The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Most Replayed Moment: Why Does Commitment Feel So Scary? How to Build a Strong, Lasting Relationship

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Paul C. Brunson is a renowned relationship expert, matchmaker, and author, known for his insightful approach to modern relationships. With years of experience helping people build lasting partnerships, Paul has become a trusted voice in the realm of love, commitment, and personal growth. In today’s Moment, Paul C. Brunson dives into the complexities of commitment and modern relationships. He unpacks why commitment can feel daunting and explores what truly makes relationships successful in today’s society. From marriage to personal well-being, Paul offers fresh perspectives on navigating love, fear, and long-term connection. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/PZSQDgCiHXb Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/BKGxiOFiHXb Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Paul C. Brunson: https://www.paulcbrunson.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@WeNeedToTalk-Podcast/videos

Thinking about the history of relationships, I often wonder how many of the rules of relationships that we've been handed by society are now invalid, or maybe we're never valid. So, you know, we have these sort of constructs of like marriage and monogamy and even like heterosexuality, all these things that have been passed to us through religion and through history. I was looking at some stats about marriage, and it says that in 2019, marriage rates for opposite sex couples fell to their lowest on record since 1862. That's in the UK and in the US marriage rates have been declining since the early 1970s. I'm not married, but I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I should be or not.

I actually had a conversation recently with my partner where I said, do you want to get married? And it was abundantly clear that she does want to get married. But then I asked why and really, it seems like it was really just more for the wedding than than for some kind of legal contract that we signed with the government. So I'm really wondering, based on everything we know about history and the trade-offs of marriage, should I be getting married? Yes, because your partner wants to. Is that reason enough?

But here, all right, so I think the institution of marriage, what you're going to see, this is my prediction, is that because nuclear families What do you mean by nuclear family? So having Well, it's interesting, there's different perspectives now

on nuclear family, but I look at it as you have two partners and children and that creates the nuclear family. That becomes an economic unit which drives a society. And as that has disappeared, there's been less of a base to drive society per many researchers.

So as a result, what I believe is going to happen as we see right now in Singapore, as we see right now in China, as we see right now in Japan, you're going to see government heavily involved in incentivizing marriage. And marriage is already incentivized right now in terms of, you know, tax benefits, being able to, you know, leave assets to your partner, leave assets to family members. So as a result of the decrease of marriage and decrease of nuclear families, you will see government step up even more to incentivize. So you're going to see all types of benefits being thrown at people to get married, you know, especially as you not only see marriage rates decline, but as you also

see birth rates declining as they as they are now your question around what what should you do is that this is a question around values and this is a question that I believe is very important to have early on now I was saying you know when you meet someone you should lay out exactly what you want this is a very important question to have early early on now in terms of where you where you are with your partner, I would say that if she is for, if she's pro this, and you are indifferent, it feels like you're indifferent, not anti, but indifferent. Yeah, I think I'm somewhat agnostic to it. However, I can call out a bunch of downsides to getting married. Really? Like? Well, again, I don't know because I'm not married, so all the married

people are like screaming at me right now. I know this because they DM me. They've been DMing me for many, many years since I started the diary of the CEO. Because in some of those early episodes, I was really like, I was really quite against it. But over time, I've kind of developed my thinking here. I just wonder, I can't understand the first principles as to why having a, like, government or religious contract with somebody is going to increase the probability of success in the union of love. There's obviously the issue with the pre-in-up situation. I actually don't have this concern with my partner. So I think she's, I think you've met her, haven't you?

You've met her, yeah. From a distance. Yes, from a distance. Yeah, I don't have a concern that she's going to try and bankrupt me or that I might try and bankrupt her. So that's not really a concern. The whole charade of like doing a massive wedding, I think, is a little bit weird. I think why can't we just have lots of events over the next 50 years where we bring our

friends and family versus like one? I've also watched a couple of my friends at the moment who are getting married. the like two years of pain and heartache and like cancelling date nights so that they can afford this one wedding day feels like highly illogical to me. We've got one particular friend who is having to cancel so much for their like everyday joy to save up for this one big event which is stressing them both out and I don't think they're going to have

well I don't think he's going to have a great time at the wedding anyway because he seems so stressed by it all. I just I sometimes hear that people can't like get out of their marriage without having to like file a divorce thing with like through lawyers and going to court and battling it out in court and I just think

you should be free to leave if you want to leave. I don't know, I just think this is a terrible analogy and completely unrelated but like in football many of the problems we see with

my favourite club, Manchester United at the moment, is we've got people on five-year contracts who we just can't get rid of and like they want to go we want them to go because we sign these long contracts with them

it's like incredibly difficult. And now these players are being like thrown in the back room and they're not playing football and we're like just completely ignoring them because we can't get out the contract. Yes. So I don't know. I just think.

Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. All right. Can we talk about this? Yes. All right. There are many secular marriages. So you don't have to do anything religious related.

And it sounds like a big difficulty that you have. It could be the number one is the wedding. because but the wedding to me the premise of it is a public declaration of your love and to your point it could be as small as you want it could be as big as you want you could have as many as you want right that public declaration could happen 50 times over 50 years it is up to you so that is you and your partner navigating that space with regard to getting out of it this is the single biggest change that we need in marriages. Marriages, in my opinion, should be much harder to get into.

You shouldn't be able, like literally, you and your partner could go to Vegas, drive up, so drive through, you could have an Elvis Presley impersonator marry you, you pay $25, and you're married. It's ridiculous. I think that there needs to be, there needs to be hurdles in place. There needs to be some type of vetting some type of premarital coaching counseling.

So everyone is aware of the commitment that is about to be made. And you have the tools, you have skills around conflict management, et cetera. It needs to be hard. But then if you want out, you should be able to get out in an hour. It should be easy. Drive up, Elvis Presley says it's over $25. It's free. Yeah, free, right?

That's the way it should be. But it is the reverse. Now, you're right. Marriage is hard to get out of. That's changing. There's now the introduction, especially in the UK, of the no fault, right? But that still takes, it still could take six months or so. There still is a lot of haggle.

So I agree with you there is that it should be much easier to get out. But ultimately, what marriage is, is marriage is a declaration of commitment done in a formal way. Can you not do that without the marriage? Like, can you not do a declaration of commitment without having to go to, like, a church or whatever else and sign documents and stuff? I don't know. Is it not possible?

It is. You know? It is. I think I just have commitment issues. I think that's probably what it is. Yeah. I think that's at the core of it. Because you know what's so interesting to me

is that you're already going to, well, how do I get out of this? Yeah. Right? And it almost feels as if there is a fear of committing to someone for the rest of your life because that's a massive I mean think about this you're going to commit to someone for the rest of your life for the rest of your days and what we feel because I've been there because when I'm getting anxiety as you say

I'm like fucking oh the rest of my life the rest of your life but think about this the anxiety is the fear of what has not even come yet. So that means that you can now interrogate your thoughts. Okay, you have fear over what? What's the fear? But isn't it just a terrible idea to commit to someone until death do you part? Because, like imagine if I said to you,

you've got to pick a job and then you've got to do it forever. Yes. The amount of procrastination that would occur because of the significance of that decision would basically stop you picking any job at all because you'd be like, I don't know, I've got to pick one and do it forever. You know, you'd become a perfectionist. You know, you'd be looking for perfection in every single job.

And maybe this is, in part, the issue is that because we see marriage as being such a final thing, that we really have to make sure the pick is perfect. It's perfect. I agree. This is one of the myths, right? This whole notion of till death do us part, which really was handed to us in religion.

If you look through Christianity, Hinduism, even a lot of the modern-day Islamic marriage ceremonies, there's some formation of you will be with this partner for the rest of your life. And I think what that does is it actually sets us up for a lower level of satisfaction. It sets us up for complacency. Oh, this is all we get.

Instead... They can't leave me. They can't leave me. So therefore I don't have to try as hard. I don't even have to talk to them now. I don't have to get to the gym. No, I can just sit here. Like, so that is a myth, though, because we know where divorce rates are, separation rates are.

We know that there are, you can get a divorce. So you can get out. She can get out. We have to put that to the side. But the key is to think about when I was like interrogate the fears is, well, what's the upside? What's the upside of having a partner for life? What would you say? Upsides. I mean, I could also name the upsides, I think. So there's a certain sense of stability

and focus that comes when you know that home is kind of locked down. So as an entrepreneur in particular, I advise anybody that's going to pursue a big, grueling, tumultuous, uncertain challenge like building a business, to have a partner at home. And I know Sir Alex Ferguson was big on this when he was selecting players from Manchester United. He would often inquire about whether they were in a relationship, because if they had a stable home life, then they would be much more focused on a training ground. And I see that with myself. You need a stable base. If you're single, I think, as an entrepreneur can become an immense distraction, an immense distraction, because on one hand, you're trying to build something over here, and you're trying to build

something over here. I think marriage is useful as well, because when you know that it's hard to get out of, it means that exiting isn't the path of least resistance, which means that you probably will go to therapy first, and you probably will see if you can fix it and figure it. out versus just throwing it away. Yes. So it becomes less disposable. Yes. Which means that you're more likely to fight to fix the thing.

And what are the other upsides? I mean the stats, right? So the stats around health and wealth all suggest that if you're in a good, productive, healthy relationship, you're going to earn more money. I think it's 4% more a year in a productive marriage. Both partners net earn 4% more a year. and according to Robert Walding, who came on the show,

you're going to live longer. So I get it. And you'll be healthier? You're going to be healthier, yeah, yeah. Less disease. Good work, Stephen. I know what it is? I'm not trying to throw the marriage out.

I'm wondering if there's an alternative. Do you know what it is part of me as well? If you look at the way I've lived in my life, I've always tried to test the system. So school, like not going to school, dropping out of university, being an entrepreneur. There's always been a bit of a fuck you and me to the system.

and a real pause in questioning what I'm being handed as the right answer to interrogate whether it's still valid now. Okay. So like many of the answers I was given, you go to university, then you go get a job, and then you hand out your CV, all of these things proved in my life to just be BS. There was a better way. So when I'm approached with a conventional system like marriage, immediately I go, hmm, let's interrogate this thing.

And I would say, I'm with you. Throw the system out. Think about just one thing. and you said this, and there's research behind this, it's the investment model, right, theory. So the more you invest in the preparation of your partnership, in the actual partnership, the more that you're investing, time, all resources,

the higher satisfaction you have. That's fact, right? That's research. That's in essence what you're saying, right? So that's the way that I would approach it, is how can I invest as much? much as I can in this partnership with this person that I love. What is it that predicts a successful marriage, in your view?

Well, once again, what is success? Is it, to me, success is high satisfaction. High satisfaction is, has a strong correlation around well-being. Dr. Carol Riff, I think, is the OG of well-being. She doesn't get enough credit. she created a model called the six dimensions of psychological well-being. And in essence, if we are working to increase each one of these dimensions, so for example, one is having a vision of your life. Like, what is that vision that you have for life? And the question, though, is do you feel like you

are actively in pursuit of that vision? If you don't feel like you know what your vision is or you're not in pursuit of it, you're going to have lower well-being, right? So the higher well-being that you have individually, the higher satisfaction you have in your relationship, the more successful your relationship is. Are there, like, fundamental qualities that I should be looking for in a good partner? Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a million. But the core, the core that I like to write about is, and I actually, I'll even synthesize

it, you want to have a partner who is aware of their well-being. and who is focused on their well-being. This is incredibly important because one of the most profound bits of research that I feel like I included in the book is that most of us believe that having alignment in the values of our partner is the most successful – or is the number one determinant of having a successful partnership. We think it's about values. We're told it's about values.

We're fed values, which, by the way, goes back to, you know where that goes back to? Religion. You know how? Have you heard of you need to be equally yoked? No. Oh, you haven't heard this? No, no, no. You're not reading your Bibles.

No, no. Don't expose me. All right. So the Bible talks about you have to have a partner. You have to find a partner who's equally yoked. What does that really mean? Equally yoked comes from oxen, right? So two, you have one ox here, one ox here. They're tethered together. They're plowing the land. If they're walking lockstep, they can plow the land.

If you have one going off this way, one going off this way, you can't plow the land. You can't produce. So the Bible says you need to have a partner who is equally yoked. Pastors then interpreted that over the years to be what? Values. You need to have a partner who shares your values, has the same religion, has the same accent. This is how we became regimented in class. This happened century after century after century, right? We get to today, you ask anyone on the street. We grab 10 people, 9 out of 10 would say, and we said, how important our values, 9 out of 10 would say, values is everything. What? Values change. They change. I value things much differently today than I did 10 years ago. Our values change. They're not constant. We need to throw

away values. Are they important? Yes. Are they the most important? No. So therefore, let's de-emphasize the focusing on finding someone who matches all of our values. Instead, well-being key. Are they focused on their well-being? That's one. Two, yeah, values is important, but you know what's what's equally, if not more? Is you know what? How open-minded are they? Like, How much do they lean in? How curious are they? And then the third is how resilient are they? Because having a relationship with anyone means tough times.

So are they able to bounce back? Or when things get tough, do they just lay on their back? So if you have a partner who's resilient, you have a partner who's open-minded, you have a partner who's focused and nurturing their well-being, you have a great partner. What about ambition? Does that matter? I think ambition is a,

value set. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I just wonder, because a lot of people would say that they want that in a partner, but just by, I mean, like running the mental numbers, not everybody can be ambitious, and people that aren't necessarily hugely ambitious also find love and keep love. But when you ask them on what they're looking for, they'll tend to have a preference towards someone who's ambitious or goal-orientated. One of the things we talked about kind of in between the lines was how society has changed. And one of the ongoing conversations in dating at the moment is around how women are struggling to find compatible men because women are more educated. I think there's more women graduating with college degrees now. The top 10% of men seem to be

having all of the sex, according to some studies that I read, a lot of the sex. And then there's this bottom 50% of men that are somewhat disenfranchised because they're not getting the attention. They're probably turning to things like pornography. Women are dating up. up into the right, I'm told. So women, I did read a study that said the majority of women are still looking for a man who's earning more than them, but in a world of equality,

which we all agree is a good thing, but women are more educated now, there isn't enough men up into the right anymore. So there's this sort of disparity between, you know, what women are looking for, but actually what's available in the market, potentially. These are all facts. However, we have to interrogate this data, but more so I think we have to interrogate the narrative that's being handed to us.

So I feel like the narrative that's being handed us today is that, you know what, the top 20% of men or 10% of men, they're good, but the bottom 80% you suck, that couldn't be further from the truth. And I think we have to acknowledge, and this is where, you know, two things could be true. One, we live in a patriarchal society, absolutely, absolutely. But do we need to extend more grace to our men? Absolutely. We do. Are men lonelier than they ever have been? Absolutely.

Are men confused? Absolutely. Right? Are men being misled? Absolutely. Let's extend more grace to our men. What does that mean? That means being aware that we do live in a loneliness epidemic. Being aware than less than 27% of men have a friend that they can feel is a confidant, that zero percent of them now feel like they have someone who they can go to at 3 a.m. in the morning. It's being aware of these things. It is saying, you know what? I can appreciate other traits and characteristics outside of how much you earn or how tall you are, right? These are, it's important to be able to understand. And you just ask me, you said, what are the most, I said nothing about how much money someone makes, nothing about how tall they are, right? But at the same time, what we have to understand is the narrative that is handed to about women is that all women are looking for the six foot plus CEO, right,

who's making over 100,000 pounds or dollars a year. And that is also not the case. This study here says despite advancements in gender equality, research indicates that better educated women still tend to prefer husbands who earn more than they do. That's from the Institute for Family Studies. An analysis of online dating behaviors across 24 countries found that women are more selective than men, showing a mark's preference for men with higher incomes and education levels, which again proves this up into the right thing. But there's just not enough men up into the right. So there's going to be a lot of women that are somewhat dissatisfied according to this. All right. So the challenge, if I'm really interrogating this,

is one is it's talking about highly educated women. So we know that highly educated women are on average dating hypergamously, right? Which is what you're talking about, up. someone who's dating, someone who has the same or higher level of education, the same or higher level of financial resources. And why is that? Because that's the script that society handed to women to say, the only way you can survive is by finding a man who can deliver this to you, right? And I think we have to accept where it came from.

It was this terrible society of, you know what, you're not going to be safe unless you find a man who could provide. But you fast forward to today, a large percentage of highly educated women are dating this way. But that's not all women. The other part is, yes, are women beginning to out-earn men and out-educate men? Absolutely. In certain cities, not in everywhere of the world. Men, on average, still earn more income.

So if you look at the narrative that's handed to us, you could say, well, you know what, men on average still earn more. But my point is this. My point is that I think we all need to reevaluate what it is that we want. No longer do we need to have a partner for most of us, or should I say, this is me speaking out of privilege, for many of us in the West. no longer do we need to have a partner for pragmatic reasons. If you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and you just divided it into three categories, you would say the bottom kind of rung is all of our psychological and physical needs, food, shelter, right? Then that kind of middle rung is belonging and connection, and the top rung is self-evolved.

Self, you know, we want to be, you know, well, self-evolved, living our best self, contributing the most that we ever could to this world. Marriage and partnership and selecting a partner was largely based on that lower rung all the way through to the 1960s. That's like yesterday, if you think about how long we've lived. But it's not evolution as well, because you see the same thing in the animal kingdom with like the orangutang, which has like 98% same DNA as us. they still select for survival factors. So I think what's interesting when you look at different mammals and the evolutionary biology is that there's lots of similarities, but then there's also lots of traits that are different.

So it's one of those where we have to appreciate that as homo sapiens. We are unique. and we live in a structure that we have largely created ourselves. We're debating about the institution of marriage. I mean, marriage didn't exist for the vast majority of our existence. But this golden rule thing, you told me about this. Yeah. And you told me that it's cross-cultural.

Yes. So it is. And this golden rule thing, please explain it for people. But for me, that is evidence that there's still an evolutionary component to selection for men and women. And I was reading this study that said women, almost 50% of women prefer to date only men that are taller than themselves, while only 13% of men prefer to date only women that are shorter than themselves. And another study revealed that women are most satisfied when their partner is approximately eight inches taller, whereas men are most satisfied with a height difference of about eight centimeters taller than their partner. So women clearly have a preference here, a significant amount of them, to dating a man that is bigger than they are. yes but all right yes this is so good all right a couple things here do we have these preferences

absolutely so a lot of this handed us through evolutionary and our biology absolutely is most of it handed to us through socialization definitely do we change as we increase our well-being yes so here's my point. If you were to go back and say Zendaya, look, you go back 10 years, say Zendaya, look, would you prefer to date a man that is taller than you? I would say there's a good chance. She would say, I would prefer it. Yes. Has that been her result? No. Does she appear to be incredibly happy and satisfied? Yes. Right? With Tom Holland, that's from my opinion, from my, Outside looking in? Yes. Why could that have been the case? Because she grew up being handed to script. She grew up the Disneyification of relationships. She saw the prince and how large the

prince always was in comparison to the princess. She saw that the prince was able to pick up the princess. Like she saw all of these things. She believed all of these things. And then as she became more mature, as she realized that she doesn't need anyone's validation, as she understood the things and the traits that she loved, she was like, this, Tom Hine guy, is hot. Yeah, but that is an exception, not the one. Because also, Tom Holland's got 30 million in the bank. So, but this does happen.

You hear the short kings. But it's the exception, isn't it? It's not the rule. It is. And you know why? Also, that's the exception. And I agree. I'm with you.

It's the exception. Because most of us have poor well-being. Most of us have low self-esteem. Most of us do. I would argue most adults have low self-esteem, mid-to-low self-esteem. And what does that mean? It means that we need the validation of others, right? And this is the reason why I always say it goes back to us.

Do you really think this is the answer to this? Do you not believe that there's a big evolutionary component to attraction selection preferences? Like, because I'm struggling to believe that society is, is the only reason why we pick certain people. And I do part of me wonders and slightly worries that we've almost accidentally inadvertently designed society in such a way where what we're looking for no longer exists necessarily.

So we have to confront this new reality that, in fact, we're going to have to adjust some of our preferences if we are going to be happy and find what we're looking for. Yes. I do believe that a large percentage of the decisions that we have, make have been handed to us genetically. So I'm, I'm with that. And I think the research

suggests that. So if you have, for example, you know, I was talking to, to Dr. Taraswirt and talking about, you know, a woman in the club, if she's ovulating or not ovulating, just based on that, men are going to be attracted or not attracted. Or you think about scent, right? really what we're trying to do with scent. The reason why we're turned off with scent is that it's genetic. It's that if we end up mating with someone who has too close of a genetic mirror to ours, the child won't be as strong. So we need diversification in our genetics. And we don't realize this, but we can determine that through our scent by being turned off. It's a whole sniff test. So do genetics play a role? Absolutely. Golden Mean. We talked about Golden Mean, where in essence, this is women, on average, loving to see wide shoulders and a thinner waist. And men, on average, loving to see smaller hips, smaller waist, wider hips. Now, can people debate these concepts? Absolutely. Do they stand up? I mean, are there evolutionary reasons for these?

Yes, because it speaks to being fertile for women or it speaks to being strong to protect, right, for a man. All of this does play a role. And sometimes we don't realize how much of a role evolution has played in why and how we make decisions, which is why it's also important, though, to understand how the society that we have created as human beings also play. a role. How we were handed, you should, you need to have a partner who's the same class as you. You need to, when you find your partner, that's the person that completes you. When you find a partner, that's till death do you part. Those pieces were handed to us. So there's no wonder why we're confused. We have all this evolutionary decision making happening that we're not even

aware of. And then on this side, we have society telling us this is the person that we that we should have and this is the reason why. And I go back to why awareness is key. And understanding how and why we are gives us a power. It gives us autonomy over our decisions so that when you are making that decision on your partner, you can ask yourself, you know, yeah, yeah. I would love to have a partner who's over six feet. But how important is that really to me? Why do I think I feel this way? And once you begin to have those debates with yourself,

that puts you on the path to making a decision that you're going to be more satisfied with in the long haul. I think that's the key. And I think the awareness comes from confronting both realities, which is on one hand, there are some evolutionary things that are going to make me have a bias towards a certain type of person that has certain attributes, even if those attributes actually not

going to lead to a long-time healthy relationship, like fuck boys. Like charisma and bravado and confidence is like somewhat attractive, but it might not be a great husband. And then on the other hand, there is tons of things society has handed me through magazines and media that have portrayed an image of what beauty looks like that are also just bullshit.

I think understanding both is the key to that sort of autonomy. Being able to say, actually, I understand where that's, coming from in me, but I will make a rational prefrontal cortex decision to select something else. Some evidence of this, the evolutionary basis of attraction, comes in this idea that people who have symmetrical faces are more beautiful and more attractive across cultures. Is that true? Yes. So there are many scientists that will say absolutely. But here's what one thing I know

definitively about attraction is attraction to someone else is largely based on your self-esteem. And this is what I mean, is that the lower your self-esteem, the more dependent you are on the validation of the public. So therefore, you will want to have a partner who is considered to be attractive. So if society, if the script is that symmetry is it, or if the script is wearing this type of trainer is it. If that's what society is saying, then if you have low self-esteem, you want a partner to look like that because you need the validation of the partner. However, whenever you see,

this is what I say, whenever you see someone who's walking around with a partner and you think, how did those two get together, right? Chances are there's an element, and remember, I'm not talking about one is super high income or one has super high status. I'm just talking about you look at at a couple, you say, they look odd, right? One of them could be traditionally attractive. One of them might not. Normally what's happened is that you have someone with high self-esteem who has no need for the public's validation of their partner at all.

What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you. Thank you.