Most Replayed Moment: Why Does Commitment Feel So Scary? How to Build a Strong, Lasting Relationship

Steven Bartlett (0:03)

Thinking about the history of relationships, I often wonder how many of the rules of relationships that we've been handed by society are now invalid, or maybe were never valid. So we have these sort of constructs of like marriage and monogamy, and even like heterosexuality, all these things that have been passed to us through religion and through history. I was looking at some stats about marriage, and it says that in 2019, marriage rates for opposite sex couples fell to the lowest on record since 1862 That's in the UK, and in the US, marriage rates have been declining since the early 1970s. I'm not married, but I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I should be or not. I actually had a conversation recently with my partner where I said, do you want to get married? It was abundantly clear that she does want to get married. But then I asked why, and really it seems like it was really just more for the wedding than for some kind of legal contract that we signed with the government. So I'm really wondering, based on everything we know about history and the tradeoffs of marriage, should I be getting married?

Paul C. Brunson (1:12)

Yes, because your partner wants to.

Steven Bartlett (1:14)

Is that reason enough?

Paul C. Brunson (1:16)

But here, all right, so I think the institution of marriage, what you're going to see, this is my prediction, is that because nuclear families.

Steven Bartlett (1:30)

What do you mean by nuclear family?

Paul C. Brunson (1:31)

So having to, well, it's interesting, there's different perspectives now on nuclear family, but I look at it as you have two partners and children, and that creates the nuclear family.

That becomes an economic unit which drives a society, and as that has disappeared, there's been less of a base to drive society, per many researchers. So as a result, what I believe is going to happen, as we see right now in Singapore, as we see right now in China, as we see right now in Japan, you're going to see government heavily involved in incentivizing marriage. And marriage is already incentivized right now in terms of tax benefits, being able to leave assets to your partner, leave assets to family members. So as a result of the decrease of marriage and decrease of nuclear families, you will see government step up even more to incentivize. So you're going to see all types of benefits being thrown at people to get married. Especially as you not only see marriage rates decline, but as you also see birth rates declining as they are. Now, your question around what should you do is that this is a question around values. And this is a question that I believe is very important to have early on. You know, I was saying, you know, when you meet someone, you should lay out exactly what you want. This is a very important question to have early, early on. Now, in terms of where you are with your partner, I would say that if she is for, if she is pro this, and you are indifferent, it feels like you're indifferent, not anti, but indifferent.

Steven Bartlett (3:34)

Yeah, I think I'm somewhat agnostic to it. However, I can call out a bunch of downsides to getting married.

Paul C. Brunson (3:43)

Really? Like?

Steven Bartlett (3:45)

Well, again, I don't know because I'm not married, so all the married people are like screaming at me.

I know this because they DM me. They've been DMing me for many, many years since I started The Diary Of A CEO, because in some of those early episodes, I was really quite against it. But over time, I've kind of developed my thinking here. I just wonder, I can't understand the first principles as to why having a government or religious contract with somebody is going to increase the probability of success in the union of love. There's obviously the issue with the pre and up situation. I actually don't have this concern with my partner. So I think you've met her, haven't you? You've met her, yeah.

Paul C. Brunson (4:23)

Yeah.

Steven Bartlett (4:23)

From a distance.

Paul C. Brunson (4:24)

Yes, from a distance.

Steven Bartlett (4:25)

Yeah, I don't have a concern that she's going to try and bankrupt me or that I might try and bankrupt her.

So that's not really a concern.

The whole charade of doing a massive wedding, I think, is a little bit weird. I think, why can't we just have lots of events over the next 50 years where we bring our friends and family versus one? I've also watched a couple of my friends at the moment who are getting married. The two years of pain and heartache and canceling date nights so that they can afford this one wedding day, feels highly illogical to me. I've got one particular friend who is having to cancel so much of their everyday joy to save up for this one big event which is stressing them both out. I don't think they're going to have, well, I don't think he's going to have a great time at the wedding anyway, because he seems so stressed by it all. I sometimes hear that people can't get out of their marriage without having to file a divorce thing with through lawyers and going to court and battling out in court. I just think you should be free to leave if you want to leave. I don't know, I just think this is a terrible analogy and completely unrelated, but like in football, many of the problems we see with my favorite club, Manchester United at the moment, is we've got people on five-year contracts who we just can't get rid of. They want to go, we want them to go, but because we signed these long contracts with them, it's incredibly difficult and now these players are being thrown in the back room and they're not playing football and we're like just completely ignoring them because we can't get out the contract.