• 1:04:44
  But but we we complement each other in in these other
• 1:04:48
  particular ways. So I thought we're.
• 1:04:50
  Not like this. We're very equal there, so
• 1:04:53
  that's hard for us. Like the intensity intensity.
• 1:04:56
  High affect, high affect is, is and that that's, that's the
• 1:04:59
  functioning of the limbic system of the brain where the the
• 1:05:01
  console of tissue that produces emotion, which is between 2 and
• 1:05:04
  40 million years ago. It's not exclusive to Homo
• 1:05:07
  sapiens. And you have emotions.
• 1:05:11
  You have 4 negative emotions, fear, anger, disgust, and
• 1:05:13
  sadness, and they're all an alarm system for things that you
• 1:05:17
  perceive below your level of awareness.
• 1:05:19
  You need them all or you'd be dead in a week.
• 1:05:21
  You need your negative emotions. Not everybody, however, has the
• 1:05:24
  same intensity of their negative and positive emotions.
• 1:05:26
  So 1/4 of the population is above average on positive
• 1:05:30
  emotionality and above average on negative emotionality.
• 1:05:33
  That's called a high affect. Together.
• 1:05:35
  Both like the high high and the high and the low, low and the
• 1:05:40
  that's what's called the mad scientist affect profile.
• 1:05:43
  There's three others. There's high positive and low
• 1:05:46
  negative. That's the cheerleader.
• 1:05:48
  There's high negative and low positive.
• 1:05:50
  That's the poet. And there's low on both.
• 1:05:52
  That's the judge. And these are affect profiles
• 1:05:55
  are really important for people to understand about each other.
• 1:05:57
  And they're really important to understand that the, the the
• 1:06:00
  marriages that have the least conflict are complementary with
• 1:06:03
  respect to affect profiles. So if you got one mad scientist,
• 1:06:06
  which I'm like the maddest of the mad scientists, I'm at the
• 1:06:09
  95th percentile in in positive and the 90th percentile in
• 1:06:13
  negative. So I'm like, I feel everything.
• 1:06:16
  Does that correspond with neuroticism and ocean as well as
• 1:06:19
  openness and ocean or? Not necessarily.
• 1:06:21
  Not necessarily. It can because high negative
• 1:06:24
  affect typically will be above average in neuroticism as well.
• 1:06:28
  So I'm about the 40th percentile and neuroticism.
• 1:06:30
  So in, in, in ocean, super high in openness, high
• 1:06:35
  unconscientiousness, relatively high in agreeableness, 96th
• 1:06:39
  percentile and extroversion, right.
• 1:06:42
  And so a lot of that goes into that mad scientist profile.
• 1:06:44
  And she's like more moderate and negative effect.
• 1:06:47
  She's a slightly above average on negative effect, really high
• 1:06:50
  and positive effect. But the whole point is that that
• 1:06:53
  we would have less conflict if she were a judge, which is low,
• 1:06:57
  low to my high high because what that would do that would
• 1:07:00
  moderate me. I would bring her up and she
• 1:07:03
  would mellow me out. Is the way that that actually
• 1:07:05
  works. Do you recommend that?
• 1:07:06
  Like if you're talking to a couple that's deciding if
• 1:07:08
  they're compatible. I recommend falling in love and
• 1:07:11
  asking God if this is your person.
• 1:07:12
  All right, I like it. And then working it out.
• 1:07:15
  But you wouldn't say oh it's best, it's ideal.
• 1:07:18
  If you have a judge with a mad scientist, you could do 2 mad it
• 1:07:20
  sounds. Are you a mad scientist?
• 1:07:21
  Then what would you? Yeah, you're, you're sort of on
• 1:07:24
  the cusp between your halfway between mad scientist and.
• 1:07:26
  Cheerleader. Am I saying scientist?
• 1:07:28
  She has very very normal negative effect.
• 1:07:30
  She has the most normal negative effect.
• 1:07:32
  She doesn't have below average or above average negative
• 1:07:34
  effect, but she has above average positive effect.
• 1:07:36
  But I would just say that that if you have that the the same
• 1:07:41
  like high intensity that we have, then you're going to have
• 1:07:44
  more arguments, you're going to crash more, right clash more
• 1:07:48
  about things and that's OK. You can deal with it.
• 1:07:51
  It's fine. It's perfectly fine.
• 1:07:52
  That's what I talk about with my students.
• 1:07:54
  They all want to know, is this the right guy for me?
• 1:07:56
  I'm like, yes, if this is the right person for you, it's the
• 1:07:59
  right person for you. Are you going to have
• 1:08:00
  challenges? Yep.
• 1:08:01
  Are you going to have temperamental challenges?
• 1:08:04
  Maybe. But you can work that out.
• 1:08:07
  So what you're saying is conflict.
• 1:08:09
  The amount of conflict is in no way a non starter.
• 1:08:14
  You can anybody and any kind of quadrant of those four different
• 1:08:17
  types or any levels of oceans or any temperaments or whatever
• 1:08:20
  you're divorce and. Anger uncorrelated.
• 1:08:23
  Divorce and anger are uncorrelated.
• 1:08:25
  Which is really really. Important divorce and anger are.
• 1:08:27
  Uncorrelated. They're uncorrelated.
• 1:08:29
  What's correlated with divorce is contempt.
• 1:08:32
  Contempt is less driven by anger and more more driven by disgust.
• 1:08:37
  Those are two different negative.
• 1:08:38
  Yeah, you're rolling. Yeah, and well, that's the and
• 1:08:40
  believe he said that all sarcasm, derision.
• 1:08:43
  So instead. Of what do you mean right?
• 1:08:46
  Contempt is is really a mixture of disgust and anger, but we're
• 1:08:50
  disgust makes it ice cold. And when you display disgust
• 1:08:54
  toward the person who's supposed to be the most important person
• 1:08:56
  in your life, that's that's that's interpreted as you think
• 1:08:59
  I'm worthless. Now what you've said is, I think
• 1:09:02
  that's a dumb thing that you said, but that's interpreted.
• 1:09:05
  You can say I'm so angry you said that.
• 1:09:06
  Yeah. And that that doesn't mean you,
• 1:09:09
  that I that means I care what you think.
• 1:09:11
  That's a hot. Emotion.
• 1:09:12
  And a hot emotion is I care. Yeah, see but but but disgust is
• 1:09:17
  an ice cold emotion. That something is a pathogen.
• 1:09:20
  So you have disgust. It's a part of your brain called
• 1:09:22
  the insular cortex or the insula is stimulated.
• 1:09:25
  And so an on board piece of hardware for you to be disgusted
• 1:09:29
  by something that might contain a pathogen.
• 1:09:30
  So you know the thing that the chicken and your and your fridge
• 1:09:33
  that made your stomach growl 3 weeks ago, now you're taking it
• 1:09:36
  to the trash. And the reason is because it
• 1:09:38
  smells weird, which indicates to your brain that it might contain
• 1:09:42
  bacteria that could kill you and that trips the insular cortex in
• 1:09:46
  your brain. That's reserved for pathogens,
• 1:09:49
  not for people so despotic rulers throughout history have
• 1:09:53
  tried to stimulate the insula in the brains of the public toward
• 1:09:57
  their fellow citizens by saying so.
• 1:09:59
  If you hear somebody on TVA politician saying what they
• 1:10:02
  think is disgusting, they're trying to stimulate the insular
• 1:10:05
  cortex in the. Brain, God forbid They're
• 1:10:07
  subhuman. They're a worm.
• 1:10:09
  They're a, they're a, you know, whatever dehumanizing term I
• 1:10:12
  mean. Hutus had a word for Tutsis in
• 1:10:14
  the Rwandan genocide called cockroaches.
• 1:10:17
  The the the Nazis refer to the Jews as rats for precisely the
• 1:10:22
  reason that we're trying to stimulate disgust and disgust
• 1:10:25
  from. Like taking them by the
• 1:10:26
  shoulders. What do you mean you believe
• 1:10:27
  that that's stupid? You know, like having, I mean,
• 1:10:29
  again, not to say you should yell at someone and say you're
• 1:10:31
  stupid, but like man to man, woman to woman, like I care
• 1:10:34
  about you, you know better. Like you can have a, you could
• 1:10:37
  even have heavy conflict, but that doesn't it doesn't have to
• 1:10:39
  include that contempt. There's nothing wrong with
• 1:10:42
  saying you're wrong, but there is something.
• 1:10:44
  Getting angry, but of course you're not going to that.
• 1:10:48
  You have to be careful because anger can be very destructive.
• 1:10:53
  Anger can be a good thing, but it can be also a bad thing.
• 1:10:56
  So you, you would not just go in just in like, I'm not going to
• 1:10:59
  start insulting him or just attacking him personally or
• 1:11:03
  doing things. But but there's nothing wrong
• 1:11:05
  with showing my anger. You know, a lot of times things
• 1:11:09
  like things that make me angry, I talk, I say something and he's
• 1:11:13
  not listening or or, or or I. I writing a book.
• 1:11:17
  I see. I was thinking about the next.
• 1:11:19
  Distraction problem. Distraction or something like
• 1:11:21
  that, or, or like I'm talking, I'm trying to explain something
• 1:11:25
  and he's not giving me clues that he's understanding that
• 1:11:28
  makes me so angry. So then I get angry and I tell
• 1:11:32
  him, I just want you to listen to me, OK?
• 1:11:34
  So you know, that anger, I think it's very healthy.
• 1:11:37
  Instead of not saying anything and keep it, you know that I
• 1:11:40
  don't think that's good. That's, by the way, this is
• 1:11:43
  utterly characteristic of any marriage.
• 1:11:46
  And this is the most common thing that men get wrong is not
• 1:11:51
  trying to listen to understand. That's the most common thing
• 1:11:54
  that men get wrong and that's the left brain, right brain
• 1:11:57
  thing. The left brain is I got it, I
• 1:12:00
  got it, I got it. 3 words in I got it and I'm going to help you
• 1:12:02
  solve it. That's not right brain.
• 1:12:05
  She's expressing frustration from the highly developed right
• 1:12:09
  brain, which is mystery, which is meaning and I just want you
• 1:12:13
  to understand me. Understanding is on the right
• 1:12:16
  side, solutions are on the left side and so when.
• 1:12:19
  And we do that with kids too, right?
• 1:12:21
  When they come to us and they say, oh, such and such told me
• 1:12:24
  that I'm, I don't want to play with me.
• 1:12:27
  So the first thing you say is that why don't they want to
• 1:12:29
  play? OK, I'm going to talk to her
• 1:12:30
  mom. I'm going to talk, you know,
• 1:12:31
  instead of just listening because they need that
• 1:12:35
  understanding and and they can figure out what to do if we just
• 1:12:39
  listen and and pay attention and they feel that we understand.
• 1:12:43
  So I think like that's the same thing.
• 1:12:46
  We we all. I don't know if women more you,
• 1:12:49
  you too want to be understood, but but to me, it's very
• 1:12:52
  important that I I, I know that you're understanding what I'm
• 1:12:56
  saying, right? Otherwise, I feel that I'm not
• 1:13:00
  you're not this. Is advice to give to young
• 1:13:01
  husbands a lot because it took me a long time to figure this
• 1:13:03
  one out and I I just wish that instead of being a French horn
• 1:13:06
  player, I was a behavioral scientist in those days yeah, I
• 1:13:09
  would have been a much better husband, but they.
• 1:13:11
  And there's another thing too, that women, we don't, we, we, we
• 1:13:15
  have a tendency, I put myself in that of wanting to our husbands
• 1:13:22
  to be something they are not. And so instead of just trying to
• 1:13:26
  know them and to love what they are, we're just trying to make
• 1:13:33
  them into something else, into that perfect.
• 1:13:35
  Idea Why are women into that? We're very controlling, right?
• 1:13:40
  I mean, I don't know all the women, but I know I am.
• 1:13:43
  And I've been doing this my whole life and and that's one of
• 1:13:47
  the things that I learned as doesn't not OK.
• 1:13:50
  Why is it so feminine? And though that desire, because
• 1:13:53
  that's such a feminine thing of we have expectations.
• 1:13:56
  It's usually expectations, right?
• 1:13:58
  Yeah, this idea of what we want and we don't have it.
• 1:14:01
  And then we just, you know, and it's like then then there's the
• 1:14:04
  nagging and the judgement and contempt, you know, God forbid
• 1:14:07
  that comes in. And then it's, you know,
• 1:14:08
  probably game over. Like you're saying, divorce
• 1:14:10
  number one causes contempt. It's very easy.
• 1:14:12
  But I'm just from the I'm curious your view on the
• 1:14:14
  theology and maybe you have the Yeah, I've.
• 1:14:17
  Got I have ideas but I want. To you have the data, but I
• 1:14:20
  would only say now as an older woman that I that I've done so
• 1:14:25
  many times that try to control and try to change and instead of
• 1:14:31
  like, OK, so we're talking about something and, and, and he he
• 1:14:36
  has an opinion, a strong opinion about something, but I have
• 1:14:38
  another one and I want to change his opinion.
• 1:14:41
  So I keep talking and telling him how and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:14:45
  And I, I've discovered that if I just say, OK, this not right
• 1:14:52
  now, I'm just going to listen to his idea and I'm going to with
• 1:14:57
  my free will, I'm going, I'm deciding to go with what he
• 1:15:02
  says. That's submission.
• 1:15:04
  Well, that's submission. But not only is submission,
• 1:15:08
  that's freedom. Because freedom is to choose the
• 1:15:13
  good, right? Not just to choose what you
• 1:15:17
  desire, what your passions are telling you.
• 1:15:20
  But it's like the good. So I choose the good.
• 1:15:22
  I said I, with my free will, decide to go along with what
• 1:15:27
  you're saying. It's very hard to do that.
• 1:15:31
  I'm not saying I'm doing this, but the few times that I've done
• 1:15:35
  that, I experience happiness because it's a sense of freedom
• 1:15:42
  that you don't have when you go along with your desires, with
• 1:15:47
  your ideas, with your whatever opinions about things.
• 1:15:50
  And I, I discovered that later in our marriage and it has been,
• 1:15:55
  it has made a difference. First of all, in me when I do
• 1:15:59
  that, but in him because I am respecting him and his opinion
• 1:16:05
  without putting, you know, I'm not questioned anything that
• 1:16:09
  he's saying. I'm not saying that we have to
• 1:16:11
  say yes to everything. But the times that we we stop,
• 1:16:16
  we think, we listen and we say, OK, let's go along with that
• 1:16:21
  freely, not not because he's like making it happen, but me
• 1:16:26
  freely choose is showing that I trust him.
• 1:16:30
  It's showing that I respect him. I'm exercising my free will and
• 1:16:35
  and and and I'm a lot happier. And by the way, this is the same
• 1:16:39
  for me. That submission is a two way St.
• 1:16:43
  The submission is not a one way St.
• 1:16:45
  And the happiest marriages are those in which men and women
• 1:16:48
  submit to each other. There are a lot of times when
• 1:16:51
  it's absolutely the case that life is better.
• 1:16:55
  You're happier. I'm happier when I don't have to
• 1:16:59
  be right, when even if I have a difference of opinion, I just
• 1:17:04
  decide that I don't have to be right.
• 1:17:06
  Which is exactly the point that you're making.
• 1:17:08
  And and mutual submission. It's I wish.
• 1:17:11
  It it shows. You're showing me that you love
• 1:17:13
  me when you do that. Now, it's not to say it's this
• 1:17:16
  is not to say that men and women need the same things, because
• 1:17:18
  men and women need different things.
• 1:17:20
  And this is objectively the case.
• 1:17:21
  There's a huge body of, of evolutionary psychology on this.
• 1:17:24
  There's a guy at, at University of Texas at Austin named David
• 1:17:26
  Buss and he has a wonderful book called The Evolution of Desire.
• 1:17:30
  And, and it talks about how men and women desire and, and live
• 1:17:34
  together and live together happily or in conflict with each
• 1:17:36
  other. It's the one book I would give
• 1:17:38
  to people in their 20s. It's not a religious book at
• 1:17:41
  all. It's not a Catholic book.
• 1:17:43
  It's just, it's, it could be actually interpreted quite the
• 1:17:45
  contrary, but it's just evolution.
• 1:17:48
  And he talks about how, you know, we were our, our brains
• 1:17:52
  were fully developed by 250,000 years ago, the beginning of the
• 1:17:55
  Pleistocene period. And we were living in bands.
• 1:17:58
  The entire, you know, human race, Homo sapiens were living
• 1:18:01
  in bands of 30 to 50 kin based individuals.
• 1:18:04
  That's how we lived. And everything was about being
• 1:18:07
  with your kin, not getting thrown out of your tribe, making
• 1:18:09
  sure that you could, you could reproduce, that you could pass
• 1:18:13
  on your genes, you could survive another day.
• 1:18:15
  And that describes a lot of why we do what we do, including why
• 1:18:17
  we may, you know, why we, you know, act the way that we do
• 1:18:20
  toward each other. No, that's not incompatible with
• 1:18:22
  Christian faith to me at all. On the contrary, God created
• 1:18:25
  science. I believe in God so much more
• 1:18:28
  deeply. The more I learn about science,
• 1:18:30
  I'm more in awe of the creation. But it also shows that you make
• 1:18:34
  a big mistake in modern life when you say that men and women
• 1:18:36
  are the same and they want and need the same thing.
• 1:18:39
  And I'll give you an example of this.
• 1:18:41
  Everything is, you know, we, we must respect each other as
• 1:18:44
  husbands and wives. That's table stakes.
• 1:18:46
  And Saint Paul talks about that. But beyond that, women and men
• 1:18:50
  have one primary need that we actually see in this literature
• 1:18:54
  that manifests itself in the following way.
• 1:18:56
  Women require to be happy in a marriage adoration and that
• 1:19:01
  means basically the husband is in no small in, in, in, in not
• 1:19:04
  so many words saying I would fight a tiger for you with my
• 1:19:09
  hands and only you and the husband, the big thing he needs
• 1:19:15
  is admiration. He needs admiration from her and
• 1:19:20
  that means. The sweetie, that tiger is so
• 1:19:23
  big. That and that you fought it, or
• 1:19:24
  that that gazelle that you dragged into the.
• 1:19:27
  Cave. That was the biggest gazelle
• 1:19:29
  anybody's ever dragged it dragged into this cave and and
• 1:19:31
  and you know, that's going to feed our family for two weeks.
• 1:19:34
  You really are big and strong and not.
• 1:19:36
  You got blood on The Cave floor again.
• 1:19:39
  That's what I would say, but no. This is we're humans, you know,
• 1:19:42
  we're humans. My, my, my impulse would be
• 1:19:44
  like, what do you do it? Right.
• 1:19:45
  And the evolution of this is obvious.
• 1:19:47
  I mean, the whole point is that women have a huge investment in,
• 1:19:50
  in, in family life that that men evolutionarily didn't.
• 1:19:55
  We should, but we don't in our animal impulses versus our moral
• 1:19:59
  aspirations. Women have more of a, of an
• 1:20:01
  investment in this. And so the result is you need a
• 1:20:04
  man who adores you and who shows commitment.
• 1:20:08
  Otherwise you actually can't. Your needs can't be met.
• 1:20:11
  And a man needs to know that he's raising his own offspring.
• 1:20:15
  And that there's admiration for what he's actually doing so that
• 1:20:18
  he has the the incentive to continue to provide in this
• 1:20:21
  particular way. It's a beautiful sort.
• 1:20:24
  Of. Complementarity.
• 1:20:25
  Exactly what we're talking about here and what you see in
• 1:20:28
  marriages that are failing is that there's a lack of
• 1:20:31
  admiration on her part and a lack of adoration on his part,
• 1:20:34
  and that actually feeds on each other.
• 1:20:36
  So she doesn't admire him and he withdraws the adoration and she
• 1:20:40
  admires him less. Now, guys come to me.
• 1:20:42
  I get more advice to men than women because for the obvious
• 1:20:44
  reasons and and and and guys say, OK, what's the secret
• 1:20:48
  professor? What's the secret to a happy
• 1:20:50
  marriage? I say, well, adore her and be
• 1:20:54
  admirable and and and he's like, what if I don't feel adoration?
• 1:20:59
  I said that's not what I said. Adore her notwithstanding your
• 1:21:03
  temporary feelings, because your limbic system is a, is a
• 1:21:06
  stochastic phenomenon. I mean, it's just it's just it
• 1:21:09
  feelings happen. This is not about your feelings.
• 1:21:11
  It's the the the to Mystic understanding of love, to will
• 1:21:14
  to go to the other, adore her all the time and show it all the
• 1:21:18
  time. And be admirable, impeccable to
• 1:21:21
  your word, complete integrity, always hard working, always
• 1:21:27
  sacrificial. That's what it means to be a
• 1:21:29
  good man. And then you will be admired.
• 1:21:31
  Then you deserve to be admired. So deserve admiration and always
• 1:21:35
  give adoration. And for women deserve
• 1:21:38
  admiration. Adoration.
• 1:21:40
  I'm sorry, deserve adoration. Be adorable.
• 1:21:42
  Be adorable, I mean, and that doesn't mean like be cute.
• 1:21:46
  That means be virtuous, be good, you know, do do the the good
• 1:21:51
  things. Always look for his good and and
• 1:21:55
  also make sure that you respect and and and and admire.
• 1:22:01
  But what if the husband isn't admirable?
• 1:22:02
  Can you admire somebody who's not objectively?
• 1:22:05
  Can you? Endorse someone who's not
• 1:22:06
  adorable. I think yeah, in in a way the
• 1:22:10
  the latter is more possible because.
• 1:22:13
  And I think. Love is a conscious act.
• 1:22:15
  Yeah, but also if if he adores me, I'm going to want to be more
• 1:22:20
  adorable. If you, if he doesn't adore me,
• 1:22:23
  I'm going to start feeling bad, confrontational, you know, like
• 1:22:28
  not loved. And and but if I see adoration,
• 1:22:33
  look, if I come into a room and he doesn't like, let's say I I
• 1:22:38
  come from the street now and he's here and he doesn't look at
• 1:22:41
  me and shows me that he adores me.
• 1:22:44
  I immediately put a like a like a like AI don't know like a
• 1:22:49
  wall, like a coldness in I LED between.
• 1:22:54
  It's silly, but I've noticed through the years, right?
• 1:22:58
  No, I'm nice. I'm not going to be like get out
• 1:23:01
  of here. No, I'm nice, but.
• 1:23:03
  You're not connected. But I'm not, we're not
• 1:23:05
  connecting. We're not.
• 1:23:06
  I don't feel like. It's the look, It's the look.
• 1:23:08
  It's the like. It's yeah, it's you and only.
• 1:23:10
  If he if he gives a talk and I'm in the audience right and and
• 1:23:14
  right after or a little bit after, I don't say that's really
• 1:23:18
  good. Good job.
• 1:23:21
  Boom. Same thing.
• 1:23:22
  That's so pathetic. Why?
• 1:23:24
  Because no, But, but why is that?
• 1:23:26
  Because why is it so important for me to respect you?
• 1:23:29
  Because that's how you feel loved.
• 1:23:32
  By. Me that by my dad respect and
• 1:23:35
  how why is it so important for me?
• 1:23:36
  Because that's how I feel loved that I want to be seen.
• 1:23:40
  I want, I want. It's always like, I think we
• 1:23:43
  want to be understood. I want to be like you.
• 1:23:46
  Want to be known? Known.
• 1:23:48
  Sorry. Known.
• 1:23:49
  Not understood. Known.
• 1:23:50
  Yeah. Understand.
• 1:23:51
  No. So.
• 1:23:53
  And if we don't get that, we don't feel loved.
• 1:23:54
  I know, I know. It's so, so a week from now
• 1:23:57
  we're taping this before the Sikh conference, which is the
• 1:24:00
  great big, you know. You've got a big speech coming.
• 1:24:02
  Up and so I'm going to do a keynote at the Sikh Conference
• 1:24:04
  for 18,000. Missionaries.
• 1:24:08
  But there's only one person in that audience.
• 1:24:10
  There's a talk I've never given before on the sacredness of
• 1:24:12
  suffering. And I'm very nervous about it
• 1:24:14
  because I'm never going to talk before and I never give a talk
• 1:24:16
  for the first time. I mean, I give 150 speeches a
• 1:24:19
  year and, and they're really, really, really super prepared.
• 1:24:23
  But this was a bespoke talk that they asked me to give and I'm
• 1:24:25
  really nervous about it. But there's only one person
• 1:24:27
  that's going to be in that audience for me.
• 1:24:29
  Only one and I'll like anyway, I I'm kind of setting you up here.
• 1:24:35
  But that doesn't mean that I, I, I don't care if he doesn't
• 1:24:39
  respect me, that that's not what it means.
• 1:24:41
  But it means that this is like very important.
• 1:24:44
  It's like top of the list. If you if you do these things
• 1:24:48
  and you pay attention to these things in your relationship,
• 1:24:51
  things are going to be a lot better than if you don't pay
• 1:24:54
  attention to these important things.
• 1:24:56
  So this is such a hot button topic when we've had these gurus
• 1:25:00
  on the show, some of them just amazing who come from different
• 1:25:02
  schools of thought, but they all say similar things, which is
• 1:25:05
  admiration, adoration, admiration, respect, love,
• 1:25:08
  affection, you know, however we want to adoration, however we
• 1:25:11
  want to use the different words. But a big question, especially
• 1:25:14
  for women, right? So we have men who listen to the
• 1:25:16
  show. We have a lot of women who
• 1:25:17
  listen to the show. And, you know, men I think are
• 1:25:19
  good at doing the tough love. Like, you know, like you just
• 1:25:22
  said, you've got to be admirable.
• 1:25:23
  Like better always keep your word.
• 1:25:24
  Like be the best ever. You know.
• 1:25:27
  Yeah, yeah. Which is great for the ladies,
• 1:25:30
  for the women. You know, there's so many women
• 1:25:32
  who feel like, oh, well, he is da, da, da.
• 1:25:35
  You know, he's not doing this, He's not doing that.
• 1:25:37
  He's playing the video games. He's whatever the complaint is.
• 1:25:40
  And so how, what would you, what do you recommend in terms of how
• 1:25:44
  do we keep admiration alive? Does it have to be sincere?
• 1:25:49
  I mean, to your point, you were doing the adoration acts even
• 1:25:52
  when you weren't feeling the adoration feelings as women do.
• 1:25:55
  We do the admiration. And this is for marriage.
• 1:25:57
  We're not talking about you owe this to a man on the street.
• 1:26:00
  You owe this to your husband, even if he's not acting
• 1:26:02
  admirable, right? How do you show respect even
• 1:26:05
  when they're not acting respectable?
• 1:26:07
  Well, sooner, I mean, sooner or later they're going to do
• 1:26:09
  something, even if it's a little thing that is admirable.
• 1:26:13
  But I mean I I see, I see with. I'm a little kid.
• 1:26:16
  You're such a good boy. They're.
• 1:26:19
  Not They're not a devil, you know, my sons.
• 1:26:22
  Now my sons, right, I have young sons and, and, and so they, they
• 1:26:26
  do, they make mistakes and they do.
• 1:26:29
  But but if there is one thing that they do good to, then you
• 1:26:34
  encourage that. You just go there, you admire
• 1:26:37
  there. They Oh, oh, that's how they
• 1:26:39
  admire me. You know, it doesn't because
• 1:26:42
  we're all imperfect And, and, and I think harder of that is
• 1:26:47
  how are we adorable? Because we're so nagging all the
• 1:26:51
  time and we're so I think it's like we're both have a different
• 1:26:55
  a difficult thing to do. So with men.
• 1:26:57
  And if you're in a marriage, hopefully you, you, your husband
• 1:27:02
  is a good husband. So I'm sure you can find
• 1:27:04
  something to admire and to respect of your husband.
• 1:27:09
  And if you, if you are a wife, so then you have to that that's
• 1:27:12
  harder to understand in this culture today to be virtuous.
• 1:27:17
  It's not a cool thing because people when you say, oh, you
• 1:27:21
  have to be virtuous, it it, it, it, it sounds like, Oh no, we
• 1:27:25
  are free women, independent and we just want to be like men and
• 1:27:30
  virtuous. What is that?
• 1:27:31
  I don't want to be virtuous. I want to be successful and
• 1:27:34
  powerful and all that stuff. I think that's harder to be
• 1:27:37
  adorable that in this way than them for finding something in a
• 1:27:42
  guy that is admirable. I think we just, we just we
• 1:27:48
  don't know guys. We don't know how what they
• 1:27:53
  what, how they think and what they're being guys.
• 1:27:58
  And we think that that's bad because they are loud or because
• 1:28:01
  they are too, I don't know, strong and they do things and
• 1:28:04
  they're not delicate in this, but that's how they are.
• 1:28:07
  And we a lot of times we don't know them and then we cannot
• 1:28:13
  love them if we don't know them. We cannot love them.
• 1:28:15
  Well, you know, I through the years, I learned more and more
• 1:28:20
  about him and his manliness. And I wish I had known before
• 1:28:25
  that that that silent when when, when I feel he's not listening
• 1:28:31
  to me, that just part of who he is.
• 1:28:33
  He's thinking about his work. So that, I mean, I'm not trying
• 1:28:38
  to be dramatic, but he's, you know, providing for us because
• 1:28:42
  he's thinking about his success and all these, you know, things.
• 1:28:47
  And I just want him to pay attention to me.
• 1:28:49
  Like, it's so like nagging, right?
• 1:28:51
  It's not. So I think that it's more about
• 1:28:54
  knowing what he really is and not trying to change.
• 1:28:59
  He's that OK and, and so. And and and interpretation,
• 1:29:04
  right, because you're saying like, and this is, I hear this
• 1:29:07
  all the time for the on the show friends, you know, it's just
• 1:29:10
  like the female experience in a marriage or relationship, you
• 1:29:13
  know, here not giving me what I want or need.
• 1:29:15
  I feel, you know, where's my adoration?
• 1:29:17
  Where's the we're always wanting connection.
• 1:29:19
  We're wired for connectivity. Men are too, but it's a little
• 1:29:22
  bit different because he's seeing this kind of larger
• 1:29:25
  landscape of provision. He's on that track.
• 1:29:28
  And so we are interpreting his other out, you know, his
• 1:29:31
  external focus really on other things as a lack of interest
• 1:29:35
  when really he's actually scanning the environment for
• 1:29:37
  Fred. He's trying to provide.
• 1:29:38
  He's doing all of the man things that are so hard wired into him.
• 1:29:42
  And I you know, we we've had I think it was Allison Armstrong
• 1:29:44
  on the show who is such a a fun and fascinating lady and so
• 1:29:48
  lovely in her, you know, advice that she gives.
• 1:29:49
  But she's just talking about how if you can ask the question when
• 1:29:54
  they're ready to hear it because they might be busy doing their
• 1:29:56
  provision or their compartmentalization, whatever
• 1:29:58
  they're doing. But say, you know, what is it?
• 1:30:00
  You know, what are ask him questions about what is driving
• 1:30:03
  him, motivating him and not interrupt him, not try to like,
• 1:30:06
  you know. Oh, me too.
• 1:30:08
  Yeah, yeah, let him just let him just have his open channel.
• 1:30:12
  It would be a mate you. I'm really amazed the wells, the
• 1:30:14
  depth of the wells that is in a man, in any man, but we maybe
• 1:30:18
  never even hear them as a woman because we're so.
• 1:30:21
  Focused on telling them what to do or what they're not doing or
• 1:30:24
  what we would like them to do or or or things like that.
• 1:30:28
  It's. Not so bad, by the way.
• 1:30:29
  It's not so bad. It's not so bad.
• 1:30:30
  It's mostly awesome. I mean, it's like she is.
• 1:30:34
  I mean, it's almost, it's making you make it sound like you've
• 1:30:36
  been like not understanding me for decades or something.
• 1:30:39
  No, On the contrary, no. But but I do, I make mistakes
• 1:30:42
  like these and I think they're common and, and it's good to
• 1:30:45
  realize those things so that you can improve.
• 1:30:48
  But like one of the like the latest things that I know is
• 1:30:51
  like, I need to learn more how to know you better, not just how
• 1:30:55
  to change you into what I want. I think that's for me has been
• 1:30:59
  very important not to get so irritated.
• 1:31:02
  If you are not not listening to me because like you say you're
• 1:31:05
  thinking about something else, that doesn't mean you you are
• 1:31:08
  not here for me, that you're not loving me or something.
• 1:31:11
  Like that, it's interesting that there's this these papers that
• 1:31:14
  show that men, for example, they have, you know, when men have
• 1:31:18
  that kind of that gaze, the thing that the men do, right,
• 1:31:22
  This actually comes from scanning the environment.
• 1:31:25
  So defocusing so that so that movement on the horizon will get
• 1:31:30
  your attention. That's what men are doing.
• 1:31:33
  And what men can't do very well is find something in the fridge.
• 1:31:37
  So they're not very good at seeing something that's right in
• 1:31:39
  front of you, but they're really good at seeing movement from far
• 1:31:42
  away. That's evolved.
• 1:31:44
  That's evolved, and that is sort of a metaphor for a lot of the
• 1:31:47
  stuff that we're talking about here, life.
• 1:31:50
  And how? Life for a man like and I'm
• 1:31:52
  look, I'm 61 years old. It's not like I have to provide
• 1:31:54
  for, you know, 9 little kids. On the contrary, you know, I'm,
• 1:31:57
  I'm, I'm setting up college accounts for my grandchildren at
• 1:32:00
  this point, you know, I'm, you know, I'm pretty much I've, I've
• 1:32:03
  done what I'm supposed to do on this earth, but still I'm
• 1:32:05
  scanning the horizon. You know, I'm looking at the
• 1:32:07
  horizon. It's like, OK, what moved out
• 1:32:08
  there? What what is it I need to
• 1:32:09
  protect them from? What are the opportunities for
• 1:32:12
  game? When that happens, it can, it
• 1:32:14
  can irritate me a lot. Oh, where is the maleness?
• 1:32:19
  What? It's in front of you, sweetie.
• 1:32:21
  Right. And then that tone of irritation
• 1:32:24
  that sometimes can be, you know, just an example, but.
• 1:32:31
  Yeah, still working on it 34 years in.
• 1:32:32
  And it's the important thing. A lot of a lot of your audience
• 1:32:35
  are young people, young married people and people who and people
• 1:32:38
  are not married, but they they want to be married.
• 1:32:40
  This is a lifelong quest. And the whole point is that's
• 1:32:43
  the adventure. Another mistake that a lot of
• 1:32:45
  couples make is thinking that that there are there conflict
• 1:32:49
  and the anxiety they have about their relationship and all that,
• 1:32:52
  that that's somehow evidence of a problem.
• 1:32:55
  It's not. It's evidence that you're alive
• 1:32:57
  and that you're 2 human beings getting better at knowing each
• 1:33:00
  other and loving each other and going toward having together.
• 1:33:03
  That's evidence. If you're not suffering, it
• 1:33:06
  means you're already dead. How much conflict is too much
• 1:33:10
  conflict in a marriage? That's a question that that
• 1:33:12
  really depends and that that's an empirical question among
• 1:33:15
  other things, right? So that's a philosophical
• 1:33:16
  question, but it's an empirical question as well.
• 1:33:18
  And what you find is that really very much depends on the couple.
• 1:33:21
  So if you've got 2 mad scientists that are are married
• 1:33:24
  to each other, you're going to have a lot of conflict and
• 1:33:26
  that's not a problem. It depends on how good you are
• 1:33:29
  at conflict. You need conflict technique is
• 1:33:32
  what it comes down. To yeah, and and sometimes like
• 1:33:35
  we fight or we have arguments about things and I go like but
• 1:33:41
  then I think, but it's so good that I trust him that I that
• 1:33:46
  it's OK. We disagree, we irritate each
• 1:33:49
  other, we argue, whatever. But like that that we're back to
• 1:33:52
  the thing. Trust.
• 1:33:54
  It's OK. We can.
• 1:33:55
  We don't understand each other right now.
• 1:33:56
  OK, It's OK. I don't care.
• 1:33:59
  Let's move on. Let's love each other.
• 1:34:01
  And sometimes he holds my hand. I don't want to as I push him
• 1:34:05
  away. But then you try again.
• 1:34:07
  OK, You know, that's it. Because if he does it enough
• 1:34:11
  times, I'll hold it. You know, you guys don't think
• 1:34:14
  that because the first time she doesn't respond.
• 1:34:18
  So. So.
• 1:34:18
  She's usually making a point. Do you ever want to hold his
• 1:34:21
  hand and he doesn't want to hold?
• 1:34:22
  Yours we are. We are very He likes to be
• 1:34:25
  touched more than I like to be touched.
• 1:34:28
  I like to be seen more than touched.
• 1:34:31
  So women have three times as much oxytocin.
• 1:34:33
  So neuropeptide in the brain that functions as a hormone.
• 1:34:36
  Women have oxytocin brains. And the reason is because you
• 1:34:39
  had when you, when your children were born and you had direct eye
• 1:34:41
  contact with a newborn infant who didn't know you, but you're,
• 1:34:45
  it was like the 4th of July inside your head.
• 1:34:47
  That's a bonding hormone. That's a bonding neuropeptide.
• 1:34:50
  Women have it more than men. Men have it too, but only a
• 1:34:52
  third is much. Now the biggest way that you're
• 1:34:55
  going to get it from the people that you love the most from your
• 1:34:57
  kin is direct eye contact. That's a window.
• 1:34:59
  It's a window into the soul, according to Saint Paul, but
• 1:35:03
  it's also a window. It's, it's, it's the, the spigot
• 1:35:06
  for, for oxytocin. One of the most important
• 1:35:09
  things, mistakes that men make in their marriages as they don't
• 1:35:13
  look at their wives in the eyes when they talk.
• 1:35:16
  This will save a multitude of problems.
• 1:35:18
  This will save marriages. Is, is eye contact.
• 1:35:21
  Stare at her in the eyes when you're having a conversation.
• 1:35:24
  Now men have more vasopressin, which is a neuropeptide.
• 1:35:27
  That's, that's not just bonding, that's like loyalty and defense,
• 1:35:31
  right? You get a lot of that when you
• 1:35:33
  touch. And the key thing all your
• 1:35:36
  husband wants is when you're walking down the street together
• 1:35:39
  for you to, you know, you put your arm inside his arm like
• 1:35:42
  that and he feels like 8 feet tall.
• 1:35:44
  Everybody. Yeah.
• 1:35:45
  Other men like men. Love that men love that.
• 1:35:48
  And the reason is because vassal president yeah, it's.
• 1:35:51
  Kind of like a protection thing, right?
• 1:35:53
  Yeah. Totally.
• 1:35:53
  And so and and so there there's a, there's sort of four secrets
• 1:35:57
  that could save almost every marriage.
• 1:35:58
  OK, let's do it. And I also want to ask you how
• 1:36:01
  to be adorable. But this is probably going to
• 1:36:03
  lead us into, well, this is. All social science, so we'll
• 1:36:05
  just get, we'll dispense with the science quickly.
• 1:36:07
  Number one, eye contact every time you're talking.
• 1:36:09
  Never be talking where you're not looking at it, especially if
• 1:36:12
  you're sitting together on the sofa.
• 1:36:15
  No phones, Yeah, No phone for. I mean, that's that's like.
• 1:36:17
  Table spakes, right? Big irritation.
• 1:36:19
  Of mine, that's everybody. My husband and I even fall into
• 1:36:22
  that if we're working or that's what you know.
• 1:36:24
  But lying in bed before you go to sleep, Pillow talk means eye
• 1:36:28
  contact. Talking to each other.
• 1:36:30
  What's that? Lights on.
• 1:36:31
  Yeah, lights on for sure. You got to, you got to see into
• 1:36:33
  each other. You got to see into each other's
• 1:36:35
  eyes. Guys, don't screw that up.
• 1:36:37
  Don't screw that up #1 #2 abt always be touching.
• 1:36:41
  When you're together, you're touching.
• 1:36:42
  When you're in mass, you're touching.
• 1:36:44
  When you're walking, you're holding hands.
• 1:36:45
  Always be touching. That's number two.
• 1:36:47
  This saves tons and tons and tons of relationships #3 don't
• 1:36:52
  rehearse all your problems. Have more fun.
• 1:36:55
  Do stuff you like as opposed to rehearsing your problems.
• 1:36:57
  You know this is that. Solving problems or rehearsing?
• 1:36:59
  Is there a difference? Rehearsing problems is what's
• 1:37:01
  actually not solving problems. But you're paying a therapist to
• 1:37:04
  do. You go in and you say, OK, let's
• 1:37:06
  talk about your conflict. You know, the, the, the glass of
• 1:37:09
  water with the dirt in it. It's like you're not getting the
• 1:37:13
  dirt out. How do you get the dirt out?
• 1:37:14
  This is actually, this is a very interesting marriage, a movement
• 1:37:18
  in Spain called Amoraco Nugalo, El projecto Amoraco Nugalo.
• 1:37:21
  And we've done it. And it means the the marital
• 1:37:25
  love project. It's coming to a country near
• 1:37:28
  you and it's. Coming.
• 1:37:30
  It's in the States already, but it's in Spanish.
• 1:37:32
  It's going. To be translated.
• 1:37:33
  Soon it's phenomenal, but one of the things that they, they, you
• 1:37:36
  know what that they point out, which is very good social
• 1:37:39
  science is they say, OK, you're stirring it up and stirring it
• 1:37:42
  up, just pour a whole pitcher of water into the glass and the
• 1:37:45
  dirt comes out on its own. And that's just have more fun.
• 1:37:50
  And last but not least, this is the key that a lot of couples
• 1:37:52
  don't have. They don't do the single most
• 1:37:54
  intimate thing they should be doing together, which is praying
• 1:37:56
  together everyday, praying together, praying together,
• 1:37:58
  praying together. I know couples, Catholic
• 1:38:00
  couples, serious Catholic couples that have been married
• 1:38:02
  for 50 years and don't pray together because it's too
• 1:38:05
  embarrassing. Like I I know what.
• 1:38:07
  Do you mean by pray together? Pray.
• 1:38:09
  I mean how you do it. I mean we pray the rosary.
• 1:38:11
  You pray the Rosary, extemporaneous prayer.
• 1:38:14
  Together, pray the rosary or pray, just pray that you know in
• 1:38:18
  times of, of, of something's happening that we're praying to
• 1:38:21
  God for something. Do it together.
• 1:38:22
  And it can include the kids. Yeah, you're.
• 1:38:25
  Saying it's like, you know, it's bilateral.
• 1:38:27
  It's that Diane. Of course, but as a as a mayor
• 1:38:29
  cop? This is the most intimate thing.
• 1:38:31
  There's lots of stuff that you know.
• 1:38:32
  It's just one of the things that's characteristic of really
• 1:38:35
  happy marriages is you realize when your kids come along, it's
• 1:38:40
  you versus them. It's teen parents and teen kids
• 1:38:43
  and unhappy marriages that have a lot of kids.
• 1:38:45
  The kids get between the parents.
• 1:38:48
  Never let your kids get never let your because they will.
• 1:38:51
  They're smart, you know, they'll divide and conquer as much as
• 1:38:53
  they possibly can. And it's like never.
• 1:38:55
  No space? No.
• 1:38:56
  Space and it's the best thing that you can do for the kids to
• 1:38:58
  be close. And one of the things to do, of
• 1:39:00
  course, is that is to maintain the deepest kind of intimacy.
• 1:39:04
  And that's spiritual intimacy. And so that's the big four.
• 1:39:06
  It's eye contact, always touching, having more fun as
• 1:39:10
  opposed to rehearsing your grievances and and and praying
• 1:39:14
  together. None of those four things were
• 1:39:16
  sexual intimacy. No, no.
• 1:39:18
  Well, they, they, they go. They they will bring you to the
• 1:39:22
  Yeah. If you want more sexual
• 1:39:23
  intimacy, you know, always be touching and make sure that
• 1:39:27
  you're doing eye contact, I mean.
• 1:39:28
  Also one of the things that if you want sexual intimacy you
• 1:39:33
  for, I think for women, we want to be seen not just like a naked
• 1:39:37
  body, but as a person, we're more like receptive.
• 1:39:40
  We we need to trust that that admiration from not just
• 1:39:45
  physically, but as a person, it's so important.
• 1:39:48
  And so, you know, that's I think, but.
• 1:39:51
  I've heard, not to be devil's advocate, but I've heard there
• 1:39:54
  are men, a lot of men that say, and again, this isn't all men,
• 1:39:59
  but there's a group of men who say, well, my need is sex.
• 1:40:03
  I and, and I know marriage, you should be having sex.
• 1:40:05
  Of course you need to be very intimate.
• 1:40:07
  That's these are keys, I think to intimacy.
• 1:40:09
  But it's more like the the idea there is this is the primordial
• 1:40:13
  need of a man, not so much of a woman.
• 1:40:16
  And you're kind of trading the man trades emotional intimacy
• 1:40:20
  and the woman trades back physical intimacy.
• 1:40:23
  And this is, again, a whole kind of worldview of how the two
• 1:40:27
  interact. Do you agree with that?
• 1:40:29
  Do you disagree with that? How do you see that?
• 1:40:31
  We talked about that in in pre cane.
• 1:40:33
  I tell what? Why don't you mention how you
• 1:40:35
  talk about this? About affection and sex?
• 1:40:36
  Yeah, I think they go together because if you get one, you're
• 1:40:41
  going to get the other one. If we women get more like
• 1:40:45
  attention and adoration, we're going to be more receptive to to
• 1:40:49
  sexual intimacy and, and, and men too, like right.
• 1:40:53
  If you. Get more sexual intimacy, then
• 1:40:56
  you'll be more willing to adore the one.
• 1:41:00
  I guess the question is to make it more precise, Would men be
• 1:41:02
  happy with just sex? No, no, no.
• 1:41:05
  And we know some people kind of I know and cheering that off,
• 1:41:08
  they're actually, we have a a perfect natural experiment for.
• 1:41:10
  Pornography, maybe when they are young.
• 1:41:12
  Right. Yeah, No, no, but not even that.
• 1:41:14
  What you find is that that more more use of pornography is
• 1:41:17
  related to much higher rates of depression, much higher rates of
• 1:41:20
  loneliness, much higher rates of suicide, much higher the race of
• 1:41:23
  anxiety. But that's a disruption of
• 1:41:25
  sexuality. This is I know, but it's just
• 1:41:27
  it's the it's sort of the, it's the, it's the asymptotic extreme
• 1:41:30
  of this phenomenon of shearing sex off from intimacy, shearing
• 1:41:34
  sex off from the human experience, from the connection
• 1:41:36
  with another person. And so men for sure are, you
• 1:41:39
  know, evolved to be more sexual. They are.
• 1:41:42
  I mean, that's that's pretty easy to anybody who denies that
• 1:41:47
  is, you know, probably a college professor.
• 1:41:49
  Or some people deny that. Yeah, I know.
• 1:41:50
  But my point being that that's not that's that that that would
• 1:41:53
  defy common sense. But the point is that there's
• 1:41:55
  still not enough for men too. And one of the things that men
• 1:41:57
  need to learn about themselves is that men need love just like
• 1:42:01
  women need love. And that your animal impulses
• 1:42:04
  are not the same space as your moral aspirations.
• 1:42:07
  The the human prefrontal cortex, which is the greatest
• 1:42:09
  supercomputer in the in the universe, 30% of your brain by
• 1:42:14
  weight gives you 2 choices. You can live in the space of
• 1:42:18
  your animal impulses, or you can choose to live in the space of
• 1:42:21
  your moral aspirations. God made us this way.
• 1:42:23
  It's, it's an incredible miracle, but that's not even a
• 1:42:26
  religious point. We know this is the case that we
• 1:42:28
  can stand up to our animal impulses and choose our moral
• 1:42:31
  aspirations. And it's one of the most
• 1:42:32
  important things that guys need to get their minds around in
• 1:42:35
  marriage is that you need to live up to your moral aspiration
• 1:42:39
  in treating your wife the way that you would want your wife to
• 1:42:42
  be treated. As you always see feeling right
• 1:42:45
  now or you just think that as a an older.
• 1:42:47
  I've always thought this, but now actually the moral I mean, I
• 1:42:50
  have the intellectual backing for it.
• 1:42:52
  Is this a evolution in your marriage?
• 1:42:54
  Early on in the marriage, was this not the way that you saw it
• 1:42:57
  or shared life together and this is now more as.
• 1:43:00
  You were more immature, to be sure, and we thought more about
• 1:43:04
  dumb things, to be sure, but we were.
• 1:43:06
  This was these. These ideas were in Koaid.
• 1:43:09
  I think they were always there. But it sounds like what you're
• 1:43:12
  saying, Arthur in and I think it's controversial in for some
• 1:43:16
  today, not all because there's different extremes, right?
• 1:43:19
  But what you're saying is that this idea of men needing sex in
• 1:43:22
  a special way versus women, there is a biological reality
• 1:43:26
  that's connected to that, but it's not sufficient.
• 1:43:29
  It's like to say, well, you need to have calories, but like any
• 1:43:32
  calorie is maybe actually some calories kill you.
• 1:43:35
  Like if you have the wrong kind, that you need a nutritional need
• 1:43:38
  to be nutritious, nutritious. And so when you say that men
• 1:43:41
  need sex, what you're really saying is men need physical
• 1:43:44
  connection in love that includes sex.
• 1:43:47
  But to say that that's the end game of a man is actually to
• 1:43:50
  reduce him. Totally, absolutely.
• 1:43:52
  And that's one of the reasons that men will find when they're
• 1:43:55
  living in the space of their animal impulses that they're
• 1:43:57
  getting unhappier and unhappier and unhappier.
• 1:44:00
  Men, the vast, overwhelming majority of men, are not
• 1:44:04
  supposed to be alone. They're not supposed to be
• 1:44:07
  alone. They're not complete.
• 1:44:08
  They're not completed and they won't be happy until they
• 1:44:10
  actually get beyond that. Now, one of the problems that a
• 1:44:12
  lot of guys have is that they're very, very successful in the
• 1:44:15
  kind of the mating marketplace. And so the result is because
• 1:44:18
  they have a lot of money or they're incredibly attractive
• 1:44:21
  or, or, you know, they just give off resource signals in the
• 1:44:23
  biological evolutionary milieu, you know, resources are
• 1:44:28
  incredibly attractive to single women.
• 1:44:30
  In a resource provision, the ability to protect, well, the
• 1:44:34
  possession of a lot of resources is the way.
• 1:44:36
  And so guys who have that because of their life
• 1:44:38
  circumstances early on, they'll attract to themselves women who
• 1:44:41
  are willing to actually give them sort of at the, at the base
• 1:44:44
  level, what they think they want.
• 1:44:46
  And that screws them up. That messes guys up and messes
• 1:44:50
  up their minds and messes up their brains.
• 1:44:52
  It, it makes them deeply, deeply unhappy.
• 1:44:54
  And they don't know why. And the reason is because
• 1:44:57
  they're not being completed. They're getting what they want,
• 1:44:59
  and that's the problem they think they want.
• 1:45:02
  You mean they're not They're not marrying an equal, they're
• 1:45:04
  marrying a they're. Not marrying.
• 1:45:07
  They're not marrying. They're not marrying, you know,
• 1:45:09
  men, men need to fall in love and marry their best friend.
• 1:45:13
  That's what men need to do. I mean it's.
• 1:45:15
  Not just marry a hot babe who's going to give you an.
• 1:45:17
  Ideal. I mean I got that too, but.
• 1:45:20
  You want both, but she also. She needs to be your.
• 1:45:23
  There needs to be friendship. Yeah.
• 1:45:25
  So the way, the way we talk about this in the world of, of
• 1:45:27
  behavioral science is that the, the human brain has a neural
• 1:45:30
  neurophysiological cascade that happens when we're in the early
• 1:45:35
  stages of mating. Sex hormones are first
• 1:45:38
  instigated when there's attraction.
• 1:45:39
  You see somebody from across the library, right?
• 1:45:41
  And there's a little, you know, spike of estradiol or, or, or
• 1:45:44
  testosterone, both, actually both in men and women, but more
• 1:45:48
  in one and less than the other. And, and that, that's just,
• 1:45:51
  that's just kind of it, it stimulates this interest, this
• 1:45:54
  you'd call it sexual interest, but romantic interest.
• 1:45:57
  What are Eros, you know, and, and as the Greeks would put it,
• 1:46:00
  the next step when you actually talk to somebody and you feel
• 1:46:02
  that real interest, that's that, that's a, a neuromodulators.
• 1:46:06
  That's where dopamine and norepinephrine come in, where
• 1:46:09
  that's euphoria and anticipation, like a text, a
• 1:46:13
  text from her. I got, there were no texts when
• 1:46:15
  we met, but the whole point is a text.
• 1:46:16
  It's like it's a text. Who cares?
• 1:46:18
  It's a text. It's a, but that anticipation,
• 1:46:20
  that weird anticipation and that euphoria you get from a dumb
• 1:46:24
  little thing. That's these two neuromodulators
• 1:46:26
  that are in the brain. The next step is a big dip in
• 1:46:30
  serotonin. Serotonin is a is a
• 1:46:32
  neurotransmitter that's associated with clinical
• 1:46:35
  depression, and when it's too low in the synapse, you tend to
• 1:46:38
  have ruminative sadness. Well, it turns out that it dips
• 1:46:42
  like crazy when you're falling in love.
• 1:46:44
  And the reason is because you need to ruminate on the other
• 1:46:47
  person to, to bond because you're looking for kin.
• 1:46:51
  You're making somebody into your kin, but you got to bond to the
• 1:46:54
  person and you didn't grow up with that person.
• 1:46:55
  You don't want to grow up with that person.
• 1:46:57
  That's a gross taboo is to have, you know, you want somebody
• 1:46:59
  who's, you know, fresh and complementary to you.
• 1:47:02
  So, so that's, and that's why you look clinically depressed
• 1:47:06
  when you're falling in love because that, that your
• 1:47:08
  serotonin levels are really low. And then it that the big goal
• 1:47:12
  after weeks and months is the beginning of this oxytocin and
• 1:47:16
  vasopressin, which is the you're this person is, it's your
• 1:47:20
  person. And that's the that's the cosmic
• 1:47:22
  bonding that actually happens. The neurobiology of this is so
• 1:47:26
  beautiful is the way that this works.
• 1:47:28
  But what you want through all of that at the end of the day is
• 1:47:32
  not passionate love. It's companionate love,
• 1:47:35
  companion, which doesn't sound hot.
• 1:47:37
  I got it right plenty. But true companionate love is
• 1:47:41
  where you're married, your best friend, and there's sex too,
• 1:47:43
  right? I mean, it's like every benefit
• 1:47:44
  you could possibly want, but you get to walk through the rest of
• 1:47:48
  your life hand in hand every day with your best friend.
• 1:47:52
  That's what you get and that's what you want.
• 1:47:54
  And when it doesn't work because that cascade is out of sync and
• 1:47:58
  they don't get the companion of love, that's when they they were
• 1:48:00
  in love and now they hate each other because the bitterness of
• 1:48:03
  the disappointment of actually not getting to friendship is
• 1:48:08
  real. And so all the dudes out there,
• 1:48:10
  they're not getting this, that they're going from step one to
• 1:48:13
  Step 2 to step one to Step 2 is testosterone to dopamine and
• 1:48:17
  norepinephrine and back up to the top again.
• 1:48:19
  And it's just hooking up and hooking up.
• 1:48:21
  You're not going to get where you need to go and you're not
• 1:48:23
  going to be happy. You're just not.
• 1:48:26
  They're living a life. It is.
• 1:48:28
  And it's, it's so funny because everybody kind of knows it when
• 1:48:31
  I explain it to party boys and guys that I meet and people that
• 1:48:35
  I like and students that I have and they're super attractive and
• 1:48:38
  they got money and they got a future and there's a line of
• 1:48:41
  women for them. For these guys.
• 1:48:43
  They know perfectly. They're doing it wrong.
• 1:48:45
  They know perfectly. The red pill would say.
• 1:48:48
  Don't be a simp. Like, like what you said
• 1:48:50
  earlier. And because I really wanted to
• 1:48:52
  get to this and and I and we're going to get to the adorable
• 1:48:54
  question because I know you have thoughts on that one too.
• 1:48:56
  But you said something earlier. I was like, are you talking
• 1:48:58
  about Our Lady? You're like, no, I'm talking
• 1:48:59
  about my wife. Yeah.
• 1:49:00
  She's your muse. She's your, you said spiritual
• 1:49:03
  guide. Oh.
• 1:49:04
  Is she my guru? She's your, she's not your idol,
• 1:49:07
  but she's on a pedestal. Yeah, no, it's I have a devotion
• 1:49:09
  to her. I devotioned her.
• 1:49:12
  Yeah, for sure. Because she brings me closer to
• 1:49:14
  God. Here's the interesting thing
• 1:49:15
  that that really. That's in my view that's very
• 1:49:17
  manly. My husband I'm blessed, sees,
• 1:49:19
  you know, adores me, right? And I feel very blessed.
• 1:49:22
  But I think today there's a backlash against feminism,
• 1:49:25
  right? Like the like the ugly, modern,
• 1:49:27
  I'm a man. There don't need no man.
• 1:49:29
  Men need a woman man. We need a man like a fish sheet
• 1:49:31
  of bicycle, whatever. There's a backlash.
• 1:49:33
  Against this famous quote. Yeah, it's a pretty funny joke.
• 1:49:36
  It is a funny, it was a joke. It's a joke, right?
• 1:49:38
  But but the backlash from men and against that rejection of
• 1:49:42
  the masculine is why I'm going to reject this whole pedestal
• 1:49:45
  thing. But again, that's just reaction.
• 1:49:47
  Reaction is always like that. I mean, as you see reaction and
• 1:49:50
  politics, you see reaction and you know, all it is, is that
• 1:49:53
  you're reacting to something. And so you go to the opposite
• 1:49:56
  extreme and men do that by the way, the domesticating, the
• 1:49:59
  civilizing force on men is women in society.
• 1:50:01
  And, and, and so you find that that reaction will be short
• 1:50:05
  lived. Reactions can't exist
• 1:50:06
  autonomously. Such a good point.
• 1:50:09
  And so you. Can't endlessly react you.
• 1:50:11
  Don't have stimuli and you know, they'll, they'll, they'll be OK.
• 1:50:13
  And I know lots of guys who thought that way and.
• 1:50:15
  We get reactions to this show for saying very like benign
• 1:50:19
  things about love and marriage and everything right there.
• 1:50:22
  Feminists, you know, like and again, we don't try to that's
• 1:50:25
  all who we're doing the show for.
• 1:50:27
  Obviously, we love those people. We hope that they'll thrive one
• 1:50:29
  day. But you know, it's it is a crazy
• 1:50:31
  world out there when you have the the hurt that a lot of men
• 1:50:34
  experience, the feminism, the now misogyny and misandry and
• 1:50:39
  it's all just this. It is.
• 1:50:41
  And mess. It's, it's going to be OK
• 1:50:45
  because, you know, the American culture is largely propelled by
• 1:50:48
  fads and panics, you know, and fads and panics and fads and
• 1:50:53
  panics and fads and panics. And sometimes when you're young,
• 1:50:56
  you get caught up in a fad or a panic.
• 1:50:58
  The fad is the weird thing that's kind of awful.
• 1:51:01
  And the panic is the reaction largely to it.
• 1:51:04
  And we kind of go back and forth in the whole thing and you get a
• 1:51:06
  little bit older. And what I found is a lot of
• 1:51:08
  guys that have this, that have this attitude about women, this
• 1:51:11
  really misguided attitude about women.
• 1:51:13
  And then they fall in love. And then they meet the person
• 1:51:16
  that's really right for them, and they say, oh, oh, oh, now I
• 1:51:19
  get it. And they have like 1 healthy
• 1:51:21
  married couple that they kind of get connected, right?
• 1:51:23
  Because I've noticed when there's the falling in love and
• 1:51:26
  they, they try to do the right thing, but they don't have good
• 1:51:28
  inputs. I have seen that because we get
• 1:51:30
  calls even on to the show about marriages that are struggling
• 1:51:34
  because the man or the woman is doing weird stuff right?
• 1:51:37
  Or they're just not connecting, whatever it is.
• 1:51:39
  But if your input is still that reaction is the fad and that
• 1:51:42
  what was the the fan of the panic and you're feeding your
• 1:51:45
  marriage with fat and panic, right, Then you're gonna, I
• 1:51:47
  mean, there's marriages today on the other side.
• 1:51:50
  They're going to like, let's open our marriage.
• 1:51:52
  Yeah. That's like there's no evidence
• 1:51:55
  it is an absolute fad, but there's today and by the way,
• 1:51:58
  that's that's not a fad that that has any sort of basis in
• 1:52:02
  what we understand about human pair bond mating.
• 1:52:05
  I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of research on this that
• 1:52:08
  the big, I'm sure that there are exceptions because there are all
• 1:52:13
  sorts of differences in human species in the human species,
• 1:52:17
  but the vast overwhelming majority of people are pair bond
• 1:52:20
  mating are are. Geared one-on-one, man and
• 1:52:23
  woman. One-on-one, one-on-one and
• 1:52:24
  there's nobody who actually goes into a marriage and says, well,
• 1:52:29
  it's probably only worked for five years.
• 1:52:31
  They want it until they die on their on their wedding day.
• 1:52:34
  I don't care if you're completely secular or super
• 1:52:37
  Catholic or anything else in between.
• 1:52:39
  You want that to work for the rest of your life.
• 1:52:41
  And that's the thing to be paying attention to.
• 1:52:44
  That's your intention. That doesn't mean it's going to
• 1:52:46
  work out. There's lots of problems that
• 1:52:49
  people have. A lot of marriages fail.
• 1:52:50
  I get it. And a lot of marriages that
• 1:52:53
  fail, and there's nothing that a partner can do about it.
• 1:52:55
  That's the reason that we have an enrollment process in the
• 1:52:57
  Catholic Church, as a matter of fact, right?
• 1:52:59
  Because there's a recognition of that fact.
• 1:53:02
  But the truth is that we want the thing that we're built to
• 1:53:05
  want deep down. And everybody watching us knows
• 1:53:09
  that. That's the key.
• 1:53:10
  There's nobody watching us today saying, yeah, you know, I think
• 1:53:12
  about it. I think it's time to redefine
• 1:53:14
  the human species. I think there's a new thing in
• 1:53:17
  town, No? And I also think that marriage,
• 1:53:23
  family and marriage have always been a goal of the devil to
• 1:53:29
  destroy. And so they're going to be
• 1:53:32
  always problems and it's never going to be like an easy thing.
• 1:53:36
  Even good marriages have to deal with with struggle.
• 1:53:41
  So we have to keep that always in mind that it's never going to
• 1:53:44
  be a super easy, simple, no work kind of relationship.
• 1:53:48
  It's always going to going to include a lot of struggle,
• 1:53:52
  sometimes more, sometimes less. But it's always like I think
• 1:53:57
  worth the trying hard, not just whenever things don't work, just
• 1:54:01
  give up. Just trying hard and, and just
• 1:54:04
  thinking about the importance of it, not just for the person, but
• 1:54:09
  for society, for, for a culture, for the world.
• 1:54:13
  So yeah. How do with fads and panics
• 1:54:17
  which are all around us, what do you think the disposition we
• 1:54:21
  should have for towards the fads and the panics, especially the
• 1:54:25
  ones having to do with how we're going to live our marriages and
• 1:54:27
  our relationships? And I mean, I, I'm, I'm thinking
• 1:54:30
  about women who now just don't want to get married.
• 1:54:33
  They don't have children. Well, I think that it should
• 1:54:37
  start telling children the truth about their lives.
• 1:54:44
  I think I'm working on a project with a Catholic school, a girls
• 1:54:49
  Catholic school. There's going to be like
• 1:54:53
  different women that are going to come throughout the school
• 1:54:55
  year and talk about poetry for two days or this and that.
• 1:55:00
  So I'm preparing one of those residences is going to be called
• 1:55:04
  Motherhood in Residence to talk to girls about motherhood.
• 1:55:10
  Because who talks to girls about motherhood?
• 1:55:13
  Nobody, nobody. We just tell them they can be
• 1:55:16
  like men. They can have success in their
• 1:55:20
  careers, they can make a lot of money, they can be very happy,
• 1:55:23
  they can have a lot of fun. Nobody tells them what they
• 1:55:27
  were, that a big part of what they were made to be is mothers.
• 1:55:32
  Not just biological mothers, but mothers.
• 1:55:35
  There's other different ways of being mothers, right?
• 1:55:38
  So because I think that, like I said before, when I was growing
• 1:55:42
  up, I, I saw that families around me in my, my friends,
• 1:55:48
  etcetera. They had a family, they had a
• 1:55:50
  marriage, they had mothers that were actually happy to be
• 1:55:54
  mothers and they were being mothers fully or whatever.
• 1:55:58
  That doesn't mean they that they stayed home because you can do
• 1:56:02
  that even if you work OK, but it means priorities.
• 1:56:06
  So nobody's telling young people that.
• 1:56:09
  Same thing with men. Who's telling men that the most
• 1:56:13
  important thing they're going to do in their lives is to meet
• 1:56:15
  their spouse and to start a family.
• 1:56:18
  Nobody's telling men that. So I think in schools we just
• 1:56:22
  focus about academics and, and all the like, fun, whatever the
• 1:56:26
  culture is just about me, me, me and how can I be satisfied and
• 1:56:31
  pleasure and fun, etcetera. But nobody tells them little
• 1:56:35
  young men and women about how they're going to be fulfilled,
• 1:56:40
  which is the only way they're going to be fulfilled is when
• 1:56:44
  they love. And the best place that they can
• 1:56:47
  love is the family is the marriage, their marriage and
• 1:56:50
  their families. That's the the place where
• 1:56:52
  they're going to be able to love, to serve and to give
• 1:56:55
  themselves for the other. And that's what we're we're made
• 1:56:59
  to do in this world. This is how we understand it's
• 1:57:03
  funny, people often ask why do people get more religious after
• 1:57:07
  they get married and have children?
• 1:57:09
  And the assumption for a lot of secular people is because that's
• 1:57:12
  how you can impose some sort of discipline on your kids, some
• 1:57:15
  sort of structure on your kids that's wrong.
• 1:57:17
  The answer is that to begin with, we tend to get more
• 1:57:20
  religious as we get older. We believe less than Santa Claus
• 1:57:23
  and more in God as we get older and and part of the reason is
• 1:57:26
  because we get over this idea that in a, you know, a good God
• 1:57:32
  could exist in an unjust world because life is messy because
• 1:57:35
  Job 38, because where were you when I created the heavens and
• 1:57:38
  the earth and all of life is messy.
• 1:57:40
  So maybe that one, you know, is but more importantly, when you
• 1:57:44
  have when you get married and Somebody Loves You
• 1:57:46
  unconditionally, and then when you have your children and.
• 1:57:50
  And I remember, you know, Carlos, when our son or, you
• 1:57:53
  know, he seemed like such a ne'er dwell Now he's like, you
• 1:57:56
  know, he went on to become a Marine sniper.
• 1:57:58
  So his, let's just say his bellicosity was, was aimed
• 1:58:02
  outward toward America's enemies, which was really great,
• 1:58:05
  you know. But when he was little, you
• 1:58:06
  know, he'd be after a hard day, you know, he'd be in his bed
• 1:58:10
  asleep, little red cheeks, you know, having been, you know,
• 1:58:13
  running around all day getting into mischief.
• 1:58:15
  And I'd be sitting in the room and I'd be like, yeah, that's
• 1:58:20
  how God loves me. That's what it means.
• 1:58:23
  Because when I'm in my bed and God is like, he was so rotten
• 1:58:26
  today, but I just love him. And you don't understand
• 1:58:30
  unconditional love until you have your children.
• 1:58:32
  You don't understand the nature of what it means to love
• 1:58:34
  somebody who's actually unlovable until you have your
• 1:58:37
  children. You don't get it is the whole
• 1:58:40
  point. That's why the family.
• 1:58:42
  And and, and, and then you don't get it.
• 1:58:44
  You don't know. But, but I think and then if you
• 1:58:47
  don't have examples around you as a child when this is actually
• 1:58:51
  happening, So then how are you going to know?
• 1:58:55
  You're probably going to figure out like later in your life, but
• 1:58:59
  you'd probably be too late for some people, you know, So that I
• 1:59:04
  think we, it's this is family, marriage is something we need to
• 1:59:10
  actually talk about with young kids and, and, and not, I mean,
• 1:59:16
  talk about, of course, the example, the life example is the
• 1:59:19
  best way to teach that. But when that is lacking in
• 1:59:24
  schools, in Catholic schools, why don't we talk more about
• 1:59:27
  that, the practical, practical things like when at the Heights
• 1:59:31
  they actually did, they talk about fatherhood.
• 1:59:34
  What other high schools do they talk about fatherhood like?
• 1:59:37
  Never, never. Heroic thing is that heroic?
• 1:59:40
  Thing. Yeah, Heroic is like, yeah, it's
• 1:59:42
  going to be awesome, boys. It's just not, it's not talked
• 1:59:45
  about. It's just like something nobody
• 1:59:47
  thinks about saying. And same thing with with women,
• 1:59:51
  with girls, right? Talk about that.
• 1:59:54
  Just the the beautiful, the beauty of being a mother, right?
• 1:59:58
  What does that mean? Why is that beautiful?
• 2:00:00
  Why is it not a burden no matter what they tell you?
• 2:00:04
  How we teaching that to young people?
• 2:00:06
  Because we're not teaching that to young people.
• 2:00:08
  I think good enough, well enough.
• 2:00:10
  I think the motherhood and fatherhood is kind of presented
• 2:00:12
  on a menu culturally where of like, you can do this, You can
• 2:00:15
  do that, Yeah, motherhood's cool thing.
• 2:00:17
  You could do it if you want, no judgement, But it's not
• 2:00:19
  presented as a coming of age necessity for the maturity of
• 2:00:24
  every human being, whether they're biological parent or a
• 2:00:28
  spiritual parent of some kind. That this is the way you you
• 2:00:31
  live like it's not optional parenthood, I believe biological
• 2:00:36
  or spiritual, it's not optional. We all are meant for it.
• 2:00:40
  Otherwise we were we were cut short.
• 2:00:42
  We never really fully matured. And that's when.
• 2:00:44
  That's when we become more like like God.
• 2:00:47
  That's when we are closer to God.
• 2:00:49
  We become more like God. That's what we are when we are
• 2:00:53
  more fulfilled in our role as, as human beings is when we, we
• 2:00:57
  take that role of parent, you know, mother, father or, or our
• 2:01:01
  role as our spouses, because it's all about love.
• 2:01:05
  It's the commandment, love God and love your neighbor.
• 2:01:08
  And, and when you do that, that's when you are fulfilled.
• 2:01:11
  That's when you're going to be happy.
• 2:01:14
  I mean, part of it is that the way that a lot of people have
• 2:01:18
  seen family life is that this is something you have to do and
• 2:01:21
  people naturally bridle against that.
• 2:01:23
  I do too. I mean, I'm a, and I'm a
• 2:01:26
  American rugged individualist. I'm an Emersonian, you know,
• 2:01:29
  Ralph Old Emerson, my favorite. He's my favorite philosopher,
• 2:01:32
  which, you know, it's not very compatible with Catholic
• 2:01:34
  thinking. And by the way, he was a
• 2:01:35
  Unitarian. But my point being, you know, he
• 2:01:38
  would talk about, you know, the the sturdy lad who always lands
• 2:01:41
  on his feet like a cat. That's from his most famous
• 2:01:44
  essay, self-reliance. I love that.
• 2:01:46
  I love that. I get it.
• 2:01:48
  And so when somebody says you got to do this thing, I'm like.
• 2:01:51
  You're going to do what? You got to do it well and you
• 2:01:54
  got. It college, No, you got to you
• 2:01:56
  got to have a family. I will figure that out myself.
• 2:01:59
  I'm an American. I'm an individualist, right?
• 2:02:03
  But that's the wrong way to think about it.
• 2:02:05
  You get to do this thing. I mean, it's like it's, you
• 2:02:08
  know, people are, you know, I hear a lot of young people today
• 2:02:11
  saying how lousy it is to have to do adult stuff.
• 2:02:14
  Being an adult is the best. I mean, it's the best.
• 2:02:18
  If I wanna eat a Milky Way, I buy a Milky Way and I eat it
• 2:02:21
  because I actually get to do all these things.
• 2:02:23
  I get to do all these. I get to get.
• 2:02:25
  Married why do you guys get to drink sparkling water whenever
• 2:02:28
  you want? We're like for adults, for.
• 2:02:32
  Adults. And it's like being an adult.
• 2:02:34
  It's almost all great. It's almost all great because
• 2:02:38
  even the responsibilities are great.
• 2:02:39
  Even the anxieties are are kind of a big adventure.
• 2:02:43
  As a matter of fact, if you see it as such, and the problem is
• 2:02:45
  we're not teaching young people today that this is the adventure
• 2:02:48
  of a lifetime is going through your life.
• 2:02:51
  I mean, everything about aging. It's like growing up.
• 2:02:53
  It's what a drag man getting old, what a drag, right?
• 2:02:58
  No, no, no, no, no. It's all this incredible
• 2:03:01
  adventure. As long as we see it as such.
• 2:03:03
  That's the start up life and that's not what we're teaching
• 2:03:06
  young people today. And, and, and we are also
• 2:03:10
  raising kids to be afraid of everything of like of conflict.
• 2:03:15
  You know, conflict can be good. Conflict can be, can open, you
• 2:03:19
  know, different things, fear of, of failure.
• 2:03:24
  I was talking to a young girl, a friend of ours who's teaching at
• 2:03:28
  a private school. And they actually the parents,
• 2:03:32
  some of the parents told her, you cannot say say no to my
• 2:03:36
  kindergartener. If you don't want her to do
• 2:03:39
  something. You have to give her three
• 2:03:41
  options, like a parent telling that to what?
• 2:03:44
  Could go wrong with that. So, OK, so dental.
• 2:03:47
  Parenting in a nutshell to the extreme.
• 2:03:49
  That child is going to go to college and and.
• 2:03:51
  Never. She is going to be afraid of
• 2:03:53
  everything if somebody doesn't agree with her or somebody has a
• 2:03:57
  different opinion. So I think it's, it starts young
• 2:04:00
  and, and I think that that because nobody is telling those
• 2:04:05
  kids what's important in life, what, what it's really going to
• 2:04:08
  make them happy and what they need to do in order to grow as
• 2:04:12
  as human beings. We only talk about success,
• 2:04:16
  wealth, power and and pleasure and we forget the most
• 2:04:21
  important. Which, by the way, those are the
• 2:04:22
  four idols of Saint that was Aquinas.
• 2:04:24
  By the way, yeah. Yeah.
• 2:04:26
  I mean, and Aquinas actually was kind of lifting that from
• 2:04:28
  Aristotle. An honor because now with the
• 2:04:30
  Instagram and all that, that's the fame, right?
• 2:04:33
  That money? Power, pleasure and fame are
• 2:04:36
  those are the worldly idols and all of those, the pursuit of all
• 2:04:39
  of those is in the animal impulse and none of those as an
• 2:04:42
  end in itself is in the is in the moral aspiration space.
• 2:04:45
  None of it. Now, there's nothing wrong with
• 2:04:47
  money or power or pleasure or honors, nothing wrong with those
• 2:04:51
  things, but only when they're intermediate goals to what we
• 2:04:53
  really want, which is to love and be loved.
• 2:04:55
  That's the that's what exists in the space of moral aspiration.
• 2:04:59
  And So what we teach young people is to, I mean, the
• 2:05:02
  hippies used to say, if it feels good, do it.
• 2:05:04
  And we really haven't come very far.
• 2:05:07
  Since then. Except we've actually added this
• 2:05:09
  twist that's made it worse, which is if it feels bad, make
• 2:05:13
  it stop, right? Which is even more dangerous.
• 2:05:16
  It's all kinds of. Toxic.
• 2:05:17
  It's caustic, it's triggering. And I'm you're out.
• 2:05:20
  It's out. Yeah, we're not going to go
• 2:05:22
  there. I've got to ask and this is also
• 2:05:26
  amazing, but there's a couple like I need to ask that.
• 2:05:30
  And this is back to the dynamic in a, in a healthy marriage, in
• 2:05:33
  a beautiful marriage. I think you have a beautiful
• 2:05:35
  marriage and it's an example to other people.
• 2:05:37
  And I'm so grateful you're sharing, you're willing to
• 2:05:39
  share. But this is just to kind of
• 2:05:41
  close the loop on the submission, mutual submission.
• 2:05:44
  We're talking about this. You said something so
• 2:05:46
  interesting about her being a spiritual guide to you.
• 2:05:49
  I'd like to learn more what that means and then what uniquely.
• 2:05:52
  The question for you will be what uniquely does the woman
• 2:05:55
  provide for the man in that he is the head.
• 2:05:57
  She's not there is only one there's a tiebreaker.
• 2:06:01
  It's the man according to Christian teaching and I think
• 2:06:04
  the natural order. So I.
• 2:06:05
  Mean there's this old saying that dad's job is to get the get
• 2:06:09
  the family into church and mom's job is to get the family into
• 2:06:12
  heaven. So neurobiologically, what would
• 2:06:16
  you say if women have generally not always your results may
• 2:06:20
  differ. As I say in the financial ADS, a
• 2:06:23
  more developed right hemisphere. This is the spiritual hemisphere
• 2:06:27
  of the brain. This is where meaning and
• 2:06:29
  mystery reside. One of the biggest problems that
• 2:06:32
  we have the reason that meaning is so elusive to young people
• 2:06:35
  today that we have an explosion of people who say their life
• 2:06:37
  feels meaningless. This literally coincides with
• 2:06:39
  the with the increases in depression and anxiety is my
• 2:06:42
  life feels meaningless answer to that question, which arced
• 2:06:45
  upwards starting in about 2008 for the very first time.
• 2:06:49
  That what's going on with that is when you, when you spend all
• 2:06:52
  your time in technology and analysis and efficiency and
• 2:06:57
  online, you're pushing yourself into the left hemisphere of, of
• 2:07:00
  your brain where mystery and meaning are absent.
• 2:07:05
  You don't find your, your relationship with God is not
• 2:07:08
  easy for you to find, maybe impossible when you're
• 2:07:11
  relegating yourself to the wrong hemisphere of your brain.
• 2:07:13
  That activity is one of the reasons that we're actually
• 2:07:16
  getting more nuns, we're getting less spiritual activity.
• 2:07:19
  The reason that we're getting more of the maladies that we're
• 2:07:21
  talking about here. But back to the complementarity
• 2:07:24
  between male and female. Women are naturally more adroit
• 2:07:27
  at that right hemisphere of the brain.
• 2:07:29
  They're naturally more spiritual than men are.
• 2:07:31
  Not all. I'm pretty spiritual.
• 2:07:33
  Not as much as you. Mystery and meaning are really
• 2:07:36
  what you're wired for. And that means that for me to
• 2:07:38
  understand the mystery and meaning of my life, I need to be
• 2:07:41
  wired into you. That's what it means for her.
• 2:07:43
  You're you're, you're use, you're using.
• 2:07:46
  Is the wrong word, but you're sharing.
• 2:07:47
  Our brains are wired together in this way.
• 2:07:49
  That's one flash. It's beautiful.
• 2:07:51
  But and also even in in Scripture, you see, OK, you, you
• 2:07:59
  talk Eve, right? She she in a way she guide, she
• 2:08:06
  LED Adam right in the wrong direction.
• 2:08:10
  But women have the power to lead men in the wrong direction and
• 2:08:15
  in the right direction. And it is a a real power.
• 2:08:18
  This is not the strength, the masculine strength.
• 2:08:21
  This is the the the the power of a woman of also woman in in
• 2:08:27
  Proverbs wisdom is a woman. Is this the female figure?
• 2:08:32
  Because we, like you say the right wing right brain, the.
• 2:08:35
  Right brain. The right the right brain.
• 2:08:38
  So when in our case, when we we are making a decision about
• 2:08:43
  something. OK, so he just not yet this and
• 2:08:46
  we'll do that, but practical. But I think that many times I
• 2:08:51
  can see through things with more clarity because it's I'm more, I
• 2:08:58
  mean, I don't want to say like it's more yeah, I see the
• 2:09:03
  complexity of thing instead of just like the, the little
• 2:09:08
  details and the things. But just like, no.
• 2:09:10
  So what is the the good thing to do right here?
• 2:09:14
  Like with withstanding everything else, all the things
• 2:09:17
  that are happening around us. But what should we do?
• 2:09:20
  What what is our goal here? What is the final goal?
• 2:09:24
  But you're not pushing it on him.
• 2:09:26
  I'm not sometimes I push because I'm, I, I have a lot of
• 2:09:30
  masculine qualities. Like I'm, I'm like, I like
• 2:09:33
  fight, I like to push and stuff. But when I use those other
• 2:09:37
  qualities are more feminine, I'm happier.
• 2:09:41
  I'm more at peace. And that includes the guidance,
• 2:09:45
  the wisdom, which a lot of times, like, I think it's more
• 2:09:49
  like a woman's grace that we have that sometimes you because
• 2:09:55
  you're so focused on the here and there and the, the
• 2:09:58
  protection and then the the, the real situation, circumstances,
• 2:10:03
  everything, you kind of lose a little bit of the sense of the,
• 2:10:07
  the whole picture. And that's what has happened in
• 2:10:10
  our marriage with in regard to decisions or you.
• 2:10:13
  Said earlier something really interesting, which I think is a
• 2:10:15
  secret for a lot of women, if they really take this to heart
• 2:10:18
  about how you choose freely to go his way, his desire, his
• 2:10:23
  plan, his choice, even when you disagree, even when maybe you
• 2:10:27
  see even in a spiritual way. I don't know about this.
• 2:10:29
  I don't know if it's the right thing, but he's set and you show
• 2:10:33
  him respect by still going his way.
• 2:10:35
  It's not a moral issue here. I'm loving him.
• 2:10:38
  You're loving him. By giving a little bit of myself
• 2:10:42
  in that in that time. And also another thing, we have
• 2:10:46
  the power to make them think that they're doing what they
• 2:10:50
  want, but they're not or you don't know, shut the the close
• 2:10:56
  your eyes and in. Another episode.
• 2:10:57
  What is that? No, I'm telling you, like a lot
• 2:11:00
  of times you say I, I said, Oh yeah, let's do that.
• 2:11:04
  But then, OK, we have ways. It's not that pure strength and
• 2:11:09
  confrontation is other ways that are that are that are very
• 2:11:13
  powerful in in it's in their own way.
• 2:11:16
  But when you've gone his way on something that you didn't think
• 2:11:18
  was the right thing, and you said you were peaceful
• 2:11:20
  afterwards, you felt like actually happier.
• 2:11:23
  Did he eventually come to your way or you eventually saw his?
• 2:11:25
  Way no, like usually if I do that, then we do his way.
• 2:11:28
  But I I would just say like other ways.
• 2:11:31
  I say all right. But then I keep trying and I
• 2:11:34
  keep in different ways, not not face to face, but when I do his
• 2:11:39
  will in a way and and I submit to that, that his opinion and
• 2:11:43
  his will in something, I'm just loving him.
• 2:11:46
  I mean, people don't understand that submission is a way to love
• 2:11:50
  that person is giving part of who you are.
• 2:11:53
  It's actually what Jesus did. He gave himself totally and we
• 2:11:57
  just imitate a little bit. I I'm giving a little bit of my
• 2:12:00
  opinion about something so that I can submit to what he wants to
• 2:12:04
  do because I know he wants the good, you know, the, the, the,
• 2:12:08
  the, the goal is a good thing. If he were saying, no, I'm, I'm
• 2:12:13
  just going to do something really bad to you and I'm OK.
• 2:12:15
  So go ahead, do no, I'm not saying that he's thinking about
• 2:12:19
  doing something good. I just have a different way to
• 2:12:22
  do it. But I'm just offering myself up
• 2:12:25
  a little bit so that we can do it your way.
• 2:12:28
  And I'm showing you I trust you and I'm showing you I, I, I
• 2:12:32
  admire you and I believe you. By the way, that's how I am
• 2:12:37
  adorable because I'm showing virtue.
• 2:12:40
  That's a virtue to self-control your desires, your opinions.
• 2:12:44
  That's very hard to do. It's meekness, yeah, but no one
• 2:12:48
  likes. To talk about.
• 2:12:49
  Nobody talks. It's so hard and it requires so
• 2:12:52
  much fortitude, right? And so much like self-control to
• 2:12:57
  be meek and to and to and to love somebody to the point of
• 2:13:01
  you putting yourself under that person.
• 2:13:03
  And but submission is, is, is mutual because he, he submits to
• 2:13:07
  me because he would die for me. He would die for me.
• 2:13:11
  He would just write you, you would just you completely give
• 2:13:15
  yourself to our marriage, to ourselves.
• 2:13:18
  So we have that common mission that we both submit in different
• 2:13:22
  ways, OK. And and that's, and that's how
• 2:13:26
  we love each other because if we just think about what we want to
• 2:13:30
  do and what you want to do, we're not loving each other.
• 2:13:33
  We're just fighting against each other.
• 2:13:36
  Anyway, this one's hard for me. I don't I don't have this one
• 2:13:39
  figured out. We get AI.
• 2:13:40
  Hope we get a few more decades to get this one settled.
• 2:13:42
  But I you submitting to my will, I don't know.
• 2:13:46
  You don't like that? For some reason it makes me
• 2:13:49
  intensely uncomfortable. Well, because we we both grew up
• 2:13:53
  in this culture. But I but I think men who really
• 2:13:56
  desire that you submit to my will.
• 2:13:59
  There's something also off about that.
• 2:14:01
  For sure. I mean the guys like submit.
• 2:14:03
  Like my husband isn't like submit to me.
• 2:14:06
  Like there's not not that. And I, and I've noticed men who
• 2:14:09
  are fixated in that, just like women who are fixated on, you
• 2:14:13
  know, provide for me. Provide for me.
• 2:14:14
  Like, it's like, it's almost like you're missing the, you're
• 2:14:17
  objectifying the person. Yeah.
• 2:14:20
  You know, you're trading the experience of the person's love
• 2:14:23
  for the person themselves, who are an, you know, the subject,
• 2:14:25
  not an object. Something like that.
• 2:14:26
  I don't know. It's funny because a lot of it
• 2:14:29
  makes sense that this would sort of live in tension in its way,
• 2:14:31
  because it's, you should always be uncomfortable about receiving
• 2:14:39
  and and you should always be comfortable with giving, right?
• 2:14:44
  And so the receiving part is something that that's, and it's,
• 2:14:46
  it's funny because you know. Well, but that's precisely one
• 2:14:49
  of the qualities of feminine qualities receptivity.
• 2:14:52
  Yeah, no, I understand. And and that's and that's what
• 2:14:55
  make makes us more human women when we receive that, if that
• 2:15:02
  you have you are like the the OK, so you're leading our
• 2:15:06
  marriage with a common mission and we receive that.
• 2:15:10
  I receive what you're giving to me so that we can fulfill that
• 2:15:14
  mission. And and that's another quality
• 2:15:17
  that is really hard. That's Mary, right?
• 2:15:19
  That's, you know, it's funny that one time I was I would I've
• 2:15:24
  been working a lot with Dalai Lama for 12 years right then and
• 2:15:28
  and that's so cool. It's great.
• 2:15:29
  It's awesome. And he's.
• 2:15:30
  When's he going to become Catholic?
• 2:15:31
  I know. Well, I've, I've, I, I gave him
• 2:15:33
  a rosary, you know, blessed by the Pope.
• 2:15:36
  And he, he said to me, I want you to be a better Catholic man.
• 2:15:39
  He's never tried to convert me to Tibetan Buddhism or anything.
• 2:15:41
  But I've learned a lot. And it's really important, I
• 2:15:43
  think, for Catholics to study other people's religions because
• 2:15:46
  you learn so much about your own faith.
• 2:15:48
  And it's a really beautiful thing to do.
• 2:15:50
  And the insular people are insular about their faith.
• 2:15:53
  They miss a lot about the outside world.
• 2:15:55
  And one time he, he, he's often critical of Americans who want
• 2:16:00
  to become Buddhists. And, and I asked, I asked him
• 2:16:04
  one time, why are you critical of Americans who want to become
• 2:16:06
  Buddhist? Why actually like, that's great.
• 2:16:08
  And he said, because they often do it for the wrong reason.
• 2:16:11
  They're meditating because they want to feel better.
• 2:16:14
  And I said, so of course they meditate because they want to
• 2:16:18
  feel better. What should they be meditating
• 2:16:19
  for? And he says, so the rest of the
• 2:16:21
  world feels better. You should be meditating so the
• 2:16:23
  rest of the world feels better, and then you might feel better
• 2:16:27
  too. But if you're trying to meditate
• 2:16:29
  for the benefits of meditation, you're not going to get the real
• 2:16:32
  benefits of meditation. You only get the benefits when
• 2:16:35
  you stop looking for the benefits.
• 2:16:36
  And that's a paradox. But that's a paradox of love.
• 2:16:41
  That's a paradox of love itself. When you, when you want
• 2:16:44
  submission, it won't satisfy you that, that that's the problem
• 2:16:49
  with all that. When you're comfortable with
• 2:16:51
  being submitted to, then power has become your idol, even in
• 2:16:55
  your, even in your, in your marriage.
• 2:16:58
  And that's just not good. You should always live in
• 2:17:01
  tension with the, with the, with, with the, with that, with
• 2:17:05
  the submission that you actually receive, I think.
• 2:17:07
  And so I don't have that straight in my head yet.
• 2:17:09
  And maybe I'm not supposed to have that straight in my head.
• 2:17:11
  I don't part of you. I don't want you to submit to
• 2:17:14
  me. I don't want that.
• 2:17:16
  I want us to be Co equal. I want us to be.
• 2:17:18
  Partners to you a lot and you don't even know.
• 2:17:21
  Well, I'm learning a lot of this.
• 2:17:22
  I'm learning a lot of Lila's podcast here.
• 2:17:25
  Yeah, because the beauty is not that you see it and you tell me,
• 2:17:28
  oh, thank you. The beauty is that you do it
• 2:17:31
  because he sees it. It's it's, you know, it's all
• 2:17:35
  about offering yourself for love for mostly for God and then for
• 2:17:42
  you. But it's not so that you tell
• 2:17:44
  me. Oh, thank you so much.
• 2:17:46
  No. Is that so that I love you
• 2:17:47
  better? And that's actually the Dalai
• 2:17:50
  Lama's point, isn't it, that you you do something for somebody
• 2:17:53
  else for their sake, and only there in the residual sense, you
• 2:17:56
  get the benefit that you saw. But.
• 2:17:57
  But I have to say it's very hard for me to submit.
• 2:18:00
  That's why I think you have a hard time me saying that because
• 2:18:04
  usually there's like a lot of thing, no, I want it this way.
• 2:18:06
  Now we should do it this way. We we always have different
• 2:18:09
  ideas about things. So probably.
• 2:18:11
  But anyway. There was one more thing you
• 2:18:13
  said, Esther, I had another and I could talk to you guys for 10
• 2:18:15
  more hours. So this has been amazing.
• 2:18:17
  But there's a couple last things and there's also your book
• 2:18:19
  coming out. But one other thing that you
• 2:18:21
  said earlier about God and, you know, really coming to Jesus and
• 2:18:27
  his church at after 18 years of marriage, getting married in the
• 2:18:29
  church after you've been, you know, married by the state.
• 2:18:32
  But I'm curious if there was an experience of you feeling loved
• 2:18:37
  by God or receiving God's love, or Jesus's love and feeling your
• 2:18:42
  heart may be more full where he was no longer an idol like his
• 2:18:45
  love him doing things your way, his your ways, or loving you the
• 2:18:49
  way exactly you wanted, that was replaced more by the experience
• 2:18:54
  of God's love. Was that part of it?
• 2:18:55
  Or how did you? What did that look like for you
• 2:18:58
  when he was no longer your idol and now you're receiving God's
• 2:19:00
  love in this more direct and full way?
• 2:19:03
  That was just a period of my time that I was very serious
• 2:19:07
  about my prayer time. So I would pray every morning,
• 2:19:10
  early morning before the kids got up and I had my hour of
• 2:19:14
  prayer. And, and, and, and so it was a
• 2:19:18
  it was a time off that I felt a lot of love from God and I
• 2:19:21
  experienced a lot of love and I and I I had a lot of trust I
• 2:19:27
  had. And, and so it was, it wasn't,
• 2:19:29
  it was not just one time, 1 moment that I exerienced
• 2:19:32
  something. And, and so so it was not just
• 2:19:37
  the anything like that. It was just a time of prayer,
• 2:19:41
  that constant prayer and praying scripture and just that
• 2:19:46
  connection and just trying to experience more the word of God,
• 2:19:50
  what it meant to be early morning silence, which is really
• 2:19:56
  hard because we get so distracted and we don't have to
• 2:19:58
  do that. But I think that was the time
• 2:20:00
  that I and then I said and at the same time there were
• 2:20:04
  feelings of sadness because like I said before, I felt like
• 2:20:08
  somebody had died. Like my idol had died and I had
• 2:20:12
  to look at he was my idol and that had died.
• 2:20:15
  I had pushed him away the way I had seen him before.
• 2:20:19
  So it was kind of like a death. It was sad, it.
• 2:20:22
  Was sad for me too. It was sad.
• 2:20:23
  Yeah. Because I don't.
• 2:20:25
  Found a lot like severe mercy where they were like infatuated
• 2:20:28
  with each other and then God became their.
• 2:20:30
  Is that what you're talking about?
• 2:20:31
  Where the God became the primary love as opposed to the love of
• 2:20:35
  the other? The lesser of the created love.
• 2:20:36
  It was the creator. Love.
• 2:20:37
  I remember that in the in the book.
• 2:20:39
  It was. Am I understanding it correct?
• 2:20:42
  I know, yes, I just realized the only way and I also realized the
• 2:20:47
  only way I can love him really truly and the deeply is if I let
• 2:20:53
  if I love God first and if I let myself love, be loved by God
• 2:20:58
  first. And I I experience that and I'm
• 2:21:00
  conscious of that. I'm aware of that and so I told
• 2:21:03
  him. And it was a really sad day.
• 2:21:06
  Yeah, it's a really sad day. Because he likes the attention
• 2:21:09
  of people a lot. He likes my attention.
• 2:21:12
  He likes me to be there and to oh, you're so good and he needs
• 2:21:16
  that, right. So I think when when I told you
• 2:21:20
  that, then then it was kind of like.
• 2:21:22
  But it was my prayer answer because it's just too much
• 2:21:25
  pressure in a marriage. It's too much pressure to be
• 2:21:27
  somebody's everything. You can't live up to somebody.
• 2:21:31
  You can't be somebody's idol. You can't live up to that.
• 2:21:33
  You'll never be. You know, it's like, I would say
• 2:21:34
  never meet your idols. They say that because you meet
• 2:21:37
  somebody that you idolize a very famous person and you meet them
• 2:21:39
  and you're like, you know, it's like kale between his teeth or
• 2:21:43
  whatever, right? Or he's kind of a jerk, or he
• 2:21:45
  was mean to the waiter or, you know, there's something right?
• 2:21:48
  And the truth is, if you're holding, you're putting somebody
• 2:21:51
  on a pedestal, that's the person who's supposed to satisfy you,
• 2:21:53
  somebody who's supposed to meet your every need, including your
• 2:21:56
  spiritual needs. You're going to be disappointed.
• 2:21:58
  And, and, and I realized that it was too much pressure in our
• 2:22:01
  marriage. It was too much pressure.
• 2:22:03
  So the sad day was when you said to him, you're no longer my idol
• 2:22:06
  goddess. Yeah.
• 2:22:07
  That you're not. That God is now what I love
• 2:22:10
  most. Yeah.
• 2:22:12
  And again, this is we were Christians.
• 2:22:13
  I mean, we were Catholics. We were going to Mass.
• 2:22:15
  This is this long process. It's not like you had this, you
• 2:22:18
  know, morning and experience. No, no, it was, it was not one
• 2:22:21
  day. It was like a few days and we
• 2:22:23
  had conversations and I said yes.
• 2:22:25
  And I think that's. Super sad.
• 2:22:27
  It was exactly what we needed. I was so happy.
• 2:22:29
  I was so sad. Did it, but did your interaction
• 2:22:31
  actually change like when you said you were super sad it?
• 2:22:34
  Went for better. It went to better.
• 2:22:36
  It's better. It's just a relief.
• 2:22:37
  I wasn't. I wasn't nagging, I wasn't
• 2:22:39
  demanding, I wasn't expecting. It was just pure offering and if
• 2:22:45
  he would give me something, it was all a gift.
• 2:22:47
  It was not because I ask or because I wanted.
• 2:22:50
  And of course it was not day and night.
• 2:22:52
  You know we still I was still loving.
• 2:22:54
  Argument every day. But but.
• 2:22:57
  And ever since, yeah, all the time.
• 2:22:59
  And then when we went to that retreat that we talked about,
• 2:23:02
  the marriage retreat, the Spanish marriage retreat, it's
• 2:23:06
  based, it's all based on the theology of the body of Saint
• 2:23:08
  Paul the 2nd. And so there we realized even
• 2:23:12
  more of the need of grace for in, in our marriage, that we
• 2:23:17
  need it because that's what we're talking about.
• 2:23:19
  We keep talking about our problems, talking about our
• 2:23:21
  problems. But hey, we have the sacrament
• 2:23:24
  of marriage who is like pouring grace into our marriage so that
• 2:23:28
  we we can stop talking about our problems and start receiving the
• 2:23:33
  gift and using it in, in, in in ways of love and and and self
• 2:23:38
  sacrifice for one for another. It's so great to be a Catholic
• 2:23:41
  for this because it's. So great, it was like.
• 2:23:43
  Yeah. And just just in general, I
• 2:23:45
  mean, Catholic couples should go to Mass together as much as they
• 2:23:50
  possibly can. I mean, that daily Mass is this
• 2:23:52
  unbelievable. It's like, it's like Starbucks.
• 2:23:56
  I mean, it's, it's better. It's Starbucks franchise bougie
• 2:23:59
  coffee. I mean it's number.
• 2:24:00
  Two, I mean this is. So available and it's so uniform
• 2:24:03
  and it's just there and we've got this thing and every day.
• 2:24:06
  We go to Mass every day at 6:30 in the morning because it's good
• 2:24:09
  for us to go early. Sometimes we don't even talk
• 2:24:13
  before we go to Mass, but we go together.
• 2:24:15
  Hold to Mass. We hold hands.
• 2:24:16
  Yeah, or not. Sometimes not.
• 2:24:18
  Mostly if I'm a little mad, I don't hold hands.
• 2:24:21
  But then we go to Mass and we just, we receive the grace, we
• 2:24:25
  receive the Eucharist. We are ready to love during the
• 2:24:29
  day. And so that, so it's, we're so
• 2:24:32
  blessed to have the church, to have the sacraments.
• 2:24:36
  We don't value the sacraments enough.
• 2:24:39
  And we have the sacrament every day there we can go.
• 2:24:43
  Why? Why would people not go every
• 2:24:44
  day, be like 10 times a day, right?
• 2:24:47
  So, but we do that. We just, yeah, no, I'm just
• 2:24:50
  kidding. It's just a joke.
• 2:24:51
  But anyway, so we do that, that and and so we wake up with, with
• 2:24:56
  Mass with, with, with Jesus and and then we are ready to start
• 2:25:00
  the day. It's such a.
• 2:25:02
  Big. It's a big understanding of
• 2:25:03
  marriage. Too, If we don't go, if we don't
• 2:25:05
  go to mass, then it's more likely that we're going to start
• 2:25:09
  getting irritated and oh, but he left and he didn't say goodbye
• 2:25:14
  and he didn't give me a kiss. Why didn't he look at me?
• 2:25:17
  And it's so much easier. And then little irritations,
• 2:25:20
  right, that can ruin a marriage or can ruin a day.
• 2:25:23
  But just let's start with the sacrament.
• 2:25:26
  It's much better. It's this realization, I didn't
• 2:25:29
  understand this until only the past five years, that you don't,
• 2:25:35
  that I can inadvertently deny God's love to you.
• 2:25:39
  That through a marriage, you experience God's love through me
• 2:25:41
  and I experience God's love through you.
• 2:25:43
  And when you're, when you're denying, if you deny me your
• 2:25:46
  love, you're denying me my experience of God's love.
• 2:25:49
  Wow, that's heavy. That's heavy.
• 2:25:52
  But that's a beautiful thing too, because that's like it it,
• 2:25:55
  it should, it's like. That's the point, right?
• 2:25:57
  Show love notwithstanding your feelings.
• 2:25:59
  Yeah, it's the point about submission and not doing it.
• 2:26:01
  And it's not about your feelings.
• 2:26:03
  It's like this is an early mistake that a lot of young
• 2:26:05
  adults make is is that they trust their feelings.
• 2:26:08
  And your feelings are liars, including your feelings about
• 2:26:11
  your spouse, about your soulmate.
• 2:26:14
  If, if, if love and marriage were about feelings, we wouldn't
• 2:26:18
  have been married 34 years. We wouldn't have been married 34
• 2:26:20
  minutes because that's probably when we had our first knock down
• 2:26:23
  drag out argument in broken English.
• 2:26:25
  And and so it's a, that's a really important thing to keep
• 2:26:28
  in mind that this is this cause again, it's the cosmic antenna
• 2:26:32
  of God's love is, is the marriage per SE, which is it
• 2:26:35
  really raises the stakes, but also it's weird.
• 2:26:38
  It raises the pressure and lowers the pressure at the same
• 2:26:40
  time. It's like a net.
• 2:26:43
  Someone told me this, oh, when you get married, for we've been
• 2:26:45
  married seven years now, so very much babies compared to you
• 2:26:48
  guys. But when you get married,
• 2:26:50
  there's going to be this Sacramento marriage.
• 2:26:52
  You kind of have this like envelope around you, like
• 2:26:54
  holding you up. And it's like intangible but
• 2:26:57
  very real. And we feel it and it's so
• 2:27:00
  beautiful and it just gives us such grace and peace.
• 2:27:05
  And it's just, it's grace. It's God's grace working through
• 2:27:08
  that's. Right.
• 2:27:08
  And we found. It too, and we saw the
• 2:27:10
  difference between living together, getting married and
• 2:27:15
  just not a sacramentally and then getting the sacrament of
• 2:27:18
  marriage. It's big difference in our
• 2:27:20
  marriage. Right.
• 2:27:21
  Yeah. I mean, there was never, from
• 2:27:23
  the minute that we were a couple, there was not.
• 2:27:25
  I didn't have the slightest doubt that we would ever break
• 2:27:27
  up. No, no break up ever.
• 2:27:29
  But the way we loved each other, yeah.
• 2:27:31
  Changed the way we loved each other was deeper and it was more
• 2:27:34
  less selfish. It was more metaphysical, yeah.
• 2:27:37
  And. And the metaphysics of it are
• 2:27:39
  really. Sacrificial more not about me
• 2:27:41
  and what my wants and my needs, but about you and God.
• 2:27:46
  Yeah, just makes itself a much better.
• 2:27:49
  How amazing that is such a gift. I'm, I'm so edified even just
• 2:27:53
  listening to this. And there is so much more that
• 2:27:57
  you're going to be living in your marriage and teaching.
• 2:27:59
  I know in some ways you said this is the first podcast where
• 2:28:02
  you're talking about your marriage together.
• 2:28:04
  Thank you very much. Thank you.
• 2:28:04
  Incredible. It was so beautiful and I'm so
• 2:28:08
  excited to see, I feel like I've seen your work, Arthur, for, I
• 2:28:13
  don't know, 20, how many years it's been.
• 2:28:14
  You've been out there doing amazing stuff.
• 2:28:16
  I think I first heard about you maybe 20 years ago, but I'm
• 2:28:18
  seeing a new explosion I see of just incredible fruit from your
• 2:28:23
  work now, your work together. And I just want to thank you.
• 2:28:26
  Thank. You thank you for making it
• 2:28:27
  possible and thank you for your work.
• 2:28:29
  You're bringing the people all over the world, of course,
• 2:28:32
  lifting people up in the spirit of God's love.
• 2:28:35
  The dream. How can people find you guys?
• 2:28:37
  I mean, you're everywhere but Esther.
• 2:28:39
  I'm so excited for your show and.
• 2:28:40
  Speaking at Sikh too beautiful and and just I have a a radio
• 2:28:46
  show in Spanish in Guadalupe radio and called Mujer E Palabra
• 2:28:53
  and what? Does that mean it?
• 2:28:55
  Means of the Word of God, the Word of God woman, and the Word
• 2:28:58
  of God beautiful. Yeah.
• 2:29:00
  And what else? And we do things to so one of
• 2:29:03
  the reasons. When we come to your marriage
• 2:29:04
  retreats. We.
• 2:29:06
  Want to go to that pre-K now? When when I when we had kids
• 2:29:11
  that were little, he would travel a lot.
• 2:29:13
  He would be all over the, you know, the world and and.
• 2:29:15
  We didn't even get into that. We didn't get into the conflict
• 2:29:18
  a lot. So you guys have to come back.
• 2:29:19
  We got to talk about Yeah, we'll talk.
• 2:29:21
  About solving conflict but. But then we would know together
• 2:29:24
  we were apart a lot and he would be working and I would be home
• 2:29:28
  and. And so now that the kids are
• 2:29:30
  gone and everything, so Arthur asked me, why don't I come with
• 2:29:34
  him and keep him company and a trip?
• 2:29:37
  And I say, I don't want to do that.
• 2:29:38
  You know, I, I don't like to travel and all that.
• 2:29:41
  And so and say, well, but then we started doing the marriage
• 2:29:44
  prep talks and everything we saw that there was a place that
• 2:29:48
  there's, there was a need to talk about marriage in a very
• 2:29:51
  open way and in a very like us older people with a lot of
• 2:29:55
  experience and faith and science.
• 2:29:57
  So I said, why don't we put together faith and science?
• 2:30:01
  And and so that's what we've been doing and I.
• 2:30:04
  Love it. Yeah, so I but but so it's
• 2:30:07
  always following him. He's the guy and just.
• 2:30:10
  He's amazing, you're both amazing and So what a gift.
• 2:30:13
  Anyway, I'm I'm just, we'll keep doing whatever.
• 2:30:18
  Whatever calls us. To do Arthur brooks.com.
• 2:30:20
  Yeah, Arthur brooks.com amazing Stop shopping for all things
• 2:30:24
  behavioral science about the about the human happiness.
• 2:30:28
  Thank you so much. Thank.
• 2:30:29
  You so much. Thank you.
• 2:30:31
  Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Lila Rose
• 2:30:33
  Show. A huge happy New Year to
• 2:30:35
  everybody. Make sure that you hit that
• 2:30:36
  subscribe button. Leave this video a like and a
• 2:30:39
  comment. We read all the comments.
• 2:30:40
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• 2:30:43
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• 2:30:46
  broadcaster in the entire world. EWTN is reaching millions of
• 2:30:49
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• 2:30:52
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• 2:30:56
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