Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty, live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Well,
Speaker 1: my next guest is someone I am very excited to
Speaker 1: have on the show. He's the author of the best
Speaker 1: selling book The All Are Nothing Marriage, How the Best
Speaker 1: Marriages Work. Now, He's not just some dating coach sitting
Speaker 1: on TikTok. He's a professor at Northwestern University and also
Speaker 1: Kellogg's School of Management. He studies romantic relationships and American politics. Whoop,
Speaker 1: that's a collision, and The Economist once declared him one
Speaker 1: of the leading lights in the realm of relationship psychology.
Speaker 1: Doctor Eli Finkel, thanks so much for joining the Doctor
Speaker 1: Wendy Wall Show.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to be here, Thanks for having me, and.
Speaker 1: I am excited to hear about your take on marriage.
Speaker 3: Before we get into.
Speaker 1: What I like to call news, you can use tips
Speaker 1: for people and love hacks. Can we talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the whole idea of marriage. Some people think
Speaker 1: that marriage is becoming extinct. Can we remind people the
Speaker 1: history of marriage and what its cultural reason for being
Speaker 1: even is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love the question. Most of us, right, we
Speaker 2: live in one particular historical and cultural moment, and we
Speaker 2: think that marriage just is that that's what it always was.
Speaker 2: But of course marriage is a social institution. It changes
Speaker 2: over time. And one of the things that I learned
Speaker 2: a lot from doing is tracking how marriage has changed
Speaker 2: over time, the expectations that we bring. And it turns
Speaker 2: out that we are in an era where we have
Speaker 2: changed the institution of marriage in a way that makes
Speaker 2: it more fragile but also makes the best marriages better
Speaker 2: than the best marriages of earlier eras, right.
Speaker 1: And I actually have one of those great marriages. Now
Speaker 1: I just got married and obvious, so I'll let you
Speaker 1: know in five years. But let's go back into history.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to way back. So in our
Speaker 1: anthropological past, obviously marriage didn't exist.
Speaker 3: But what was you think the advent?
Speaker 1: Do you think it was when we moved into agriculture
Speaker 1: or when did this whole concept of one heterosexual male,
Speaker 1: one heterosexual female to gather in one abode, helping offspring
Speaker 1: that came from both of them.
Speaker 2: Only, well, there's been you know, it has formed in
Speaker 2: all sorts of cultural contexts, in all sorts of ways,
Speaker 2: with all sorts of structures. The thing that I found
Speaker 2: especially useful to do was to unpack how it was
Speaker 2: structured when you know, Europeans first started colonizing this land
Speaker 2: and then track it up until the present day. And
Speaker 2: if you look at that first era, it was an
Speaker 2: agricultural era, and the way we think about marriage today
Speaker 2: just would not make much sense. People of course, preferred
Speaker 2: to love their spouse, and if the sex was good,
Speaker 2: that was even better. But people didn't say things like,
Speaker 2: you know, gosh, Jeff is a good man, and yet
Speaker 2: I don't feel the pitter patter when I, you know,
Speaker 2: when we kiss, and therefore I'm not going to marry him.
Speaker 2: Because marriage was too important. It was literally about things
Speaker 2: like food, clothing, and shelter and these more psychological sorts
Speaker 2: of needs. People just couldn't really prioritize them back in
Speaker 2: that era.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember one time touring a former plantation
Speaker 1: down in the south in Louisiana, and I found it
Speaker 1: really interesting. Forget about the tragic parts of history. But
Speaker 1: one of the things they had in the ladies bedroom
Speaker 1: was a glass case that had letters that she had
Speaker 1: written to her sister, who was a wife on another
Speaker 1: plantation down the way. And they really looked like quite
Speaker 1: love letters. And when I asked the tour guide about this,
Speaker 1: she said, well, often Irish and English girls were sent
Speaker 1: over to the New World to be wise of the
Speaker 1: plantation owners, and their closest relationship was often with their sibling.
Speaker 1: It wasn't any form of romantic marriage. And yet she
Speaker 1: talks about, you know, my dear sister, you are in
Speaker 1: my heart at all times. I love you, I can't
Speaker 1: wait and see you. It was a love letter to
Speaker 1: her because that was really her secure attachment more than
Speaker 1: her husband.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's also you know, heartbreaking in
Speaker 2: its own way, but it is true that again we
Speaker 2: stand up in front of our loved ones and you know,
Speaker 2: a minister of the faith and say I want to
Speaker 2: marry you because you're my best friend or you complete me.
Speaker 2: And that just isn't what it used to be about.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's why it wasn't crazy for people back in an
Speaker 2: earlier era to marry people they had never met, or
Speaker 2: have families sort of set up the whole arrangement for us,
Speaker 2: because it wasn't primarily about the individual fulfillment of the spouses.
Speaker 2: And that's really changed. I mean, it started changing in
Speaker 2: a widespread way around the middle of the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 2: when we had industrialization and then a bunch of young
Speaker 2: people for the first time ever anywhere where graphically and
Speaker 2: economically independent of their parents. And it was then that
Speaker 2: they started to think, well, I would like to marry
Speaker 2: based on my own personal fulfillment. And we've continued to
Speaker 2: see that trend up until the present day. And like
Speaker 2: I said, I don't want to sound like I'm judging
Speaker 2: or castigating people. I'm delighted that I live in this
Speaker 2: era of marriage, and you know, it is more fragile
Speaker 2: because there are marriages that would have been totally sufficient
Speaker 2: for our grandparents, and today we say no, not for
Speaker 2: the expectations I'm bringing, not for the things I'm looking
Speaker 2: to get from the marriage. But what we forget is
Speaker 2: along with those expectations comes something positive, which is we're
Speaker 2: seeking a deeper emotional, spiritual, psychological sort of connection than
Speaker 2: people were seeking, say a few hundred years ago, but
Speaker 2: even fifty or seventy five years ago, and some of
Speaker 2: us are sticking the landing on that. And it's pretty
Speaker 2: great when we're able to do that.
Speaker 1: When it does happen. Now, your book is called the
Speaker 1: all or nothing marriage. Does that allude to the fact
Speaker 1: that today people want not just a you know, protector, provider, caregiver,
Speaker 1: a survival marriage, but they also want a best friend,
Speaker 1: They want intellectual stimulation, they want emotional support. Is this
Speaker 1: the part of the all that we want in our marriage?
Speaker 2: Yes? And really the all or nothing marriage is. What
Speaker 2: has happened as a result of those changing expectations is
Speaker 2: that the average marriage, at least in the US, if
Speaker 2: you track this stuff over time, the average marriage has
Speaker 2: gotten worse. You know, divorce rates are much higher than
Speaker 2: they were one hundred years ago or three hundred years
Speaker 2: ago and so forth. And our level of satisfaction, even
Speaker 2: in those marriages that make it is a little lower
Speaker 2: on average, but there is a.
Speaker 1: Substantial minoritations are so high.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, because we end up disappointed with
Speaker 2: the things aren't The marriage isn't delivering everything we'd ask.
Speaker 2: But again, some of them are pretty good. And so
Speaker 2: when I say the all or nothing marriage, I'm referring
Speaker 2: to this current era where the average marriage is worse
Speaker 2: than before, but the best marriages are better than ever.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a friend, I have a friend,
Speaker 1: and she was in a terrible marriage for years, and
Speaker 1: I always you say, you gotta leave them, you got
Speaker 1: to leave them, And she said, you know, you just
Speaker 1: like things to be better than I need them to be.
Speaker 1: Like it was struck from the outside. I was like,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't put up with it even for all that
Speaker 1: money he's thrown in there.
Speaker 3: But she was happy with the money.
Speaker 2: Wichard. You know what's fascinating about that is I think
Speaker 2: that that the two of you have you've just described
Speaker 2: your temperaments, you are more likely to have a truly
Speaker 2: extraordinary connection because of how demanding you are, what your
Speaker 2: expectations are. But at the same time, you're more likely
Speaker 2: to be disappointed in a marriage that's like kind of
Speaker 2: okay and like pretty good. But she's she's doing just
Speaker 2: fine with that marriage. And for you it wouldn't work,
Speaker 2: but for her it works just fine.
Speaker 3: It works just fine. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Listen, when we come back, we have to go to
Speaker 1: a break. I want to talk about some of your
Speaker 1: must try love hacks from your book, and also I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask you if you tried any of these
Speaker 1: hacks with your wife. My guest doctor Eli Finkel, author
Speaker 1: of The All or Nothing Marriage, how the best marriages work.
Speaker 1: And also, I forgot to say, co host of one
Speaker 1: of my favorite podcasts, Love Factually, Love Fact Doctor, Eli,
Speaker 1: how did you come up with this idea for a podcast? Oh?
Speaker 2: So this is a podcast I'm doing with Paul Eastwick.
Speaker 2: I think he's been a guest on your show recently
Speaker 2: as well. He and I are both relationships researchers, and
Speaker 2: we came to this sort of disconcerting realization that, you know,
Speaker 2: there are literally hundreds of people who devote their careers
Speaker 2: to trying to use the methods of science that is,
Speaker 2: developing hypotheses and collecting data and evaluating the evidence with
Speaker 2: regard to what makes relationships good or bad, and most
Speaker 2: of those findings are cloistered in like academic libraries. And
Speaker 2: so we had this idea that, like, what if we
Speaker 2: could get those insights, the best scientific insights, out to
Speaker 2: the public in a way that was just really fun
Speaker 2: for everybody. And so what we decided to do is
Speaker 2: is do that through the realm, or through the mechanism
Speaker 2: of movies. Popular romance movies like When Harry Met Sally,
Speaker 2: or La La Land or you know whatever else Jerry Maguire.
Speaker 2: These movies inject into the culture ideas about how relationships work. Well,
Speaker 2: we have the data.
Speaker 3: To wrong ideas, by the way, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's totally right. But one thing it's been satisfying.
Speaker 2: Each episode is about a particular movie, and one thing
Speaker 2: that we force ourselves to do in each episode to say, like,
Speaker 2: what does the movie get right and what does the
Speaker 2: movie get wrong? And it is it is definitely a
Speaker 2: mixed bag. It's our opportunity to you know, fact check Hollywood,
Speaker 2: and sometimes they do get it right also, so it's
Speaker 2: been fun to try to take a sober lens to
Speaker 2: those things.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the things that I've always said about
Speaker 1: romantic comedies is that they end at the beginning.
Speaker 3: They end at the beginning of it really well.
Speaker 2: You're right, you are absolutely right. It's like, well, we
Speaker 2: worked through that, we had the meat too, and then
Speaker 2: we had the conflict, and then we like realized it
Speaker 2: was all okay, and we fell in love, and then
Speaker 2: the movie ends, right, well, there is the next sixty
Speaker 2: years and.
Speaker 3: Now the work comes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, anyway to everybody, if you're listening, Love Factually is
Speaker 1: available on the iHeartRadio app as well. Okay, let's get
Speaker 1: back to the all or nothing marriage, how the best
Speaker 1: marriages work? What are some of your must try love
Speaker 1: hacks for all of us?
Speaker 3: And I'm taking notes here.
Speaker 2: Well, the idea of the love hack is, you know,
Speaker 2: you get people like me to, you know, talk on
Speaker 2: shows about how to make relationships good, and mostly it's
Speaker 2: conversations about a lot of work. Right. It's like, here
Speaker 2: are the ways that you can invest, and here's how
Speaker 2: to have a more active sex life to work at it,
Speaker 2: and here are the communication things you need to do,
Speaker 2: and it's going to be hard, and all those things
Speaker 2: are good.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: In the book and the All and Nothing Marriage, I
Speaker 2: talk about those things, but I also spend the chapter
Speaker 2: basically saying, are there any quick and dirty things we
Speaker 2: can do? Not the things that are going to make
Speaker 2: a bad marriage a good marriage. You need to work
Speaker 2: hard to do that. But are the things that we
Speaker 2: can do to make things just a little bit better
Speaker 2: regardless of how good the marriage is. And yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a bunch of sort of quick and easy things we
Speaker 2: can do. One of my favorites, I've actually called it
Speaker 2: the marriage hack. Right. It's trying to think about conflict
Speaker 2: in our relationship, not through our regular vantage point, not
Speaker 2: through our own two eyes, but from the perspective of
Speaker 2: a neutral third party who wants the best for everybody.
Speaker 1: And we ran a we ran a candid camera in
Speaker 1: the room.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, a fly on the wall or something. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a more friendly than candid camera perhaps, But we
Speaker 2: ran a study where we randomly assigned couples to do this,
Speaker 2: and then we tracked them versus a control condition of
Speaker 2: couples who didn't get this advice, and we found that
Speaker 2: their marriage was literally better over time. And all they
Speaker 2: had done throughout the course of the study is they'd
Speaker 2: written for twenty one minutes over the course of the
Speaker 2: year trying to think about conflict in their relationship from
Speaker 2: this neutral third party perspective. And so that's one of
Speaker 2: those quick and dirty things we can do to make
Speaker 2: ourselves a little bit happier in our marriage.
Speaker 1: Just imagine you're watching it going on and taking both
Speaker 1: people's sides, like, oh, come on, you.
Speaker 2: Guys, that's exactly right. It's just like a reorientation. A
Speaker 2: reorientation sometimes people call it self distancing, because from our
Speaker 2: own perspective, it's really easy to understand why everything we
Speaker 2: did was reasonable and why the other person is being
Speaker 2: totally outrageous. It turns out you just force yourself to
Speaker 2: be like, well, what would this look like if I
Speaker 2: were watching the two of us right now? Would I
Speaker 2: be able to see his perspective a little bit better?
Speaker 2: Would I be able to understand maybe I'm being a
Speaker 2: little hypocritical? We can do that if we try, and
Speaker 2: it's not much work.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you about gratitude?
Speaker 3: Is it a love hack?
Speaker 2: I think it is. Yes. So there's lots of different
Speaker 2: ways you could go about this, but the love hack
Speaker 2: version of gratitude is simply reminding ourselves of the nice
Speaker 2: things that our partner has done for us. And one
Speaker 2: place that I like to start to think about gratitude again.
Speaker 2: I don't know what everybody's sort of worldview is or
Speaker 2: religious background, but the best that the scientists can tell
Speaker 2: us is that the universe started thirteen point eight billion
Speaker 2: years ago, the Earth started around four and a half
Speaker 2: or five billion years ago, and we emerged from that
Speaker 2: and we are literally stardust. When I say literally, I
Speaker 2: mean the best the scientists can tell us is that
Speaker 2: we emerge from some big cosmic explosion and from that
Speaker 2: point of view, the amount of grievance that we allow
Speaker 2: ourselves to feel that we indulge in seems to be
Speaker 2: a little excessive. Can we remember that, yes, there are
Speaker 2: ways that our partner wasn't perfect, absolutely, but there are
Speaker 2: certainly nice things that our partner is doing as well,
Speaker 2: and we can make ourselves and our partner happier if
Speaker 2: we lean in on those gratitude sorts of feelings.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to tell you a story.
Speaker 1: So one of the things my husband does is he
Speaker 1: leaves drawers open an inch or two in a halfhaszard
Speaker 1: way as well as closet doors crack. And one day
Speaker 1: it occurred to me that this was my problem, not his,
Speaker 1: that it's not his job to make me happy. If
Speaker 1: I need an organized environment, that is my issue, not his.
Speaker 1: And so I decided to reframe it and turn it
Speaker 1: into a little workout. Sometimes I do squats as I'm
Speaker 1: closing his drawers, and doing it with any so that
Speaker 1: I'm getting some benefit. I try to get into weird
Speaker 1: contorted body positions as I close ers, so that least
Speaker 1: I'm getting work out. But also every time I close
Speaker 1: a drawer, I say I love you, Julio I.
Speaker 3: Love you, Hula.
Speaker 2: How nice is that?
Speaker 3: Just to remind my brain?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you just as easily could have said what
Speaker 2: a jerk. How easy would it be for him to
Speaker 2: have closed this? I've asked him thirty times. He knows
Speaker 2: it's important to me. You would have been totally within
Speaker 2: your rights. It would have been a reasonable way to respond,
Speaker 2: and yet you chose this other way to respond, and
Speaker 2: both of you are much happier.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course now he leaves things open more often
Speaker 1: because he likes to hear that.
Speaker 3: I love you. Oh insensive, I'm kind of rewarding it.
Speaker 1: Okay, we have very little time left, but I do
Speaker 1: want to ask you for one more quick hack. And
Speaker 1: have you tried them all on your wife?
Speaker 2: Have I tried all of them? One of my favorite
Speaker 2: hacks is really straightforward one. It's related to what we
Speaker 2: were talking about here, which is, there are circumstances that
Speaker 2: exist in the world. Those are real, but what the
Speaker 2: circumstance means that's up to us. The world like facts exist,
Speaker 2: but they don't interpret themselves, and so we get to
Speaker 2: interpret what we want to do. And you have just
Speaker 2: offered a great example with regard to the open drawer.
Speaker 2: You get to interpret that however you want. Have I
Speaker 2: used all eight of the love hacks in my own marriage?
Speaker 2: My guess is that I have. I haven't been systematic,
Speaker 2: I haven't gone one to eight to do it, But
Speaker 2: if I look through the list of eight, I'm confident
Speaker 2: that I have tried to use them in my own
Speaker 2: marriage as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, so you literally being a relationship expert, a relationship researcher,
Speaker 1: does your wife feel threatened or grateful?
Speaker 2: She just rolls her eyes. She just thinks this idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, the dedication of my book is to my wife, Allison,
Speaker 2: who thinks it's hilarious that I'm a marriage expert.
Speaker 1: Now, Julio tells his friends, if I can't have a
Speaker 1: healthy relationship with this one, I can't have it with anybody.
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. The book
Speaker 1: is the All or Nothing Marriage, How the Best Marriages Work,
Speaker 1: and the podcast is Love Factually?
Speaker 3: Get It? Love Actually?
Speaker 2: Is It?
Speaker 1: Love Actually is one of my favorite movies, by the way,
Speaker 1: But Love Factually there's an f in there, Doctor Eli Finkle,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: And that brings the Doctor Wendy Wall Show to eight Clothes.
Speaker 1: I'm always here for you every Sunday night from seven
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