The Unplanned Podcast with Matt & Abby - Harvard Professor: Why marriages fail & the science of happiness w/ Arthur Brooks

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Arthur Brooks is is one of the world’s leading experts on the science of human happiness, a Harvard professor, columnist of the popular "How To Build A Life" in The Atlantic, and a #1 New York Times bestselling author of 15 books. This episode is sponsored by Everyday dose, StoryWorth, BetterHelp & Article. Everyday dose: Get 61% off your first Coffee+ Starter Kit, a free A2 Probiotic Creamer, with over $100 in free gifts by going to http://everydaydose.com/UNPLANNED or entering UNPLANNED at checkout StoryWorth: Give your loved ones a unique keepsake you’ll all cherish for years—Storyworth Memoirs! Right now, save $10 or more during their Holiday sale when you go to http://storyworth.com/unplanned! BetterHelp: Our listeners get 10% off at http://BetterHelp.com/unplannedpodcast #ad Article: Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more To claim, visit http://ARTICLE.COM/unplanned and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout Arthur Brooks is is one of the world’s leading experts on the science of human happiness, a Harvard professor, columnist of the popular "How To Build A Life" in The Atlantic, and a #1 New York Times bestselling author of 15 books. The Meaning of Your Life, out March 31, 2025, pre-order your copy today at the link!Continue the conversation and stay connected with Arthur: The Happiness Files Website Instagram Facebook YouTube LinkedIn Spotify X Office Hours with Arthur Brooks Podcast Join 150,000+ readers of The Art & Science of Happiness newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you to Cozy Earth for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. When the holiday season rolls around, what's the famous question we ask? Every mom, woman, man, anyone in your life, what do you want for Christmas? And I feel like truthfully what anyone that I'm talking to nowadays just wants a little bit of extra rest to slow down, wind down, and a little extra coziness. And feeling cozy and making home their sanctuary, that's exactly what Cozy Earth delivers. Cozy Earth has some extremely soft, luxurious sheets. actually have them on our bed right now and have been sleeping with these sheets. How long has it been

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Just be sure to place your order by December 12th for guaranteed Christmas delivery. Listening after the 12th, don't worry. Our code unplanned still works year-round for 20% off. And if you get a post-purched survey, be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here. Give the gift of comfort that lasts beyond the holidays and carries you into a cozy new year. Does marriage make you happier? For the big majority of people, marriage makes you happier.

A bad marriage doesn't. A crummy marriage doesn't make you happier. You could save most marriages just by eye contact and touch before you go to bed at night, stare at each other and have a conversation every night. Your feelings are liars. Psychology is biology. Emotions, all they are, is your most reptilian brain.

Women need a lot of things with our husbands, right? But the one big thing that if they don't have, have. It'll wreck their marriage. They need to be a... Today on Unplanned, we sat down with Dr. Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor, New York Times best-selling author, and happiness expert. Now, this dude's written books with Oprah. So I just knew that we were going to have an amazing conversation with him, and we did. We talk about why the most successful people aren't as happy and what you can do to manage your unhappiness all on today's episode.

What got you so into happiness? I'm just so curious because it makes me think that maybe there was a time in your life where things weren't so good, and you got obsessed. with happiness and the idea of being happy. Is that true? That is completely true. You know, this isn't, I don't do research. I do me search. And anybody in the happiness field, you've got to go, right?

There's a reason. And I know all the people who specialize in happiness, and there's a lot of truth to that. And what happened was that, you know, about half of your natural happiness is genetic. It's true. You know, your mother made you unhappy. Literally.

And we know this because we have studies of identical twins that were separated at birth and adopted into separate families, which is this unbelievable natural experiment. Because statistically, if they're reunited at age 40 and you look at the similarities and differences between them, you know what part is genetic and what part is environmental. And about half of your natural happiness is genetic. And what that means is you need really, really good habits. And you need to under, if you're behind the eight ball, because you come from gloomy stock,

you've got to do a lot of things right. And the truth is, you know, I have great, had wonderful parents, you know, really, really well-educated and artistic and intellectual parents. And I'm so grateful. But, you know, they struggled. And it looked like my fate. And I struggled with happiness. Just, oh. And I married a happy person who, you know, and I was bumming her out. And finally, she said when I was, you know, retiring from my, you know, third career, I was like, what do we do? And we were walking the Camino de Santiago. Do you know what that is? That's that hundreds of mile walk across northern Spain. Oh, my goodness. Which Christians have been doing for, hundreds of years, more than 1,000 years, to find their calling and to find God's purpose for their life. When I was 55 doing this with my wife, hand in hand praying, you know, and, you know, guide my path, going to what's the next career, right? And Esther said, you know, you should use your Ph.D. for something truly useful. Like, what have I been doing? I don't know, honey. And I said, what? She said, happiness. It's what you need. It's what you need.

It's what you want. Why don't you actually understand the science, which I thought I did, but bring it to masses of people and in serving other people, I think you'll find it yourself. And so on that long walk, I dedicated the rest of my career to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love, using science and ideas. And that's what I've been doing ever since. It's clear that you have that mission statement so ingrained in you. And that's really cool also that your wife was able to kind of like say, hey,

like this is something that'd be good for you and you can use it for good and she's my guru and that's what we're supposed to do for each other that's what you're doing for each other that's why you're on earth i mean this is this is the we're not supposed to be alone for the most part i mean there are people who do really well with a single vocation to be sure but most people don't but why i mean what's the why of your marriage i mean there's a lot of practical wise you know raising children together it's a good thing and and all that but but fundamentally you're put together to to to perfect each other you know and how do you perfect each other by you saying, man, Matt, this is what you need. I think this, I'm the person who knows you best. I think

this is what you need. I mean, you're growing up together effectively. And sometimes it's, you're making a mistake. And I'm the only one who can tell you, Abby, you're making a mistake. And you get this whole life together from 20, 21 until 100. And you get to actually figure it out together. That's the whole point. That's marriage. Isn't there a lot of data about marriage and how you live longer if you're married and you're happier? I think if you're, if you're married? Does marriage make you happier? Yeah, yeah, for sure. It does? Okay. Now, a bad marriage doesn't. Yeah. A crummy marriage doesn't make you happier. So what you find is that for the big

majority of people, marriage makes you happier. And for the minority people who are really unhappy and staying married, it makes them much unhappier is what you find. Yeah, for sure. Because, you know, living with somebody who's driving you completely insane, that's not that great. That's one of the reasons that people figure out that, or they decide that they've made a mistake. The five-year point in marriages is always the dangerous one. You know, the culture says there's a seven-year itch. It's actually a five-year itch. And that's when dissatisfaction tends to peak.

And if you, and then what successful marriages have in common is that they have the peak of dissatisfaction because you're going from passion to companionship, which doesn't sound hot. Yeah. I know, right? Like, doesn't. But companion at love has tons of passion in it. And once you actually understand that this is a lifelong, you know, we're walking into the future hand in hand, it's just you and me. and you understand each other

and you understand the complementarity between men and women then from five years on things for most couples tend to get better and better because that companion at love gets deeper and richer.

Does that include like from the start of marriage or like you first met and started dating or is it kind of generally around that mark? Well, so this is measured because there's so much variance and how long people take to get married.

This usually measured from the beginning of a marriage because that's something that's really tangible. It's like, boom. That the starting gun. But for a lot of couples, I mean, you would measure it from a different point. Is there something that you would, like, one piece of, like, practical advice for a couple

hitting that five-year mark? Like, what you would recommend? Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what I see is the big reason that they don't make it. I can tell you the real reason that they intend not to make it. It's that the husband and wife don't understand the one thing the other one needs. They think that the other one needs the same thing that they do. And that's wrong.

Many of them are different. That's the fun. I mean, that's like, that's awesome, right? And that's because we're complementary. We don't substitute for each other, which is why you shouldn't compete with each other. You're complementary to each other. And a lot of what men and women need is based in evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology, which is how we develop to be complementary to each other as men and women.

And what you find, according to the evolution, is that women need one big thing from their husbands. They need a lot of things from their husbands, right? I mean, they require respect and they require responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. But the one big thing that if they don't have, it'll wreck their marriage, they need to be adored by their husbands. And the evolutionary reason for that is that women, they make a big investment. I mean, being pregnant and feeding a child, I mean, that's a huge investment. And that requires commitment and protection from the mate. And so the way that that's shown is adoration.

Like, baby, I would fight a tiger for you and only you. That's adoration, right? And if they don't feel it, it's a huge problem because that signals a huge lack of commitment. And that's when a marriage really starts to falter. If they don't feel the adoration, the unique adoration from the husband. The husband needs admiration from his wife, uniquely from his wife. And that's basically he'd fight a tiger. but what he needs to hear is

that is the biggest gazelle that anybody who's ever dragged into this cave you are so big and strong that's going to feed our family for three weeks you're amazing that's what he needs to hear because evolution made him into the hunter, the provider

now again women provide and men take care of kids don't get me wrong I'm not getting into these like retrograde gender roles none no no no no no no but fundamentally there is a wiring to this kind of thing And men who don't feel admired by their wives, they stop adoring their wives. And women who stop feeling adored by their husbands stop admiring their husbands.

And the cycle goes, no admiration, no admiration, no admiration, no adoration. And that peaks at five years and it goes down from there. And the couples that really have this together are the ones where, man, she really admired. Again, mutual respect and understanding that we live in the modern world. And, you know, and my wife has always done all kinds of stuff to support our family as well. done all kinds of things that I take I changed a lot of diapers in my time I'd live with my grandkids now I'm changing diapers still which is the best actually because now I actually enjoy it you know but the whole point is if you break the admiration adoration cycle you're

going to struggle wow that's so good how do you reverse that by deciding to be the person you want to be now I give a lot of advice to young dudes and they say so what do I do to stay in love And the answer is, number one, adore her. I don't care how you feel. Adore her and be admirable. Because it's hard to admire somebody who's not admirable, right? And you have to be saying, yeah, but it's really hard to adore somebody who's not adorable. True.

But you decide to adore her and you decide to be an admirable man. And that means being impeccable to your morals, impeccable to your word, impeccable to your work. I love it because what you're saying is so countercultural from, I feel like what we hear in the media, on social media especially, which is like, if you don't feel like, if you don't feel, this, like, you know, maybe it's time for the relationship to, like, part way, like, maybe there's not a good fit. Like, if you don't, if you don't, like, it's all about your feelings and if it feels wrong,

if it's hard, like, you know, I mean, I loved, I was listening to a podcast and you were talking about how, yeah, it doesn't necessarily feel good when you work out, but it's good for you. That's all right. So why do we look at marriages and relationships differently? Absolutely. And as a matter of fact, marriages grow through suffering. Because we all grow through suffering.

Suffering is your teacher. suffering is your teacher you've suffered i mean you've talked publicly about your suffering that's your teacher if you didn't have any suffering you wouldn't actually understand many many important things about life and you wouldn't be able to help anybody else you'd be terrible parents you'd be the worst parents ever it's like i don't know life sounds been really good for me so i don't know what's what's up with you junior i mean it wouldn't be helpful and so understanding that a great part of your growing up together is the suffering that you have by trying to get along with each other and the difficulties that you actually have,

that you need this. And so the idea of like, I'm not feeling it, good, that's your opportunity to love each other more deeply, notwithstanding your feelings. Your feelings are liars. Your limbic system lies to you all the time. Feelings, all they are, emotions all they are,

is a processing of signals that you're perceiving in the exterior from around you. So your most reptilian brain, you know, it's more than 40 million years old, you have it in common with snakes and lizards. It perceives stuff. It sends data to the newer part of your brain called the limbic system, which is still pre-human,

and that translates these signals into emotions. All emotions are, are your perception signals of what's going on around you below your level of awareness. You have four negative emotions, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness, only four. And all of them have been involved to give you signals about different threats. Did they come up with those from the movie Inside Out? I'm guessing like, some psychologist at Harvard was like, hey, inside out is a great, movie, we should base everything off this movie. It turns out that maybe the movie got it from.

But anyway, either way. I'm sad to me, but that's the first thing on it trigger. I know. I know. Yeah. And that was a really useful movie for that too. And there's some there's some argument about what the basic emotions are, but generally speaking, the four negative emotions just are what they are. The positive emotions are a little bit more contested. There's a little bit more argument among neuroscientists.

But they're generally joy, right, of interest and surprise. Most of surprise is like surprise. I mean there are bad surprises like your lawyer's on the phone. I mean that's but but most of the time surprise is like all humor is based on surprises. There's a little tiny thing in your in your limbic system called a para hippocampal gyrus and it's all how you resolve surprise and it makes you laugh. So all jokes you flick that parahippocampal gyrus you hit it too hard and you're like that's bad taste. You hit it too softly and you're like that's a stupid dad joke. But you hit it just right and you crack up.

And that's all based on surprise. So you see, I mean, this is all, the psychology is biology. And if you understand the biology, then you understand that all of these negative emotions that they have a reason for existing and they're very important. And so what are we trying to do? We're trying to develop emotionally such that we can manage these emotions, grow from these emotions, and they're not managing us. When you say, I don't feel it anymore with somebody I used to love and I'm going to walk

away from my marriage because of my feelings, you're basically saying, My limbic system manages me. Whoa. And that's not very evolved. That's like saying I'm a reptile. I'm a monkey. Like I just follow my emotions. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like somebody who decides that their goal in life is pleasure. You know, pleasure. All that's doing is flicking a little part of your limbic system called the, you know, the, what is it called? The ventral tegmental area and the ventral striatum. These two little places in your and your limbic system that make you feel, and you can get it from, you know, somebody says, I love you, or you can get it from a bump of cocaine because we have very thrifty brains.

But if you're going to live just to try to hit the ventral tegmental area again and again and again and again, you're not going to be happy. You're going to be in rehab. Recently, I came to this realization where I finally understood there's never going to be like a moment where I look back in my life and I'm like, wow, I made it. I don't know. You accomplish the thing that you always dreamed of. And then after you have that moment of happiness and then you're like, okay, what's next? And we're wire for that, absolutely. And part of the reason is because when you hit a goal, you get positive emotions.

But positive emotions are not there to give you permanent satisfaction. They're there to say, good, now keep running. That's what they're for. I mean, the joy that you get from hitting a goal will wear off immediately and turn into some sort of disappointment for something that's not going right today. And that's because your amygdala does two things, attention and fear and anger. And so what happens, your limbic system exists out there for you to perceive stuff. threats and opportunities all day long.

And so the result of it is that we think that when we actually make our goals or wonderful things happen, that we're going to get satisfaction that hangs around wrong. That's not right. That's not right. That's no way to live.

That's why Olympic athletes typically suffer from a clinical depression in the months after winning their gold. Because they thought it was going to be awesome, but it isn't because their brain doesn't work that way. Thank you so much to Everyday Dose for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. How many of you guys start your day with coffee?

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a free A2 probiotic creamer with over $100 in free gifts by going to EverydayDose.com slash unplanned or entering unplanned at checkout. That's everyday dose.com slash unplanned for 61% off your first order. Everyday dose is also available at your local target. When it comes to social scientists, I heard you on a podcast mention something about social scientists in India tend to be Buddhist and social scientists and, you know, some of your colleagues you said it were Jewish and you're a Christian. I'm curious with like all the different religions, what are the similarities you see across

happiness when it comes to religion and the different belief systems? Because I'm sure there's a lot of similarities, but there's also. some differences. A lot, a lot. I've studied a lot of comparative religion. I've worked a lot in India, actually, with religious leaders. And religious leaders around the world. I'm really, really interested in this. Now, to begin with, most social scientists are not religious. I'm in the minority. It's less than 20% of PhD behavioral scientists are religious at all. Okay. Now, physical scientists are more religious. So you find that more than half of members of the American Academy of Sciences are, they believe in a higher power.

right, at least. And the younger they are, the more actually religious they actually are. So my father was a biostatistician. It's a PhD biostatistician. He was a lifelong Christian and a lot of mathematicians. Probably a majority of mathematicians are actually religious. It's just social scientists. And the reason is because there's this belief in behavioral science that everything is a, is a reaction to or an accommodation of what we find. And so most social scientists say that belief in God is a way that we manage our terror of not understanding non-existence. It's a funny thing about death. Most people are not really afraid of dying. They understand that. Only 20% of people have a phobia of death. It's called thanatophobia. 20% of people. You're probably neither one of you is like,

I mean, I'm going to die. The problem is that the human brain can't understand, can understand not being physically alive, but can't understand not existing. Those are two fundamentally different cognitions. And so we have to find some way to resolve dying but not being able to understand non-existent. And that creates that cognitive dissonance creates terror. And so social scientists say the way that we resolve that terror is by inventing God, by inventing heaven. And so they say, it's got to be an adaptation. I don't see it that way. I don't see it that way at all. I see it more in terms of a holistic understanding of creator. and creation. You know, I have all kinds of data about human behavior and neuroscience, and that's my

stock and trade. I mean, looking at experiments and brain scans and data and statistical experiments, but I don't have that data for God. For that, for that, I have faith. And that's, that for me, that's completely consistent in much the same way that if I were an art historian, specializing in Picasso, I'd need to know two things. I need to know all about Picasso's paintings, and I need to know all about Picasso. And I can't find anything about Picasso, the man, by staring at one of Picasso's paintings. There are two different ways of understanding creator and creation, but you're not a good intellectual unless you understand both. That's my view.

And that's how my faith makes my reason better and my reason makes my faith better. But I'm not trying to use my reason to enhance my faith, right? I mean, I'm not actually, actually what I should say is I'm not trying to use science to find evidence of God. because that doesn't work. They're different in the same way as Picasso the man and Picasso the painting. So that's how I see it. I'm shocked that you said that most social scientists aren't religious at all because I just assumed that most were based off of like, you know, learning about you and your colleagues.

Tell me about, do you guys ever like get into debates? Do you guys ever, like how does that work? Like what does all that look like? So not really very many debates. people are pretty nice, and people are pretty tolerant. You know, I teach a secular university. I teach at Harvard University. And nobody's like, oh, wow, that's a bastion of, you know, Orthodox Christianity.

You know what I said that, right? It's like, oh, all those Catholics, you know what I mean? No. And I'm sure a lot of social scientists are like, yeah, Brooks has got that like hang up. He's got his whole Christian thing going, I'm sure, right? I'm sure. But people are super nice to me. And my students are awesome.

And they know, I mean, they know that I have a deep Christian belief. but I'm also not up there pounding the podium saying, you know, repent or die because I want them to find their path. I find it interesting because there's been a ton of like new information coming out, at least from my awareness about spirituality and happiness. Yeah. It seems like there's a big correlation. Yeah, that was your question before. So what's the relationship between religion and happiness? And it's really strong.

It's really, really strong. Now, for happiness, probably the correlation is between a sense of the transcendent and happiness. So it's not the specific path that people have. And again, this is not a judgment on metaphysical truth. I mean, I have a belief on metaphysical truth. I mean, you know, I'm practicing Roman Catholic. It's what I do. It's my gig, right?

And so I have a belief that's awesome and right. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the difference between well-being and religious belief. And there's a very strong correlation between the belief that it's not just about me and there's something bigger than me. And I can actually stand in awe of something bigger than me. And there are many ways to actually get that happiness that's not just traditional religious beliefs. So a lot of people are watching us and are not religious believers. You can get the same happiness effect through a vipassano meditation practice, for example,

or walking in nature before dawn without devices for an hour every day. Oh, yeah. Watching the sun come up. We used to live by the mountains, and I would take my boys on a bike ride, like around sunset. and just the, oh, just like the purple. Like here in Arizona, we get purple in the sky when the sun sets. And I would just be like, holy crap, I can't believe this is really. That's the best.

And it's because you're having a transcendent experience. Then the transcendent experience is what really is. It gets you out of the me self into observing things that are bigger than you. You can get this by studying the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest composer who ever lived, or whoever your thing is, but something bigger than yourself. And or studying the stoic philosophers. My friend Ryan Holiday is just he gets huge, transcendence, actually, from studying the Stoics.

And for me, it's my traditional Christian faith that actually gives me that sense of the transcendent. But if you're stuck in the psychodrama, me, me, me, me, you're going to be miserable. That's the bottom line. So that's the connection between happiness and religion. And then we can, you know, there's other benefits of religion, too, of course, but the happiness benefit really comes from transcendence. That's so good, too, because like that, you're saying like the psychodrama of me,

me, me, me. I feel like that's everything that like our devices often are trying to. to get us to focus on more. Oh, completely, completely. Our devices, they distract us from finding the meaning of our lives, right? And there's a reason for that. The meaning of your life is only perceived in the right hemisphere of your brain. The right hemisphere of your brain is all the mystery that goes beyond language.

That's really a right hemispheric experience. That comes from the work of Ian McGilchrist, who's a neuroscientist at Oxford. This is a thing called a fancy word, hemispheric lateralization, which has a simple idea that different halves of your brain do different things, right? We put, you know, fancy titles on simple ideas. That's how we get tenure. I appreciate that you use like, like very dumb down language so that. It's not dumb down. It's just English. Yeah, just basic English so I can understand. Yeah, of course. You were, you were using fancy language in a podcast I was listening to and you're like, I'm literally just talking about the two parts of your brain. And I was like, thank you. I was like,

I don't know what the fancy words were that you said. I know, I know. And it's just the right side does does meaning and mystery and happiness and love and the left side of your brain does tasks and analysis and efficiency and technology. That's what's going on in left and right. You need both. You need to be able to get to work, but you also need to know why you're going to go to work.

You need to know how to actually figure out how to be a decent human being who can marry your soulmate, but there's a reason you want to. And the two halves of your brain need to work together on the why and the what and how. Do you believe in soulmates? Well, I believe that there are lots and lots of people

who could be your soulmate and then you have to do the work to make sure the person is. That's what I believe. That's so cool. I mean, it's unambiguously true. Yeah. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, right?

I mean, and a lot of the, you know, people who say there's actually your twin flame or the whole thing, it doesn't stand up. Wait, what is the twin flame? The twin flame is a phenomenon in which there is only one person for you in the whole world

and woe be unto you if you don't find her. But I feel like that idea is dangerous because if you're in your relationship, and something isn't going well for a time being you're in a season of hardship let's say i don't know you're in a newborn stage with a baby and you're like how do i like what am i doing right it's so easy to go into that idea of oh clearly i missed my soulmate clearly and i think that can be a very harmful idea yeah that people who have that superstition in their religions are way more likely to have disappointment in their relationships they're way more likely to engage in ghosting and other

kinds of unethical behavior it's like it it is what it is man so they have they feel morally uh they feel like they have a moral space to actually treat people with less respect and love because it wasn't their soulmate to begin with and so people who have that sort of superstition they're way unhappier in their relationships they're less likely to have success way less likely to have successful relationships they're way more likely not to make it past that five year mark and they're way more likely when they're dating to engage in an unethical harmful and you know the kind of behavior that hurts other people okay i've got to ask it because i feel like it plays hand in hand with happiness what what's the effect of sex on happiness yeah like what how does

how does that tie in because obviously we talked about the beginning stages of relationships there's all that chemistry you know it's it's so exciting yeah the passion is there you know let's talk about that yeah so so you know human sexuality is a an area that a lot of people study and there's this belief that the sexual act per se is an enormous part of happiness. What it is, it's, it's a form of pleasure and pleasure actually doesn't lead to happiness. What happens is with pleasure is that it can be converted into a part of making life enjoyable, satisfying, and meaningful. And so that's what, when, when sex is correlated with happiness, it's when it's within the confines of relationship in which it's enjoyable and that means pleasure plus people plus memory and so that's

one of the reasons that pornography is so dangerous and leads to so much depression and anxiety and unhappiness is because there's no other people involved it's solitary and that shears off the sexual experience from the from the from the way it's supposed to be which is bonding to another person i was listening to this video about um this like experiment some scientists did with rats and they had like rats that were just able to drink regular water or water laced with what was it um methamphetamine or something yes yes it wasn't meth but it was what was it that you had in the hospital when fentanyl fentanyl it was laced yeah and then they and then so obviously the rat would go to the fentanyl every time but then when they brought the rats into rat park

where they could you know have sex have community have friends you know yay they're in community Have fun. Now the rats don't care about the fentanyl. They're drinking the water just as much as the... They're drinking the regular water. And that's one of the reasons that, you know, 25% of active duty military in Vietnam were addicted to heroin, which is one of the reasons the United States was functioning poorly in Vietnam. There's abundant cheap heroin there. And they're like, it's going to be a huge public health crisis when they all come home. Between 5 and 10%, depending on the estimates that you believe, were addicted after the first day at home. Why? Because they were reunited with their loved ones. And that's what their brains want it. That's the reason that a lot of heroin addicts say that being high on opiates feels like pure love because it's actually affecting the brain in much the same way. And when you get real love, it's what you actually want. So when you're shearing the rewards off from the actual love, it's a problem.

That's a problem. So that's number one is you don't get, that's why pornography doesn't lead to enjoyment and therefore is unrelated to happiness. On the contrary, at least to unhappiness. It's really bad and dangerous. Really bad and dangerous thing. satisfaction. So sex is related to satisfaction to the point that it's it's leading you to the goal of going deeper with a person. So it should be something. That's why you should you should be

having sex with somebody you're in love with. Right? That's the important thing. That's why casual sex is not a good thing. Yeah. It's a bad. Now when I say not a good, I'm not making a moral point. I'm making a point about happiness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like people can figure out their own morals, but I'll talk about the science of happiness. And most of all, most importantly within within a marriage, at least a meaning. This is a memorialization of the part of the meaning of my life, the depth of my life, as I've made a commitment to have a union, one flesh, with one particular person. That's how that comes about.

So it's fun, it's pleasurable, but that goes through the enjoyment channel. It actually leads to the goal of my life, which is to be with somebody and make a life with somebody, and that's satisfaction. And it helps me understand who I am as a person, which is fused to this other person, which leads to more meaning. And that's how we need to understand sex. We got married when we were 20 and 21. We were very young, very much in love. It was so exciting. I was just like obsessed with Abby for three years, basically. I was like, I'm going to marry this. We did everything we possibly could to make the money that we needed to be financially independent from our parents and have our own

place. We worked at a pizza restaurant, sharing a car together so that we could. Do you live together before you were married? We didn't, actually. So yeah, we waited to live together until we were married. We waited until marriage. Not to be all weird and vulnerable for a second, but, you know, it's all right, man. Do it, man. We, yeah, waiting. I don't know where he's going with this. I'm a little nervous. But we waited. We waited for three years. After like a year or two is like, I felt like I was going effing crazy. It's like, I love this person, but we're not married. And biologically, you have a particular appetite. Yes. And what you're doing here is just that you're telling me an incredibly important thing here. If you were a dog, you wouldn't await it.

And that's because you have nothing more than animal impulses. But you're a man. And that means you also have moral aspirations. The prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is the purely human part, the executives, there's only 250,000 years old. It allows you to defy your animal impulses and live in your moral aspirations. Your happiness comes from getting into your moral aspirations and not giving in to animal impulses. That's why this works. That's what you're telling me. And look, I don't want to chew my own horn here because I'm not perfect. Like, we, it's not, I'm not, like, we waited until marriage, like, we weren't like completely perfect. Like, we didn't just hold hands the whole time that we were dating. But I guess,

I guess my question is... I'm made of stone. Like, I'm like, what are you... I'm just like, what do you... Because, like, we have kids now, and we're going to have these conversations with them. And from, like, a scientific standpoint, what makes sense? Because people are saying, oh, your brain's not developed to your 26 if you're a dude, 24 when you're, if you're a girl. 31, actually.

What is it? 21. Women are... Well, it's the connection between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex so that you can manage your emotions and you're not managed by your emotions. Okay. Some people are worse at that. And some people never actually get that connection complete. But when you're a kid, you absolutely don't have those connections,

which is why your little kids, my grandkids, they freak out all the time. They're freaking out all the time. It's awesome. Stop screaming. You're killing me. Why are you screaming all the time? And that's because their limbic system is in charge. Yeah.

Right? And that's why teenagers do really, really irresponsible things. It's because their limbic systems are giving these super heavy emotions. and their prefrontal cortex is not managing those emotions. And so they're being managed by their emotions and doing crazy things like driving at 90 miles an hour or taking drugs or whatever it happens to be. That's why adolescent behavior is so irresponsible and can be so dangerous. It's because you can't have the limbic system in charge.

That's why you need parents and rules. And again, we all make mistakes. Don't get me wrong. And what I'm talking about, like what we're talking about like sex or whatever, these are the ideal states you know and the truth is that nobody actually very very few people live the ideal and it's a mistake to think that if you don't hit the ideal you're going to have a crummy life that's wrong what you want to do is to be the do the best you can and then always trying to be doing better that's the goal in life is to do your best and try to be better and and recognize

that yeah you know it's like i shouldn't eat eating the whole pizza so tomorrow i'm not going to eat a whole that's progress. That's progress. And when it comes to your sex life or whatever happens to be, you're just trying to be better. Thank you to StoryWorth for sponsoring this portion of today's episode.

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save $10 or more during their holiday sale when you go to storyworth.com slash unplanned. That's storyworth.com slash unplanned to save $10 or more on your order. I guess I have two questions that I think I can concisely narrow down. One is from a scientific standpoint, how long should you wait, according to science, to have sex in a relationship? And then number two, according to science like when is the like how long should you wait to get married right because we technically got married before our brains were fully developed right yeah so reckless so those are two different those are two and and the first question there's no answer to that because it's not there's not like good science on that how long you should wait um there is pretty compelling work

that shows that living together isn't great and and for the longest time people thought you got to live together because you practice your marriage and the reason that tends not to be great is that typically the reasons for living together are different between the woman and the man. And there's a bunch of estimates that suggest that up to 95% of cohabiting relationships end in disillusion, not in marriage. Interesting.

95%? Okay, so. 95? Yeah, yeah. So 19 out of 20 couples wind up not getting married and one of the 20 gets married. And that's what I've seen. And again, this is all over the map because this is not like settled science like this.

But there's a reason why that you would tend to, tends to be a mistake when a couple moves moves in together in their mid-20s for example typically and again everybody's results may very i'm not speaking for everybody i was looking at the broad patterns the woman thinks it's a step toward marriage and the man thinks it's a bulwark against breakup and that difference is really really dangerous so they're like we're going to we're going to move in together because otherwise i'm going to get an ultimatum from her and i don't want the ultimatum from her like marriage or bye and he doesn't want to break up because he loves her and she thinks that this is actually a step toward marriage

and if he's doing it to not break up that's not a step toward marriage it isn't and so that's a misunderstanding and now we're living together and that can go on for a really really long time and lead to some big problems you live together for six or seven or eight years and she's like so when are we getting married

when are we getting married when are we getting married and he's like at least we're not breaking up that's not the basis of a stable relationship at all so that's one of the reasons that for a lot of couples is better not to live together You also find that your likelihood of actually having a successful marriage go down after having lived with more than one person. In other words, you don't get better at it. Things actually tend to get worse.

A lot of this is from the work of Brad Wilcox, who's a sociologist at the University of Virginia. And he runs this great program called the Institute for Family Studies, pure social science, no moral judgment, just the patterns. Now, to your question, though, we do know the age range where people are most likely to stay married. Okay. And that's when they get married between 28 and 32. Interesting. I know, way older than you. And way older than my kids.

Yeah, we're both not even in that age. I know. You're not even, and you know, my kids, I have three kids. They're 22, 25, and 27. My 25 and 27 year old, they got married at 22 and 23, respectively. Wow. And they started having their kids at 23 and 24. So they're 27 and 25 and they have four kids between them, right?

And they're married, you know, young like you. I mean, they more or less like you. a little bit, little, a year older than you, fantastic. And so the reason for those data is not, they're not prescriptive. It's not that 28 to 32 is the magic zone. It's just that culturally, that's where most people, they feel like they have a mature attitude toward marriage. You can be completely different because you can have a much more mature attitude

toward marriage, much younger, if you decide to do so. Yeah. I think the bigger problem in our society today is marrying too late, not marrying too early. Now, if you've gotten married at 16, I'd be like, I don't know. It's like, you know, running off to, you know, some state where it's legal. I don't know. That's not that. It's like, you know, or, you know, like her dad, her dad is behind you with a shotgun or something, you know, it's like, but, you know, 21, 22, if you've got your act together and you're understanding what this is all about and you have a supernatural understanding

in particular of what this union really is, that's not too young. I've heard you say a couple times like successful marriage and it has me questioning like what how do you measure a successful marriage so a successful marriage i mean technically it means it's you're staying married yeah okay we're like well we're together because it's kind of a zero one deal where zero is not married and one is married and so successful marriage you look at my marriage yesterday was my 34th wedding anniversary and so you know congratulations that's obviously successful marriage because it's like there's there's no chance that that i'm going to be like honey it's been great but Let's face facts.

I mean, there's like, no way that that's actually going to happen. I mean, it's going to be till death do us part. Now, that said, there's an explosion in my field in what's called gray divorce. Gray divorce is when you break up after 25 years. That's been going through the roof in the last 10 years. Really? Wow. Yeah, yeah.

And there's tons of speculation, and it's just really, really early days. And the research on why people are breaking up later and later and later, later than they had been before. you know there's it's probably because it's more and more socially acceptable for people to call it quits and say I never liked you anyway or whatever it is it's like enough is enough so that is actually increasing but the truth is the longer you're married the higher the likelihood is that you're going to stay married until one of you dies right maybe it's the empty nestar phase there is a lot of that and actually this is what I see in a lot of great divorces and this is the

danger and this is what you need to be paying attention to as a couple that more and more and more what you have in common is the kids and the one thing you talk about is the kids and even when you're alone at dinner you talk about the kids you got to have more than the kids because when the kids grow up and leave you're going blink blink blink and so we got nothing in common we grew apart now good you're working together that's good right I mean that's a I mean it can be good I mean not every couple should work together either but you you have to have you've got to be a unit and couples that struggle with this are couples where the kids can get between the parents a lot,

never let your kids get between you. If she's wrong, she's right. If he's wrong, he's right. The kids are wrong. It's you against them. We've said that before. We've been like, it's us against them. Totally, and you're gonna have more.

They're gonna outnumber you. You better have, you better have complete solidarity. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And my wife and I, we've never, never had disagreements about this. I mean, we've been, it's like, we understand perfectly We're a team, team parents and team kids. They're not a very good team. They don't work together very well.

We work together great. They can't beat us. They can't beat us. Our kids try. Like, we will put one of them. Like, you're like, you're taking a break right now. And they'll yell for the other one. They'll go, brother.

And they think that their brother can get them out of time. Yeah, no way. No way. That's like, I know. I mean, I like the intuition that they've got there. But, you know, they're just, they're going to lose every time. There's something to this, though, because we hug each other. And we're like, we love each other so.

I'll be like, Mommy loves Daddy, Daddy loves Mommy. And then they'll go hug each other. And I'll go like, I love Augie. And then they'll like hug and then they're like, maybe a couple. I told my three-year-old that my wife was my crush. I was like, yeah, Mama's my crush. He's like, oh, Augie's my crush. Okay, well, good, fine.

Whatever work for you. It's weird. Like they see us doing, like hugging or kissing. They want to hug or kiss each other. Yeah, I know. I just be careful to not slap your butt in front of the kids. They've started doing that. It's like, it's not, yeah.

There's some, there's some fences on. He did tell him this morning. He's like, that's not for you. I was like, that's just for daddy's Griffey. That's right. They'll figure that out. Fortunately, there's a lot of evolutionary psychology that will help them along the way. Right?

And they're not just social taboos. You know, you're not interested romantically in your blood relatives for a reason. You know, we're built to be like, yeah, right, for a reason. Yeah. And so they do, you know, is the way. And by the way, one of my kids is adopted. Same deal. you know it's like it's just you know if you're growing up together your your your brain is wired to not

think that way about your kin which is this is why we think it's so abnormal when people do weird things like that right yeah so anyway that's obviously not something to worry about as you go older as a couple here's a key thing to keep in mind there are two really bad habits that people get into they stop looking at each other in the eyes when they talk and they stop touching so that's super important why because you need a connection there's a there's a neuro peptide in the brain called oxytocin that women have three times as much as men and there's another one called vasopressin that men have more than women you both have vasopressin you both have oxytocin oxytocin is a as a binding molecule it's a molecule of that makes you bind bound to each other as

kin that's the connection the love molecule as it were people often call it that and then vasopressin is one especially where men feel like loyalty and and defense for the family like i'm going to take care of her, right? I'm going to take care of. I'm going to take care of these people, especially my wife. You get that through eye contact and touch. And so you could save most marriages by having them, like before you go to bed at night, stare at each other and have a conversation in the bed and with like looking each other in the eyes every night. And every time you're talking, always be looking at each other, not like doing other stuff and cleaning up to catch in and talk. No, no, no. Talk to each other and look at each other because you're saying you're mine, you're mine, you're

your brain is registering that. And when you were in those first three years where you're obsessed with Abby, Abby, every time you look at it, you're like, right? And then you do less. I mean, you're busy is the whole thing. And what that's doing is that's attenuating

the relationship neurobiologically. Yeah. The second thing is touch. When you're together, you're touching. Always be touching. A, B, T. Always be touching. That's the rule.

When you're walking, you're holding hands. When Esther and astronaut, we walk, look at that. So, okay, I like holding her hand. When we're on the podcast, sometimes people will comment like, that's so weird. Why is he holding her hand? It's like, I don't know, maybe she's my wife. It's his wife.

And that's a normal thing to do with your spouse for Pete's sake. I was just, Esther and I were together in Mexico City yesterday because we were doing some talks in Mexico City. And we're doing them together. And we're doing more and more talks about love and relationships and marriage together. She's, her studies are in philosophy and theology and mine are in science. And so we go back and forth and we talk about it in that particular way. and when we're together, we're always touching. And we go for a 30 to 40 minute walk every night after dinner when I'm home,

which is I'm home about half the time. And always touching, always touching, always touching, always touching. You can save so many marriages just by eye contact and touch. And that's what they lose. And when you lose those two things, you're changing your brains and you're disconnecting your brains from each other. You know, people think about sort of the physical connection of one flesh. The one flesh is the flesh above your neck.

it's all that stuff inside your cranium. That's one flesh. And that's how you stay connected. Isn't there something about like six or seven second kisses as well? Yeah, it's 22 second hugs. It's actually what the research is kind of, yeah, yeah. You maximize oxytocin and a 22 second hug. Oh.

Yeah, yeah. And so here's the, I know, I know. You counted, but you like, you're like stopping me. Here's kind of the rule with your kids, though, because you get tons of oxytocin with your kids. never be the one who releases the hug. Oh.

Wait, that's a Disney rule. Have you heard that? The characters aren't allowed to like, if a kid hugs them, they're not supposed to break it. The kid has to break it first. Oh, okay. Well, I didn't, I didn't,

I don't mean to plagiarize from Disney, but that's always what we've said because, you know, the research is clear that you're never going to get the optimal length hug from your kids, especially as they become adolescents. Oh. So make them, they do the break. You're not going to hold on to them.

You're going to freak them out. out. Get me out of here. Let go of me. God. You're struggling. You're like you got to hit 22 seconds, which is kind of long. That's a long hug.

I feel like I can do that, though, make them laugh because we like to wrestle a lot. Like we just went to Disneyland and got lightsapers and we have battle. They call it battle, so we'll battle each other. But yeah, the wrestling is really fun. Wrestling's great. I mean, when you're wrestling with your, and you know, I wrestle with my, with my oldest grandson who now he lives with me and he's two and a half

his parents and their family. They're on the bottom floor of the house we're on the top floor of the house. No way. You guys all live together. That's awesome. Yeah. We actually made a decision to move to the same place all of us. We had a big family. The data the data. I'm a social scientist. I got to go with my data. I got to go with my data, right? I got to eat

my own cooking. And it's very clear that it's way, way better for grandchildren to live near the grandparents and have a real relationship with their grandparents. And And grandparents live longer and are happier when they have a serious relationship with their grandchildren. And so we talked about with their kids.

I was like, where do you want to raise your kids? They had been raised in the D.C. region because I was running that think tank in D.C. for 11 years in D.C. And they went to these great Catholic schools that they want to send their kids to. That's the goal. And they said, okay. So we all packed up and moved there. One from one of my sons got out of the Marine Corps, and they moved from California with his wife

and their baby. And one, the other who lived in Boston near us. when we were living in Boston. And we just packed up the same moving van and moved down there to my daughter graduated from college. Now she's in the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia, which is not that far away. She'll be going back and forth during deployments

and where she's posted. But at the end of the day, she'll come probably back to the D.C. region as well. Why? Because we're all going to live together. And it's even more convenient when we, some of us, at least some of us live in the same house. Oh, it's like the 1940s Catholic family.

And sweet. But based on research. Yeah. No, it's cool. we actually did that for a time and that was like that was really fun yeah and now like we have a lot of family near us like my brother lives 10 minutes away yeah everyone's close now abby's parent two minutes away my sister-in-law brother-in-law i think are they five minutes away like everyone's so close and it's great like at first we used to live in hawaiiana man yeah we were in hawaii for a little bit and i fell in

love a surfing, RIP, but now there's a surf park in Arizona, which is awesome. I've, I've go there. God bless capitalism. Let's go capitalism. I love America. But like, it's just, I was like, we want to like live by our family? No, like the what? And, but it's been amazing. Like, it's, it's so good having, having that connection, that community. Because I was so close to my grandparents and still am. So it depends on the family, too. I mean, there's some, I would have struggled living with my parents. I would have struggled living with my in-laws. I mean, it would it wouldn't have been like, you know, we wind up on the news, that kind of thing, but but it wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been happiness. I don't realize you were so

funny. What did you start cracking jokes like this? I haven't heard it. He just knows what's happening in your brain. Oh yeah. It's because of you. You're bringing out the best in me. Right here, you're ruining my career. Thank you very much. No, no, it's, it's, it's phenomenal. I mean, it's like, you know, in the morning when I'm there and, you know, Joseph, my little grandson, he comes upstairs and he, he, he, knows he's like the king of the mombo and it's going to be we call him prince j and he's and he's he's all about it it's just fantastic they had a new baby um last the week before last as a matter of fact wow prince prince h and entered the mix in my house and then the others live you know

12 miles up the street and they have two and and they're they want lots you know they're we're repopulating the earth with brooks this is an ad by better help we have been establishing family ever since moving into our new home a year ago. And one of those is decorating her house for Christmas before Thanksgiving. Yes. And I think it's really important also amidst all the holiday chaos to think about incorporating therapy into one of your traditions. Help give you some peace and some clarity during a very busy, fun, but also sometimes

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first met like an hour ago you asked us how many kids we had yeah and I don't know why but I just like my brain was like we have three kids yeah and then Abby was like no well we we just missed care we lost her daughter at 17 weeks because you do have three kids yeah we do we do and uh and it's been awful and it's like it's still something like we you know Abby and I are figuring that out going to lots of therapy grieving like it's it's sucked but like I I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is since we're on the subject of happiness and that's something that we're trying to rediscover again after going to be very public about it because you want to help other people yeah because a lot of the people who are watching this they're your age and they're not married yet

but they're going to be married and that's going to happen yeah that's going to happen and the more that that's familiarized demysticized the better off they're going to be this is how you're turning something that happened that was really really rough and that you didn't actually think about probably before into a way to serve other people and so doing it's healing for you yeah and it's protective for them. How do you find happiness again after grief? Let's get a little scientific. Because psychology is biology.

You know, we have brains for a reason. Your limbic system, the console of emotion in your brain, it processes your negative emotions using different parts of that system. And they all exist for a reason. Sadness, loss, the sense of loss, is largely, it largely involves a little thing called the, again, sorry, you know, for the, for the, for the, for the, technical term, the dorsal anterior singular cortex. What is that?

It's a little thing about the size of the end of your index finger. And it just lights up like a Christmas tree when you're feeling socially excluded or losing something or someone that you love. It's the really, I mean, there are other parts of your brain that involve sadness, but that's that thing that they always identify. The bad breakup, the loss, the death of a loved one,

the loss of your child, this is the dorsal anterior singular cortex. And the reason that you have this, I mean, people say, I want to live without sadness. No, you don't. If you lived, had no fear of the pain of sadness, you'd say everything inside your head. And you'd be like divorced, friendless, and fired in like a week. You need to be afraid of loss.

We are a kin-based hierarchical species. 250,000 years ago, until about 10,000 years, we lived in bands of 30 to 50 individuals. And it was, if you had lost, social loss, if you lost your relationships, you'd walk the frozen tundra and die alone. You'd be a panther's meal in like 10 minutes by yourself. You need to not be alone. Yeah. And so that's why a part of your brain says, don't be alone, don't be alone, don't face rejection, don't face loss, don't face loss.

But you're gonna. And when you do, that part of the brain and other parts of the brain are really, really, really affected by that. Grief is one in which you can't resolve it through going back to the person by reconciling with your clan. You know, you say something in you're socially rejected and you feel. feel really sad and hurt, and then you reconcile with the people. This is the reason you reconcile with each other all the time because you, I mean,

I'm sure you argue and fight and disagree and they're like, I'm sorry. Never done that. I'm married to a Spaniard. It's like every day. 10,000 fights. Our, you know, our memoir will be called 10,000 fights, right? Oh, that's actually good. Oh, yeah, totally.

And by the way, anger and divorce are uncorrelated. Anger and divorce are uncorrelated. Anger is a hot emotion that says, I care what you think and I want it to change. contempt and divorce are correlated, where you add disgust into the anger and make it ice cold saying what you're saying and who you are is worthless to me. That's eye rolling, sarcasm, derision, dismissal. We can talk about that. That leads to divorce. But the whole point is that when you've got this grief because you can't reconcile, because you can't reconcile when your when your father dies. It's no reconciliation. That's a loss of an actual person from your life or

when you have a miscarriage, any of these things of real grief. And then you need to actually heal. And what happens is that the dorsal enter your singular cortex, the parts of the brain involved, they become, as you learn, you start to find the meaning in it, that the activity in these parts of the brain start to lessen. You maintain the memory, but you feel less pain. You start to put it into context. There will always be some pain because there is a sense of loss, but it's not going to be debilitating, very debilitating. The very beginning people say, I'm going to be sad forever. And the reason is because evolution said, I want you to think you're going to be said forever so that you'll reconcile to go find the person, right? But you can't be debilitated

that way, and so you aren't. And so as you find a sense of meaning, and there's lots of ways to find sense of meaning. It's one of the best ways to find sense of meaning after a bad breakup, a nasty breakup, believe it or not, is to listen to sad songs. And you'd think it'd make you more sad. But what it does is it puts into perspective, it helps you understand that your feelings are not unique and that this is a normal part of life. And that normal part of life says that there's meaning to the experience. That's why people listen to sad songs. That's cracking me up because I was 15 years old.

I'd crushed on this girl since like third grade. And I'd like asked a friend to ask one of like to ask her like if she liked me. And she said no. And I was like devastating listening to sad music in the car. We were on vacation with my family and I like just, I remember like listening to all these sad songs. And they're like, come on, Matt, stop being like down. I know. So let's listen to like a marching band or something.

No, no, no, no. because the marching band will give you no sense of meaning. Like these bummer songs of like, she done me wrong and, you know, it's like, and all this is, you know, basically, it's funny because, you know, when you talk about the neurobiology of emotion, it eviscerates all of the romantic content

of every love song or every country and Western song ever written. You know, it's like, she done my limbic system wrong. It's like, that doesn't sound great, right? Yeah. That's kind of literally what's going on. Yeah. So what you want is actually to find,

is to look for meaning in it, and the meaning in it is the depth, the spiritual depth that actually comes from the connection and what it actually means to be alive. So what it means for you to be alive, what it means for you to be parents of the children that you didn't lose, what it means for you to serve the world, what it means for you to have time on this earth that's not about you. You're jarred out of your psychodrama when you have a loss and you look at bigger, deeper, more metaphysical things, which you need to understand what your life is actually really all

about. And in this way, 90% of people who have a devastating loss, they look back on it with a sense of gratitude. 90%. That's called post-traumatic growth. You know, I was talking about post-traumatic stress? Yeah. Post-traumatic growth. 90% of the cases. More. Because you look back on it and say, I learned a lot about my life when I saw a terrific loss in that life. That's what I understood it. That's why in the sort of the therapy industrial complex that we're living through in America and around the world today, the idea of eliminating negative emotions is so unbelievably dangerous. So dangerous. You've got to lean into it, man. You've got to turn around and look at it. You've got to be alive. You need to be fully alive. Now, it can be exaggerated and become

a mood disorder and it can be dysregulated. I got it. I completely got it. I mean, I've had, thank God for psychiatric care and my own family. My mother would have, you know, wouldn't have had a life, you know, had it not been for that because of so many mood disorders that were debilitating. But for ordinary people, evidence that you're alive is that you're sad. It's evidence that you're angry, that you're afraid, that you're disgusted, that's, you know, that's just negative emotions. They're not something to eliminate. There's something to understand and grow from. And the ordinary person, every 18 months or so, this is according to Bruce Filer, who does work on stages in life, every 18 months you have a big,

transition, mostly unwelcome. And every five years, you have a catastrophe. Catastrophe. The miscarriage that you suffered was a catastrophe, right? It's going to be every five years for the rest of your life. Buckle up. Buckle up. Right? And you're not going to expect it generally because you can't. And you're not going to like it. And you're going to learn and grow from it. And you're going to love each other more because of it. And you're going to love your kids more if you let yourself find the meaning in that loss. Wow. That's so good. I also have a follow-up question. I wonder what, can I call you a happiness scientist? I guess I sort of am at this point. I mean, there's not a happiness science because it's across so many different fields, but sure, yeah, people call me that a lot for sure.

What, like, your perspective is on antidepressants. Yeah. So most antidepressants, they fall into different categories chemically. But the most common form are called selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. SSRIs, the sort of the Prozac family, as it were. And what that does, it's all based on the research that shows that people who have ruminative sadness, they tend to have very low levels of serotonin in the synapse in the brain. And if they can do something chemically to raise the level of serotonin in the synapse, either by increasing the amount of serotonin or keeping it in the synapse longer so it doesn't get reabsorbed, that those people, they tend to have less ruminative sadness.

And it's pretty reliable at about, you know, something like 30% of people who take these SSRIs, they get significant relief as a result of that. Now, there are other chemical things that are going on with clinical depression. There's sort of three big categories of physical manifestations of clinical oppression. One is that ruinous sadness. The second is anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure. And the third is called psychomotor retardation, which is you're physically inhibited. you walk slower, you mumble, is what they actually find. And different chemistry actually affects those things in different ways.

So if you have Anhedonia, inability to feel pleasure, typically what they'll do is they'll raise your dopamine levels. And so you'll have rewards and anticipation of rewards. So you get really low dopamine in a lot of cases of clinical depression. So even things that you used to like, you don't look forward to them anymore and you don't like them, right? And this is actually one of the reasons that GLP1 drugs can be hard on. people and actually and lead to depression in some people.

Oh, really? Yeah, because what they do is they inhibit the dopamine from your rewards and people who, you know, had trouble with eating a lot of junk food, for example, a lot of their rewards and anticipation of rewards and little rewards from day to day were like Twinkies or something. And you don't get that anymore. And you're like, huh, life's gray. And so they have to kind of migrate to different kinds of rewards and they feel this an hedonia and that's why some people actually feel depressed when they're on GLP1 drugs.

And that could be, you know, equilibrated neurochemical. with you know with a good psychiatrist and the last is when they have this gait problem when they're you know they walk slowly or mumble or something those usually well there are that'll that works on the norapinephrine receptors and so noradrenaline which is from the adrenal glands that they'll they'll find some way to make sure that that that there's sufficient amount of that so it's not affecting you physically so the first thing with clinical depression is understanding the physical manifestation and then experimenting to see whether drugs work now that said just because you have low mood and even persistent low mood doesn't mean you have clinical depression.

It means you're a human being on earth. And when you go through difficult times in your life, you're going to feel sadness. You are. You're going to feel like the things that used to like you don't like as much. These are normal things. There are signals to you that these are times for you to learn. These are periods between the equilibria in your life, that you're in a transition, that you've experienced the loss. for a lot of people this is this is evidence that your limbic system is working properly and

anytime you feel sadness or anxiety and you go to the doctor and the doctor says ah we got to get rid of that what they're saying is I need to make you a little less normal in a lot of cases again you know it can be exaggerated or dysregulated in which case you actually need medical care but for most people that's not the case I tell my students I mean they're studying at Harvard I say you're Harvard students if you're not sad and anxious you need therapy Because, man, this is a hard thing that you've chosen to do. Why do you say that? Because it's scary and hard.

Yeah. It's a scary and hard thing. I mean, you're going to one of the finest universities in the world, and it's hard. Yeah. And it's a competitive environment, and you have high expectations for yourself. It's like, you know, my son, when he was in boot camp as an enlisted Marine. I mean, it wasn't like, it was the worst thing that ever happened to him. And now he looks back on it and go, man, I wouldn't get, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I wouldn't do it again but I wouldn't trade it for anything and it got harder from there because he became a special operations brain became a scout sniper and it got harder and harder and harder and harder and harder and every single thing

helped him understand who he is and that's the truth for most of us your sadness and anxiety are boot camp they're your teacher and if we don't ask okay what am I supposed to learn from this how am I growing from this

how am I learning to manage myself from this we're missing the boat and if we let people who are older than us when people of your age Let people my age tell you that you better eliminate your sadness and anxiety or you're going to be stunted for life. You're getting bad advice. You're generally speaking getting bad advice. I can't help but notice. I have a feeling that you lift weights. I'm seeing a vein on the bice. You've got a vein on the bicep. That either that or I just don't eat. Okay. So I'm guessing you stay active. I'm guessing that with happiness is probably a correlation with being physically active, you know, going to the gym, running, something like that. Sort of. Sort of. Sort of. Sort of. So sort of. So sort of. So sort. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So happiness and and fitness don't have a direct relationship. Fitness has a direct relationship with unhappiness. So happiness and unhappiness are not opposites, right?

Because you have different parts of the limbic system giving you different aversive and positive emotions. Okay. And you need unhappiness to find all the things that we've talked about here. But you need to manage unhappiness, right? And the best way, there are terrible ways to manage unhappiness, like drugs and alcohol, terrible way. Workaholism, awful.

Unmanaged Internet use. terrible way, staying distracted, terrible way to manage unhappiness. The best ways to manage unhappiness are spiritual activity and picking up heavy things and running around. No way. The best way to manage unhappiness. And so if, so people who don't have unhappiness issues and half the population is below average and unhappiness, right? Makes sense. It has to be. Those people have trouble staying in the gym. They have trouble staying in the gym because they don't feel like they're getting any well-being benefit from their from their weightlifting or yoga or whatever it's. They don't feel better.

They don't feel better because they don't, they're not, there's no problem they need to solve with their, with their fitness, fitness goals. Me, on the other hand, I'm like, I'm not naturally happy. So I work out for an hour a day, seven days a week. And I have for decades. And that's how I manage my, my negative affect, as we social scientists like to say, or just my grumpiness and unhappiness, as ordinary people say, is by picking up heavy things and running around every single day. That's like this is why I can't stay consistent in the gym. You're just happy. A person, Abby, you're happy.

I mean, look, you glow as a happy person. Oh, do I go to the gym of a lot? No, that means you manage your unhappiness. And I'm more the black cats. But the other thing is that half the people, I mean, a quarter of the population is both above average happiness and above average unhappiness. Oh. That's called a mad scientist affect profile. And that's probably you.

What does that mean? That is somebody who feels lots of emotions very intensely. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's who above average intensity. of positive and negative emotions. These are people where you don't, the happiness stuff, you can do that stuff, and that's great, but what you really need to work on is keeping the happiness

high and then managing the unhappiness so it doesn't interfere with your life. And that's why fitness and spirituality are going to be really, really important in your life. After listening to a lot of yourself, I was like, I need to take that quiz. Because I'm sure that's probably where I live. That's a new quiz that we're just putting up now.

Because, you know, for the longest time, I've used a lot of other people's surveys on affect profiles and well-being levels. And finally, we've actually created one that's really statistically valid that measures your well-being with respect to the rest of the population, where are you on the macronutrients of your well-being, so you know what to work on, whether you have an enjoyment issue, a satisfaction issue, or a meaning issue, and then whether happiness or unhappiness is your bigger challenge. It's a sort of 40-question thing.

You get this like report on you and what you actually need to work on because all those things need to be separated out. It's called the happiness scale. We just loaded it. We need to link it. Also, how long does it take you to take it? Between five and ten minutes. Okay, I'm doing this today. Between five and ten minutes. I need to know.

We should both take it. I know. I want to ask you also. I would actually predict that on the happiness, I would predict that you're a mad scientist. Okay. And I'll predict that you're a cheerleader. Which is to say that you have intense, positive emotions and very normal negative emotionality.

I would say that you're not like crazy negative emotionality. And that's one that's correlated with the highest level of well-being. But it actually, it has, I mean, everybody's got their, it's a strength and weakness no matter what. Yeah. Right. It makes it harder to be a CEO that can actually give criticism and you don't like to get bad news. You know, it's one of the things. But it's a happy way to live for sure.

I would predict that, but I can't know because we're only been talking for an hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's a golden retriever, as people say. Ah, the golden retriever is, you know, the cheerleader profile is kind of the golden retriever profile. The profiles that are, that can be, the hardest one is the poet, which is high-natured. negative and low positive. It's low positive emotionality and high negative emotionality.

So the reason it's called a poet is because when I talked about ruminative sadness, which is one of the symptoms of clinical depression, that involves a part of the brain called a ventralateral prefrontal cortex. It makes you ruminate, right? You ruminate on sadness, but you also ruminate when you're falling in love on another person, which is why it's super active. Why the brain of somebody falling in love looks like somebody who's deeply clinically depressed because of the activity of that part of the brain.

No way. Yeah, yeah. And it's also really creative people have a lot of activity. That's why poets, they tend to be creative, romantic, and depressed. Because the same part of the brain, right? And so that's what the poetic. Now, that's the big strength of the poet. The big weaknesses, like high negative affect,

the big strength is romance and creativity. And so what they need to do is to have really, really good hygiene in their lives for managing their high level of negative. effect. That's why every poet I meet, I'm like, time you need a personal trainer, you need to get your, you need to eat more protein, you need to get your sleep hours on point, you need to actually optimize your caffeine consumption. I have a whole set of protocols that actually do for people who have high negative effect. Thank you to article for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. With the holidays coming up, are you guys hosters or are you attending events?

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I've never met somebody who's actually too happy. It's interesting. That's a question that some psychologists have answered. To look at the most successful people in life, so people who are most successful are the second happiest people. So if you have like five categories, super happy, happy, normal, kind of unhappy, miserable. That's called a likert scale, a five, anyway. Four is happy, not super happy.

Those are the people who make the most money and have the best careers, right? And the reason is because the people at the very top it's like the grasshopper and the ant. They're the grasshoppers. They're having a great time. In college, they have all the friends and they're going to all the parties

and they're not studying that much. And the second happiest people, they have a lot of good mood so they're able to perform at a really high level, but they also can see threats better. They can see threats better than the happiest people actually can. So when it comes to success,

The answer is yes. But when it comes to quality of life, the answer is no. So then I guess you have to ask yourself the question. That's more important. I got a little loss there. So you're saying like the happiest people are not the most successful because when you're at the top, it's like. It's a party time.

Life's a big party. Okay. Life's a huge party. He's saying the top of happiness. The top of happiness. The top of happiness. The top category of self-evaluated life satisfaction are not the people who make the most money and have the best careers.

Got it. It's the second highest. Okay. I want to be that. Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, part of it is that that is a good ambition, by the way, because the idea of having unmitigated joy is not a good ambition. Okay. Because unmitigated joy is not, doesn't have the, it's not being fully alive.

Yeah. It's not the most, I mean, it's just life requires difficulty for you to actually be a fully alive human being. Now, I'm not casting aspersions on all the people because I'm just jealous, but I am. I'm like, I'm jealous about a lot of things. I'm jealous of people with hair. I'm jealous of you right now. I'm thinking, look at that hair. It's beautiful.

Well, you got a hair transplant. What's that? I just got a hair transplant. I have like a comb over right now, but I got like these baby hairs coming in. Are you kidding? You did? I literally did. Because you were losing your hair? I went to turkey.

I'm not even kidding. See, you never know. You never know. It looks phenomenal. Estanova, check them out. The problem is that I can't do that. Can you imagine if I did that? And it's like I got a lot of people who know my work for a long time and I suddenly show

up with hair. It would be like a complete object of derision. You're doing it right. You're just making, just not going ball as opposed to, you know, I got a turkey And I come back and people are like, that's not normal, you know? I don't think I trust Arthur anymore, you know? You just happen one day. But I will admit to real jealousy.

It looks just right. What do they take? Where do they take the hairs from? They take it from the sides. I was going to say, they take it from your arms or something. I could show you afterwards. I had like, I was like all bloody around the side of my head. I've seen those pictures.

Yeah, actually, I'm not going to lie. It hurt. But it was one of those things where it's like, yeah, it's painful. But I'm going to look good eventually. It works. He'll see us full results. You'll have to see us again six months from now. Yeah, great.

I've got a new book coming out on the meaning of life. Okay. That's coming out on March 31st. So let's make a date. No, seriously. Because I'm like, I hate that our time is coming to an age of emptiness that talks about how the brain is getting screwed up by the misuse of technology and making an impossible to find the meaning of life.

And the six things that people have to do to live like the old days, even in the new days, because you're not going to get rid of your phone, that they actually can find the meaning of life. So it's a solutions, man. It's a guidebook to actually finding life's meaning. That's coming on March 31st. So we should have a conversation about that. Then most importantly, I get to see, you know, Matt's complete results on the headline.

No, that book sounds fantastic, though, because I feel like there's, like, there's so many aspects. Like, that just speaks to, I feel like there's so many people are desiring in our age. We're like, how do we find some of those traditional values and elements of life but in this modern age? Because you can't go back, like you said. No, no, no, no. And to find why when the whole world is pushing you to how. and what? The whole world is pushing you to, you know, fritter away your time, distract yourself, work harder, achieve these things, get this device, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what

it's doing is is blocking this right hemisphere of your brain where mystery and meaning are processed. Yeah. And when you turn off that right hemisphere of the brain, it's interesting because now the whole, everybody's talking about AI, right? And AI is great. I mean, AI's going to do all kinds of things, but it's an adjunct to the left side of your brain. If you use it to try to meet your your right brain needs, if you're trying to make it your therapist or your friend or your girlfriend, you're doomed, man, because your brain knows. It can fool you into thinking it's a real person for a minute, but your brain knows you're going to get more depressed and more anxious and more lonely because you're using a left brain solution for a right brain problem. And so that's what

this book is all about. How do you live differently? And in a few short months, you can actually know the meaning of your life. But you've got to live like, you know, great. granddad who never came home and said he had a boring job in a hard life but he never came home and said you know I had a panic attack behind the mule today because it wasn't a thing that's so true yeah yeah there's a reason I really liked the way you you put it when you were talking about the book you wrote with Oprah which seems seems similar seems like a similar some similarities there between that book and this new book which I'm really excited to read but you were talking about how rather than like changing it'd be stupid to try to change everything around you to fit your needs

rather than just like looking inward and saying hey how can I change myself to adapt to the environment I'm in you speak more about that and maybe tell the story that you gave like an example about like a road and like a car I thought that was kind of cool well yeah so you know I don't want to get a flat tire in my car obviously so I need to make tires and you're never going to go flat and the right material for that is probably cement. I should have cement tires. But, you know, I can't drive on a cement road with cement tires. That would be a catastrophe. So the obvious thing for me to do is to bulletproof myself with cement tires, but then I got to create a whole world that's got nothing about rubber roads, which is, of course, absurd. That doesn't make sense. You do it the other way, which is that

you have cement roads, which are nice and cheap and really durable, and you have rubber tires on your car, which sometimes go flat, but you deal with that. And that's what you do is you deal with the thing that you can deal with, living in real life, saying sometimes I'm going to get flats. And I'm going to work on building a life where I have the durability and I have the emotional fortitude to deal with flat tires and then be smart about it. Like my tires are bald, change the tires in advance and kind of take care of myself. Change the things in your life that you need to change and don't try to change the outside world. And one of the biggest reasons that there's so much depression and anxiety today is because

we're being told by, you know, baby boomer activists that are trying to conscript people your age into a culture war, that the reason that you're suffering, and there's really high race of depression and anxiety, is because the whole outside world is against you, and the whole outside world is screwed up. And that's just nothing more than a political play by people my age to activate you to our political purposes. It's like, I want you really, really mad and sad and angry and afraid. I want you to be afraid and saying, I can't live a good life until the world looks different. And so I got to vote for this guy or buy this product or follow this person on social media or read this newspaper or watch this channel and I'm a victim and so the world

has to become a particular way so I'm not a victim anymore. That's completely dangerous and incorrect thinking and it's a cynical ploy to activate your generation for different political agendas, right and left by the way. It scared me. I mean, with the last election, I was noticing on both sides, people basically saying, hey, it's the end of the world if our candidate doesn't get elected. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention, man. It means you're a bad citizen. It's so, it's freaky because I'm like, I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent person and even that like brought up this fear in me like, oh my gosh, like, you know, it's like, this is really important.

I don't want the world to end. I don't want like, and it just, it almost like takes away all logic and reason and intellectual thinking about, hey, let's slow down, think about actually what the best foot forward is rather than just like jumping into fear. Yeah. So this amygdala activation is actually what's biologically happening. when you have activists, politicians, and media, they're trying to fire you up.

They're trying to make you feel angry and afraid. Because the amygdala, when it's activated, it clears the decks, man. In terms of evolutionary biology, you want fear to erase everything. You know, you hear a little snap of a twig behind you and you're walking across the Savannah 200,000 years ago. You don't want anybody to say,

huh, I bet that's one of my friends coming up to say, hi you know you want to be like run for to climb a tree and ask questions later and that's why we have this amygdala this part of this little almond shaped things on either side of our brains in the limbic system that they activate they'll turn on and like if you see a car in your peripheral vision when you're in a crosswalk coming toward you that will register as a as a large predator because your your brain can't say that's a Mercedes your brain says that's something big that's going to hurt me kill me and eat me that's a lion or something that's what you're your brain is telling you. And in 74 milliseconds, your heart will be pounding and you'll be

sweating and you'll have flipped off the driver and jumped out of the way way way before you know what's not happened. And your amygdala saved your life. So what happens is if you're a demagogic leader, somebody in the press or somebody in politics or somebody on social media or somebody who's just trying to make you mad on a college campus, they're trying to activate your amygdala so you'll act in panic. That's what they want you to do. Because then you're putty in their hands, then they can use you. If they can wipe out love for somebody you disagree with, if they can wipe out negative emotion, positive emotions, if they can just activate that, they own you. And that's what they're trying to do. Yeah. Okay. Talk to that on your podcast.

How do you manage that? Say, if like any of those fear, you know, fight or flight responses come up in a marriage, you know, like circling back to kind of like what we talked about before, you were talking about anger and contempt and how, which surprised me, you said that anger is actually not a predictor of divorce, but contempt is. Anger is a fun, but it's not a predictor of divorce. It's when you actually allow disgust to mix with anger, creating a complex emotion. Complex emotion, basic emotions are singular, complex emotions are mixes of different emotions. And so, you know, experts in the biology of emotion will talk about, you know, there's like

43 different emotions, like cocktails of different emotions that we mix together, right? And, you know, fear plus joy, you know, what is that? You know, and that's going to be the roller coaster effect, you know, that kind of thing. But contempt is fear plus disgust. Disgust is your natural reaction using a part of the brain called the insula or the insular cortex that makes you feel disgust toward a pathogen. So you feel it naturally when something smells off, some in the fridge, when something looks rotten, when something is dead.

And the reason is because we're evolved to know where bacteria and germs come from. Yeah. And something that's a carrier, a common carrier bacteria in germs will make us feel disgusted. If you don't have, if you have natural antibiotics in your saliva like the dog, then you're not going to be disgusted by licking the floor. Yeah. But if you're a person, you're going to tell your kid, don't lick the floor. It's disgusting.

And they'll learn that it's disgusting because it actually is more likely to make you sick than phyto. Yeah. Right. So that's kind of how all that whole thing. The same thing works when you make somebody to say. disgusted about other people. So demagogic leaders, dictators, like the, in Rwanda and the genocide in the 1990s, they had a word, the Hutus had a word for the Tutsis, which meant

cockroaches. Why? Because they wanted to stimulate the insular cortex and the brains of these particular people so they would be capable of unspeakable savagery, of barbarity. And you do that by stimulating this really kind of all-encompassing negative emotionality. You turn them into a pathogen that might actually kill them. The Nazis referred to Jews as rats to try to stimulate the insular cortex. That's how, you know, press and politicians are actually talking about people with whom we disagree politically today. Yeah.

They say they're disgusting. When they say the word disgusting, what they're trying to do is they want the, they want the amygdala fired up for anger, and they want to mix it with the insular cortex activity, which is disgusting that creates contempt, which is the worthlessness of another person. Yeah. Okay. That's bad in politics. It's fatal for a marriage.

it's absolutely fatal for a marriage when you express contempt even if you don't feel it the other person will absorb the complex negative emotion of contempt from the other person which is actually hatred so the person you love the most

is actually expressing hatred toward you yeah that breaks up marriages it really does and that just means and the way you avoid it is learning how to fight you don't not fight I mean couples they don't fight don't stay married because they don't have there's no passion and some couple

fight a lot like me and Esther. I mean, like little kids or cats and dogs or, you know, it's been like that, the whole, because she's super high emotional salience and me too. And so we're like, we're very much alike in terms of character. And so it's like, it's daggers drawn a lot. But we get it. We know what's going on. Neither one of us thinks this is the end of the world. And we're always apologizing. There's constant apologies going on. It's like the life of apologies to be sure. The problem is when you don't realize that you're expressing mutual contempt for each other, absorbing hatred when you feel love, that extinguishes the love in a marriage. And that requires that you fight in a different way and you understand your own emotions.

So being married 34 years, you guys still fight. How do you fight in a way to where contempt doesn't creep in? Well, sometimes it does, but then you have to recognize it and apologize. guys. It's just like, it's a life of, of recognizing your own frailty. Yeah. You know, it's like, this is, you know, I'm sorry. And we're better, you know, been to, you know, fights would go on for a couple of days back in the old days. It was like, you know, the Cold War. But, you know, and now it's just like a couple of hours or sometimes usually a couple of minutes is kind of how it goes on. It's like, yeah, I'm sorry I reacted that way. I was thinking this. And I miss, I didn't, I misperceive the thing that you said. Are you both pretty good about not, not like

trying to like win the argument right because if someone wins there's no winning right yeah i mean a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still that's from how to win friends and influence people by real Carnegie wait say that again i love that a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still if you win an argument you lost yeah and if you had an argument in your marriage you just weakened your marriage yeah is the whole point you don't try to win you do try to persuade. But the whole point is that persuasion is a win-win because it's like, huh, yeah, you're right. We did need that couch, right? Or something like that, right? Because that's, you know, it's a common thing. It's like, you know, I used to come in in, you know, years ago and I'd come home and it'd be like,

every day, I'd be like, what's that? You know, I'd come home. It's like, it's furniture, she'd say. It's like, and I didn't even know, because, you know, I'm a man. And so I would be living on lawn furniture and it would be an unheated garage sitting on lawn furniture because you know and we do need stuff but but the whole point is that that you you learn about this with each other and you you learn to to persuade each other in important ways and yeah avie it's it's funny because like i i would say probably abby spends more often than i do but when i spend i probably buy bigger budget items and like one example of this is recently i built a half pipe in her backyard and she's Like, how much is this half pipe?

Are you a skateboarder? Oh, what a great question. So I grew up. No, I grew up, I grew up, skateboarding. I wanted to be, I wanted to like go pro, but like, obviously that never worked out. But, you know, it's a, it's been a dream. I wanted to be a pro skateboarder when I was like 10. That's so cool.

Yeah, but I mean, it's what is cool now, though, is because of like the, the platform we have and stuff, I have friends that are pro skateboarders and I've invited them to come skate my half pipe with me. And I think, I think it'll be a freaking blast. Yeah, that's right. And you're like, this is my backyard. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things I'm curious about. And you're like, I was like, I'm married to a 14-year-old.

I have a couple of here. You know, the last person, the guy dropping off all the lumber for this was like, yeah, the last person I delivered this to is a professional skateboarder. I was like, Matt, we've been together almost a decade. I've seen him skateboard a handful of times. Yeah, I get it. It'll be great. It'll be great. Our boys will love it.

Your boys probably will love it. And, you know, you can always get rid of the half fight. Yeah. You know, once the next thing enters your head. You know, I know, that's the thing. Yeah, maybe it costs $5,000, but, you know, yeah, just get rid of the half-five. You approach the biggest questions people ask themselves and the biggest pursuits you have in your life, the meaning of life, how do I find happiness? Like, like all these things.

But in such a conversational way that also has all this research into it, like it's, I feel like I just like, I don't re-listen to our podcast. this is one I will be relistening to and I'm like I need to take notes and like really absorb this because there was just so much wisdom packed into like such a short amount of time really and I have so many takeaways from this that are very tangible for me

well thank you and you two are a case study and doing so many things right and that's really important you're super curious you love each other you're building a life together you're trying to be an example to other people it's just very beautiful to see and there's wonderful times ahead that you're going to share with other people as well

I'm really privileged to be a small part of your journey today. Thank you. That's so nice. That's so kind. Thanks. Well, Dr. Arthur Brooks, thank you so much. Guys, follow him on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all the socials. Check out the new book.

Check out the new book coming out in March. March 31st. Yes, March 31st. So again, thank you so much. Pre-order now. And take the quiz. I want to take it too. Yeah, the happiness scale.

That's at arthurbrooks.com. That'll be fun. Sweet. Okay. We'll let you know our results. Thanks a lot. Thank you.