Dear Chelsea - The Best Relationships in History with Eli J. Finkel

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

This week, Chelsea is joined by social psychology professor and relationship researcher Eli J. Finkel to discuss marriage, monogamy, and why data matters when it comes to relationship advice. Then: A recent breakup makes an ex-girlfriend question her gut. A wife wonders how to get her husband to put down the phone when they’re in bed. And a twenty-something explores opening up her relationship with her non-binary partner.  *Executive Producer Nick StumpfProduced by Catherine LawEdited & Engineered by Brandon Dickert*****The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the Podcast author, or individuals participating in the Podcast, and do not represent the opinions of iHeartMedia or its employees. This Podcast should not be used as medical advice, mental health advice, mental health counseling or therapy, or as imparting any health care recommendations at all. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical, counseling advice and/or therapy from a competent health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issues, health inquiry or matter, including matters discussed on this Podcast. Guests and listeners should not rely on matters discussed in the Podcast and shall not act or shall refrain from acting based on information contained in the Podcast without first seeking independent medical advice. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody. Hi. Hi, Katherine. Hi. Hi.

How are you? Ooh, I'm so good today. I'm just, I'm feeling cheerful. You're always cheerful. The holidays are coming. Yeah. You're always cheerful, though. Yeah.

You might be boring. You have one of those cheerful faces. Oh, good. Yeah. I have the opposite resting bitch face. I mean, that's okay. I sort of sometimes have a resting bitch voice where I sort of like a little bit of vocal fry. And like people think I'm being bitchy, but I'm actually not. I'm just like stating a fact.

Joe says I do this thing when people are talking to me that I don't want to be talking to that I have a low grumble where I go, and he says, when like people are approaching us or if somebody, if somebody is annoying me, he goes, he'll look at me, he goes, honey, I can hear you. And I'm like, what? And then I go, I, can I make a confession? I have heard that noise. In fact, earlier today, you know, we were recording something and there was something that you were trying to say and it kept coming out kind of wrong. And you did, you had just sort of a, yeah, yeah. I think it's disdain for the circumstances I find myself in. I go, I mean, you know, you know what? I'm going to own it. That's part of me being a bitch. You know what I mean? That's who I am. Yeah. You know, it's a whole brand. Yeah. One side bitch, one side sunny side up.

Well, I have an interesting update from our Dax episode. Oh, yeah. You guys asked about fentanyl and cocaine. Yeah. You know, we may never know, but here is a theory that one of our callers wrote in with. She says, Hi, Chelsea. I had the same question as you and Dax about why fentanyl is ending up in people's Coke. My former heroin-slash-cocaine-addict boyfriend explained that when dealers cut fentanyl into the Coke, it balances it out a little so you're able to do more of the coke without getting too anxious. It gives more of a euphoric effect, so it makes you want to do more of it and call them quicker for another eight ball.

Cute, huh? P.S. In case you're wondering, he's been sober three years this January. Jay. Yeah, well, that makes sense until you find out that fentanyl kills people, and then you're losing customers. So, yeah, I mean, it's not great. It's a great idea for the beginning. But then when you find out the effect, then you have to like, why would you want to kill your own cocaine customers? Right. Or then you can for business. Exactly. Or then you can do more coke. But then, like, you can also overdose on that and die. You know, it's just it's no good. Yeah. Fentanyl needs to get, oh fuck. Be careful out there. Yeah. Be careful out there. Don't do cocaine anyway. Coke is out

of style. Yeah. Yeah. We have a professional on the show again. This is a fun new thing we're doing. I like every once in a while to throw in somebody with a degree or some background in psychotherapy or expertise since the two of us are just bouncing off of what we've read and absorbed through other people. Although we've been doing a pretty good job. A lot of our patients are thriving. Yeah. Yeah. So we have a great guest today. He's a social psychology professor who studies romantic relationships, meaning initial attraction, marital dynamics, shared goal pursuit. And he's the author of the bestselling book, The All or Nothing Marriage, How the Best Marriages Work. And he's a professor at Northwestern University. This is perfect timing since I'm probably going to end up getting married. Oh. Hi, Eli.

How are you? Good. How are you? Very well. I'm loving life. How about yourself? I mean, yeah, things are going, you know, other than the state of the world, but that's always a pain in the ass, right?

Yeah. We've got some state of the world issues. State of the world issues. Personally, things are going fine for me. Actually, better than fine. So I'm doing well to answer your question more succinctly. I recommended your book to Chelsea because she's newly in love and she's in a really solid, wonderful relationship with a great guy. And when I read your book a couple of years ago, I was just I have to say one of the reasons that

I liked it is it pointed out a lot of things that like I'm doing right in my relationship, which felt very good for like sort of a self-helpy type of book. I feel like normally when you read books like that, you're like, okay, here's what I'm doing wrong. And here's what I'm doing wrong. And here's what's wrong. I've recommended it to so many people. I feel like your book, The All or Nothing Marriage is just a perfect introduction to here is what a good relationship looks like. It can actually look like a lot of different things, but here are some of the things that you have to either have or get rid of in your relationship to make it last. Yeah. And what I really appreciated about the book, it's called The All or Nothing Marriage, How the Best Marriages Work. What I really appreciated about the book is

the historical context that you put it into, what marriages have been over the course of history and what they have become in a more pragmatic modern society. And so that is very helpful to understand what people needed a long time ago versus what people need today. You know, everyone talks about how we're all a lot more touchy feely, emotionally in touch with ourselves now more than ever, right? And how to kind of make that work in today's society and what, and all the, with all the demands, you know, we're not just sitting here going hunting in the morning anymore, because that's what I'm always comparing myself to as a hunter-gatherer. I'm like, you know what?

Life's not so bad. At least you're not hunting today. So you kind of break that down in a really relatable way, right? I think that is what the point of this book is, is to understand what your expectations are and how to communicate, which is, you know, the bane of everybody's existence. I think communication can be so hard and such a hurdle. And once people learn how to do it and are able to exercise it more frequently, the results kind of show, right? Yeah. I mean, that is the hope, right? That all of us are born into a certain cultural and historical moment, and that just feels like what reality is. And it's only when we step outside that moment and say, well, how did they used to do it? And how do they do it in other countries and other cultures that you start to get perspective

on, first of all, the range of the ways people do things, for example, the different ways that marriage functions in different times and different places. But also you can get a novel perspective on your own circumstances and say, look, this is where there's a flexibility that I might not have otherwise seen, an opportunity to make things better that would have been out of reach if I hadn't had this perspective from the outside. And what is your background? How did you come about writing this book? I am a social psychologist. I'm an academic. I'm half in a psychology department. I'm half in a business school, actually. But basically, I do research on relationships. And when I say do

research, I mean it in the data way. Lots of us have hypotheses or ideas about what makes for a good relationship or a bad relationship. But the truth is very few of us, including most self-help writers, put those ideas to any sort of test. All of us have instincts that are wrong. And the only way you can really know is to test them in a formal way, which is a pretty cool thing. There's this area of research that people don't really know about called relationship science, where we try to use data to test hypotheses about what makes relationships better, what makes them worse. And can you give us some of that info? What are the most common themes to a marriage that isn't going to make it? And what

are the most common ways to improve things? Well, the way I lay it out in the book, in the All or Nothing Marriage, is that our expectations are essential. And to some degree, all of us realize that. It's not hard to come across advice, hey, stop asking so much, for example. But the story ends up being much more complicated and much more interesting, I think, in terms of what is it that we should look for from our relationship? And once you have this historical and cultural perspective, you realize the range of things that people do ask from their marriage, things that people don't ask from their marriage. And then it puts us in a position to say, well, what's crucial for us? How can we play to our strengths and limit our weaknesses? That is yours,

mine, and ours, this particular relationship. There's a lot of things that are essential and pretty well validated from the data. For example, most of us have a pretty strong need to love and be loved. We simultaneously have a pretty strong need not to feel rejected. And this leads to an interesting tension, right? That is, how do I simultaneously get very close and intimate with you while making sure that I'm not vulnerable to pain and exploitation from you? And this is one of the things that's most interesting about our really intimate relationships

is that we don't get to maximize both. You can't simultaneously be totally protected and totally intimate. And so you have to, through trust and other things like that, you have to be willing to calibrate how willing am I to be vulnerable to you? And if the answer is a lot, that means that we're prioritizing closeness in the relationship over self-protection. If the answer is no, I'm a little scared and I don't feel like I can be that vulnerable, then we're prioritizing self-protection over the relationship, neither one of which is right or wrong. But until we start thinking that way, we don't really have a perspective on the choices that we face and the trade-offs that we face. Yeah. Because I think that what you're talking about, like one of the things in the book that I thought was interesting was making everybody watch those kind of romantic

comedy movies and then write their notes on it, like what they liked about it, what they didn't like about it. Because I think romantic comedy movies are a major factor of why women have expectations that are not met. You know what I mean? I mean, luckily I'm in a relationship with somebody who has exceeded any expectations I could have ever had for any man. I mean, I didn't even think this was possible. So but i i know that i whenever i had an experience you know even the wedding planner with jennifer lopez i remember going what the fuck is this shit seriously you know like what i mean the formulaic aspect of a movie and and and watching that and expecting that that to happen is just so unrealistic because every individual has their own life history, their own personal demons, their own personal trauma. And then you have to join forces with another person and try to be you have to be so healthy.

You know, in my experience, you have to be so healthy to be able to be in a relationship. Like until I got healthy, I was useless. I could not be in a relationship because I have to understand that I have to give and that I have to shut up when I want to say something and that I have to be quiet, you know, in certain times and to choose moments for certain conversations. And without therapy, I would have, I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. Yeah. I mean, a couple of interesting things there. First of all, one of the things that from my perspective is so striking about that genre, the rom-com, is that at least traditionally it ends with the wedding or maybe even the proposal. And from my perspective, you're just getting started, right?

It's like, well, they met and it didn't go well and they had to resolve the conflicts and then they sort of fell in love and he said, will you? And she said, I do. And then we cut to the credits. It's like, my God, no wonder we suck at actually living a 20, 30, 40, 50 year marriage with somebody because it's like not considered part of the romance or part of the story. There's like, and they all lived happily ever after. What? What? They get to the proposal and everything from there is just epilogue? A second thing that is so interesting about what you just said, about the importance of really getting good with yourself, going to therapy, discovering who you are,

maybe cultivating a stronger sense of self-esteem and so forth, that is indeed crucial. That's a really essential part of what makes for a good marriage. One of the things that I found so interesting when I was working on my marriage book is that that didn't used to be the case, right? Like you don't have to go that far back before like nobody married for these sorts of reasons. You know, I'm marrying you because, you know, you make me feel psychologically whole or you're my best friend. I mean, you go back literally just 200 years in this country and life was way too precarious for that.

It would have been an extreme luxury to feel like, I don't know, you make me become my ideal self and I'm like a whole person and therefore can connect to you in this intensive, emotional way. Literally, it used to be about food, clothing, and shelter. It used to be about like, how do we not freeze in the wintertime and make sure there's enough to eat throughout the difficult months? And what's so interesting, I think, about these changes, right? Like I'm not just talking about an abstraction. I'm not just saying like, oh, 200 years ago, isn't that a fun fact? The changes are crucial because as we think about the way that marriage used to be and the way it is now, we can think, well, okay, well, what opportunities does it afford today that it

didn't use to afford? And what challenges does it bring today that it didn't use to bring? And you were talking, Chelsea, it sounds like you, I don't know if you believe in soulmates or whatever, but it sounds like you've met somebody who's lighting your fire on all the dimensions, somebody that feels profoundly compatible with you. And those of us who live in the current climate, live in 2021 America and are able to find that are indeed able to have a level of marital connection that was out of reach, not only 200 years ago, but even like 1950, right? Where people just weren't looking for this sort of stuff from their marriage. So that's the positive side.

On the negative side, these expectations aren't easy to meet. And if you, Chelsea, are bringing the assumption to your relationship, and you have to correct me if I have this wrong, but if you're bringing the assumption that I need to be my full, whole self, and I need him to be his whole, full self, So it's two whole, full selves connecting and really cultivating the best in each other, which I think a lot of people, a lot of us these days are looking for. It's a big ask. And a lot of relationships that would have been totally fine, not only 200 years ago, but I don't know, 1950, like would have been totally fine, now disappoint us. And that really is the thesis of the All or Nothing Marriage. That's the thesis of my book, that we've arrived at a moment in time where the average marriage is worse than

in earlier eras because it's harder to meet the needs and the expectations that we're bringing to it these days. But the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras. And in fact, I'm a little beyond the data here, but my perception based on the evidence is probably the best marriages today are the best marriages that the world has ever known. That's so interesting to me that you say that. And reading your book, it almost takes a little bit of pressure off a marriage to think, you know, this person doesn't have to be like the best sexual partner I've ever had and the best sexual partner I've ever had and the best emotional partner I've ever had and an intellectual equal and all these other things.

And like my whole community and you talk a lot about how for eons we had the whole village would fulfill most of those roles. And the partner was just the partner, the person you raised children with and you kept each other from starving. But to come to a place where you realize like, oh, my partner might fill four of those roles and not 10, or they might fill nine of those roles and not 10. And like, that's okay. And maybe if I do just need to vent and he's not ready for me to just vent, he wants to give me advice. Maybe I take that to my girlfriends, you know, who know that I just need to vent or whatever role that person might be lacking for you. It's not that the whole relationship is a wash. It's just that this one need that I have might need to be met elsewhere. Yeah. I think that is one of the

like essential things that we're kind of losing track of as a culture. It didn't used to be the case that your spouse was supposed to be your best friend and your source of primary emotional fulfillment and the person who really helped you with your spiritual quests. There were certain circumscribed roles that were played by different people in your community. And throughout the course of US history in particular, but especially in the current era, we all write our own vows, our own wedding vows now. It's too much of an authentic moment for us to take the stuff off the shelf and use that stuff. And then I go to a lot of weddings, you probably do too, and you can listen to the vows. And the vows are things like,

I want to marry you because you're my best friend. I want to marry you because again, you bring out the best in me. And you go down this rather long list of social, emotional, psychological reasons why we marry these days. And if I sound like I'm on the verge of becoming a scold and telling everybody to stop doing that, no, I just want everyone to realize that it doesn't have to be this way. And it didn't used to be this way. We've set up a particularly idiosyncratic system. And so again, as you were saying, Catherine, one of the ideas in the book is not just, well, I expect this from my marriage and I expect that from my marriage and I expect this other thing from my marriage, but very deliberately and very strategically saying, I will not expect this thing from the marriage. I will not expect this other thing from the marriage because

we have this tendency to just pile more and more and more stuff, expectations, needs on this one relationship. And I'm not saying that's always a bad idea. Sometimes the person who is your best friend really is your spouse. And that person also is the best person to be your primary source of emotional support. And that person also is the person with whom you have the most sexual chemistry and down the list. And God bless, that's convenient that he's in your house with you, but there aren't rules. There's no tablets from Mount Sinai that say that your partner has to do this one person, this spouse has to do all of those things. And so, yes, one of the things that I urge people to do is figure out where is it that we have strengths and really lean into those things. Yeah. Where is it that we

come up a bit short? We're chronically sort of bickering about something or I'm chronically disappointed in you and you hurt my feelings about some things. It might be so essential for you that you have to work it through with this person. And the book talks about that too, but maybe it's something you can let go of and say, you know what? Every time I want to talk about work, he gets kind of cranky with me. Do I really need to talk to him about work? And you realize, you know what? Every time I want to talk about work, he gets kind of cranky with me. Do I really need to talk to him about work? And you realize, you know what? I don't.

I have plenty of people to talk to about that. Interesting. Yeah, that seems like a common problem. Well, we want to put you to work right away because we have a professional here as opposed to the two of us who are constantly doling out advice with no credentials whatsoever,

except my own therapy experience, which I take very seriously. So we want, we have callers call in and we're going to have you kind of, you know, help everybody so that we have some legitimacy. Thank you for lending it to us. Yeah. And before we get to our callers, we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really break! your spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really

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on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And we're back. So, Chelsea and Eli, our first question comes from Charmaine. Charmaine says, Dear Chelsea, I've been married to my husband for nearly 15 years and we've gotten into a rut. With two young kids, busy jobs, and COVID killing our social life, I'm always looking for ways that we can spark the romance and do something active. Our nights are mostly spent in bed, watching TV, and scrolling through our phones. How common is that? We're too fucking young and cool to be

acting like a couple of geriatrics. Help, Charmaine. Okay, Eli, I'm going to let you go first, obviously. You know, that is such a sort of classic example. And assuming I'm reading the subtext properly, it sounds like this is generally a strong, loving marriage that's just, as Charmaine says, just in a rut. And one of the things that's cool about this line of research I was talking about, this area of work, relationship sciences, is we can actually do a better job than even five or 10 years ago at saying not only general things like, well, try a date night, but being specific about which sorts of activities together are likely to cultivate what sorts of connections. And so one of my favorite studies is one that randomly assigns people to do some additional tasks.

So there's a control condition that they don't do anything. There's one condition, one of the two intervention conditions has people do comfortable activities. And Charmaine, it sounds like you have totally nailed it. Netflix and chill, but perhaps not with the hashtag and chill component to it. And then the third one is do novel and exciting activities. That is things that you don't normally do. Turns out that both of those interventions relative to people who are in the control condition make people feel closer to each other. If you actually report, how connected do you feel to your partner? It

doesn't really matter if you're doing Netflix or reruns of Friends or you're going ballroom dancing. It doesn't matter. But for hotness, if the thing that you're really trying to cultivate is this sense of fire that maybe you had 15 years ago and is waning a little bit, not because of any sort of severe conflict, but maybe something closer to boredom, it's really that other type. It's not watching friends. It's trying something new and different that tends to cultivate a hotter sense of connection with the partner. So do you have any examples of what that might be? Like what? Like taking a cooking class at home. You know, I feel like the phones are such a, we all fall into that grossness of being on our phones at the end of the night. And I think it's

a really good rule to incorporate into anyone's life to just designate a period of time that you are not on your phones, because it also feels lame when you're on your phone in bed. Even when you're watching TV, it's like, I remember reading, like if you're walking down the street and you're on your phone, you're doing both of those things poorly. So if you're going to be on your phone, it's an allocated amount of time that you're like, okay, I'm going to be on my phone. Joe and I do this all the time. I'm like, I'm going to be on my phone for the next 20 minutes. He's like, okay, I'll do the same thing. And when we're in bed together, we're never on our phones unless we're, you know, watching a funny video or something like that. Like we, we really try not

to. So it's just bad habits too. It's like, Hey honey, you and me, when we're in bed together, we're going to be in bed together. We're not going to have our phones on for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours at night. Nothing's that important. You don't need to be scrolling through TikTok or Instagram for those two hours. You know, whatever you're looking for will be there in the morning. And it is brain fry when we do that. So why not redirect that brain fry towards each other and just at least be snuggling or, you know, do something online together, play a game online together, or get out a board game and play it together.

You know, even simple activities like watching TV can be much more meaningful if you both don't have phones in your hand. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is something diabolical about the size of the phone. It's definitely like for a single individual, not necessarily romantically unattached, but for one pair of eyes. Chelsea, I'm curious, how long have you been with this new person? I've been with him since June, like five months, I think. But I've known him for a long time. He's an old friend of mine. So we've been friends for like 15 years and we just got romantically together in August. I love it. I mean, I think what our, you know, what our first caller would say was five months

in, like, why are you even talking to me? Right. Right. And I think she's, she's actually right. And I think this is one of the things that we start to lament as our relationships progress is like, at first, we really are thinking about each other all the time and nobody needs any sort of prompting or anything put on the schedule to have some sexy time together. And then as the relationship gets more, let's just say has existed longer, it tends to be harder, right? Like there's a couple of things that really favor hotness in the early stages of a relationship. One is novelty. And the other is it looks like there's a couple of different forms of love that go into these meaningful long-term relationships. One is something that you might call infatuation

or something like that. And it seems to be a fundamentally different set of neural systems, like a different set of processes in the brain. And during that phase, we often think, oh, I would never be with anybody else because all I can think about is you. And it's this sort of obsessive, passionate thing. Sometimes it almost feels like an obsessive compulsive disorder. I literally can't stop thinking about you. And I'm chronically checking to see if you texted back. But there's a second type that's slower to emerge, right? So if we call that something like infatuation, there's a second type that's slower to emerge, but really is like the long-term glue, and we can call it attachment or something like that. And if you look at the ratio of infatuation to attachment in, say, five months

into a relationship versus, say, 15 years into the relationship, on average, you see a large difference. And this will surprise literally none of your listeners that the infatuation stuff is very intensive at first. And then the sort of more warm, friendly sort of stuff really builds more gradually over time. And so the real question is not like, how can we have a really hot relationship for six months? It's how can we have a really hot relationship for 60 years?

And that is, again, a different set of challenges that probably requires that we make a real effort. Whereas having a hot relationship for six months, like everything's hot in the first six months. Yeah. And something you talk about in your book is reminding each other and reminding yourself about what caused you to fall in love with this person. Going back to the basics, going back to the OG reason why you guys got together, you know, thinking about those moments, thinking about the things they did that made you fall in love with them.

And that is a powerful tool for anybody to remember, whether you're in a romantic relationship or a friendship, whenever you hit a tough patch, it's important to remind yourself why you came together with this person in the first place. And that's a good aphrodisiac that I think a lot of people benefit from remembering why. Yeah. Why do you love this person? What are the things that he did to make you feel special? The things

that turned you on about him? What were the things that he did that made you feel like he was sexy and he, you wanted him, you know, as your husband, as the father of your children, all of those things. You know, it's interesting. This like reflecting back part is especially interesting because it underscores something kind of wild about the idea of marriage as a means of deep psychological and emotional and sexual connection, right? Like if it was a sacrament before God or let's just kind of do it and then we'll run the household or something, it'd be different. But for the sorts of things we're looking for, it's like,

you know, if you were to take the sort of, I don't know, default example of like, well, I don't know, we met when we were 28 and that seemed like the right time. And then we went to Europe and like the sex in Paris, oh, I'll never forget it. And I just can't stop thinking about him. And it was a couple of years and he proposed and I was thrilled and we got married. All totally reasonable. I feel no judgment of any of that stuff. But how representative of your future life together were those two, three years that you used to get to know each other, right? Like what? We traveled around Europe and had hot sex in Paris. Like, sure.

That's like a little bit of what a long-term marriage is, especially if you're considering having kids. It's like, I don't know. Then suddenly I'm involved in imposing discipline on recalcitrant little people. Sometimes it's like, well, the things that I really liked about you don't emerge as often. If you find, as I think back about what was so nice about us when we first met, it's like, to some degree, we can try to get back into those habits. To some degree, it's like, well, our lives are different now. And again, here, I think your first caller had a really good insight, which was, well, it's COVID. We've got young kids at home. We're

watching Netflix and so forth. It's like, you know what you found exciting about that guy when you first met him? How he charmed people at the bar. And so a lot of it is for relationships that are generally solid, but kind of in a rut, it's breaking out of that rut in a way that you can find that person. He's covered in spit up, 15 years of spit up on that guy, right? It's like, where do we find that person who was playful and naughty and irreverent? And again, it's not impossible to do, but it is a deliberate effort at that stage of a relationship. It's also important to find that about yourself, right? To find your kernel of truth. You're real, like standing in your own power, knowing who you are, because many times, and especially I can only imagine with people having children that

that's what they lose, the person that they used to be. So, you know, to know that that person isn't gone, that that person has shifted, you know, and to kind of remind yourself of the playfulness that we all had, you know, or people with children had before the children came along. Yeah. One of the, you know, if I had a magic wand and could wave it and change the relationships of America or something like that, the long-term ones. One of the things I would wish for is more play. I don't necessarily mean hashtag play or quotations play, but that too. But it's easy to get into habits. And again, some habits are good, some are bad, but it's like, okay, this is the time I wake up and then I see the kids off and that's this process. And then there's this other process. And it's like, you know, when was the last time we were really naughty?

Like when was the last time we were irreverent or just cracked up? And those things, you know, life's busy, especially you have a two career couple and you're chronically, especially with young kids, right? Like I could see why there's like extended periods of time, possibly a decade or something where it's like, I don't know, it just felt so chaotic. And in the meantime, did we really attend to what is really, at least for most of us, the organizing relationship, the most central relationship in our life. And sometimes we're a little bit neglectful of it in a way that's benign and mild for each individual day,

but over the course of a thousand days or 5,000 days ends up taking a real toll. And so, yeah, I would love it if I could break people out of their routines in a way that was naughty, irreverent, playful, childlike in a way, but perhaps with sex. I think Joe has a lot of those qualities. My husband also, he's just constantly being silly. He makes me laugh. And it was a couple years ago that I had to make a really conscious choice when he'll do a thing sometimes where he tries to make me laugh if we're sort of starting an argument or starting to disagree. And I used to just be like, well, I'm not going to like, I'm not going to buy into that. And I just came to a point a few years ago

where I'm like, guess what? Life is a lot more fun if you just laugh and then you guys get back into normal. If you just giggle, you like, you know, give them the win. Yeah, right, right, right. I think that's a really important thing. It's like getting to a point where you can give it away. Like you give the person the win. You're like, let them take this. Yes. Because then you're not operating out of ego. And that's the biggest problem that we all kind of stumble on is our own pride, which is pointless in that kind of dynamic. says Dear Chelsea. My name's Caitlin, and I'm looking for some advice and a ray of hope from you and the team. Last week, I broke up with my loving and dependable boyfriend of one and a half years, all because of this tiny feeling in my gut he wasn't the one. I tried so hard to make the unsureness go away and just couldn't, even though he was completely wonderful and the partner anyone would want. I found myself forced to reckon with the decision I've made and I'm constantly wondering

if something better is actually out there. I miss him so much and I'm so sad at the pain I've caused us both. I'm scared I made the wrong decision and that I may never find love again. Any advice for staying the course and letting go of fear of the unknown? I feel overwhelmed that I may never find happiness again.

Caitlin. Oh, hi, Caitlin. Hi, Chelsea. Hi, this is Eli Finkel. Hi, Eli. Hey there. He's a relationship scientist. I need Eli in my life.

Yeah, you do. It's perfect timing. And you know, Catherine, right? You guys have corresponded. Well, I'm glad you called in and I'm glad to talk to you. So tell us, when did this happen? So this happened about, we're going on three weeks now. So this is pretty recent. Okay. So that's natural. All of your feelings are totally natural. I would say,

I'm going to let Eli weigh in. I would say though, trusting your instinct is a very, very important thing for women to do, especially moreover, I think than anyone, because women have such a habit of ignoring our instincts. So I would say that trusting your instinct is the number one thing that you can do for yourself to be an empowered person. And you did that. And all of these feelings that you're having come with that decision, you know, missing somebody, second guessing your decision, wondering what you did, if you did the right thing. And I think that's all natural and you have to know that. Like you're not experiencing these feelings as a result of making a wrong decision per se, but this is all comes with that kind of decision making. Once you make a decision

to get rid of somebody in your life that there's not necessarily anything wrong with, but it's not 150% right in your mind, you're signing up anything wrong with, but it's not 150% right in your mind, you're signing up for all of these emotions that come along with breaking up. And that's totally normal and natural. And there's no reason to second guess yourself. You know, if you feel like this in a year, then I would say, oh, okay, then maybe you really need to revisit it. But all of this stuff is, these are the things that are going to happen to you emotionally after you make a decision like that. Eli, what do you think? You know, one of the things about really engaging with life, being somebody who's truly alive,

is that you are in the arena and that you are going to make decisions. This is all of us. I'm not talking just to you, Caitlin. All of us, we're going to make decisions. Those decisions are made under uncertainty and we will have some regrets. And that is like this existentially agonizing state of what it is to be a human being. And so I don't know, like, did you make the right decision? Did you make the wrong decision? I don't know. I do think a lot of Chelsea's analysis is deeply wise in that, you know, the ability to trust oneself is one of the things that has great value. And I also agree that these sorts of issues have been gendered historically. To what degree do we empower women to really trust themselves and go with their instinct? As a relationship scientist,

I can tell you, we ran a study once where, this I'll talk in averages now rather than about your specific situation, but we ran a study once where we followed people over time. And perhaps deviously, these were all people who were in relationships. Every two weeks, they completed a survey. And we asked them every two weeks, if you were to break up with your partner in the next two weeks, how happy will you be in two weeks from now? And then we also asked four weeks, eight weeks, and 12 weeks. We were like, how will you be doing? And on average, people were way better off than they themselves had forecasted. Now, I don't know if that's true for you. It sounds like you're having some residual thinking about some regrets. We don't know what your

baseline was, like how ambivalent you felt one week ago versus now. But what we do know is that on average, people significantly overestimate how distressed they'll be. We could also figure out on average, who are the people who got it most wrong? The people who were most in love at the time they made their forecast. These are people who think my life will never go on. I will never be whole again. On average, they tend to recuperate reasonably well. I don't know if any of that is resonating with you, Caitlin, but that's a little bit from the perspective of the science. Yeah, I mean, it definitely resonates with me. I feel like that's hope in itself as I just keep wondering, like, when will it end?

Like, when will this emotional pain end and forecasting that it won't? And that's really difficult to get past because you're just in this cycle of thinking, like, I'll always feel this way. So it's nice to know that I might have overestimated it. And the timeline I'm expecting is going to be a lot shorter than I can see now. So it is useful to have some data. I'm kind of a solution oriented person. That's why I reached out. So it's nice to know. But also, you know, emotions don't have like a beginning, middle and an end all the time, you know, so to say to yourself, when is this going to be over? I thought this was going to be over. I've done that with relationships. Like, why am I still feeling this way? It's been this, it's been three months. It's been six months. We don't have an exact gauge about how long it takes us to get over or pass something. You know, we don't have it and it's

not permanent. Nothing is permanent. That's the only thing we know for sure is that nothing is permanent, right? Our emotional states, our physical states, everything is moving and changing. So you're definitely not going to feel like this interminably. It's not going to go on and on and on, you know? And if you get to a point where you feel strongly like you made the wrong decision, then you'll have the opportunity to go back and correct it. And as a woman, I honestly think trusting your gut was the strongest move you could make and that you're going to be fine

and you're going to go through this. It's been three weeks. That's pretty new. Like I don't get over things in three weeks. And I think that's pretty new. You were there with him for a year and a half. Give it some space. Out of respect for both of you, give it some space

because you don't want to go back prematurely and be like, Hey, cause that's not nice either or fair to him. So you have to, you know, honor the fact that you did end the relationship and not be playing games and really get your head to a place where you can reflect with some perspective and then know, okay. Cause you will know you're going to get to a place where you're going to go, thank God I made that decision. Or the opposite. You'll get to that place. Okay. Are you guys of the mindset that not talking or not communicating in any way is the fastest

path to healing? Or do you feel like some communication could be okay? Eli, that's a you question. I'm not aware of the data. I can offer my best intuition. I think if the goal really is to split, I do think there's something to be said for taking a legitimate breather. That doesn't mean forever, but you see lots of instances. Again, here I'm talking less about data, but you see lots of instances where, well, we're

still each other's best friends. We still sleep together sometimes. And if the goal really is to, you know, this wasn't the right fit for me for what I'm looking for in a relationship right now. And therefore I need to get myself to a place where I can move on. Then I see some wisdom in the plan of in the long run, I hope we can be friends, but let's wait until the desire to reach out doesn't come from a place of pain and craving before we reinitiate that. And that time will also give you some space to get into your gut and really check, really see like in two, three weeks, does this still feel right? Whereas if you do still

have that connection and that ongoing conversation, it can be a little, a little muddier. I will say like, even since I originally reached out to you guys, I feel like I've seen an evolution in how I felt. What once was this gut feeling like has started to uncover reasons. And I didn't feel that initially. So I think that is at least some progress of that space you're talking about. I'm uncovering more. It's, it starts with a gut instinct, but I think that gut is based on something. And when you're so emotionally invested, you can't always see that. So I do feel like that's, you know, changed even since I reached out. So that's good. You sound like you have your shit together. Also, you know, with the holiday season coming up, just because your background says, Oh, it made me think of it, you know, just know that that those feelings are

going to come up, that you're not going to be with each other this year. And be prepared, like manage your expectations like Eli talks about in his book. You know, manage your expectations for what you're going to be feeling and know there's going to be a couple of rough days where you're really going to miss him and you're going to want to reach out. And if that's the right thing, maybe it's the right thing. But have enough respect for him and for yourself to stick to the plan because space is the only thing that will give you the information you really need to know. And you're halfway there and you made a strong decision. I respect that a lot and you're going to be just fine. And I have no doubt you'll know exactly what to do when the time is right. Thank you. That's nice to hear. Yeah. Well, thank you, Caitlin. Yeah. Thank you, Caitlin, for calling in and have a great holiday season

with your family and enjoy them. You know, guys. Yeah, thank you, Caitlin, for calling in and have a great holiday season with your family and enjoy them, you know? Guys, yeah, I need to lean into that. And let us know what happens. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. So nice to meet you guys. Thank you.

This is a dream. Take care. Okay, bye. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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Well, there's one more question I definitely want to get to with Eli, because this was one of the most surprising things that you talked about in your book. This question comes from Brett. Dear Chelsea, my name is Brett, and I'm a 26-year-old female, and my partner's name is TJ. He's a 26-year-old trans male. We've been dating for a year and four months,

just moved in together and have recently started having conversations about opening up our relationship. We've always prioritized open communication and are patient and empathetic with each other. We've been honest about our attraction to other people and think that opening up our relationship would benefit both of us. Do you have any advice about how to open it up while maintaining our long-term relationship? Brett. Eli. Is that me? That's you. That's you. Chelsea, come on.

I'm not carrying my weight on this episode. This is a major decision for couples. But what I appreciate about the question is that this is a couple that is making the decision deliberately. And actually, this is how I felt about the previous caller too, is that it's easy to let life happen passively. It's really living in the arena to make deliberate decisions that you know may well involve regret, but at least the regrets of commission rather than regrets of omission. And I have a fairly long discussion late in the book about consensual non-monogamy. And here I feel obligated to do an aside. This is not infidelity and this is not cheating. There's nothing in my book that says, yeah, like promise that you'll be faithful and then don't do it. There's nothing in my book like that. But this question of, is monogamy the standard default for all relationships? Well, it usually is. Is that a good thing that it's something that almost nobody discusses? I think no. I think on average, the state of our marriages, the state of our relationships, and let's say the US, for example, would be stronger if we had a better

lexicon, a better ability to talk openly about our needs and preferences in the sexual and, frankly, romantic domain. It's usually not that you just want to go off for a quickie with someone. It's usually that you want some type of connection with someone else. And so I don't have an opinion about whether any individual person should do it. And I don't know enough about Brett's circumstances to recommend that they open things up or don't. Here, I would like to set myself apart from people who are like advocates or zealots for consensual non-monogamy. I think many people, perhaps most people are probably happier in a monogamous relationship.

That said, a healthy, substantial minority of us would probably be not only happier at the personal level, but have a stronger relationship, a stronger, let's call it primary relationship or marriage or whatever we want to say, if there were more openness and open discussion about opening things up. So how does one do that? I'm not an expert on the conversational gambits that you need. Just remember that your partner might not start from the same headspace that you're in. You might think, oh, I love this person so much, but one of the things I'd really, and one of the things I'd really like to do to make sure the relationship stays strong is to see other people. And he might hear you say, you don't love me and you're not

attracted to me. And so the ability to convey that this desire for opening the relationship doesn't come from a place of lack. It doesn't come from a place of void. It does come from a place of need and desire to live big, ambitious, fulfilling lives that are ideally well-suited for both of us. And I think that if we had a society where those conversations were easier to have, relationships would be better. Yeah. And I would also recommend just a book for them to read. Called Swinging. Is there a book about swinging? No, I'm sure there is. But no, I just made that up. Well, this is kind of about that. But it's called The Ethical Slut. I read it just sort of out of curiosity a few years ago. And it's really it really sort of

breaks down like how to have certain conversations. But I think as someone who has a couple of friends, you know, a pair of friends who were married and spectacularly blew up their marriage by deciding to open it up without having read one article or one book on the subject, I would say just research the heck out of it before you go into it. Talk the heck out of it before you go into it and then like decide if it's right for you and set super clear boundaries. That's basically like as far as I've read with things, that's the best way you can go about it. And then keep talking once you start. Yeah, I think honesty is the best policy for everything

with relation to non-monogamy and with having relationships. If you're both on the same page, that's your decision to do that together. But just try not to lie about anything and just be as open and honest as you possibly can for the most successful outcome. I'd like to add one other bit on this that I just think sort of frames the discussion, not for any individual caller or any individual person, but as a society, how are we going to think about monogamy in marriage, let's say? And for me, and this won't surprise you at this stage of our conversation, it's really

about what are the expectations that you're bringing to the relationship and what is it that's realistic that the relationship can deliver? And I feel about the monogamy side of things. And this is, I mean, both romantic and sexual monogamy, that assumption that all of us, almost everybody has, that that's what marriage is. By the way, that certainly was not what marriage always was. Anybody who's read the Bible knows that that's not the case. But for those of us today, we might decide that that's absolutely essential and that's fine. What I regret or lament about the way we're thinking about non-monogamy is it is accepted as a default. And consequently, we don't have any discussion of how we're going to do it. So it's not like we're 30 and we hope

to be married for the next 60 years. And it's like, boy, that's like a long time to be with only one person romantically and sexually. And I like flirting. How are we going to keep this hot, playful? How are we going to make this work? I just don't think that we're having mature conversations about that because we're not having mature conversations about what the alternatives might be. And so from my perspective, it is a damn big ask to say, you will be with nobody but me in any romantic or sexual way for the next 60 years until death does us part. And so good. Lots of people should make that ask. I have no objection to that ask. Great idea for many people. But there should be some sort of follow-up thinking or conversation about how are we going to deliver on that? And I wish we had those conversations.

Can you expand a little bit on, in your book, you talk about the bonds that a lot of marriages that you saw that were open, how their bond was sort of like, in a lot of instances, closer than some people who were monogamous? Yeah. So again, this is one of the cool things about being a relationship scientist rather than a speculator, right? So this is an interesting question. So let's imagine that

you're with one person as a primary partner. There are obviously other versions of non-monogamy than that, but let's imagine that you have a primary partner and we want to compare people who are with a primary partner and have a consensual non-monogamy norm of some sort that is something other than complete monogamy. And another group of people that are, again, have a primary partner, but really it's the only partner because you have a strong monogamy norm. Well, look, if you're an empiricist, if you're a social scientist, you can actually collect data. And to what degree are the people in group A happier than the people in group B? And by and large, there's no difference. That is, by and large, if you look at, if I'm remembering correctly, if you look at intimacy,

commitment, and satisfaction, you cannot find differences on average between the people who have opted into a non-monogamy norm versus the people who have opted into a non-monogamy norm. And again, they're reporting on how committed and satisfied and intimate they are with their own relationship, with their primary partner. Let me just say there are small differences on a couple of variables, trust and jealousy. The effects, they're not huge effects, but they go in the direction that I think is not intuitive for most people. That is, people who have opted into a consensually non-monogamous norm relative to people who have opted into a monogamous norm are a little more trusting and a little less jealous.

It's such surprising information. I'm a person who's monogamous, but I'm fascinated endlessly by non-monogamy. Me too. I'm also fascinated. But I mean, I think it makes sense because the reason why people don't want to be in that kind of dynamic is because they're not trustworthy

or because they are jealous. Like, I don't want an open relationship. I don't want my husband or boyfriend fucking other women. I'm not without me. Perhaps I'd be open to that, but no, I wouldn't be open to that. It's just not a comfort level for me because I would be jealous. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And it sounds like you, again, you talked earlier about how you have some hard-earned wisdom that you've accrued as an adult. And it sounds

like you have a pretty good sense of where you stand on this, but that means that you're in a position to have a sophisticated conversation about it. Like it could come up and you could say, well, these are circumstances that I could potentially imagine if they were important to you. These other circumstances I don't think will work. I know myself and I tend toward jealousy in those cases. And I don't want to go crazy in this relationship. Like that is a great reason to opt into monogamy. I don't think, I don't know, just because nobody's ever thought about it or we're not allowed to talk about it is a great reason to opt into monogamy.

Right. Right. Exactly. Well, Eli, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. Very fun. Thank you, Eli. Nice to meet you. You too. Bye. And for those of you listening, the book is called The All or Nothing Marriage, How the Best Marriages Work. This will be good for Joe and me because Joe wants to get married. And, you know, I'm going to have to do that one day.

Great. Yeah, and I think it's great even for if you don't get married. It's great for like relationships. What works in your relationship. Yeah, for sure. And also, like I said, you know, patting yourself on the back when you get stuff right. Tell us about your stand-up dates. Oh, okay.

So we added new shows for stand-up. My Vaccinated and horny tour, which I won a people's choice award for you guys. Best comedy tour. Can you fucking believe that? I can't. I love it for the people who voted for me. My God.

Thank you so much. Yeah. We had added second shows in Portland. We just added second show. I added a show in Maui, Pittsburgh, Philly, and Los Angeles. So we have a whole slew of shows. If you go show in Maui, Pittsburgh, Philly, and Los Angeles.

So we have a whole slew of shows if you go to ChelseaHandler.com that are already up. We've added a bunch of second shows. And we're adding second shows in Kansas City, Montclair, New Jersey, and Santa Rosa, California. Excellent. That's fantastic. You're all over. I'm all over. I'm coming your way.

All right. All righty. Goodbye. See you all over. I'm all over. I'm coming your way. All right. All righty. Goodbye. See you guys later. Bye. Goodbye. And if you have a question or you and a loved one have a question, please write in to DearChelseaProject at gmail.com.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500,

a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.