SLO MO REWIND: Alain de Botton on How to Keep Your Partner Happy

28:34It's like, what is this business with the poor? Why do the poor have this role? Again, it's to do with pride. So by poor, one really ultimately means people who've lost everything and who therefore, because they've lost, they've lost their hold on the standard narrative of success. It's not going to work for them anymore. They've thrown that out of the window. They are in this new space. And that's a space of radical honesty, of authenticity, and that's where they've got nothing left to lose. And that's when there can be true love and true knowledge of oneself and knowledge of another. But it's very hard when one's on the app and one's on TV, as it were.

29:14It's very hard at those moments. One's a fake. So the challenge I have is that if you look at that script of romanticism and how our 20th century has evolved that script through movies and Hollywood and stories that are being told in a very specific way and novels that are always written around jealousy and adultery and betrayal and all of that, because that's the drama moment that draws the audience in. And then the current evolution of that script into modern world dating, modern world hookups, modern world relationship definitions, which are actually quite interestingly opposite almost to romanticism, but not in the direction of love.

29:58Where do you think we're going with all of this? Look, I think there are some attempts to broaden the conversation around what, let's say, a normal sexuality is. I think in the United States, polyamory and I think is still considered a sin by 92 % of the population. So I think this is quite a long way to go. But look, in some areas, there's an attempt, you know, which really begins in the West with psychoanalysis in the early 20th century, where people are trying to say, there's this thing called sex. It's very weird. It makes us want to do very weird things. Let's stop moralizing. Let's just try and understand it in an unfrightened way.

30:42Let's try and look at some of the weird stuff it wants us to do. And even if we don't do it, We just want to be curious about it. And I think we're still a long way off true honesty as a culture about what we're like. The price of honesty still seems too high. Do you believe there is a difference between female and male in the concept of love? There seems to be differences in the concept of sexuality, which I actually debate, to be honest. I don't think there's any difference. if you define love as a longing for self-honesty and a meeting with another, I think both genders want this. I think there are hurdles in terms of getting there, but I think that they're equally, you know, I don't necessarily buy the myth that sort of women are more open, men are less open.

31:33I've known plenty of open men and unopened women and vice versa. I don't think it's an interesting generalization. I think it's a challenge for everybody. But I think, yes, I think the longing for love is universal and quite similar. Sexually, I don't know. And again, it's part of wanting to be known. And people will want all sorts of things. I totally agree. I think the distinction is because we at a level minus one, if you want, one level lower, one level deeper, we may want different things. A man may want to be a little more dominant a woman may want to be or the female the feminine of the relationship might want to be a little more owned or held or sometimes dominated which is in the last few years has become more and more accepted as a conversation not as a generalization but sometimes this is the case and it's become more accepted but at one level higher if you want either party either side is attempting to express what they are openly and be accepted and find someone that enjoys it So there are women that want to be dominated and there are men that want to be dominated.

32:40And there is absolutely no distinction that is gender based because gender itself is quite fluid, if you want. And I think what happens is that the real deep attempt here is I want to express my sexuality openly with you. And if there is chemistry, you will actually like the things that I want to do to you. And I will like the things that you want to do to me. And then we have that relationship. And I think that may not always be the same person with whom you're able to talk about other things. So there can be two people who really have a wonderful connection psychologically, but one wants to be chained and hit, and the other just, that's really, really, really not their thing.

33:24And I think, again, there should be no shame. It's like, okay, we want different things, actually. So no one's a bad person. I think that, as I say, sexuality is such an area where we're surrounded by shame and so-and-so is good and bad and this is good or bad, et cetera. If we could just accept our fundamental goodness and move on from there. Fundamental goodness is such an interesting term here because, sadly, I mean, where I come from in the Middle East and most of the emerging markets, believe it or not, perhaps other than Latin America, there is such a taboo around the topic of sex that children growing up are constantly told, this is the worst thing ever.

34:03You really have to hate it. It's like the only way you can sort of prevent against it is to say it's horrible. It's the worst thing that can ever happen to you. And if you're together with a man and you're pregnant, we're going to kill you. And that's start to hate sex. And there is interestingly no real point in the life of a person where that sort of little lie is corrected. It's like, imagine if the parents would go 14 weeks before the wedding and go like, you know, that stuff that we told you about, that was not true. Forget it. Sex is actually wonderful and you can open up. And if you're with the person that you really love, that's amazing.

34:37And so this leaves serious trauma. And to describe it differently is quite an interesting way for you to put it. It's terrible. And of course, it's so different from how a parent loves a small child. The small child is pure and innocent in the parent's eyes. There's nothing that a small child can do that is going to be bad. Maybe if the child throws the cake on the floor, well, it's one of those things, et cetera. But then sex comes along in adolescence. Suddenly, it's the birth of something. If we were able to continue to see sexuality as fundamentally pure. Yes, it is a powerful force. Yes, other people can get hurt.

35:21Yes, we need to take great care, etc. But this is not a sin. It's not a coincidence the religions will see it as a sin. It's a temptation of the mind. And it takes an awful lot of maturity and courage to, again, I mean, you've said it so well, it's about self-acceptance. But so is cheesecake. I mean, think about it. In reality, it's quite peculiar the way we have cheesecake and then we smudge our faces and then it comes in there and it becomes poop. If you really think of that whole process of our physical form, it's quite weird, but it's reasonably accepted to have two pieces. It's like, that's fine.

35:56No problem at all. Yes, absolutely. And those who know, think of undertakers. An undertaker knows everything about the body and our bodily self or a nurse. Think of a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. That nurse will know everything about what we're like, our desperation, our cries. That person is like God's creature kind of thing, because they will know, they will accept and remain kind. These are the people, these are the true beacons of acceptance and of knowledge of what a human really is in all their extremes and extremities. But there is something not to be ignored here, Alain. So love and sex are a big reason for unhappiness in the modern world.

36:45In reality, among my friends, especially in the 20s and 30s, there is constant disappointment. There is constant pain, if you want. And there is constant confusion about, will I ever find my soulmate, the romantic perception of what love is all about? And there is something that needs to be fixed about this. something that we need to see differently. Part of the problem is people are lonely and they want to make a connection. But the world tells them the person that you can make a connection with will be one special romantic partner you'll meet on Tinder or etc. And you'll have that special feeling and you go on a date and you go on one date and that's when you'll find whether there's connection or else you dump them and you move on to something else, etc.

37:31The thing is, we're really, really confused. Imagine if we changed the rules And we said, okay, young people, old people, we're going to change what the whole game is about. The game is, first of all, not about finding one special person, because we just decided that's not really an interesting game to play. And it's not even really about having sex. It's just like, let's just park that for the moment. Let's worry about that. This is a game in which we're going to try and find connection. Okay, that's really the game of life. Try and find connection. It could be with someone who's very old, who's very young, who's the same gender, a different gender.

38:03It doesn't matter. It's just like human connection. That's what we're going to try and find. And we're going to give you tools. One of those tools is knowing how to talk to people. Most of us don't know how to speak. We don't know how to reveal the bits of our personality that are going to be required in order to connect with another person. We don't know how to do it. No one's trained us. We're too scared. We don't know ourselves. So we are helpless. We're going to be useless on a date because we don't we've never been inside how can we how can we connect we can't even get we haven't got the language and we haven't got the tools so we need to skill ourselves up so that we are actually capable of connection and then it starts to matter much less if so and so is hot or not or so and so is this or that or that this starts to diminish okay so maybe they're hot an added bonus but oh my god we had such a fascinating conversation we connected and we start to do away with this lover, not lover thing.

39:00Either they're a lover and she's fantastic or they're not a lover and she's so boring, et cetera. And we're just on the hunt for rich connections. And it's not about like, oh, they're in the friend zone. Let's do away with this rotten paradigm of sexual partner, very special, amazing, romantic hero, or no one, nobody, maybe a casual friend you go to a party with. It's like, no, no, no. We are connecting creatures and that's the glory, that's the honey, that's the nectar that we're seeking. Anytime you get that, you've hit the jackpot. And that's what our aim should be. I will tell you openly, if you ask me, this is truly, this is how the game is.

39:40As a matter of fact, in my previous relationships, the one thing that would really, really kill me is if a romantic relationship with one person would prevent me from having connection with others. To me, true love, and this is why I often tell people, I love everything and everyone. I really do. I mean, I love you, man. I think you're an amazing person. I don't have any sexual intentions or living together intentions, you and I, but I feel that same feeling. I feel for butterflies. I feel for my son and I feel for a romantic partner. It's almost the same fabric to me. And the idea of being a connection junkie, to me, is where I think that whole concept of romanticism has broken up our world.

40:23Not only between couples, because they're chasing a target that is almost impossible, but for the rest of us, because that target somehow has the exclusivity. And by the way, if you're connecting with me, you're not supposed to be connecting with anyone else. That's too scary, right? And that is such a broken system because the way you describe it by saying, let's separate sexuality from the rest of it, somehow then everything becomes easy. It's like, you know, I'm going to have a coffee with a friend. What difference does it make if that friend is male or female? Where does the jealousy come from?

40:56This is the irony of the terrible irony of jealousy. So jealousy is a desire to hold on more firmly to somebody who seems to be drifting away. And so the impulse is to say, you're drifting away from me. So what I will do is throw away your phone, lock you up, prevent you from going out, etc. And that will help you to be close to me. And of course, it's a doomed venture. Let's remember, we are connecting creatures. So what is the best possible way to increase connection and therefore decrease jealousy? It's to increase knowledge and a feeling of acceptance. So let's imagine I'm with somebody and I feel I'm getting attracted to somebody else.

41:41What's going to make me, hypothetical scenario, what's going to make me keener to stay with the original person? Is it being banned from seeing them? No, of course it's not. The thing that's going to make me close is if I'm able to be honest about my attraction to somebody else. If I'm able to be honest about my attraction to somebody else, that's such a gift. Oh my God, you have listened with patience and understanding to the complexity of my feelings. I didn't know that this was going to happen. It seems to have happened. But you haven't censored me. You haven't shamed me. Therefore, my love for you is greater because you've allowed me to be more of myself.

42:22But your ownership of me changes. Yes, it ceases to be a practical ownership and it becomes an emotional connection, which is ultimately what we want. We can try and tie each other up and put legal bows around each other, but that doesn't do anything, ultimately. The only thing that guarantees a couple is that mutual honesty and acceptance and knowledge. You can have seven houses and businesses and legal agreements. It's all going to blow up unless you're able to do that work. I always think the best guarantee of keeping your partner faithful is to allow them to explore the way in many ways in which quite naturally they want to be unfaithful.

43:05That's a massive statement. That is a massive statement. So I fell in love with my college sweetheart. We spent 28 years together. And I still today, I mean, we've not been together for five years. and I still will say publicly in front of everyone, she's the most amazing woman I ever met, right? So, you know, every human being will every now and then come across another attractive person and go like, ah, that's so interesting. But I constantly, even in those situations, would compare to my Nibel and say, oh my God, but Nibel is so much better. Nibel is so much closer to me. She allows me this growth that we grew together over 28 years and my choice would always be to go back to Nibel, to go back.

43:49Like I don't actually even deviate. I would stay closer to Nibel. And it wasn't because she locked me down. I was traveling all the time. I could have done anything I wanted. It's because she was always that person that allowed me that freedom to choose but really gave me no choice because she was so much better than everyone else. That's right. And that's beautiful. And if only couples understood this, There would be so much less pain and misery. But my goodness, it takes courage on both parts to think, as you say, if you can offer somebody a chance of growth and self-knowledge, that's a superpower.

44:28You don't need to look a million dollars. You don't need to lock somebody up in a contract, et cetera. You will have a superpower that others generally do not have. You will be way ahead of the competition. And, you know, sometimes you do see couples that are so solid and you think, why are they so solid? What is it that ties them? And it's because they have that. They have that capacity to grow together, be honest together, connect together. And it doesn't matter what life's going to throw at them. They're going to have that. My problem with the modern world is we don't even know that's something we want and need.

45:05So we're not even training for it. In order to make a good athlete, you have to know what the sport is and what the rules are. We haven't defined the sport or the rules. So we don't have many great athletes in this area. It's by chance. Someone throws a javelin, by chance. But we haven't defined. So this is one of the goals before us to try and define how we might do this. Yeah, I mean, by chance and very, very, very slim chance when you really think about it. So statistics will say, I don't know, one of every two couples will break up marriages. I think 50 % of marriages end up in divorce or something like that.

45:38But that actually doesn't count the dates. And from a mathematical point of view, if you count the number of times people get together for a day, a week, a month, and then separate and add that to the statistics, it's almost like the reports we get on coronavirus where people are not reporting that they got it. But truly, I would probably say 99 out of every 100 get-togethers end up in separation. And then of the one that remains, 50 % end up in divorce. which is statistically saying that there is something wrong with the way we're handling this. And you're absolutely right. I found that the couples that stayed, I had an incredible conversation with Lynn Twist the other day, where I asked her how did she stay 53 years married.

46:21And she said, he was always helping me with my life as I was helping him with his. So she had that incredible life where she was touring the world and helping people in need and really working with Mother Teresa and so on. And she would say, when I was away, and he would have a vacation, he would come with me to Ethiopia instead of going to Hawaii and sit on the beach, right? And that gave us that ability to realize that there is more between us, that personal growth, that ability to support each other, than just arguing about the cornflakes, as you said, you know, you make a strange sound when you eat cornflakes in one of your talks.

47:03Yes, that's right. And look, what's striking me is we don't know what we're missing. We look at a couple like that and we think, oh, it's freakish. And ever since the birth of agriculture, what we've tried to do as human beings is to produce on command something that nature seems to only throw up by accident. This is what our minds love to do. But because we're romantics, we don't systematically investigate and we're not rigorous enough. I mean, imagine if we set up a project, an organization a bit like NASA, where we said, okay, we're going to try and figure out what good couples are and how to get more of them.

47:44What are the requirements for good connection? We would come up with amazing results and people would look back and go, oh my God, do you remember that era of history? but people were just desperate. They kept trying to marry in this modern way and they would go out on dates. We would look back like, we look at medieval people trying to do brain surgery. We just say, oh my God, those guys, they just didn't understand anything. And I think we're at that level. I mean, literally, we are at that level. We have not begun to know what the problems are. And I literally think that medieval brain surgery is a good model.

48:21That's the way that we are operating our love lives and we're getting about the same results as for trepanning. So my daughter's 25. What would you tell her? I have to admit, I'm not going to say anything because if I say it, it's going to be daddy speaking. So not me. I want my daughter to find an amazing person in her life. Person that really helps her grow, loves her, makes her, I don't want to say makes her happy, but at least allow her to find her own happiness. What should a 25-year-old do? Well, I think a lot of the work should be in herself, outside, without meeting somebody. It's not just about meeting the special person.

48:59Because I do think that a lot of it is, can she be the person who can understand herself and the mechanics of love as we've defined it as a kind of connection? so that when she meets a quite nice person who maybe has thought about some of these things, but not that deeply, or maybe he's never thought about them, she can show him. She can guide him because she's done it with herself. She's understood what love is in herself. So rather than seeing her as a tabula rasa, she's just waiting for a person to ignite her soul. No, she can deepen her connection with her own deep self and she can become ready for the kind of relationship she will want.

49:48Ultimately, all she will need is a man, if she wants a man, a man who, a person who is open to that journey. But no other qualification is needed. I love this. I love the way that you describe love as a journey. One of the biggest challenges we have, actually, is that most of the script that we get about romanticism is documented in Hollywood movies up to the moment where you fall in love. And that's actually, if you ask someone like me who spent 28 years with a wonderful woman, that was basically the starting point. And man, it was hard work sometimes and it was amazing roller coasters sometimes and it was a ton of fun other times, but it was the journey.

50:32The 28 years was actually the love. It wasn't falling in love. And I think that journey is quite missed. Yes, that's right. We are just collectively as a society at the very, very beginning. We have no clue. That's not very encouraging, Alon. No, but I think it is encouraging. I think so often in many situations we see ourselves as late on in history. We think, ah, we've been around so long, et cetera. We're just getting going as a species. I mean, you have a sense of geological time and how long our species has been around, et cetera. We're just starting. I mean, Homo sapiens, 200 ,000 years.

51:10So 2 ,000 years ago, Jesus was around. It's just the beginning. It's just the start. It's not a long time ago, yeah? It's not a surprise that we should be finding this. So in other words, we should be ready to be pioneers in this area and not feel that we're somehow late to a party that we've not understood. Because often you feel, everyone else knows I'm late at the party. What's going on? I've misunderstood something. No, no, no, no. No one's understood anything. you're a pioneer and let's try and work this out. So that kind of spirit, I think it can be very helpful for us. So one of the things that allow me to really become a happier than average person in life is I actually recognize the non-issues, if you ask me.

51:54The fact that every young person I know, when they break up with their first love, it's like the end of the freaking world. And every person that has broken up with their first love and is just one lover later, they go like, yeah. Yeah. So it happens, like it almost happens 100 % of the time. Like literally, I know very few people in history that died on their deathbed together when they met when they were 16, right? It just doesn't happen that way. So it's a non-issue sometimes to try and take the journey as a journey. What other non-issues do you think there are? What are the other big non-issues that nevertheless seem to trouble a lot of people?

52:31I think the big deal, and again, sadly, there is sort of a gender disadvantage is that women have a bit of an earlier biological clock. And so they start to panic. And now more and more, you know, because I have conversations with tens of thousands of people, it starts too early. So now that whole panic starts to show up, even though I would probably say, in my culture, it showed up when the woman was 18. It's like, are you not married yet? Right? But in the West, it wasn't that way. But today, I get women in their late 20s and early 30s saying, oh my God, I'm late. And the truth is, of course, that's a challenge, but it's a non-issue.

53:09In my view, it is, well, you have one of two choices, honestly, if you think about it from a game theory point of view, you can either find that you spend the rest of your life with and you're not late anymore, or you can just keep looking until you find someone suitable and accept them and then move on from there. And I think if it's positioned that way, then you're somehow able to deal with the situation as a journey, rather than just get bogged down with issues, right? And there are many others. I'm sure you've come across a lot of people that tell you the horror stories they face with love.

53:46Absolutely. But also, you know, outside of love, I mean, there are so many people waste their time wanting to be loved by strangers, for example. Enormous amount of energy is devoted to thinking about what other people think. And it's such a tricky one. Obviously, our evolutionary history has made us very, very sensitive to that. But like many things, those impulses can be overexcited and unhelpfully excited, and it can ruin chunks of our lives, etc. I want to go back to actually a question that really is something that I've been giving a lot of thought to. But before I do that, I normally ask my listeners to remember one thing.

54:26So I'm on a mission to make a billion people happy. If you're with us until now, me and Alon, then you must have found something inspiring in our conversation. So please share it with others. Please tell others what you learned. Please tell them that they need to invest in their happiness. They need to invest in finding themselves. I think this is very important. And you'll be surprised that putting something on social media that helps others find their own happiness is a small step on your side, but it can scale to millions. And so please help us out and spread the word. And I want to ask you a question that I don't have the answer to.

54:59So when you talk to spiritual people or spiritual seekers, maybe not yet spiritual, they'll always tell me, oh, God is love. And my engineering mind understands the sign equal as equal. This is it. If you tell me God is love, then this is it. God is nothing else. And love is nothing else. And that's it. And when I borrow from your analogy around love is connection, where does that concept of God come into that game at all? One way to think of God is God is the total knowledge that there might be of human nature and reality. So each of us has a little silo, a very private bit of this knowledge.

55:47We don't know what's in everybody else's silo. We look nervously over the edge and we wonder what might be in it. We gingerly share a bit of our reality at the best moments of our lives. We're able to do this. God is, as it were, the eye in the sky that looks down and can see the whole shebang, can see everything about everything, has an understanding of the totality of human sexuality, the totality of human desire, the totality of human ambition, of human sadness, of human regret, etc. All of this is known. So in that sense, God is total knowledge and total connection with all the facts and the normally disguised and secretly held bits of human nature.

56:36And, you know, this isn't just a fanciful image. I mean, in religions, this is, of course, why God is such a relief, because, you know, no one understands, but you turn to God and God is hearing. God knows about how you feel about your partner or about your job or about the secret desires. God knows and is able to see and accept. So in that sense, that is a kind of universal love. And in that case, by creating love, you're belonging to that overall top knowledge, is that? Yes, yes, yes. You're exceeding to a little bit of the knowledge of the whole. And I think this is a major impulse in human beings to stumble out of their individual darkness towards a knowledge of the totality before they are plunged back into the blackness.

57:32And of course, we can only have a briefly glimpse a very small bit. And this is some of the agony of being a finite mortal. You know, we know that we're just, we have a flickering candle and our brains are so small and so insufficient to the full kind of mystery that we're plunged into. And we're so lazy, so unable to really gather our mental strengths to take on board what we need to. So I'll close with one of my favorite talks of yours, where you say, look, you know, if you really want to fix your relationship, there are a couple of things, or you said three things, but the two that really stuck with me were treat them as children and laugh about the whole thing.

58:15So what do you mean by treating my adult? Like, you know, if I have a partner and she's fully grown, I'm guessing, I hope, right? And what is that treat her as children thing? Look, I think it's got to do with the interpretation of motives. When we deal with small children, without almost noticing, we are incredibly generous about the motives which they have for doing bad stuff. So if you see a kid behaving badly, your kid especially behaving badly, you will say, it's tired, it's got toothache, it's got a feeling of jealousy, it's something like this, right? Yeah. When you see an adult, you think it's evil.

58:57It's trying to do me down. It's got me in its sights. It's been plotting to be evil since the day it was born, etc. It's not true to human nature. Most people who do bad stuff are worried, ignorant, lost at sea. That's why they do bad stuff, in the same way the children are. And they're tired as well. Most people do bad things when they're very tired. But we forget this. We don't bring a loving parent's sense of judgment to bear on those who behave badly as adults. But of course, we should. And it's no insult to treat adults like small children. It's not that we're infantilizing them. We are doing them the honor of recognizing that an adult human being is at least 50 % child, especially late at night, And when they're tired and stressed, et cetera, we revert back to our earlier selves.

59:51And that's not patronizing. That's an honor to recognize that. So I think that's an important thing. You mentioned humor. I mean, humor ultimately is born out of paradox and pessimism. Humor is paradox plus pessimism. There are so many paradoxes in which we're stuck. We're hugely intelligent, but completely stupid. We're not worth spending time with and we're the most precious people in the world, et cetera. We're half angel, half devil, et cetera. We are this constant paradox. And I think the richest kind of humor juggles with these incompatibilities. And I think that when you see a loving couple, you know, they'll sometimes insult each other in brutal ways, but you know it's been done out of love.

1:00:35Then labeling with humor, they're saying the unsayable. What love it takes to be able to do that to be able still to have a kind, benevolent eye. I always think of it, you change from seeing your partner as an idiot to seeing them as a lovable idiot. Oh my God, you're such an adorable idiot, right? That's such progress. If you're able to say you're an adorable idiot and the other person's able to laugh at it, then you're on the way. Oh man. And I think, you know, so many couples don't know how to tease each other. We all need to be teased because we're all so ridiculous. And teasing of bringing the ridiculousness of your partner more into focus, but in a loving way.

1:01:20So benevolent teasing, not the nasty kind, benevolent teasing is one of the most generous acts. You're such a lovable idiot, Alana. I really adore how much I learn from you. Because I'm very accurate with my mathematics, I would want to say that I'm one of your biggest fans, but I don't know the others, so I cannot prove that. between the people that I'm a fan of, you're one of the highest. I enjoy so much listening to your views. I'm sure many of my listeners have learned quite a bit. We're all out there looking for connection. And I think connection happens when we connect with ourselves first.

1:01:56And I heard you many times saying, until you know yourself, until you love yourself, your chances of finding another to love you is very, very limited. And I think the idea is to accept, is to be open enough. The only way for you to find true love, as per the way you described it, which is for someone to accept you and connect with you is that at least they get to know you. And the only way they get to know you is through that honesty, through that ability to be open enough and say, I'm an idiot and it's who I am. And if you're willing to accept me, then this is real love. And if you're not, then maybe that's okay too.

1:02:31And I think that idea of us trying to connect so desperately that love is the opposite of loneliness, of isolation, such a profound point of view. I don't know how to thank you enough. This has been an incredibly enlightening, incredibly joyful conversation. I hope you have all the love in the world. Thank you. Thank you so much. And congratulations on all you do. And for all of you who joined us, thank you so much for listening. Be sure to follow me on social media. Search for MoGaudet, SlowMo, Solve for Happy or 1BillionHappy. I know you've got a lot going on, but remember, there is always time to slow down.

1:03:18Until next time, stay happy.