Based Camp - Love Is Not A Real Emotion (Inside Our Loveless Marriage)

00:00:00.000 hello i'm excited to be here with you today if you read this title and you're familiar with the

00:00:04.540 way we do title cards you probably think that this is some sort of bait and switch it is not

00:00:08.460 a bait and switch no this is the core point i'm going to be arguing in this episode is that some

00:00:16.440 groups may feel love but i suspect for the vast majority of humans at least given myself and with

00:00:23.900 my wife you know i i came to her the other day and i was like i wasn't sure if you're going to

00:00:27.300 be mad at me because we're always in this show it's like i love you and everything like that

00:00:30.420 and i was like simone i'm gonna be honest i don't feel some separate distinct emotion that i can

00:00:36.880 categorize as love like and and i think that what's really cool is if love is a myth most people don't

00:00:45.600 feel that they can say that they can go out and say hey this is a myth yeah either they're not in a deep

00:00:51.000 you know satisfying relationship so they're in this position where people will just be like oh well you

00:00:56.520 haven't found love yet right or they are in a deep satisfying relationship and people will just say

00:01:03.320 wait does that mean that you don't really care about your wife does that mean you don't you know

00:01:07.500 it disconfirms being the person the whistleblower on love to beat all these people like hey i'm not sure

00:01:16.280 this is a real thing and we're going to be going through the receipts on it yeah it's quite a costly

00:01:20.920 thing to do unless you're in an incredibly secure position with your relationship and so people know

00:01:27.060 us they know that i literally have no negative thoughts about my wife anymore like there were

00:01:33.520 times in our relationship where like i had like minor bs with you about this or that i drive you a

00:01:37.300 little nuts on some front i don't even have minor bs the the the primary emotion that i feel towards

00:01:44.540 you like if i was going to categorize the primary emotions that i feel towards you is admiration and

00:01:51.060 a sense of debt for everything that you've invested in our family and aligned future and i have other

00:01:58.880 feelings i have a feeling of attachment i have a feeling of fondness i have a feeling of sadness when

00:02:05.300 you're not around or like a desire to be with you again that's sort of like an addiction i have

00:02:10.360 arousal from you i think that you're a very attractive woman but i can name all of those

00:02:16.460 things yeah these are all separate and distinct things and and and i don't feel something other

00:02:23.180 than these things that have a very commonly known name and so i think that me coming out here and saying

00:02:30.120 this is saying something that is sort of like uh and i i will note i do think that quote unquote

00:02:36.320 love is a real thing but what i mean by that is i think that what we are calling love

00:02:42.260 is a bundle of other emotions that have easily nameable names yeah either new relationship energy

00:02:49.780 is often mistaken for love when you're starting to date for people who don't know this is common

00:02:53.900 in like the polyamory community and it's that special feeling you get when you're dating someone

00:02:58.280 you're excited about yeah it dies down your belly the tinglys yes the tinglys but but new

00:03:05.200 relationship energy is obviously not love no people call it love early when when somebody says

00:03:10.580 like do you love me or do you not love me they're typically asking like how much new relationship

00:03:14.080 energy do you have for me yeah the second thing that is often caused to love and this is in relation

00:03:18.100 to children right is and by the way when i say like this is what people are calling love like this bundle

00:03:24.700 of emotions this is why when i tell my wife i love her at the end of every episode i'm not lying to

00:03:29.620 her i am i am telling her i have this emotional set that other people are calling love

00:03:34.280 but with children i think what is often called love is a bundle of emotions but predominantly the

00:03:40.260 emotion uh that psychologists call attachment and in psychology especially child development

00:03:45.540 attachment is treated as a unique emotional state a child does not just like their caregiver they feel

00:03:50.900 a deep existential distress when separated and security when near except for our kids attachment

00:03:57.940 distress when separated security when near but that's not love that nobody means our children

00:04:03.120 don't love us malcolm i swear to you no no i mean i don't think they do but i think a lot of people

00:04:09.760 they may hear this and they'll think this is really a semantic argument right you're being like well you

00:04:15.660 have these emotional states but they're not and i'm like actually not only is it not a semantic

00:04:20.560 argument it's a very big deal that this misconception has had and it's a very big deal because a lot of

00:04:27.780 people like if you look at the sort of normal western relationship development there is the moment when

00:04:33.620 the partner says i love you right and so somebody can be like well you know you're saying that you

00:04:39.000 know love loving is really just a word that means fondness and attachment and arousal maybe right

00:04:46.000 i mean it's like well if that is actually what everyone else means when they're saying the word love

00:04:51.660 then why do we have this ritual in relationships where people who otherwise like each other in

00:04:57.320 all other formats like two people will be dating for a long time like years sometimes and one of them

00:05:03.400 won't say i love you to the other one and it's supposed to be this like big step in their relationship

00:05:06.660 when they say i love you to them yeah and the other partner says thanks yeah or i love you too or

00:05:12.820 whatever right but but suppose they say this and and what love really means in our society

00:05:17.500 is just fondness arousal and attachment right and maybe respect in most of the instances in which

00:05:23.740 i've seen a person doesn't say i love you in a relationship and it's like a big deal within our media

00:05:27.360 or something like that they have all of those emotions so clearly it's explicitly sort of

00:05:33.600 demonstrated to people that this word means something in addition to those things well i think it

00:05:39.260 causes conflict like i think one of the reasons why people don't immediately say i love you too

00:05:44.340 is because they think that there's some social contract that's being initiated when one partner

00:05:50.060 says i love you but they're really not sure what that means like okay does this mean that you expect

00:05:56.100 me to propose in four months because for some people that kind of does and i remember also feeling this

00:06:02.320 way because your family you grew up using i love you as a way to end a conversation and i think you

00:06:09.920 might have learned that from your mom and your mom has like other people in her family had started to

00:06:16.500 adopt it and then they would start ending calls with i love you and i is like the daughter-in-law

00:06:22.400 who wasn't like oh i didn't know if i should say i love you too so like i know that feeling i think a lot

00:06:28.000 of people can really identify with that feeling of like oh god like what am i into now like i think

00:06:33.460 so no but the point here being is think about the damage this could cost to a young person's

00:06:39.020 relationship oh they're dating girls girls have i mean this sounds like the kind of thing she'd

00:06:43.760 post to reddit you know should i break up with my boyfriend because he refuses to say he loves me too

00:06:48.100 well i'm just trying to be honest he's like i don't feel some new emotion that is materially

00:06:54.520 different from the way i felt about you up until now yeah like from day one yeah so what what do you

00:07:00.280 mean like yeah and then there's this this this secondary issue which is so the person who's trying to be

00:07:06.840 fastidiously honest ends up never saying it and hurting somebody else right or uh they eventually

00:07:12.580 break like most people do in our society and then just say it um and then they believe that they're

00:07:17.920 lying to their partner and they're living a lie yeah um that's not good you don't want to start a

00:07:23.360 relationship on that right like this is not a small thing if it turns out that this is not an other

00:07:30.420 emotion and it's not a particularly profound like really really loud emotion and i should say

00:07:36.500 we're in a uniquely good spot to talk about this not just because we're in a solid relationship

00:07:40.580 but also because we tick all of the boxes that people say break love like i was the first person

00:07:45.700 you slept with you know i was the first person you seriously hooked up with i was the first person

00:07:50.240 right like all of these things which are tied to like these bonding chemicals in women like the 1.00

00:07:55.640 oxytocin and everything like that which create attachment you have been exposed to right it's it

00:08:01.320 it's not just the quality of our relationship it's it's literally check every single box that should

00:08:07.820 produce the what people say is pure love so you're saying some people would argue that the problem many

00:08:13.580 people don't experience love is that they've had too many partners or something like that right yes

00:08:18.160 yes they'll say and we do know this lower the amount of oxytocin which causes the collection of

00:08:22.760 emotions that people call love this sort of attachment which which we have but it's not like

00:08:27.400 a super profound emotion it's like i miss you when we don't talk but it's not like all of a sudden

00:08:32.960 along with that missing you some other emotion that felt really awesome came up and hit me as well

00:08:38.580 some weird like poetic longing there just seems to be this poetic element to the this that i just don't

00:08:44.660 yeah and note here if it is a real emotion and all i have found is just by coincidence

00:08:49.960 neither my wife or i feel it what this means is that there are specific individuals out there who

00:08:56.000 can be perfectly happy in fact my marriage is better than i ever could have imagined a marriage

00:09:01.240 being who can have perfectly happy and satisfying relationships without this extra emotion being a

00:09:08.180 part of it and that nothing will ever trigger this emotion in some people if it is true that other

00:09:13.240 people are having this emotion and we're just anomalies which is another important thing to note

00:09:17.720 and i i want to demystify this concept because what love has become was in our civilization

00:09:24.100 is basically it just means emotions that are above reproach and so people will say things like

00:09:31.940 lex friedman will come in and be like but what about love mr all all of his degrees are from drexel

00:09:37.920 i will never stop mentioning that he's not an mit professor he's r.i.p your chance of ever being on

00:09:43.620 his podcast hey look he he didn't let me online he didn't get back to me this is his fault you know

00:09:49.700 he he also i don't like when people like are purposely going out there and basically defrauding

00:09:55.620 people like we were through the reputational fraud you know if you're not smart just admit you're not

00:10:00.440 that bright okay that's fine you can be bright and go to drexel but it right misleading i mean it

00:10:06.580 implies a level of insecurity or just like i don't know whatever but anyway the the the the people like

00:10:12.380 him sorry simone you can't be smart and ever respond to somebody what about love

00:10:17.220 that's like the ultimate basic b take um true i guess i know i did that is i have never heard

00:10:26.660 anything more basic you refer to your friends as your boys you love bacon so much that you ruin it for

00:10:33.280 everyone else and your preferred topic of conversation is how much you drank last night

00:10:38.040 four beers two shots of jack one red bull and vodka yes it's very serious gerald very seriously

00:10:44.840 basic the good news is we caught your basicness early if you can wean yourself off the guys only

00:10:50.940 poker nights and stop referring to your basement as your man cave you might be able to salvage a

00:10:57.820 personality uh actually i haven't i haven't told you everything i've noticed a strange feeling

00:11:04.940 like this area i think i have a crutch on emma watson oh my god that's basic he is trans smart he is

00:11:13.060 someone who identifies this smart um and therefore we need to affirm that identity no but here's the

00:11:19.020 thing though and like to to your point about being afraid of of being a whistleblower on the scam of

00:11:24.780 love i i think that a really big issue at play here is that we have there are people and we have

00:11:32.500 friends who are like this too like you know we have our model of friendship and we believe there are

00:11:36.120 only three types of friends there are convenience friends who are like neighbors and colleagues who

00:11:40.640 you're only friends with because they're literally they're inconvenient there are character reinforcing

00:11:44.760 friends who are literally the supporting characters that you need to prove yourself that you are the

00:11:49.460 character you want to be and then there are utility friends who provide useful information or

00:11:54.080 connections or they have the best video game console and and they are useful to you and so therefore

00:11:58.560 you're friends with them and we have some friends who are like but what about the people who you just

00:12:02.440 love for their own inherent value and who like we have people who say that to me multiple different

00:12:09.140 people i think where we are with that is there's a lot of people who see themselves like they they

00:12:15.300 they see themselves as loving and and that they respect humans and that they they literally could

00:12:21.920 not reconcile what you're saying about love because it would break their sense of self so i don't think

00:12:30.180 it's necessarily a sign of stupidity i think it could also be a flaw in their character design and that

00:12:36.920 they're like literally they would have to admit that a huge part of their identity is just a sort of 0.94

00:12:42.540 performative fraudulent fraudulent no i think that people who base a lot of their character identity

00:12:48.180 and i will say that there is an emotion that is misidentified as love that can exist towards like

00:12:54.580 the world as a whole or society as a whole or god or any yes it's an emotion that is generated

00:13:01.500 when you think about something that is complicated and not fully knowable that gives you a sense of

00:13:07.760 comfort um and that is is also like not fully grokkable in the moment like that all of reality

00:13:15.640 like when you think about the true nature of the cosmos and and how big it is or the the true time

00:13:21.380 links of all of your ancestors and everything they went through or god itself right or himself sorry

00:13:27.060 i don't want to be somebody who implies that god is a genderless but you get this this this feeling

00:13:32.340 that people call a form of love and i'm like yeah but this is clearly not what we're talking about

00:13:39.700 when we're talking about like romantic love right like this is obviously some other and and quite a

00:13:45.740 trite and easy to trigger emotion you you can trigger it whenever you think about something that

00:13:50.640 is vast and gives you a sense of security and and that is complex slightly more complex than your

00:13:57.100 understanding so it's a feeling you might get when you like contemplate the nature of the trinity

00:14:00.560 because the trinity is intrinsically not understandable and so you'll get this feeling

00:14:03.780 or contemplate the nature of you know consciousness or um or all of humanity or the gaia or like earth

00:14:10.980 and all of the biomes that are make it up but this is obviously not what we mean when we're talking about

00:14:16.060 love is like this magical thing that bonds you to somebody it's it's clearly this like easily

00:14:20.200 trickable and hackable emotional state that isn't magic or anything like that so what i want to do is i want

00:14:26.180 to go through one the science around this what creates love okay i want to go through because

00:14:32.220 some people are born with different genetics that cause them to express emotions like lust and love

00:14:39.160 differently um interesting yeah just how like some people taste the bitterness in broccoli and other

00:14:44.680 people literally can't and you can see if you have that gene yeah it would make sense that love would

00:14:49.120 be experienced differently too of course we're going to go through the history of this and i'm going to show

00:14:53.980 you that the concept of love as we understand it today as something different from arousal or

00:15:00.480 attachment or fondness started very specifically and easily traceably to the court culture of courtly

00:15:09.400 love to the culture of chivalry this was a culture that was if you go to books of this time period

00:15:15.960 they were written by either horny troubadours or celibate monks very frequently yeah they were no they

00:15:23.900 were basically the incels of the time writing stories about romancing some woman um and and the 0.93

00:15:32.200 problem is is that because they were godly men and stuff like that they couldn't say i have this hole in

00:15:40.040 my life and this hole is lust and attachment and the desire to possess someone and and so i'm gonna

00:15:47.560 define the emotion that i feel for them as above reproach and i am going to call this this new

00:15:55.040 emotional state love and what we will see because i'm going to go through this is that actually this

00:16:00.480 isn't a common concept cross-culturally and where it is seen cross-culturally it's usually seen as a

00:16:05.720 negative emotion oh okay the idea that you would feel an attachment to somebody outside of like the best

00:16:12.700 interest of both of your families is seen as a negative emotion and while there have been studies

00:16:19.240 and i'll go over these studies that say that like 88 of cultures have some concept of love

00:16:24.200 if you look at how they're defining love they'll say it's like a fondness like i'd be sad if they died

00:16:28.840 i'd be sad if they were away from me i'm like bro i feel that way for my wife right and i'm admitting

00:16:34.340 that i don't have this separate other emotion so clearly those aren't what love is yeah what love is

00:16:40.020 is this secondary overwhelming and clearly distinct emotion that we have made up in western culture

00:16:47.120 and and very strangely it's become like this weird thing in relationships like they haven't said they

00:16:51.760 love me yet like oh yeah it's just your performative thing of when do you say i love you and basically

00:16:57.720 i love you back right away i'm putting this on the table you know yeah it's like this weird emotional

00:17:05.000 thing and we might get a chance i don't know how much time we're gonna have in this to go over some

00:17:08.660 other emotions that i think are mostly made up oh two of which i think are jealousy i think jealousy

00:17:14.260 is mostly made up no what have you ever felt i'm not talking about like your partner sleeping with

00:17:20.220 somebody else but have you ever felt distinct you may have felt like this person unjustly has a lot

00:17:25.980 of stuff that i wish i had no no that's you're describing envy jealousy is when you're trying to

00:17:30.060 protect a thing that you think someone else is going to try to take from you

00:17:32.760 like a jealous not yeah envy is when you want something you don't have

00:17:38.840 jealousy jealousy is when you want something that somebody else has

00:17:42.640 no that's envy and and it makes you dislike them as a result of this that's envy

00:17:48.160 okay well i'll let you ai this while i keep going simone

00:17:52.680 oh did the ai not agree with you oh hold on why are you going princess are you trying are you trying

00:18:05.160 to get it to agree with you now because it didn't agree with you jealousy is wanting what someone else

00:18:11.720 has envy is i'm wrong oh my god told you so but but no but jealousy has a secondary implication which is

00:18:20.620 not just you want what somebody else has but this wanting makes you like dislike them or angry at

00:18:28.640 them and i think that that's just like a social construct that we that's just you choosing to be 0.99

00:18:34.200 a jerk yeah it's like you choosing to be petty and a jerk and i think you can just choose to not be 0.98

00:18:39.840 jealous yeah to like understand the world's not fair the other one i might talk about is is forgiveness 0.99

00:18:45.180 i don't think forgiveness is a real concept either with you on that either like like nothing

00:18:50.180 changes in the moment i'm just like oh i'm choosing to not hold this against you anymore

00:18:54.660 but that's just like a choice it's not like an emotion or uh yeah but anyway to keep going here

00:18:58.980 because i want to go into the ancient greeks because you'll be like all the ancient greeks had this

00:19:02.340 concept okay okay the linguistic evidence is particularly compelling many languages don't have a single

00:19:07.940 word that maps onto the english love which they would if this was a widespread human emotion

00:19:12.580 ancient greece has multiple words which i think is more honest about what it is because remember

00:19:17.300 i said i think that this is multiple distinct emotions that have other words yeah arrows desire

00:19:21.860 okay what we would call lust yeah ilia we would call friendship storge what we would call familial

00:19:28.780 affection certainly not love and agape which is universal compassion this is the agape remember i

00:19:34.960 said that this is this oh yeah like i love the world things yeah that sort of baba yetu feeling

00:19:40.020 exactly exactly yeah suggesting they saw these as fundamentally different experiences and note here

00:19:45.780 to me this is pretty strong evidence that a lot of humans don't feel this emotion if the entire greek

00:19:52.060 civilization was able to get by without anyone thinking this emotion needed a name and them being

00:19:57.760 able to have debates where they clearly talk about and we'll go into these debates later marriage and

00:20:03.660 the way i feel for my wife while describing something very different than what the modern concept of love

00:20:09.320 is and i'll go into plato's symposium because in that they they talk about what what is this emotion

00:20:14.760 that you feel or this bundle of emotions that you feel uh you know when you're you're married to

00:20:20.560 somebody and blah blah blah blah right and so it basically had different speeches that gave different

00:20:26.140 iterations on what this may be and i think that they're pretty good at describing it

00:20:29.600 posse on s's speech he explicitly divides eros into vulgar so this is the concept of lust right

00:20:37.040 okay into a vulgar tied to physical arousal and body gratification often indiscriminate and heavenly

00:20:43.940 a virtuous intellectual bond between partners focused on character and wisdom rather than just desire

00:20:50.300 affection oh i guess sapiosexual well not even sapiosexual i mean i think that would describe

00:20:54.920 our relationship right like an intellectual bond between partners focused on character and wisdom

00:20:59.920 rather than desire affection totally but i don't think that that's this distinct magical emotion it's it's

00:21:05.300 it's more like admiration is the closest word i i have to it and i think that it is a form of

00:21:12.460 admiration um this distinguishes between love as a moral elevated state and not merely left or fondness

00:21:19.620 heavenly love inspired self-improvement in the beloved beyond attachment which we've always talked

00:21:24.960 about in our relationship is it self-improvement is a core goal and i would say that this this heavenly

00:21:30.800 form of the vulgar or of eros is not even in the category that most people consider love even though

00:21:37.660 i would consider it to be the highest form of the emotional attachment yeah you even had an ex-girlfriend

00:21:42.380 who left you because she felt like you primarily loved her for the intellectual engagement you had

00:21:47.900 yes and she wanted you to like vulgarly lust after her yeah she's like you you you always call me 1.00

00:21:54.760 beautiful and whatever actually this is two different girls who had one broke up with me 0.68

00:21:59.740 the other had issues one just been like you only liked me for my brain and i was like yeah the nerve

00:22:07.160 the nerve i mean you're hot but like i primarily like you because of your intellect and this other

00:22:13.800 guy liked her for her body i guess and good for her i'm sure anyone who saw what's what's happened 0.96

00:22:20.220 in my life would probably prefer to be married to me but i'm glad that that worked out for her

00:22:24.440 she broke up with the guy shortly after by the way so it doesn't even this is in college it's a

00:22:28.300 freshman sophomore year of college for the freshman year of college and then the next one by the way

00:22:32.920 securing a good girlfriend freshman year of college that's hard because that's yeah i don't know if i'd

00:22:38.000 want my kids to settle down with their freshman love my brother did that's who he married that's true

00:22:44.640 actually okay never mind i stand corrected they're solid college yeah yeah then the the second one

00:22:50.160 this was the one who was at our wedding as a groomsman actually this person didn't transition

00:22:55.400 or anything it's just that she was my friend and so we had her in a suit and everything and i

00:22:59.360 consider her very close friend but anyway so she she one day got mad at me because she goes you always

00:23:05.180 tell me hot and what was it no it's beautiful she's like you always call me beautiful and you never

00:23:10.440 call me like hot or sexy or anything like that and i i i feel like no one ever sees me that way

00:23:16.420 and like actually if you've seen her you get it i don't know if you like know the difference between

00:23:20.640 like beautiful and hot and sexy but she definitely is like beautiful above all else well that's like so 0.88

00:23:25.720 the problem is she's extremely classy yeah and there's there's a level of class at which you just

00:23:31.380 can't sexualize someone yeah she's at that level of class where it's very hard to sexualize 0.98

00:23:38.800 she was daisy buchanan level of class like daisy isn't sexy ever right like i mean like not to say 0.96

00:23:46.720 that she isn't sexy but like you won't sexualize her because she you're too busy admiring the beauty 0.94

00:23:51.600 like yeah there's something there's something very like if you're trying to like max up the sexuality

00:23:59.420 dial on someone there is kind of this trashiness thing that you also like there's you have you have 0.84

00:24:05.340 to put in trashy points like you can't be maximum sexy if you're not also a little trashy

00:24:11.260 agree agree also you know what i think part of it is it and you can see this in a lot of erotic 0.56

00:24:15.880 material that men watch a big part of being sexy is like really enthusiastic like i need you like i'm 0.98

00:24:22.800 so excited to suck on your you know what and a classy woman is a little bit too aloof for that kind of 1.00

00:24:31.260 oh absolutely that element of being sexy and so they can't be 100 sexy because that's like 1.00

00:24:36.860 okay at least 30 plus percent of what sexiness is in a woman i think yeah anyway to continue 1.00

00:24:44.640 aristophanes speech so this is the next one in the the plato thing love is mythologized as a deep

00:24:51.260 existential longing for one's other half after humans were split by zeus portraying it as a drive

00:24:57.260 for wholeness and union that causes emotional turmoil but isn't just arousal it's not always

00:25:02.600 sexual or attachment it's obsessive and incomplete without the partner this frames love as a unique

00:25:08.060 psychological state a binding of partners separate from casual fondness and i would say that again this

00:25:13.540 is an accurate thing that i feel for my wife but i do not think that this is the love that other people

00:25:19.740 are talking about this desire to be a single entity and we often talk about this where if you look at

00:25:25.580 other people where like they see marriage as like a combining of two individuals and we don't like

00:25:31.120 like what i mean like two people who stay individuals i see the primary unit of self

00:25:35.820 as the family yeah the secondary unit of self is me plus my wife tetra unit of self is me as an

00:25:42.580 individual entity but this is a recontextualization of what it means to be me and what is the most

00:25:49.340 important instance of me was in reality i am a a cell within an organism that i exist to serve

00:25:57.000 yeah the cells doesn't matter exactly but that's not love that's just a recontextualization of

00:26:03.780 identity that's healthy to happen after marriage and then you have later aristotle 350 bce in

00:26:11.600 nimanian essex he differentiates philia a form of love akin to deep friendship into types utility

00:26:18.720 based practical attachment pleasure based arousal fondness and virtue based the highest mutual and

00:26:24.160 reciprocal fostering moral growth which again we talk about it's like in a pygmalion relationship

00:26:29.520 or something like that in our in our book but that's not what other people are talking about

00:26:33.380 when they're talking about love they don't in fact our modern culture is antithetical in its

00:26:38.940 conception of love to love applying to moral growth because the most common thing that you hear within

00:26:44.480 our modern culture is i hope you love me as i am i want somebody who loves me as i am without growth

00:26:51.540 if it implied moral growth it wouldn't be an as i am phenomenon yeah whereas with us actually when we

00:26:59.440 got married we didn't even promise to love each other because i was like i can't control my emotions

00:27:02.600 and we explicitly said as much in our wedding vows wedding vows but i said that i will push you to

00:27:08.420 improve every day and i i know that you care about me because you push me to improve every day

00:27:12.960 which is i think a very different thing from modern if we were going to recontextualize love as

00:27:18.260 being with somebody who pushes you to morally improve every day and improve yourself every day

00:27:22.540 i'm like oh yeah i can get behind like that's a real emotion i have towards 100 that's not what other

00:27:27.300 people that's not what lex friedman is talking about when he goes what about love

00:27:30.440 yeah he's talking about an emotion that is defined by its irreproachability and sacredness and the fact

00:27:38.900 when people are like god is love and and note for those who want to say that this argument is just

00:27:43.420 semantics and we're just using different definitions here we are absolutely not individuals when they say

00:27:48.600 something like but what about love they're clearly not talking about these fairly trivial emotional states

00:27:55.480 like attachment like just feeling you know irritated when you're not around someone or something like

00:27:59.980 that they are talking about some alternate emotional state which feels near transcendent and is

00:28:06.260 irreproachable and we are saying that emotional state does not exist at least as an output from

00:28:12.800 relationships no i almost feel like it's kind of it's it's downstream of this chivalric love fantasy

00:28:20.580 that was created in in in incel monk fan fiction basically that no it is

00:28:29.540 that like never really existed and that it implies this like poetic performativeness of like oh my my

00:28:36.520 darling love and i you know this pining and like all this weird stuff that isn't is neither productive

00:28:42.660 nor realistic and it was literally my people who lived in in single gender environments with no

00:28:50.660 no interaction no relation you've got ovid who then tackles a subject this is in rome so 43 bce to 17c

00:28:59.800 in roman literature like amoris as ours amati love is depicted as chaotic obsessive emotion involving

00:29:07.680 jealousy pursuit and emotional turmoil often satirized as a disease or an artful game it's distinct from

00:29:15.480 pure lust which he treats separately as carnal or fondness casual liking emphasizing psychological

00:29:21.920 manipulation and longing that binds lovers in dramatic sometimes tragic ways this is i think

00:29:28.180 closest to the modern concept of love we've just removed any implication that it could have these

00:29:33.280 negative effects where it's like oh well yes love is this thing that causes you to act jealous i.e like

00:29:40.340 overly protective of an individual this is a modern concept right or gives you the right to act that

00:29:45.440 way you know what i mean like again i don't believe jealousy the thing i think the social contracts of

00:29:49.340 a set of rights that you believe that you have i know when i say i don't believe jealousy of this

00:29:53.140 thing we'll get to this if we get to this this is not to say that you do not feel something when

00:29:57.260 your partner sleeps with someone other than you but this is an evolved state that is not

00:30:01.920 what people mean when they say jealousy it's more like a sensitive disgust and anger that is like

00:30:08.620 obviously useful from like a reproductive capacity perspective but this sort of like

00:30:13.340 manipulative iteration of love is i think closer to what the modern person means when they say love

00:30:20.640 and most other cultures saw it as is quite negative i will note that before courtly love

00:30:27.020 you get some sort of like prototypical ideas of this modern concept of love from early christian

00:30:33.240 thinkers so you've got saint paul in 50 to 60 ce in letters like corinthians 1 agape is unconditional

00:30:42.840 sacrificial love ig patient kind and not envious modeled in christ self-giving which i think is sort

00:30:51.080 of this proto love it's like whatever whatever christ felt towards humanity is this emotion that we're

00:30:58.280 going to define as love but it sounds more like maybe what a parent too it would feel for their child

00:31:02.740 exactly so it works well but it's more like if you just look at it it's more just self-sacrifice like

00:31:09.240 i don't think that's something different than self-sacrifice for something that you either for

00:31:14.940 ideological reasons or for attachment reasons feel attached to right then you have saint augustine

00:31:20.080 in 400 ce he emerges eros and agape into carterus a yearning for god as the ultimate good but applies

00:31:28.380 it to human bonds as a path to eternal fulfillment it's portrayed as restless ascending desire our

00:31:34.240 hearts are restless until they rest in you separate from capitulus worldly lust for fondness or transience

00:31:42.560 emphasizing a spiritual union over physical or habitual and note here the words that he's

00:31:48.560 mixing here or agape which is like that word i said is like love for like the universe or love for

00:31:56.220 like remember i talked about like that word that you feel when you're dealing with like these

00:31:59.120 complicated concepts yeah with arrows which means lust so he's saying weird it's like i want to i want

00:32:06.260 a mind f god yeah i'll put here the scene from south park which is i want to get down on my knees and

00:32:13.880 start pleasing jesus oh gosh okay i want to get down on my knees and start pleasing jesus i want to feel

00:32:20.420 his salvation all over my face the cd is filled with instant classics who doesn't remember the body of

00:32:27.720 there you go which is kind of but i don't know if you know this but when matt stone and trey parker

00:32:41.180 wrote these they had actually planned under a pseudonym before this to attempt to create a

00:32:46.740 christian rock band that became popular but they wanted all the songs to be of this category of song

00:32:52.180 right where it sounded like the person was actually like in love with god yeah or jesus

00:32:57.420 um and and they were like we wanted to see how long we could stay under a car but they decided

00:33:04.100 it was too much work and i'm like this is so sad that that didn't happen in our timeline that is

00:33:08.500 really that stone and trey parker take over the christian rock scene with songs about

00:33:13.260 pleasing jesus i want to i want to get down on my knees and start pleasing jesus i want to feel

00:33:19.140 his salvation all over my face oh lost opportunity lost opportunity to be in that timeline

00:33:27.040 but now here you know people will be like well you see it in some other places than just courtly

00:33:32.720 love like what about muslim writings and this i think is really interesting because i think he does

00:33:38.420 a good job of breaking down the way people actually feel about their partners versus this magical love

00:33:44.400 emotion which is proposed and some people probably feel pretty insecure about not feeling because they

00:33:49.860 don't realize that everyone else is just pretending we were trying to break the this is going to come

00:33:54.100 back to haunt us some articles gonna be like they don't even love each other but i'm gonna be like

00:33:57.980 hey we whatever you guys are calling love we're just honest and secure enough in our relationship

00:34:02.200 to be like everyone else is just deluding themselves shenanigans this isn't real that guy when he says i

00:34:09.700 love you he's just waiting as long as he can to decide when he needs to say that to get to f you or

00:34:14.740 whatever right like yeah or to continue the length of the relationship to to to basically efface himself

00:34:21.200 by our cultural standards but he probably doesn't feel some new emotional state towards you no no and

00:34:28.260 why the funny thing though is i feel like there's this tacit understanding that that's true it's just

00:34:33.520 people are really uncomfortable admitting that because i think people think they'll be branded as

00:34:38.900 a sociopath or unfeeling or unkind if they do that yeah so this is written in 1022 ce the ring of the dub

00:34:48.740 the arabic treaties systematically describes romantic love ishka as a psychological and emotional process

00:34:54.980 with stages and i think this is accurate as well right like it's not a a distinct emotion it's a set of emotions

00:35:02.180 that come on in stages that have other names um specifically attraction obsession jealousy sleeplessness

00:35:10.740 and even chaste devotion or unrequited suffering ibn hams drawing from personal experiences like his

00:35:19.300 infituation was a maid note by the way here he got this for a maid that he was infatuated with it is not

00:35:26.260 what we would call love right okay portrays it as a noble soul binding affection that can be pure and

00:35:33.840 elevating not just lust which he separates at the base and again or fondness casual affection and note

00:35:40.760 here which you often see when people have love is they have lust in new relationship energy for an

00:35:46.100 individual who they know they're not supposed to be with and so they then rebrand it as something

00:35:50.240 approach okay for example he discusses love signs like a gazing and secrecy framing it as a distant

00:35:59.460 malady of the heart that unites lovers spiritually even if unconsummated and some scholars have seen

00:36:07.080 this as a progenitor to the courtly love concept so european literature did create this idealized almost

00:36:15.200 spiritual concept of romantic love that was quite different from earlier views of marriage primarily

00:36:20.900 as an economic and social arrangement from an but i'll note here this is the biggest pullback on all

00:36:28.280 of this it is actually kind of weird that evolution didn't build a love emotion that it seemed to just

00:36:35.020 grab a number of other emotions and tie them together and so we'll like you say in all our books

00:36:40.700 evolution's a lazy programmer what are you gonna do lazy programmer just takes what's already there

00:36:45.180 um so a combination of emotions and drives the american psychological association defines love as a

00:36:52.380 quote-unquote complex emotion involving affection tenderness attachment and sometimes arousal

00:36:57.720 researchers like carol isard so right now i'm just going over with the various like scientific

00:37:02.100 fields say on this have noted that love can be joy combined with interest in another person

00:37:07.560 note again this is what the scientists who study this say none of these are what our pop culture

00:37:13.180 would say is love no they define it as this other magical emotion that like you'll know it when you

00:37:17.980 feel it right i mean these people are like no it's just joy was fondness right and it's like okay well

00:37:23.740 clearly i have that for my wife yeah but i don't have this other magical emotion that warrants people

00:37:30.020 like let's freedom and saying but what about but again when you when you express any doubt around it you

00:37:35.980 are completely pilloried like there's this famous interview between a journalist and the newly married

00:37:44.540 or maybe engaged prince charles and princess diana when they're like oh are you in love and she

00:37:50.280 immediately says yes and he's like whatever that means whatever that means

00:37:55.340 and i suppose in love of course whatever in love it's so honest it's so true and yet he just like

00:38:08.620 he will never live that down never yes because everyone's like all this oh he doesn't have the

00:38:14.380 but yeah oh he doesn't love her he was the first whistleblower in the world of love yes yes yes never

00:38:21.260 forget yes so helen fisher's work frames romantic love not as an emotion at all but as a motivational

00:38:28.340 state overlapping with systems for lust attraction um and attachment which again is not what other

00:38:35.500 people call love and then review by adam bodhi and gosh krishna echoes this calling romantic love a

00:38:43.180 suite of adaptations including cognitive emotional and behavioral elements for mate choice bonding

00:38:49.180 rather than a singular feeling rut row but let's go into the neuroscientific backing

00:38:55.860 brain scans show love activating multiple systems reward dopamine for a high this is like what you get

00:39:01.460 from drugs like heroin attachment oxytocin for bonding this is the attachment system and even obsession

00:39:07.680 which again addiction so what people are describing here is a combination of an addiction system and

00:39:13.280 attraction system sorry an attachment system but not a unique love center

00:39:18.160 one of the most cited studies here if a 1992 paper that showed love appearing in approximately

00:39:24.260 88.5 percent of cultures created by the anthropologist william jackowack and edward fisher examined

00:39:32.000 technologies of these cultures but what did they what did they call love like how did they determine

00:39:37.920 whether or not these cultures had love yeah well did they have songs about passionate longing

00:39:43.000 did they have songs about unrequited love defined as one person wanting another partner or did they

00:39:49.200 have fuck folk tales of lovers eloping again that's not love as we mean it today or evidence of that

00:39:56.540 no or unaliving over unrequited love or unrequited wanting somebody else that thing 0.96

00:40:02.060 well i mean romeo julie yeah it's like a thing but yeah this is like a this is one of these things

00:40:08.900 where it's like i can't see like if i didn't have a bunch of kids with you and you died even without

00:40:16.440 this emotion i would almost certainly unalive myself but we have a lot of kids and i have other

00:40:21.060 responsibilities now you're super not allowed to do that by the way i understand but i'm just saying

00:40:26.100 that's very much the way i would feel about the world even without this emotion right that's not

00:40:32.440 evidence that a culture has this emotion and so when you look at these studies that find this in

00:40:37.620 other cultures what you realize is the things that they are defining as this is something that people

00:40:44.380 normally have if they're in a long-term relationship with someone they have a deep admiration for

00:40:50.000 even if and have intertwined their lives with even if they don't have this separate quote-unquote

00:40:55.080 magical emotion on top of that a 2018 study on core features of romantic love models found culturally

00:41:02.800 universal elements like altruism and intrusive thinking about the beloved alongside variables

00:41:08.680 like sexual exclusivity in ethnological data from multiple regions yeah but the problem is is i have

00:41:14.680 all of those things too and i wouldn't say i have this separate love emotion no yeah that's not evidence

00:41:19.460 for it more recent large-scale surveys such as a 2024 study against 90 countries showed people

00:41:26.080 worldwide are generally unwilling to commit to a long-term partner without whatever they defined

00:41:31.880 as quote-unquote romantic love what they really just meant here was liking the person and it's like

00:41:37.180 well okay buddy that's an easy thing to have right like that's not that's not this separate emotion

00:41:44.460 that you're talking about here or actually we can end now there's actually a lot more to go in this

00:41:49.340 episode oh i'm sorry no it's okay we're gonna go over a bunch of early cultures and see how they were

00:41:57.760 generally against whatever this bundle of emotions is that favorable and it didn't become seen positively

00:42:05.120 until it's seen positively within a few rare cultures historically and within this modern culture but

00:42:11.100 that's it i'd even argue based on the the collective relationship advice videos that i've watched you

00:42:16.760 know from the 50s that are in my playlist yeah that even they are like one just control your lust you

00:42:25.340 know get a hold of yourself and then two like they they really want people to form practical adult

00:42:31.000 relationships to create a house i'm gonna argue and i think that this is true is that the emotion that we

00:42:35.340 call love today it was mostly popularized by disney movies uh which borrowed from chivalric literature

00:42:42.600 and the movie's popularity nobody thought like this nobody thought that there was some separate

00:42:49.320 emotion that like made it ultra clear to you that this person was your one and only but disney movies

00:42:54.420 needed a way to show an attraction to a partner in a way that was above moral reproach and it also

00:43:01.200 wasn't like purely wasn't sexual but also wasn't about housework and i feel like the the you can

00:43:06.820 see even see that everyone's between snow white where first she demonstrates she's a really good 0.97

00:43:11.520 housewife because she cleans for seven men and and then you know then she gets to marry within her 1.00

00:43:16.220 station because she's you know let's not do inter-class marriage guys she's actually but she but she's 1.00

00:43:22.720 really just gonna you know clean the castle now it's fine guys of your rebranding of the story but

00:43:28.780 it's so true it's that she shows you the top tier wife by cleaning for seven men and dealing with 1.00

00:43:33.580 men of all emotional ranges grumpy sleepy etc sleepy yes with with a plum and then she marries a man of

00:43:41.340 her own class yeah and then later it's like it's only in in you know the the the 70s 80s 90s etc 0.87

00:43:47.640 that we see this chivalric love where it's like romantic you know it's really it was more just like

00:43:54.160 oh well you need fairly modern concept because it's gross if you married minors like you 1.00

00:44:00.000 all right i'll stop recording then for the wagyu i'm i'm assuming that i'm gonna i'm gonna cut it

00:44:08.320 into steaks for tonight and make you guys pan seared steak and then we'll figure out what to do with

00:44:14.140 the i really love your pan seared steak in olive oil no and butter dude olive oil has a really low

00:44:21.860 smoke point and then it becomes curtsynogenic so we want to always cook it in butter and then serve

00:44:26.220 it with olive oil to be on the side because i remember putting this steak after you cook it

00:44:30.300 and all the herb butter the expensive oh the herb butter is so good yeah do the herb butter okay okay

00:44:36.520 you know what's up this is gifted australian wagyu we are not screwing this up this is high stakes

00:44:41.920 oh high stakes you with that i love you simone but i hope anyone who sees this interacting you

00:44:51.220 know when we say this and the reason i feel comfortable saying this is because i think the

00:44:54.120 way i feel about my wife is as fond of a human being as any other human is capable of being 0.51

00:45:00.880 and because i'm at this stage in my relationship i'm able to finally come out and be like guys no

00:45:06.600 matter how deep in the tunnel you go you don't find these diamonds they're not there there's no

00:45:12.260 fade up thing everybody said go to the and everybody thinks they're like well that's just proof that

00:45:17.260 you're not really working in the tunnel and it's like no like i'm at the other end of the tunnel

00:45:21.580 basically yeah yeah sweeties you guys anyway okay off i go have a great day wagyu and homemade

00:45:31.000 sourdough i'm so excited i love you hello simone back in because this was a long one so it's

00:45:37.280 stretching over two days of recording and i collected data to go into all the science behind

00:45:40.780 like what changes when you love someone and the chemicals that are released and these chemicals

00:45:45.580 are actually released in a bunch of other instances as well and seem more to do with i a lot of them are

00:45:52.260 evolved in addiction oh totally and we knew this because the experiment that i tried when when we first

00:45:59.660 met was i i met malcolm as part of this campaign i had when i turned 24 that i wanted to fall in love

00:46:06.100 and have my heart broken in one year because i was like i i genuinely even believed at that age that love

00:46:11.340 was not real but i still like everyone sang songs about it wrote poetry about it i was like well i'm

00:46:17.000 gonna try it and i might disprove it and i made you break up with me on july 31st of that year 0.89

00:46:21.840 because i wanted to see what heartbreak felt like there's no such thing as heartbreak but there is such a

00:46:27.440 thing as drug withdrawal and i know exactly what that felt like because it kicked in a week after

00:46:31.900 you were like i don't feel anything everyone else is being wacko about this and apparently what you

00:46:37.540 like collapsed in the street one day or like yeah and then i just started crying and i couldn't stop

00:46:41.580 crying and then yeah i was just super emotional and i have absolutely felt but the emotion you were

00:46:48.500 feeling was not hormonal it was hormonal it was about withdrawal from a hormonal cocktail the only time

00:46:54.040 i felt something similar is the postpartum experience which is also experience of an extreme

00:47:00.840 like shift in hormones and what had happened was yes i did i developed like an addiction to you based

00:47:06.160 on all the stuff that had happened as we dated and became sexually intimate so again you're totally

00:47:11.720 right there i just i just want to emphasize that point there wasn't because if i if it was purely if

00:47:16.900 there was some like thing like love which is kind of like people being like there's a soul if there

00:47:22.140 was really love i would have felt it from day one after the breakup or as soon as i like

00:47:25.780 emo like and logically process yeah but not just that throughout the entire process of our early

00:47:33.200 dating you didn't feel some other unexplained emotion that you had never felt before right like

00:47:38.460 um you you felt the withdrawal but you didn't feel the this extra love emotion that you could have been

00:47:45.300 like one day oh now i know i'm in love with malcolm and i wasn't in love with malcolm yesterday yeah it's

00:47:50.280 not like you've discovered a new flavor like umami it's no yeah yeah and so i think that that's

00:47:57.160 really important to know so what we are going to jump into though is what i actually think triggers

00:48:02.100 the various love emotions because we wrote about this in the pragmatist guide to sexuality which some

00:48:06.320 of our fans still haven't read so a useful thing to go into before we go into some of the other

00:48:10.640 cultures that you know don't really elevate love or see it as a negative thing um so romantic love

00:48:17.660 appears to be triggered by complexity the complexity of an idea or person appears to correlate with

00:48:22.560 feelings of romantic love time the amount of time we spend thinking about something may trigger

00:48:27.120 feelings of romantic love the belief that a thing can protect and comfort us feeling supported by

00:48:32.040 something in a moment of personal vulnerability may trigger feelings of romantic love prolonged eye

00:48:36.400 contact in addition to triggering feelings of romantic love looking at eyes elicits all sorts of weird

00:48:41.240 unique psychological effects oh yeah for example if you paint eyes on a collection box people will

00:48:45.760 donate more money and if people see fake eyes painted on something they will act more morally in

00:48:51.280 general there is clearly a unique neurological pathway associated with the process it was processing the

00:48:56.780 concept of eyes so it may make sense that it could be involved in love and note there's the famous

00:49:01.400 kinsey study experiment where you you know you know you sit across from somebody you look in their eyes

00:49:04.820 and you ask vulnerable questions and people from this study reported feeling love for the other

00:49:08.640 person after this and getting married one when a couple even dead so like clearly this is this can be

00:49:15.160 at the deepest level hacked pretty easily physical intimacy interaction while violating personal

00:49:22.320 space assuming the violation of personal space doesn't put a person's guard up may trigger feelings

00:49:27.720 of romantic love this might be tied to the vulnerability trigger and sex maybe orgasms matter here maybe

00:49:34.560 they don't but sex and arousal seem to make other love systems bond faster this trigger seems to affect

00:49:39.980 women more than men and weaken with subsequent sex partners through understanding the above points

00:49:45.700 one can incite love in a target individual with an even higher fidelity than the message used by

00:49:51.540 arthur aaron and that's the guy who did the experiments where people fall into love after looking at each

00:49:55.360 other in the eyes yeah creepy these the feeling specifically the feeling of love can be reliably

00:50:01.700 instigated in a subject by combining regular sex with a few sessions in which you sit with the subject

00:50:07.320 somewhat isolated with a view even better if there is some taboo associated with the location which

00:50:12.600 increases the feeling of vulnerability and protectiveness hold hands make her own direct

00:50:17.340 eye contact discuss life philosophy that's that's really it that will create love and someone forced

00:50:22.140 me to do that oh no in the bay area this is really common because people are familiar with the research

00:50:28.220 and they think that other people won't know what they're doing but they're basically attempting to

00:50:31.540 brainwash you i know i saw rationalists do this all the time it was very common at like rationalist meetings

00:50:36.180 and stuff yeah actually when we went to vibe camp i met someone who like talked about how they were

00:50:41.160 deeply against that practice and they're like i don't make eye contact with people anymore because

00:50:46.440 that's been used to manipulate me a bunch it's like oh gosh what have you been through but it is it is it

00:50:52.440 just is yeah this technique takes about a week and a half to strongly set in and is generally effective

00:50:58.480 as long as the target feels comfortable enough to be vulnerable and talk about things they otherwise

00:51:03.320 wouldn't feel safe discussing an adequate level of comfort aesthetic appeal and hygiene is also

00:51:08.020 necessary a target is not going to tolerate prolonged close proximity and eye contact with

00:51:13.040 someone who has horrid breasts or stinking hair and a target will not be able to engage in deep 1.00

00:51:18.400 philosophical conversations if they are tired hungry cold and feeling threatened or trapped 0.97

00:51:22.940 the above technique boasts an admirable success rate on people with little sexual experience explaining

00:51:29.020 the steps and the purpose of the quote-unquote experiment to the target which we would recommend

00:51:34.180 in the name of good form does not appear to lower the probability of this method working so this is

00:51:38.440 something i did to people and told them i would do to them and i could reliably create a very strong

00:51:43.240 attachment to me the method is not from any specific set of research finding but rather a conglomeration

00:51:49.200 of a few studies combined with personal experimentation it works reliably enough that we assume that there

00:51:54.680 must be something behind it this technique revolves around three core elements one maximizing feelings

00:52:00.500 of vulnerability backed up by feelings of safety two physiological modifiers like eye contact and sex

00:52:06.340 and three complex cognitively engaging discussions that inspire self-reflection read the pregnantist

00:52:10.980 guide to life if you don't know how to make these statistics on romantic love in arranged marriages

00:52:16.240 strongly indicate that romantic love between people forms when they spend a lot of time around each other

00:52:20.740 and rely on each other or whatever we socially are calling romantic love we develop the process

00:52:25.220 outlined above merely to see if romantic love could be developed more rapidly our brains appear to use

00:52:30.580 complexity rather than closeness as the proxy for the closeness of a relationship just as one might

00:52:36.700 use weight as a proxy for the volume of a thing or how much water is in a container despite there being

00:52:42.260 many other things that could have weight such as rocks our minds appear to use the apparent complexity

00:52:47.660 of a person or the frequency with which we think about that person as a proxy from our intimacy to

00:52:52.880 them so basically what i'm saying here is a lot of people think what generates the feeling of love and

00:52:58.100 this is why things like thinking about the cosmos or thinking about the trinity or thinking about other

00:53:02.580 like really deep philosophical issues or sort of unknowable issues can generate a feeling that is close to

00:53:08.160 the feeling that some people call love because these are very complex things and the brain you know in

00:53:14.920 indiana jones the opening scene where there's the the golden statue and he he switches it with a bag

00:53:21.160 oh yeah it's the exact same weight the brain doesn't actually note how how much have you been thinking

00:53:27.500 about someone or how do you feel about someone those are too complicated of emotions for it to really

00:53:31.700 wait and measure with such a simple system all it's measuring is the complexity of your thoughts about

00:53:36.920 that individual and that can be easily hacked by thinking about the nature of the universe or reality or

00:53:41.600 something like that and create a very similar one of these emotions the agape emotion that i mentioned

00:53:47.020 before which is not traditional love it's a it's a sort of all emotion i think is a closer like

00:53:53.900 definition for it but it's something that you can get from either individuals or from thinking about the

00:53:59.940 universe etc meditating this is an elegant system humans spend very little time thinking about are

00:54:04.880 building models of people who are not romantic targets we just don't think about other people that

00:54:09.760 much unless we're trying to get said people to mate with us if someone is successful in their romantic

00:54:15.060 conquest they will spend more and more time around their romantic target further increasing the

00:54:19.140 complexity of their mental image of that person so the complexity of our image of a person could prove

00:54:24.160 as a valid proxy for success in romantic conquest this could in turn increase the evolutionary advantage

00:54:29.180 of falling in love with such a person in short since those whom we think about the most commonly

00:54:35.520 are those who we romantically pursue the complexity of our mental models of others it serves as a great

00:54:41.300 proxy for our subconscious to measure when determining who slash what we love and by here i think that this

00:54:47.880 is this this doesn't go against my larger thing that love doesn't really exist i'm just saying that

00:54:52.180 the chemical state that causes the collection of emotions that we already have easy names and ways to

00:54:57.820 relate to and that clearly aren't this like magical emotion that hits you all of a sudden one day when you're in a

00:55:04.140 relationship that these are are not like big profound feeling things and i think that that's the thing

00:55:11.500 about love is it's been sold to people as something that is going to feel really profound and that's

00:55:17.320 another reason why it's important to debunk that it is not its own unique above reproach profound

00:55:22.660 emotional state because some people might not get married because they're just like well i haven't felt to

00:55:27.920 this emotion yet right in fact i would bet a lot of people who run away from weddings this is what

00:55:32.560 what causes it like call off wedding some feeling that there's this fleeting unrealistic non-existent

00:55:38.700 thing that they haven't yet felt yeah they're like but i just haven't felt the thing that people call

00:55:43.460 love yet like everything else seems perfect but i haven't felt this yet in short those whom oh sorry

00:55:50.920 now let's go into various societies that saw love quite differently there's this idea that oh no everyone

00:55:56.680 always sees love the same and i'm like actually no the anthropology that did that really cheesed their

00:56:01.080 results as i pointed out so you got ancient rome 753 bce to 576 ce in roman society marriage was

00:56:09.400 primarily an arrangement between families to enhance wealth social class and political standing with

00:56:13.540 little emphasis on affection or romance parents selected partners based on practical criteria

00:56:18.400 and laws restricted unions i.e citizens couldn't marry actors or prostitutes romantic love was often

00:56:25.420 secondary or viewed negatively being overly influenced by a partner especially a woman

00:56:30.640 was considered weakness unfit of a true roman man i mean you see this in a lot of roman literature and

00:56:36.300 poetry and women's sexual pleasure outside of procreative purposes in marriage was deemed evil

00:56:42.400 ceremonies emphasize the duty and family obligations not passion and divorce was straightforward if the

00:56:48.940 arrangement failed to put in its practical goals then you have ancient greece 800 bce to 146 bce greek

00:56:56.220 philosophers and literature portray romantic love as dangerous madness or illness that disrupted rational

00:57:03.740 thought and societal order plato for instance advocated for non-romantic platonic bonds as superior viewing passion

00:57:10.620 with horror because it could lead to regrettable actions harmful to the community and then the iliad served as

00:57:16.940 as a part of the world in the world in the world in the world in the world in the world in the world in the world

00:57:21.100 marriages were typically arranged for economic or familial reasons with love regulated to extramarital affairs

00:57:27.340 or same-sex mentorships a survival dependent on practical unions like combining resources during hardships ancient

00:57:35.100 mesopotamia 3500 bce to 539 bce in mesopotamian countries the sumerians babylonians marriage was essential for

00:57:43.420 societal community family lineage and property inheritance often arranged to ensure these goals

00:57:48.300 romantic love was not primarily a factor medieval europe 5th through 15th century among nobility and

00:57:53.500 landowners marriages and strategic alliances for power whilst often arranged by parents and guardians

00:57:58.780 with romantic love dismissed as impractical or destabilizing traditional south asian cultures india

00:58:05.180 pakistan etc arranged marriages of the norm will actually get deeper into india because i think it's really

00:58:10.220 interesting when the traditional east asian cultures confucian principles emphasize familial piety and

00:58:15.020 family harmony making arranged marriages standard to align with parental authority and societal roles

00:58:20.620 and low love would conflict with the concept of duty within these relationships within confucius

00:58:24.940 philosophy what's really interesting is is how anti-love indians were historically speaking

00:58:32.060 there are eight forms of marriage in hinduism so in ancient forms that are were they like

00:58:37.260 we'll get to it it'll make sense once i get to it okay such as a maserati dorama stratus outline eight

00:58:44.300 recognized forms of marriage which provide a hierarchy of acceptability these reflect a spectrum

00:58:49.740 from highly approved arranged types to condemned ones oh so the most approved type

00:58:57.500 is called barham vahafa the highest and most virtuous form fully arranged by parents

00:59:03.980 was a bride given a gift often a dowry it emphasized duty and was ideal for preserving

00:59:09.820 caste and family honor divya vish vhaha viva arranged where the bride is given to a priest less preferred

00:59:19.020 than brahma but still respectable arsha viva involves a token exchange e.g cows arranged by citizens but

00:59:27.340 criticized for its transactional nature and then you have propitiya vivasha no we haven't gotten to love

00:59:32.940 marriages yet similar to brahma arranged with lavish gifts focusing on mutual consent under parental

00:59:39.180 guidance so note this one that required mutual consent this is under giving your daughter to a

00:59:44.540 priest under the cow transaction thing here right and this is still a partially arranged marriage

00:59:50.460 then you have gangara vahbaha this is a love marriage form based on mutual attraction and consent

00:59:57.740 without rituals or parental involvement the story of dashita and shikanta in mahabharata it is

01:00:05.900 acknowledged but ranked lower criticized by mana as promiscuous or suitable only for certain lower

01:00:11.740 sections of society and seen as a holdover from less regulated times okay so what's the next one down

01:00:18.300 seen as about the same as a love marriage okay ashara vavaha where the bride is purchased with wealth

01:00:25.100 so basically slavery this is seen as about the same as marrying a slave then the only thing worse than

01:00:30.140 that is rakasha vavaha which is abduction by force yeah one of the lowest forms and then there's

01:00:36.060 peshara vavaha which involves seduction or taking advantage while asleep so if somebody grapes you you

01:00:43.500 have to marry them okay you know maybe not the best culture to model for everything but i did find it to

01:00:51.260 be particularly interesting to read about all of these different types of marriages and to point

01:00:56.780 out that when people are like oh love is universal or seeing love as a positive thing is universal it's

01:01:01.100 like it really isn't if you actually like do real anthropology instead of this type that's designed to

01:01:06.300 confirm your pre-existing beliefs generally what i find is i'd say in about like like historic societies

01:01:13.020 seems like in about 80 percent love marriages were condemned at least among upper classes and love was seen

01:01:18.700 as more of like a sickness and here what i mean is love loves involvement in choosing partners so so

01:01:25.260 this is the the and note i'm using love here that's used colloquially i'm talking about this collection

01:01:31.100 of sort of addiction you get with a person that includes on this the feeling of attachment a feeling

01:01:37.180 of you know warmth around them a desire to spend time with them and a respect for them this collection of

01:01:44.540 emotions was seen as a lower reason to get into a relationship then then the the logical decision

01:01:52.060 made soberly by a council of your elders basically or even soberly by yourself under not under the

01:01:59.260 influence of this particular cocktail of chemicals which again i know is there it just doesn't create

01:02:05.180 this feeling of profundity it's not particularly moral it's not particularly important really and

01:02:11.260 it doesn't you know hit you particularly hard all of a sudden or anything like that although no there

01:02:16.700 are differences in human biology there there likely are some people who do feel these emotions hit so

01:02:23.660 all at once due to some sort of hormonal fluctuation in dating that it may cause this i'd also know when

01:02:29.260 i'm talking about like simone is the perfect woman to have felt this my wife early in our marriage

01:02:33.660 especially you were a complete andre like very very obsessed with me and who's to say that has changed

01:02:41.660 no you're still very obsessed with me uh but we're saying as somebody like like full on yandre mode

01:02:49.660 from an anime or something and still not getting this secondary emotion that people are are

01:02:56.460 hypothesizing and talking about and telling young people they need to feel to be in a relationship

01:03:02.540 um so let's talk about the biology of this because i found this really interesting we're going to talk

01:03:06.140 about the different alterations a person can have that causes them to relate to bonding differently

01:03:11.900 okay in research on love and attachment genetic markers like variations in the genes avpr1a

01:03:19.100 vasoreceptor oxtr oxytocin receptor comt you don't care what these are and drd4 are used as proxies for

01:03:29.100 love susceptibility this refers to an individual's uh predisposition to form maintain or experience

01:03:35.340 romantic bonds attachment styles and related behaviors like empathy pair bonding and fidelity

01:03:41.660 or reward seeking in relationships these genes influence neurotransmitter systems avpr1a and

01:03:48.460 oxtr regulate vasopressin and oxytocin hormones key to social bonding and trust

01:03:54.060 while comt and drd4 affected dopamine involved in reward motivation and pleasure so if we wanted to

01:04:01.660 you know it's been leaked now that we have funded research into germline gene editing you know in a

01:04:08.300 generation or so our family as we become more engaged in genetic engineering and stuff could make

01:04:13.740 modifications to ourselves or to our offspring to not even to have even less susceptibility to this love

01:04:19.580 emotion yeah and it's this kind of it reminds me of our running theory and i think a lot of people

01:04:25.820 share this with what causes obesity in modern times it's not like it's it's probably not mostly

01:04:33.340 your difference in metabolism because as you pointed out that's at most like

01:04:37.740 how many calories calories a day which can really add up don't get me wrong but like it's not going to

01:04:41.900 produce the amount of obesity that we yeah often see we think that maybe a larger segment of people

01:04:48.060 just like their response to food is so much stronger kind of like with love like some people

01:04:53.420 just have a different response to food than others and you can tell this by like how many people who

01:04:58.220 have you met who were like well i would just love to eat like if i can have a pill instead of food i

01:05:03.340 would and it's hard for me to imagine that you know but like yeah for other people they just it's

01:05:09.340 that response is not there so that totally makes sense so avpr1a the role in love and attachment this

01:05:16.460 gene codes for the receptor vasopressin a hormone promoting pair bonding jealousy and long-term

01:05:22.620 attachment variations affect social behaviors like commitment and marital satisfaction key variants

01:05:28.300 rs3 polymorphism long versus short alleles longer alleles are linked to strong pair bonding agat

01:05:36.380 polymorphism associated with earlier sexual debut in females so this one will cause women to have sex at 1.00

01:05:43.260 an earlier age or turn down sex less which i think is well effects and differences people with longer

01:05:49.900 are three alleles often report higher partner bonding fewer relationship problems greater

01:05:54.700 commitment and better sexual satisfaction frequency they show brain activation in reward

01:06:00.540 and attachment areas e.g ventral tignin and vta correlated with maintaining romantic love over time

01:06:06.780 suggesting higher susceptibility to stable monogamous bonds those with shorter alleles or their variants

01:06:12.620 e.g agat long long makes a bit weaker bonding higher infidelity risk and earlier riskier sexual

01:06:19.500 behaviors oh wow role in love and attraction in codes in receptor oxytocin the cuddle hormone which

01:06:27.500 enhances trust empathy and social bonding variants influence responsiveness to key social cues and stress

01:06:34.300 in relationships gg carriers show a higher sociality and specific ones of these are linked to empathy

01:06:41.580 stress reactivity and pair bonding often sex specific individuals with more g alleles tend to have a

01:06:46.700 higher empathy altruism toward partners or secure attachment styles this is displayed through

01:06:52.780 stronger brain responses to attachment regions when viewing their partners increasing susceptibility to

01:06:57.420 romantic love and stable bonds oh i should look to see where we are on this on nebula a a allele

01:07:04.140 carries or other other risk variants often show lower empathy higher attachment anxiety greater stress

01:07:11.020 reactivity reactivity and reduced emotional well-being this can lead to ancient or or avoidant

01:07:15.980 styles comt role in love and attachment regulates dopamine breakdown in the brain affecting reward

01:07:21.820 processing and emotional regulation variations influence how rewarding relationships feel

01:07:26.300 one variant if you have the val allele higher activity lower dopamine or the met allele you'll get

01:07:31.660 lower activity higher dopamine met allele carriers this is the heterozygous ones or no there is a heterozygous

01:07:38.460 variant of valve so met allele characters higher dopamine often experience greater reward

01:07:43.900 responsiveness positive affect and obsessive thinking about partners correlating with stronger

01:07:49.340 romantic infatuation and brain activity in reward areas wow and i note here obsessive thinking about

01:07:56.540 somebody is clearly it is something that you feel early in relationships but it is caused more by

01:08:04.220 nre than any relationship that i feel about my wife for example yeah for people who don't know it's

01:08:09.900 nre stands for new relationship energy and it's an emotional state that typically declines with the

01:08:15.020 lengths of a relationship and would almost be in many people's inversely correlated with the amount of

01:08:20.060 love that they feel with an individual over time and that the core thing that i think causes nre in my

01:08:25.900 experience is the possibility of the partner not liking you it's like the the very high potential upside

01:08:34.380 will they or won't they yes potential downside of not knowing how things will develop so i see it as

01:08:40.860 actually a chemical that's likely related to chemicals it's affiliated with gambling and and that's why

01:08:46.940 you don't see it in long-term partners because there isn't any longer any like well how much better is

01:08:53.980 this going to get how much worse is this going to get interesting val zygotes may seek more novelty

01:09:00.860 but show less reward from stable bonds potentially leading to lower relationship satisfaction and i

01:09:06.460 find this really interesting the person's relationship satisfaction could just be downstream of their

01:09:09.660 genes heterozygotes valmet frequently exhibit avoidant attachment and inhibited personalities

01:09:14.780 basically you're saying it's ableist for people to be mad at their boyfriends or girlfriends for not

01:09:19.500 feeling love the same way they do yes now i'm saying it's ableist to be mad at them for cheating

01:09:28.140 someone you're just a bigot if you get mad at me because i'm going out and sleeping with a bunch 1.00

01:09:31.900 of people heterozygotes frequently exhibit avoidant attachment and inhibited personalities

01:09:37.820 and then the d4 d4 dopamine receptor d4 role and love and attachment and codes for dopamine

01:09:45.020 receptor involved in novelty seeking and reward variants affect motivation for new experiences

01:09:50.060 relationship fidelity and what i find so interesting about all of this by the way as we go over this is

01:09:54.780 this means that one day we can edit this stuff you can edit your partner to make them more loving

01:10:00.540 and by the by the time our kids are older to have them be less likely to commit fidelity i mean who

01:10:05.820 wouldn't want these edits often right like oh i i'm less likely to go out and sleep with other people

01:10:11.740 that's great yeah and the thing is too we can't develop this technology unless we acknowledge

01:10:19.260 that there isn't some magical intangible property known as love

01:10:27.180 we we can't develop it or yeah well if we don't if we don't understand or or admit that this is just

01:10:33.660 like a highly genetic hormonal thing we're not we can't engineer better versions of it

01:10:39.980 i mean we're well past arguing love isn't magic i mean that's like malcolm and philosophy number one

01:10:47.020 point number one love doesn't matter that much but anyway key variants exon 3 has reduced dopamine

01:10:52.700 binding zr for sorry seven r plus carriers at least one seven repeat are linked to higher promiscuity

01:11:02.220 twice as likely to have one night stands wow twice as likely a hundred percent more likely to have one

01:11:06.140 night stands if you have the d4d in a seven strand repeat infidelity they're 50 more likely to have 0.99

01:11:12.940 extra pair partners and novelty thinking like just imagine you could test for this right they show brain 0.88

01:11:18.380 activation and reward areas but lower overall romantic love scores suggesting preference for

01:11:23.420 short-term bonds and overall relationship attachment this reduces susceptibility to monogamous

01:11:28.300 love favoring exploratory behaviors i would bet aila probably has this one some people when

01:11:33.580 we've done our like you know polyamory episodes you got to keep in mind that some of the individuals

01:11:37.900 who are polyamory might just be like literally coded differently than you and and so they may actually

01:11:44.220 have a really hard time maintaining any sort of long-term monogamous relationship without the

01:11:48.540 opportunity for this form of exploration based on how they describe it you know they it's described as

01:11:54.380 something they just really can't help like i just can't commit to one person and i think it's really

01:11:59.420 hard for people to understand they think they're just making it up or that they're just insufficiently

01:12:03.260 committed to you as a partner well i mean some individuals get into it when they don't have

01:12:08.140 this and they really shouldn't that's true no i mean like a lot of people just try to break up

01:12:12.780 passively by article we really need to do there was this great article the new york times recently

01:12:17.420 about this woman complaining that nobody wants to date her and and and she was in a polyamorous 0.96

01:12:22.540 relationship with her husband and left her for some other guy and the other guy then told her even 0.99

01:12:28.140 beforehand that he was not interested in her and now she's blaming it on all men of course

01:12:36.780 oh well but anyway that is my argument there the other emotions that i said i didn't think was real

01:12:43.100 another one was jealousy which i was actually convinced of while i was trying to look up something

01:12:47.740 else related to this and i was convinced of it by a post by a polyamorous individual

01:12:53.100 and when i was reading it at first i was like come on you're just whatever or maybe you don't feel

01:12:59.020 this and then i thought about it and i was like no he's right like if i discount the emotional like

01:13:06.060 disgust i would feel and sadness i would feel over losing a relationship with you because you slept

01:13:11.580 around and that made you less attractive to me which it would i mean that's a natural reaction for

01:13:15.500 a lot of guys for evolutionarily evolved reasons and the anger i would feel towards the individual

01:13:20.060 who did that that wouldn't be motivated by jealousy that would be motivated by a very specific emotion

01:13:24.940 but then i started thinking about jealousy about other things like somebody who's wealthier than me

01:13:29.740 or somebody who has more figurines than me or somebody who has more followers than me i've never

01:13:36.380 felt whatever this emotion is i felt like a motivation to catch up to them like oh my god they

01:13:41.260 were younger than me and they'd already done more and look at how little i've accomplished in life yet so

01:13:44.940 far but then i thought i was like i haven't really so i'll read this because i thought it was

01:13:48.220 interesting and this is from a blog called death is bad very rational as you can tell i think that's

01:13:54.460 the the real motivator here everyone knows the patriarchy is bad for men as well as women but

01:14:00.540 they don't mention it too much because it's a lot more bad for women well here's one way it's bad for 1.00

01:14:05.980 men you have to pretend to be jealous and bluster about and say you'll attack anyone who touches your mate

01:14:12.780 because if anyone sees someone other than yourself engage in sexual play with your mate you're

01:14:18.380 automatically less of a man you lose status you can't be taken seriously you are something to be

01:14:23.340 pitied f that i've powered through status seeking shaming several times already in my life and every

01:14:29.580 time i've been better freer and happier for it now i respect people who are in open relationships

01:14:36.460 far more than those who are stuck in the social straight jacket of enforced monogamy while the

01:14:41.740 limited number of years we have here sorry with limited number of years we have here why would

01:14:46.700 you want to do that with your life it's kind of sad and once i said i i let that go and said f society

01:14:52.780 this is bs i actually found that the opposite of jealousy happens and this is where i disagree with

01:14:58.140 him because i and i don't disagree with him i mean i just have a different sexual profile than him

01:15:02.380 i was happy to see my girl getting that sort of pleasure i would not be by the way why wouldn't you

01:15:07.180 want to see the person you love happy and more than that it's a complete turn-on for him and that's

01:15:11.500 why he's okay with it it's really effing hot at least that's been my experience and again this is

01:15:16.620 there's different sounds like his unique form of sexual enjoyment right and that's why when i first

01:15:21.900 read it i was like come on you know you have a form of sexual enjoyment which is really unique and not

01:15:26.220 evolutionarily adaptive it was funny in the comments he's like i just can't see the evolutionary reason

01:15:31.180 that people would want their partner to not sleep with other people we used to live in big tribes where

01:15:35.500 we all shared our wives and i was like really unusual but but in addition to the anthropology

01:15:41.820 not backing him up it it also doesn't make sense even if there is partner sharing was in a community

01:15:48.140 you still benefit from punishing a partner for sleeping with other people and sleeping with you

01:15:52.780 more and them less genetically speaking no matter how much partner sharing there is in a community

01:15:58.220 you still benefit from punishing somebody who you slept with sleeping with other people well in other

01:16:02.780 words the guys who did that ended up having more offspring so you're more likely to have inherited

01:16:07.180 genes that give you that tendency yeah so like no i don't buy this but what i do buy when i started to

01:16:15.180 think about it and he said jealousy is a social construct i was like yeah jealousy is more of

01:16:21.260 a social thing where i feel that i have a right to be upset with someone for having more than me

01:16:28.940 but i can choose not to engage with that right i can just be like but i'm not going to right like

01:16:36.460 they have more than me so what and as soon as you choose that you no longer feel that particular

01:16:41.660 emotional output the other one that we were talking about was yeah what was the big one it was

01:16:48.380 forgiveness i see somebody like you know well i finally forgave my my father for unaliving himself and

01:16:55.500 now i've begun to emotionally heal it's like what do you mean forgave him like he's dead like you you

01:17:01.500 can't you still you still have the the knowledge of the choice he made right you you can change how

01:17:07.100 you decide to contextualize it in your head but that's not really an emotional state yeah there's

01:17:11.740 just a choice of contextualization yeah i it's it's hard for me to i mean i understand the definition is

01:17:21.100 to to to let go of anger or resentment regarding a slight you've experienced and and that sounds

01:17:28.220 good but it sounds more like i don't know an emotional process than anything else and you can

01:17:34.620 also choose to not feel resentful about something whenever you're ready so i think that another thing

01:17:39.900 i was wondering about today is loneliness everyone's talking about loneliness epidemics and people are

01:17:45.260 lonely but isn't it is that real i don't i mean obviously i'm an extreme introvert so i don't think

01:17:52.060 i've ever felt lonely lonely before you okay what does it feel like isn't it just a need for stimulation

01:17:59.580 or isn't it just a desire to fulfill a kind of vision of yourself it's tied to your self-image

01:18:06.780 and if you have a part of a self-image of somebody who has been rejected by others and who is

01:18:15.260 you know i think loneliness in big part is a feeling of rejection plus isolation think of it

01:18:22.060 like a claustrophobia like emotion tied to social interaction that has more to do with your perception

01:18:32.140 of yourself than any real feeling no it really feels very claustrophobic sometimes like almost sort of

01:18:39.980 panicky well that's how i feel when i'm around people other people don't know that emotion so

01:18:48.300 huh maybe maybe you know we talk about sexuality being something where with regard to arousal and

01:18:55.420 disgust there are typical spectrums that people have but sometimes you get a sign flip maybe there

01:19:01.340 are things beyond sexuality where sometimes there are sign flips like the average the evolutionarily average

01:19:08.220 person craves the company of other people because obviously the average person who craved those

01:19:13.260 things survived because they didn't get rejected by the tribe they invested in it you know and but

01:19:19.660 maybe i had a sign flip and i i crave the rejection of the tribe you crave tribal rejection so you can

01:19:27.020 be alone and not talk to me yes but i mean i you know it's it's not on it's not unheard of for

01:19:34.140 people to experience flips of other forms of arousal versus aversion that are not necessarily 0.94

01:19:43.740 evolutionarily to their advantage like men who find penises really arousing and not vaginas and only want 0.99

01:19:52.060 to sleep with men you know like it happens so i don't know i don't know 0.93

01:19:58.700 but that's interesting so i don't know what would you encourage people to take away from this don't

01:20:05.660 don't ask for love from people i guess stop talking about love what what should people do differently

01:20:12.700 after hearing this well no i mean i think it's it's you know that you know you're supposed to pretend

01:20:19.260 when you feel honest and attachment to somebody and you will begin to build an addiction to interacting

01:20:24.380 with your partner that that part is real but don't expect this transcendent emotional state to wash

01:20:29.980 over you at some point in the process of dating or marriage and don't think that now i would say

01:20:36.460 really importantly if you're with a partner who believes in love and don't go into

01:20:39.900 you're just gonna have to pretend to believe in you pretend just love you too just say i love you too

01:20:46.140 okay guys yeah i love you too but i do think it's important for more and more people to come out and

01:20:51.180 call shenanigans on this shenanigans what's all this officer poverty i would like to reinstate my

01:20:57.980 previous shenanigans this whole carnival is a rip-up you know uh excuse me but i agree these rides 0.97

01:21:02.860 are really stupid okay let's calm down people of south park do you declare shenanigans on the carnival 0.98

01:21:08.460 people yeah okay carnival people do you accept this decree of shenanigans what are you talking about 1.00

01:21:15.820 this whole town is screwy well that settles it everybody grab a broom it's shenanigans

01:21:26.780 so that you know young people i think this prevents them from getting into relationships

01:21:30.620 or feeling really dedicated to a partner because they expect some other emotion that is just never

01:21:36.860 going to come that's fair okay i like that that's solid advice just don't just chill just and and

01:21:45.020 i'm telling you even without this marriage is way better than i thought it could conceivably be

01:21:51.260 in terms of the way it makes me feel the way i feel every day the way it feels to interact with you

01:21:56.780 or have kids with you or to interact with my kids i'm saying i feel all of these great things

01:22:01.980 none of them include whatever this external love emotion is and despite that they feel kind of

01:22:08.940 better than the way people describe love feeling which to me always sounds more just like a drug

01:22:13.900 and i'm just like well that doesn't sound like that pleasant right like it doesn't come with like

01:22:17.820 genuine satisfaction or anything when people describe love to me i get the same reaction i felt when

01:22:23.820 reading dante's paradiso like the the the part of the divine comedy where he's exploring heaven

01:22:32.300 and i'm just like this i don't know i don't want to go there this doesn't sound very fun

01:22:39.020 just sounds sounds kind of brainwashed little culty kind of creepy

01:22:46.140 i i think i know that so many journalists are going to use this to attack us they don't even love each

01:22:50.780 other they don't already do i was i was just listening to a youtube video today that was about purity

01:22:57.900 culture and fundamentalist marriages and then like 53 minutes in just randomly we get mentioned

01:23:05.980 we have nothing to do with purity culture but it was only in the context of us not really loving our

01:23:11.500 children and and occasionally beating them oh now we'll have he beats his children he doesn't love

01:23:17.980 them yeah he doesn't love his wife we already have that reputation though we we already have a loveless

01:23:23.180 family no one will be surprised to discover that we have a loveless marriage so just approving the

01:23:32.060 haters right that was out of the bag we're just we're just confirming it on the record

01:23:35.980 apparently i mean obviously the alternative to all this is we come from an extremely unique cultural

01:23:41.900 genotype that's just very low on one of these genetic variants and it wouldn't be surprising

01:23:46.940 like i often mention that we're of the backwoods puritan heritage heritage groups like those two

01:23:51.820 groups are the predominant ancestry groups of ours and if any groups was going to have evolved out the

01:23:57.740 love emotion it would be those two groups um so it could be that other people really feel this

01:24:05.500 like but see like to me love is living and working together and the appellation and before that like

01:24:12.700 you know scottish clan culture is like you saw a lot more of that you saw a lot more family integration

01:24:18.460 everyone kind of working together not these this isolation that i feel separates people so much to me

01:24:25.100 love is integration it's also so fun to me that you you and i have this reputation for lovelessness

01:24:30.860 when the first thing you ever made go viral was your marriage proposal to me where you commissioned

01:24:37.100 like top 10 romantic things of the year you commissioned 21 pieces of original art of you

01:24:42.220 proposing to me in different styles related to different genres that we like and we went to the

01:24:47.500 front page of reddit and that was but god no we don't love each other do you think do you think

01:24:53.180 this is going to should we be saving this for a reporter to tell them we don't really love each

01:24:56.860 other and we think this whole concept's a scam because that'd go viral prenatalist couple doesn't

01:25:02.460 love each other already basically said as such in a bunch of articles again if youtubers are like

01:25:07.500 randomly like they can't even when they run out of weird fundy couples that you know they need to

01:25:15.100 they need to show that couples don't love each other they turn to us because they can't find anyone else

01:25:20.060 who openly apparently you're the best and the greatest fundy couple because we are the only one

01:25:27.740 bravest enough to tell the truth yeah they all pretend to love each other messed up but i think

01:25:35.180 culturally normalizing that this isn't a thing that people feel or at least people within our cultural

01:25:39.500 group feel will make it much faster for our kids to get married and find secure partners

01:25:43.340 yeah yeah to focus on the practical aspects all right range marriage i love you too

01:25:51.340 hey tonight yeah steak tonight basically same thing as last night but instead of

01:25:57.580 whole wheat sourdough i was gonna make those flatbreads but i'm going to instead toast them a

01:26:03.500 lot longer so they're oh yeah do that and this time with with garlic because i think it'd be fun to

01:26:08.380 have sort of like garlic flatbread cook a little less of the raw steak and a little more of the

01:26:12.940 cooked steak because your parents didn't want the additional one and i did oh no no no so i already

01:26:19.420 told you i i froze that we're going to use it later like in a couple weeks to do yeah love you to death

01:26:26.140 love you too

01:26:29.020 i missed you on our normal morning time and then we've reported we haven't had our morning walks and

01:26:35.420 now we have reporters coming yes i just want to talk with you though i miss you i seriously i miss

01:26:42.700 you when we don't get to spend like our private time together in morning and during and so like

01:26:48.060 this is the the only private time we're getting today or yesterday yeah it just kills me when we

01:26:53.020 don't get it indy was mad though too that she missed her walk with you she could tell 0.90

01:26:57.740 she gets really angry that yeah she's learned the word no so she's like no no no no no no no all

01:27:06.780 morning but i did learn a thing a new form of prepping that apparently is popular among wealthy tech 0.50

01:27:15.660 elite who are into prepping that had not occurred to me but i think it's more inspired by horror films

01:27:24.300 and like an actual doomsday scenario and it is multiple people that were interviewed by this

01:27:32.140 this guy who wrote the book the haves and the have yachts which is about the super elite wealthy people

01:27:37.260 billionaires they've gotten lasik because they're like well if there's some societal collapse i won't

01:27:46.140 be able to get a new glasses prescription and then i'm screwed because i'll be blind but i'm really

01:27:51.900 thinking of it more from that one scene in the mummy where the american archaeologist slash yahoo who's

01:27:58.780 trying to find egyptian treasure loses his glasses while attempting to run away oh gosh resurrected

01:28:05.180 mummy and he's looking for his glasses and then the mummy just pulls out his eyeballs because that's what 0.55

01:28:11.660 happens when you don't have lasik so late that'd be a great lasik commercial just goes to that scene and

01:28:19.340 there's lasik gotta get lasik all right i'll get started you know i have to i have to represent her

01:28:31.420 since she's she's not with us in person she's with us in spirit

01:28:37.740 i went to i have this like beautiful vision that after i went to get eggs from the chicken coop this

01:28:42.060 morning that i would pick some blackberries at least for torsten to snack on at dinner and if i could get

01:28:47.180 more than to make jam okay and i'm like oh it's gonna be so you know scenic you got stuck in all

01:28:52.300 the thorns i do blackberries with the kids i basically send them in like a little rabbit in

01:28:59.020 the briar pit and and they're so good at it they go in and they get them all really easily yeah whereas

01:29:04.620 i'm covered with scratches like and i was like bleeding out there toddlers are for you send them

01:29:09.580 into the briar patch yeah they're there for the mines they're for the factories like giant blackberry

01:29:15.020 patches on our property that i didn't even plant i just didn't weed and and so whenever they start

01:29:21.500 growing in any location on our property i stop weeding in that location which means it's a little

01:29:27.820 rough walking around our house yeah our house is very fortified though i love that feeling

01:29:33.500 on the on the topic of court of thrones oh court of thrones thorns or whatever

01:29:39.260 we live our life as a romance novel but but speaking of romance on the topic of loveless marriages

01:29:45.740 i actually remember from a young age the extent to which i began romanticizing and desiring a loveless

01:29:52.220 marriage one of my like part of my financial package in college was that i could work for some of my tuition

01:29:59.900 in in addition to getting some debt and i worked at my university honors office as a secretary

01:30:07.980 a receptionist and one of my colleagues was this this this gay dude who would just say things that i i 0.96

01:30:16.700 loved like he cracked me up and at one point i was like oh my god will you marry me and he was like well

01:30:22.540 it would be a loveless marriage and i remember like i hadn't heard that phrase before or something

01:30:27.420 and like i just you know i laughed at him or whatever and we got back to work but i remember

01:30:31.340 thinking after that i was like i love this marriage like that sounds amazing like what is this institution

01:30:39.500 and how do i get involved like is this like where they work together or something oh no did i give you

01:30:45.900 the loveless marriage you always desired marriage without all the gushy stuff we have well no like we we

01:30:54.780 have the sex we have the romance like you you gave me all that but then like we really we lean in to

01:31:00.540 the loveless part and i just i i didn't realize until today when we were gonna do this episode that 0.98

01:31:05.980 i was like oh shit like i've i've always wanted this i've always wanted a loveless marriage and 0.89

01:31:14.700 thank you so much for making this girl's fantasy come to life 0.97

01:31:18.700 i am here for you all right so i'll get started here okay let's go

01:31:31.980 what are you guys doing

01:31:37.180 are there going to be any survivors

01:31:48.700 you

01:31:55.260 you

01:31:59.980 you

01:32:01.260 you

01:32:04.140 you

01:32:09.140 you

Based Camp - July 28, 2025

Love Is Not A Real Emotion (Inside Our Loveless Marriage)

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