Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler - 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.

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Bell. Connection is everything. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.

You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody. Hi. Hi, Catherine. 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 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 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's 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 i've 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 disdained for the circumstances i find myself and i go i mean you know you know what i'm gonna 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 it's a whole brand yeah one side bitch one side sunny side up yes well i have an interesting update from our dax episode oh yeah you guys asked about fentanyl and cocaine oh yeah And, 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 8-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... Yeah, 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. That's not good 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. But 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 I'm doing right in my relationship, which felt very good for 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 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, is to, you know, to test them in a formal way, which is, 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 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? Like, you know, what, 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 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 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 and 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 I, but I, I know that I when I ever 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 sort of just, 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. You don't have to go that far back before nobody married for these sorts of reasons. I'm marrying you because 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 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? 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 used to afford? And what challenges does it bring today that it didn't used to bring? And you were talking, Chelsea, it sounds like you, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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. It's so interesting to me that you say that. And reading your book, like 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 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 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 U.S. 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, like 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, 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? Like we're chronically sort of bickering about some, 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? 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. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite?

Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.

On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.

I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits,

change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook

on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka the biz and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show we've had a lot of great guests like sarah sherman not that great actually can you help me can can you help me shape this yeah how about we flip it on his head right how about we flip the script okay what is the surprise woman who actually you think is the straight man is actually the one

who's acting weird adam scott this entire time you've been expecting adam sandler to come to visit the show i i would never let go of that i have i would never set expectations for something like that seems like if the universe allows for something like that to happen i'm open to it i'm always going to accept you know danny mcbride fine yeah it's all this fragile masculinity exuding i could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you i was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity ben stiller no because a lot of times in out of context people don't get it or even know what a circle is you know what i mean like they're like oh what's the state everyone's so dumb except for you fake right fake and and

also not interested or just like oh i've got my life i don't care about your life and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us oh and by the way will ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode but he's just so busy listen to hollywood handbook on the iheart radio app 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, like 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, like 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 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, right? Yeah. And something you talk about in your book is reminding each other and reminding yourself about what, 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're hit, 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. 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 you wanted him as your husband, as the father of your children, all of those things? It's interesting. This reflecting back part is especially interesting because it underscores

was 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, right? It's like, I don't know, like then suddenly I'm involved in like imposing discipline on recalcitrant little people. And sometimes it's like, well, the things that I really liked about you don't emerge as often. And so if you find like, 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 this is the other

process. And it's like, when was the last time we were really naughty? When was the last time we were irreverent or just cracked up? And those things, life's busy, especially you have a two career couple and you're chronically, especially with young kids, right? I could see why there's 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 end 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. Yeah. My husband also, like, he's just constantly being, like, 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, hmm, 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 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 well our next caller is caitlin caitlin is in seattle and she says dear chelsea my name is 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.

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 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 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've 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 because 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, because 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 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. 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 And we'll be right back. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies?

Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, Shut up. Don't say anything. every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive

Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.

On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.

I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits,

change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.

Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on its head? How about we flip the script? What if the surprise woman, who actually you think is the straight man, is actually the one who's acting weird? Adam Scott, this entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never let go of that.

I have never set expectations for something like that. It seems like if the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept, you know, Danny McBride. Fine. Yeah. It's all this fragile masculinity exuding. i could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you i was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity yeah ben stiller no because a lot of times in out of context people

don't get it or even know what a circle is you know what i mean like you're like oh what's this everyone's so dumb and fake right fake and and also not interested or just like oh i've got my life i don't care about your life and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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? 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 in, let's say, the U.S., 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 uh here i would like to set myself apart from people who are like advocates or zealots for consensual non-monogamy i 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 mean, 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 really sort of breaks down how to have certain conversations. But I think as someone who has a couple 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, 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, you know, 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.

Like, how are we going to keep this hot, playful? Like, 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 bond 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 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 primary partner. Let me just say there are small differences on a couple of variables, trust and jealousy. 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, you know, perhaps I'd be open to like that, but not, not, no, I wouldn't be open to that. You know, 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 know, 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 gonna 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 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 the 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 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. And if you have a question or you and a loved one have a question, please write in to DearChelseaProject at gmail.com. i survived nine months in captivity and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced these are stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor

Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.

Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town. Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land. We need cities on a shining hill.

This is Our Town, a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.