Ehrlicher Rat für Beziehungen

0:00Find a woman who kills drama instead of starting it, makes life quieter, not louder, tells you you're better than these guys, you can beat them, and wants you to win even more than you do. Then become the man required to attract that woman and marry her the moment you find her. >> Yeah, that was just a tweet about my life. Um, when I was debating uh whether I should marry Leila, I had a mentor who I reached out to and I was like, "Hey, what do you think?" Um, and I was actually like just not sure. I just honestly came in with like open hands here. I was like, "I don't know." Um, because my relationship with Ila was different than any other relationship that I'd been in before. And he said, "Look at your stats.

0:51And this is probably the most hormosian of [laughter] of of of love story decisions, but he was like, "Your business is up. You're eating better. You're working out. You are less stressed than you were. And she has done all of these things to create the space for you to do that." And when I translated into like what has changed about my life rather than you know do I feel the chemical compound of whatever um it actually made it a much easier decision for me to say you know what this makes sense which was by the way my proposal to Ila I think it would make sense if we got married was my actual

1:31>> um which wasn't a question it was a statement she was like is that a proposal and I was like well are you saying yes [laughter] she was like yeah I was like okay then we need to get you a ring and that was that That was horos there was there was there. Yeah. So that's Hermosi's romance. But anyways, um I think that I think a lot of people chase chase the um the the fireworks rather than the the the coal the coal furnace that takes a long time to to heat up. But then it just it keeps it keeps going and it can power for a much longer time during good times and bad times

2:14>> because if it makes sense if it makes sense without emotion then it will make sense when the emotions are gone. [snorts] >> Yeah, that's an interesting assessment of the way that the human attachment system works that basically you have sanity insanity sanity again. Uh, and you should, everybody should see themselves as potential future drug addicts that are playing around with maybe one of the most powerful substances on the planet. The only issue is that it's endogenously created inside of you as opposed to exogenously given to you by a guy in a BMW.

2:53[gasps and laughter] That's what falling in love is. Falling in love is choosing to deal yourself drugs for between 6 and 24 months. >> Yeah. During that time, you cannot trust your own decision-m. >> So, you need to make as rational of a decision up front >> in the belief that that will be where you end up on the other side of this window.

3:19For the terminology, it's the passionate versus the companionate attachment system. It's because serotonin gets dropped in the brain because you're just dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, [ __ ] drive, drive, drive, and then >> you don't sleep, you don't eat. You're like, "Oh my god, she's amazing." >> He like come out of it 24 months later. You're like, "What the [ __ ] was that?" And if you're not careful, you know, in a relationship in a [ __ ] house with a golden retriever and maybe a ring and maybe a kid with a person who you don't really like all that much and made your stats go down.

3:47Do you ever hear the uh diary entry that Charles Darwin wrote when he was unsure about whether or not to get married? >> Yes, but please but you could recant it. >> [ __ ] sick. >> The document has so Darwin's unsure about whether or not he should get married. So he makes a list. The document has two columns, one labeled marry, one labeled not marry. And above them circled are the words this is the question. On the promarriage side of the equation were children if it please God, constant companion and friend in old age who will feel interested in one object to be beloved and played with. After reflection of an unknown length, he modified the foregoing sentence with better than a dog. Anyhow, he continued, "Home and someone to take care of house, charms of music and female chitchat. These things good for one's health, but terrible loss of time." Without warning, Darwin had, from the promarriage column, swerved uncontrollably into major anti-marriage factors, so major that he underlined it.

4:45This issue, the infringement of marriage on his time, especially his work time, was addressed at greater length in the appropriate not to marry column. Not marrying, he wrote, would preserve freedom to go where one likes, choice of society, and little of it. Conservation conversation of clever men at clubs not forced to visit relatives and bend in every trifle to have the expense and anxiety of children perhaps quarreling loss of time cannot read in the evening fatness and idleness anxiety and responsibility less money for bucks and if many children forced to gain one's bread even experts in mating and evolution struggle with big decisions [ __ ] sick the line that I remember from that most vividly was for books.

5:29[laughter] It's just such just such a like and less money for books. >> Yeah, that will be in there. I want to do another one. I don't mean to just read [ __ ] that exists. >> Have you ever read Richard Feman's love letter to his wife? >> Uh, no. I read the pleasure of finding things out. >> Okay. >> But I love Fineman. Love, love. I mean, you can see a lot of influence. >> I might I might not be able to say this without crying, which is going to be very embarrassing, but I'm going to try.

5:55October 17th, 1946. Dear Arlene, I adore you, sweetheart. I know how much you like to hear it, but I don't only write it because you like it. I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write you. It is such a terribly long time since Alash wrote to you, almost 2 years. But I know you'll excuse me because you understand how I am stubborn and realistic, and I thought there was no sense to writing. But now I know, my darling wife, that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I will always love you. I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead.

6:38But I still want to comfort and take care of you. And I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you. I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until now that we can do that. What should we do? We started to learn to make clothes together or learn Chinese or get a movie projector. Can't I do something now? No.

7:01I am alone without you. And you were the idea woman and general instigator of all our wild adventures. When you were sick, you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn't have worried. Just as I told you then, there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways, so much. And now it is clearly even more true. You can give me nothing. Yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else.

7:32But I want you to stand there. You dead are so much better than anyone else alive. I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don't want to be in my way. I'll bet you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend except you, sweetheart, after 2 years. But you can't help it, darling. Nor can I. I don't understand it for I have met many girls and very nice ones, and I don't want to remain alone. But in two or three meetings, they all seem ashes.

8:09You only are left to me. You are real. My darling wife. I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead. Tough.

8:39to play the reverse out. It's like, would I want Leila to write that letter? And I don't think I would unless she was happy writing that letter. [sighs and gasps] But if the removal of me as a contingency of reinforcement for her um meant that she couldn't find that in somebody else um would sadden me and so I've already so like with Lelay life I've told her I tell her a lot um I was like I'm going to die before you statistically there's I'm for sure going to die before you.

9:22>> She's a little younger. she's younger and I'm like and she exercised like she's for sure going to live longer. And I was like, >> I want you to spend as little time as humanly possible from the time that I die to finding somebody else. >> Um, you do me no service by making yourself miserable. And you do not discredit or dishonor me by finding somebody else to spend your life with. So yeah, just I I only think about that from reverse. There's a the joy of melancholy.

9:55>> Yeah. >> Is an interesting kind of emotion that's kind complex, >> you know, this strange >> think wallowing >> satisfaction in wisfulness. >> Um, and yeah, wallowing wallowing is maybe a little a little more loaded. Mhm. >> Um but melancholy, you know, there can be odd joy and sadness and and a kind of beauty that you get to experience after something is gone that you can't experience during it. That I've not had anybody in my life die. Only child with a mother and a father that is still alive. Like I've got there's no one.

10:33>> Must be nice. >> Yeah. [ __ ] Um, [laughter] but there's not been many things that I've lost. And this is me [ __ ] Monday morning quarterbacking. Uh, I don't know. But maybe what's a mood setter? >> Modern women see Ila and think, >> "I'll wait to establish myself in my career before I date or get married or have kids." But they forget we got married when she was 23 and we built this together. Love is one of the rare times you don't do life in order, but rather all at once.

11:21If you find someone that makes your world go round and makes the world make sense to you, where you both look at the same thing and say, "Oh, you saw that, too?" Like, I feel like I was the only one. I think that for high achieving individuals, finding someone who sees the world the same way is incredibly rare. And when you find that person, you should stop what you're doing and then you should get them to stay with you. And it's been, you know, one of the best decisions of my entire life, marrying Ila. And there's there's this especially unfortunately for women right now there's this huge you know put it off delay there's no rush but it doesn't actually take into um consideration two things. One is that biology hasn't advanced with culture and society. You can't have kids past you know 35. I mean, you can, but you're a geriatric, you know, and it's a ger geriatric pregnancy past 35.

12:21>> Ruthless tum. >> Yeah. I'm just being real, right? Yeah. >> Um, and so I mean, I I this is like super prevalent and I know this is a much more common theme on the show and I don't touch it very much, but >> it it just I just say it more like cuz it I think it sucks. Um, >> it's not fair. >> It's not Yeah, it's objectively it's not fair. Guys can wait the you know, their whole lives. They can do everything. Um, and you have to, if you go to college, graduate college at 21 or 22. And if you want to have four kids, assuming that you have perfect pregnancies and you have exactly one year, you know, 18 months between each one, okay, that's six years by the time you're done. And so if we if we rule out ger that geratric pregnancy is our last, then it means that we have to basically have or we you have to have your first kid at 29. Well, okay, maybe it'll take, let's just tack one year on of marriage to have the kid and be married. Okay, 28 you're married. All right, do you want to marry somebody within six months of meeting them? Let's give it two years to give our logical, you know, brain in.

13:22Okay, so 26, 26, you graduate at 22, you have 48 months. And I think that again, this is if you have if you don't want kids, then all of this is null. If you do, then you have a very small window um to piece that together. Now, of course, there's surrogates and maybe in the future, you know, like I I'll say in general, betting on I'll smoke I'll smoke cigarettes now because by the time I'm old, they'll have a cure for it. Um I don't know. I just I don't make those bets. And so,

13:57>> it's easier to work with reality the way it is, not the way you hope it's going to end up landing. >> Yeah. to to knowingly incur basically a guaranteed price for the potential of maybe a non-existent solution is probably not the best decision-m process. And to be clear, I say this, Ila and I, you know, we don't have kids. She's not 35. Um, but I think that we have these unrealistic expectations that someone is going to make our lives, that they're going to complete us in some way. when I think that for me the the the best thing that a partner can do is help you be the best version of yourself. And that may mean that you also have other friends who who fulfill other needs for you. I remember a mentor of mine uh you know he he had had a wife that well most people have wives that are not involved in their business. I'm the exception there. Um but his wife wasn't involved at all in the business and they had a very happy marriage. Uh, and he said, um, and I said, 'Do you ever like wish you could talk shop with, you know, your wife? And he said, "God, no." And I was like, "Uh, why not?" He said, "That's what I got you for."

15:03[laughter] >> And it was just such a business. Yeah. It was just a such a flippant like off-handed answer that I was like, there was actually a lot of wisdom in that. And he's like, "I don't need I don't need her to do that." He's like, "I need her to do this." And he's like, "And I've got you and you and Kevin to do these things with." And he's like, "And when I want to do like church stuff, I go to these people." And so um and I think a lot of that is because we've become increasingly remote. People live together in close quarters for extended period of time. And so it's like our exposure, our surface area with one another has gone so far up compared to how the vast majority of kind of uh relationships were call even 50 years ago. Like you didn't spend nearly as much time with your spouse. And so it was more normal to have different people or different parts of your life that were or needs being fulfilled by many people and only the ones that are confined by the laws of marriage being delivered on that. Now if you get somebody who can who can take two of those boxes or three of those boxes, amazing. But I think the idea cuz I tend to reject the idea of soulmate and I think that people have this fallacy of the perfect pick. like I have to pick this person perfectly when there's also the Buddhist perspective which you and I have both you know spoken length off off off camera about which is like suffering is going to be a constant and this person will like we get to choose how we want this to go and so I think that if you take off the societal pressure of a perfect partner and think does this person make me Will this person hold me back from my goals? Um, if the answer to that is they will make me better, they will make it more likely that I I do the things that I want to do and we have no what I would consider non-negotiables. I want to have kids, they don't want to have kids, I want to travel, they never want to travel. If those things are good, I think part of the excitement of life is is learning how to be married.

16:57>> There's a cool idea Louise Perry taught me about uh which is how people buy a lamp. So, okay, if you were to move into a house completely unfernished, finding the right lamp is super easy. Get any lamp and the house will fit around it. But if you've spent a decade and a half constructing the perfect house and all of the upholstery is chosen and the arts on the wall, there's this sort of sage uh uh effevescent uh candle over the far sides, even the smell. Trying to find a lamp that fits that perfectly cured house is really difficult and it's a price that we don't like to talk about. I say this as somebody who's unmarried at 37, right? And has constructed a pretty [ __ ] elaborate complex life. Um, it's significantly more difficult to find a lamp that fits into a house that you've designed for a long time than it is to build a house around a lamp. And assuming that you want a lamp in your house, getting the order at least somewhat right may make it easier. Now, there are lots of great [ __ ] things about the fact that your house is more big and complex and you've had fun in building it and all the rest of the stuff, but it is a cost that we don't talk about, which is how much more difficult is it? What are some of the irreversible doors that you have of just being older and more ingrained in your habits? And this is the theory versus practice tension again of well you know if I find the right person I can you know we can it'll and you go

18:28>> yeah dude but your mind is not that of 21 >> or 25 or 30 it's that of 35 or 40 >> and it's going to be harder for you to feel as satisfied with your choice. It's a difference between satisficing and maximizing. And the problem is even if you're looking for satisficing you start to that bar begins to raise. Yeah. Exactly. And how do you know that you're not kidding yourself into selling that short? We've seen I was at uh Zach Zach's wedding a couple of months ago, and this is such a [ __ ] universal truth of every wedding that I've ever been to, as soon as the ceremony is finished, all of the eyes of the older people turn onto the single people in the [ __ ] crowd, and they're like blocked on like this, and they're coming over. Anybody that's not married the next Christopher when are we going to see you know when are we going to be you know you can't you must not forever yeah exactly and uh it's vicious it's like a [ __ ] heat seeeking missile from all of the older people that are there

19:33>> and uh Zach's mom had had a lot to drink and was being super loud and came out with an absolute [ __ ] slammer of an insight where she was you know so when do you think and so on and so I I can't wait to be a Dad, I can't wait to have a family. I can't wait to do the thing. I feel like I've spent a lot of my life looking after me and I'm starting to get sick of myself and I'm looking forward to looking after somebody else.

19:56>> And she said, uh, that's all well and good. Make sure that you love you fall in love with the girl, not with the institution. >> And you see this with women because they have tighter timelines again. >> Yeah. that as the nightclub lights are about to come on, the standards have to increasingly slip. And it's not entirely the same for men. But look, most relationships that are an age gap of 2 yearsish. I think the average is 1.5 years older in the guy's direction. You can play around with this all that you want, but it's going to become increasingly diff if you're talking like over 10 years. Like, okay, like how much are you going to have in common? Very different life stages. You can get a particularly youthful older person or you can get a particularly mature younger person. But come on, like it's going to be it's going to be another uh challenge for you guys to get past. And uh yeah, make sure that you fall in love with the girl, not with the institution. don't reverse engineer this situation out of somebody that isn't right for it. Uh I think is a a good insight.

21:06>> I think there's a distinct advantage to be clear. Not that everyone needs this, but if you are a younger guy, the fear that you have is that you're not going to have the resources to attract, you know, a super eligible bachelorette. But I think that there's really deep bonding that occurs in going through hardship together. Like when and this isn't me saying my way is better. I promise. Like hopefully the end point of this whole podcast is like Alex clearly has no idea. Um but Leila's 23, I was 26 and she saw me lose everything twice and that was before we got married. And so I felt very confident that she liked me for me.

21:52>> And I think that one of the what people don't talk about is the the flip side of this, like playing it out, right? Let's play it out a couple steps. Is let's say you do have the the nice place, you have the big bank account, you have whatever income stream, all the the societal W's. You're not sure if she loves you or the institution of you. >> Yeah. >> And is there a way to know? I don't know. Well, you can stress test it, but it's a high-risisk [laughter]

22:19>> purposefully bankrupt myself to see if this woman loves me. >> Yeah. Um, and so I, uh, without being 1950s nostalgic because we weren't there and it was probably not as good as people think it is now. >> Um, >> find the person who allows you to be the most version of you. And I think that that really comes down to it. and the most version of you um I think is the highest potential version of you. The person who can lubricate the gap between who you are and who you want to be. Um you know, I've said this before, but the person you marry marries two people. The person you are and the person you want to become. Just make sure they love both of those people

23:01>> because they're going to be the one who's either going to prevent that from happening or they can be the one who's a rocket pack for you. Like what's really interesting is that there was a uh there was like a super red pill podcast that reached out to Ila um and wanted to interview her and she turned down the the request but the in the invite it said you and Alex seem to have like the only like relationship where it's like modern relationship but it seems like it's working cuz they're super you know t conserved whatever and you know Ila responded um you know we had a conversation basically about the invite um she she didn't do But um I think what a lot of people don't see publicly is that like

23:41>> Leila and I actually have an incredibly traditional relationship. >> And in some ways I just feel like Ila is the most extreme wife you could possibly find which is that she just said I will support my husband in every possible way to help him achieve what he wants >> including becoming his business partner. >> Yes. Yes. And that's what people don't get. Like Ila has done everything for me and that's the part that people can't see and like sure she'll get girl boss and like whatever you know that world wants to but like we have a very traditional relationship and Leila is also a very strong woman and I think that for the very strong women that are out there this will probably be you know chopped in a million pieces and put all over the internet but I think you just need an even stronger man. And so unfortunately with like the pussification of society especially men um and the and the flip side of like the more girl boss etc is that it's making it harder for those very confident strong achieving women to find men that

24:45>> they will let be men and the real real is that the guy that you will end up with he will not accept you quote letting him be a man. He will be a man and then you will fall into that world. M >> you will fit within it. And I know that that will probably, you know, rub some people the wrong way, but that is my worldview. Um and Ila shares this worldview and this is again not as public on cuz you can't do it in Instagram sound bites. Um but Ila's life has been one of absolute service and she just did everything she [ __ ] could to help me and she still does to this day to the point of pushing herself into health issues to to to help us win. And I think the sooner that you can get an ally that you can absolutely trust, we think about competence and we think about incentives, right? A wife is ideally like recommendation to the younger guys, find a competent wife.

25:37>> Um the incentives take care of themselves once you get married. And I will say that contrary to to popular, you know, pop culture, getting married makes you more money. So, as much as Darwin said, "This will cost me money. I will have less money for books, getting married will make you more money." And I'll say, even at the most basic level, because you're not spending a third of your mental effort chasing tail, you get a third

26:02>> the admin, the sheer admin of dating in the modern world. >> It's true though. Yep. >> Um and and you go you go from from a third of your time chasing tail with always trying to gauge people's incent, you know, intentions and all this stuff to getting all of that back plus another 3/3 of somebody else provided you're aligned on where you want to go. And like I would not be here without Ila, not just because uh she's been instrumental in everything that we've done business-wise, but she above all else created space. She allowed and and she was the first person in my life who just who who just wanted me to be me. And like even in the times when I would like I was at I was at a wedding and I was about to post something and Ila was with me and I was like ah this is a little bit edgy. I was like I don't want to piss people off. And she just looked at me and she was like never dilute yourself. And it's like somebody who wants you to be the most concentrated, potent, unshackled, unconstrained version of you. like she puts up with the fact that I wear the exact same thing every single day. I eat the same lunch every single day, the same breakfast every single day. I talk about only one topic, which is business, and I do that unrelentingly and forever for every single conversation. And she has dealt with all of these things. Um, and the the perspective that I have on this is that like after the two years of all the the serotonin hyperdump or norepinephrine and dopamine that you get from the love drug, um, what you'll have left is you and them. And if you do not fit into their idea of what they wanted you to be, then that is going to be a tough ride. And so I think the baseline is I accept you for who you are and I also accept the person that you want to become and I'm going to do everything in my power to help you get there. And ideally both of us becoming that person is aligned with the same actions. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10stage road map from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple times. And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business. What the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it and then what steps we actually took to graduate.

28:13And we've done this across software, physical products, uh, service businesses, brickandmortar, all of this. And it works. And it's my gift to you. It's absolutely free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.comroadmap. Just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you. offering.