The Art of Manliness - #239： Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. If you're

00:00:18.680 a man on the precipice of marriage or have marriage as a life goal, one worry you likely

00:00:23.540 have is, will my marriage even last? While divorce rates have been decreasing since they

00:00:29.080 reached their peaks in the late 1970s and early 80s, there's still a perception out there

00:00:32.960 that marriage is just a crapshoot, a game of Russian roulette, and that the odds favor 0.88

00:00:37.140 you ending up in a family court or at best in a sad and loveless relationship. Well, my

00:00:42.360 guest today on the show argues that that doesn't have to be your fate so long as you take a

00:00:46.540 proactive approach to marriage. With some thought and intentionality, you can help ensure that

00:00:51.320 you have a happy, loving, fulfilling relationship that lasts until death do you part. His name

00:00:56.960 is Les Parrott and he's a clinical psychologist specializing in marriage and family. He, along

00:01:01.680 with his wife, Leslie, who's also a marriage therapist, have written a book to help couples

00:01:06.220 prepare themselves for a matrimonial commitment. It's called Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts, 1.00

00:01:11.140 Seven Questions to Ask Before and After You Marry. And today on the show, Les and I discuss

00:01:15.840 how a man can know if he's personally ready for marriage, the myths that people have about

00:01:20.600 marriage that set them up for disappointment, the mindsets people have about marriage, particularly

00:01:25.200 millennials, and the conversations you should be having with your future spouse to help ensure

00:01:29.480 that you have a happy life together. While the conversation day is geared towards soon-to-be

00:01:34.140 marrieds and newlyweds, even if you've been married for a couple decades, you're going to find some

00:01:38.580 useful advice and insights in this show. After the show, make sure to check out the show notes at

00:01:43.700 aom.is slash Parrott. So that's P-A-R-R-O-T, just like the bird, for links to resources where you can 0.99

00:01:50.340 delve deeper into this topic. Dr. Les Parrott, welcome to the show.

00:01:57.140 Thanks. Good to be with you. I appreciate being on.

00:01:59.320 So you're a clinical psychologist that specializes in marriage and relationships, and you work with

00:02:03.980 your wife, Leslie, who's also a marriage and family therapist. You work on helping other people

00:02:11.260 have good, strong families and marriages. You've written several books. And the book we're going

00:02:16.760 to talk about today is Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts, which is all about helping people get on

00:02:23.940 the right path towards a strong and happy marriage. But before we get into specifics of what engaged

00:02:32.160 couples can do, people who are about to get married to have a good, strong marriage, let's talk about

00:02:36.660 the individual first. Because I've gotten questions over the years from guys who they want to get

00:02:42.080 married. They're dating a girl and they're like, I think this is the woman I want to ask to be my

00:02:47.660 wife. But they're not sure if they're ready individually to make that commitment to marriage.

00:02:54.020 And they've wondered if like, how do they know they're ready for marriage? So based on your experience

00:02:59.060 and your research, are there things people can look for in themselves to know that they're ready

00:03:03.380 to be married? Yeah, I love that question. It's a great place to start. And by the way,

00:03:08.640 I should say, related to that introduction, my wife and I do have the exact same name if people

00:03:13.940 are confused. So I'm Leslie, and she's Leslie. We're both psychologists. And it does get confusing,

00:03:21.160 but that's why I go by Les. And it's also why we named our first son, John. So no more confusion

00:03:27.220 there. But I love your question, because it really does begin with the individual. In fact,

00:03:34.360 Wesley and I, man, this had to be 18 years ago, sitting around a dining room table in Los Angeles

00:03:42.360 with a fella named Neil Clark Warren. And if his name sounds familiar, it's because he's the guy in

00:03:48.360 the eHarmony commercials. And we were sitting around this dining room table when the idea for eHarmony

00:03:54.060 first was being explored. And we ended up working with that company for 10 years and working on that

00:04:00.620 matching mechanism and all that kind of thing with folks, a fantastic team there. But I remember

00:04:06.120 asking Neil that night in the midst of that conversation, hey, if you could only give one

00:04:10.500 word of advice to a person about to be married, what would it be? And I remember the answer was just

00:04:16.720 like on the tip of his tongue. He didn't have to think for a split second. He said, get yourself

00:04:21.060 healthy before you'd get yourself married. And that is such an essential thing and such a kind

00:04:27.360 of a quippy little thing to say, but it has such profound depth. Get yourself healthy before you get

00:04:32.600 yourself married. Why is that? Because your marriage can only be as healthy as you are. In fact,

00:04:39.340 your relationships can only be as healthy as you are, whether it's marriage or anything else.

00:04:43.840 And so we've spent a lot of time in our own research and writing, looking at how do you have

00:04:50.440 relationship readiness? In fact, my wife and I even teach a class at our university here in Seattle

00:04:58.240 where we live. And it's just Relationships 101. And it's a class that is offered at six, six o'clock in

00:05:07.440 the evening on Mondays, not prime time for undergrads. And yet it's the largest class on our campus.

00:05:12.640 And we start off that first lecture telling these students, it doesn't matter to me where you take

00:05:19.660 any notes. That's up to you and how you want to function. Except tonight, I want you to write down

00:05:23.900 one single sentence. And I build this sentence up and I finally give it to them. And it is so relevant

00:05:30.260 to your question. I want to give it to you and our listeners. And here's the sentence. If you try to

00:05:35.460 build intimacy with another person, before you've done the difficult work of getting whole or healthy

00:05:43.500 on your own, all your relationships become an attempt to complete yourself. In other words,

00:05:51.460 we start to treat others as a shortcut towards our well-being. And that's a lot of pressure to put on

00:05:57.340 somebody else. So that's the big answer. We can drill down on that if you want a little bit.

00:06:02.000 How do you get healthy? But that's fundamental to any relationship because your relationship

00:06:07.320 can only be as healthy as you are.

00:06:09.400 Well, so yeah, let's drill down a bit. I mean, how do you get healthy for a relationship or whole?

00:06:13.780 Well, there's several things. You know, one of the hallmarks of psychological well-being and health

00:06:21.000 is self-awareness. You're aware of, you know, issues in your life that you need to be working on.

00:06:28.420 You know, the unhealthy person just goes around without any sense of their jaggedness, how they're

00:06:36.900 rubbing people the wrong way and how they're interfacing with people in a nonproductive fashion and so

00:06:41.780 forth. So self-awareness is paramount. And that's why I always suggest if somebody wants to get

00:06:47.660 serious about working on this, that they invite a mentor into their life, somebody that's objective,

00:06:53.060 that has their best interest in mind, that will serve as kind of a proverbial mirror in front of

00:06:58.200 them. So that's just one practical step. But here's some hallmarks of psychological health.

00:07:05.800 One is what I call unswerving authenticity. Now, this has to do with being true to you. I can't tell

00:07:15.080 you as a psychologist how many times I've had somebody come into my counseling office suffering

00:07:19.300 from that proverbial disease to please. You know what I mean? And they're thinking, oh man,

00:07:24.380 maybe if I accomplish this goal over here, I'll get the respect of this group. Or maybe if I get onto this

00:07:29.540 team, you know, so-and-so will be impressed. Or maybe if I do this, you know, my parents will give me

00:07:34.940 their blessing or I'll win the heart of this young lady or whatever it might be. And so they end up

00:07:40.040 doing things that aren't authentic. And the healthy person knows, hey, this is the path I'm traveling

00:07:46.720 and nobody can sway me from that because I got to be true to who I am in spite of what anybody else

00:07:54.320 might say, think, or do. So that's foundational. And that leads to a second one. And that is

00:08:00.680 what I call self-giving love. The most mature, the most healthy among us are people that can

00:08:07.980 transcend their own boundaries and recognize other people's needs and put empathy into practice

00:08:13.600 and see, you know, needs that are unique to that person. Because most of us, you know,

00:08:20.280 if we're not intentional, we kind of project our own neediness onto other people and then kind of meet

00:08:26.100 those needs, uh, thinking we're really being a loving person, all we're really doing is loving

00:08:30.860 ourselves. Does that make sense? It's kind of convoluted, but it happens so frequently.

00:08:36.020 And so those are a few things. Self-awareness is paramount. It begins the process. You know,

00:08:41.240 you can only change something. You can only work on something once you're aware of it.

00:08:45.060 And then you got to be true to you. And then you got to give yourself away. The more you give

00:08:48.740 yourself away, the more loving you are to other people, um, in an altruistic sense, uh, you know,

00:08:54.540 the higher, uh, marks you will get in psychological wellbeing.

00:08:58.440 Okay. Well, let's talk about, let's say you're, you mentioned earlier when, before we got on the

00:09:03.240 interview, um, this assessment that you did about, uh, young people's attitudes towards marriage,

00:09:10.240 um, as big survey you did, I mean, and you mentioned there's five attitudes that a lot of

00:09:14.540 young people these days have about marriage. What are those five attitudes that people have about

00:09:19.000 marriage these days?

00:09:19.620 Yeah. I appreciate you asking this because, um, you know, my wife and I wrote this book,

00:09:24.640 saving your marriage before it starts. We wrote this years ago. Um, and really out of our own

00:09:29.420 desire to help our own university students here in Seattle had no idea that the book would be used

00:09:35.280 by more than a million couples at Oprah would have us on and Barbara Walters and all the rest. 1.00

00:09:39.620 It's been a phenomenal ride with that book. But, um, a few years ago, our publisher called us Harper

00:09:45.420 Collins and said, Hey, you know, this book just seems to keep going and going. Let's revise it.

00:09:50.020 Let's update it. And that's kind of publisher speak for let's put a new cover on it. And we said,

00:09:55.360 no, let's do it the right way. And so we began to, um, do a lot of research around what does it take

00:10:02.420 for lifelong love? And, uh, it was out of that, that we devised this, uh, assessment that we can come

00:10:08.820 back to called the Simbas assessment. But in the context of, of building that, um, we did this

00:10:15.660 massive study through the university of Chicago, looking at single adults between the ages of 18

00:10:22.520 and 35 and, uh, trying to understand what is their attitude toward marriage, what we call their marriage

00:10:29.000 mindset. So this isn't about any particular relationship. It's just about what do they,

00:10:33.900 how do they feel about marriage in general, just the enterprise of marriage. And what we discovered

00:10:40.220 is they fall into one of five categories and they're pretty predictable. And it's, it's actually

00:10:46.720 quite fascinating. So let me list these, these five off and give you a little, little sense for each

00:10:52.320 one of them. The first is what, and I'll start with R the first is the resolute mindset. Now, these are

00:10:58.340 people, anybody that's listening to us right now that is thinking, you know, uh, marriage is for life

00:11:04.980 for me, uh, like divorce is not even in my vocabulary. Uh, I can't imagine not being married

00:11:11.340 because it's always been a part of my life plan. That's the resolute mindset. These people are gung ho

00:11:18.280 on marriage. Okay. The next category is what we call, uh, after resolute is rational and the rational

00:11:27.760 mindset and feel free to interrupt me along the way on any of these, but the rational mindset is the

00:11:33.680 person that, yeah, I believe in marriage, but I know it's going to be really hard work. In fact,

00:11:39.980 I've probably grown up in a home where I saw how not to be married and I don't want to go through

00:11:44.720 that, but I still believe in marriage. So these people will tend to get married later. There's more

00:11:49.180 men in this category than women, by the way, uh, the, the rational approach, the third category after

00:11:56.620 resolute and rational is romantic. And these people, and this tends to be populated more by

00:12:02.860 women than men, just the opposite of rational. And the rash, the, the romantic approach has an 1.00

00:12:08.620 attitude of kind of wanting to write this incredible love story because nobody's ever experienced this

00:12:15.080 kind of love with, you know, in the, on the planet before, and they'd love words like soulmate and

00:12:20.920 finding the one and so forth. And so if, if it doesn't work out for them, they tend to think,

00:12:27.660 well, I, it wasn't the one I got duped somehow. And so they, they tend to have a higher divorce rate

00:12:33.260 than others. After that category, there's two more and that's restless. This is an interesting

00:12:38.940 category because you ask these folks, Hey, you know, you plan on getting married someday? Yeah,

00:12:43.960 maybe, you know, uh, but, uh, really not on my list right now because I'm having too much fun.

00:12:50.440 These are people that love to party. These are people that love just, uh, they're just having a

00:12:55.220 blast. They're just, uh, thinking like marriage is the last thing on their list of considerations. So

00:13:00.660 the only way you find these people in a counselor's office, you know, doing some pre-marriage work

00:13:06.800 is when there's some kind of crisis. Maybe there's been a unexpected pregnancy or there's financial

00:13:12.040 pressure or there's something else going on. And then the last category after, uh, resolute,

00:13:18.460 rational, romantic, restless, the last category is reluctant. And these are people that don't believe

00:13:24.780 in marriage at all. It's just a piece of paper. Why would I, why would I ever get married? Um,

00:13:30.300 and so they're very cynical just about the whole enterprise. So every, every young adult between

00:13:36.000 the ages of 18 and 35 will fall into one of those five categories. And that's helpful

00:13:41.660 information, especially if you're preparing for lifelong love, uh, with another person,

00:13:46.100 because you want to know what their mindset is as well. And the combination of those two

00:13:51.400 mindsets can, can tell you a lot about the road ahead for the two of you. Does that make sense?

00:13:55.780 That makes perfect sense. And I'm curious, um, is there one mindset in particular that has,

00:13:59.740 you know, a lion's share of the people in that mindset between the, in that demographic?

00:14:04.520 Yeah, great question. So on average, there's about 20% in each of these categories, reluctant

00:14:11.880 is the lowest and, uh, excuse me, reluctant is lowest. And then, uh, resolute is the highest.

00:14:20.200 So the two anchors on the end of the continuum. Uh, but when you break it down by, uh, some other

00:14:26.040 demographic information, you know, gender is a big one. That's when you see more women as romantics 1.00

00:14:31.520 and more men as rational. So, but, uh, yeah, it's pretty even distribution.

00:14:36.200 Okay. So, um, I think, you know, one thing that might put people in that rational or reluctant

00:14:42.660 phase is that, you know, they've probably seen the statistics about marriage and divorce. Um,

00:14:47.260 but I think there's been studies, I mean, I guess the number that's been floating around is like 50%,

00:14:51.020 but there's studies that have showed that it's not as bad. It's actually decreased since like the

00:14:56.020 1970s when it was at its peak. But, um, still it's, it can be sobering for people and people

00:15:02.740 think marriage is just a crapshoot. Um, your job as a marital counselor doing this premarital 0.99

00:15:09.240 counseling is to help make it less of a crapshoot. Um, what does the research say on the effectiveness

00:15:14.300 of premarital counseling on reducing the chances of divorce?

00:15:18.700 Yeah, it's pretty easy to get discouraged because everybody knows someone's divorced, right? I mean,

00:15:24.320 you just can't find anyone that doesn't know someone that's divorced. So regardless of what

00:15:29.420 the stats are, we've all witnessed pretty much up close and personal, the devastation of, of a,

00:15:34.620 of a breakup, uh, in marriage. So, um, does it make any difference? First of all, let me say

00:15:41.540 that people still believe in marriage. 86% of young adults, uh, say they want to get married and 82%

00:15:51.940 of that 86% say they want it to be for life. In other words, nobody, only a very small handful

00:15:58.620 of people are saying, yeah, I'm going to get married, but this is kind of the starter marriage

00:16:02.140 and I'll, I'll find another marriage later on. Um, most people say I want it to be for life.

00:16:07.400 Um, and so if they avail themselves of some kind of premarital education or counseling that does more

00:16:14.480 than just focus on the ceremony, we know for a fact that they lower their chances of divorce by 31, 0.59

00:16:21.940 um, we also know that they raise their level of fulfillment and happiness and, uh, contentment

00:16:31.360 in that relationship by at least a third. And so, uh, it's, it, there's no, there's no doubt that

00:16:37.720 premarital education is helpful. And in fact, you know, I have two teenage boys, if they want to get

00:16:44.020 married and said, I don't need any kind of premarriage help. I'd just go, are you kidding me?

00:16:47.900 Look at the facts here. You want to do this for yourself. Trust me. So I can't imagine anybody

00:16:54.020 not wanting to do that. And by the way, the statistics get even higher, uh, for success

00:16:59.580 when people will go through some kind of personalized experience, like taking an assessment,

00:17:04.340 like the Simba's assessment that I mentioned a little bit ago.

00:17:08.040 Okay. So, uh, let's talk about like, what are we aiming for here? If you're, you're in

00:17:11.940 premarital counseling or doing some education, doing some reading, um, and you're trying to figure out,

00:17:17.180 okay, what can I do to have a, uh, strong marriage from the get go that will last a lifetime? Um,

00:17:23.080 what are we aiming for? What does the research say on what a happy marriage looks like? I mean,

00:17:27.780 what are the traits of happily married couples?

00:17:31.220 Yeah. So first of all, um, the more alike you are, especially when it comes to your values,

00:17:38.260 the easier and happier life is, you know, um, birds of a feather flock together. We, we sometimes

00:17:44.980 hear people say opposites attract, and there is some truth to that. There's some excitement about

00:17:50.020 being around somebody that's different than you. And, uh, but, uh, as the saying sometimes also

00:17:55.580 goes opposites attract, and then they attack because it starts to get under our skin. Like,

00:18:01.300 why can't you view the world the same way I do, especially when it comes to my values? So I'm not

00:18:06.660 talking about, you know, surface things. You know, I like to ride a Harley and she likes to garden 0.64

00:18:11.520 on a Saturday. Those are two very different things. Sure. That can impact the relationship,

00:18:15.280 but not as much as what you might believe about having children or some other values that you hold

00:18:21.380 really dear, you know? So, um, so when it comes to predicting happiness in a marriage, you want to,

00:18:28.660 you really want to find somebody that can be as similar to you as possible on the things that matter

00:18:34.600 most. Um, in addition, uh, we know there's other marks, you know, we talked about wellbeing and,

00:18:41.180 and psychological health. That's a huge predictor of success and happiness in a marriage,

00:18:47.360 but there's also, uh, to put a finer point on that, there's expectations that we bring, you know,

00:18:54.320 that proverbial baggage that we bring into a relationship and all of us do this. It doesn't

00:18:59.460 matter whether you're the epitome of wellbeing and health. Um, and by the way, just going back to

00:19:05.780 that for a second, nobody ever arrives, right? We can't ever check that off our list. Hey, I'm

00:19:10.080 totally psychologically healthy now. Uh, we're always in process. We're all working on that.

00:19:15.760 Um, but when you begin to look at expectations, you know, those are so, they're shaped so intensely by

00:19:22.740 the homes that we grew up in. And so you really want to make sure that, um, what you have in mind,

00:19:28.840 your picture in your mind's eye of what married life is supposed to be like is similar to what

00:19:34.160 this other person is expecting. Uh, because if not, we get married and we go, Hey, I thought

00:19:39.300 you loved me. A loving husband doesn't do that. A loving wife doesn't do that. Why are you doing

00:19:43.500 that? Um, so those kinds of things. Um, and then on a real practical level, another marker is just,

00:19:50.720 um, uh, financial security. Uh, we just know, uh, that, uh, for happy couples, not that money

00:19:58.820 can make you happy, but that when you're on the same page financially, you know, and inevitably

00:20:04.480 one of you will feel like more of a spender and one of you more of a saver. Um, and that

00:20:09.820 can sometimes feel like opposites, but that's a matter of degree, but just making sure you're,

00:20:14.600 you, you've got some solid footing and you're headed in the right direction for financial

00:20:19.560 management. Um, uh, that, that's also a huge predictor. Um, as is age, by the way, a person

00:20:27.860 that gets married at the age of 21 versus 25, their chances of divorce, doubtful. Think

00:20:34.180 about that. That's based on nothing more than just how old they are when they get married.

00:20:38.620 And so when you look at happiness in marriage, you know, that, uh, uh, there's lots of things

00:20:45.060 that go into it, but here's the crux of the matter. Marriage was never ever designed to

00:20:51.100 make a person happy. You make your marriage happy. Let me say that again, because this is

00:20:56.440 so key marriage isn't designed to make you happy. You make your marriage happy, which

00:21:02.560 basically means it comes down to you and your attitude and that of your partner as well.

00:21:08.160 I love that. Um, so let's go back to this, these expectations. I thought this was interesting.

00:21:12.020 You have a section in your book about, uh, unspoken rules and unconscious roles, uh, that

00:21:18.020 people bring into a relationship. Cause I remember when I got married, um, this came up every

00:21:23.040 now, it was like weird moments. It was just like stuff like, well, no, this is how you're

00:21:27.300 supposed to do X thing in a relationship, or this is the tradition. This is like, what

00:21:32.740 this is, we do this at Christmas. We don't do it that way. Um, it's little tiny things

00:21:37.240 that pop up, but you don't think about before you get married. Um, so how do you bring up

00:21:43.600 these unspoken and unconscious, unspoken, um, rules and unconscious roles, um, to light before

00:21:51.140 you get married. So you're all on the same page. Yeah. Leslie and I have often joked

00:21:55.160 about how cool it would be if before a couple got married, you could say, Hey, bring out

00:21:58.820 your invisible rule books. Let's compare notes because everybody gets married with a set of 0.99

00:22:04.140 rules about how life should work. And we don't even know that we have these rules until we

00:22:10.000 get married and our spouse begins to break our rules. And they can be about silly things.

00:22:15.200 Uh, you know, uh, Hey, when do you open your presents at the holidays or, or, you know,

00:22:21.020 do you do that Christmas Eve or Christmas night? Uh, uh, I mean, Christmas morning, you know,

00:22:25.420 but just silly things like that, as well as much more significant things, you know, um, on

00:22:31.220 that might relate to spiritual beliefs or what have you. So we have these, these unspoken rules.

00:22:38.140 And one of the tasks I think for a couple that's, that's thinking about, you know, enjoying

00:22:44.920 lifelong love together is to do their best to uncover these rules. So we sometimes call

00:22:50.120 them your personal 10 commandments. And, um, uh, if you just take some time to think about

00:22:55.720 what was important in your home, I sometimes liken it to, um, you know, if you could go to

00:23:02.020 your childhood home and maybe up in the figurative attic, at least you'd find this big dusty trunk

00:23:07.800 that would have your name engraved on the side of it. And underneath it, it would say relationship

00:23:12.500 curriculum. And you would think through, you know, you'd pull out file folders of all the

00:23:17.420 in quotes, you know, I'm doing air quotes here of all the, the courses you took as a kid growing

00:23:22.760 up, you know, feelings we don't talk about in this family. Um, you know, stuff like that,

00:23:27.860 you know, uh, maybe you took a class in advanced blame shifting and how to do it. You know, I mean,

00:23:32.160 we, we learned all kinds of things from our family of origin. And so, uh, when you begin

00:23:37.720 to look at these unspoken rules that you're bringing into the relationship and your partner

00:23:41.380 does the same thing, let me tell you, you are solving so many problems in advance and eliminating

00:23:46.560 so many headaches down the road. And then you couple that with unconscious, uh, role expectations.

00:23:54.600 Uh, those are, they're closely connected, but they're distinct. You know, the rules are just

00:23:59.080 about how life should be lived. Unconscious role expectations have to do with what a loving

00:24:04.140 husband should do and what a loving wife should do and what they should say and how they should feel. 0.99

00:24:09.360 And so we want to uncover that for them as well, because that was shaped by, uh, the, the father

00:24:16.100 that you grew up with, the mom that you grew up with, or it's even shaped by the media things that

00:24:21.020 you witnessed and said, that's the kind of person I want. Uh, you know, if a, if a, if a wife is really 0.99

00:24:26.300 loving, these are the kinds of things that she would say and think and do. And so the more you can kind

00:24:31.840 of bring that to the surface and then make it conscious, uh, the easier life becomes and the

00:24:37.000 happier, uh, your relationship would be.

00:24:39.600 Fantastic. Yeah. I guess one of the, an example of that unconscious role would be, you know, a man

00:24:43.260 thinking, well, the way I show my love is just like working hard and providing for my family.

00:24:48.340 And there might be a woman who came from a family where her husband, where her dad was very

00:24:52.400 affectionate and spent a lot of time with their family. And that's what she's expecting, but he's got

00:24:56.860 the complete opposite expectation. Right. I'll give you one other quick illustration. Just

00:25:02.020 that seems so simple, but it was so impactful on this couple that we were working with a while back

00:25:07.140 and in the home that they had all these lovely little gifts for wedding presents, you know,

00:25:12.260 and they were going to decorate their apartment with the, you know, some stuff to put on the wall

00:25:16.520 and whatever. And it just kept getting put off because in her home growing up, it was always dad

00:25:23.680 who would get out a hammer and nail and a level and put that thing up on the wall. Mom had nothing 1.00

00:25:29.320 to do with that. Okay. In his home growing up, dad never thought about doing it. That was a woman's 0.95

00:25:35.080 job. She's the decorator. She's going to put the stuff on the walls. And so here they were,

00:25:39.040 they were married for about six, seven, eight months, and they're both waiting for the other

00:25:42.820 person to, to do what, to, to be a loving spouse, right? Because that's what a loving husband does.

00:25:48.880 That's what a loving wife does. And so I remember when they came back to see us for what we call a

00:25:53.200 marriage tune-up a few months into marriage, and they were just both distraught over this. And we

00:25:58.280 were like, are you serious? This is what's, you know, really weighing you guys down. But to them,

00:26:03.540 it was as serious as a heart attack because, and that's the power of these unconscious role

00:26:08.640 expectations. We build this into our psyche that this, if this person loved me, this is what they

00:26:14.500 would do. And it could be something as simple as just hanging a picture on the wall.

00:26:18.300 Right. So have those conversations before you get married. Let's talk, in the book you talk about

00:26:24.420 there's three factors needed for long lasting love in a marriage. What are those three factors and

00:26:31.580 what sorts of conversations should people be having before marriage to ensure that you're on the same

00:26:36.500 page when it comes to these factors? Yeah. Let me preface my comments and my response to this,

00:26:42.820 and I'll give you the three ingredients of romantic love that we know from studies at Yale University

00:26:48.580 by saying that when we devise the CIMBAS assessment, this is a personalized tool. It takes about 30

00:26:56.500 minutes to answer these questions. There's 300 items and all kinds of different, there's drag and drop

00:27:01.980 questions, true and false and sliders and radio buttons, all that kind of stuff. You answer this online

00:27:08.260 and you get this 15 page report on your relationship. Your partner does the same thing.

00:27:14.440 And one of the pages out of the 15 is dedicated to this very thing that I'm going to tell you about,

00:27:19.940 and that is love, love and sexuality. And years ago, and by the way, if somebody's interested in

00:27:27.060 that, they can go to CIMBASassessment.com. That's Y-M-B-I-S. It stands for saving your marriage

00:27:33.120 before it starts. But years ago at Yale University, there was a professor who did this incredible study

00:27:41.760 on romantic love when nobody else really was doing that. You know, it was too mushy. It wasn't

00:27:48.860 scholarly enough to study romantic love. His name was Robert Sternberg, by the way. And he did this

00:27:55.280 massive study, the first of its kind, to basically answer the question, what are the ingredients of

00:28:01.380 romantic love? And he came up with this thing called the triangular theory of love, which sounds

00:28:07.540 like an incredible sleeper, right? I mean, like, did we just lose half of our listeners when I said

00:28:12.520 that, right? Triangular theory of love. It sounds so, you know, academic, but I got to tell you, it's

00:28:17.820 super practical. And he said that if you just think of love as a triangle, and you can kind of visualize

00:28:24.180 three words, one on each side of the triangle, or, you know, and as they were to write them on,

00:28:29.900 on the outside of the triangle. The first one is passion. And that's really the biological

00:28:35.340 side of love. Passion is that part of love that kind of just flows with the hormones. There's

00:28:41.140 nothing particularly noble about it. It was, you know, that's what gets two people together. In the

00:28:46.200 first place, there's kind of this chemistry that takes place and you go, wow, I got to get to know

00:28:50.540 that person, right? That's passion, biological. On the other side of the triangle, you could write the

00:28:57.900 word intimacy and this is the emotional side of love. While passion is biological, intimacy is

00:29:04.960 emotional. And this is about all the kind of connectedness. We have things in common that we

00:29:13.860 just go, oh, wow, really? You too? And there's that sense of just intimacy that you get me and I get

00:29:20.480 you like nobody else on the planet. Like, wow, you like see through me. You have some deep

00:29:26.440 understanding of who I am. And it's great to be known, right? And it's great to know another person

00:29:32.840 that brings us together. That's intimacy. We're reading off the same sheet of music here. And then

00:29:39.600 on the base of the triangle, you can write the word commitment. And commitment is the willful side of

00:29:45.860 love. So if passion is biological and intimacy is emotional, commitment is willful. This is that

00:29:52.080 part of love that truly is a decision. This is that part of love that says, in spite of all the

00:29:57.740 things in my life, I can't seem to pin down. I'm going to make one thing rock solid. And that's my

00:30:02.920 relationship with you. Now, does that come from your hormones? Of course not. Does it come from your

00:30:08.800 emotions? No, it comes from your will. Love is a decision, as some like to say. So those are the

00:30:14.800 three ingredients of romantic love. But the research didn't stop there, just in identifying

00:30:22.180 the ingredients. Because here's what's important about this. The bottom line of all the research

00:30:27.680 was to show that these ingredients are incredibly fluid. They're not static. Love is not a static

00:30:34.920 thing you fall into and you fall out of. Love changes. There's an ebb and flow to it. There's

00:30:41.020 seasons to it. And so the love that you have today is not the kind of love you're going to have five

00:30:47.160 years from now or five months from now or even five days from now because love changes. There's a lot of

00:30:53.900 fluidity to it. And so that's why we always, when we're doing premarital work with couples, we often

00:30:59.220 work on how do you cultivate those ingredients of passion, intimacy, and commitment. Because if you're

00:31:05.480 waking up every morning after you get married and expecting all three of those ingredients to be at a

00:31:09.720 10 out of 10, you're going to be sorely disappointed because love doesn't work that way. It takes a lot

00:31:15.960 of attention on all three of those fronts. Right. And I imagine when people first get married,

00:31:20.980 passion and intimacy probably are like stronger. I mean, there's commitment there, but

00:31:26.700 it doesn't require so much will because they have all this emotional and biological drive to be

00:31:33.520 together. And then that's going to change as their relationship matures.

00:31:39.360 Yeah, that's exactly right. And when you begin to chart out love over the lifespan,

00:31:44.780 you will see what researchers call this big inverted bell curve. And so you have this incredible

00:31:50.400 satisfaction at the beginning. You know, you ask a couple that's just gotten married,

00:31:53.580 hey, how's your love life? It's incredible. You know, it's 10 out of 10. I'm so glad we got married.

00:31:58.220 And then you come back, you know, five years later, uh, not so much 10 out of 10 anymore.

00:32:03.220 And you come back, you know, 18 years later and it's like love life. What's that? You know,

00:32:08.900 and they have teenagers and, and the junior hires or whatever. And here's the, here's the really

00:32:14.280 encouraging news. You come back to that couple 25 years later, Hey, how's your love life? And what you

00:32:20.840 discover is there's this new kind of depth and maturity to their love life. And the level of

00:32:26.940 satisfaction is on the rise. And in the second half of marriage, a couple of love life and these

00:32:32.480 three ingredients increase significantly. All right. Now, of course, some couples don't make 0.89

00:32:37.680 it that far and they're missing out on the very best part of married life. But on the second half

00:32:42.120 of married life, a level of satisfaction literally begins to go off the scale. Social scientists no

00:32:47.040 longer have instruments to measure how happy these couples are. So it's an incredible, and by the way,

00:32:54.580 I don't want our listeners to get discouraged and say, Oh man, so you have to go through this big,

00:32:58.400 huge inverted bell curve and get disappointed. No, the point of that, that's big sociological

00:33:04.060 trend. The point of that is to say, if you know the secret, you know, what are the three essential

00:33:09.320 ingredients of love, passion, intimacy, and commitment? If you know this, you can unlock the,

00:33:15.880 you know, you have the key to unlock lifelong love at its fullest because you're going to work on

00:33:20.820 those three things. And that's enough to keep some couples going. You know, it's, it's, we,

00:33:25.620 we can sometimes think, Oh, there's another shiny object over here or whatever. Just focus on passion,

00:33:30.540 intimacy, and commitment. And you do the hard work of cultivating those three things and you're going

00:33:36.160 to love the life you live together. Right. And I mean, I guess one thing, I mean, I think that's

00:33:40.060 useful to understand for people because, you know, the passion is going to be there for, I mean,

00:33:43.980 I guess they say like the, the shelf life or the half-life of romantic love is like three years.

00:33:49.160 And then it starts to sort of petering out and that's natural, but there's things you can do.

00:33:53.380 So just expect that, right? If you don't feel the fireworks, like you felt when you first met your,

00:33:57.700 your wife, that's okay. It's natural, but there's things you can do to cultivate more passion,

00:34:02.260 uh, in your marriage. That's absolutely right. In fact, let me give you one practical thing you can

00:34:08.400 do. Uh, cause this research has been incredible. Leslie and I, we've been married for 32 years and we

00:34:14.280 discovered this, um, a number of years ago and it is so true in our relationship and lots of other

00:34:19.520 couples. But when you do, you know, it's one, we sometimes talk about date nights after you get

00:34:24.660 married, you know, so much emphasis is put on dating before you get married, but after you get

00:34:30.340 married, it's just important to continue your date dating life together. And, uh, what happens is

00:34:37.440 we kind of get stuck in a rut and we go to our favorite restaurant because, Oh, I love the lasagna

00:34:43.080 there. And then let's go catch the latest movie. And so we do that and then we come home. And so

00:34:48.560 it's kind of movie, uh, a dinner and a movie and kind of that's it and nothing wrong with that. That's

00:34:53.760 great. But here's what the research shows when a couple, especially a married couple will, that's

00:35:00.280 been married for a while, will do a date that is novel. In other words, they're doing some activity

00:35:05.960 that they've never done or they haven't done in a long time together. What happens is they have

00:35:12.000 this chemical brain shower of all these, uh, that incites all these emotions that they haven't had

00:35:18.900 since they fell in love and were dating in the early stages of the relationship. And so that experience

00:35:25.440 of doing new and exciting things together, um, and doesn't have to be elaborate. It doesn't have to

00:35:30.620 be expensive. I'm not talking about that. In fact, with the study, had these couples, Del Crow,

00:35:35.960 their, their wrists and their ankles together and they had to go through this obstacle course

00:35:40.320 and they compared what happened at the end of that date versus a couple that went out to a romantic

00:35:46.100 dinner and a movie. Well, who do you think was talking the most after that? Who do you think

00:35:50.480 was most energized after that? You know, and they were, they're going, Oh, I can't believe we beat

00:35:55.260 that other couple. And we made it over that one thing. And can you believe we went to that tunnel?

00:35:58.480 That was crazy, you know? And it just, it brings about all this new, um, kind of dormant

00:36:04.620 chemical of falling in love that hasn't been around for a while. So be innovative in your

00:36:10.420 dating world. All right. I love that. It's great practical advice. Um, so focus on these three

00:36:15.320 aspects of the love triangle, intimacy, passion, commitment. But even if you're focusing on those

00:36:20.060 things, there might be what you call saboteurs that will pop up even in a happy marriage. Um,

00:36:26.380 what are these saboteurs and what can you do before marriage to reduce the chances of them popping up?

00:36:31.740 Yeah. And once again, on our SIMBIS assessment, we have a page dedicated to this and, and, uh,

00:36:38.800 I got to tell you, this is the most neglected area of marital preparation, uh, today. And the

00:36:45.340 research shows it should be in the top three. It's, um, it's really fundamental and it can be summed up

00:36:51.840 in kind of a single sentence. And that is to adjust to things beyond your control. Um, if you don't get

00:36:59.780 a lock on this early on in your relationship, you're setting yourself up for serious heartache.

00:37:05.840 And, um, in fact, I remember Leslie and I were speaking in San Juan Island off the coast of,

00:37:12.420 of, uh, Seattle here. And, and, uh, we had to get to another engagement. And so we took this little,

00:37:18.520 you know, four seater Cessna, this pilot picked us up on this little Island and took us back into

00:37:23.520 Seattle. And as we were landing, I asked the pilot, I said, Hey, what's the secret to a good landing?

00:37:30.360 And he said, the secret is to find the right attitude in spite of atmospheric conditions.

00:37:35.740 And I thought he meant to say altitude, but he corrected me. He said, no attitude. And that

00:37:39.620 was the first I'd ever learned that pilots talk about an airplane having an attitude as it lands.

00:37:44.800 It has to do with the tail and the nose and relationship to the ground. And, and, uh, when I

00:37:49.320 got off an airplane, I remember I turned to my wife Leslie and I just said, man, I got to write that

00:37:52.860 down. Finding the right attitude in spite of atmospheric conditions. I wish we could give it

00:37:58.940 as a wedding gift to everybody that gets married in the world, because it would solve so many problems.

00:38:04.900 Um, the saboteurs that we face, uh, and if you haven't, you know, every, every good marriage

00:38:10.600 eventually bumps into something bad. It's just inevitable. Put your seatbelt on cause it's coming.

00:38:15.700 All right. Um, and, uh, for us, we have a, uh, a child that had incredible health challenges.

00:38:23.960 Um, for others, it might be something like bankruptcy or infertility or infidelity or just go down

00:38:30.840 the list, right? Every good marriage eventually bumps into something bad. How you adjust to that,

00:38:35.600 as well as all the little bumps in the road along the way will determine whether or not your marriage

00:38:40.440 sinks or swims. And it all comes back around to, uh, adjusting to things beyond your control,

00:38:47.120 finding the right attitude in spite of atmospheric conditions. Because saboteurs are things like

00:38:52.900 blame and, uh, resentment and self-pity. I remember when we first got married and we were living in Los

00:39:00.940 Angeles, going to graduate school. And I think that's one of the biggest self-pity parties Los Angeles has

00:39:05.740 ever seen. And self-pity is very contagious. Things just weren't going my way. And if you complain

00:39:12.480 about that in your marriage, your spouse will begin to kind of join the party. And before you know it,

00:39:17.880 you're kind of digging yourself into this big pit that serves no purpose whatsoever. So the

00:39:24.140 saboteurs of, of, uh, happy, happiness in marriage, the list goes on and on, but the remedy is the most

00:39:30.980 important thing. And that is finding the right attitude in spite of atmospheric conditions.

00:39:36.240 That's fantastic. I love that. Um, so we're the art of manliness podcast. Most of our listeners are

00:39:40.700 men. Um, there's been a lot, you know, some red, you know, written about, you know, men are from

00:39:45.460 Mars. Women are from Venus. They have, they communicate differently. They have different needs. 1.00

00:39:49.660 Is that really true? Do men and women communicate differently? And if so, um, what can men do to better

00:39:56.680 communicate with their wives or their future wife? Well, there's definitely a gender gap that we all 0.61

00:40:03.300 need to be conscious of. Um, but when it comes to, you know, your question about do men and women

00:40:09.300 communicate differently in a sense, but more important to me than the gender gap, which I want 0.98

00:40:14.300 to come back to in a moment, but more important is the personality that we bring into this relationship.

00:40:21.320 Um, because that will determine more about how we communicate, how we like to be

00:40:26.680 uh, communicated to by our spouse than anything else. And, uh, so, uh, once again, that's why we,

00:40:34.800 we built this assessment so that you can really dig into your two personalities. And what that does,

00:40:42.020 it not only just raises self-awareness or the hallmarks of wellbeing and health, but it also

00:40:47.980 opens a door for empathy. So you begin to bridge that gender gap more easily, um, because you're focused

00:40:54.880 not just on, Oh, men are this way and women are that way, which there's a lot of truth to that, 1.00

00:40:59.340 but it's also because you're going, I want to understand you as a person. And when we do that,

00:41:06.680 we kind of crack the code of each other's talk styles because we're understanding our personalities

00:41:11.780 in on the SIMBIS assessment. For example, we have this paragraph at the whole page on communication,

00:41:18.000 and we uncover your personal talk style, just how you are hardwired in your personality for

00:41:25.080 communication. And everybody is different. So you've got to understand that about yourself and

00:41:30.760 about each other. But when it comes to those bigger issues on bridging the gender gap, uh,

00:41:35.760 two things I'll mention, there's lots of them in, in, in our book, Saving Your Marriage Before It

00:41:39.960 Starts. We mentioned three things that every husband needs to know about his wife and vice versa.

00:41:44.460 So let me lift out one, uh, especially for men. And that is that every man needs to understand that

00:41:52.280 his wife, um, needs to have, um, needs to be cherished, cherished. And that word cherished

00:42:01.040 is a really feminine word because most men, in fact, some studies have even, you'll think I'm making

00:42:06.640 this up, but some studies have actually shown you ask, uh, women to list the top 10 things they want

00:42:12.520 in their spouse. And inevitably a woman will say, well, I want him to cherish me.

00:42:18.340 You ask men to list the top 100 things they want from their wife. And you'll be hard pressed to find 0.99

00:42:24.720 a guy that says, well, I know one thing she better cherish me. Right. Guys just don't think about that. 0.87

00:42:29.680 It's not in our nature. And so that that's one suggestion to cherish a woman. Now, what does that 0.99

00:42:35.380 mean? And I always love it. Leslie and I do these events around, uh, North America called fight

00:42:40.780 night. They're, they're, um, basically just a fun day night for a couple to kind of laugh while you

00:42:45.920 learn. And I will sometimes ask the guy, Hey men, what does it mean to cherish a woman? And you can

00:42:51.700 hear crickets in the room. Cause we just don't know. Cherish a woman, a lover. Yeah. Well, let's get a 1.00

00:42:57.460 little more fine than that, you know? And, and so, uh, just a silly example, uh, silly to some men,

00:43:04.900 uh, very serious for a woman. But let's say you, you show up at your wife's work when you know, 0.92

00:43:09.680 she's going to have a really challenging meeting or something like that. And you deliver her favorite,

00:43:14.420 uh, coffee drink, uh, from a favorite, uh, you know, barista. And you, you write a little note

00:43:21.300 on the lid and you just leave it on her desk. You may not even see her and you do that. All right.

00:43:25.860 That's cherishing a woman. That's saying, I'm thinking about you and I'm really, uh, I really

00:43:32.700 care about how your day's going. That's what we mean by cherishing a woman. So the book is filled

00:43:37.680 with all kinds of tips like that on how you can do those things as well as many others to bridge the

00:43:43.200 gender gap. But I'm glad you asked the question because it's a big one. Yeah. And then, you know,

00:43:47.920 this idea of, uh, communication, uh, you know, what's something that's going to happen up in marriage

00:43:52.560 every now and what's going to happen inevitably is arguments. You're going to have disagreements.

00:43:56.900 And I think a lot of people have this idea that a happy marriage is an, a marriage that where they

00:44:01.360 never argue, you never raise your voice at each other. Um, but is fighting really bad for a marriage

00:44:07.700 or can it actually be good for a marriage? Yeah. I appreciate that question too, because as I

00:44:12.440 just mentioned, you know, we did this event called fight night and it's all about conflict.

00:44:16.660 And the reason we do that and the reason that's so popular, we'll have several thousand couples each

00:44:21.860 time we go to do one of these things. And the reason is all of us have conflict. Nobody's immune,

00:44:28.200 right? Uh, the question is how do you use it to your advantage? And here's what we tell people,

00:44:33.420 uh, uh, those live events that we do, uh, when you master the skills of a good fight,

00:44:39.660 conflict becomes the price we pay for deeper intimacy. In other words, conflict can actually bring

00:44:45.700 the two of you closer together if you know how to manage it successfully. And so, uh, yeah,

00:44:51.680 to answer your question straight on, conflict is not bad for a marriage. Uh, what matters is how

00:44:57.720 you manage that conflict. So the goal is not to steer clear of it. It's just to know how to handle it.

00:45:04.880 And, uh, of course we have bad fights that draw us apart and we have dumb fights that are just a

00:45:11.040 complete waste of time. I had a couple that, uh, told me just this last week that they were fighting

00:45:16.520 because, uh, when they went to bed, um, uh, you know, the last person in bed didn't turn off the

00:45:23.760 lights and the light switch by the door. And they both just had this pride fight about, uh, you,

00:45:30.220 you get up. I did it last time you get up and they just fell asleep with their lights on,

00:45:34.060 you know, woke up at three o'clock in the morning, the lights are still as bright as day. Um,

00:45:38.200 you know, just, that's just a dumb fight, right? That's pride. And so when you learn to manage

00:45:44.140 those kinds of little tips, as well as the bigger things, like, are we going to move to St. Louis

00:45:48.900 for your job? Uh, when our family is here in Portland, Oregon, or whatever it might be,

00:45:53.840 you know, when you can learn to, to manage and navigate the tumultuous water, uh, you will learn

00:45:59.980 to bring your spirits together and, uh, rise above you'll be in the top 10% of couples that enjoy

00:46:05.060 success because so few couples know how to fight a good fight, as we like to say.

00:46:11.000 Yeah. I, those dumb fights, those, those happen. And it, I mean, I've had those with my wife and

00:46:15.920 I, we've had, we're, whenever they happen, it's like, I'm like, why are we fighting? Like one of

00:46:19.400 us will have those moments, like, I can't even remember, like, why were you fighting? And then

00:46:23.000 we started laughing. I mean, we kind of laughed it off and that's sort of our way of diffusing

00:46:26.200 the situation. Um, cause usually as we forget what set it off and it's usually dumb. Um, so that-

00:46:33.060 We had a couple, a little while ago, they were fighting about whether their cat was fat or

00:46:37.900 not. That's a dumb fight. You know, it's just like, why are we having this fight?

00:46:42.560 Are we just, I think the key is like for us to just like laughing about it and realizing,

00:46:46.880 okay, we just, we're human and we just got wasted five minutes of our lives. Um, so we've

00:46:53.420 been focusing on what to do to prepare for a marriage, but a lot of folks are listening

00:46:56.960 to this. Um, they're in a marriage. It's not so great. It could be better. They're having

00:47:03.380 problems. Do these tips apply to them if they, you know, do these things that they, they can

00:47:08.500 help strengthen and possibly save their marriage?

00:47:11.580 Yeah, absolutely. In fact, uh, you know, this assessment that I've been talking about, we

00:47:16.120 designed it for pre-marriage and, and kind of pre-engagement, you know, those couples on the

00:47:22.480 edge of, of commitment. Um, and what we discovered is, uh, it's applicable to any age or stage. Um,

00:47:30.860 you know, it doesn't matter whether you've been married for 30 years or, uh, or three, three years,

00:47:36.520 or you've just been dating for three years and you're thinking about getting married. Um, you know,

00:47:41.620 we all deal with these same issues and those issues are, are love and communication and conflict

00:47:47.860 and bridging the gender gap and attitude and expectations and, and all this stuff that we've

00:47:53.240 been, been talking about. And so that's why, uh, we actually, uh, now use this Symbus assessment

00:47:59.720 with any age or stage.

00:48:01.460 Fantastic. Well, Dr. Perry, this has been a great conversation. Where can people learn,

00:48:04.820 um, more about your work? I think you mentioned, uh, is it Symbus.com they can go to?

00:48:11.060 Symbusassessment.com and that's S-Y-M-B-I-S. That stands for saving your marriage before

00:48:17.660 it starts. That's the title of, uh, our book. And by the way, there's, there's her workbook

00:48:23.360 that, uh, people can go through that together. There's even a DVD if they want, but, uh, they

00:48:28.820 can find all of that on our website, our primary website, which is less and leslie.com less

00:48:36.020 and leslie.com. And, um, that's L-E-S and then the word and A-N-D and then Leslie L-E-S-L-I-E.com.

00:48:44.520 Um, and of course there's a link there to the Symbus assessment that we've been talking

00:48:48.380 about too.

00:48:49.240 Fantastic. Well, Dr. Les Parrott, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:48:54.420 Hey, my, my honor to do it. And thanks for having me on.

00:48:56.960 My guest today was Les Parrott. He is a clinical psychologist specializing in marriage and family.

00:49:02.040 Uh, he's the coauthor of the book, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. You can find more

00:49:06.200 information about his work at, uh, lesandleslie.com. Or like, as he said in the podcast, you can take

00:49:12.620 his Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts assessment at symbusassessment.com. Uh, and be

00:49:18.900 sure to check out the book on amazon.com, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. Also check out the

00:49:22.800 show notes at aom.is slash parrot. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness

00:49:39.000 Podcast. For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at

00:49:42.520 artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy the show and have gotten something out of it, I'd really

00:49:46.600 appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It really helps us out a lot. As

00:49:50.680 always, thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to

00:49:54.240 stay manly.

00:50:09.000 Thank you.

00:50:10.460 Thank you.

00:50:10.740 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - September 29, 2016

#239： Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript