"Love Is NOT Earned" - Arthur Brooks Warns Why High Achievers Choose the Wrong Partner

0:00What do we get to late in life? It sort of depends on who we are. I mean, people have deficits depending on their background to be sure. But, you know, this is, like, this is a show for strivers. If you're not serious about life, you don't watch Patrick Schell. So let's just assume everybody watching us as a striver who really wants to get ahead. And let's talk about the biggest mistake that younger versions of you and me would make. The number one mistake that they make is believing that love is earned. So when you and I were little kids, we were good at stuff. We were hustlers. We were working hard, you know, a lot of people watching us, either they got really good grades or they were really good in sports or they were, you know, they were high, they had high initiative and they were, you know, starting a paper route and then a business, et cetera. That's what people have in common who are watching us. The problem with that is that you tended to get positive affirmation from adults only when you did something. And your synaptically plastic little brain came to the conclusion that love from the people who you care about the most is earned when you do a special thing.

1:01Now I get it. You know, I'm a parent and grandparent and I know positive affirmation. I know how it works, but it's a dangerous game, especially for strivers because they'll grow up thinking, okay, I want that feeling of being valued and loved. And so I got to go do something excellent and they'll chase that feeling through their whole lives. They'll marry people who's love they have to earn. They'll surround themselves with friends who's love they have to earn. Those people don't love them. Those are people who are using them. And so the biggest mistake that they make is thinking that love is earned that turns them into workaholics and success addicts and self-objectifiers. And what we have to remember is that love is a free gift freely given. Only hang around with people who love you on your worst day. How do you know the difference? How do you know if somebody truly loves you or not? Yeah, that's the trick because a lot of people walk into relationships that they've earned and then they find out only too late that that's the case. The biggest mistake, of course, is marriage is what it comes down to. But the whole point is that you will know when you're in a relationship with a woman or a man. If you're a striver within the first couple of years,

2:03I'll find your lowest day on your worst day. She loves you more, not less. That's the thing to keep in mind. That's somebody who sees your human side because you're, you know, like your business is going under, right? The creditors are calling. There's a problem. Whatever it happens to be where and you're lonely and depressed. And she loves you even more. That's the person that you know is a keeper. That's what it comes down to. As opposed to somebody who's like kicking into the curb on your lowest day, who wants to only see the win. You know, it's funny to say that because right now, a trend that's going on on social media, young men who are on social and they're seeing this, you know, masculinity, all this stuff that you're seeing, the messaging that's coming out that women just want you for your money, for your status that leave you to another rich, better looking guy one day. And then, you know, so younger guys today, when I talked to them, sometimes I worried, is it even worth me getting married? You're seeing the birth rate declining. And guys are like, just live for myself. Live for myself is the, what is the risk of never getting married?

3:08Never having kids. How big of a risk is that that some men are taking today? It's a big risk because if you don't do those things, you probably won't be happy. And I've got the data. I've got the data. The data of the data. And men who never get married and who never have kids are significantly unhappier than men who take those, who take those challenges, who actually make those commitments. Now, that doesn't mean your marriage is going to be successful. It doesn't mean that it's going to be like a walk in the park every single day. Hurray, it's so wonderful in the country. Look, Patrick, I've been married 35 years. And my wife and I have had 10,000 fights, part of that's because she's from Barcelona. And you know, they're very, they're very conflicted. You guys met all of them, right? No, no, actually I went over there in hot pursuit. I met her in France on a concert tour. She was studying in France and she was from Barcelona. I quit my job in New York. And I moved to Barcelona and took a job in the symphony orchestra because I had his intuition. His girl didn't speak a single word of English. I didn't speak a single word of Spanish or cut the line. Was going to be my wife. Or at least I was going to give it a shot. I mean, look, love is entrepreneurship. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

4:08Right. It's ultimate putting capital at risk. It's the capital of your heart at risk. And this is one of the things that I tell young entrepreneurial guys. If you're not putting your heart at risk, you're actually not an entrepreneur. You're lame. If you don't put your heart at risk, love at risk. You're not an entrepreneur. You're not a real entrepreneur. I mean, it's like, yeah, risk somebody's money. Boring, boring, putting your heart at risk. Now we're talking. Now we're talking. That makes sense. Because you know, what entrepreneurs, what do they do? They're willing and able to take risk and manage the risk, right? That's the skill that they have. In pursuit of explosive rewards, those are the two characteristics of an entrepreneur. I've brought entrepreneurship over the course of my career. I'm a B school professor. So that's the kind of stuff that we do. I've written a textbook on entrepreneurship as a matter of fact. Those are the two characteristics. Willingness and ability to manage high amounts of risk in pursuit of explosive rewards. Now the denomination of rewards depends on you. Once a business, you count it up in green pieces of paper called money.

5:08And you're trying to get to IPO or whatever. But what is the things that really matter? Then it's love and happiness. And that's a lot more valuable to everybody. And I want to get that. I want to get to the capitalism because at that time when I was reading Road to Freedom, I would say nobody explains capitalism better than Arthur Seabrook. It was you, so well and Milton Friedman. You explained it in a way. It's a very good company. It's a very good company. Well, you are in that company with whether you, I'm sure you know it because of the work you've done. But go back to this mirrorishing. So it's scary. Arthur, you know, both you and I are, I just celebrate it 17 years and we got four kids. You got three kids. Thank you. And your kids are doing well. We'll talk about that here in a minute. But going into it. So let's talk about somebody that's single, not those that are married. We'll talk about how to stay married, but you're single. You're looking for spouse. What do I find them? How do I know if I'm ready to get married? How do I filter it out? What are some things I need to do getting into it? Yeah. So number one, getting married earlier is better than waiting longer. This is an important.

6:09I'm about 16, right? Old school. I'm not talking about getting married when you're in a teenager. I'm talking about getting married in your early to mid, mid 20s is optimal. Not everybody can work that out. I mean, it's just fine if you get married in your 30s that can have really happy relationships too. But the whole point is you want to joint start up with a woman. You don't want a merger if you can avoid it. Mergers are less successful in startups. I don't, like I'm bringing coal to Newcastle by telling you, this mergers usually don't work very well. Same thing is true with mergers inside relationships. Mergers meaning you come with two kids. I come with two kids. And not even that. It's like you got your career. I got my career. I got my bank account. You've got your bank account. Let's merge. Got it. And that's because we're super independent. And that's basically a hedge against a lack of success. I'm like, I'm going to do everything first. I'm going to finish my PhD and then I'll talk about getting married, right? That's a merger marriage. OK, it can work. But a startup together. Like my wife and I, we grew up together. I was 24 when I fell in love with her. I've been locked down. As we say in social science, I've been restricted since I was 24 years old.

7:12I don't remember. What were you before? Were you before? No, I mean, I was a musician. So you were around beautiful girls if you were a musician. Yeah, it was classical music. So you know, it's like, oh. OK, slightly different. It's slightly different. But the whole point is I was a pretty serious guy, though. And I had my parents at a very successful marriage. My dad loved my mom. And that's the most important thing, by the way, that men, that's the biggest gift that men can give their sons. Is that you've got, basically, you have one job with your son. If you want to raise a good man, love his mom. That's the one big job. It's to love his mom. And so my dad loved my mom. And that was really, really a big deal for me. Because I knew that that was the source and sort of the source and sum of what it meant to love and be loved. And so I was after that. I mean, it's like, I wasn't like when I was 19 years old saying, where's my wife? Where's my wife? I did have, I dated and met different people. And I knew that this wasn't it and that wasn't it. But we had a strong premonition that this woman was going to be my better half, that this

8:12woman was going to complete me based on what? Based, I don't know. I mean, it was a cosmic connection in its own way. And it could have gone well. I wasn't feeling, I think, that people really know because the right hemisphere of our brain, which is where we actually, we have our intuition, where we answer, ask the why questions. That has mystery and meaning is where we process it and the left hemisphere of our brain. You know when you're with somebody and you have kind of this union where you kind of click, it's because your right hemispheres are actually in sync. And you know, there are people who talk about brain to brain coupling using FMRI machines and that's actually the case. So you can use a dating app to use the left hemisphere, which is analysis and information and all that and say, oh yeah, she seems like a good match for me. But when you're with her and you're like, I don't know what it is, but it seems like this is a person who completes me. It's the phenomenon of two hearts beating is one, which is really two right hemispheres working in sync. And you know, now it's still my no work out. You still got to, you know, you got to make sure that you have a period of appropriate

9:13recording. But then there are characteristics too. I mean, people are so funny. They, you know, they say, I want somebody who, you know, I respect for sure. But the key thing is when you're for guys and what percentage of your audiences are men? 85%. Okay. 70% of my audience are women, interestingly, because of the happiness stuff. But for men, for example, successful relationships have a difference between what men and women are actually give to each other. Respect mutually for sure. That's really, really important. Commitment, absolutely. Lack of commitment is an absolute killer. You should only be going with somebody who can make a commitment to you. Like no fooling, not talking to others, not, you know, posting thirst traps on the internet, none of the nonsense. You know, that's not what I've been going through, right? But the whole point is that she, it mires you. That men can stay with and fall in love with me, really happy with women who admire them, and women can stay with and be happy with men who adore them. It's called the adoration admiration dichotomy.

10:16And that comes from evolutionary biology, you know, back in the Pleistocene days, in the middle Pleistocene 250,000 years ago, when our brains were more or less what they are still today, I mean, we haven't changed that much since that period. We lived in kin-based groups that were related, you know, hunter-gatherers. And what we, women, females made this huge commitment of, you know, pregnancy and taking care of babies. And you needed somebody who was deeply, deeply amazed, who was deeply committed to you. And you knew that because of adoration. He's like, I would fight a tiger for you with my bare hands. And you knew it was true. That's adoration. And he needs adoration from you so that he will continue, always, always have this incentive to drag in that gazelle, daff. And she's going to be like, that is the biggest gazelle anybody's ever brought in. And you know it's true in our marriages, right? Yours and mine. I bet you that your wife really admires you. And she's super impressed by this cool stuff that you're doing, right? I mean, she's mad at you a lot because you're working too much and you're not paying enough

11:18attention. And she's like, I'm over here, right? I mean, of course, because you're a striver. But at the end of the day, she's like, that's my husband. That's my husband. And that's all you want. I'll do a talk for 20,000 people in an arena. I do 150 talks a year. If my wife is out there, that's all I care about. I'm afterward. I'm like, how'd it go? Do you feel yourself doing better if she's in the audience? I find myself more nervous when she's in the audience. Stop. I'm never nervous when I speak. Stop it. Never. When she's there, you get more nervous. I'm completely nervous. You want to perform? I want her to admire me. I want her to truly say that was great. Truly say that that was great. And if she walks into a room, she wants, and it's a crowded room, she wants me to be going, after 35 years, that's adoration. That's the sign of adoration. How do you maintain that? Well, because that's work. Yeah, well, you do it on purpose. Now, there's a lot of other stuff that you can do, too. I mean, I have the four protocols that I give couples that have been either newly together or long married that will actually solidify

12:20those tendencies that will neurochemically solidify those tendencies. Do you want another four protocols? Please. Number one is have more fun. When you're having trouble, all you ever do is rehearse your problems. One of the most important things that you can do is flooding the zone with fun. You like riding your bikes, go ride your bikes. You like binging a TV show, binge the TV show. Go to the beach. Do the stuff that you actually like together because mutually fun experiences are extremely bonding. Having fun together is extremely bonding. The second thing is reading to each other, which is actually will neurochemically bond you to each other. Reading to each other. Reading to each other. Yeah, like you read your kids. Read to each other. And it's especially important. I strongly recommend reading to each other in bed. Don't ever, ever, ever look at your phones when you're in bed. Your phone shouldn't even be with you for the last hour before you go to sleep. So that you're for the architecture of your sleep, for the function of your pineal gland, natural melatonin, all that blue screen stuff.

13:21We all know that. But the whole point is it'll wreck your relationship to be staring at your phone before you go to bed. This is sacred time in your marriage in your relationship. And so I strongly recommend reading to each other in bed before you go to sleep from like a real physical book. Like to examine example. Like last time you did it, what do you, well, every night? You know, literally, you literally read to me. Yeah, I came in last night because we're doing, we're taping the show in the morning. And so on, on FaceTime, we read to each other at night before we go to sleep. Because I'm on the road 48 weeks. So whatever book you're reading, you know, reading the songs. We're the songs we're the songs. Yeah, that's, and that's, that's, that's a, that's a lot of love for how long have you been doing that years? Is we've been doing that? Yeah. And, and particularly in the last two, actually, we've been doing it more and doing it more consciously. And part of the reason is because I, I eat my own cooking. I do the research and then I follow my own research. Because of that don't, I mean, shame on me. So reading to each other will just, that, that will give you a brain to bring, coupling like crazy. And if it's love poetry, all the stronger, the third rule is a, it's called the ABT rule.

14:23Always be touching, always be touching, always be touching. Now that's, it's actually more important for men than it is for women. The guy is watching us are like, yeah, she always wants to be holding her hand. And it actually, it's you, dude. Non-sexual touch is critically important for the production of the Neuropeptide Vastel Presson. They gives you the feeling of being big and strong. So when, when a couple's walking down the street and she hooks her arm inside his, you know how it makes you feel like you're seven feet tall. That's right. That's because that you get this Vastel Presson boost when your wife, when your girlfriend, when you're, when you're woman, when she, I'm a man. Yeah, yeah. So always be touching. So when you're sitting on the couch, when you're lying in the bed, when you're reading to her. Are you saying this to him or to her both, both? Always be touching, but I'm especially saying that to her to always be touching him. Interesting. Always be touching him. And the last is eye contact. And that's because of a, even more powerful Neuropeptide called oxytocin. Oxytocin, which functions as a hormone in the brain, is the, also known as the love molecule. It's a bonding Neuropeptide where we know our kin.

15:24And this is especially profound when we have eye contact with a loved one. And so the last thing is you go to sleep after you finish reading and you close the book and you're lying on your pillows looking at each other because your phones are long on. You stare at each other and talk. And you stare at each other eye contact and talk. That's the big, big, big, big connection. And that's what will get you back to the adoration, admiration, mutual system that you need to have a long and happy relationship. When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast, we had the choice to make it cheap. We chose knife. Instead we chose tuscanero. We chose trutalian craftsmanship. Each pair touched by 50 skilled hands. We chose patience, spending two years perfecting every detail. And we chose the finest quality at every step. Introducing the Future Looks Bride Collection. Not rushed, not disposable, not ordinary.

16:25Rather intentional, luxurious, timeless. If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here. And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.