Does Love = Happiness?

24:47But it's, you know, it's probably tomorrow. But that's the intention. And when I can get rid of the attachment while I maintain the intention, I can move down the line with greater progress toward the complex end that is the mystery and the beauty of the life that I'm trying to build. That's so beautiful. And then so what about how do you rationalize the suffering part? Like, do you believe that suffering is a fundamental part of like the, you know, the pressure that turns the coal into diamond? Like, is that because it is it is so universal and life is so hard, no matter who we are, what the circumstances are like, it always will reveal itself to be incredibly difficult, full of suffering.

25:39Not every day. Of course, some days are incredible. And but do you do you sort of do you regard the suffering in any particular way, like in a teaching capacity or anything? I do. And this is a way where I'm more Western than Buddhist, as a matter of fact. So the Buddhists, you know, first you refer to this a minute ago, the first noble truth of Buddhism is called Dukkha in Sanskrit. And it's life is suffering, literally, although the word suffering, it's actually it's not the right translation. It's probably life is dissatisfaction because we always have these sticky cravings. And the whole point is to get rid of your cravings, to get rid of your attachments.

26:17That's that's the whole sort of the meta narrative of what they talk about. and a little bit more of a sort of a holistic Western sort of Judeo-Christian tradition, suffering is integral to the learning that we need. Now, to begin with, as a scientist by background now, you're not, you know, my students, I was talking about how their suffering is sacred. And they'll be like, hey, professor, do I got to go looking for suffering? And say, don't worry, it will find you. Just stay in one place and it's going to find you. Probably within an hour, Something is going to bum you out. And part of the reason for that is you have negative emotions for a reason.

26:53Negative emotions, there's only four, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. And we all have them. And those are indicators that your limbic system is telling you that there's a threat on the horizon. There's something that you don't like that's not really good for your gene propagation or for your survival or whatever. And so that tells you to avoid it. That's all negative emotions are for. but there's also negative experiences that we all have. You know, negative encounters with other people, things that we don't like, being rejected from the things that we actually want. And those are part of an ordinary life because we have to live together in society.

27:28And those are super important because this is where it really gets to a more Western perspective. If you don't have those things, you're not gonna learn and grow. You're just not. Happiness requires that you forego pleasure all the time to get to a deeper enjoyment of things. Happiness requires that you have deep satisfaction that requires that you delay your gratifications. Happiness requires that you find meaning, and meaning comes from suffering. You know, I'm sure if we dig into the things that have happened in your life that you don't like, that these are the learning experiences that have made you into the person that you are today.

28:03Is that fair to say? Very. And so here's sort of the Catholic Buddhist master, you know, technique. And this is what I try to do every morning is in my prayer in the morning, I say, thank you for the beautiful, fun things I'm going to get to do today. But thank you also for the suffering. And thank you for the difficult things that are going to happen this day, because I know that these are for a divine purpose. These are going to make me the person that I am supposed to be. And without them, I would be lost. So when something befalls you that's difficult or causes suffering, do you have like a quick facility with the tool in the moment to sort of catch it?

28:51Like how does that look? How does that go internally for you? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm a very lucky person so far is that, you know, the great, I mean, the huge tragedies of I've never lost a child, for example. And I've worked with a lot of people who've lost a child. And, you know, I've lost my parents, for example, and people, you know, my own age, who I was very close to, of course. But that's a unique kind of tragedy. That's a different species of tragedy. That's the kind of tragedy that leads to deep grief. And grief actually has a neurobiological basis to it. There's a part in your brain that makes you feel sadness from losing something or someone that you deeply love.

29:30And the reason that we have that part of our brain, it's called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Why would you have it? And the answer is because we need to not want to lose things that we love. In the ancestral environment, losing relationships would mean walking the frozen tundra and dying alone. It's like, that's no good. And so you have this natural defense mechanism against the behaviors that would make you lose your spouse, lose your friends, lose your employer, whatever it happens to be. But it happens. and when it happens on the level of something that's deeply unnatural, or so it seems, like losing a child, that's when you have this deep kind of grief and you heal.

30:07What you find is that most people, when they have that, they get what's called post-traumatic growth. 90 % of people who have these bad tragedies, they wind up years later saying, of course, I wish it didn't happen, but I'm a stronger, more spiritual, more aligned person as a result of that. And there are ways to hasten the healing, for sure. I talk about that a lot. You know, when people lose a child, they heal faster when they help other people who've lost children because they transcend their own grief by helping other people with theirs, which is a fundamental of human life. You want to feel better, go help somebody is what it comes down to, right?

30:44So that's something and understanding that is really important to me. But for me also, it's understanding that I can offer these things up in a spiritual way. I can this is something that Jews and Christians and Muslims have always done and all the great monotheistic traditions have always done is to offer up these ideas I offer up my suffering for the sufferings of others I offer up the suffering so I can better understand the suffering of my sisters and brothers around the world to make radical solidarity with other people thank you for making me closer to other people who are suffering even more than me and that's been helpful for me and I hope that when real suffering befalls me, and it will, that I can actually turn to that.

31:31Right. I suppose there are sort of micro sufferings and then, and macro sufferings. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Micro sufferings are all the things that are happening during the course of the day. I didn't like that. You know, something, I didn't like that. I didn't like the thing that that happened or something is just troubling you. About 17 % of the average person's day is in negative emotion. And about 33 % of your day is in mixed emotional states, meaning that you're kind of, okay, okay, it's all good. It's all good. It's all good. But it's punctuated by something that you're worried about. Something is bothering you in a little bit.

32:05Like, I don't like that conversation I had with my spouse or some things I'm kind of worried about my 22 year old kid, you know, that kind of thing. You have a, you know, your kids are younger than mine in general, but my kids are 27, 25, and 22. So I have grandkids. I'm worried about my grandkids, whatever, you know? I mean, and that punctuates the equilibrium of your reverie, of your bliss. That's life. That's life. And the more that you understand, that's not a pathology. You're not broken. If you didn't have that, you wouldn't be normal. And it's okay. It's okay. Okay. So then 50 % of the time, are we in happiness?

32:50So about, yeah. So again, your results may vary. Well, no, because... It's normal, but you're normal. And here's the weird thing. People believe that if you're really, really famous and successful, then you don't have bad days. That is insanity. That is the craziest thing. And the reason is because we believe that if you get worldly success, money, power, pleasure, fame, then happiness comes for free. That's exactly wrong. Some of the unhappiest people that you and I know are extremely famous. The way to get enough success is by shooting toward happiness is the way that that works. 42 % of the time, to answer your question, we're in a positive state.

33:33We're in a positive emotional state. But that doesn't mean like, hooray no no it just means it's all good see positive emotional states are like your car idling in a light negative emotional states are when you're like flooring it and so that's why you notice negative more than you understand positive because noticing negative emotion means giddy app you got to get up and run in the ancestral environment and so they got to punctuate anything fear for example is will clear the decks when something makes you afraid like Like you saw something, you know, somebody's like, I can only, I know what it is for me.

34:11You know, somebody is like, Hey, you know, the New York times is writing an article about your work. It's like, great. Oh, and, and, you know, and for you, it's like, Hey, there's a big feature on you and variety. It's like, that's great. Is it great? And it's, it's, it's normal. Like that. And that's kind of how it's supposed to work. Your negative emotions are supposed to be way more intense than your negative emotions.

34:41So we're wired to orient around happiness and we, like, ideally you spend more, I mean, of course we're always going to have intrusive thoughts and we're always going to have, and just because of the nature of the world and how people are like, you know, and it was interesting what you were saying. I do think that especially now, although I'm sure like Marcus Aurelius, who was famous in his time, had the same kind of stuff. But I do think that externally society values this fame and notoriety and this idea that comes. I think there's something actually, some kind of relief, because for people to think about, oh, if I just had X, than my life would feel like.

35:33Why? Because the truth of the matter is, it's like it can be, but having success, having those sort of worldly trappings can actually be so isolating and demoralizing. And when you reach some kind of pinnacle and you're supposed to be happy and you're not, right, when that's not the outcome, which has happened to me a number of times in my life. Like I think I thrived out of, you know, out of having anxiety and having low self-esteem and all the things and thinking, you know, if I just cross this particular finish line, I'm going to be a whole person, which never, which just didn't happen. In fact, it made it worse.

36:23Truly. And, you know, there's one thing to point out about that. So people who are, one of the great, I mean, there's a lot to love about having a great career. You and I both know. I mean, it's fantastic. And you and I are both really grateful for good things that have happened to us, to be sure. But almost everybody who has outsized success has a pathology. And that pathology is called the success addiction. A success addiction, the way that it works typically is when you're a little kid, you get the attention of adults when you do something extraordinary. you get a little pat on the head and that wires your brain.

36:59And so by the time, and if you, and if, if God forbid you're famous before your brain is fully developed. So in human females is about the age of 21, then you're going to have a brain that looks a little like an adolescent methamphetamine addicts brain, which is to say that you get especially high amounts of dopamine when you get these worldly successes. This turns you into a workaholic. This tends to turns you into somebody who is self-objectifying, by which I mean, I am a success machine. And you learn that you get love when you do incredible things. Now, the real pathology of this is that you start to try to earn other people's love.

37:40This is a real problem in relationships of especially successful people is that they're like, I'm trying to earn my wife's love. It's like, did I earn it yet? But you can't earn love. Real love can't be earned. Real love is a grace. It's a free gift freely given. And the more you try to earn it, the more you devalue it by turning it from an intrinsic thing into an extrinsic thing. There's all this literature about there, about when you take kids and they're playing with toys in the lab and having a great old time. And then you say, if you go play with your favorite toy, I'll give you a cookie.

38:13They don't want to play with the toy as much because you value the fun in terms of a cookie. And so when with your spouse, you say, I'm trying to earn your love, you've devalued the love. And that's what success addicts do again and again. And they suffer a lot as a result of it. They suffer a lot. And I mean, it's so funny because then what happens is the horizon. The horizon keeps moving of what success actually means. Did I earn it? Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Because you can't. You can't get there. I mean, I have this great friend. He doesn't mind if I tell this because he actually has told this story and I put it in writing.

38:48A really great friend of mine. you probably know Rainn Wilson, right? From The Office. I mean, I don't know him, but I know who he is. He's great. Yeah, we grew up about five miles apart from each other in Seattle and we're about the same age. We actually didn't know each other as kids, but we bonded overall, like watching the same TV shows on the same stations as a Gilligan's Island in the afternoon and that kind of stuff on Channel 11 in Seattle. Anyway, and Rainn, he says like, when he was doing The Office, I mean, he was the, people were shouting, I love you from passing cars. and this after a long time of trying to become a successful actor.

39:21And then he's like, the whole time he's in the office, he's like, how come I didn't win an Emmy? Of course, because that's human nature. And the fact is he's very self-aware. He's extremely self-aware, but he suffered as a result of the fact that all humans suffer in this way. And then civilians outside the business will be like, you ingrate. Well, guess what? We're made for ingratitude. We're made for resentment. We have literally brains wired to be resentful and not to be grateful. Because resentment keeps you alive. Gratitude is nice to have. Oh my gosh, that's so interesting. And that's why you have to be a spiritual being.

40:00That's why you have to reach for the divine. Because you have to override your natural animal tendencies so that you can become the person that you're supposed to be, truly lifting yourself and other people up, and not become a victim of your resentment. And that's what Rain has done. He's super spiritual. He's a deeply religious guy. He has a great meditation practice. And now really, really healthy relationships, including a few weird former French horn playing behavioral science friends like me. That's hilarious. So let's go into the romantic love part just for a minute because you obviously focus on this and kind of the brain science, the neurochemical processes behind a lot of the stuff, which I find so interesting.

40:48And one of the things that I heard you talk about when I was researching was that you've got, well, you talk about these, you know, there's the initial attraction that's fueled by sex hormones, right? Then euphoria. Then I was really, I didn't know about the drop in serotonin, which causes an obsessive fixation. So I, I really want to ask you about that. Yeah. And then pair bonding through oxytocin and a hormone I had never heard of called vasopressin. Yeah. Vasopressin. That's more of a, men have more vasopressin and women have more oxytocin, but we both have both. Yeah. Vasopressin is this neural hormone that makes men be, be defenders.

41:33It's like, I'll, okay. It's like, I love you so much. I'll fight a tiger for you. I don't know why, but four weeks ago I wouldn't have, but now I will. Right. And that's, so that's how best of present. Whereas oxytocin is more sort of nesting. It's more bonding around the nurturing. It's also called the love molecule. It's when you've had your kids and you, you fall in love with a newborn baby when you first make eye contact kind of thing. So women have about four times as much oxytocin as men. Men have a lot of it too. You know, I have kids and grandkids and I'm in love, but, but, but it's, it's, it's anyway.

42:04So that's, that's that fourth stage. Yeah. Okay. So the initial attraction part, I understand that's, but there's a neurochemical process that happens when you meet somebody that you're attracted to. Yeah. Yeah. This is the thing, but there's a guy named David Buss, who's a evolutionary psychologist at the university of Texas at Austin. He'd be a great guest by the way, because his stuff is mind-blowingly interesting on, on, you know, in 140 societies, what are the top three things that men find attractive in women? What are the top three things that women find attractive in men, and they're not the same.

42:38But they're all the same across societies because it comes from the ancestral environment when the brain was really created and what we're actually looking for and the different roles that we have in having kids and being pregnant and taking care of babies and et cetera, all that sort of stuff. And all this stuff, for example, what women need to be adored by a husband in lots of ways, and men really need to be admired by their wives. And, and, and again, it sounds like, so it's not sexist. All that's basically saying is that, that if you want to be a successful husband, you've got two jobs, be admirable and adore her.

43:15And it's like, it's weirdly simple, but it's hard anyway. So all that stuff is what David Buss gets into. So I don't take credit for his work. I just a huge admirer of his work. So the, the, the first stage is attraction. And, and that's why people want to be attractive to each other. That's why people want to look good. And even when you're not on the market, you still want to look good because you have these impulses that are sort of wired into you. And that's healthy and that's fine. If you've made the commitment not to stray, it's still okay to look good. It's still, because that's a normal thing.

43:49Even if you're not trying to attract another partner, a new mate. The second stage kicks in really quickly. And that's the stage of anticipation of reward and euphoria. So it's like, I just got a text from her. Wow. It's like, you get tons of texts every day. Why are you freaking out over text? Because you get two catecholamines, two neurotransmitters in really, really heavy succession with each other, which is norepinephrine. It's a stress hormone. And that gives you a feeling of euphoria. And then the anticipation of reward of something coming is dopamine, meaning any little thing that you're looking forward to has huge significance, like even a text.

44:27And the reason that you're doing this is because you want to ramp up, ramp up the bonding. This is how we're evolved. Then within a couple of weeks, it goes to this interesting third phase, which is that your serotonin levels, that's another neurotransmitter. Everybody knows what it is now because it's involved with clinical depression. It dips. And you're like, what? I'm depressed? Yep. Yep. Falling in love is like depression. And the reason is because there's a part of the, and this, again, this is neuroscientists disagree on everything. So I'm just sort of taking the predominant view here. There's a thing in your brain called a ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that helps you ruminate on stuff.

45:07It's your ruminating organ. And, you know, when you're ruminating for you, for example, if you're ruminating in a creative project, which no doubt you do. It's like, can't get it out of my mind. That's your ventral lateral prefrontal cortex. If you're clinically depressed, you're ruminating on sadness and how dumb you are and regret, that's the same part of your brain. And when you're ruminating on another person, like you're losing your mind and you sent a hundred texts in the last hour, like an idiot, you're not an idiot. It's just that your serotonin is in the tank and your ventral lateral prefrontal cortex.

45:38Now that's the reason that depressive people, they also tend to be romantics and poetic. They tend to be artistic. And that's why when you think of the poet, you think of somebody who's really romantic and depressed. That's why. Same part of the brain. And that's also one of the reasons that some research suggests that when you increase your serotonin levels, like with SSRI drugs, Prozac, et cetera, that it feels harder to fall in love. And that's... Oh my goodness. Yeah. You still can, but the whole point is that you're messed with your brain hormones or your brain chemistry and funny things.

46:14Again, all of this is contested, but the point about the serotonin part kind of isn't. We know that that's actually kind of what's happening. And so you look at the brains of people who are depressed and people who are like deeply falling in love, they kind of look the same. Oh my gosh, that's so fascinating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you say that like now we're living in like this hookup culture and where people are skipping some of these steps. What did you mean by that? And you sort of advise caution against that? Yeah, yeah, sure. Because what happens is, again, the fourth stage that we talked about kind of as the first one was the oxytocin and vasopressin.

46:56You want to get to true bonding. You want, I mean, deep love is called companionate love where it's your, you're sleeping with your best friend. It's just the best. And that's the kind of bliss that you get for a long-term pair bond, pair bond mating. It's like how social scientists talk, it's so not romantic. It's like, I'd like you to meet Mrs. Brooks, my pair bond mate. You know, it's like, that's, but that's what you want to get to. And the problem is in hookup culture, you're going one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. You need to go one, two, three, four, stop. That's what the greatest happiness comes from, is getting to four and stopping.

47:35That's the greatest happiness. That's the greatest source of happiness. a single source of happiness that most people have in their life. And if you're going one, two, one, two, one, two, sometimes something's wrong. Sometimes there's a trauma you need to deal with, but it isn't normal. And it is a pathology that needs to be dealt with. Another problem, we've got this kind of bifurcated culture among people in their 20s, where you've got hookup culture, but then you also have celibate culture. You find that people in their 20s today are about a third less likely to be in love as people were when you and I were in our 20s?

48:08Yeah. They're less likely to get married. They're less likely to cohabitate. They're having less sex than people ever have since we've been keeping records. So you got like whole groups that are not even initiating the process and whole groups. Why? Well, that's a good question. I read about that a lot. Two big problems are dating apps and pornography. Huge, huge things that are interrupting the neurochemical process in a big way. I mean, I mean, dating apps are great for some people, but the truth is that they make you curate what you're looking for to something that looks just like you, which is not hot, right?

48:46I mean, we're narcissists, right? And it's like, I want somebody who votes like I do and likes Austin and listens to the same kind of music and thinks Sriracha is a personality or whatever. And the result is that you're looking for somebody just like yourself. And the essence of hotness is complementarity. You want somebody who's like enough the same, like same religion, whatever your thing is, but just different enough to be interesting. And there's a lot of neurobiology why we want difference. There's a ton of neurobiology that says why we want that kind of difference because we're ascertaining how people can, we can have really successful kids and people who are just like us have the same immunological profile.

49:34And, and so you judge with personality, if somebody is a lot like you biologically, and you want really different biology, really different biology. Now, right. I mean, go join the Peace Corps and go to a part of the world you've never been in and get married. That might be a great strategy. Right. Sort of the opposite of like the old royal strategy, right? Where they keep married. Oh my God. Totally. And they didn't like each other. They didn't, I mean, those old marriages, you look back on historically, they weren't attracted to each other at all because, you know, they were marrying their cousin or something.

50:08I married a girl who literally didn't speak a word of the same language with me. And I just like totally fell in love with a girl. I didn't speak a word of English. I didn't speak any of her. She spoke a lot of romance language. I spoke none at the time. And I literally quit my job and moved to Spain and went on thinking, I bet I could learn that language. I bet I could close that deal. Oh, my God. And you did. And you did. I did. It worked out. I mean, you know, three kids and four grandkids later. Amazing. Unbelievable.

50:48So I think, you know, I mean, it's just obviously anecdotally, but also you say that a long-term relationship is a great marker for life, life happiness. So how, is that something that, you know, cause it's interesting, like in my, my life, for example, like in my, my first marriage, I felt like I was very much doing the thing, which you described a few minutes ago, right? Like I was in that feedback loop of, I kept having to earn, of telling myself I had to earn love. And which is something that I also learned through a childhood pattern. But anyway, you're not my therapist. So I don't do clinical work, but you know, I have friends.

51:37In my second marriage, you know, it's been really interesting. Like the pair bonding, you know, phrase or whatever you call it. It's like that, that resonates so deeply with me. Like I feel, even though it's not the most romantic of all phrases, like I do feel bonded. Like I feel like I'm in the right pairing and I feel extremely bonded. And I am deprogramming myself to think that I have to earn love all the time. And so, but some relationships, it feels really hard to maintain physical and emotional intimacy and love, love, especially past that first phase, certain relationships, it feels a little bit more intuitively there.

52:24But how, how, like, how important is it that to sustain that closeness and what are the sort of tools to do that? Yeah. So to begin with it, you're absolutely on the right track. You can't, you know, it's funny because it's easy to see somebody like you as somebody who doesn't need anybody's adoration because you have the world's adoration. That's wrong. That's wrong. I mean, people shouting I love you from passing cars is no substitute for what you want, which is the one person saying, I would fight a tiger for you. I would die for you. I'm blind to everybody in the world but you. That's how adoration works.

53:04And you absolutely need that. And you can't earn that. You can't earn it. And the more you try, the worse it gets. And people who are very successful almost always learn that the hard way. and you learned that the hard way, right? It's what it comes down to. But it also requires that you be in an environment where adoration is kind of the coin of the realm as is admiration, which men need. And men almost never figure out that they can't earn their wife's true admiration by dragging bigger and bigger gazelles into the cave, right? It's like, it's just, we don't need more gazelles. You know, it's like, how about another billion dollars?

53:42And no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the source of my admiration. My admiration is the moral admiration that I have for you as a person and you're working 190 hours a week or something is not going to get it done. So the point is that you've gotten a cognizance of that. And then being very explicit about that is really important. It's like, we need an environment of respect, respect admiration and adoration. The real key to this for couples that are long-term, because it's hard, you know? I mean, you're working and occupied with lots of things, and it's just life, you know? I mean, and relationships and living with another person is very tricky business, is realizing that this is not just an earthly thing, that marriage is, it's a very mysterious phenomenon.

54:31It's very, very powerful. And many of the most successful couples, whether they're traditionally religious or not, they see their marriage as an antenna to the divine. So this is how it works. Hindus talk about this a lot, but Catholics and Muslims talk about this a lot. My marriage is the way that I understand in an earthly way, God's love for me. God's love for me comes through him. God's love for him comes through me. When I'm not giving the love that he needs, I'm denying him the love of the divine, which really, really ups the stakes. But it's also the kind of thing where you're going to want to practice your meditation, your spiritual practices, your religion together.

55:18And that's a key thing. Really successful pair bonds. They have a, and again, it doesn't have to be the kind of traditional religion that I practice. I like mine. I recommend it to everybody. It's awesome. But my wife and I go to mass together every day. That's how we start when I'm in town. I mean, I'm on the road about 50 % of the time. And when I'm home, we go to mass at 6.30 every morning. We did this morning. You get up and go physically somewhere? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I get up real early because I have a whole morning happiness protocol that I practice, which is really, really important.

55:50So I get up at 4.30, I work out from 4.45 to 5.45. And then from 6.30 to 7, I go to mass with her because the antenna is up. You know, it's like we're, we have to connect in this, in this spiritual way, but there's lots of ways to do that that don't involve the Catholic church necessarily. But it's very important to understand that, that you are in a very, in the act of saying, we're married, this is a permanent deal, that you become one in a very divine and very important way and practice it as, I mean, you're both, you're individuals, I got it, you know, but the whole point is that this fusion between the two, the spiritual fusion between the souls and seeing it that way, as opposed to, ah, man, it's just not working out.

56:35You know, we're, we're quarreling a lot. Of course you're quarreling a lot. That's part of the spiritual fusion is that friction that we actually see as well, but then it has meaning. Hmm. That is so incredibly beautiful. I, and I, I find that I it's, it's really nice to hear, I don't know, somebody articulate it like that, like that, that marriage is, you know, this fusion, this very soulful, purposeful, divine thing that happens between, between two people who have made that commitment. And I noticed too, like every day, every week, every year, like the commitment is, I think what grows out of the commitment inspires me so much.

57:26Like the sense of, like the broader sense of ease that you have, right? Just knowing you have your person and they are there for you no matter what happens. And that there's this, I don't know, it also feels quite mysterious, you know, this entity that exists between two people that you make together. It's really beautiful to hear you talk about that. Yeah. You know, it's funny, romantic love in particular, because it's the most intense kind of love besides divine love that we experience. It's largely a phenomenon, not to, you know, to degrade it in any way biologically, but it largely occurs in the half of your brain that processes all mysterious phenomena.

58:10The right hemisphere of the brain is the hemisphere that actually doesn't process language. It processes the most important deep commands, the purpose and meaning of life, or right hemisphere of phenomenon. And that's where you understand the nature of your marriage. And that's why it's so hard. I mean, like, love poetry is great, but it doesn't quite get at it, you know? and love songs are popular, but they also, they kind of leave you, no, that's not it. And that's because you know it, the left side of your brain, actually, that's where the speech centers are. It's called the Broca's area and the Wernicke's area.

58:47That's where you form words and write poetry. And you write a script and you learn your lines. That's all on the left side of your brain. But the love for your husband, it's over here. It's on the mystery side. And I believe that the divine gives us that mystery side so that we can live in that mystery. And to the extent that we don't, that we say, okay, I got to solve my marriage. I got to go figure it out. I got to go talk to a therapist who's going to give me the five techniques for figuring it out. That's all good. But you're not going to train the right side of your brain. That's a side that has to be lived every single day.

59:29What is your theory on, because my husband has a theory that the only way that you get to kind of what you're talking about, this like incredibly bonded, you know, mysterious, wonderful, expansive thing between two people is to have a monogamous relationship. He feels like you choose to bond with one person and do that with only one person, and then the cascading down, there's this downstream impact of making that commitment. Do you feel that that's right, or do you feel that people can experience this outside of a monogamous relationship? That's a real hard question. It's a deep question, and I do have my views on it.

1:00:18So to begin with, neuroscientists, they debate this. And part of the reason is because there are lots of species that truly are monogamous and many species that aren't. And so the question is, are we or aren't we? What are we? That's the thing. So and people argue it both ways. So non-human primates typically aren't, but many other species typically are. So then you have to look back on what most societies are and what most social constructions are. So you have some that are, they're not non-monogamous. And so you'll find that you really don't find any societies that say, it's okay to sleep with anybody.

1:00:55There are some people who say you can have multiple spouses, but you can't sleep with somebody who's not one of your spouses. And you can't sleep with somebody else's spouse. That's, there's no societies think that that stuff is okay. So, so adultery in some way, shape or form is prohibited in basically every culture. Most societies, however, say that monogamy one-to-one is the arrangement to which we tend. Now we get into the philosophy and sort of the spirituality behind it. But before we go there, is that true that we tend, as human beings, we tend toward monogamy? The huge majority of people do.

1:01:35The huge majority of people do. Now, that said, we have urges that go outside that. lots and lots of urges that go outside that because, you know, like we are who we are, right? It's like, ah, she's pretty. And, and, and without the strictures of kind of culture and morality and norms and all this kind of stuff, it's easy that people can actually learn. But, but here's the thing to keep in mind. There's nobody who ever said, you know, I was super, super, super in love with that guy. And it was awesome that he slept with my sister. Nobody's ever said that, like nobody ever. And so that's a tell, that's a tell, right?

1:02:09Right there. And what you find is that most societies, they accept divorce, but they don't accept adultery. That about 97 % of people who are not religious say that adultery is wrong. So it's not the Ten Commandments. It's something deeper than the Ten Commandments. So there's something in the ancestral environment and the wiring of the brain that says that that's not right. And then you get into this whole idea of how can you establish the divine connection? And this is what almost every religion has said, that the divine connection comes from the one, comes from the one, because that's God's representative in your life.

1:02:47And, you know, and that's what I believe. That's what I believe. I mean, that's like, that's, I'm going to, as I take my dying breath, I'm going to be laying my eyes on my beloved. As I say, as I, as I recite the Holy Scriptures, I'll be saying, thank you, Lord. That's a good one.

1:03:04oh that's i mean how can we even there's nothing else to say that's the perfect way to end our hour together oh my gosh you've given me like i don't it's it's it's so wonderful to have a a conversation with a teacher a professor like you who i don't know can really crystallize like an undefined feeling or you know like a sentiment or a philosophy i haven't even put like thoughts or words to it yet until this conversation with you today. So thank you so much for that. Thank you, Gwyneth.

1:03:43Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.