This is pod Popular Podcast for the People, the Great Love Debate. It's
the Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate. It's a Great Love Debate.
Hi again everyone, It's Brian Howie. Welcome to The Great Love Debate,
the world's number one dating and relationship podcast since twenty fifteen. I am
back here in the very fine and fancy studios of Pod Popular Podcasts for the
People. I'm sitting on a couch. It's very luxurious. I'm at the
one in Boca Raton, Florida, and I'm gonna I'm gonna read you a
list of a bunch of celebrities, famous people, mostly actors, and you're
gonna guess at home, what are these people have in common? And then
I'm going to tell you what they're have in common and why I want to
bring it up today. Okay, a little bit different today, but little
little exercise I want to do. I'm gonna give you this list, and
yes they're all wealthy, but that's not the reason for the list. Are
you ready? Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack, Matt Dillon, Bill Maher,
Al Pacino, Charlie's Thorn, Sheryl Crow, Owen Wilson, Keanu Reeves,
Matthew Perry, Marissa Tomay, Diane Keaton, Brian Christopher Howie. So I
threw myself on that list, and so just off the top of my head,
there there are one, two, three, four, four Oscar winners
on that list. But that's not what they have in common. That's that
is a list of people who are over forty years old and have never been
married, and they range in age from the youngest on that list is probably
Charlie's and the oldest on that list is probably that is al Pacino eighty three,
and everyone in between. These are people that have not been married.
And I throw myself in there because I'm one of those people. And why
do I bring that up? I bring that up because I get asked that
question all the time. How can you do a show about love, dating
relationships when you've never been married? And I have a couple of answers to
that. First of all, this is not a advice show. This is
an opinion show. It's a discussion show. I'm not out here, I'm
not coaching anybody. I'm giving you a sort of the consensus based on the
fact that we visit and hear literally millions of people over the last ten years
on this show and are trying to give you at least a little bit of
a roadmap to that. Now, where does this roadmap hope to lead?
I believe to marriage or at least a long term relationship, which I haven't
always had lots of those, but most of these people on this list,
And so people say to me, like, how can you never been married?
Well, you know, you don't have to be a even for those
who do coach and have never been married who are dating relationship coaches. You
know, Bill Belichick never played professional football doesn't mean he can't coach Tom Brady
and cancer and on colleges doesn't have to have cancer and in order to be
able to treat it, you know. That being said, I believe that
if you have gotten to the age of forty years old and you have never
been married, you had better be prepared to give an answer on that question
beyond I was too busy, or I hadn't met the right person yet,
or any of that, because all of those answers are bullshit, and there
is a real reason why you haven't gotten married, including me, And it's
not necessarily a positive thing. If I met somebody over forty to date and
she had never been married. It would absolutely be a red flag to me.
I would want to know why. I would want to know the answer
of why they have never been married. And so I'm not here to just
initially talk about marriage is better or worse whatever, I'm going to get into
a lot of that. I would just want to talk about a lot of
these people why they give their answers as to why they've never been married.
And some are good and some are you know, I think cop outs,
and I want to talk about me and my reason and some of the things
that I believe and I do believe in marriage. And as I've said many
many times on this podcast, the reason why a lot of marriages break down,
I guess is because pretty quickly, I think too many marriages go from
husband wife to mom and dad, and mom and dad is a whole different
dynamic. Then you know, let's date and let's fall in love, and
there's a lot less romantic elements about it, you know, when you take
away the family. That being said, I research some of these people to
see what their answers are as to why they didn't get married or why they
have not gotten married, and some of them are a little snarky, and
some of them are cop outs. Like I said, so I'm gonna read
you a few of them. So John Cusack, who's not nearly as famous
as he used to be, but he was famous for a while, and
his father went to my college. By the way, somebody asked him,
could you describe why you have not gotten married in five words or less?
And Cusick said no, but I can do it in seven. Society doesn't
tell me what to do, you know, that's his answer. But that's
not really a reason, like you should not not get married just because you're
sort of this rebel against society. You know, there's a lot of reasons
to get married. There's a lot of reasons not to get married. I
don't think because you're like, I don't need a piece of paper to tell
me to fall in love. I think that's a cop out. And I
think you need to have a better reason than that. Bill Maher, who's
a krusty fucker if you've ever met him, But he says, I mean,
is anyone really that interesting that that they would be the person you want
to spend this much time with for the rest of your life. And I
think The answer to that is hopefully marriage or not. If you find the
right person, hopefully you will want to spend as much time with them forever
and ever and ever, and everybody else pails in comparison, So I think
he's wrong than that. Charlie's says marriage that's never been something that's important to
me. Well, that's a little bit of a dismissive thing too, because
it doesn't mean just because something wasn't always important to you, doesn't mean that
it couldn't be important to you, and doesn't mean that it wouldn't be important
to your partner or your relationship or anything else. So I'm not particularly fond
of her answer either. Diane Keaton, who is darling. If you ever
run across Diane Keaton, stop her and talk to her for fifteen minutes,
because she is a delight and she's probably close to eighty. And she dated
al Pacino, I guess back in the day after The Godfather in real life,
and he's never been married either, so I don't know if that's some
kind of pack they made. But she says, I just don't think it
would have been a good idea for me to have been married, and to
me that takes a certain degree of ownership, because I think she says that
that maybe she has some elements that she has not dealt with, where she
may be either trapped or unable to sort of fulfill the commitment of marriage.
Maybe she would feel like he was somehow put in a situation where he just
so. I think that this is sort of an unresolved issue with her and
the people that she's dated, lots of famous people. Maybe she put that
out to them that I'm a really good girlfriend, not such a great possible
wife. Ava Mendez gave an answer, and she is very famously and I
think very committed to Ryan Gosling, who also has never been married. But
I don't think he's quite old enough to make this list. But Ava Mendez
said, I actually think it's really sexy to be with someone in their fifties
or sixties and be like, that's my boyfriend. I think husband and wife
are very unsexy words. Now I think that is getting somewhere. I think
that's getting to a place where it's like, the reason I'm not married is
because I want something even more fun and deeper. And I'm not saying marriage
doesn't necessarily doesn't necessarily mean that people get married for a whole lot of different
reasons that have nothing to do with the romance. And I'm in the romance
business. So she said that Shakira, who has not been married, she
said, to tell you the truth, marriage scares the shit out of me.
I don't want him to see me as the wife. I'd rather him
see me as his girlfriend. And that's another one, just like Ava Mendez
says, there is something when you are happy at least that is so much
better about boyfriend and girlfriend than husband and wife I believe will ever be for
the most part, and again saying this is somebody's never been married. Maybe
it's awesome, but I think the spark and the romance, it's just not
there. So I'll get back to that one in a second. The last
one is Edie Falco, who was Carmelo soprano, and she said, I'm
not married because I tend to get a lot of eye rolling conversations with people
about their marriages. Why would I want to head there? Very true,
I've made that comment. I've made that joke myself at a time or two
in the past where by the time I even considered it in my late thirties,
everybody I know was coming back out of the club, so to speak.
Everybody else was getting divorced. Nobody seemed to tell me that it was
better. Very rarely did I hear that people were happier husband and wife than
they ever were boyfriend and girlfriend. And when people get married, I always
ask them when somebody proposes, why did you decide to get married? Why
I decided to take that step? Why did you know this? And the
answers I always get are never the most romantic answers. They always circle in
this area of well, it was time to settle down, or we've been
dating for three years, I wanted to be committed, or we wanted to
have kids or anything. But the are you kidding me? She is the
love of my life, and of course I want to spend the rest of
my life with her. I want to hear that I do. That being
said, I'm going to get into some of what I believe is the prose
of at least the commitment. I'm going to talk about what it means to
not be married, why I had to take a quick break. Not that
I have to pay for a wedding around here, but I can pay for
a lot of other things. We are talking about marriage. We are calling
this episode the marriage Trap question mark exclamation point. Not sure we will be
back right after this, And we are back. And I like to talk
about politics a lot. And somebody asked me, would you ever run for
office? And I said that I don't believe that I could win. And
they asked me why, and I said, I have two things that America
will not vote for. One, I am agnostic doesn't mean I'm an atheist.
It means I'm agnostic, which I think we all are at our core.
Agnostic means I don't know. I don't really know. Could be maybe
people are not comfortable with that answer. They want in God, we trust,
on the money. They want put your right hand on the Bible and
swear to God. They want all of that. People are not prepared to
deal with somebody who does not embrace some faith of that. And I'm not
an atheist by any means. I'm like, I don't know, but they're
not prepared to deal with agnostic. The other thing they are not prepared to
deal with is bachelor president. And I don't care how long or how committed
you are to your girlfriend, there has not been a There's only been two
in history, and there has not been one in I think one hundred and
fifty years. I forget who was Tyler Harrison one of those nondescript ones.
There's not been a bachelor president in a long long time. America does not
like that. They think it is not stable. They would rather have somebody
with five divorces than never been married. And a lot of you out there
in the dating pool would rather have somebody with five divorces than somebody who's never
got married, because you guys always tell me, at least your means,
it means you're capable of commitment, at least you're willing to take that plunge.
At least you're willing to get on the knee, and says I want
to do this, And I don't know if that really is true, just
because somebody gets married. A lot of people, like I said, get
married for a lot of reasons. A lot of people get married assuming it's
not going to last forever. And a lot of people, especially men,
the ones who get up there four or five, six, seven marriages.
Shout out to the late Larry King, I think you're getting married after you've
got divorced so many times, and you do have the means to survive divorce.
Many times. I think you're trying to lock her down. I think
you're not trying to make sure she's with you. I think a lot of
these guys are proposing so she doesn't go with somebody else. And I think
that's what a lot of the serial marriers are. And I don't think that's
necessarily a better thing. And so a lot of the especially the women and
the people, come to our show and they put their hands up and they
say, I wouldn't necessarily trust somebody who is a bachelor in their forties,
fifties, sixties, because that generally means one of three things, none of
them good. And I agree with this. To the women, it means
you're gay, possibly closeted, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
I'm saying it's a bad thing for a woman looking for her husband. Two,
it means you're an absolute player and you don't want to just pick one
woman or three. You are emotionally unavailable, mommy issues blah blah blah blah
blah, and so you haven't probably processed it. You can probably put me
in category two and three for a long long time, and I think two
leads to three. I think you could say that I was on emotionally unavailable
for most of my adult life because, as I've said a lot of times
on this podcast, my parents were married a long long time, fifty plus
years. I'm not sure they even liked each other, and so that was
not a good example for me. And because I did not trust the love
quote unquote that they had for each other, I'm not sure I could trust
the love they had for me, And then I'm not sure I trusted the
concept. So I existed most of my adult life in sort of this emotionally
walled off middle bandwidth, not too high, not too low. I had
a lot of long, long term relationships where I would put enough chips on
the table to stay in the game, but not enough to go all in.
I have, I think processed that I have dealt with that. I
own that if somebody says, why haven't I got married, I put it
entirely on me and the work I needed to do and the conversation I needed
to have with seven year old Brian and the therapist I needed to see,
and all that kind of stuff, and I don't think until I got to
my mid forties was I sort of emotionally competent enough to say I want to
go all in. But part of me has always liked that concept. Secretly,
I've been sort of working on this proposal for like twenty years. I
spent like ten minutes a day on it, like somebody who works on a
puzzle. A little bit. I think I could do it better. I
think I could make it more meaningful. I think she would tell her friends
and make her friends feel terrible, but that their husband just sort of lit
it up on a scoreboard. And so there's a part of me that really
believes in that that I want there to be a level beyond boyfriend girlfriend.
And you've heard me do podcasts about this before, where I'm like, the
best compliment I I can say is to just look at the person I'm with
and say, that's the girl, and I know what that means, and
she knows what that means. And I've done a whole episode on that.
But you know, to outsiders, they want to be able to define your
relationship and make it seem like he is different from all the boyfriends, she
is different from all the girlfriends. These long term couples that we know are
happy together, you know, the Goldie Hawns and Kurt Russell's and people like
that who've been together twenty thirty years, and we kind of know. And
the question they always ask is like, why didn't you guys get married?
I read, I think Ricky Gervais is with his girlfriend for like thirty years.
How can you never get married? Yeah, I think that marriage probably
wouldn't bring any more to the table. I do believe there's value to the
kids if mom and dad are married, even though it takes the romance out
of it. I think it's good to have probably the same last name,
and it feels like a family. And I see the pluses in all of
that. And I do believe in and want and the one guy, one
girl happily. Ever after, let's do fifty years. And people have joked
to me, well, now you waited so long, you probably don't have
to do fifty years. So you shorten the you shorten the term, you
shorten the sentence to like thirty four years. Maybe, But I'm also not
jaded on the idea of marriage. Lots of people who get into their forties
fifty sixties, almost all of them are divorced. If they're still single,
the dating pool is filled with mostly divorced people. And for those people,
they have lost the hope and the faith and the dream of till death to
us part happily ever after because they tried it and they don't have it.
So I believe, you know, Oprah, whatever her you know, personal
situation is. And she gets criticized and questioned all the time about her relationship
with Stedman and her relationship with Gail, and her relationship with everything. And
you know, she had a traumatic childhood. She's also a conglomerate, which
involves a lot of lawyers and stuff. If you want to get married,
it's a little more complicated. I don't think she's not capable of love.
I don't think it's something she'd doesn't want. I don't think any of these
things. You know, Marisa Tomay, she's on this list. I went
out one night with Marisa tome that's your marriage is for her either. I'll
just leave it at that. But it's for me and for a lot of
people who come to our shows, men so called bachelor's for forty forties and
fifties. I think in a lot of ways that it's capable of breaking the
bachelor. I believe the right woman, girl, situation, relationship timing can
make him do exactly what he would have done that you dreamed about when he
was twenty four. We bring up Warren Beatty a lot on this podcast,
who was probably the most famous bachelor in the I don't know, sixties,
seventies, eighties. He probably had a thirty year run as the lothario of
Hollywood. He's now been married to an at Benning, like thirty two years,
like a long long time. He waited and waited and waited and got
married and it worked for him. He waited till I think he was ready
to to not just meet the right person, but to let that person be
that person in his world, in his presence, in his universe. I
think a lot of men are doing the work and do want to make it
work. And the guy who's single at forty eight or fifty two or sixty
two and he's never been married, I don't think he's out there chasing around
some twenty six year old because he's never dated somebody young, or he's never
dated an Asian girl, or he's never had this or that or whatever,
because he's married for fifteen years. I think the so called lifelong, uncommitted
bachelor's I think there is capable of love and lasting a relationship as anybody,
you know. I know, people always look at George Clooney like, has
he ever settled down? That was a bit of the myth that he was
putting out there. He was married in his twenties to an actress, so
he was married for a while. He liked the People magazine covers that he
was the sort of you know, perpetual bachelor, But that wasn't really the
case. He was a married guy, and I think his wife, who
he married, now knew that people were always like, oh, he waited
to find this intelligent woman. No he didn't. I'm not saying his first
wife wasn't. I'm just saying he didn't wait like anybody else. He was
just a regular divorced guy out in the pool. But I think when people
make these snippy comments about marriage or like I don't need a piece of paper
to tell me or whatever, I don't necessarily agree with that. Like,
I think there is something to the ceremony and the rings and standing up in
front of whoever your friends or your family or God or society and saying I
am committed to this person in a very definable and public fashion. I think
that has merit. I like that you can give me all that that's easy
for you to say you don't do that doesn't mean I don't believe in it,
And I don't know if it means you have to actually go through go
down to city hall and get the paperwork and whatever it takes, blood tests
and licenses and all that. You know, you guys could stand on a
bluff in Ireland and say the vows to each other and believe what it is
you believe, and call each other a husband and wife and let the world
know that this is the person for me, and that's the guy, and
this is the girl. And that's what I think. And so I don't
I don't know. I put myself on that list at the beginning, but
a lot of them are sort of anti and bitter and angry or jaded about
the concept of it. I am not one of those people, which is
probably why I do this show. I believe in the me and you two
of us loving monogamous sharing growing. There's nobody in the world I would rather
be doing this with than you and so whatever that looks like, however you
have to phrase that, however, you have to to seek that. I'm
all in I'm in favor of it, I believe in it. So put
me on this list, take me off this list. But if you ask
me why I haven't been married yet, just put the put the focus on
yet and not on never. All right, shoot me an email. Great
Love Debate ad gamail dot com. All you perpetual bachelors and bachelrettes out there,
I want to hear your thoughts on it. Go to Great Lovedebate dot
com. We have some shows, live shows coming up. I'm picking and
choosing which ones I want to do. But I'm sure somebody at the show
will raise their hand and say, why are we talking to you you've never
been married, and I will have an answer for it. I'll say,
listen to this episode. But most importantly, like, share, follow,
please review this podcast. Reviews will always mean a lot in the podcasting ecosystem.
Happily ever after, because, as always at the Great Love Debate,
we never stopped making love. See you next time the Great Love Debate.
It's the Great Love Debate. Great Love Debate. It's a great love debate.