548. Jordan Peterson Takes Your Call： Advice, Mental Health, Family Dynamics ｜ Mikhaila Fuller
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
143.07487
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Jordan Bean Peterson answers a question from her audience about the benefits of a significant age gap in a relationship. Dr. Peterson is a pediatrician, clinical psychologist, author, and speaker. She has been married to Dr. Larry Peterson for over twenty-five years and is the author of several books, including "The Age Gap Theory."
Transcript
00:00:02.240
Watch Parenting, my new Daily Wire Plus series, May 25th.
00:00:15.180
It's very distressing to see people whose families are fragmented because it just curdles your soul.
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How far should I go for someone who I care about but who refuses to get professional help?
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How do I know if I'm a hazard building with something important?
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It seems to me unwise to reproduce things being this uncertain.
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Well, what are you doing when you're talking to someone?
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You know, it sounds to me like you're setting yourself up as someone who could be maybe an excellent husband and father.
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You know, you've evaluated your life and you've come to some new conclusions and you've developed some new daring and you're becoming more educated.
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We thought it might be a fun idea or an interesting idea to take questions from your audience and have you do what you do best and try to help some people if they need help.
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And maybe the questions will be applicable to a lot of people.
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I'm Mikayla, by the way, if people don't know who I am.
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And a perfectly fine person in her own right as well.
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What is your opinion or feedback about what you've seen about relationships being successful if there is a substantial age gap of, let's say, 10, 15 years?
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What has been your understanding as to the overall satisfaction of those relationships and the ability for them to be able to be long-lasting and satisfying when compared to relationships with, you know, less than a 10-year age gap or so?
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First of all, that's generally a situation with a younger woman and an older man.
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I'm not going to comment on the reverse situation because it's very rare.
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Like women cross-culturally prefer men who are about four years older.
00:03:04.040
The major reason is that a wise woman isn't looking for another child.
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She's looking for someone who she can rely on to be productive, generous, loving when she's incapacitated or more incapacitated in pregnancy and with young children.
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And so, women even the scorecard by looking for men who are mature and no wonder.
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A 17-year-old male is not a very marketable creature.
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You know, spectacularly attractive people who are outstanding in some manner can leapfrog the game.
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There are women who I've met who are looking for someone who's quite substantially more mature.
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And there are advantages to that, I think, for a woman.
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Because as men establish themselves, they know more, they have broader social connections, they're more competent, and they have more resources.
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And the other thing, you know, is by the time you're 25, you're about as old as everyone else until they're like 70.
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You know, you hit that period of maturity where roughly people are the same age.
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And so, if you're attracted and you're both willing, then I don't see that as a problem that's any more insurmountable than personality differences or the other idiosyncrasies that couples have to contend with.
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So, I think the difference between, say, 30-year-old woman or 25-year-old woman and 40 or 45-year-old man, that makes more, or if you go up, that kind of makes sense.
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Do you think it's weird when we see, like, 35-year-old men who refuse to date anybody who's above the age of 22?
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I don't know if there are experiments of this sort, but they'd be easy enough to run.
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If you're after a one-night stand, then why not have a 22-year-old?
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Well, then the problems that you just described leap forward madly for anyone who has any sense.
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I would be concerned that I was being taken advantage of just from being a 21-year-old.
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If I meet other 35-year-old guys, I'm like, if you only date young 20s, is it because anybody who's 30 would see through you?
00:06:17.860
But once you get above, like, 25, I don't think it makes that much of a difference.
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Look, Mick, we know the personality characteristics of men who tilt towards one-night stands.
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And so, the 35-year-old men who won't date anyone who's over 23, they're not dating.
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They're looking for sex with no strings attached.
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And, you know, if there was such a thing as sex with no strings attached, then, hey, have at her.
00:07:05.460
But the problem is, is that that never happens.
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I think the argument that they use is, oh, those are women's most fertile years.
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But you don't see the people doing that, getting married and having babies.
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They're actually more into polyamory, if anything.
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Well, there is a relationship between youth and casual sexual attractiveness.
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The same way there is between maybe overuse of makeup and casual sexual attractiveness.
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Like, if you're shallow, I'm not exactly saying that attraction to youth and beauty is shallow.
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But, you know, there are 15, 16-year-old models.
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And it's very easy, if you're male, to be attracted sexually by surface.
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And I'm not trying to make a case against beauty.
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But there are plenty of beautiful women who are 30.
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There are plenty of beautiful women who are 50.
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It gets harder as you get older to maintain that.
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Your mother has done that extraordinarily well.
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And that's convenient if what you want to do is have responsibility-free sex.
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But there's no such thing as responsibility-free sex.
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They're not tying themselves together with someone for the long run.
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I think with regards to the age difference, maybe the one thing you want to ask if you're
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a young woman with an older man is, you know, are you looking for a father?
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But then, if you didn't have a father and you're a very young woman, like, maybe you need that
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I think as long as you avoid the psychopathic types that are just after naivety, then you're
00:09:56.680
all kind of the same age after a certain point anyway, so it probably doesn't matter.
00:10:00.640
And maybe there are some benefits even, depending on the person.
00:10:08.760
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00:11:09.080
Largely thanks to discovering your lectures as I was going through a very rough patch in 2017,
00:11:14.780
I am now a former truck driver turned part-time security guard and full-time law student.
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You helped me rediscover meaning, culture, and rekindled the flame that drove me, and
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I am, however, less and less optimistic about the future of Western civilization, as it seems
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that a lot of what gave it meaning is evaporating in front of our eyes, particularly with wokeness
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It seems to me unwise to reproduce things being this uncertain.
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Do you have any words to rekindle my faith that we are still, in fact, able to create a world
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Your story implies that you made less of yourself for some substantial amount of time
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because of doubt, and that you've shed that, and that that's improved your life substantially,
00:12:07.260
enough so that you expressed gratitude for that.
00:12:11.860
My first pass take on what you said is that the same problem is plaguing you in relationship
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It's always, there isn't a more uncertain thing you can do than to have children.
00:12:28.900
And so, it's always been the case throughout human history that you are bringing children
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You're coping with the uncertainty in life by picking a challenging and responsibility-laden
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Find someone and take the risk, and then the same with children, and figure it out as you
00:13:13.660
I think that there's a diverse enough range of opportunity and risk in the future so that
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a generic notion like things are too unstable is not the right level of resolution to address
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The question is, would you take on the responsibility and the adventure of producing a micro-environment
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within your own family that enables you to marry and to have children and to produce something
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for the future in a way that best enables your children to move forward with security and
00:14:02.460
And you already know you can do this in principle because you've already taken radical steps in
00:14:09.340
the last few years to put your life on a new course.
00:14:12.800
Because you could say the same thing about the judiciary becoming corrupt and law schools
00:14:17.820
becoming woke and everything shaking to its foundations.
00:14:21.280
And you could use that as a justification for your refusal to move forward in faith and with
00:14:32.520
And you said yourself that things are way better because of your new attitude.
00:14:40.940
You know, it sounds to me like you're setting yourself up as someone who could be maybe an
00:14:47.520
excellent husband and father and, you know, you've evaluated your life and you've come
00:14:54.920
to some new conclusions and you've developed some new daring and you're becoming more educated.
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It's like, share that with someone and pass on the benefits to your children who will love
00:15:05.180
you, which is a, there's no better deal than that, by the way, too, you know.
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You know, there's no better deal than a family and people who love you.
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And that's worth a risk and it's worth a risk for them.
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And there's no better pathway forward than to maintain your faith in yourself and in the
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And if you lose that or let it waver, then it makes even catastrophe worse.
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So, consider it a moral obligation to have faith in, be fruitful and multiply.
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And if you're opposed to your own existence, then who can save you?
00:15:58.400
You can also create this, like you were talking about, this little microcosm in your home for
00:16:04.500
your kids to grow up in, and then you can help them become extremely competent.
00:16:12.220
He's like, he's obviously gone through a number of jobs and become more and more successful
00:16:19.900
But if you raise your kids right and you build confidence in themselves, then they can go out
00:16:32.020
Yeah, well, and there's not that much difference between a problem and an opportunity.
00:16:38.420
Like, a world full of problems is, well, you could solve those problems.
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And if there's a problem and you solve it, then you have an opportunity.
00:16:46.080
And so, a world where everything was taken care of would actually be a world without opportunity.
00:16:56.220
So, don't underestimate the utility of your children's competence and your role in encouraging
00:17:11.380
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We've been a traditional family for 50 years, enjoying the usual family gatherings, birthdays,
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Our oldest son has been with his partner for 20 years, and they have four children ages 9
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In the last two years, our son helped a woman who was in an abusive relationship, and she
00:19:29.040
It became apparent last year they are now in a polyamorous relationship.
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Also, our 17-year-old granddaughter is now a grandson.
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My husband and I can work around the latter, but cannot bring ourselves to accept the polyamorous
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relationship, and as we have not accepted it completely, we are now estranged from them.
00:19:47.620
They have taken a different road, and we can't seem to find a middle road to gather with them.
00:19:56.780
Well, the first thing I would say that might be useful for everybody listening is that
00:20:04.340
you deviate from the norm, much less the ideal, at your extreme peril.
00:20:13.320
You know, when people came to see me who were unhappy and unfulfilled, and often didn't know
00:20:21.640
what to do with their lives, one of the guidelines that I used to help me and them navigate was
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you should do what everyone else does, unless you have a really good reason not to.
00:20:48.200
Just because some dim-witted leftist hedonists came up with a new word doesn't mean that anything
00:20:56.060
It's already very, very difficult to negotiate a relationship over the long run.
00:21:02.780
Let's call it a marriage, if you stay religiously within the normative parameters.
00:21:17.900
You think you're going to be sophisticated enough to negotiate the jealousies, the split of time,
00:21:25.040
the perilous risks of intimacy with more than one person, and you think you're going to do that
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well, and that everyone else around you is going to know how to deal with that.
00:21:49.380
Not because people don't have proclivities in other directions, but because the human race
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hasn't found a solution that's stable, all things considered, balancing the needs of children,
00:22:11.080
There's no solution to that problem other than monogamy.
00:22:15.000
And I would also say, you're doing something that's bad.
00:22:19.920
By entering into a polyamorous relationship, you're destabilizing the social norm.
00:22:33.980
First of all, that's a little on the selfish side, I might say.
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And you hope that your parents can somehow adapt to that.
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That's what they're going to do if they love you.
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They're not going to raise any objections to your strange experiment.
00:23:03.420
And so what that generally means, if you're exceptional, is that people aren't going to
00:23:09.360
have much to do with you because you're too damn much trouble.
00:23:11.320
Well, what would you do if I had been in that situation?
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Like, is a bit of it dependent on how old they are?
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Like, if these are people who are, I don't know, mid-20s maybe, and they're like, I'm
00:23:24.740
I'm one of those people that can navigate basically an open relationship.
00:23:30.120
Like, what if I had it in my head that that was me?
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Well, I think I would have fought with you until I knew what the hell was going on.
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The woman who asked this question, there's not a lot of detail in the question.
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And it's a terrible thing to be alienated from your children.
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Maybe they just said, we don't agree with your lifestyle and we need a boundary here.
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But should the boundary be as far as we don't talk to you anymore?
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We don't think this lifestyle is good for you or the people around you or potential children
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My suspicions are, look, if you stay within the boundaries of the norm, everybody knows
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You know how to have Thanksgiving dinner together.
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You know how to treat your son's wife's children.
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Now, if you throw a left curve into that, well, what are the rules exactly?
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And the answer to that is you have to negotiate them from scratch for everything.
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And so the probability that they're going to come up with a solution for that inside
00:25:00.960
You're basically negotiating a whole new social contract.
00:25:03.760
And so part of the advantage to marriage is like a serious reduction in complexity.
00:25:12.560
You know, you have someone that you can rely on for the long run.
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You can make practical and contractual relationships with them.
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You don't have to manage the cascading consequences of multiple relationships.
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All of a sudden, people are, they're not going to have sexual jealousy.
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And everyone's going to love each other equally.
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That's never happened anywhere, ever, even once, to anyone.
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Now, what would I do if that situation arose with my own kids?
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I don't know if I'd be the one in our family that would put down the boundary.
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You know, because she's probably more capable than me of saying,
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I'm not going to stand by you while you walk off the edge of a cliff.
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Now, I would like to think that I would fight it out because I don't want to have anything between us.
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And if you were doing something seriously ill-advised,
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I'd like to hope that the warning signs of that would have been there early
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and that we would have worked on it before it became an unmanageable mess.
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I think, for the woman who asked this question,
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I think probably the problem is that the issue is too vague.
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You see, now these people in this situation, they have to think through everything.
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Okay, how many times a year are we going to meet?
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Once, twice, three times, four times, five times.
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Like, I'd probably counsel them to try one dinner together
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and have a pretty decent discussion about one dinner beforehand.
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And let's be polite like we would be to strangers
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Everything at the table is anomalous and strange.
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And so maybe you meet for, maybe you meet at a restaurant
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And maybe you meet for an hour or maybe half an hour or 45 minutes,
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And then if that worked, well, if that didn't work, then scale down.
00:28:04.140
If it did work, well, then maybe you could try something a little bit more personal.
00:28:09.780
You know, the problem is, is that something terribly anomalous has occurred
00:28:18.400
Without knowing family dynamics, like, is the person who's in a polyamorous relationship,
00:28:27.340
Is it because of the person they're with that's encouraging them?
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You know, like it could be one of those factors because maybe they,
00:28:42.700
We don't agree with this at all, but we love you anyway
00:28:51.000
Like, I feel like if I was in the situation where I was like,
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It's better for me, which is a delusional way of thinking.
00:29:01.860
But if I had convinced myself that was the right thing
00:29:06.960
what I would probably want is my parents to say,
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We don't think this is good for you and your family.
00:29:34.980
And false adventures are excitement without responsibility.
00:29:40.560
And what you want to do within the confines of your marriage
00:29:51.440
I mean, there isn't anything better than a sexual relationship
00:29:57.960
That's, there's nothing better than that, period.
00:30:01.200
And so, if you're not getting that excitement and adventure
00:30:06.540
within your relationship, that's what you should be working on.
00:30:24.560
If there's anything between you and your wife, let's say.
00:30:28.700
And you're going to reduplicate every single bloody problem
00:30:32.620
that you had with your wife, with this new person, in all likelihood.
00:30:39.320
And if you have put your wife in a pumpkin shell
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Maybe you could try being a little more sophisticated
00:31:10.720
there's no punishment severe enough for people that stupid
00:31:30.940
We're dealing with a pattern of misbehaviors with our son.
00:31:48.040
how do I know if I'm actually building something important
00:31:58.080
but I'm not sure whether the path is right for me.
00:32:07.060
for completely changing my life with his views,
00:32:23.520
the goals that you have envisioned for yourself
00:32:38.220
And so that the direction that those goals provide
00:32:43.280
protects you from undue, directionless anxiety.
00:34:16.260
You know, if you're higher in trait neuroticism
00:34:26.900
That's also partly why you bring other people on board to