Based Camp - June 23, 2023


Based Camp: Our Relationship Contract


Episode Stats

Length

29 minutes

Words per Minute

204.60475

Word Count

5,960

Sentence Count

1

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

7


Summary

In this episode, we discuss the concept of "relationships contracts" and why it's so important to have a solid social contract with everyone you interact with, including your spouse, family, friends, partners, etc.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 oh la la i keep sitting on these champagne bottles like why are you covered in champagne
00:00:08.820 bottles what's the story there it's our it's our billionaire tech elite lifestyle we just
00:00:15.720 hold on we'll do this in the record oh it's recording now yeah why are you why are you
00:00:19.740 sitting on champagne bottles it's i tell them what tech billionaires just like have
00:00:24.700 champagne bottles sitting all over their furniture it's annoying they trip over them
00:00:29.580 it's like legos in a parent's house but really simone what is going on with the champagne
00:00:34.540 bottles i went through her room and she had two champagne bottles in her chair i i mean if we're
00:00:40.080 being honest it's like a motivational thing like i mean i i don't really drink now because like we're
00:00:45.040 going through an ivf cycle like we want to get pregnant and and yet like i just want to know
00:00:50.200 it's there and if anything goes wrong we have these like consolation prizes like okay if there's a failed
00:00:56.180 transfer i get this consolation prize if there is a miscarriage i get this consolation prize if
00:01:02.280 there's a stillbirth because like i need to not get so demoralized that we don't keep trying right
00:01:06.960 because it can be really hard well this is very germane to the topic of the video what are these
00:01:10.920 cancellation prizes what's the cancellation consolation consolation i'm being consoled i'm not being
00:01:17.320 canceled canceled don't cancel me when i have a miscarriage my idea is is so she asked me for
00:01:23.220 permission i don't even know why she asked me for permission i like that you're no no well it's
00:01:26.820 actually it's a marriage contract thing i'm just i'm making sure that with an expenditure of joint
00:01:30.860 funds on a consolation prize related to our fertility plans that you are on the same page and that you
00:01:36.240 officially in writing and in a documented fashion approve it and this has to do indeed with the with
00:01:42.560 the topic of this podcast which actually came as a commenter suggestion so i'm like really excited
00:01:47.920 because people are now giving us suggestions for our podcast i've never said it was a suggestion too
00:01:54.560 yeah but anyway so this this suggestion came from cat ad victorium who said 100 want your dedicated
00:02:01.460 video to relationship contracts your fat clause is so relatable and reasonable my husband does
00:02:07.000 relationship coaching and probably one of the top three reasons and sadly it's so taboo to point this out
00:02:12.280 is one of the spouses slash partners has let themselves go and gained a bunch of weight and stops
00:02:17.420 making an effort to be an attractive person in some way there's this entitled attitude quote they
00:02:23.240 should just accept me as i am and if they can't handle it they're emotionally abusive unquote it is
00:02:27.920 wild my husband and i have both gone from periods of fat to fat and fit and back and so we've experienced
00:02:33.360 this for ourselves and we've learned over our 15 years and counting marriage they were both making a
00:02:38.040 maximum effort to be healthy for one another and to be alive for as long as possible for our four
00:02:42.100 children things are pretty satisfying well much more satisfying than if you slump and become
00:02:46.980 schlumpy it is neither good for yourself nor your spouse so anyway cat ad victorium thank you for
00:02:52.280 your comment thank you for your suggestion we're going to talk about relationship contracts and yes
00:02:55.900 one part of relationship contracts is making sure that you're on the same page with expenditures
00:02:59.740 would you like to know more i just want to give like bird's eye view of relationship contracts one
00:03:05.940 you're in a social contract with everyone that you interact with like that's a key premise of like
00:03:10.960 why is it worth it to have a relationship contract every time you have a conversation with someone
00:03:15.400 every time you get on a bus like you are engaging with a social contract the social contract on a
00:03:19.400 bus is that you're going to sit down and not urinate and not get naked you're going to allow the
00:03:25.040 wheelchair bound people just in the wheelchair area if they come in there there are these unspoken social
00:03:30.640 contracts we have the problem is especially when you live in a diverse environment and people have a
00:03:36.200 lot of different cultural backgrounds it's really important to be more explicit in discussing what your
00:03:42.880 social contracts are especially when you start to be in a more higher stakes relationship like a
00:03:47.020 romantic relationship a sexual relationship a marriage etc an example of this is if you're dating
00:03:52.080 somebody people from different cultural backgrounds one may think that dating means that they are
00:03:57.120 exclusive another may think that dating doesn't mean they're exclusive or one may think that well yes
00:04:03.660 dating means you're exclusive but you know kissing someone else is an infidelity and so if you don't if you
00:04:10.380 aren't really explicit to make sure you're operating off of the same shared social code then it can lead
00:04:16.420 to misunderstandings which are really important when you consider what's actually going on with one of
00:04:22.720 these contracts so we go back to the dating what's actually happening is is both people are saying i am
00:04:28.200 making these sacrifices or restrictions in how i act with other people to benefit my relationship with
00:04:33.580 you on the understanding that you are making like an equal trade-off of sacrifices and if that is
00:04:40.000 improperly communicated one partner might feel like they made sacrifices that the other person didn't
00:04:45.680 make or or something like that and with all of the different like cultural baggage around what creates
00:04:52.900 these default relationship contracts different cultures have found different optimums work for those cultures
00:04:59.080 and within every culture there's this belief well the way that i do things is the correct way to do
00:05:03.400 things so continue from there right and so when when people typically hear that we have a relationship
00:05:09.840 contract they immediately think like oh this is where we discuss how you tie up and whip each other
00:05:15.300 isn't it like this is where you your sex dungeon comes into play mr gray what was it gray mr gray i don't
00:05:21.360 50 shades of gray is what they think of i think that there's a contract in there i think actually their
00:05:25.460 contract might have a fat clause i haven't read the books actually mr gray is in clue oh okay i don't
00:05:31.280 i don't know i don't play games i don't read 50 shades of gray okay so they they yeah they assume it's
00:05:36.440 like it's a sex thing really interesting thing that we when we talk about this sort of degenerate social
00:05:41.340 virus in our society that when people see we have a lot of kids they're like oh you must be doing it
00:05:46.480 because it's a fetish or when they hear we have a relationship contract they're like oh it must be a bunch
00:05:50.480 of sex stuff because like that is their perspective of reality is that everything is about this very
00:05:57.120 visceral gratification instead of that the relationship contract is like this is the expected
00:06:02.480 temperature of the house let's go into this so like what is a relationship contract actually well
00:06:08.760 what malcolm and i did and this is first off it's a living document it is a google document we update it
00:06:14.080 regularly we i just updated it per consolation prices in case i have a mishap the next time we
00:06:20.660 try to get pregnant for example and with kids names things like that but it is a living document that you
00:06:26.100 and a partner a friend a work colleague whatever it could be anyone who has a high stakes relationship
00:06:31.120 with you you you negotiate various terms especially around potential points of conflict before they become
00:06:37.900 potential point of constant points of conflict so what malcolm and i did before we got engaged before we
00:06:43.520 got married was we went through like our relationships on reddit we asked a bunch of friends and colleagues
00:06:49.380 and family members and strangers where they had major fights conflicts issues in their relationships
00:06:54.700 and then we put those issues into our marriage contract and we negotiated them before they'll ever
00:07:02.920 happen so let's go into some of the the issues you wanted to talk about finances malcolm well i mean i think
00:07:08.320 that if you're talking about the most important clauses in any relationship contract finances is
00:07:16.240 definitely one of them and there's a few ways that this can be done you could either just completely
00:07:21.660 divide finances so finances go into a mutual pot and then they are divided in some way like it could
00:07:27.640 be 70 30 or it's more likely if you do it this way it would be 50 50 you can have you keep what you earn
00:07:33.380 which is each partner basically maintains a separate bank account and goes into the relationship
00:07:37.800 with a separate bank account or you can have a shared pot with then some private money that goes
00:07:45.600 to each individual or some sort of combination of these what we have in our relationship is a shared
00:07:51.320 pot with sort of an allowance of free spending money for each individual and so what she was talking
00:07:57.740 about was these sorts of like consolation expenses is that they would be tied to the shared pot because
00:08:04.100 she was undertaking an emotional task that was for our combined benefit yeah so in other words all of
00:08:12.160 our income regardless of if it's like income that went technically to malcolm or technically to me
00:08:16.980 goes into one big account and then it gets pulled out for various different budgets and a lot of them are
00:08:23.200 joint things and all of the joint expenses that we have like for our kids for housing for for travel
00:08:28.900 things that we do jointly are based on agreed upon budgets we've we've decided on the percentages the
00:08:34.380 monthly amounts whatever and so that's all set and this of course yeah as part of that then and we've
00:08:39.540 seen this works really really well for people in relationships there's discretionary spending for
00:08:43.720 each partner so like it doesn't matter like what you're spending it on it could be something completely
00:08:48.520 abhorrent to the other partner doesn't matter because that's your money they have zero visibility
00:08:52.760 into it so that money goes into private accounts for each of us i have no idea what malcolm spends his
00:08:57.000 money on okay so we use a lot of shared public accounts like amazon accounts and stuff like that
00:09:04.340 yes i do her account so she gets an email whenever i buy something and i yeah well when we try to max out
00:09:10.060 credit card points and i like i reimburse our credit card charges on a shared card like from our personal
00:09:14.800 accounts so like okay i know i know but but technically you know everything i'm actually spending money on
00:09:19.500 yeah i i do but like you could do it all privately and that's very important to think because there are
00:09:24.580 some relationships in which every expense is reviewed by all partners and that can be really tough
00:09:30.280 especially if like one partner is spending more personally than the other partner or the other
00:09:35.140 partner doesn't approve of it there's a lot of friction there so having like a blind fund where it's
00:09:39.600 like this is your discretionary spending zero judgment zero visibility if you don't want any visibility
00:09:44.080 like it's it's very smart and it seemed to have worked really well so there are other things that
00:09:49.700 are in our contract that i think maybe people wouldn't expect you alluded to one which is like
00:09:55.080 house temperature for example yeah house temperature well i mean i think a lot of the important ones are
00:09:59.760 the ones that come up most frequently in our lives because otherwise they become simmering points of
00:10:04.400 conflict like there wasn't an agreement before we got married whereas something like house temperature
00:10:09.860 can seem like a pretty trivial decision to make with a partner before you get married and so it
00:10:16.200 doesn't cost a lot of emotion to do then but in terms of you're already married and each of you have
00:10:21.540 strong preferences for different temperatures then it becomes a very costly thing so a lot of these
00:10:26.420 things remove a lot of the potential tension of relationship by deciding it up front one of the
00:10:30.460 things we mentioned in a previous video was what do the spouse's parents do if they end up destitute or
00:10:35.060 something and they they asked if they could come live with you right yeah and something like that
00:10:39.340 is a lot easier to decide when you're not deciding about specific humans who who benefits one person
00:10:45.800 every other person you're deciding this with either of your spouses then you know that when you initially
00:10:50.120 made this decision you made it blind as to who it would be about instead of like if both my parents
00:10:56.400 die and then we're having this negotiation like it's pretty lopsided the way the terms work out
00:11:00.720 other causes that are in a relationship contract that i really like are for example who how to deal
00:11:08.220 with travel to certain events like to family gatherings so let's say one partner really hates
00:11:12.300 going to them and yet the other partner wants to spend a lot of money to like go out and visit family
00:11:17.460 we have various rules around that and one of our rule that our dynamic that i think is really fun and
00:11:21.980 it works really really well is with things like that where one partner really wants to do it and the
00:11:27.660 other partner doesn't then it comes down to one partner being willing to do that thing with their
00:11:32.600 discretionary spending so like okay we'll do it but you have to pay for it similar to house
00:11:37.660 temperature like i'm i'm okay with the house being hotter than necessary like during the winter i just
00:11:44.420 wear a snowsuit inside and i deal with it but malcolm doesn't necessarily want to so i'm like okay
00:11:48.940 the temperature can go higher but you have to pay for the difference in other words right and i don't i
00:11:54.360 mean we usually leave our house at around 50 degrees in the winter um which which i love i love
00:11:59.380 your frugality simone and i love your constantly testing yourself in terms of enduring pain for
00:12:06.680 mutual benefit which i think makes you a stronger person mentally a voluntary hardship is very useful
00:12:12.840 for for clearing the mind but in terms of something you mentioned is updating the contracts a lot of
00:12:17.600 people miss another big area what does that mean well for us that's just about the contract stands
00:12:22.200 unless both of us decide to update it together so either one of us has veto power on contract
00:12:27.840 updates uh another oh for example we just went today so one of the sections of our contract
00:12:33.280 is kids names like well there's a lot of things in there like whether or not kids yeah she had she
00:12:38.800 got a crush on a ship from a sci-fi book and you guys say oh it's a really hot ship and i was like
00:12:44.080 well that's a very simone thing to say it's no i mean i think anyone who reads surface detail by
00:12:48.860 ian banks and discovers the the ship known as falling outside the normal moral constraints which
00:12:54.140 is a culture abominator class offensive unit it is like the coolest character of the entire book as
00:12:58.960 far as i've gone so far like but anyway so like i i added that name for consideration in the document
00:13:06.400 and and then i asked malcolm like hey what do you think about the name to my son which is the avatar
00:13:10.820 of this ship and he's like nope so but that's how it works and it's really straightforward
00:13:15.780 as a name abominator what is it called a cultural he's an abominator class yeah but about abominator
00:13:24.120 abominator is not bad it's not bad we'll think about it yeah but we have a whole i think abominator
00:13:30.740 is too weird i think it's yeah no no well we'll have to i will just search for other names in ian
00:13:35.700 banks novels and we will i will find one ideally of a ship that is really good because i think i don't
00:13:41.660 think falling outside the moral constraints is is a pithy name so i can't use that sadly as much as
00:13:47.100 i love that okay so so then another thing that people often ask is well how do you make decisions
00:13:52.240 when they're not covered by the contract right and i think that's a really interesting question as well
00:13:57.460 so the way we do that is generally we have divided our life into different domains of which we have
00:14:05.960 we we give day-to-day management of those domains between the two of us so like simone manages the
00:14:11.560 inside of the house i manage the outside of the house simone manages our finances i manage career
00:14:15.780 decisions but at the end of the day i end up making all the decisions you have the final call
00:14:20.940 like you veto power you final decision power on literally anything except what's already outlined
00:14:26.520 in the contract so the contract is like outlining defensively these are your rights of areas where i
00:14:31.520 can't just make final calls and a lot of people are like oh my god that's horrible why don't why
00:14:36.840 don't you compromise right and it's like compromise is a terrible way to handle relationships because
00:14:41.700 what it does is it creates the incentive for each partner to exaggerate their positions okay so in
00:14:48.540 other words if i want five and malcolm wants three malcolm is incentivized to say he wants zero and i'm
00:14:53.620 incentivized to say i want 10 and we're all going to end up at an exaggerated position what's even worse
00:14:58.660 is when you're you're coming at things from this very individualized perspective you start not
00:15:04.040 thinking in terms of what's best for us what would the relationship benefit from what are what do our
00:15:08.400 shared values benefit from you end up thinking about me and in my extreme views and what serves me the
00:15:14.300 best and you might even start leaning into your exaggerated stated preference so like i might actually
00:15:19.940 start wanting the 10 even though i really just i mean i think it's impossible to not if you take a position
00:15:25.820 in an argument you're much more likely to find yourself believing that position is your totally
00:15:30.340 your real perspective yeah so then you it's like it's literally pulling the couple apart or the
00:15:35.940 every partner in a relationship right and i think that when a partner voluntarily says i'm giving up power
00:15:42.020 to you i trust you to use it wisely if you're in a positive relationship the person is actually
00:15:47.440 probably going to default to your needs over their own because in every decision they yeah they know
00:15:53.880 that was out that you have you have surrendered that power to them voluntarily where this doesn't
00:15:59.460 work is if a person believes there's a cultural expectation that the power should be surrendered
00:16:04.440 to them and they have some sort of divine right of rulership within the relationship which can happen
00:16:09.460 within some cultures where they believe that like men by the sake of being men should be the one in
00:16:14.800 charge yeah that means that he doesn't feel like the woman has made any sort of like real sacrifice
00:16:19.800 sometimes now some some people still appreciate it even when they come from those cultural
00:16:23.500 backgrounds but there is a risk that they're like oh well of course she's subservient to me because
00:16:28.180 she's a woman well i think that this also even shows up with in in like traditional more and more
00:16:33.580 traditional seeming cultures where women are like oh well of course i'm entitled to like spend all
00:16:38.140 this shared money on clothes and purses for myself because i'm the woman and i should be treasured and
00:16:41.900 like i i got pregnant for you so therefore i get to buy whatever i want with your money etc
00:16:46.040 um like it can go i mean it's a bad cultural expectation and it's something that i'm glad
00:16:50.840 that we outlined that in terms of like those values like frugality i mean i think also outlining
00:16:55.800 your values is really important but i want to go back to other ways that you so suppose you actually
00:17:00.000 don't trust your partner enough to say i'm going to let one of my partners just have final call on
00:17:04.140 things then what you're doing and this is a very easy thing to do if you have aligned values it's
00:17:08.880 something that doesn't work if either of your values are humanistic in nature because then there's
00:17:12.920 always going to be missing incentivization but if you have aligned values for like i live my life
00:17:18.780 in dedication to this greater cause then it's it's very easy to think okay what what logically helps
00:17:24.940 us both move towards that greater cause right and and you are rewarded for in terms of like real world
00:17:31.300 achievement from seeking as much information as possible from your partner in terms of achieving that
00:17:34.720 cause but other ways this can be done if you don't trust your partner that much is you could have some
00:17:38.780 sort of external party be the mediator right and you see this in traditional cultures too i mean like
00:17:44.580 often like religious yeah yeah yeah but let's actually let's talk about consequences for violating
00:17:51.000 the contract because i think that this is something that's super under underrated and i mean sort of
00:17:56.160 like i don't know in country music or in popular culture there is this perception that when you
00:18:01.140 violate a relationship contract or a marriage contract even when it's unspoken so like he cheated she
00:18:08.280 cheated the person the the understanding is well of course you leave the relationship you end the
00:18:13.920 relationship you trash their car you throw their clothing out of the like fifth story window etc etc
00:18:20.000 right like you do all these like pretty toxic things whereas we argue in the pragmatist guide to
00:18:25.880 relationships that's actually like a really suboptimal thing to do unless you are 100 committed to doing
00:18:31.940 it and it seems like in most cases when someone leaving the relationship right a lot of people are like
00:18:36.760 i will leave you if you do this now take it from there yeah if you break a rule i will leave and
00:18:41.080 that that ultimately is not ideal honestly like yeah you would think that in our relationship contract
00:18:46.220 we've put all this thought into it like oh we must have like these really really big ramifications for
00:18:50.640 like even really specific ramifications for when someone breaks the rule honestly like it's pretty much
00:18:56.220 just if you break this rule if you if you don't honor this rule or standard it will really hurt my feelings
00:19:02.200 like that that's kind of it and that's that's honestly in a relationship in which each partner
00:19:07.220 loves each other and each partner wants the relationship to stay intact that's frankly one
00:19:11.700 of the best ramifications you can have because it's obvious to both partners that if that happens a lot
00:19:16.620 if one partner is constantly disappointing constantly hurting feelings that eventually for the partner who's
00:19:22.200 regularly being let down they're going to terminate the relationship period and this is something that i think is
00:19:27.480 really important in relationships is and we'll do our episode on how perverse it is to have a relationship
00:19:32.180 based on love but a lot of people assume that love is the most important emotion or feeling you have
00:19:38.440 towards your partner in a relationship but i i think in truth love is like number four in terms of
00:19:44.900 important emotions the really important one is gratitude when your partner makes a sacrifice for you
00:19:52.460 or does something for you that you are grateful for the sacrifice they have made because nothing
00:19:58.320 degrades the relationship faster than when you feel like you're doing something for someone and they are
00:20:04.060 not show you can tell that they do not appreciate it yeah one thing that i really appreciated our
00:20:10.440 relationship is i am just always overwhelmed and humbled by the amount of gratitude you engender in me
00:20:18.280 where i'm constantly like wow she really does more than her share like i always feel like you're doing
00:20:23.960 more than your share well i do about you too i think that's a good sign of a relationship if each
00:20:28.200 partner thinks of pulling a fast one yeah because i think people hear that and they're like why would
00:20:32.340 two people consistently the way that you create a relationship where both people always feel like the
00:20:37.580 other person is doing more than their share is you divide the roles in the relationship so that each
00:20:43.780 person or takes on the roles that the other person finds difficult so this task that simone does i find
00:20:51.680 incredibly emotionally difficult to do and the things that welcome does i literally could not do
00:20:56.940 yeah and so you look at like little things for me where i'm like oh like some people were asking why do
00:21:02.400 you record in different rooms right and and they know that simone's autistic simone doesn't like to
00:21:06.320 be in the same environment with someone right and and well it it stresses her out a little like with me
00:21:12.260 it's okay if it's just socialization but like when we're performing when we're on stage like we
00:21:16.620 are with these podcasts there's it's like having somebody looking over her shoulder while she's
00:21:20.280 working yeah is that a good yeah and i think a lot of people wouldn't respect that and so you come
00:21:25.700 at this and you and you have gratitude for little weird sacrifices i make that to me feel like
00:21:32.080 almost nothing whereas for you an example of something she's doing today is i find it really
00:21:37.940 stressful to go through comments on twitter or youtube because some of them are negative and and
00:21:44.520 mean and it really stresses me out so like in south park where they have the butters going through
00:21:49.980 all the negative comments and only sending you the positive ones simone doesn't really get bothered
00:21:54.480 by negative comments that much not at all so she just engages with them and then really only brings
00:21:59.660 them to me where she goes oh this is like a interesting point that i want you to engage with
00:22:03.720 because sometimes they're bringing up like an intellectual point and i do want to be open to
00:22:07.440 other ideas but then other times it's just like i want to kill you or or i i you're ugly and weird
00:22:13.180 and i'm like i know i'm ugly and weird come on guys we are we are runway okay and the runway like all
00:22:22.980 the pretty people are catalog we are runway deal with it okay what are other parts of a relationship
00:22:29.640 contract that are important let me pull up our relationship contract and give some additional
00:22:35.660 examples for for listener inspiration just in case you are thinking about making a relationship
00:22:41.880 contract of your own so under finances we have distribution of investment and inheritance income
00:22:47.400 which i think is another important thing because each partner can come into a relationship not just
00:22:51.800 with their existing salaries which are easy enough to divide up but also with like
00:22:55.220 oh here's like i get royalties for example from content that i created before malcolm was in a
00:23:00.900 relationship both of us have inherited a little bit of money from grandparents like what happens
00:23:05.500 with that money and we also have things like use of emergency funds like are we do we build up an
00:23:13.440 emergency fund how many months does it have to cover what do we do about retirement savings what are
00:23:18.100 our policies with debt like in what scenarios is it okay for us to get into debt which i think is also
00:23:23.740 really important and a big point of conflict with people getting into relationships even like i i knew
00:23:28.700 someone in college who had so much student debt that as soon as partners learned about it they didn't
00:23:32.820 want to marry her which is insane but also like it's a big deal so that's a really big one they're
00:23:38.200 inheriting that debt when i know i know and i know it's it is a big deal oh of course fidelity like
00:23:44.020 we very we very fidelity that's a what what is cheating what is not cheating what is allowed how do
00:23:50.860 things need to be discussed like i think that's really important and i think it's interesting that
00:23:54.600 for for some partners i think i remember going through one study that showed how men were like
00:24:02.520 super cool with like ai like sex or boyfriends or girlfriends or something like that whereas women
00:24:09.260 were like no i'm super not cool with my boyfriend or husband like having an emotional or sexual
00:24:15.360 relationship with an ai like entity like super i think something that you point out here is there's
00:24:22.560 this perception in our society that men and women are sociologically the same on average and therefore
00:24:28.860 when you're talking about infidelity rules or something like that a trade-off for a guy will be
00:24:34.840 the equivalent of a similar trade-off for a girl right yeah which it totally isn't which is not true
00:24:39.820 yeah and the ai is a perfect example of that but if you created a rule that you know both people can
00:24:44.460 date ais that might actually be a lot more costly for one gender than the other totally and i think
00:24:50.340 it's the same with sex like i think extramarital or extra relationship sex can mean a lot more to
00:24:57.580 some parties and other parties so also a big a big thing and i know this is like what blows our mind
00:25:04.340 is that like so many people get married and then they're like okay so do we have kids like do we not
00:25:09.180 have kids like i think it's less common now people are a lot more upfront about whether or not they want
00:25:13.900 to have kids but when we first looked at like relationship deal breakers and things that caused
00:25:18.800 breakups we kept coming across stories of people who had gotten married and then discovered that
00:25:25.480 they weren't on the same page about kids which is really not good so we we don't only have agreements
00:25:32.400 about how many kids we may have how we're going to try with issues or like deal with issues of fertility
00:25:37.840 but also there there's a section on career sacrifices for children and i think this is another
00:25:42.840 really big one is that a big point of conflict in relationships is who's gonna who's gonna take the
00:25:48.980 hit like who has to give up their career to have kids or who's gonna pick up the kids when they're
00:25:53.100 sick or who's gonna deal with this or that and often like societally women end up picking up a lot
00:25:58.760 of the slack just because there is this unwritten social contract that that calls to the mother
00:26:02.600 so negotiating that ahead of time i think that there's also a lot of like resentment on behalf
00:26:07.000 of women because they feel that obligation when often it may be the case that the husbands would
00:26:11.460 be super happy to do all that and they're doing it because they think the women want to do that
00:26:15.640 and so actually like malcolm picks up like the majority of the slack with our kids one because
00:26:20.660 he's cool with it too because he's the best husband ever but that's something that really made a big
00:26:24.820 difference for me around children but also we have punishment for children that's there's a lot of
00:26:29.840 conflict around that yeah one person comes in thinking like corporal punishment is okay and the
00:26:33.960 other person doesn't that's sure to cause a lot of conflict yeah and then financial considerations
00:26:39.040 like one parent may want to spend a lot more money on kids than the other one parent wants like
00:26:43.580 designer ralph lauren clothing for the kids the other one like no we're only doing hand-me-downs
00:26:47.660 that's a freedom of choice for kids what are they allowed to do their recreation their education
00:26:52.800 the media they consume pets like we have a pets clause in here child sex education child names of
00:26:58.720 course that's like our most frequently updated thing now oh housing in the event of a long
00:27:03.280 distance marriage so like if we end up having to live on different continents for a while for doing
00:27:07.700 work who's where do the kids go these are important things we also have things like family gatherings and
00:27:14.240 holiday travel like we said elder family member care then of course there's health too like
00:27:19.420 preventative health care like are we what are we committing to like in terms of screening and regular
00:27:24.520 health checks i i think that that's beyond just like because obviously we have our fat clause in
00:27:29.040 our in our marriage contract which i love but it's not just a fat clause like we also have terms around
00:27:34.800 health and and not doing things that harm ourselves which is i think great and really important life
00:27:41.740 supports in there of course although that's one of the few things that like a lot of people with
00:27:45.300 their their power of attorney do actually work out oddly like the one thing that kind of like is
00:27:51.580 almost never gonna happen you're what happens once anyway to wrap things up if you have questions about
00:27:58.740 relationship contracts or fun things that you put in your relationship contract and it can be your
00:28:03.460 sexy relationship contract whatever we'll talk about that too let us know in the comments and this
00:28:09.200 is so cringe but don't forget to like and subscribe i told her she had to say this i was like we've never
00:28:15.080 asked people to like and subscribe so we really try to create the best listener experience possible
00:28:19.420 in that one of the things we do is we try to if you don't want to watch the full episode if you're
00:28:23.400 like okay i just want to get to like the point that you're getting at we try to put that before
00:28:27.660 the title card that's probably not great in terms of like viewership links in terms of the algorithm
00:28:33.000 but i really want this to be just like an ideal listenership experience and that's also one of the
00:28:37.700 reasons why we haven't really been adding the like and subscribe thing but i mean i guess it helps
00:28:43.500 i don't even know if subscribing helps that much anymore for for the algorithm it certainly helps for my ego
00:28:48.260 that's our big goal this year get to 10k subscribers and we're like real youtubers i i guess that's that's
00:28:54.640 the way i see it so it's the dream so anyway please do your part please do your part friends yeah okay
00:29:01.760 malcolm i love you so much and let's do another conversation soon i hope so i love you too yeah