The Matt Walsh Show - How To (And Not To) Date To Get Married

00:00:00.000 As a married man, I look at the modern dating scene, like someone who ran out of a burning

00:00:13.760 building seconds before it collapsed. Somebody on Twitter recently said that married people

00:00:17.860 these days must feel like they caught the last chopper out of Nam. And perhaps that's the better 1.00

00:00:22.460 analogy, whichever image you prefer. The point is that I wake up every day grateful to be married,

00:00:26.800 mostly because, you know, I love my wife and my family, but also because I simply could not be

00:00:31.880 a single man in this environment. I would have already become a monk or a hermit in the woods 1.00

00:00:37.180 by now. I don't say this to rub it in the faces of people in the audience who are single. I say it

00:00:42.160 more as encouragement, really, for any who are married. Because even if you're struggling in

00:00:46.240 your marriage, even if you and your spouse have hit hard times, consider that the alternative is

00:00:51.100 to wander alone in this barren wasteland. Realize that all you have is each other. Out there,

00:00:58.400 it's dark and cold and you'll likely die shivering and alone. So your marriage is your shelter. Be

00:01:03.540 grateful for it. Stop screwing it up. Do you really want to start over again in this environment? Would

00:01:09.460 you really prefer to be out there dating during the zombie apocalypse? Again, I'm not trying to make

00:01:13.820 single people feel bad. It's more that I'm commiserating with you. Now, many of the problems

00:01:18.520 with modern dating and with modern culture in general and dating in general were highlighted

00:01:22.960 by a recent viral phenomenon, which began on TikTok, as they often do, and then spread like

00:01:27.340 herpes to other social media platforms, which is where I became aware of it. From what I can tell,

00:01:32.120 it began when a woman used her platform to vent her frustrations about a man that she'd recently met 0.98

00:01:38.600 on a dating app called Hinge, which I didn't even know existed until I heard about this. The man,

00:01:43.520 Caleb, took her out on one date and then never talked to her again, otherwise known as a ghosting,

00:01:50.200 as the kids call it now. Other women on TikTok then chimed in with their own horror stories about

00:01:54.980 the man who had quickly been dubbed West Elm Caleb, a moniker based on where he works.

00:02:00.320 And soon his name was trending nationwide. He had been doxxed all across the internet.

00:02:04.560 So here's just to give you an idea of what this is. Here's a quick sample of one of the video

00:02:09.360 testimonials. And there are like hundreds like this, but one of the video testimonials that you

00:02:14.440 might find detailing the dastardly crimes of this Caleb character. Here it is.

00:02:21.220 I matched with Caleb on Hinge and we started talking. We talked for like two, three weeks,

00:02:27.540 maybe like nothing serious. I never met this man, like literally just texting, Snapchatting, whatever.

00:02:33.920 Uh, same thing happened that everyone's talking about. He was super weird, like started getting

00:02:39.540 very cryptic and concerning and ghosted. So he ghosted me. We stopped talking. I went my separate

00:02:50.160 way. Didn't think of this man, you know, was nothing really going on. And then.

00:02:55.840 Okay. So I go on my life. I'm minding my own business until about a month ago, sometime during

00:03:03.620 December, I see that I have a, an Instagram request, DM request or whatever. And who could

00:03:13.260 it be? Who could it be? It's him on his new Instagram account, not Caleb Hunter. Okay.

00:03:22.600 Riveting. Like I told you, I'm so glad I'm not dating anymore.

00:03:25.680 With, with people like this, this is what you have to deal with. And I'm talking about

00:03:30.360 the woman, not even the guy. Now she went on in that video to post screenshots of the 0.99

00:03:35.620 texts from Caleb, where he tries to get back into her good graces after ignoring her for

00:03:39.880 a year. She, she, she turns him down and that's the end of it. So far as I can tell, all of

00:03:44.420 the videos are like this. Caleb is guilty of being rude and tacky. And for that infraction,

00:03:48.220 he apparently deserves to be doxxed and publicly shamed by women who are all almost certainly 1.00

00:03:53.200 at least as shallow and selfish as he is. So there's a lot that can be said about the 0.98

00:03:57.480 lack of proportionality. When the internet mob sets its sights on someone, local news

00:04:02.420 stories become global concerns and stories that wouldn't even be fit to air on the local

00:04:07.260 news or to be written on a note card and tacked to a bulletin board somewhere still turn into

00:04:11.680 national affairs. We could say plenty about that, but that's not what we're focused on

00:04:15.420 today. Dating is the issue. And this story reveals its myriad pitfalls in our current climate.

00:04:21.620 The whole scene is, is one big pit that so many millions fall into and never managed to

00:04:26.260 escape. Marriage rates are plummeting rapidly and historically in this country. So that as

00:04:30.640 of two years ago, as of just two years ago, less than half of the households in the U S

00:04:35.380 consisted of married couples and families. Now to put that in perspective in 1950, that

00:04:41.380 number was 80%. So it used to be 80% of the households featured a married couple was a family

00:04:47.700 with a married couple. Now it's less than half and the numbers are still trending downward.

00:04:52.740 There are numerous reasons for this catastrophic shift, but certainly one of the most prominent

00:04:57.240 reasons is that our social system for matching people up, pairing them off and setting them

00:05:02.800 on the path towards marriage and parenthood and real adult life is fundamentally broken.

00:05:08.520 So for one thing, everyone of course is using dating apps now, which are, which are different

00:05:13.060 even from the dating sites of ancient times back in the early two thousands. When I was,

00:05:16.700 when I was single, we had the dating websites. And back then you would fill out a lengthy profile

00:05:21.440 and you'd be given in return a comparatively small group of potential matches to contact.

00:05:28.120 But now those old fashioned websites have been replaced by apps, which are much easier to use

00:05:32.220 and to peruse. And most people have more than one that they monitor at any given time.

00:05:36.280 It doesn't require any effort or commitment to use the apps. And the user sort of swipes through

00:05:40.940 it very quickly, casually discarding potential matches based on nothing but a cursory glance

00:05:45.360 at their photograph. So all judgments are made visually, which already distorts the entire

00:05:51.220 process because a woman's romantic attraction is not naturally as visually based as a man's.

00:05:58.600 And that's how a slovenly ogre like myself ends up marrying a hot woman because a woman is 0.99

00:06:04.440 attracted to personality, sense of humor, intelligence, but little of that translates through an app.

00:06:10.940 Which means that many quality mates are sent to the junk folder just because they're bad at taking

00:06:15.080 selfies. Meanwhile, there are far too many choices. So the modern dating scene is what happens when

00:06:21.560 every beggar becomes a chooser. Everyone is lonely and desperate for companionship, but the field is 1.00

00:06:26.760 so flooded with options. There's such a surplus that you begin to feel like kind of like I feel when

00:06:32.380 I'm in the condiment aisle at Walmart trying to buy mustard. And there are 197 different types of

00:06:38.240 mustard. And though all I want is just regular mustard, the overwhelming array of options

00:06:43.040 paralyzes me. And I'm just standing there slack jawed, questioning whether I should be settling

00:06:48.420 for just regular mustard when I could be getting gourmet, Dijon, whole grain, honey, French, yellow,

00:06:52.880 spicy, brown, white, yellow, German mustard instead. All of modern life is plagued by this problem.

00:06:58.700 Everything is plentiful and can be obtained effortlessly and cheaply,

00:07:03.060 but it's too plentiful and too effortless and too cheap. So you can turn on your TV and watch

00:07:09.320 literally any movie that's ever been made, any TV show that's ever been produced. And yet how many

00:07:15.320 nights have you wasted scrolling through the infinite catalog and then settling on reruns of

00:07:19.440 The Office because there's nothing else to watch? Well, there's plenty to watch. It's just that you can't

00:07:24.940 settle on any one thing because your awareness that there are billions of other possibilities gives

00:07:30.380 you anxiety. And it makes it so that you can never be sure that you're choosing the absolute best

00:07:35.140 option, which means that often you don't choose anything at all. So dating is like this. Whereas

00:07:40.800 before you had only the eligible single people in your town to choose from, now you have the entire

00:07:45.980 internet. You're not confined by geographic boundaries or any other boundaries. The result,

00:07:51.980 ironically, is paralysis. Now on the complete opposite end of the spectrum are arranged marriages. 0.93

00:07:57.580 Instead of a boundless, never-ending buffet of options, a young person in a culture that 1.00

00:08:02.340 practices arranged marriages will be assigned just one, and they don't even make the choice.

00:08:07.820 Their families just pair them up and say, here you go. There's far less freedom and far less

00:08:13.660 autonomy in a system of that sort, but it is without a doubt superior to our system. We would be happier.

00:08:21.820 Every person in the dating scene right now would be happier if they were just matched up with 0.89

00:08:25.340 someone against their will, actually. Of course, even after you settle on a match and you meet them

00:08:33.240 in person, a whole new set of problem arises. It would be impossible to review the whole list,

00:08:39.000 but one of the big problems is that if you're in the younger generations, you're meeting someone who

00:08:44.680 was raised on the internet, just like you. Having spent their formative years staring at screens,

00:08:49.840 they oftentimes will not have developed the kind of interests and hobbies and rich interior life that

00:08:56.460 could form the basis for conversation and for interpersonal bonding. You also don't know where

00:09:01.840 to go on a date or what to do because nobody wants to do anything but stare at their phones.

00:09:06.720 And as the relationship progresses, if it does, you'll find that the internet also interferes with

00:09:11.900 emotional intimacy because there's nothing private or sacred between you. Private life doesn't exist

00:09:19.420 anymore, especially for younger people. People live their whole lives in public, sharing everything

00:09:25.160 with the world, and leaving no parts of themselves emotionally or very often physically that are

00:09:31.100 special or exclusive for their significant other. And then there's the biggest hurdle of all,

00:09:36.520 one which has been standing in the way ever since the modern concept of dating was first invented

00:09:40.940 decades ago, but which has only grown larger and more insurmountable as the decades have gone by.

00:09:46.920 And that is, there's no goal with dating. There's no end point. There's no resolution. There's no

00:09:52.260 logical progression. So those women complain about getting ghosted by Caleb, but what are they really 0.77

00:09:58.320 complaining about? Did they see him as marriage material? Were they even looking for a man to marry? I'm

00:10:03.920 guessing not. And if not, then their relationship with Caleb was doomed to fall apart anyway, sooner than later.

00:10:10.080 Just as all of their other relationships before and since have. What difference does it make if he

00:10:16.160 disappears after one date or if he sticks around and the whole thing dissolves after three months?

00:10:20.300 Who cares? You're just hopping into one car after another and each is going over a cliff. Does it

00:10:26.000 really matter if it tumbles over the edge after one mile or 10? The whole enterprise is so fundamentally

00:10:31.960 hopeless and pointless that if anything, the Caleb's of the world do you a favor by wasting less of your

00:10:37.660 time. So here's the reality. There's no reason to be dating at all unless you're specifically looking

00:10:45.820 for somebody to marry. If you have no interest in marriage, then all of your romantic relationships

00:10:51.160 are doomed before they start. You're building sandcastles during high tide. It's all going to be

00:10:56.580 washed away before it can be finished. You're making a series of bad emotional investments,

00:11:02.640 pouring yourself into one leaky container after another. It's no wonder that marriage rates are 1.00

00:11:08.080 plummeting. People are exhausted by romantic relationships and jaded by the whole enterprise

00:11:13.040 before they even reach 25 years old because they've been betrayed and heartbroken and dumped and humiliated

00:11:18.920 enough for 50 lifetimes. That's what happens when you take the courtship out of dating. Only solution is to 1.00

00:11:28.160 put it back in. I mean, really forget about dating completely, in fact. Replace dating with courting. Don't

00:11:33.820 waste your time on people who have no goal for their relationship because marriage should always be the

00:11:39.860 desired endpoint. Courting is the trial period, the interview process that both partners are undergoing. You're

00:11:46.540 interviewing each other for the job. If you approach dating that way, it will significantly reduce your

00:11:52.020 options. That's for sure. But as we've seen, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Does it make sense that

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00:13:10.340 slash WalshYT to get three extra months free. There was a little bit of a delayed reaction,

00:13:16.020 but finally yesterday, Tuesday, the usual suspects decided to be offended by my show on Monday where

00:13:21.560 we talked about, among other things, the perils of modern dating. And as you might recall, during the

00:13:26.980 course of that conversation, I observed that one of the myriad problems with the dating scene is that

00:13:31.180 there are far too many options which are arranged far too conveniently and superficially on dating apps

00:13:37.140 for you to scroll through like you're shopping for a mate on Amazon or something. We've talked about

00:13:42.220 the familiar irony of modern life where the surplus of choices tends to paralyze us. It breeds indecision

00:13:49.500 and anxiety. You know, you're afraid to pick one thing because you're aware that there are a million

00:13:54.420 other options. How can you know that this is the right one? Why not just hold out for the next one

00:13:59.780 and the one after that and the one after that forever? Now, I'm far from the first person to point this

00:14:04.680 out. As much as I'd like to take credit for the insight, I certainly can't. The paradox of choice

00:14:09.760 is something that many cultural critics and analysts have noticed over the years. In fact,

00:14:14.620 one of them wrote a book called The Paradox of Choice about this very problem, specifically as it

00:14:19.580 relates to consumers. Another book that touches on these themes, which I read a few months ago,

00:14:23.600 is called The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford, which I highly recommend. And he talks about

00:14:28.760 how craftsmen will use a strategy called jigging, which intentionally limits or constrains their

00:14:34.920 environment so that they can work in a more focused and efficient way. So again, we see the paradox.

00:14:41.120 Limitations can be freeing in that they enable you to accomplish one particular task,

00:14:46.220 achieve one particular goal in an environment specifically and specially designed for it.

00:14:51.480 What we find is that in a world without limitation, where everyone can do everything,

00:14:55.680 nobody ends up doing anything. I think this is part of the story with dating. I also mentioned,

00:15:02.640 as one brief aside, that arranged marriages, which is a system that has been in place historically in

00:15:09.600 many cultures, that exists on the opposite end of this spectrum. They are the extreme antithesis of

00:15:16.480 our current approach to dating. I said that even that, even arranged marriages, would be preferable to

00:15:23.380 our current system. And not too surprisingly, that is the one single sentence in a 14-minute

00:15:28.980 discussion of dating that the left has latched onto. So first, Media Matters published their

00:15:33.560 urgent headline, Daily Wire host endorses arranged marriages. It is without a doubt superior to our

00:15:39.360 system. That's quoting me. Then my good friend Jason Campbell over at Media Matters posted the clip

00:15:43.820 to Twitter. And from there, some of the left-wing blogs and YouTube channels picked it up. And

00:15:47.060 as a consequence of all of this, my inbox this morning was full of some very interesting

00:15:51.380 commentary, much of it revolving around the theme that I am a horrible, backwards, archaic caveman, 0.99

00:15:56.500 and I deserve to die a painful and humiliating death. So really just your average Wednesday, I suppose. 0.99

00:16:02.780 Of course, contrary to the claims made by my critics here, I didn't say that arranged marriages

00:16:06.720 are the best option, just that they're better than our current system. Which I'll say again,

00:16:10.900 because it's true. I also think that literally anything would be better than our current system.

00:16:15.180 A national lottery pulling names out of a hat and pairing couples up that way would be better.

00:16:20.120 You could have someone, in fact, I'll volunteer for this job. You could have someone just walk

00:16:24.280 down the street and point to random people like you, marry her. You two, get married. And that would 1.00

00:16:29.460 be better. Which speaks not to the wisdom of that alternative, but to the disastrous nature

00:16:35.000 of our modern approach. Best system, the one that I actually do advocate for, is, as I said,

00:16:41.540 courtship. You might call that dating with a purpose, goal-oriented dating, whatever label you want

00:16:46.100 to put on it. The point is that couples begin dating with the goal of marriage in mind.

00:16:50.000 Now, I've been criticized quite a bit for that suggestion as well, because it is, I'm told,

00:16:53.700 old-fashioned, out-of-touch, reactionary, and I'll gladly embrace all those labels.

00:17:00.700 But one of the great advantages of the courtship system is that at the moment that either member

00:17:06.640 in this partnership realizes that they cannot or do not want to marry the other person,

00:17:11.120 the relationship is broken off, the marital interview process is concluded, and both can

00:17:16.320 now go and seek different applicants. They don't have to waste so much of their time.

00:17:20.300 Because there is a determined end point, which is either marriage or not marriage.

00:17:26.520 And once you realize you've gotten to that point, or it's going to be a marriage, or you know

00:17:32.080 that there's not going to be any marriage, now you can move to the next phase, which would

00:17:35.720 be marriage, or just go in your separate ways. Now, there's no guarantee that anybody who adopts

00:17:42.320 this strategy will immediately find the love of their lives and live happily ever after,

00:17:46.140 even if you get married, as we all know. That certainly is no guarantee that you'll live

00:17:50.360 happily ever after. Because you have to live day by day and moment by moment. We don't live in like

00:17:55.860 chunks where you can just cross some kind of threshold and announce, well, I've done this,

00:17:59.840 so now the next 50 years of my life will be happy and fulfilled. Doesn't work that way.

00:18:03.780 If you want a happy and fulfilled life, or a happy and fulfilled marriage, you have to make

00:18:08.840 that choice every day, and renew it the next day, and the next day, and the day after that,

00:18:12.800 forever and ever. Love is an act of will. It's a choice. It's not merely an emotion.

00:18:18.780 The emotional experience of love is, if anything, a byproduct. It's not the fuel that keeps your

00:18:22.940 marriage running. The fuel is the choice you both make to serve each other, sacrifice for each other,

00:18:28.540 and remain loyal and faithful. This is another problem. There's this overemphasis on emotions,

00:18:35.040 where emotions, our emotional fulfillment on purely an emotional level is the entire point

00:18:42.260 for a lot of people. That's what they think. And the problem is that emotions come and go.

00:18:47.100 They ebb and flow. Emotions are fleeting. And so they go off and they get married,

00:18:53.060 and they're feeling the emotional rush. The honeymoon, we talk about the honeymoon, and

00:18:58.400 these days we say honeymoon, and we're talking about the week-long vacation that you take to

00:19:02.580 Europe or a cruise or whatever. But traditionally, honeymoon is a phase of marriage early on.

00:19:07.800 And that's when your emotions are kicked into high gear and all of those things, and there's

00:19:14.340 this effatuation. And when that starts to settle down a little bit, people that are guided only by

00:19:19.220 their emotions. They'll say, oh, well, I guess this wasn't the right one. In fact, I just read an

00:19:23.440 article about Pamela Anderson, who unfortunately is just divorced. I think it's her fifth husband.

00:19:31.740 And for some reason, I read the article, and it quotes her or someone familiar with her as saying

00:19:36.660 that, oh, she realized that he's not the one. So she's like in her 60s now, and she just left her

00:19:44.280 fifth guy. Oh, because he's not the one. She's still pursuing the one. What do you think you're

00:19:49.360 looking for? You're looking for someone who will give you that emotional satisfaction every second

00:19:54.660 of the day forever. And the moment those emotions fade away for even a moment, then you say, well,

00:20:00.840 this is not the one for me. Now, in order to even get in the door and have the chance to maintain a

00:20:07.300 marriage or screw it up, you have to go into your dating quest with a sense of purpose. Life in

00:20:12.800 America today is plagued by purposelessness. You've heard me talk about this many times because I

00:20:18.800 think it's our central problem. This is related to the issue of there being too many choices.

00:20:24.780 That makes that problem all the worse because how are you supposed to know how to navigate all the

00:20:29.200 choices and select the right option if you don't know what you're looking for or why you're looking

00:20:33.420 for it in the first place? Americans are experiencing record levels of despair and anxiety, not because

00:20:39.540 there's some mysterious mental illness going around, but because many people have no sense

00:20:43.780 of meaning or purpose in their lives. This attitude is brought into their relationships and their

00:20:49.040 pursuit of relationships, and it's why the dating scene is so miserable and marriage rates are

00:20:53.120 plummeting. I suggest that we restore our sense of meaning and purpose. And that's a suggestion that

00:21:02.240 is treated as controversial by those who would prefer for everyone to remain mentally paralyzed and in

00:21:07.960 despair.

The Matt Walsh Show - October 15, 2022

How To (And Not To) Date To Get Married

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