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Welcome to radical personal finance a show dedicated

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to providing you with the knowledge skills insight

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and encouragement you need to live a rich

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and meaningful life now while building a plan

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for financial freedom in 10 years or less

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my name is joshua sheets i am your

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host and on today's episode of the podcast

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i want to share with you a fairly

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comprehensive outline of how

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to find and attract a

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very high quality spouse that

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is my goal to give you a formula a list

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of things that you can do that

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will help you to attract and find

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find an attract let's get in the

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right order find an attract a high

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quality spouse now you might

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be quickly hastening to say joshua but

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joshua this show is called radical personal

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finance what does this have to do

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with personal finance and my answer here

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as i begin is quite a lot

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quite a lot now i could take

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fire more courageous i could take the

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track to say that one of the

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best and most reliable pathways to your

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wealth and financial independence is to find

1:01

and marry a rich person i

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would like to do that show because it's certainly

1:06

something that people talk about we know that it's

1:09

true we know that some people do

1:11

find and find love and marry

1:13

for money and tell you what

1:16

is a lot of thing that seem seems

1:18

really attractive to it of finding somebody rich

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and marrying that person i'm

1:22

not quite courageous enough to tackle that

1:25

subject i'll let you do that simply

1:27

because i don't consider that to be

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an ideal soul quality

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to judge someone by and i

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don't necessarily know how to do it i

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don't know how to go out into the

1:38

world and attract and find you

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know a rich heiress of some kind who

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can support me in my lifestyle i've known

1:44

a couple of men who have done this

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being from palm beach florida

1:49

i have known a couple of men who

1:51

friend of mine who ran a stationary shop

1:53

and married a very wealthy lady and he

1:55

ran the shop could given something to do

1:57

but she supported him and did really

2:00

well. But my reticence just comes down to being

2:02

a man and I would have a hard time

2:05

respecting myself of going after that. I think there's

2:07

a difference between men and women in

2:09

this regard where finding and marrying

2:11

a rich man seems to be a little

2:13

easier for women to accomplish in some cases

2:15

than it is for men. I think the

2:17

kind of man who's going out looking for

2:19

a rich woman is often not very attractive

2:21

to the rich woman in question. So

2:24

I'll let someone with more courage than me tackle

2:26

that. On a more mundane level though, I want

2:28

to tell you why this is a financial topic.

2:30

And there are two things related to it. Number

2:32

one, on its face, it's obvious

2:34

that your marriage decisions will

2:37

impact all of your financial

2:39

planning. We know that the

2:41

amount of income that you earn, the amount

2:43

of wealth that you accumulate, the specific expenses

2:45

and obligations that you have throughout your lifetime,

2:48

all of these are going to be affected

2:50

by your decision to marry or not marry.

2:52

We know that on the

2:54

positive side, marriage is a very good

2:56

indicator that is reliably going to be

2:59

one of the factors that means you're

3:01

likely to wind up and the top

3:03

cohort of your peers in terms of

3:05

wealth accumulation, income, all of

3:07

the financial statistics are very strongly in favor

3:09

of those who marry. On the

3:11

contrary, we know that those who divorce

3:13

often experience an enormous financial destruction and

3:16

it's one of the biggest risks that you can

3:19

face in your life. And so it's certainly one

3:21

of those things that matters. But the

3:23

reason I like to talk about it and want to

3:25

talk about it is that I always

3:27

have an interest of going basically a

3:29

level back, going a step

3:31

upstream. And that's how I think about a

3:33

topic like this. I want you

3:36

to pretend for a moment that you were

3:38

part, you grew up in a

3:41

tribe of, I don't know,

3:43

Indians in the Amazon somewhere and

3:46

you have zero contact with the modern world,

3:48

you're living out in a rural environment and

3:51

you decide for some reason to take up an

3:54

interest in personal finance. Well, the

3:56

first thing that would happen would be you would

3:58

simply have to figure out

4:00

some reason to take an interest in personal

4:02

finance because in a

4:04

primitive setting like that, the

4:07

whole concept of finance and

4:09

money and everything like that is just

4:11

not applicable. It's only applicable in the

4:13

modern world. So let's pretend that you

4:15

were going to take good financial advice.

4:17

Well, the first thing that you would

4:20

do would be to start to engage

4:22

in the modern world. You wouldn't engage

4:24

in the modern world at the level

4:26

of saving money into a

4:28

retirement account or lowering your tax bill. You

4:30

would engage in the modern world on the

4:32

level of learning how to earn money,

4:35

learning how to earn income for wages, learning how

4:37

to spend money. But if we

4:39

take it a step back further, we can

4:41

see that behind all of these decisions, there's always

4:43

one more level, one more level, one more

4:45

level, one more level. And

4:47

so if we look at

4:49

somebody who is, let's say,

4:51

a stereotypical aristocrat born

4:53

and raised with a silver spoon in

4:56

his mouth, and we go back to

4:58

the very beginning. What we'll see is

5:00

that there are so many levels that

5:02

ultimately produce that aristocrat that

5:05

if we plumb the depths of those,

5:07

we can learn from them. We

5:09

can go all the way back to the foundation

5:12

of a civilization. We can go, and what I'm

5:14

saying here is we can go back before genetic

5:16

seed. The

5:18

topic of genetics is an important

5:20

component of personal finance because we

5:22

are all a basic product of

5:25

our genes. And so the ability

5:27

that our parents had to find

5:29

and attract one another and produce

5:31

intelligent and handsome children is a

5:34

fundamental aspect of our long-term financial

5:36

success. We can even go

5:38

back to the society, the society that

5:40

is stable and holds us. And

5:43

so my point is that when we

5:45

talk about finance, if we exclusively restrict

5:48

our conversation to those things that are covered

5:51

on the CFP exam, we

5:53

can approach one level of success.

5:56

But for everything that is covered on the CFP

5:58

exam, if you go back... one more

6:00

level, you can often find

6:02

a factor that if it's optimized,

6:05

can sweep everything else away.

6:08

Again, the example I always like to use

6:11

is simply you can

6:13

practice frugal living and savings and good

6:15

investing over time, but if you just

6:17

have an enormous income or build an

6:19

enormous business, then all of the need

6:21

for the day-to-day penny pinching stuff goes

6:24

out the window. It

6:26

would behoove us to spend time focusing

6:28

on the things that are one level

6:30

up. Today's podcast is one

6:33

of those things. I believe that

6:35

this is a financial topic and

6:37

that's why I want to present it to

6:40

you in the context of radical personal finance

6:42

because it's one of those foundational topics

6:44

that most people don't cover. But if

6:47

you get this right, it

6:49

can go really well. Back to

6:51

the marrying a rich spouse is

6:53

simply that my wife got

6:55

it right, she married me and I've paid

6:57

every bill and she's had as

6:59

much money as she needed ever since that time. Her

7:03

pathway to financial independence, in

7:06

her case, depended very

7:08

much on her getting the marriage

7:11

thing right. We didn't have an easy road

7:13

into marriage, but once we got on that

7:15

road, then everything worked out well enough for

7:17

her, at least so far. Now, that's not

7:20

to say that things couldn't go

7:22

wrong in the future. We have to protect against

7:24

that. That's why we talk about life insurance and

7:27

health insurance and proper

7:29

divorce planning and all

7:32

the stuff that goes with everything so

7:34

that it continues to go

7:36

right with her. But this concept and what I'm

7:38

going to share is fundamentally

7:40

important. If you want to marry

7:42

a rich man or a

7:44

rich woman, I'm going

7:46

to describe to you in this podcast a

7:49

formula as to how you can accomplish that

7:51

and get you on the road to that

7:53

if that's something that you are interested in.

7:55

If you are just interested in marrying somebody

7:57

who has other qualities, then you can get

7:59

married. qualities that you admire, I'm going

8:01

to give you a formula in today's podcast

8:03

to help you accomplish those personal goals. Before

8:07

I get to that formula, I

8:09

want to also give one quick

8:11

apologetic for marriage. There

8:13

are two basic decisions that shape the

8:15

actual experience you have of life over

8:18

the long term. Decisions

8:20

to marry or not marry and decisions to

8:23

have children or not have children are two

8:25

of those basic decisions. There are a couple

8:27

others, but those are two

8:29

fundamental decisions. Now separately in other episodes

8:31

of the podcast, I've talked about the

8:34

decision to have children. I've tried to

8:36

make an apologetic that most people should

8:38

consider having children. I want to make

8:40

a quick apologetic here for marriage. I

8:43

want to talk about why I feel such

8:45

a burden to share this formula and help

8:47

you. It has to do with frankly the

8:49

success of our culture on a

8:53

broad macro level all the way down

8:55

to a personal level, the just simple

8:57

happiness that you and I will experience

8:59

by being well partnered in life. Historically,

9:02

all successful and enduring

9:05

societies have built

9:07

some kind of social construct

9:09

that naturally funneled most young

9:12

people into marriage and procreation,

9:14

family growth. If a

9:16

society is not able to accomplish that, it

9:19

will fail in the fullness of time.

9:22

Every society that is not able

9:24

to create a stable population that

9:26

stabilizes the needs and the desires

9:28

of young men and women ultimately

9:30

falls to some influence. You

9:32

oftentimes, for example, if you have a

9:34

polygamous society, you'll often have so much

9:37

unrest by the unwed men

9:39

in society who aren't able to compete with the

9:41

high value men who take all the wives. There

9:43

are results in social

9:46

decay over time. You

9:48

have societies in which men

9:51

and women are kept separate. They

9:54

collapse over time. And then ultimately, if

9:56

a society doesn't have children, doesn't maintain

9:58

high birth rates, it gets sub-determined. subsumed

10:00

by some other society that does. So

10:03

our society, the one

10:05

that you and I live in, also

10:07

previously had such a social construct

10:09

that naturally funneled most young people

10:12

into marriage and family growth. But

10:15

speaking broadly of Western

10:17

civilization, US American culture that

10:19

I come from, and perhaps the

10:21

various subcultures and microcultures that I

10:24

represent and you represent to some degree, our

10:27

society once did that, but that's broadly

10:29

collapsed. We have replaced

10:32

the shaping power of marriage

10:34

as an institution that forms

10:36

people with the false

10:39

belief that only perfect

10:42

and perfectly self-actualized human beings

10:44

should marry. We

10:47

have replaced raising children as a natural

10:49

and normal life goal with

10:51

alternative goals such as making money and

10:53

retiring early as the primary life

10:56

goals to pursue. So

10:58

if you and I desire for our

11:00

families, our cultures, and our societies to

11:02

continue and to flourish, we have to

11:05

change some of these problems. And

11:08

because this is all upstream of finance,

11:12

if we don't get it right, our financial

11:14

lives are much, much more difficult. If we

11:17

live in a society of increased

11:20

cultural conflict due to

11:22

poorly partnered men

11:24

and women, if we live in a

11:27

society that is old, growing older, graying,

11:29

even all of our welfare programs fall apart.

11:32

Social security and other government benefits that would

11:34

see to us in our old age, these

11:36

are all predicated upon a young and growing

11:38

society. And so we would

11:41

have much bigger problems. And

11:43

so we want to talk about this stuff. We want to deal

11:46

with it straight on. And we want

11:48

to focus on dealing with it straight on so that

11:50

we can develop strategies

11:52

to help ourselves and

11:54

also our children so that our society

11:56

becomes one that is expanding and growing

11:59

and spreading out. out and subsuming

12:01

other inferior cultures in the

12:03

fullness of time. The

12:07

decision to marry is largely

12:09

based upon your meeting an

12:11

acceptable marriage partner at

12:13

an appropriate phase of life and

12:16

then being able to successfully attract

12:19

and woo that person into a

12:21

committed marriage with you. I

12:24

think the default natural evidence

12:26

based desire or decision for

12:28

most people should be

12:30

to marry. That should be the

12:32

default choice and we

12:35

should not shy away from

12:37

installing that default choice, that

12:39

default ambition into our

12:41

children, into our neighbors, into

12:43

our society around. We

12:45

know that all of the sociological data

12:48

that we have shows that whether by

12:50

objective metrics such as health, health

12:53

span, life span or

12:55

subjective metrics such as

12:57

self-reported happiness and satisfaction with

12:59

life or various other self-reported

13:02

metrics that married people outperform

13:04

unmarried people on, I

13:06

want to say all, I'd say most because I haven't

13:08

seen all, all the ones that I've ever seen. I

13:11

don't know of a metric that married people

13:14

don't outperform unmarried people on.

13:18

Now we obviously need to think carefully about

13:20

survivorship bias because divorce

13:22

people, especially recently divorced people tend to have

13:24

a very low opinion of marriage and they

13:27

want to contradict all of the data and statistics that

13:29

I have just said. Although

13:31

their opinion of marriage somehow tends to change

13:33

over time. I've lived long enough now to

13:36

work with and talk with a number of people who

13:38

have gotten married then

13:41

gotten divorced and there's a remarkable

13:43

chain of events that tends to

13:45

happen. In the months and

13:47

then sometimes years, immediately after divorce, you'll

13:50

hear people swear by everything

13:53

that is dear to them that they will never

13:55

ever again marry. And then

13:57

something happens sometime later. Usually, they meet a

13:59

certain someone. or a certain series of

14:01

someones, and they kind of soften up, and

14:03

then all of a sudden they're married again,

14:05

and they're proclaiming the benefits of their best

14:08

decision ever. There are some

14:10

who go the other way and follow through on that

14:12

long-term vow not to marry, but they're few and far

14:14

in between. And so we

14:16

should be careful here, obviously. I don't want to

14:18

deal flippantly with any of these things. These are

14:20

important. But our bias should be that

14:23

all of the evidence is that most people should

14:25

marry, and that, again, the metrics

14:27

that we can measure indicate that they're better off

14:29

in the fullness of time. And

14:31

we shouldn't be ashamed to study those metrics,

14:34

learn from them, and then share them with

14:36

others. Because even when

14:38

talking about divorce and its damaging

14:40

effects, what I'm talking about

14:42

in this podcast is going to be

14:44

fundamental to avoiding that. Divorce

14:47

does not happen accidentally or randomly.

14:49

It's not randomly distributed. There's

14:52

an effect that comes from certain causes.

14:54

And while not all causes of divorce

14:56

can be avoided for all people,

14:59

many, or at least I would say most, or at

15:02

least many of them can be avoided by

15:05

better attention to the formula that I'm

15:07

going to give you here in this

15:09

podcast. We know that other lifestyles

15:12

really don't work in the long-term.

15:14

For example, singleness, or let's

15:16

just start with celibacy. Single

15:19

celibacy is not a long-term

15:21

winner for most people just

15:23

due to their basic biological

15:25

urges. There are some people

15:27

who have been able to master those

15:30

urges, but in general, long-term celibacy is

15:32

not a lifestyle that most people have

15:34

pursued voluntarily. We know that

15:37

promiscuous sexual behavior outside

15:39

of marriage is empty

15:42

and or hollow for most normal

15:44

people after some amount of time.

15:47

Sometimes it's empty and hollow very

15:49

quickly. Some people go on for

15:51

a decade living a promiscuous lifestyle

15:53

of fornication, and then they realize

15:55

that that really wasn't a big

15:57

winner and they ultimately change. walk

16:00

away from that. There are

16:02

some people who don't. Our society

16:04

is full of psychopaths and

16:06

sociopaths and perverts. We

16:09

can go through the names

16:11

of P. Diddy in the news right

16:13

now or Jeffrey Epstein or Harvey Weinstein

16:15

or Kevin Spacey or Oscar Wilde or

16:17

Marquis de Sade or all of these

16:20

perverts that throughout history have been around.

16:22

We know that sociopaths and psychopaths will

16:24

continue in their destructive behavior and we

16:26

have to restrain them as a society.

16:30

But generally speaking, most

16:33

arrangements other than one man,

16:35

one woman marriage don't work in the long

16:37

term. So it's better for

16:40

us to give attention to what we

16:42

know does work effectively, what

16:44

should be the default option for people,

16:46

to teach our young people that this

16:49

should be the default option because we

16:51

know that it's the best default option

16:53

and then try to solve the issues

16:55

that arise from that.

16:58

So rather than sacrificing

17:00

a generation to wander around with

17:02

a lifelong pursuit of self-actualization and

17:04

arrive at the end of life

17:07

wondering if it was worth it, since we

17:09

can measure that stuff pretty effectively, we

17:12

should focus more on solving the

17:14

problems with marriage itself

17:18

and then our next

17:20

generation will be in a stronger place.

17:23

And so how do we solve some of

17:25

the issues with marriage? Well, some of them

17:27

ultimately are legal and there's many layers that

17:30

some are cultural, some are social, but at

17:32

its core we have the best chance of

17:34

solving the problems that are closest to us.

17:37

And I think there are a couple that I want to really focus on.

17:40

First, we diligently prepare people

17:42

for marriage especially

17:44

by making sure that individuals

17:47

have a good exposure to the world, a

17:49

good sense of who they are and what

17:52

they're looking for in life. And

17:54

then we give individuals, unmarried individuals,

17:56

the tools to attract a

17:59

high quality spouse so that they

18:01

would have the best possible chance

18:03

of building an enduring and high-quality

18:06

marriage relationship. So I'd

18:08

like to talk about how do we prepare

18:10

young people for marriage? Because if you start

18:12

doing what I'm doing and you talk about

18:15

what I'm about to do, you speak about marriage

18:17

while young, you will

18:20

quickly hear and receive a

18:22

well-intended, well-meaning objection. Someone

18:24

will say, we don't want people to get married

18:26

too young. After all, young people

18:28

don't even know themselves or they haven't even had a

18:30

chance to get to know the world in some way.

18:33

Marrying too young is a problem. And

18:35

I'm inclined myself to agree with

18:37

this objection. I don't

18:40

want to encourage marriage that is

18:42

too young. But before

18:44

I agree with the objection, let

18:46

me point out the hypocrisy of

18:48

this objection in our

18:51

current moment. In

18:54

most of our societies, we have

18:56

decided to treat 18-year-old men and

18:58

18-year-old women as competent

19:00

humans. We

19:03

consider them competent to cast a vote

19:05

in a democratic election. We consider

19:07

them competent to go to war and

19:10

die either voluntarily or involuntarily.

19:14

We consider them competent to get

19:16

tattoos, to go through a sex

19:19

change surgery, to commit crimes and

19:21

be held fully responsible for their

19:24

actions and the results of their

19:26

actions. We consider them

19:28

competent to get themselves euthanized

19:30

in some countries. And we consider

19:33

them competent to marry. Now,

19:35

of that list of things, and

19:37

you could expand the list into many

19:39

other things, but of that list, marriage

19:42

in my judgment is

19:44

probably the least harmful possible decision

19:46

of any of those things. Now,

19:49

the tattooed among us would argue with that

19:51

and the voters would argue with that, but

19:53

I think you could extrapolate

19:56

out and say, well, is

19:58

it really harmless to have a bunch

20:00

of 18-year-olds voting when they're

20:02

so easily swayed by whatever. I don't know.

20:05

The point is that marriage is a

20:07

relatively, we know that the long-term outcome

20:09

of marriage is a relatively positive and

20:11

strong. And so basically

20:15

what I'm saying is that if we're

20:17

going to automatically have the response that

20:19

18-year-olds shouldn't marry, then they

20:22

definitely shouldn't do any of the other

20:24

stuff on that list as well. Now

20:27

we know from the data that, at least

20:29

in our current paradigm, that there's

20:31

a higher rate of divorce

20:33

for people who marry at 18 as

20:35

compared to people who marry at 25.

20:39

I don't know why that is the case, but

20:41

I would say that that's why I'm inclined to

20:43

agree with the objection. I'm not trying to get

20:45

my own children to marry at 18. But

20:50

I think that we can do a lot

20:52

more in the direction of solving this. First,

20:54

some of those other things, those other decisions

20:56

should be deferred beyond the age of 18.

20:59

If I understand from the medical personnel

21:01

among us, they say that people's

21:04

brains, that people don't even fully

21:06

mature from an intellectual or mental

21:08

standpoint until at least mid-20s. And

21:12

so I'd like to tell

21:14

young people, I tell my own children that

21:16

if you're going to engage in some life-altering

21:19

decision or behavior, it's probably best to

21:21

wait until you're something like 30. You

21:24

want to get a tattoo? Get a tattoo, but just wait until you're

21:26

about 30. People I've

21:28

noticed who are happiest with their tattoos are the

21:30

ones who started when they were fully formed adults,

21:32

not the ones who went out and impetuously

21:34

made a decision when they were as

21:37

young as possible. I tell

21:39

my children, if you want to consume alcohol, that's

21:41

fine. Just probably wait until you're 30. You

21:44

make smarter decisions. If your

21:46

decisions are not encumbered

21:49

by your inebriation, just wait. Wait

21:51

until you can make more mature,

21:53

intelligent decisions. And so most

21:55

things in life are better off to defer

21:57

until a later time. we

22:00

could argue that that's the case for

22:02

marriage. Now the problem

22:04

with marriage is that

22:06

there are certain periods of life

22:09

in which marriage, in

22:12

which certain things happen better. And

22:14

I frequently talk about money bound goals and

22:16

time bound goals. And with marriage,

22:19

and especially with procreation, younger

22:22

tends to have better long-term outcomes.

22:25

If you wait until you're 30 to marry, you

22:27

can still marry well, and

22:29

you can have children potentially. But

22:32

the statistical likelihood of your

22:34

marrying your dream partner and

22:37

or your having children is much, much

22:39

lower. It's much more likely that most

22:41

of the dream spouses that you would

22:43

have loved to be married to are

22:45

long gone by the age of 30.

22:49

And if you're going to have children, if

22:51

you start having children at 30 and

22:54

later, when your brain is fully matured and

22:56

fully formed, then you are going

22:59

to, number one, not

23:02

have as much time with those children as

23:04

you otherwise might have. Number two, you are

23:06

probably gonna have a more difficult time conceiving

23:08

and birthing those children than you otherwise would

23:11

have. And number three, you

23:13

probably won't be able to have enough time

23:15

to have as many children as you otherwise

23:17

would have. And so marriage is one of

23:19

those decisions in where because we have a

23:21

biological component of the effect

23:23

of marriage, we wanna be thoughtful about

23:25

arbitrarily setting a certain age. And

23:28

so one of my questions is

23:30

how much of this kind of preparation

23:35

for marriage is cultural as

23:37

compared to biological? I

23:39

will concede the point that perhaps 18

23:41

year olds are better

23:43

off having more time for their brains

23:46

to develop and for them to grow. But

23:48

I also think that we can affect some of

23:50

these things from a cultural perspective. Why

23:53

aren't our 18 year olds

23:56

prepared generally for marriage? Why

23:58

would you and I shut up? if

24:00

most 17 or 18 or 19 year old

24:02

young men and women came to us and said, alright,

24:05

I'm engaged, and we say, ah, is

24:07

that really a good idea? Why would both

24:10

you and I do that? Well, and

24:12

could we do a better job

24:15

of preparing our young people effectively

24:17

for marriage? I

24:19

think that cultures throughout history have done so.

24:21

So why can't we? Or at least why

24:23

couldn't we if we wanted to? Is

24:26

it the fact that there's some magical

24:28

age? For example, is 25

24:31

the magical age at which it makes

24:33

sense to marry because then

24:35

you're gonna have the statistically lowest chance of divorce?

24:37

Or is it just that our culture has accomplished

24:41

certain things that happen by and around the

24:43

age of 25 that winds up in that

24:45

being a good

24:47

solution? So I think a good

24:50

amount of this is a cultural phenomenon.

24:52

And so we could change our culture,

24:55

either on a micro level, our family culture,

24:57

or on a macro level if we wanted

24:59

to. So reasons not

25:01

to marry young, we'll

25:04

talk, I've already mentioned maturity, emotional

25:06

and psychological maturity. Certainly

25:09

some expressions of

25:11

maturity are biological, but

25:14

not all. It's

25:16

not uncommon for you to encounter a

25:18

30 or 40 year old who,

25:21

though his chronological age has

25:23

advanced, his psychological and emotional

25:25

maturity seems stunted for

25:27

various reasons. Sometimes there's been some kind

25:30

of trauma that has stopped the maturing

25:32

process. Sometimes it's just disuse. Nobody was

25:34

forced to mature. And so

25:36

I think that we could encourage

25:38

our young people to stronger emotional

25:40

and psychological maturity before

25:43

their biological age would

25:45

indicate that it's possible. What

25:48

about financial stability? One of

25:50

the great problems of marrying at 18

25:52

would be that very rarely would a

25:54

young man or a young woman have

25:56

any measurable financial stability. But that's something

25:58

that we've done. We've created that. system

26:00

by freezing young people out of the job

26:02

market, freezing young people, making it

26:05

illegal for them to work in many cultures prior

26:07

to that certain age. We've created

26:09

cultures that are very sophisticated and require

26:11

advanced levels of education and skills and

26:13

training before someone can be productive. And

26:16

so we could go back and think

26:19

through the educational process that we

26:21

use and help people to be more prepared at a

26:23

younger age. Teachers can

26:25

earn money even in a complex

26:27

society just like anyone else can.

26:30

Or education and career development,

26:32

our training and educational processes

26:34

could be adjusted if we

26:36

wanted to. What about life

26:38

experience? I think one of the most powerful

26:40

ones for many people is just to say

26:42

that at 18 you don't know yourself because

26:44

you had a very constrained life experience. A

26:47

natural way that many

26:49

people would grow up would be to live

26:51

in one town where their families from have

26:54

one life experience of going through

26:56

a local school system. And

26:59

their only experience of life comes from what

27:02

they've learned from vicariously through textbooks or reading

27:04

or movies or some other thing like that.

27:07

And so the young individual will turn

27:10

18 years old, go off to college,

27:12

and it's basically the first time that

27:14

that young man or woman has experienced

27:17

freedom and independence, the ability to choose

27:19

who he or she socializes with and

27:21

interacts with. And you start to say

27:23

yes to different kinds of life experience

27:25

and no to other things. And it's

27:28

that process of gaining exposure to varied

27:30

experiences that often help a young man

27:32

or woman to form his or her

27:34

perspectives on life and help him to

27:37

be more confident in what he likes

27:39

and what she's not into. But

27:42

why does that life experience have to begin at

27:44

18? One

27:46

of my ambitions as a parent

27:48

is to expose my children very

27:50

broadly to a diverse experience of

27:52

life at a young age to try to

27:54

counteract some of these things. And

27:56

so this is why I travel and why we

27:59

try to read. very broadly and

28:01

why we try to interact with different

28:03

cultures and different people and have different

28:05

situations and then even that experience

28:07

of Going off at 18. I don't think

28:09

that that should be the first time that

28:11

young men women experience freedom and voluntary association

28:13

I think it's smart for high schoolers to

28:15

study abroad in high school rather than just

28:17

waiting till 18 I think that

28:20

that teenagers should go and spend their summers

28:22

working at jobs where they're not at home

28:24

So they experience the maturing effects and the

28:26

the all of the things that come it

28:29

shouldn't be delayed until 18 And that I

28:32

think that if we do a better job of

28:34

exposing our young people to Diversity

28:38

of experience and diversity of

28:40

philosophy then there's probably a

28:43

stronger Possibility that an 18

28:45

or 20 year old would feel confident that I

28:47

know who I am. I know what I want

28:49

I know what I want to do and

28:52

be more ready

28:54

and more mature with a

28:56

very life experience to move into

28:59

Marriage and so there are other factors

29:01

we could go on My point was just to pique your

29:03

interest and to say if you don't

29:05

believe that 18 year olds should marry Why

29:08

don't you believe they should marry and? Take

29:13

those factors and say are

29:15

these things that are biological realities?

29:18

That that are unalterable or

29:21

are these factors things that could

29:23

be changed if we molded and

29:25

adapted and reshaped our cultures in

29:29

some way and my

29:31

answer is that there are a few of

29:33

those things that fall into category a and

29:36

So I don't want to create a

29:38

counterculture that is forced certainly not one that's

29:41

forcing, but I don't want to Create

29:44

a culture that's just mindlessly sweeping

29:46

young men and women into marriage

29:48

as young as possible But

29:51

I want to work hard to create a culture

29:53

in which there are easy pathways for young men

29:55

and women To marry when

29:57

they are young why is youth such an

29:59

impression? Why do I care about

30:01

when young? In addition to

30:03

all of the factors that I've alluded

30:06

to and mentioned, things that marriage is

30:08

a transforming influence on young men and

30:10

people. It has an amazing maturing influence

30:13

that when you marry young, you have more

30:15

time with your marriage partner, with your spouse.

30:18

You have more time with your children. When

30:22

you're younger, it's easier to couple up

30:24

because you're more malleable. You have that

30:26

less life experience, has a converse benefit

30:28

in that you can adapt yourself

30:31

to your spouse in a way that's much

30:33

harder if you come together when you're both

30:35

fully foreign mature adults at 32 years old

30:38

and you're set in your ways. It's easier to be

30:40

malleable and that can form a stronger bond. And

30:44

then everything related to children, childbirth, and time

30:47

with children, all of those things matter. The

30:50

reason I want to emphasize this

30:52

in today's episode has more to

30:55

do with your ability to find

30:58

and attract the highest quality

31:01

spouse. This is

31:03

why this is applicable for those of us who

31:05

are raising children to be thinking about. It's

31:07

applicable if you're listening to me and you're 20 years

31:10

old or 30 years old, 40 years old, 70 years

31:12

old, and you're unmarried and you're trying to think about

31:14

how do I go about this? I'd like to change

31:16

this. What do I need to do?

31:19

The key point is

31:21

simply the younger

31:23

you are when you decide

31:25

to pursue marriage, the

31:28

better the potential outcome because

31:31

you have the widest possible

31:33

pool of high

31:35

quality potential mates. When

31:39

you are young, you have

31:41

the widest pool of

31:44

high quality potential spouses that you will

31:46

ever, ever have.

31:49

I would submit to you that this

31:51

is a mathematical fact. Let

31:55

me demonstrate it to you. Let's assume

31:57

that you are a young man or young

31:59

woman. and you

32:01

have a sample set of 100

32:05

potential spouses that are available to

32:07

you that you're exposed to. These

32:10

could be the girls that are in your

32:12

high school or the boys that are in

32:14

your college or the co-workers

32:16

you have or the people you meet at the

32:18

tennis club or whatever you do or the matches

32:20

that you get on whatever app you're swiping on

32:22

at the moment. So you have a potential

32:24

a sample set of 100 persons. Not

32:28

all 100 of these

32:31

individuals are equally appealing

32:33

to you and

32:35

so we could create a grading

32:37

system of some kind for these individuals.

32:40

We could choose and create our grading system

32:42

for simplicity on a scale of 1 to

32:44

10. Now let

32:46

me hasten to add that this is

32:48

your grading system. I'm not saying that

32:51

for example the way this you know

32:53

she's a 10 is commonly used based

32:55

upon looks or he's a

32:57

an 8.5. This has become

33:00

somewhat vulgar because I think the factors that

33:02

people are often using in the grading system

33:04

are not very well thought out. But

33:07

the reality is we all have a grading

33:09

system. We all have some kind of system

33:11

that we grade other people on whether

33:14

it's explicitly expressed and we could actually

33:16

point to it, write it down on

33:18

a sheet of paper, plug it in

33:20

a spreadsheet and rate

33:22

our potential candidates based upon each of the

33:24

factors that are involved or whether it's just

33:26

an implicit unexamined attractiveness

33:29

scale that I'm generally attracted

33:31

to this person. We all

33:34

have a grading scale and

33:36

I think that's a good thing. If

33:39

you go through your grading scale

33:41

and you divide these hundred potential

33:44

spouses into 10 different categories, you

33:46

would probably get at the

33:48

outcome of your grading, you would probably

33:51

get something like a bell curve. And

33:54

so if we applied the standard numbers to

33:56

kind of a standard bell curve to this

33:58

group of 100 individuals that you know.

34:01

Again, think of your 100, the

34:03

100 girls you graduated with from high school

34:05

or college, or the last 100

34:07

matches you've matched with on your social media

34:09

app. Then of that, at

34:12

either extreme, you would have a small number. Let's

34:15

say you would have, I'll give you the numbers. So

34:18

on your scale of one to 10, you would have two people

34:20

who are rated as one, very

34:23

undesirable. You would have five people that

34:25

you would rate as a two. You would have

34:27

nine people that you would rate as a three. You

34:29

would have 14 people that you would rate as a four. 20

34:31

people you would rate as a five. Six, sorry, 20 that you

34:33

would rate as a six. 14

34:36

as a seven, nine as an eight, five as

34:38

a nine. And on the very high end of

34:40

the most attractive, desirable people for you, there

34:43

would be two 10s in that sample set

34:45

of 100 people. Now,

34:49

you have that sample set of 100 people. Fast

34:52

forward one year. Of

34:56

that 100 people, at the end of one year, there

35:00

will be fewer available

35:03

spouses to you of that

35:05

sample set of 100 people than there were

35:07

one year before. Why? Well,

35:09

some people will die, perhaps. Not

35:11

many if you're very young, more if you're older, but

35:13

maybe one would die. Some

35:16

people will marry. And this would

35:18

be the most frequent category

35:20

as to why someone would no longer be

35:22

available to you as a potential spouse. Some

35:25

people would just simply age out that

35:28

some people might get too old or too young.

35:30

You would age out. You would get older and

35:32

you would say, that's not appropriate now for me

35:34

to be interested in someone who was 13 years

35:36

younger than me or

35:39

14 years older than me. And so time

35:42

and life decisions are going to

35:44

naturally cause many of

35:46

those 100 people to be unavailable to

35:48

you. Now,

35:51

here's my question. Of

35:55

the people, let's say that in a given year, let's

35:57

say 20 of the 100 people. naturally

36:02

are no longer part of your available sample

36:04

set. Are those 20 likely

36:07

to come from the top half of

36:09

the curve, the fives and ups, or

36:12

from the bottom half of the curve, the lower

36:14

than fives? I

36:18

would say that since the biggest factor

36:21

in people not being part

36:23

of your 100 person

36:26

sample set is

36:28

likely to be that those people are married

36:30

or in a committed relationship leading to marriage

36:32

or something related to that, that

36:35

they're probably going to be coming

36:37

from the most desirable candidates, the

36:41

fives and over. And

36:43

so every year what's happening is

36:45

the best candidates for marriage are

36:51

quickly becoming fewer and fewer. That

36:54

doesn't necessarily mean that the most

36:56

beautiful women are no longer available

36:58

or the most attractive men are

37:00

no longer available. Remember, these are

37:02

your figures,

37:06

these are your ratings levels. But

37:09

the best candidates for marriage, if you're

37:11

interested in marriage, are

37:13

continually being taken by other

37:16

people who are able to

37:18

attract those people into

37:20

a marriage relationship. And

37:23

so if you're not paying attention to this, it's

37:26

very easy for you to wind up

37:28

in an unintended place. It's

37:32

very easy for you to wind up older

37:34

than you ever intended to be and

37:37

with many fewer marriage candidates. And

37:40

you're looking around at the available guys and you're

37:42

just thinking, these guys are all losers. You're

37:44

looking around at all the girls and you're thinking, I don't wanna

37:46

marry these girls. And

37:49

this is a natural, normal part of

37:51

life. Now,

37:57

the answer to this is, Be

38:00

as aggressive as possible at

38:02

a young age about being

38:05

prepared for marriage and

38:07

pursue it as a focused goal. We

38:10

can't predict exactly when you will meet

38:12

someone that is an ideal

38:14

fit for you. But

38:18

if you are open to meeting that person

38:20

when you are younger, and if you've been

38:22

intentional about preparing yourself to be able to

38:24

attract that person when younger, everything

38:28

will work out. When

38:30

you are young, you

38:32

have the most possible

38:35

people that you will ever have. Now

38:38

I've talked about the first thing, about

38:40

population, the potential candidate

38:42

pool of unmarried individuals

38:45

that you could potentially attract into

38:47

a marriage relationship being small. But

38:49

there are other things as well. Every

38:51

year that you get older, you might

38:55

face challenges in being able to

38:57

attract a partner that's of your

38:59

ideal age. And

39:02

this affects men and women differently.

39:05

The traditional normal marriage

39:07

contract between men and

39:09

women recognizes a frustrating

39:11

reality. Generally

39:14

speaking, women are the

39:17

most attractive marriage candidates when

39:19

they are very young. Because

39:22

women who are young have

39:24

the maximum peak of

39:26

their physical beauty and attractiveness

39:29

and alluring qualities, and

39:32

they have the maximum ability

39:34

to have babies when young. As

39:38

a woman gets older, her physical

39:40

beauty generally declines, and

39:42

her ability to have babies generally

39:44

declines. Now for

39:46

men who are younger, their

39:48

opportunity and ability to provide

39:51

a warm and comfortable home and

39:54

provide financially and provide emotional stability

39:56

and be good fathers, generally

39:59

when young, that

40:01

ability is only in its

40:03

infancy. Twenty-year-old

40:06

guys are not generally becoming multimillionaires and

40:08

having all the money to support their

40:10

wife in furs and Mercedes in the

40:12

luxury. As

40:15

a man gets older, his ability

40:17

to provide those things generally

40:20

increases. And

40:22

so he's in his forties and fifties, he's

40:24

in his max earning years, and

40:26

he's able to provide those comforts of home. And

40:29

so the normal history of the marriage

40:31

contract, that is, one man, one woman

40:33

for life has been, wife

40:36

comes to the table and says, I will

40:38

give you my youth, my

40:41

beauty, and my childbearing ability

40:43

and child raising ability. I'll

40:45

give you these most valuable decades of

40:47

my life in exchange for

40:49

you giving me the comfort

40:52

and security and stability

40:54

during the time when you are the most attractive.

40:57

And I'll invest in you when you're

40:59

young and not particularly attractive so

41:02

that you stay invested in me when

41:04

you are older. Well

41:07

in the marriage environment we've created today in

41:09

which the marriage contract has been weakened and

41:11

destroyed legally by

41:13

no-fault divorce and culturally with

41:15

basically saying it's no big

41:17

deal, this has turned into

41:19

a really bad system for

41:21

women and for men because women

41:24

don't have the enduring confidence in

41:26

the marriage relationship and

41:28

men, after now a lot

41:30

of that and decades of that, men are

41:33

now realizing, wait a second, I can go

41:35

out and I can attract multiple women who

41:38

are young and beautiful and raise children

41:40

for me. And this is an

41:43

immoral system that we have to end and

41:45

it's a very frustrating system. And

41:47

it can be frustrating for both people. The

41:50

example I think of is there

41:53

was a friend of mine when I was in school who

41:55

was incredibly beautiful, she

41:58

was a beautiful girl. She

42:00

was physically beautiful. She

42:02

had a lovely personality. She was

42:05

very athletic, total

42:07

class A model, wonderful girl. When

42:10

we were in school, my

42:12

friends and I, those of us that we

42:15

came from a school, we had a peer group. I

42:17

remember talking with a friend of mine about what she

42:19

was doing. She was in

42:21

college and she was dating professional

42:23

athletes. She was dating professional

42:25

athletes who were current professional athletes,

42:27

who were showering her with money

42:29

and experiences and everything in the

42:31

world. I remember thinking

42:34

at the time, how on earth could

42:36

I compete with a professional athlete for

42:38

this beautiful girl, this amazingly

42:40

attractive young lady? What could I

42:43

offer her? I couldn't offer her anything.

42:45

I was a broke student and maybe

42:48

I could have prospects, but not the

42:50

kind of prospects that a professional athlete

42:53

had. I just thought, well, she's

42:55

just totally out of my league. There's nothing that I could offer

42:57

her. What's interesting is,

42:59

fast forward to today, that

43:01

girl is now a

43:03

middle-aged woman and she's a

43:06

single mother. When I look at her

43:08

now, I don't have anything near of

43:10

that feeling

43:14

that I once had of inferiority

43:16

to her because now as

43:18

a man, I am coming

43:20

into my prime in many respects of

43:22

my life. Now I feel like I

43:26

have a lot to offer,

43:28

but now the question would be, if I

43:31

weren't married, well, would she be the one

43:33

that I would pursue? That's the question that

43:35

a lot of men face. It's a very

43:37

frustrating problem for men

43:39

and women. The best solution

43:41

to this is to

43:45

try to be married to somebody who

43:47

is close in age to you because

43:50

while it's possible to marry outside

43:52

of your standard age range, it

43:55

creates more and more problems in life

43:57

and in marriage as that age gap.

44:01

extends. And

44:03

as you get older, the age gap becomes much

44:05

more important. And so if you marry

44:07

when young, you can marry a very high

44:10

quality candidate and your age gap is

44:12

together and you start to build a lot

44:14

of amazing aspects

44:17

of your life together. Now,

44:19

and the older you get, the

44:22

tens, the nines, the

44:24

eights, the sevens, most

44:26

of these are taken off of the table.

44:29

They're no longer available to you. Remember,

44:31

by the way, for the fourth time, this

44:34

is your own ranking system. If

44:36

you wanted to create a spousal

44:39

candidate ranking system that

44:41

was numeric like this, you could do it. You

44:44

would sit down and you would list all

44:46

of the qualities and characteristics that you consider

44:49

important in a potential spouse. You

44:52

would create a numeric rating. Really, the numbers don't

44:54

matter, but you would create a simple numeric rating.

44:57

Zero to ten works fine. You would say, okay, I'm going

44:59

to rate her physical beauty. Zero

45:01

to ten. Give her X, X number

45:03

of eight points. I'm

45:06

going to rank how I feel when I spend time

45:08

with her. Eight. I'm

45:11

going to rank how much respect she

45:13

shows to my parents. Three.

45:16

You create any number of categories you cared

45:19

about and give them a ranking and you

45:21

can come out the other side with a weighted

45:23

score based upon how important

45:25

you characterize things are. You could rank

45:27

a potential wife or a potential husband

45:30

based upon these scores. My point is

45:32

simply that we all have some ranking

45:34

system and some of us have

45:36

one or two factors on it. Some of us have 102 factors

45:39

on it, but

45:41

all of us have a ranking

45:43

system. If your ranking system is

45:45

optimized towards marriage, not

45:47

optimized towards fornication or something else,

45:49

then the candidates

45:51

who would be the best

45:56

husbands and the best wives, your pool, your

45:59

family, your family, your family, your shrinks naturally

46:01

every year that goes by. Now

46:06

assuming that's true, what you want

46:08

to do is be serious

46:11

about marriage but not

46:14

obsessed. Serious but

46:16

not obsessed. What I mean by

46:18

serious is don't set this aside

46:21

and say this is not important to me

46:23

because if you're having a hard time

46:25

today finding and attracting

46:27

a suitable spouse then

46:30

it's not going to be easier five years

46:32

from now. There is no metric by

46:34

which it's easier for that to happen. The

46:37

key is to focus on changing whatever needs

46:39

to be changed to make it easier now

46:42

and be serious about it. And

46:44

what I often tell people is if you need to spend

46:46

money on this, this is a good use of

46:49

money. So be serious about it. One

46:51

thing that's very different for my

46:54

being middle-aged as compared to being as young

46:56

as I once was is that

46:59

today it's very easy for me to talk about

47:01

serious things in life in a straightforward manner.

47:04

And I think this is one of the cultural things that we

47:06

need to change. Older

47:09

people, especially older married

47:11

people, have a

47:13

generally easy time talking about

47:16

marriage, pursuing marriage, entering

47:18

into marriage. It's just easy because

47:20

we understand how important this is

47:23

in life and how fundamental

47:25

it is to our experience of life, to

47:27

our happiness in life and satisfaction and enjoyment.

47:30

And so when older people talk

47:32

to younger people about their romantic

47:34

relationships, we want

47:36

young people to win. We want young people

47:39

to experience the joy that we've had and

47:41

we understand that running away

47:43

from the subject or talking in riddles is

47:45

not a way of accomplishing that. For

47:48

whatever reason, in our youth culture, it often

47:50

doesn't tend to be that way. Our

47:53

parents often didn't facilitate a culture in

47:55

which talking about matters of the heart

47:58

was easy with us. didn't

48:00

prepare us for what we were going

48:02

to experience. They didn't talk about things

48:04

seriously and straightforwardly and openly. Talk about

48:07

the good and the bad, the benefits,

48:09

the downsides, the difficulties, the things that

48:11

are easy. And I want

48:13

to change that. And so my

48:15

ambition with all of my children, like one of

48:17

the things that I never permit is

48:21

I never permit people

48:23

in personal conversation to

48:27

make comments that

48:29

would cause a young person, a

48:31

young man or young woman to feel

48:35

weird or funny about experiencing

48:37

romantic attraction for other people.

48:40

And usually it happens with other fathers and a father will

48:42

say something about when her boyfriends, but that's going to be

48:44

five years off or I'm not going to be, no, I

48:46

was going to be 10 years away. And

48:49

I always confront this. It's a big deal to me.

48:51

Matters of the heart should be normal and

48:55

appropriate conversations between parents and children.

48:57

They are private. They need to

48:59

be respected and don't ever cause

49:01

young people to feel bad about

49:04

it. And so my ambition as

49:06

a father is that when my

49:08

children all experience their first crush, I want to

49:10

be the first one. They talk about it. When

49:14

they are totally infatuated with someone, I want to be

49:16

the first one that knows about it because I've prepared

49:18

them for that. I've told them it's going to happen.

49:20

We've talked about it. And so when it happens, they

49:22

come to me and they're, and that, and they

49:24

trust me and they know that I never betray

49:27

their confidence. And I'm right there

49:29

to celebrate these experiences they're having, the

49:31

attraction and to coach them in managing

49:33

them in an appropriate and healthy way.

49:35

That's my ambition as a father. Time

49:38

will tell whether it works out, but that's my

49:40

ambition as a father. And so recognize that we

49:42

need to deal with these things on a straightforward

49:44

basis and we need to take away the weirdness

49:48

of the situations in

49:51

order to improve them. How

49:54

do you attract a high

49:56

quality spouse? Well,

49:59

I think that it is in

50:03

a significant way a math equation.

50:07

Now that's probably a shocking statement for

50:09

some people to say that attracting

50:12

a world-class spouse is a math

50:14

equation. I think first we

50:16

need to deal with our terms and

50:18

talk about love

50:20

and marriage being something that

50:23

happens to you rather than something

50:25

that you do. In

50:28

general, I think the idea

50:30

of finding the one

50:32

is silly. It's

50:35

a riskable concept and it should

50:37

be mocked mercilessly in our society.

50:40

I don't do very well with the mocking

50:42

but I think I would be happy if

50:44

I heard more people mocking the concept of

50:46

I'm just going to find the one, the

50:48

one person who is right for

50:50

me. There is no the

50:52

one. In a world of 8 billion

50:55

people, there is no just one person in the

50:57

universe who is right for you. There

51:00

are simply people who are a great fit for

51:02

you when you are ready

51:04

to marry and then you stop looking.

51:07

So you find someone who is a good fit for

51:09

you at an appropriate phase of life and then you

51:12

stop looking. I don't consider

51:14

my wife to be the one as in

51:16

she's the only one in the world who

51:18

could possibly be for me. Together

51:22

she is the one because

51:24

she is the one that

51:26

I have chosen and

51:29

because of that choice she

51:31

is the only one in the world

51:33

for me. Now

51:36

you understand that sounds like blasphemy in

51:38

a world formed by Disney princesses and

51:40

Hallmark movies but it's not. It

51:42

is true. It

51:44

is the truth that we go

51:47

through life and even if you look at

51:49

the most ridiculous rom-com that you are aware

51:51

of, you will see this played out. You

51:54

will see that even in a

51:56

ridiculous movie that is predicated upon

51:58

finding the one. You simply

52:00

have two people that go through life all of

52:02

a sudden they encounter one another at a phase

52:05

in life at which they're open To the relationship

52:07

then something clicks they realize we're a

52:09

good fit sometimes that happens quickly and

52:12

as well judge sometimes it happens slowly

52:14

and I just needed this event to happen

52:16

to convince me that he was the one for me and But

52:19

they realize that this is a good fit and

52:21

then they get together and then they stop looking

52:25

Now if you don't stop looking then you wind

52:27

up committing adultery against your spouse you wind up

52:29

divorced and you wind up going through a long

52:32

series of relationships, but your

52:34

spouse becomes the one when

52:38

This is the man or the woman

52:40

that you choose and then because of

52:42

that choice He

52:45

or she is the one for you To

52:51

illustrate this I thought of the example

52:53

of athletics I

52:55

think there are many professional

52:57

athletes who could effectively compete

52:59

in various sports If

53:02

you look at natural athletic ability,

53:04

it seems to be significantly

53:06

important to very high-level athletic

53:08

accomplishment Is

53:11

somebody who plays professional football is

53:14

his life great? Because

53:16

he magically chose the right sport for

53:18

him Or

53:20

is his life great because he worked hard at

53:22

the sport that he chose I Think

53:26

that if we think about that metaphor

53:28

we see analogues in

53:31

romantic relationships We can

53:33

see for example that there are some sports that

53:35

are good natural complements for

53:38

Certain athletes and some that aren't

53:41

there are some sports in which you do better

53:43

if you are very small and There

53:45

are some sports in which you do better if you are very big

53:48

There are some sports that you do better at if you're

53:50

very fat And there are some sports you

53:53

do better at if you're very skinny And

53:55

so there is a natural component

53:57

of selection among athletes similar to

54:00

how there are certain people who just are a

54:02

good fit and who aren't a good fit for

54:04

you. But then within

54:06

the group of sports that are a

54:08

good natural complement for an athlete's raw

54:10

innate characteristics, the athlete becomes

54:12

great at the sport because he chooses

54:15

that sport. I guess

54:17

probably the best, most famous example would be a

54:19

guy like Dion Sanders. Dion Sanders, I

54:21

think, is the only athlete to date to

54:23

have played in both a Super Bowl and

54:25

in a World Series. Played

54:27

in the NFL and in Major League Baseball. But

54:30

I would say that many athletes who play

54:32

in the NFL could also play in the

54:34

NBA. And many athletes

54:36

who play baseball could also play football. Marriage

54:40

is similar. But why don't they? Right?

54:44

Well, because they picked a sport at a certain point

54:46

in time and they specialized in it. And

54:48

then that specialization allowed them to achieve

54:50

the highest levels. And marriage

54:52

is similar. You choose someone who

54:54

is a good fit for you. And

54:57

then as you build your life together, you

55:00

wind up becoming world class because

55:02

you have so many shared memories,

55:04

so many shared relationships, you have

55:07

a shared vision, you just have

55:09

a shared life. So

55:11

then the idea of anyone else being

55:13

right for you is unthinkable. It's

55:17

basically unthinkable to me that

55:19

there would be someone else out there in the

55:22

world who would be a better wife for me

55:25

because of the shared experience that I

55:27

have with my wife. We've

55:29

had so much of our life together that

55:32

to not be married

55:34

to her and to then

55:37

try to build a relationship with someone else, I

55:41

would be walking away from decades

55:43

of my own life experience. And

55:46

so that's the point, is that

55:48

you can't, if you have 10 years of

55:51

experience playing football at a high level, you

55:53

can't just automatically walk away from that and

55:55

compete with someone who has 10 years of experiencing.

56:00

baseball at a high level the

56:02

specialization becomes intense so recognize

56:04

that the one is Not

56:08

because there's you just got to magically find a

56:10

person in the world who is the one for

56:12

you But rather that you

56:14

were going to choose one person from

56:17

potential candidates and then as you

56:19

enter into and pass through a

56:22

maturing relationship Then

56:24

that person will be the one because of

56:26

the choice that you made and become quite

56:28

literally the only one in the world for

56:30

you What

56:33

is the math equation for attracting a spouse?

56:35

Well, it's not math, but I

56:37

think it's basically this you

56:39

have to find a suitable high-quality potential

56:42

spouse at

56:45

the right time of your life and then

56:48

successfully woo and attract that person

56:51

into into marriage

56:54

if any of those three things aren't

56:56

working then your marriage prospects are dimmed

56:58

or doomed

57:00

and So to maximize your

57:02

marriage prospects you want to work on all

57:05

three of these to the best of your

57:07

abilities What

57:09

are the three again? You have to

57:11

find a suitable high-quality potential spouse

57:13

find that is a whole process

57:15

of the The potential

57:18

candidates that are available your interaction

57:20

with those candidates and the screening

57:22

ability that you have to find

57:24

a suitable high-quality potential

57:26

spouse At the right

57:28

time of your life What is

57:30

the right time of your life? Well, you decide

57:33

but it's an important component and many people say

57:35

well It's not the right time right now And

57:38

it's not the right time because it's going to be

57:40

eight more years because I'm going to build my career

57:42

or four more years Because I'm going to graduate from

57:45

college or whatever the right time is But

57:48

then your candidate pool becomes

57:50

smaller And so I'm pleading with you

57:52

to not ignore the importance of age

57:54

and be open to it at many

57:56

times in life While also

57:58

acknowledging that Sometimes you got

58:00

to do certain things and make changes and

58:02

change takes time. So you have

58:05

to find a suitable high quality potential spouse

58:07

at the right time of life and then

58:09

successfully woo and attract him or her into

58:11

marriage. You have to be attractive enough to

58:14

the person that you want to

58:16

be attracted to you in order

58:19

to actually engage in a relationship

58:21

that leads to marriage. Notice

58:24

my emphasis on engaging in a relationship that

58:26

leads to marriage. That's hard to do. There's

58:29

a wide pool of candidates of people

58:32

that you could be friends with. There's

58:35

a smaller pool of candidates of people

58:37

that you could have some kind of

58:39

romantic-ish relationship or situation

58:42

with. There's

58:44

a wide pool of people that you

58:46

could have a sexual relationship with. But

58:50

to attract someone into a marriage relationship

58:53

and then actually see it through to

58:55

consummation is

58:57

a different proposition and

59:00

it requires a different approach. So

59:03

you should be careful in this who you take

59:05

advice from. One of the things

59:07

that I find interesting as a cultural observer is

59:10

how few people there are

59:14

who are happily and

59:16

successfully married who are

59:19

talking about how they accomplished that. What

59:25

I'm doing at the moment is a little

59:27

unusual. There's a

59:29

world of dating coaches available to you

59:33

who will teach you how to date. There

59:37

aren't so many people

59:40

who are in long-term

59:42

enduring relationships who

59:44

are trying to teach you how to build a

59:47

long-term enduring relationships. Most

59:49

of us who are in that situation is just not important to

59:51

us. I don't want to go and do that. So I'm doing

59:53

my best because I care about it. But recognize that if you

59:56

want to know how to get married, you should

59:58

spend your time asking married people to get married. people

1:00:00

how that happened for them. If you're a young

1:00:02

man and you want to get married, you should

1:00:04

spend more time with married men as compared

1:00:07

to single men and find out what those married

1:00:09

men did. If you're a young woman

1:00:11

and you want to marry, spend time with married women

1:00:14

and find out how did this happen? What did you

1:00:16

do? What advice do you have for someone like me?

1:00:19

And notice by the way that our society is

1:00:21

generally structured in a way to make that difficult.

1:00:23

You go to church and you have the singles

1:00:25

groups and the married

1:00:27

groups. But if you're single

1:00:29

and you want to be in the married group, you

1:00:31

need to spend time in a single group because that's

1:00:33

possibly where your potential spouse might be, but you need

1:00:36

to get the advice from the married group. So you

1:00:38

got to create it for yourself. Here

1:00:41

is my advice for you if you want

1:00:43

to follow this

1:00:45

through. Assume that

1:00:47

today you're listening to me and you're

1:00:50

saying, Joshua, I'm single. I would like

1:00:52

to get married. What can I do? Here

1:00:55

is my advice. Step

1:00:58

one, I

1:01:00

want you to create a comprehensive

1:01:05

image of

1:01:09

what you would consider to be

1:01:11

someone that would be your dream

1:01:13

spouse. If

1:01:16

you're a man and you're sitting there and you're

1:01:18

thinking, I want you to create in your mind

1:01:20

a picture of the perfect woman that you would

1:01:23

run down the aisle

1:01:26

to marry with zero

1:01:28

reservations, zero hesitation, no

1:01:30

holding back whatsoever. I

1:01:34

want you to picture her in your mind. Now,

1:01:38

picturing her is not enough. What

1:01:41

we need to do is we need to get that picture out

1:01:44

of your mind and onto paper where we can

1:01:46

analyze it. You

1:01:48

do this in whatever way is comfortable for you.

1:01:50

Take out a sheet of paper in your journal

1:01:52

and write, My Perfect Wife, at the

1:01:54

top of it. Pull out

1:01:56

of a note on your phone and title it,

1:01:58

My Perfect Wife. If

1:02:00

you're a lady, sit down and record

1:02:03

a voice memo and say, my perfect husband,

1:02:05

you know, make it out. And

1:02:07

you're going to transcribe it. Some way of

1:02:09

getting this on paper. And then

1:02:11

I want you to spend time

1:02:13

writing down every feature, characteristic,

1:02:17

quality, attribute,

1:02:20

write down everything that you can

1:02:23

think of that you would

1:02:25

dream about of the perfect

1:02:27

man or woman for me. Again,

1:02:31

put yourself in a mental frame in

1:02:33

which you would experience zero hesitation to

1:02:36

move towards marriage. Get

1:02:38

a crystal clear picture as much

1:02:41

as is possible of every attribute,

1:02:43

feature, characteristic, quality, everything

1:02:45

related to this person. Do

1:02:48

not censor yourself in

1:02:51

any way. What

1:02:53

I mean is all of us have lived

1:02:56

under social obligations and

1:02:59

we experience some form of censorship.

1:03:02

We all would censor our words. We would

1:03:04

provide some kind of characteristic

1:03:06

of disclaimers or whatever if we

1:03:08

actually expressed what we really wanted. And

1:03:11

the censorship that we would generally apply to

1:03:13

our words applies also to

1:03:16

our thoughts. Because

1:03:18

when we've experienced the social pressure

1:03:20

that we all experience, even

1:03:22

in our own thoughts, we're always censoring ourselves and

1:03:25

saying, well, I want this, but I

1:03:27

shouldn't want that. Or it's just not

1:03:29

right for me. And I'm going to

1:03:31

encourage you, do not censor yourself at all.

1:03:34

If this should be your thing, put it

1:03:37

in lock and key, put it in an encrypted note.

1:03:39

No one else is ever going to read this thing.

1:03:41

You write down every

1:03:43

characteristic that you want, every

1:03:45

dream that you have of

1:03:47

an absolute 10 out

1:03:49

of 10, an absolute dream spouse for

1:03:51

you. observe

1:04:00

someone. Let's say you're interacting, you're over

1:04:02

at dinner at a friend's house and

1:04:05

you observe his wife doing something. Write

1:04:07

that down. I have this

1:04:09

video I show to people of this couple that

1:04:11

I randomly found and I just was amazed at

1:04:14

how the woman looked at the husband while they're

1:04:16

recording the video and I thought, like, that's something

1:04:18

that I never would have thought of writing down

1:04:20

until she looks at me a certain way when

1:04:22

recording a video. But you can just see the

1:04:25

expression of the way that woman looks at her

1:04:28

husband. It's amazing. Write down every

1:04:30

feature, attribute, everything you can

1:04:32

imagine and make a comprehensive list. Make

1:04:35

it as long as possible and don't

1:04:37

censor yourself or judge yourself or criticize

1:04:39

yourself on any of these things at

1:04:41

this stage. That's step one.

1:04:45

Now, set that list aside.

1:04:48

Let it percolate for an appropriate amount

1:04:51

of time, days, couple of weeks,

1:04:53

whatever. Then bring

1:04:55

out that list and

1:04:58

read it carefully. Print

1:05:02

it out, put it on your desk, read

1:05:04

it carefully and then you're going

1:05:06

to make another list. Say

1:05:10

while you're imagining this perfect person, I'm going to use

1:05:13

a man's example, you're imagining your perfect wife.

1:05:17

Put that list of all the characteristics and

1:05:19

attributes that she has on one sheet of

1:05:21

paper. Put the second sheet of paper and

1:05:23

say, I'm going to

1:05:25

now describe the perfect man

1:05:28

that this perfect woman would

1:05:31

be attracted to. So

1:05:34

for every feature or attribute

1:05:37

or characteristic, quality that

1:05:39

you described about your perfect wife,

1:05:43

she's going to have a corresponding character,

1:05:46

feature or attribute that

1:05:48

would correspond to what you wrote down. You

1:05:53

wrote down that my ideal

1:05:55

wife is somebody who is a woman

1:05:57

who is honest. She's honest.

1:06:00

Well, is she going to be attracted to

1:06:03

somebody who is dishonest? No.

1:06:05

So you write honest. She's,

1:06:08

let's say that she's physically beautiful. She

1:06:10

dresses well. She looks stunning at all

1:06:12

times. Well, is a woman

1:06:15

who dresses well and is very physically

1:06:17

beautiful, is she likely to be attracted

1:06:19

to somebody who dresses like a slob? Probably

1:06:22

not. So, you would say, you

1:06:24

know, dress as well, dress as suitably. And

1:06:27

there is texture that is necessary in

1:06:29

this because most

1:06:32

relationships that are

1:06:34

successful involve

1:06:37

a man and a woman who complement one

1:06:40

another. The word complement does not

1:06:42

mean are the same as one another. And

1:06:45

so if she dresses like a prima donna

1:06:47

at all times, just absolutely and totally into

1:06:49

fashion, does that mean that she's automatically into

1:06:51

the guy who dresses like a dandy at

1:06:53

all times? My answer would be no. She's

1:06:56

not necessarily. Now, sometimes you see

1:06:58

those kinds of couples and they seem to get along

1:07:01

together, but there is a range

1:07:03

of appropriateness that if she cares about

1:07:05

the way that she dresses, then at

1:07:07

the very least a man that she's

1:07:09

likely to be attracted to is

1:07:12

presentable and is not

1:07:14

completely thoughtless. And

1:07:16

so you figure out what the range is for each

1:07:18

characteristic. You know, let's say that you

1:07:20

wrote down someone who's very intelligent. Well,

1:07:22

is she likely to be attracted to somebody who's

1:07:24

not intelligent? Write

1:07:27

down all of the attributes of it. If

1:07:31

picture this woman and write down

1:07:33

the perfect man that she would be attracted to. Similarly,

1:07:36

if you're a woman and you're doing this exercise,

1:07:38

you wrote down the perfect man, write down all

1:07:40

of the attributes of the perfect wife that he

1:07:42

would just be thrilled to marry from everything that

1:07:44

you know, you've observed, you've heard about, you've learned

1:07:47

about, you've asked other people about. That's

1:07:50

step two. Take

1:07:53

as much time as necessary, days, weeks, months,

1:07:55

doesn't matter. Just take time and get

1:07:57

the clear clarity on it. But hopefully this

1:07:59

is day two. days and weeks. Then come back to that

1:08:01

list. Give us a short time, days or weeks.

1:08:03

Come back to that list number two. And

1:08:07

now here's the hard part. You

1:08:11

need to grade yourself on

1:08:14

how well you match up to

1:08:17

that perfect person.

1:08:20

So again, using a man's perspective. I

1:08:22

made list A was my perfect wife.

1:08:24

Every feature attribute I could do. List

1:08:27

B was the kind of man that

1:08:29

this woman is likely to be attracted

1:08:31

to. What kind of man would she

1:08:33

run down the aisle to meet? And

1:08:35

now I'm going to grade myself on those things. Zero

1:08:39

to ten works fine. You

1:08:41

say, well, she's going to be attracted to someone

1:08:43

who's, you know, I wrote down that she's

1:08:45

beautiful and athletic and we like to

1:08:48

do runs together. And so she's going to be attracted

1:08:50

to someone who's beautiful and athletic. Great. So I'm a

1:08:52

ten out of ten out of ten. Then

1:08:54

she's going to be attracted to someone who has a

1:08:56

lot of money so that he can provide for her.

1:08:59

But I'm flat broke. So I'm one out of ten. Or

1:09:02

she's going to be attracted to somebody who has

1:09:04

good social skills and is able to interact with

1:09:06

her in a positive way or

1:09:08

makes her feel good. And whatever the things are

1:09:10

that you wrote, I just, I don't

1:09:12

have those skills. And you grade

1:09:14

yourself and compare yourself to that perfect

1:09:17

man as best you can

1:09:19

imagine him to be. You

1:09:22

now have your to do list, your

1:09:24

self improvement list. After

1:09:26

I finish this

1:09:28

line of thinking that I'm going down, I'll come

1:09:30

back and give you some suggestions for what should

1:09:33

be on that list if you yourself can't

1:09:35

come up with that list. But

1:09:38

I don't want to do that here because I

1:09:40

want to emphasize this is your list. These

1:09:43

are the things that you can change about

1:09:45

yourself and you get started on changing those

1:09:47

things. And there's no reason to

1:09:49

wait. Get started on changing those things. You

1:09:53

can't coerce someone into a

1:09:55

marriage with you. You

1:09:57

have to attract a person into a...

1:10:00

Married with you. You. Can't

1:10:02

guarantee for certain. What?

1:10:05

Is likely to attract a

1:10:07

specific person. We all have

1:10:09

strange and unusual things that

1:10:11

for us or individual or

1:10:13

individuals. but you can start

1:10:16

to create an appropriate level

1:10:18

of commonality by imagining what

1:10:20

you think is your ideal

1:10:22

marriage partner and then by

1:10:24

starting to become what you

1:10:27

think would be the ideal

1:10:29

marriage partner for that person.

1:10:31

And so while the. Individual.

1:10:34

Expressions on a very small level

1:10:36

will be very negotiable. The big

1:10:38

things aren't. Is. That goofy

1:10:40

example: I drink coffee. my wife doesn't

1:10:43

drink coffee ever. She doesn't like it,

1:10:45

never has. Never will I think t

1:10:47

a can find drinking tea. You.

1:10:50

Could sit down and you could say off

1:10:52

the idea woman that i would wanna be

1:10:54

in of in a relationship with would be.

1:10:57

I would would match me for my

1:10:59

interest in coffee. And

1:11:01

so I'm going to become super in

1:11:03

whatever expression of it. The point is

1:11:06

that this is a minor unimportant thing.

1:11:08

It just doesn't matter at all whether

1:11:10

someone like coffee, your doesn't like coffee

1:11:12

or or chairs your taste and wines

1:11:14

or doesn't share your taste In wise,

1:11:16

what is a big deal is wants

1:11:18

to have children, Doesn't want to have

1:11:20

children. Things. Like that are non

1:11:22

negotiable like nonstarters like you can't That

1:11:25

has to be key. In

1:11:27

so you will ultimately rank these things and

1:11:29

a lot of this will just. Work

1:11:32

out in the wash in your say else

1:11:34

in I put down that she must like

1:11:36

coffee, but after all, here's his great girl

1:11:38

that doesn't like coffee. No big deal that

1:11:40

you want to start pool, moving yourself in

1:11:43

the direction of being someone who's likely be

1:11:45

attractive to the kind of person that you

1:11:47

want to attract. I'm not going to dictate

1:11:49

these things to you, and no one else

1:11:51

should either, but the person that you are.

1:11:55

In reality, Should.

1:11:57

Attract the kind of person that.

1:12:00

Want to be with and repel the

1:12:02

kind of people that you don't want

1:12:04

to be with? And

1:12:07

you can do that. By. Making

1:12:09

a list number one of your ideal

1:12:11

spouse Number two: Making a fantasy list

1:12:14

of the kind of person that your

1:12:16

ideal spouses likely to be attracted to

1:12:18

and then measuring yourself as compared to

1:12:21

that person that you've made up and

1:12:23

saying what do I need to change

1:12:25

and then get busy changing it. Now

1:12:29

after you've done that and while you are

1:12:31

busy changing, it's the next thing that you

1:12:33

want to do is. Go. Back

1:12:35

to. That. Image

1:12:38

You've created. The avatar you created of

1:12:40

your perfect wife Or your perfect husband.

1:12:43

And then make another list and the list

1:12:45

is. Where. Is this

1:12:47

person likely to be. Where.

1:12:52

Does this person spend time. If.

1:12:57

You wrote: i want someone who is

1:13:00

you know, Christian like me? Then there's

1:13:02

a good chance is a bigger chance

1:13:04

that she's and church on Sunday morning

1:13:06

than at the club on Saturday night.

1:13:09

If you wrote down I want

1:13:11

someone who is athletic is a

1:13:13

bigger chance that season the hiking

1:13:15

club that is going out on

1:13:17

Saturday morning than in the chess

1:13:19

club. if he wrote I want

1:13:21

someone who is intelligent. there's a

1:13:24

bigger chance that see his in

1:13:26

college then that she's working in

1:13:28

a factory. You.

1:13:30

Get the point. Where. Is this

1:13:32

person And here I think you should also

1:13:35

consider what online communities as as person the

1:13:37

part of was going to be a difference

1:13:39

between are no. Meet.

1:13:42

My. husband.com vs. Tinder. There's

1:13:44

gonna be a big difference in

1:13:46

different apps and different platforms that

1:13:48

people are likely to be. And

1:13:50

Cd to five. Ask yourself, where

1:13:53

is this person likely to be.

1:13:57

Then. Next. Step is.

1:13:59

Good. back to your calendar after you've made the

1:14:01

list of where is this person, go back to

1:14:04

your calendar and count

1:14:07

up the number of times in

1:14:09

the last month that you

1:14:11

have actually been in the place

1:14:13

that your ideal husband

1:14:15

or wife is or

1:14:18

could be found. There

1:14:22

are a couple of things that can

1:14:24

go wrong in the process of finding

1:14:26

and attracting a suitable spouse. We

1:14:29

can analyze these things under those three

1:14:31

layers that I said. What is

1:14:34

the equation for attracting a spouse? You

1:14:36

have to find a suitable, high-quality potential spouse

1:14:38

at the right time of life and successfully

1:14:40

woo and attract him or her into marriage.

1:14:44

We've spent some time on successfully wooing and

1:14:46

attracting him or her into marriage. We've

1:14:48

talked about becoming the kind of person that

1:14:50

would be attractive to this spouse. We've

1:14:53

talked a little bit about the right time of life. If

1:14:55

you're 15 years old and you want to

1:14:57

get married, there aren't that many people in your

1:15:00

high school classroom that want to get married. Not the right

1:15:02

time of life. We need

1:15:04

to be at the right time of life. Then

1:15:06

you have to find the suitable

1:15:08

spouse. You say, where's the problem? Is the

1:15:10

problem that I'm not attractive or is the

1:15:13

problem that I'm just not spending any time

1:15:15

finding and not spending time looking? A

1:15:17

lot of people that I interact with that tell me,

1:15:20

Joshua, I want to get married, if I ask you

1:15:22

the question, how many potential candidates did you meet in

1:15:24

the last month, the answer is zero. We

1:15:26

don't need to automatically assume that the problem

1:15:29

is because you're unattractive. Maybe the

1:15:31

problem is that you're just not actually meeting anybody.

1:15:34

This is understandable, by the way. No one

1:15:36

would find fault with you.

1:15:40

You're frustrated. You had a bad breakup. You're

1:15:43

annoyed with not getting matched online

1:15:46

or whatever it is. That's all

1:15:48

understandable. Understandable

1:15:50

doesn't mean that you're actually going to get

1:15:52

the outcome if it doesn't happen. There's a

1:15:54

lot of people that go through life expecting

1:15:56

that magically someday, the wonderful

1:15:59

girl from heaven is going to knock on the front

1:16:01

door and propose to me on the doorstep never having

1:16:03

met me and it's absurd. It's

1:16:05

an absurd concept and we need to recognize it's

1:16:07

absurd and then change it. So

1:16:09

if you're going to, if you're working on

1:16:11

your personal attractiveness and you're at the right

1:16:14

time of life in which you want to

1:16:16

marry, then you need to be out meeting

1:16:18

potential candidates. You need

1:16:20

to be meeting people and then we can try to figure out

1:16:23

what's working and what's not working. And

1:16:25

so how many times in the last month have

1:16:28

you been in these places where

1:16:30

your ideal spouse is? How

1:16:32

many available women

1:16:34

have you met or how many available men have you

1:16:36

met or how many available

1:16:39

attractive men and women have you met? People

1:16:42

that you think are appropriate for you based

1:16:44

upon your values and your list, have

1:16:46

you met? And if the answer

1:16:48

is two in the last six months, the chances

1:16:50

of you being married two years from now are

1:16:53

very low. On the other

1:16:55

hand, if the answer is 10 in the

1:16:57

last six weeks, then now we've

1:16:59

got pretty good odds and we can go back

1:17:01

and we can analyze those numbers and say, well,

1:17:04

what's going well? What's not

1:17:06

going well? And this is where you

1:17:08

could be coached further with

1:17:10

appropriate texture. If you're a

1:17:13

guy, I met 10 women who were unmarried,

1:17:15

seemed like the kind of people that I

1:17:17

would be interested in getting

1:17:19

to know and dating

1:17:21

to see if there would be a relationship there. I

1:17:23

asked 10 women out and all 10 said no. All

1:17:26

right, well, something's wrong. Why did

1:17:28

10 out of 10 say no to you? And

1:17:31

are you a weirdo? Do you come

1:17:34

across as obsessive? Like, again, serious, not

1:17:36

obsessed. We don't want to be a weirdo. We don't

1:17:38

want to pull off bad vibes.

1:17:41

Are you? And I'm not going to

1:17:43

go down, but you can analyze it. What

1:17:45

you can't do necessarily is

1:17:47

have any luck if someone

1:17:49

says I've met zero women in the last six weeks

1:17:51

and I don't care. Well, you're

1:17:53

not going to be married six years from now if you

1:17:55

don't change that. So you need to

1:17:57

change number one, who you are. something

1:18:00

unattractive about who you are to your

1:18:02

ideal spouse. Number two, you need to

1:18:04

change where you are and be spending

1:18:06

time in places where your potential candidates

1:18:08

are likely to be. Remember

1:18:11

the saying, what gets measured gets managed.

1:18:14

If you can see that something, that

1:18:18

if you did something, that that

1:18:20

could likely lead to better outcomes for

1:18:22

a goal that you are seeking. And

1:18:25

if it's something that you're capable of

1:18:27

measuring, then it's something that you should

1:18:29

measure so that you could manage it.

1:18:33

And measuring yourself against the attributes

1:18:35

that you think your perfect

1:18:39

potential spouse would value in you so

1:18:41

that you can manage them is good. And

1:18:44

then measuring the number of potential

1:18:46

candidates that you meet through your

1:18:48

activities and through what you're doing

1:18:50

in life, that's also

1:18:52

something that could lead to the

1:18:54

initiation of a relationship.

1:18:57

Not everything is math, but

1:18:59

you can develop the skills that are necessary.

1:19:02

And if you can measure these things, then you

1:19:04

can coach yourself into what skills do you need

1:19:07

to do. You may need

1:19:09

to develop social skills of meeting people,

1:19:11

striking up a conversation, asking someone out.

1:19:13

You may need to develop social skills

1:19:15

of creating an intimate

1:19:18

communication in relationship. You need, there's

1:19:20

all kinds of skills, but all

1:19:22

of these are projects. These are

1:19:24

things that can be done. And

1:19:27

there is no person in the

1:19:29

world who with time, practice, focus,

1:19:31

a little bit of outside analysis

1:19:33

and good coaching and focus on

1:19:35

skill set development, can't develop all

1:19:37

of the skills necessary to initiate

1:19:40

a successful romantic relationship, lead

1:19:42

it into and through marriage, found a

1:19:44

family, all of those things are totally

1:19:46

possible. So regardless of whether it's as easy

1:19:49

as it once was or

1:19:51

not, it is possible and

1:19:53

it can be done and it can be

1:19:55

done by any person. There are

1:19:57

certain factors that make it naturally easier.

1:20:00

And you may or may not have those factors,

1:20:02

but it doesn't matter. You

1:20:05

have the factors that you have and you

1:20:07

should focus on moving them forward. By

1:20:09

way of review, what I suggest,

1:20:11

step one, make a

1:20:14

list of your perfect ideal

1:20:16

spouse and all of her

1:20:18

characteristics, attributes, qualities, features, everything.

1:20:22

Number two, make a list

1:20:24

of the kind of person that

1:20:26

your ideal spouse would likely be

1:20:29

attracted to, everything that you

1:20:31

can think of, especially based upon what

1:20:33

you described as important. Number

1:20:35

three, compare yourself as

1:20:37

objectively as possible to that ideal

1:20:40

man or ideal person and

1:20:44

figure out where your strengths are and

1:20:46

where your weaknesses are and work on

1:20:48

your weaknesses as best you are able

1:20:50

to. Number four, make

1:20:53

a list of where your ideal

1:20:55

spouse spends time and is in

1:20:58

this moment and then ask

1:21:00

yourself, how much time am I actually

1:21:02

spending in that place? Then

1:21:07

track the number of potential candidates

1:21:09

that you are meeting by

1:21:12

being in that place and

1:21:14

then track the results of what happens.

1:21:17

An example that is really good for younger people,

1:21:20

especially I want to speak to younger men for

1:21:22

a moment. If you are a younger

1:21:24

man, there is a

1:21:26

very high probability that

1:21:28

the woman that you would consider to

1:21:30

be a dream wife is

1:21:33

in a college somewhere. In

1:21:36

our current environment, most

1:21:38

intelligent, capable, hardworking women are

1:21:40

going to go to college.

1:21:43

Women are going to college at a rate twice as high as men

1:21:46

and they are likely to be in college.

1:21:49

You can filter colleges based

1:21:51

upon ideology. Many

1:21:55

colleges will attract certain kinds of people and repel

1:21:57

certain kinds of people. type

1:22:00

of woman that you are looking for, she's

1:22:02

probably going to be in a certain college. The

1:22:06

best thing to do, especially when you are young,

1:22:08

is probably to be in that kind of environment.

1:22:11

I don't want to focus on a

1:22:13

long discourse of this, but this is

1:22:16

important because remember back to phases of

1:22:18

life. If you're 18, 20, 22 years old, 24

1:22:20

years old, 27 years old, it's relatively easy for you to

1:22:26

be in college. It's much different

1:22:28

for you to naturally interact with dozens

1:22:31

and dozens and dozens of people who

1:22:33

might be a high quality spouse for

1:22:35

you. On the other hand, if

1:22:37

you're 40 years old, it's much more difficult for you

1:22:39

to be in that environment. This

1:22:42

is one of the things that timing matters. My

1:22:44

point of spending time in it is one of

1:22:47

the strategies that I think is a good strategy

1:22:49

for people to consider, especially for men who often

1:22:52

have a very difficult time with online

1:22:54

dating, is how can you get yourself

1:22:56

into an appropriate college environment? Go

1:22:58

ahead and take a master's degree. Work out

1:23:01

at the on-campus gym. Make sure

1:23:03

you have a legitimate non-creepy reason to

1:23:05

be in the college environment and then

1:23:07

meet lots of people. It's relatively easy

1:23:09

as a guy to meet

1:23:11

a dozen new girls per week around

1:23:13

the college environment, whereas if you're 35

1:23:15

years old and you're working 70 hours

1:23:17

a week, it's much more

1:23:20

difficult for you to meet a

1:23:22

dozen new girls per week without

1:23:24

some other elaborate system of introductions.

1:23:27

Go through this process and check

1:23:29

yourself, meaning rate yourself, track

1:23:31

how many people did

1:23:33

I meet, what happened in those conversations.

1:23:35

I met a girl at the gym.

1:23:37

We had a short conversation. It was

1:23:39

pleasant. It was great,

1:23:42

but here's what happened. Then see what

1:23:44

is happening in terms of moving the relationship forward.

1:23:48

That's the process that is useful. If

1:23:51

you go through that process, probably by now, even

1:23:53

in your mind, you automatically know

1:23:56

some things that you could or would change

1:23:58

that might help you get a better relationship.

1:24:00

outcome of a potential spouse. I

1:24:03

would love it if you would stop

1:24:05

now and do those exercises before

1:24:07

you hear what I'm about to say. Let me tell

1:24:09

you what I'm about to say so that you can

1:24:11

stop if it would be appropriate. I'm

1:24:14

going to give you some specifics that

1:24:16

are broadly applicable, specifics for men and

1:24:18

specifics for women, that are things that

1:24:20

will help you to be generally more

1:24:23

attractive. And I'm doing this because

1:24:25

this is what I wish that I wish that

1:24:27

I had had when I was younger. When I

1:24:29

was younger, I was not serious about finding a

1:24:31

wife. It just happened because I ended up in

1:24:34

the natural environment and I met

1:24:36

a woman that I clicked with and

1:24:38

it happens naturally. That's what happens for

1:24:40

most people and what happened in

1:24:43

the past. But I didn't

1:24:45

come from a culture that was as broken around

1:24:47

dating as the current culture and so I didn't

1:24:49

need this strong plan. The current

1:24:52

dating culture is increasingly broken and it's

1:24:54

broken a lot since I was in

1:24:56

college. It's gotten much more difficult

1:24:58

for young men and women and that's why

1:25:00

I'm spending more time on it. But

1:25:02

I wish still in hindsight I look

1:25:04

back and I think why didn't somebody

1:25:06

tell me how important some of these

1:25:08

factors were? And so I try

1:25:11

to do my job to coach young

1:25:13

men and young women on some

1:25:15

of the factors that while not

1:25:17

any one of them is the

1:25:19

factor, it's the collection of these

1:25:21

traits and features that are

1:25:23

probably going to influence the outcomes that

1:25:26

you have. And when I

1:25:28

interact with people who are not successful

1:25:31

with women or not successful with

1:25:33

men, it's

1:25:36

rare to find people who are

1:25:38

maximizing these characteristics and attributes that

1:25:42

are having that level of success. I want you to

1:25:44

listen to what I'm going to continue on with but

1:25:47

I would love it if you would make your own

1:25:49

lists first. So if you're going to do

1:25:51

this exercise, you're the kind of person that does it, pause

1:25:54

the episode, go through, spend the next

1:25:56

three or four weeks doing these exercises

1:25:58

that I've described for you. and

1:26:00

then come back and listen to what I'm about

1:26:02

to say. If you're the kind

1:26:05

of person who never stops when someone says

1:26:07

stop then just listen but just know that

1:26:09

I'm gonna probably pollute your mind a little

1:26:11

bit with giving you attributes and characteristics that

1:26:14

are broadly influential on most

1:26:16

male and female relationships. Pausing

1:26:19

now so you can stop the episode 5 4 3

1:26:22

2 1. I'm going to give

1:26:29

you a list of characteristics and what I'm

1:26:32

going to share with you is not original with

1:26:34

me. It comes from

1:26:36

an awkwardly

1:26:38

titled YouTube channel called Ho

1:26:41

Math. Ho

1:26:43

Math has become a very large

1:26:45

producer on TikTok and on YouTube

1:26:48

and is increasingly growing

1:26:50

and back around last

1:26:54

year in December which is

1:26:56

actually when the video that I'm referencing

1:26:58

and drawing from came out. I

1:27:01

came across this channel and I

1:27:03

immediately saw that this particular channel

1:27:05

in our current moment is

1:27:08

an extremely useful and

1:27:10

somewhat balanced perspective on

1:27:13

relationship formation in the current

1:27:15

world. There are

1:27:17

if you're looking for coaches or

1:27:19

guides on relationship formation we face

1:27:22

an enormous problem and

1:27:24

let me describe the problem to you

1:27:26

so that you can understand where to

1:27:28

go for advice. The first problem is

1:27:30

that the dating marketplace, the

1:27:32

sexual marketplace for young people who are

1:27:35

dating has been

1:27:37

completely transformed in the

1:27:39

last decade for a

1:27:41

variety of features and so many older

1:27:43

people, my generation and older, who are

1:27:45

not paying attention they don't

1:27:48

understand how much things have

1:27:50

changed, genuinely changed. There

1:27:53

are many reasons for this but just

1:27:56

something as simple as social

1:27:58

media has completely transformed male

1:28:01

and female relationships from

1:28:04

being kind of a natural thing where you

1:28:06

interacted with people who were in your social

1:28:08

sphere to now young men and

1:28:10

women are accessing people from all around the world.

1:28:14

In former times, it was very normal that you

1:28:16

went to high school, you went to college, your

1:28:20

social circle was limited by those you were in high

1:28:22

school with and those you were in college with and

1:28:25

that the people that you

1:28:27

interacted with were drawn from

1:28:30

that limited social circle. Well, today

1:28:32

that's entirely different. Today,

1:28:35

any man and most importantly any

1:28:37

woman can go online, create a

1:28:39

profile and instantly, generally the women,

1:28:42

receive male attention from people all

1:28:44

around the world. And

1:28:46

so this has dramatically changed

1:28:49

relationship dynamics for young

1:28:51

men and women that now as a young

1:28:53

man, you're not just in competition

1:28:55

with the people that you're in your high school

1:28:58

class or your college environment, you're now in competition

1:29:00

with people from all around the world at all

1:29:02

different ages. And so this

1:29:05

has changed the dynamics. Older

1:29:07

people generally, unless

1:29:10

they're paying attention, don't have an asking

1:29:12

young people for their experience, don't

1:29:14

have an accurate view of where things are at

1:29:16

the moment. The next thing that you have to

1:29:19

filter for is basically

1:29:21

ideology or philosophy. We

1:29:23

are becoming a more segregated

1:29:26

society where people

1:29:28

of an intense ideology are congregating together.

1:29:31

And so you can have this for men

1:29:33

and for women. I'm most familiar with the

1:29:35

male space. But let's say that I

1:29:37

become a red-pilled

1:29:40

in-cell MGTOW guy. And

1:29:43

so I spend all my time consuming MGTOW,

1:29:45

which is an acronym, MGTOW Men Going Their

1:29:47

Own Way, and I'm spending all my time

1:29:49

with the red-pilled MGTOW folks, and that's all

1:29:52

I listen to. I can do this

1:29:54

when I'm young. I can do this when I'm older.

1:29:56

Usually with the younger guys, it winds up being the

1:29:58

pickup artist space. and

1:30:00

basically the sleep with as many women

1:30:02

as possible and abuse them space, Andrew

1:30:06

Tate and many

1:30:08

people in his sphere would

1:30:10

be emblematic of this. If you're

1:30:12

an older guy, then it becomes the

1:30:14

divorced folks, it becomes the entrepreneurs

1:30:16

and cars people and all of the 40s

1:30:19

and 50 year old guys. And

1:30:21

what happens is you get into this echo chamber.

1:30:23

So you watch one video and the algorithm feeds

1:30:25

you another video. And six months

1:30:27

later, you basically despise women and

1:30:30

you just despise women and you

1:30:32

become totally toxic to women because

1:30:35

of your misogynistic despising

1:30:37

of women. And

1:30:39

you look at some of the people who talk

1:30:41

about this, just becomes a self reinforcing expression

1:30:45

of it. Whereas meanwhile, guys who are

1:30:47

happily married and appreciate women, they tend

1:30:49

to be pretty attractive to women because

1:30:51

they appreciate women and they don't just

1:30:54

look down on women. And I'm

1:30:56

sure that there's a similar effect in

1:30:58

female circles where I'm

1:31:01

generally pretty repulsed by hardcore,

1:31:03

concurred feminist types. And they

1:31:06

wanna repulse me, they wanna repel

1:31:08

me. And so I'm repulsed by them. But

1:31:11

if they're on, what happens is that

1:31:13

they're not receiving energy from people like

1:31:15

me who I consider myself

1:31:17

a fairly upstanding virtuous man of

1:31:19

integrity who appreciates and who attracts,

1:31:22

excuse me, who is respectful of women and

1:31:24

I have opinions and

1:31:26

ideas that she might disagree with

1:31:29

but I treat women with respect

1:31:31

in all circumstances. And

1:31:33

so she's repelling guys like me but

1:31:35

then she's gonna create a sphere group

1:31:38

of guys who don't have that perspective

1:31:40

to her and who would

1:31:42

mistreat her. And so it's no surprise

1:31:45

that two or three years later she

1:31:47

winds up hating men because of this.

1:31:49

After all, that's what she's been exposed

1:31:51

to. I watched this happen to

1:31:53

a friend of mine that

1:31:55

I graduated from, a friend

1:31:58

of mine from school moved to New York. York

1:32:00

wound up in kind of this

1:32:02

super ambitious culture

1:32:05

that was very unfriendly to marriage

1:32:08

and kind of just natural relationships.

1:32:10

Today she's a blue-haired lesbian, you

1:32:12

know, feminist type and it's a

1:32:14

totally natural thing. But she

1:32:17

wasn't that way. There was nothing innate about

1:32:19

her that was that way. It

1:32:21

was that the culture that she got involved in

1:32:23

changed her. And so we want to be careful

1:32:25

of cultural influences. And today,

1:32:28

since we all choose our cultural voices to

1:32:30

a degree based upon who we choose to

1:32:32

pay attention to, it's really important that we

1:32:34

develop filtering mechanisms for people that

1:32:36

have a balance because—and an appreciation,

1:32:39

a knowledge, and a balance. I

1:32:42

say all that to say that I think Ho Math,

1:32:44

as much as I don't like saying the name of

1:32:46

his channel and his

1:32:49

platform, is one of those guys

1:32:51

who's probably a useful and insightful observer

1:32:53

because of his own experience and because

1:32:55

of what he's done. So he published

1:32:57

this video back in December

1:33:00

of 2023 called Zones, version 3, the most

1:33:02

useful relationship map in history. I'll link to

1:33:04

it in the show notes. And

1:33:07

in this he goes over a diagram

1:33:09

that he drew that I think is

1:33:12

broadly useful to

1:33:14

understand male and female attraction. It's

1:33:18

not—when I say you're smart enough

1:33:20

to understand words like broadly, like broadly this

1:33:22

is useful. And

1:33:25

because it's broadly useful, I consider it

1:33:27

an important thing to discuss.

1:33:29

You can watch the original version. I would encourage you

1:33:32

to watch the original version. I'm just going to go

1:33:34

over some of the factors that you

1:33:36

might want to consider in

1:33:38

terms of assessing why am I unable to

1:33:40

attract the kind of person that

1:33:42

I want to attract. And

1:33:45

these factors are different for men

1:33:47

and for women. I'm going

1:33:49

to begin with what

1:33:52

men are attracted to in women

1:33:54

because they are somewhat

1:33:57

simpler. When I say simpler, we're going

1:33:59

to do it. One of the

1:34:01

insights that I think is

1:34:03

useful from this particular relationship

1:34:05

map is

1:34:07

the introduction of

1:34:09

texture to say that men analyze

1:34:12

women differently than women analyze

1:34:14

men. From

1:34:17

my experience and observation, I think this

1:34:19

is true. For

1:34:26

the kind of woman that a man is

1:34:28

attracted to, men basically have one scale. We

1:34:30

can label it as zero to 10. And

1:34:33

in the actual

1:34:36

video, homemath

1:34:38

goes through different levels as far

1:34:41

as the kinds of relationships that

1:34:43

men will engage in with women.

1:34:46

As someone who's mostly interested in marriage, I

1:34:48

understand we need to be aware of this,

1:34:50

but I'm mostly interested in helping people to

1:34:52

get to marriage, not to just multiple relationships.

1:34:55

But the point is that men could

1:34:58

rate women, and do rate women, on

1:35:00

a scale of zero to 10, on a

1:35:02

single scale, and that the

1:35:04

features in this scale are

1:35:07

additive. Men have one meter

1:35:09

to say, are you a keeper? Are

1:35:11

you a seven and over that I'm gonna commit to?

1:35:14

Or are you not? And if

1:35:17

you're gonna be a 10, it's

1:35:21

the accumulation of these features.

1:35:24

Now, going from most important

1:35:26

to least important for

1:35:28

men, we can factor

1:35:30

these in. So according to Homath's chart, he would

1:35:33

say that the most important thing for men, where

1:35:35

you get the most points, is

1:35:37

your body, as a woman's body. And

1:35:39

so a body would include factors such as

1:35:42

body type. She have a body type that

1:35:44

I'm attracted to, her voice, how does she

1:35:46

speak, fitness, level of

1:35:48

personal fitness, the attractiveness

1:35:51

of her face, her hair,

1:35:54

pheromones, or just a general sense,

1:35:56

and chemistry. Then you

1:35:58

have personality, general, men

1:36:00

are attracted to women who are supportive, who

1:36:03

are helpful, who are

1:36:05

reliable, women who are interesting,

1:36:08

who are talented, who are fun

1:36:10

to be with, who have a high

1:36:12

IQ, who are intelligent, and who

1:36:15

are emotional bonding. Then

1:36:18

you have the factors related to purity.

1:36:21

So is she a woman who is loyal to me? What

1:36:24

is her history with men, her sexual

1:36:26

history? What baggage does she

1:36:28

bring to the table of her life? Is

1:36:31

she modest? Does she express modesty? Is

1:36:34

she innocent? Is she willing to be

1:36:36

exclusive with me? Does she want children?

1:36:39

Does she have a lot of guy, quote unquote,

1:36:41

friends that she indulges in her life?

1:36:43

And then small factors that barely

1:36:46

matter at all to men such

1:36:48

as there's certain conveniences or possessions

1:36:50

or quirks about her. And

1:36:52

the idea is that these things are cumulative.

1:36:55

Any one factor is

1:36:57

something that is going to be the factor.

1:36:59

But for a man, if he looks at

1:37:01

the overall package and says, okay,

1:37:04

she's got a body type that I'm attracted

1:37:06

to, she's in good shape, we seem to

1:37:08

have good chemistry, she's got hair I like,

1:37:11

maybe her face is not naturally the

1:37:13

most beautiful, but it's acceptable. She's

1:37:16

super supportive, she makes me feel strong

1:37:18

and confident in myself. She's really

1:37:20

fun to be around, she's loyal to me,

1:37:22

she doesn't have a lot of baggage, she's

1:37:24

generally modest, she treats me well, she wants

1:37:26

children. A man says, she's great,

1:37:28

I'm going to marry her. And it's one dimension

1:37:30

that is cumulative. So if you're a

1:37:32

woman who is looking to attract a man, I would encourage

1:37:35

you, go through that list that I just read to you

1:37:37

and look through the list and ask yourself,

1:37:39

how can I optimize each of these things?

1:37:42

And men will tell you if you ask them. The

1:37:45

problem that many young women who desire

1:37:47

to marry today is that they're optimizing

1:37:49

for things that men don't value. They're

1:37:52

optimizing for things that society is optimizing

1:37:55

for men, and men are

1:37:57

not generally attracted to

1:37:59

men. They're attracted to women. And

1:38:02

so this is why if you're a woman and

1:38:04

you're in good shape and you are encouraging

1:38:07

to a man and you build his confidence

1:38:09

and you're supportive of him and

1:38:11

you wear a cute dress and you cook a great

1:38:13

meal, good

1:38:15

chance that he's seeing you as wife material.

1:38:17

And he's not so impressed by the fact

1:38:20

that you're the president of the XYZ Society

1:38:22

and that you've written four books and published

1:38:24

those things because those things are not that

1:38:27

big a deal to him. They're not

1:38:29

unimportant. They're an expression of your IQ

1:38:31

and your talent and things like that,

1:38:33

but they're not that important. So consider

1:38:36

these features and optimize for them. I

1:38:38

think you can do both if you're

1:38:40

a woman who is really interested in

1:38:43

your professional development and you're very much

1:38:45

focused on pursuing your career. All that

1:38:47

is great, but you also need to

1:38:49

adapt to the feminine qualities that men

1:38:52

appreciate and bring those things to him

1:38:55

for him to be attracted to you. The point is

1:38:57

that there's one meter and

1:38:59

it's a cumulative matter

1:39:02

of these factors. So if

1:39:04

you're lacking in one factor that is

1:39:06

attractive to your ideal husband,

1:39:08

if you can improve the

1:39:11

other factors that are under your control, then

1:39:13

you can do that and be fine. Now

1:39:16

switching now for the

1:39:19

male audience of the things

1:39:21

that are attractive to women, especially

1:39:24

someone to whom you're

1:39:26

going to marry. Because for

1:39:28

men who want to marry a woman,

1:39:31

it seems as though things can go

1:39:33

wrong on multiple levels. What

1:39:36

I mean is it can go wrong in the sense

1:39:38

that you're just not attracted to women, period,

1:39:40

and no woman wants to be with you.

1:39:43

On the other hand, you can have a

1:39:45

woman who wants to be with you, but she's not

1:39:48

willing to marry you. Or

1:39:50

you might find someone who likes to be with

1:39:52

you, but she's not willing to be in a

1:39:54

romantic relationship with you. And the

1:39:57

insight that I appreciate from what Ho Math

1:39:59

created is that according

1:40:01

to him, there are

1:40:03

two metrics by which

1:40:05

women evaluate men. They

1:40:08

are the metrics of security, or

1:40:11

what we can call a good

1:40:13

guy score, and the metrics of

1:40:15

attraction, or what we can call

1:40:18

a bad boy score. And

1:40:20

both of these are generally important to

1:40:22

women. If a

1:40:24

man provides high degrees of

1:40:27

security, but

1:40:29

he's a good guy, but he

1:40:31

doesn't provide high degrees of attraction,

1:40:34

then he winds up friend-zoned.

1:40:38

And that was one of the things that

1:40:40

I didn't understand when I was in college.

1:40:42

I was friend-zoned continually because I was always

1:40:44

high security and low attraction. I

1:40:47

didn't understand that you had to optimize for

1:40:49

both of those things in order to attract

1:40:51

the attention of women. Now I

1:40:53

subconsciously optimized for both of those things with

1:40:55

my wife based upon the way that our

1:40:57

relationship emerged. Today I can look

1:40:59

back and I can see that, but I was blind

1:41:01

to it at the time. I thought,

1:41:03

well, I want to be a good guy. And

1:41:06

if I'm a good guy, then those would be

1:41:08

the things that would be attractive to women. And

1:41:11

I was a good guy who got friend-zoned

1:41:13

continually. It's important for men

1:41:15

to understand this because it's utterly maddening

1:41:17

if you think that what women are looking

1:41:20

for is just good guys. And you think,

1:41:22