Why modern relationships feel harder than ever

We are Faith and Fury. Love and Fight. This is the Human Equation, where every voice counts

and every true cuts deep. With your host, Joseph Pangaro. Good evening my friends and

welcome to the Human Equation. I'm your host, Joe Pangaro.

So while we talk about what makes us human and how we get along, I wanted to talk about

a topic that I see a lot out in the world. I have my own personal experiences with relationships.

I see a plethora of sites dedicated to men and to women of all ages and trying to address

and understand why it seems that modern relationships are so difficult. I see lots of people who

are struggling with relationships. I see them not being able to achieve the things that they want

in a relationship. And I see them having a really, really difficult time in life and it's

painful. For me personally, you know, one of the things that we do here because the Human Equation

is about being a person. I'm pretty open about my life and what I think and what I believe and I

try to be as absolutely as honest as I can about things in revealing because I think each of us

have stories and have experiences that can help other people. That's really one of the things

that you can do as a person to help other people is by talking about your experiences. What did

you do? How did you deal with them? How did you react to things? So for most of you who have been

listening for a little bit, you know that I lost my wife, Kathleen, very unexpectedly last summer.

We had a 42-year-long love affair. She was my best friend. She was my lover. She was my

mother of my children. She was the center of our lives here. She was a really, really wonderful person.

Now does that mean in 42 years we didn't have the same difficulties that lots of people have in

relationships? No, it doesn't mean that of course we did. We had ups, we had downs, we had growing

pains. You know, we got together when we were very young. In a time when getting together young

was almost the norm. People met when they were in their late teens, maybe early 20s,

they dated for a while. If they thought it was right, they got married. The problem that we started

to see is that we got married in 1983 and at that point we started to see the divorce rate in

America was really out of control. It had been building for years, the divorce rate in America

and we find that most marriages, about 50 percent of all marriages across the board,

were ended in divorce within the first five years. Then we found if we go out seven to ten years,

another 25 percent. So if you got married in 1983, the chances are pretty good that 75 percent

of those marriages would be over and done by 1993. That is a really terrible statistic

for lots of reasons. First of all, the tragedy of the people who were involved. To have a

ten-year marriage break apart for all different kinds of reasons. There's financial reasons. There's

personal incompatibility. That sex and money are two big destroyers of relationships.

All of these things are taking place in the context of a changing society,

changing society of values, of understandings, of relationships, of who people in the relationship

are. Expectations. All of these things change. I remember looking at my life at the time when I

met Kathleen. She was a wonderfully smart girl. She was beautiful. She had a heart of gold.

I remember I was a guitar player and I was a player player out there. I was always a fun guy

and I loved women. I loved old different kinds of girls. I found it wonderful to be around women

and I was easy to fall into at the time when I thought of fall in love easily. As a guitar player,

I wasn't a rock star, but we had a successful band in the area, which means we had a lot of people

who came to see us. We had a lot of opportunities. Everybody was young. The culture of the 70s,

of free love and all of that really was as I became into a teenage years, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.

All of that was happening around me. The world was changing. We had gone from the 50s,

1950s with certain social norms. Then we saw the change in the 1960s, the rocking of the boat

of social norms. The 70s was called the nothing generation, but it was really, they were crazy

and amazing times when we were not as radical really as the people of the 60s, the generations of

the 60s, but we had radicalism in us. We had new ways of looking at the world. We had a different

set of social norms that previous generations didn't have. The idea in the 1950s of an unmarried

couple living together to check it out, to try it out and see how it would work was pretty much

unheard of. It happened, but it was not certainly not the norm. Even into the 1960s, by the end of

the 1960s as the counterculture and the free love culture and all of that started to take effect

with younger people, the norms of society were no longer adhered to. Casual sex became a thing

that was extremely common. It was not common in the 50s. Of course, there was a premarital sex

in the 50s and the 40s. Of course, there was. You have human beings. They're going to involve

themselves in that. But the society frowned upon it and people pretty much stayed away from the

constant forms of sexual freedom that they saw in the late 60s, the 70s, the 80s and then

right up to the modern time, which we see completely out of control, our society. Is it strange

to see that relationships are harder when all of the things that made relationships work

have been either tossed aside, reinvented, turned inside out? Is it really a strange idea? I

wanted to comment on that. I know as a young person, I was in the middle of that world and like I

said, I loved women and I dated lots and lots of women and I was a guitar guy and we had groupies

and all that kind of stuff. And then I met Kathleen and she was nothing like any of those young women.

She was smart and beautiful and she had her own thoughts in her head of who she was, her worth,

her value, what she wanted out of a relationship. And I remember, you know, one of the things that

came common for me was that like I said, I fell in love easily. Really, you know, I saw a girl I

liked. They're like, we dated for a couple of weeks and next thing, oh, I love you, man, this is

awesome. And I said that to her and she said to me, you know, we were dating for a couple of months,

I guess. And I was trying to hold back and I said, oh, I really love you. And she said, don't tell me

you love me. You don't even know me. We only been dating for a couple of months. That statement

alone knocked me on my heels because in all honesty, I had never experienced a young woman say that

to me, you know, it was, it was just it caught me, caught me off guard. Who is this girl to tell me?

Don't say I love you because you don't even know me. And it caught me off guard so much that I could

have went one of two ways. I could have said, you know what? I'm out of here. I don't need this,

you know, I want a faster relationship, if you know what I'm talking about. And she would have

none of it. You know, this was, if this was going to be a relationship, this was going to be a

relationship that took time to develop, time to build, to get to know each other before we go

giving ourselves to each other physically or emotionally, right? And because of that,

I chose the other way. It caught me so much off guard because the culture, the culture was not

that at the time. The culture was you met somebody, you liked them. And you could engage them physically,

like very soon, very quick. Second day, sometimes first date, sometimes you meet somebody at the

bar and go to the parking lot and engage in, you know, adult activities. Let's put it that way.

And to have somebody say, whoa, whoa, stop. Slow down here. You know, who do you think you are?

I'm not one of them. I'm not one of them, girls, right? And there was so much value in that. For

me to see, see her is so valuable that, oh, wait a minute, do I really like this girl enough to

go slow, to slow down, to get to know her first, to get to know myself a little better in this

relationship. And that is what I chose to do. And really, that was the hallmark, I think,

of our relationship. We valued each other. We valued ourselves. And we were trying to find ourselves

in this new culture. So I remember looking back and seeing the relationship between my father and

my mother. And I was very, very lucky that my mother and father were very, very much in love.

They were very much a team. There's no doubt about it. For those of you know, I told you my father

passed away very early, but they met when they were 18 or 19. They fell in love. They followed

the traditional path, which at the time, 1959 is, I believe they got married. You know, they dated,

they dated, they dated for a couple of years. They got engaged. They didn't live together.

They didn't get together until they were married. And once they got married, they figured out

their lives. They moved in together. They figured out who they were as people, as young adults.

And then they started a family. You know, what do we see today? We see young people get together.

They hook up the whole hook up culture. And it's at all ages, believe me. It's every age group has

its hook up culture. But that's a factor, I think, of the change in the nature of society and

the relationships. So anyway. But what I saw in my mother and father was I saw a team. I saw

intense love between the two of them. They were physically affectionate at all times,

kissing the morning, kissing the afternoon, hugging while my mother was making dinner.

My father was very protective of her and me and my brother. He was very much the provider.

My mother was at home. She took care of us every day. She took care of the home. She made sure

that, you know, my father who was out working, you know, 50, 60 hours a week when he came home.

There was a hot meal on the table. It was a traditional relationship. I didn't see anything

oppressive in the relationship. My mother absolutely adored my father, loved him,

told us all the time how much she loved my father. And my father was constantly telling us how

much she loved my mother. It's the modeling that I saw of how to have a relationship.

Now, it sounds counterintuitive because I just explained to you how as a young person,

I fell into the modern culture that was a much faster kind of relationship, less traditional.

And I think part of that as I look back on it, I lost my father early. I was a young kid. I was

14 years old. I was basically raising myself, you know, and I fell into working and playing music

and the different kind of lifestyles that were going on and I fell into it. I never lost my

respect, though, for what my mother and father had. And I always envisioned that someday I would

get married, you know, I would get married someday and I would have a family. And I envisioned

that I would have the kind of marriage that my mother and father had. I had a vision that we

I would be the provider and the protector. And my wife would take care of the home and the children

and raise those kids so that we would together work together to make a successful family.

Because that was the model that I saw growing up. Now, my mother wasn't, she wasn't oppressed by

my father because she took care of the home. Her natural desires were to take care of the children

and create a beautiful home, a comfortable home, a home that everyone could grow and learn from

each other and become their best persons. My mother's constant comment to me and my brother was,

you can be anything you want. You just have to work hard. My father told us you have to work hard

to get what you want. You know, he broke all, he was a union electrician, he broke away from the

union and started his own business. I've told this story in previous episodes, you go back and

listen to it. But my mother totally supported him in the struggle that they had to go through for

the next couple of years going from a good union job to a basically start your own business

from scratch, from nothing. And you have a mortgage, you have two kids, you have cars, you have life

payments, right? But they did it together. They did it as a team. There was no complaining that,

oh my gosh, things are not like they were a couple of years ago. There was someday it'll be better

and we're going to work together to make it better. That's what I saw. That's the relationship that

I saw. And in that inherent relationship, there was an equality that I saw. I didn't see my

father as oppressing my mother or my mother had, you know, submitting to everything my father wanted

and just not losing herself in the relationship. The reality was she got to be herself in the

relationship because my father provided for all our needs, our home to live in, money to supply

and he protected the family from anything that could have been dangerous out in the world.

My mother then got to be who she was, right? So I always saw that as a completely respectful

relationship on both sides. My father got to do the things that he wanted to do to take care of

his family, create a business, and my mother got to do what she wanted to do in creating the family.

And it was a beautiful family. We had an absolutely beautiful family. It became the model

for what I saw no matter what I was doing personally at 17, 18, 18 years old in the new culture.

It's what I saw as well when I finally decide I'm going to get married because I go, I'm going

to be married someday. I want to have a family. I want to have kids. Not right now. Right now I'm

a rock and roll guy and I'm having a good time. I'm enjoying the world, right? It's wonderful.

But at some point I'm going to want to have all that. I knew it. I knew I wanted to have those

things and I wanted to have a traditional kind of relationship like the one I saw in my parents

and in lots of the other people in our world. My aunts and my uncles and how they got along and how

they had their relationships. It was kind of the norm of what was going on and that's what I always

thought I would want. So when I met Kathleen after a string of short, very, very short-term

relationship, then I met her and she said, whoa, slow down. I don't know what you've been doing

the last couple of years but that's not me. That really knocked me for a loop and I said, wow,

this young woman is different. This young woman is special. This young woman values herself

and I fell head over heels in love with her and she fell in love with me and we started

very, very early in our relationship. Once it got serious and we were dating exclusively,

then we decided if this is going to continue, if this is going to be the relationship that we

both see as being the one for our future, we weren't looking at it as well. We'll give it a try

and see how it works out. We were looking at it as, wow, we didn't expect to find each other

this young but we seem to be compatible and mesh in our ideas and what we thought a family

was supposed to be. How each of us was to bring ourselves to the relationship

and sacrifice for the other person to make the relationship the goal. So when I say,

over the course of 42 years, of course we had ups and downs, of course we had difficulties

as we transitioned from being young people to being young adults as we transitioned from being

a couple focused on couple things to now becoming a family and having children to raise

and all of the stresses that come with that. How do you make the decisions about what's important?

Well, we decided that raising the kids the best possible way we could providing them with a

spiritual background, providing them with as much, I don't know how else to say, as creature comforts

as we could afford to make their life as easy as they could to give them educational opportunities,

our goal was to make them into young men and women who would be decent people and would have a

great opportunity, more of an opportunity than we had. That was the idea. We were going to build a

family that was in our minds what we had hoped our family would be. I lost my father early and

that goofed up my family. You know, Kathy had problems in her family and we decided we wanted to have

a solid family and we would do anything to make that happen. We would do all the things we had to

do as hard as they were. So when hard times came up or when difficulties came up or when we grew

as people because we started out young and you know you get into your 20s and your third,

you grow, you become different people, our careers, our jobs, the things that we wanted.

Sometimes they clashed with what was going on and we had choices like lots of people do to say,

you know what? This ain't worth it. I'm going to do my thing. I really want to do this. You disagree.

Well then guess what? You go about your business and I'm going to go about mine and we'll move on.

We got to those places and we made the decision to say, wait a minute, let's think about this.

Do I want to go and do this thing because it's what I feel I need to do for me and forsake

my family? Do I want to give up my family for personal enjoyment or personal whatever

about me only? And Kathy too. Do I want to move off and do this thing and you know not have the

family anymore? And in every single instance we chose to have the family and the love life

that brought us together in the first place. We remembered what brought us together. We talked

about it openly. We had to deal with some very painful thoughts, some very painful kind of

things that we had to work through. Otherwise we couldn't have survived. But we made the choice.

I remember we went to, we used to be a part of in the Catholic Church is a thing called pre-Kena.

And pre-Kena is a situation before people get married. They have to attend pre-Kena classes either

two weekends in a row or all in a day and you have married couples that are married in the church

and they are the team leaders. Each, each couple has you know eight or ten young couples who

were pledged to get married and each group makes a presentation on a different topic about

married life. Children raising children, jobs, family moving away, sexual attitudes,

responsibilities, all of these different topics that go into a relationship. And the married

couples in the group give their experience to the young people that are there that want to get

married so that they're exposed to some of the things maybe they never thought about. And we did

this for about five or six years and I have to tell you that in that five or six years we met so

many of these young couples and many of them got married and we saw them later on when they started

their own families and you know they were always very nice to say boy it was such a great experience

and we never thought about something and then we saw some people that would come to the first

session and they didn't come back to the second session because they talked about things that came

up in the pre-Kena sessions about married life that they had never even considered and once they

started talking about it they realized they were so opposed to each other that they didn't even

get married. They broke up and they moved on right and the difference now is that in our modern

world today people don't don't do that so much. They don't talk about they just say oh it's

going to be great and I'll be me you be you and you know we'll have a great life and then they

have problems and they say no this isn't worth it and that's why the divorce rate is what it is

that's why relationships are so difficult for many many people because I don't know that there's

this adherence to understanding you know what is this all about what is the relationship all about.

So as Kathy and I grew as individuals as we grew as a couple as we grew as a family when these

things came up we had the ability to talk about them honestly and there weren't always easy

sometimes there were some very difficult conversations that we had to have and the choice always came

back to do you choose to love so I remember there was a priest that was like the advisor for

Precena and he came out and he gave you know give a talk to the to the team before we started

the session and he said what it comes down to in long term relationships you have to choose to love

it's not always once the whole excitement once the whole initial relationship and all that starts

to fade and then you have real life comes in at jobs and works and children and stresses in this

and that you can lose your relationship so what you need to do is always remember why you had

the relationship why you wanted this relation why you wanted this other person and then you have

to choose to love you have to choose to love that person sometimes even when it's hard

but if you you choose not to love then you're going to you're going to lose your relationship

and potentially your family and lots of other things so throughout our entire marriage

we always remembered that and we weathered every storm that came up every single storm that came

up we weathered it and we came out of it at a time in life probably when we hit our early 50s

when we hit our early 50s a lot of the drama of life was settled down the children were older

you know it's not like when you have brand new little babies and how that disrupts your life

and how hard it is to take care of children and function you know we were settled I was settled

in my career I was successful we made the choice that she would be a stay-home mom to raise our

children so that they weren't you know going out to daycare and all this other stuff she

wanted to keep a direct hand on how her children were raised and we made that choice together

that that was the right thing to do and it turns out we have four beautiful wonderful young people

young human beings that are good and decent people but is all because we chose to love we had

to remember I've told you before we have a sign in our house for the last 10 or 15 years

and it says it's a wonderful life and that was something that we had to fight for we had to choose

we had to sacrifice for constantly to make sure we maintained that not just for our children

but for ourselves right and until I lost Kathy last summer completely unexpectedly out of nowhere she

got sick and I lost her we had I don't know probably the greatest relationship I could have ever

imagined having in my life and while I'm sad today that she's gone that I lost her I look back at

that and I say you know it was a wonderful life and I cherish every moment of it and I'm thankful

to God that I had the time with her to make this family so when I thought about this topic

I saw some young people that are struggling and I wanted to talk about it so when we come back

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b-e-a-r b-a-r dot com forward slash out loud okay we are back here on the human equation I'm your

host Joe Pangaro so you can reach me it's Jay Pangaro p-a-n-g-a-r-o Jay Pangaro at america out loud

dot news Jay Pangaro at america out loud dot news so I like to hear from you like to see what's

going on with you do you agree with me disagree with me your stories what do you want to talk about

et cetera all of the things that take place in the human equation but our topic today is relationships

you know why relationships are seems so difficult in this modern world as compared to what they

were before so in the first part of our show I tried to use my own experience to describe how we

my wife Kathleen I worked our way through having a great relationship and the difficulties

I came with that so this this part of our little get together I want to talk about some other

things about the idea of male loneliness which is a big trend going on out there young women being

so independent that they many of them on social media they don't need men or they don't want men

men and women don't trust each other anymore they they can't count on each other anymore they're

very angry with each other you know it's it's a totally different world and through the eyes of

many young people that I work with and young people I have in my own family I see these realities

that they're going through on the ground I see them as they're actionally happening and it's

helped me to to do my research and to try and come up with some information that we can use to

discuss but before we do that I want to tell you about something that you can participate in

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going to celebrate America we're going to celebrate America out loud all right so talking about

relationships you know I talked about my own personal experience through a relationship and like

I said I feel blessed that I had the life that I had I'm sad that my Kathy is gone now but you

know what I'm a man of faith and then she was a woman of faith and we know we'll be together again

like I told her as she was as she was going as she was going passing on to to the lord's house

I said listen it's only a short period of time I'm right behind you and that's a reality you know

what I got 60 as 80 year left now come on we all know life is life is limited so love as best as

you can work out your problems enjoy your life eat the cake go on the trip is what I say all the time

right so but when I look at this I say to myself seeing all these young people and then well

in all honesty now people my own age people have been married divorced married divorced the

second time people who lost the relationship lost the loved one I see people grieving still

after years and years and years and they they can't they can't seem to get their lives together

and then they go out okay well I don't want to be alone I'm going to get a companion I'm going

to meet somebody you know and people have different different ideas you know they want to get

remarried some people are just marriage people they want to be married so I got friends of mine that

either got divorced or lost a spouse to to a disease or an accident and after a year or so they

I want to find somebody I don't want to be alone right you know it is all different kind of

relationships so at all different ages I see it I see the young people all the way up through

people my age and older than me relationships are difficult because times times they are a changing

right so when we talk about things that are affecting millions of people without them even realizing

why so is it possible to have real lasting meaning for relationships they seem harder than ever

before to build and it's not because men and women don't want to fall in love not because you know

they've been suddenly all of a sudden everybody's cold and selfish it's the world around us has

changed and I think I started saying that at the beginning of the program is that's that's what I

see has our emotional skill sets kept up with the changes right we live in a culture that celebrates

independence personal freedom self expression and those are good things those are all very good things

but some learn along the way we stop talking about the other side of the equation the side that

requires commitment sacrifice patience and the willing to put someone else's needs next to

or in front of your own that seems to be like a really foreign idea especially for younger people

you know that's uh you know hey I'm not here to take care of you I'm here to take care of me and

I expect you to take care of me it's it's a really strange situation so as an as an experience

I know this young couple and they're both professionals they're both college educated they're

both very very smart they're both very good looking uh they got together and they created a

relationship they went slow at first and then it picked up speed and next thing you know

they're deciding they're probably gonna get married they're probably gonna get married and

it seemed like okay they seemed like a really good couple they both had good jobs they

seemed to have an idea of what they wanted you know the idea of children and family

was in their picture but it wasn't their main picture you know they wanted to live a modern

a modern life with with the amenities that come with it you know they wanted to live in a beautiful

apartment in a really nice city where they could enjoy city life and nightlife and you know do

things on the weekend they seem very connected they seem very very connected and that you know

really beautiful I was very happy for them I thought hey you guys are you guys are gonna have

a good life man you're on the same path there was some different ideas about how quickly to have

a family but it was something that they were working on they were having these conversations

and me and other people that know them knew the conversations they were having and like yeah

well we will probably want to wait you know till we get through our 20s we're gonna enjoy our 20s

we're gonna travel we're gonna work hard make a lot of money live in a beautiful apartment you know

have a very casual lifestyle go to dinner and when we get closer to 30 we'll probably start with

the family you know and that's probably we're gonna put that off for a little while okay that's a

that's not an unreasonable choice now you start to get concerned about how old you are when you

have children some of the things they may not think of for any of you out there who remember

having kids when you were in your 20s your early 20s you have a lot of energy and stamina to take

care of all them kids that are running around and going to the baseball games and going to the

friends and getting up in the middle of the night with the baby and that's throwing up and

it takes a lot of energy to uh to take care of children especially a couple of children within

a couple of years of each other and you know when I heard this I'm like hey you know that's

that's a good plan you guys are making a good plan I think it's a good idea I said but when you're

in your 30s you're not gonna have the energy you have now in your 20s but that's a personal choice

you know as long as you know going into it that it's a huge commitment to raise children and to

raise them properly and we all know that relationships uh relationships change once you bring children

into the picture right they you no longer have all the free time you had before you no longer

have the money that you had before you don't have the freedom to just hey let's go to cancun this weekend

you know you can't do that you have children they need stability they need uh they need good

clothes they need good food they need good medical care there's a lot that goes it changes a

relationship and I think a lot of people are not prepared for that and that commitment that goes

into that and the more I looked at this um I saw the commitment thing is probably the biggest

problem for this couple that I'm talking about and other young couples I know that that broke up

is that the commitment part of it was not something that they were prepared for the culture has told

them that each one of them is the most important their desires are the most important uh their goals

are the most important and the other person should go along with them should help them should

support them completely in it and for some people I know that works I know some of you

after going well that's the relationship I have and we are completely on our doing our own

things and we support each and that's great if that works for you I think it's great the reality

though is it doesn't work for most people and hence again that's why we see this huge

divorce problem relationships ending badly um it can lead to financial ruin emotional ruin

it's destructive we all know people that were madly in love had a great relationship

and then a tragedy struck their family maybe they lost a child to an illness or to an accident

and we see that they never really recover from that um some people do I know people who have lost

children tragically and they manage to work their way through it and come out on the other side of

it uh hole and united but I also know quite a few people who lost a child um and they didn't make

it through it it is it is too stressful it it creates cracks in a relationship and people are

not prepared for that right they're just not prepared for it so we see relationships fall apart

but it's the commitment part that I see with this one young couple and I have to be honest in that

I tried to to talk to them you know I know them and I talked to each one of them independently

they had some difficulties some things came up in their lives outside of their relationship work-wise

family-wise that were extremely difficult that were emotionally draining and what I saw was

that instead of coming together uh to fight against the problem what they did is they retreated

into their own camps uh their own needs uh to be met and the other person's needs where yeah I

understand them I hear them but my needs are more important um you should get over that you should

change you should be differently you know the word should is a very powerful powerful word that

causes a lot of problems when you say to somebody you should do this you should do that I should do

this it's an expectation in a word the word should instead a better word I think is could I could

do it differently I could do it the way you want I could see the problem differently so when we

start shooting each other you should have known I was upset you should have known I wanted to do that

when you use that word should you are creating a situation that creates distance between people

and when I see this young couple I realized that they had these things happen

in their lives and it was yeah they were they were pretty serious things that happened to them

to a series of two or three things that happened to them within eight months nine months of their

lives and the whole idea was one partner was saying okay that's enough time you should be over

this by now and any other partner would say well I'm not and I need you to be this and that

person the other person says well uh I would be over this if it were me so I think I think you're

dragging this out you're doing it for different reason and that led to unfortunately a gap in

their relationship they separated into their own camps and their expectations of each other

in a moment of crisis revealed that they were really not together they were really not willing to

commit to each other to sacrifice for each other for the relationship right so the reason I told

you the story of me and my wife Kathy is that when we went through those same exact kind of things

we chose the relationship and the sacrifice for the other person right sometimes it was me sometimes

it was her but we chose to do those things to maintain the relationship this young couple

they didn't and I remember speaking to the young man and saying you know I think the reality here is

that yes this last year has been very difficult for you as a couple as individuals I said but the

reality seems to me that you are not ready for a long term committed relationship because you've

only been together a couple of years to begin with and in a couple of years to have the difficulties

you're having really tells you that you are not ready for a long term committed relationship to

each other because you're breaking down in only two years in two years you should still be on the

greatest high of the entire world you have jobs you have your health you have money you have the

ability to do whatever you want to do you should be happy say I even I used the word should

you would think you would be happy and that that would be this would be your glow up time this

would be amazing because you don't have the responsibilities of children and a mortgage you can

do whatever you want to do and instead of it being wonderful and outrageous and great it's become

difficult and depressing and upsetting and neither one of you are happy I said and when I look at

and I see what both of you were doing and saying it becomes very clear to me that you as the man

are not prepared to have a long term relationship with a woman that requires you to

put her basically on a pedestal now I know a lot of people and younger people out there right now

are jumping up and down you're going crazy but the reality is both partners need to do that

you know both partners need to put the other person on a pedestal and say I am here for them

and put that person's needs first and if both of you do that then you move forward as a couple

because then you have a united front what this young couple was doing is that they had difficulties

pop up in their life and how the difficulties affected them they went into their own camps

and they said well you know I've given and I'm tired of giving now I want you to give more I want

you to change I want you to do this that and the other thing instead of working together

to figure out how to move forward and I don't know that the relationship can be saved I think

they both want to save the relationship they've said that but the reality is we're not seeing the

we're not seeing the changes in the two of them that need to be made they're not looking at the

problem as a team they're looking at the problems that they're facing as individuals and what's best

for each one of them and that is a road to ruin that's what leads to divorce that's what leads to

loss of love loss of intimacy loss of caring when you have to do things on your own and you don't

feel cared for you know when you don't feel cared for it and I and I see that happening to this

young couple and I feel bad for him I've seen other young couples go the same way and that's

why I want the juxtapose yeah Kathy and I went through really difficult times really hard times

outside of our family inside the family all kinds of things but we always made the choice to choose

the other person first put them first deal with their emotional needs their physical needs first

and save the family and the relationship and over time that's the greatest satisfaction

that we had you know we made it to 42 years and we would have gone on into the sunset as two old

people you know sitting in their own drooling on each other we would have had more years had

God given Kathy more time but the reality is we made it for 42 years a lot of people don't this

young couple and other young couples I see they're struggling with this modern society and what it

dictates for them and sometimes that can be very difficult so some of the points you know

the culture shifts to hyper individualism and that's that's what I see happening you know it's

it's about me and we're both going to be in this together but it's it's about me and the other

persons worried about them and they don't see forward they want connection without inconvenience

okay intimacy without vulnerability you know when you give your body to another person whether

you're a man or a woman you share intimacy with another person that is a special and sacred

thing to do right it is it is it is the sharing you know it religiously you know when you get married

the priest tells you you know you know two people into one you know two people become one person

symbolically in lots of wedding ceremonies you'll see people take two candles

uh each carry a candle up to the altar and they light one candle and they extinguish the two

they but they were carrying once that middle candle is lit symbolically that's describing

we were individuals we are now one and therefore when you're one caring about your spouse first

and foremost is natural because you're in that one candle it's your life it's what you're all

about now and I see that that's that whole idea of compromise and working together when it's

difficult sacrifice is really hard for for people you know the readiness for a commitment I kind

of talked about that being relationship ready means emotional maturity not just desire you know we

all get desire everybody oh I see somebody oh she's so hot he's so hot there's so it's beautiful

I want to be with her I want to be with him he's so great oh he's got great job and he's

oh it's fantastic and that fades away over time that those kind of things fade away over time

and it is the long term love that you build for common goals for a common desire and I don't know

you know again we we can look to a lot of things in religion religion was such a big part of

people's lives not so much anymore which is unfortunate we see the downfall of our society the more

we remove we remove religious teaching and God from our lives the more we take God out of our

lives the more we see the human creature can't make it on its own because in reality the

relationship between the people humans and God is a lot like marriage that's that's why when you

get married you're supposed to stay married you've you've made a commitment right like God made

a commitment to us and I'm not getting into the whole religious thing here I don't want to do that

I'm saying the the conceptual points are the same and they're there and as the more we remove

God the more we see our beliefs change our commitments change our desires our understanding of

what's right and wrong comes apart right now we've seen that in our society in general and

specifically as we go so commitment the readiness for commitment means to take those two candles

light one in the middle and extinguish that other doesn't mean you can't be yourself doesn't

mean you can't be a person a good and have your own thoughts and ideas that's not what that means

it means adding to your situation this concept of family whether it's just a two of you or the

two of you in children you become a family you become connected at the spirit and therefore what

you do for the other person you're doing for yourself because it makes the relationship stronger

it makes it makes it healthier right and if the other person does the same thing that's how you

get a 42-year marriage right so we have commitment problems the independence thing I see I see a lot

of young women out there on social media and they're posting all over that how how how independent

they are and that that's good that's good I have a daughter she's brilliant young woman she's

a professional she's independent well it's good to be independent and to be able to take care of

yourself you have to understand what each person wants in a relationship it's kind of funny when

you watch that these young women are on here I got my own job I can buy my own things I got my own

house why doesn't man find that attractive well men don't find those kind of things attractive that's

what that's what men do right men are looking for a woman to be a partner to help them raise children

together to love them they're looking for a softness in a person they're looking for someone that

they can make a family with and a lot of these guys that are that are not suitable for taking care

of a woman for treating her properly respectfully helping her to grow you help each other to grow

see the idea you work as a team but is it this independence thing we're seeing that it's

leading to two things number one we see a lot of young women very very frustrated that they

can't have the relationships that they want they can't find someone that they're happy with

to be together and then we see the young men on the on the male loneliness crisis because they

they can't provide of themselves the way the women in their lives need them to be they can't

sacrifice for them and therefore the two different groups men and women are not getting along

very well and they're not being able to build relationships so we're seeing these this male

loneliness crisis where men are saying I'm just giving up on the dating world and these women I'm

giving up on the dating world men are horrible they you know they only draw for themselves well

it really comes back to this hyper individualism and commitment and respect and understanding

what a long term relationship is it is a sacrifice for the other person it is a sacrifice

to a degree of yourself you want to become one with the other person right and that's what I

think is missing in a lot of relationships today and I think that's why it's so hard

for people to find that relationship that they truly want so I want you to think about this

please write to me Jay Pangaro at america out loud news let me know what you think tell your

friends and young people to listen to this program have them have them listen to it maybe it'll

provide some insight for them but in the meantime remember be a part of the solution not a part

of the problem you'll be back before you know it