You'Ve said that a marriage must be based on trust and transparency and being

shackled together. How and for how long should you get to know someone how to set a
foundation? Oh well, you know, there's no, there's no simple answer to that. I
think that you should know someone well enough, so that you can so that you know if
you can negotiate with them and so that you have started to formulate a vision of
your joint future that you can both look forward to with enthusiasm and confidence.
So and of course, that's going to depend to some degree on your level of maturity,
but that means you've considered such things as do you have a sufficient number of
joint interests and are you oriented in the same direction with regards to how
you're going to handle Your joint careers and the possibility of children and the
the manner in which you're going to interact with your in-laws and you you have to
start thinking about you - have to start considering your life together from the
perspective of practicality and economics, I would say so it Can'T just be that
massive erotic attraction that's associated with with love, although I think that's
extraordinarily important and you're unbelievably fortunate. If you have that - and
you should do everything you can to maintain it - which and that takes effort that
takes real effort at will. But you need to ally that, with with maturity and
intelligence and the maturity and intelligence is okay, we're going to put our
lives together. What's that going to look like at the level of detail, how are we
going to handle our finances? Where are we going to live? What are our joint plans
going to be? It cetera one of the things that my business partners and I plan to do
in in what would you say that, in as an analogue to the self authoring suite is
that we want to develop an online program to help people negotiate their
relationships, and, and so It would actually provide an answer to this question in
a more comprehensive manner. Is that imagine that if you want to set up a household
with someone, then there's a lot of things that you need to get straight? And you
either do that by bringing your unconscious assumptions to bear on the situation
and perhaps clashing where they don't match? Or you sit down like conscious and
aware and articulate couple and start to negotiate what your joint responsibilities
are going to be, and so that would be well who's responsible for the meals and when
and what are you going to eat and who's going to get groceries And who's going to
pay the bills and who's going to do which part of what household chores there are
to do and how is that going to be laid out fair? And so you should get to know. You
should get to know the person that you're with well enough, so that you can start
discussing the real practical issues of life and determine whether or not you're
capable of of negotiating that. And I don't think that necessarily means that you
should live together. Because the evidence is actually quite strong, at least the
last time I look that people who live together are more rather than less likely to
be divorced. Now, that might be that might have nothing to do with the actual act
of living together. It might be that people who are more likely to get divorced, or
also those who are more likely to merely live together, but I don't think that's a
great solution for reasons I won't get into now and with regards to being shackled
together. Is that that's a complicated one, and - and I learned this at least in
part from reading Carl Jung and the idea there is that unless you've really made a
commitment to someone like a lifetime commitment and that that's a serious
commitment, one that you're not going to Back out of you're not going to take the
relationship with a seriousness, that's necessary to make it of the highest
possible quality and sustainability across the course of your life. And it's really
important that it is of that high quality and sustainability. Because the
relationship, especially when it starts to produce children, is a machine, let's
say a machine that you jointly operate. That adds immensely to the quality of your
life and the depth of your life. I mean you, you have the rope and strand of your
and your partner has the strands in the rope of his or her life, and then those are
tied together to make a stronger rope. And then that unites you across time. And
then you undertake massive adventures. Together and some of that is the
establishment of a household and the establishment of joint careers and the
maintenance of each other's mental and physical health and the maintenance of a
high quality sexual life and all of that very, very challenging. To do all of that.
And then the joint production end and care of children which which sets you up
properly for the last half of your life. So like I'm 55 now you know and both my
kids just got engaged in the last month. So that's pretty bloody, amazing and
they're. Both setting up households and and they're stepping into adulthood, and
I'm fortunate enough to have them in the city that I live in so hooray for me -
that's so bloody fortunate that I can hardly believe it. I mean we've helped them
out and tried to make it. What would you say to make the possibility of their
living here? Be something that's viable, but I'm absolutely thrilled that they're
going to be around and I'm looking forward immensely to having grandchildren and
like what else are you gon na do when you're 55, you know and you're gon na be 55,
it's good. I might have 40 more years like what am I gon na do with those years
well, so I have a good marriage, thank God for that, and that's partly due to the
outstanding moral quality of my life, my wife, who I'm also extraordinarily
attracted to - and you Know we've built a life together and we've had kids together
and we're happy with our kids, and we had plenty of struggle with our kids because
one of our children, my daughter, had serious serious health problems which she
seems to have managed to resolve. Partly as a consequence of her own brilliance -
but you know - we've set ourselves up now, so that our children are respectable and
mature young adults. So thank God for that and they've got partners who we both
really like and they're gon na have children and well hooray. You know that means
that this next part of my life is going to be something that I can invest into with
with a fair bit of hope and and and excitement, and the idea of having little kids
around again is thrilling, because I really like little kids They'Re really really
fun, and so the the shackle together is more like it's a it's it's it's such a. I
may have even said that, but it's such a cynical way of looking at it. It'S more
like what you've produced is an unbreakable bond between two beings and that that
makes both of them both of them better in every way, if it's based on, if it's a
relationship, that's based on trust and genuine communication, that's very
difficult thing to attain, because You have to be willing to tell the truth and the
truth is terrible. Generally, a horrible thing. No, I mean it's easy to tell truth
when everyone wants to hear what you have to say, but it's very difficult to tell
the truth when no one wants to hear it least of all yourself, and so marriage gets
a very bad rap in our culture and So does child rearing and I think that's absolute
catastrophe because really being in a long-term relationship, a marriage, let's say
and having children. That'S two-thirds of your life, even if you're a highly career
oriented person, that's two-thirds of your life and I'm a highly career oriented
person, and my family has been unbelievably important to me and has also been
something. That'S enabled me to be a very effective in my career because it, my
house, has been a sanctuary for me and thank God for that, especially over many
times in my life, but especially over the last year. So you should, you should get
to know someone long enough to know that you too can tell the truth with each other
communicate and negotiate, because the most important part of a relationship is the
fact that you can tell each other the truth and negotiate.