E281: One Brain: The Neurobiology and Theology of Marriage w/Arthur & Ester Brooks | Lila Rose Show

There's sort of four secrets that could save almost every marriage. Okay, let's do it. Submission is not a one-way street. The happiest marriages are those in which men and women submit to each other. Well, I submit to you a lot, and you don't need to know. The most common thing that men get wrong is not trying to listen to understand. And that's a left-brain, right-brain thing. I realized that he was my idol. I was dependent completely on him for my happiness. So, a moment I said, "No, no, no, you're going to, number two, God's going to be number one." I felt like somebody had died. Our marriage changed completely. Also, we have our Patreon where you get access to ad-free episodes behind the scenes access and for new members in 2026. We have a special offering right now where you get to pick free March of your choice if you become an annual member. So go check that out at patreon.com/lilaroshow. Are there an Esther Brooks? Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I'm so glad you guys are here. Thanks for coming on. We're delighted to be here. Congratulations on the success of the show. Thank you. You're touching people all over the world. Thank you. It's been a true honor. And it's a huge honor to have you on. And I think we might be the first podcast to have you on as a couple. Yeah, I think so. It's true. The podcast is the first one, but you have been in my show. We have a show in Lupa Radio, which is based here in Los Angeles. And I had Arthur a few times in Spanish. He speaks very good Spanish. Very good, Arthur Brooks. For 34 years with you, I mean, I should have picked up something. No, yeah, when we got married in Spain, so he speaks Spanish. He's going back and forth to Barcelona for decades. Amazing. Yeah. I'm a huge admirer of both of you. I first saw your work, one of your first books. I mean, you've written now. What is it? Over 10 books. What do you write now? Yeah, 16 books. Yeah, who's counting? I mean, I mean, I mean, somebody has the count. 16 is amazing. It's not the amount of lines on so many of those. New York Times bestsellers. And what is so striking about the two of you together is you're witnessing the beauty of marriage and the happiness that comes through marriage as well as the life lived well. And so that's what I'm excited to explore today. Your story, you have a, I think a talk you give together, falling in love and staying in love. Yeah. So we'll hear about that. And then just this huge body of work on happiness, of course. I was on your website and I saw, I mean, I've already had seen this because everybody from the Dalai Lama to Oprah loves you, Arthur. And of course, you by extension, Esther, but Oprah saying that you taught her how to be happy. She's pretty good at it already, actually. I think she has a natural talent for it, but she was pretty interested in the intellectual basis for how we can get happier because this is really, I mean, we all come out, I mean, happiness is a funny thing. We all have our natural tendency. We have a baseline. I actually have a test that we take on the people taking on my website to find out kind of what their baseline is. And then what we want to do is understand that, find out what the big challenges are so that we can get happier. And that requires some understanding of science and changing habits. And that's really what my work is all about. That's what she got interested in. That's what Oprah got interested in. So we wrote a book together about that as a matter of fact. It's amazing. The Harvard Happiness Study, which you've referenced I know a lot in your work. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, right? The Harvard Study of Adult Development, excuse me. It's marriage, relationship lifelong, that is a huge secret. It is. And so what you find is that when that study started in the late 1930s with students at Harvard College, which is the undergraduate part of Harvard University, and that wasn't very representative that was, you know, white men at Harvard. And so it was actually expanded to people who didn't go to college and then it incorporated their spouses and children. So it became very representative and now it's been going for 90 years. And so almost 90 years. And so that follows people all the way through other lives to see what predicts happiness and health and old age. Now, there's kind of a crystal ball. What can you do when you're your age, or even our age, that will predict if you're 80 or 90 years old that you're going to be happy and healthy, healthy and happy and well is what they call it. And there's seven things that predict it. Some of them are pretty obvious, diet, exercise, smoking, drinking, in other words. Non-smoking. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, it's like what they find is not smoking, obviously, because, you know, if you're a lifelong smoker, there's a seven and ten chance you're going to die of a smoking related illness. And that's not a happy way to go. You can't be very happy unless you're an incredibly unusual person if you're dying without fissima. Drinking is neurotoxic and dangerous and there's not, I mean, they say, the old research that you have a couple of glasses of wine a day, it's wrong is what it comes down to. And the number one predictor of your marriage melting down is misuse of substances is in that study. And then exercise and diet, don't eat like an 11 year old and, you know, pick up heavy things and run around for Pete say, I mean, that stuff's pretty obvious. But then the last three are keep learning, keep an active mind, reading is super helpful. So people who are curious and learn, they're much happier and healthier, find a way to deal with your problems, get good at some way of dealing with your problems. And so everybody's thinking, well, get a psychoanalyst. No, not necessarily, get a prayer practice. That's the best possible way as a relationship with a divine is not actually your friendship with God. But get good at it. You've got to practice it. And last but not least is love, happiness is love by far the most important. And by far the most frequent, successful example of love leading to happiness and wellness is a long term marriage. Was that though of all of those different seven qualities love was the, would you say the pinnacle, the most important? It washed everything else out. It washed everything out of the world. It's like, the love is, happiness is love. It's what it comes down to. You can, it covers a multitude of sins. Yes. I mean, it's a biblical, of course. But the whole thing is it's like, even if you're a lifelong smoker, don't do that. If you're married happily, I mean, it's just so critically important. And, you know, there's some people who aren't, and there are people with religious vocations, for example. And there's some people who just never find the one, right? Some people who have unsuccessful marriages, I get it, I live in the world. Those people can be very, very happy with extremely close personal friendships. So it's love and for, and then, of course, the best you can get is when you're married to your best friend. Which I am. And it looks like you guys are. Yeah. How many years married Esther? 34 years. We had a very interesting path in our marriage. We met in France. We were both musicians at the time. And after that, we just found out, if you're one, we can tell the story itself. Well, I'd love to hear the story, because this is the falling in love and staying in love to be happy for life. I mean. So we were. It's a exotic tale, to be sure. Yeah. Right. So it was eight, 1988, I mean, it sounds really far away, but it was 1988. And we were, we both met in Dijon, France. I originally from Barcelona, Spain, he, he's a from Seattle. And we met at a brass festival. We were both musicians. I used to play the trumpet. He used to play the French horn. And he was on tour in Europe and I, I came from Barcelona to Dijon and to the Burgundy region, region. And we met there for a couple of few days. He has, he, he has talked a lot and, and wrote about how the first time he saw me, so he, you should say that. I'm not going to say that. It's, it's embarrassing just for me to say it. But anyway, we met and we met in the summer. And then in Christmas, around Christmas, I went to visit him in New York. Virtual detail. You spoke zero words. Yeah. I spoke zero in German. And I spoke no French. No Spanish. No catalogue. But he loved you. But it was like, we were, well, I was a 24-year-old man. Yeah. We were very, even though we didn't speak the same language, there was something, the, the best way to explain it, I always say, when I was with him, even though I didn't understand what he was saying, but I felt at home. You know that feeling? That you are at home. Yes. That you are not, you know, you feel so good to be there. You feel safe. Exactly. Safe at home. So, anyway, so after that summer, not speaking, not communicating in a normal way, it was mostly science and, and a lot of laughing, he went back to New York, I went back to Barcelona. But around Christmas time, I came to visit him in New York and, and so we spent a week together or something. I have to say that we were not practicing at the time. So then, right. You're practicing faith. Not practicing our Catholic faith. We're certainly practicing music. We're practicing music. And then so, after that Christmas together, I went back to Spain and he found out that there was an opening for an orchestra in Barcelona, for the classical orchestra in Barcelona. It's called Orquesta Ciudad de Barcelona. And so he said, "I'm going to apply and see if I get the addition." And he actually got the job. And a year later, long story short, a year later, we were living in Barcelona. So after that, we lived together for two years. It took me a while to close that deal. It took me a day. Were you trying to close the deal the whole time? Or you or something? I knew. I knew. I knew we were going to get married before we spoke the same language. I knew this. Because you know that. Because, I don't know. It's funny. Yeah. And that's the same thing. I felt at home. Yeah. You knew that I was home too. Yeah, yeah. And that's how you expressed it. Yeah. But I came from a culture of very secular, ethnically Catholic, but non-practicing. And they're like, you live together, you should never marry because you never know what's going to happen. That was my thinking. But I knew I wanted to be with him. So I never thought about getting married because that was not even in my background. My siblings didn't get married. My friends, nobody got married. But he. Europe is so modern. Yeah. It really is. It really is so modern. But, you know, the whole idea, it was, you didn't have anybody who was saying that marriage is the pinnacle of how a man and a woman can love each other. I never heard that. Yeah. And it was no sense that it was sacramental. So I was raised in a strong Christian home. And I knew I was in. Catholic or. No. I was actually evangelical Protestant. I converted it at 16. Yeah. I had a mystical experience at the trino while Lupe is a teenager. And. Okay. Sorry. Can we hear that really well? Well, I mean, I was on a music trip. I was a super serious musician. That's all I cared about was music. And I was on a music trip. What instrument? French horn. And I was in at the trino while Lupe, they were marching us through just for tourism. And you've been there to the Basilica of Lupe. I have not been yet. She's on her wall here. I adore her. I have not been yet. We almost went this last fall. We weren't able to go. But we planned to go. I mean, so I have a huge devotion to our lady of Lupe and she was looking at me. And I was Protestant. I mean, it meant nothing to me, but I couldn't get it out of my head and I realized I discovered at the age of 16 that actually I was 15 at the time and I went back to my home in Seattle and which was where I grew up and started the process of conversion. My parents thought it was, "Well, probably better than drugs." And they had a lot on their minds and they wanted to go to the Catholic Church. I didn't know any Catholics as a matter of fact, but I was really home under those circumstances. But the whole point is I was well formed when a Christian home and what do you do? You fall in love and when you're in love with a woman, you marry her and then you have a family. And that's what happiness comes from is that kind of love, that kind of institutionalized love is that belief. I've got a comment before we go into when we get to the marriage and then the staying in love for 34 years, you saw Esther and you fell in love and you were just ready to go. And you saw our lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City and you sounds like you fell in love and you just thought, "Whatever this says, I want to commit to the greater picture of faith here." No, of course, after many, many years and she's my spiritual director. She's my guru. Our lady of Guadalupe. No, her, this one. Esther. Yeah, Esther. Well, after. After our lady of Guadalupe. Yeah, and a little totally. Wow. But part of it is that life is about understanding and making commitments. And it's not like I'm some sort of weird arch person, right? It's commit to anything on the spur of the moment. You get to choose once, but really it's a question of discovery. It's not a question of invention. It's funny because there's these two, as a behavioral scientist, I study entrepreneurs a lot. And there's two schools of entrepreneurship. One is the invention school and the other is the discovery school. So did Steve Jobs invent the iPhone or did he discover the iPhone? And I'm completely persuaded that entrepreneurship in the business of life is all about discovering the truth because the truth is there. Now, part of that is because I'm a Christian. I believe that the truth is X stamp that that essence precedes existence. You exist, but you already had an essence because God is a plan for your life. And your job is to discover it. That's the joy. That's the journey. That's the adventure. That's life itself. And so I've gone through life with this idea that I'm going to that I'm discovering this thing. And when you know if you're waiting to discover something made Lewis and Clark knew it was the Pacific Ocean, right? And when I when I saw her, it's like, I went home after that week in Dijon. You know, I said, Dad, call my dad at the moment. I think I'm going to marry. He says, great. I want to meet her. I said, well, I got some problems. You know, I got some problems. She'll speak English. She doesn't live in the United States and she doesn't know this nor am I sure she believes in marriage. And so there was it was a project. Let's just say it was a project. Okay. I want to explore the project. I got to ask this whole idea of knowing through discovery. And first, you're open to the discovery. You're kind of primed. You have to, it sounds like part of it. You were primed for the discovery in Mexico City because you were already formed and inculcated in this Christian home. Not that God couldn't obviously give us, you know, any moment of disc of revelation because God can do that at any moment. redirect us. For sure. But grace builds on nature. So you were already formed to perceive the spiritual things as a good and and see in the eyes of our ladies, something deeper to bring you even closer to Jesus Christ your son, right? Similarly with Esther, when you first saw her, you were already primed for marriage because of your faith. It sounds like. Yeah, I knew I was going to get met for sure. You knew. There was a 0% chance. That's a very good point. It's really hard to find good content to watch with my kids for when they are allowed to have screen time. I'm always on the lookout for low stimulating, story driven and values based kids content. That's why I'm very excited about brave plus. Brave plus is a new streaming platform with content that reinforces our values instead of undermining them. 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These are the products that I use for myself at home, as well as for my babies. Head over to everylife.com/Lyla today and use my code "Lyla" for 10% off your first order. Support babies and mothers and sign yourself or love to one up and their baby today over at everylife.com/Lyla. But I want to ask both of you this, because it sounds like you also had this feeling of he's home, even though you weren't fully realizing what that looked like. So many people, when they are maybe even open to marriage and they're dating or there are just, it could be a drop search, either two or calling. Like what is my calling? What is my cause? Certainly, what is my relationship? There's confusion, because they meet someone, they think there's a spark or there's something special, then it's totally all wrong. They meet someone else, there was no spark, but then they sort of get to know them more and they're like, "This is all right." I think this idea is very beautiful if you see someone you know, and it's so simple, it's clean. There's this vision there and confidence, but not very few people, maybe not very few, but not many people that I talk to have that experience. Why is that? Well, particularly today, right? Yeah, and I would say two things. A lot of times you think that that's what it is and it isn't. That's possible too. You say, "Oh, yeah, because we're getting far too aided with somebody, but that's the wrong person. That can also happen." And sometimes, I think that that's what I see with the young people that I know and I talk to, there's a fear of rejection, there's a fear of failure, and that kind of paralyzes a lot of people who agree with me about just taking the risk saying, "No, I'm selling my car and my trumpet and I'm going to New York because I really, I want to be home with this guy." And I was not a religious person, but I had that thing and I took a risk and I remember when the plane landed in New York, this little young old 25-year-old from Spain, never been in New York and I was thinking, "Is he going to pick me up?" If he's not picking me up, what am I going to do? You know, I was thinking, so I was a risk. I mean, I was not going to die. I would have done something, but I didn't speak English. I didn't know if he, and he told me he was going to come, but he told me over the phone and we didn't speak the same language. No cell phone, right? No cell phones. No, of course. That was 1989. No, 1988. 1988. Yeah, yeah. So, no cell phones. I had a cause in who spoke English and spoke to him and told him, "If you're not there, I'm going to come and get you." Basically, that was my. No. So, there's two things. There is a risk. You can make a mistake. I could have landed in New York and he couldn't have not been there. And then, "Okay, so you move on." I was prepared for that. You know what I mean? And it would have. It would not have been okay. I would have been heartbroken, but I would not have died. And I would have come, you know, after that. And I would. It would have been okay. And I knew that in the back of my mind. I knew there was a risk and I was willing to take that risk. And the same thing with him. He took the job in Barcelona and moved to Barcelona. That was a risk. And it could have gone wrong. Because. Perfectly. Perfectly. But it's okay. Because even when things go wrong, you just. You learn from it. You just get better. You get stronger. And you. You should never stop trying. That's your life as a startup. Yeah. When your life really is an enterprise. You're the founder of the, you know, the enterprise that's your life. That's what God lets you do. And the idea of not treating a life like a startup, little waste, but that requires a bunch of risk. I mean, you're an entrepreneur. You've got a business that you're running here. I mean, this doesn't, you know, the Laila Rose podcast doesn't run on whale songs and happy thoughts. I mean, it's a business. And that's. But I need happy thoughts to keep it going. You know, I get a lot of praise. Lots of praise folks. But, you know, that's really an important thing because that's part of the adventure. And I think this is a big cultural shift that we've seen. So I now teach 20-something. So my students are all graduate students at Harvard and they're MBA students and masters of public policy students. So they're on average 28 years old. And life is quite different than when we were in our mid 20s. Back then, I mean, we found all kinds of technological ways and cultural ways to defray the risk that goes into every part of life, including the risk that comes from building your life from love up. The foundation of your life is love. It was riskier in the 80s and 90s. It was a riskier business. And you know, one of the problems with a lot of dating apps, for example, which are getting better, to be sure. But one of the problems with them is they're dedicated to taking risk out of the experience. And when you de-risk your life, you also de-adventure your life. You make your life less risk means less reward. That's a problem. I. This is so compelling. And we talk about dating and relationships on the show all the time. We even have dating panels. We're doing a call and show now. So this is like the topic, right? But you guys were. You are entrepreneurs, both of you. And you were entrepreneurial like you were saying in love. And that meant willing to take big risks for big rewards, knowing it might not pan out. And then you're going to keep moving. It's not like you're going to give up on marriage or give up on love. You're going to be heartbroken in New York or you're going to go to Barcelona. The girl doesn't want to marry me. This isn't going to work out. And then you're going to have to keep trying. I think the fear most people have, just getting into marriage to begin with today, is the fear of the risk, right? All of the risks. And so, to your point, you do risk, then you also do reward. You lose the lower, without the possibility for the low-low, you lose the possibility of the high-high. But at the same time, what about the role of prudence in all of this? Yes. Well, prudence is funny, right? Because that's the use of peeper who writes into the four cardinal virtues. And every serious viewer and listener to this show needs to go read the four cardinal virtues of peeper. The first of those virtues in that book is prudence. Prudence isn't being cautious. Prudence is choosing the right path at the right time, is reacting in the appropriate way. That's what prudence means. Choosing the good always to see the picture and they just say, what is the good thing to do right now? Right. So it's not just eliminate. Prudence does not eliminate risk and do what's most safe, right? It's not being overly cautious in the contrary. We have two of our kids or military, two of our kids are US Marines. And they teach them to be incredibly prudent, which sometimes means going and kicking down that door. That's the prudent thing to do when you're a Marine, right? Because that's the appropriate thing to do. Prudence involves actions many times. It doesn't only involve an action. When I met her, the prudent thing to do was to go all in. To go all in. That was the prudence. Otherwise, you would have lost an opportunity to something really great. Think about it too. That's not prudent. Yeah. And this idea that there is a path for you, that there's a plan for you, that's the underlying sense of the supernatural, which even though you weren't religious, you had a sense of the supernatural. You had a sense of an antenna to the divine that would only be on when the circuit was closed and the circuit is closed when you have this marriage, when you have this relationship. I've got to ask, had there been a risk that either of you had taken in love before each other where it didn't pan out, obviously, but it showed that you were willing to take the risk or did you buy God's grace, really? The first risk you really took was each other. I had a boyfriend before. I took a risk. Super long term. Yeah. It didn't work. It didn't work out. No. And you were part broken. I remember when we woke up, it was the end of the world that day, you know, or that week. I remember. And my sister taking care of me and the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. But there's someone better for you. Yes. Did she say that? No, my sister didn't say it. But it is the truth. Yeah. So yeah, it happened. You had a little relief. Yeah. It wasn't like this. It wasn't like this. Yeah. Because it wasn't the one. This was your biggest risk and your biggest risk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And again, I'm a lot more binary in my thinking that she is. She's a lot more shades of gray and that's that's actually quite common between men and women. Actually, that's that that women are there a lot more. They're a lot less binary than men are a lot of the time, which is one of the ways that we're so complimentary and so it's so important that we be together. It's one of the reasons that people tend are often very unhappy when they're not partnered in this particular way because there's not somebody to complete you. Partnered in a way male female. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, in marriage, for example, you're supposed to complete each other. I mean, that's biblical. But it's also psychological. It's biological. That's the case. And one of the reasons for that is that men have a much more developed left hemisphere of the brain. And that's more sort of logical binary black and white thinking. And women have a much stronger right hemisphere of the brain, which is shades of gray, mystery, and meaning. And you got to have two hemispheres. We all have two hemispheres to be sure, but this whole idea that she's the right hemisphere on the left hemisphere, sort of metaphorically speaking, the corpus callosum, the connective tissue between the hemispheres. That's our marriage. That's how we're really linked together. And so one flesh, for me, as a scientist, one flesh means our brains, our brains, or we have one brain. We're one brain. And also we have qualities that are different, you know, like men and women. It's another thing that I believe is a problem for people to find their spouses because, you know, it seems like we cannot say that men and women are different, and we have different qualities. And so we are supposed to find a person that complements us, right? And so, and in my case, in my generation, we were really brainwashed about women have to be like men and be less women and motherhood is just a burden in all these lives that we still keep telling girls. And but deep down, I think people, my generation, we knew the truth. We were able to see the truth. We would see the truth in our families. We would see the truth in the culture. And I think more and more, we, you cannot see the truth in your families or in the culture because nobody's telling you these things. And then there's a lot of frustration, your girls, women, when they get to a certain age and they realize, wait a second, I have this truth, I can, I can understand this truth in me. Nobody has told me. But I. You are always super sensible, though. I have to say, very sensible person. I mean, you lived in this hard core communist atheist culture, and which I was not down with. I was never down with that at all, but you would, I remember you laughed at it. I mean, you followed a lot of that because you're, you know, fishes and water, right? Yeah, yeah. But you laughed at it. I remember you laughing at it, which gave me hope. It really gave me hope that whole time when, by the way, when I was cutting corners, we were living together before we were married. Because, and that's the thing, Lyle, here's the thing. I got to ask you a question. Here's the thing. Yeah, ask me. Like, so we, we, we have this really super successful marriage. I mean, she's really the last person I lay my eyes on as I take my dying breath. I'm Don Quixote. And she's built the nela. I mean, it's like, this is, it's great, but, but we made, we started off with a mistake. Right? We started off by living together for two years. How is that? How? How is that possible? And look, if I had said, nah, honey, we're not going to live together. We're going to do this the right way, the way that I was raised. We would have said, like, see ya. Wow. So. Well, I don't know. I don't know. We don't know. I know you. I know you. I know you've been like, what's up with you? Our Lady of Guadalupe would have appeared to her. I know. I know. But I don't know. I mean, how does that happen? We don't know. We don't know how to, we don't know how to de-conflict that. After 34 years, we still can't de-conflict that as we've talked to our kids. I mean, our kids know and we tell our kids, no, that's the wrong way to do it. I mean, we got the resurrection because of the crucifixion and we got the crucifixion because of the faults. Like, the oh happy fault. I mean, yeah. That's the whole story of all of our lives, right, to any degree, is that we send and then God brings out of greater redemption and a more perfect plan, which is crazy, that's God's economy of grace. And also, you knew, well, you didn't know. So you knew don't have sex with our marriage, but that wasn't your, you weren't really raised with that. It's not like you're like, this is the right thing to do, just go with your feelings with your desires and whatever, because you know, that's how we're still up, but still like, I still have my family, my siblings, my friends, they don't leave like this. You know, I was so, for me, that was so great that I had him who would just like, take me away from that so that I could grow in my relationship with God and they don't laugh at the American. And they don't laugh at me. I mean, you know, oh, you're married, oh, you go to my house. Okay. The whole plan, the master plan was get married and then we're going to raise our family Catholic. That's the plan. But it was a staged plan and it wouldn't have been, you know, all at once, it would have been impossible. So I cut corners, but that was the plan. And so we moved back to the United States after we got married. We immigrated together. Well, wait, but you forgot. So, so then we lived together for two years. And then one day he came home with a ring and he got on his knee and he asked me to marry him. And and I remember he was shaking and he didn't know he was going to say no, you know, I was there. Yes. 11 together. I don't know. I mean, that's ridiculous. To because because I always would talk and would say, I don't believe in marriage, we don't need to get married. We are so well like these, but then you came with a ring, by the way, it was the wrong ring. I don't know. But instead of buying like the diamond ring for the, he bought, he bought a wedding, a wedding pen. He was ready. He was like, we got official, anyway, we got so cute. And so that immediately I said, yes. So I saw the truth. I saw that was it. And I said, yes. So maybe, I mean, back to the question you asked, Arthur, which I want to hear your answer on that because you know, you say, well, it wouldn't have worked. It wouldn't have worked. It wouldn't have. Meaning, the living together before it was like, well, we had to do that because that's the way she was wired and which how she was raised. But you're saying, well, maybe not. Maybe it wouldn't. Who knows? It's hard to say, but it's interesting. So my answer is it's a mystery like so many other things. You know, we were reading the other night, we were reading a joke together. We were at the Bible together a lot at night, and we were reading the 30th chapter of Job. In the 38th chapter of Job, Job has God in the dock. All this bad stuff happened to Job. And he remained faithful. But then he has, he talks to the whirlwind, you know, God deans to have a conversation with Job. And Job says, you know, what gives? Come on. I mean, I was like, you were even saying to the, you know, to satan, the dark one or whatever that his interlocutor at the beginning of Job that I was your boy. And then you did this to me. Why? And God says, well, I'll tell you. I mean, you deserve to know. I mean, obviously, because you know so much, because you understand why I made the heavens and the earth. So I'll tell you. And in this mystery, too, it's very clear. God is messing with Job, they say, it's a mystery. So until you understand why I created the heavens and the earth, you're not going to sort this one out. And this is one of these weird mysteries of all these things about why something that we're not supposed to do leads to the best thing ever. Why something that we're not supposed to do leads us to a lead to live a fully Catholic life in which we're telling young people about these great sources of joy. And also God doesn't ask us to understand, but He's asked us to trust. And that's another thing we talk a lot about. That trust is such an important thing, especially in our relationship with God, of course, but also in marriage. That's another, I think, another problem that I have a talk on submission and mutual submission in marriage and what does that look like, etc. And everything, all of this is very good, but I think there has to be a base of trust before you can build and you can love like completely, sacrificially in a marriage. And of course, and with God, if we stop trusting, that's when we start controlling things, that's when we start eating from the forbidden tree. And that's when that's when bad things start happening. So in our case, in your question, what happened, what would have happened if you had asked me before that? And I had said, no, we shouldn't even try to understand because that's the way God let it happen. And that's the, and I think one of the reasons is so that we can talk to younger people about marriage without being judgmental, without telling them, we are so much better than you are because we did all the wrong things. And I think only that is worth just like, we do pre-canon now, having long through these 36 or 40 couples at a time and they're about 60% of them are living together. Yes. I mean, they're there and their reason that they're in pre-canons because they have to be here, their priests won't marry them. And it's a big retreat center, a legionaries retreat center near where we live in northern Virginia. And so they're packed in there and they're like, you know, they're just gritting their teeth and getting it done. And we get up there and we say, look, we look like this really traditional Catholic couple. We've been together for a super long time and all this well, and we have kids. We have grandkids. Isn't that great? We go to mass every week. We go to mass every day, right? But I've got to tell you something that a lot of you were living together and so were we. So you got to ask, what nerve, what gives them the right to actually stand up here and talk to us? And I say, well, there's a number of reasons. Number one, they asked us to. Number two, it doesn't matter where you start, what matters is where you wind up. And number three, we learned a lot over that particular experience that we want to talk to you about. That's what we're doing. Yeah. I think one of the reasons that now we're doing things together is because we have realized that people want to know and and and it's not that we have a perfect marriage because there's no perfect marriage and we fight and we have discussions every day. Every day we have a fight. 10,000 fights. Yeah. It's Spanish. And the form of communications. I irritate him. He irritates me. I mean, this is all it's okay, but but I think. People want to hear, okay, so how do I do this? How do I get over these irritations and this and this lack of trust and this, what, how can I do this? And so that's one of the reasons that we start doing things together because there are other reasons because we see that there is really interest and people really want to know and want to hear and maybe we can give something because our beginnings were so messed up. And now we have, we're finding, we're still finding the, not the perfect, there's no such thing in this work, in this earth, but like as close as possible to the best that we can do in our lives here. And so this is so important that that it started with a weakness with something broken, something wrong and it's progressing and we're getting, we could say we're getting better and happier, right? Because it's not, yeah, it's not completely perfect. It can never be perfect until, you know, we are in heaven, so yeah. Looking for perfection, looking for happiness, some endpoint of happiness is bad religion. The reason that we want happiness, but can't get it is because we're made on earth to get to heaven and that there is an ultimate point of happiness where there is bliss that's unending where there's joy that doesn't stop and that's heaven and the fact that we want that on earth is the hunger that shows us that reveals to us the existence of that. So you want a perfect marriage, but you're not going to get it. The whole point is that you're trying to get to heaven. That's your struggle to get to heaven right there. It's evidence that it's true. And the perfect love and communion that we get in heaven, it's like the culmination love being back to the happiness study. I know it has the other name that I didn't get earlier, but anyway, the end game is love and being loved and to love. Figuring out the right daily nutrition can feel overwhelming, but one thing that I consistently rely on are the supplements from weheartnutrition.com. I'm a huge fan of weheartnutrition. 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And so it was a lack of trust that was the cause of the first sin, right? And that really toppled the whole peaceful harmony that we had in the garden with God. We walked in total harmony with God. And then we have sin under the world and death and all the curses. But it was a lack of trust. And so back to that couple, because again, we talk on the show. We have this comes up all the time, not just hook up culture, which is more of an extreme, but yeah, co-habitation. Most people today live together before they get married. And they think, "Well, it's not a big deal because we're going to get married." I think about personal friends of mine. They're like, "We wasn't a big deal. We're going to get married." So let's just focus on that in the future at some point. We're basically married already. It's like common law in their minds to some degree. But that marriage certificate does matter. And most importantly, the marriage before God matters. Whether it's a natural marriage or it becomes a sacramental marriage, this is for life, you and me exclusively, permanently until death do us part. And so I'm curious if you have a message for people about maybe one more thought for especially people that are either younger in the situation or people that know people that are like this, where they think, "Well, it worked out for you guys." You know? They're doing. They're crushing it. Look, he's in there in love. Like, it's so beautiful. And so let's not make too big of a deal over this morality thing about sex before marriage because Christians can get you hung up on this morality thing. Yeah. Well. Okay. So in order to answer that quote, can I answer that question? Yeah, I'll do this way. I'll answer you to the audience. Okay. In order to answer that question. Okay. So then I would like to go to that place, that point where he asked me to marry him. And then I said yes, but then I said, "But not in the church." And so we got married in the justice of the peace. I was not there yet. I was. Slowly he was bringing me, but I was not there yet. Okay. So we got married in the justice of the peace. And it took us 18 years after that for us to get married in the church. So it was a long process. But what happened? I mean, I had to, you know, I had to happen, but it was very long. You wish it had not been so long. But what happened is that how can I summarize this whole thing? There was a point in my life that I realized that in order for me to really love my husband or anybody, really true love, sacrificial love, I had to let God into our marriage. I had to open the doors to the divine. So the source of love. So that. And when I did that, my love became, instead of being a human love, selfish, needy, it became divine. It became pure love, sacrificial, to the point that I could. He could do bad things to me, but I would not stop loving him. And most importantly. I'm not bad things. Well, yeah. You're pretty good. I'm not going to say the bad things. I know you. You're not going to say the bad things. I was resentful for years because when we moved back to the States and we started having children, I was going to mass. I was going to have a Catholic family and I was teaching the kids their prayers when they were little. I was taking them a lot of times to go. What would that feel like for you? I felt like these things are a question of time. I went home. I was working super long hours. I was like a gnome, which is when you're an assistant professor, you're just trying desperately trying to get tenure. And I went home and we were living on a third floor condominium in Atlanta and it was a hot day. It was in September and we had the windows open because our condition had broken. And our 16 month year old fell at the window from the third floor and broke his fractured skull in a lot of places. And that was the day I had prayed the rosary. And she was in the ambulance with him and I was behind it. We thought he was going to die. And I kept praying the rosary all the way to the hospital. I think it'll begin, you know. And we got to the hospital in the pediatric neurosurgeon looking at us as we don't know. I mean, it's not good. It's not good. I mean, it's like five fractured. I mean, it was horrible and it was an intensive care and they weren't interrogating us. They're asking us how did your son fall out the window to throw them out the window. I mean, it's just awful. And he lived that night and that next morning, the pediatric neurosurgeon was a guy from India. He said, this is a miracle. It was a Christian guy. He said, but he says, this is a miracle. Those are the words that he survived the night. He survived the night. Even just the night. Now how old is he? 27. 27 has two kids. And I asked the doctor, Dr. Narayan was his name. I said, Dr. Narayan, how will we know if it's going to be okay? Just brain damage. How are we going to know? He said, well, probably when you see his SATs. In other words, you don't know. And he's a weird dude. I mean, he is a weird dude. But not because of that. And that was another miracle, right? It was from our lady, Guadalupe, Rosary. These are all from our lady. Every supernatural experience, every metaphysical experience, every cosmic, weird thing. I'm a scientist. I'm not a superstitious guy. I'm not a sentimentalist at all. But these weird things have this common root in my life. And then that really stimulated you. We put up a crucifix. I got that done. It's like, can I put up a crucifix? I mean, at almost the cost of the baby, what was your, what was that experience like for you? What was that feeling like you're in an ambulance? You think your son might be dying? Well, I remember that day I prayed to God. He was in the car behind. I was in the ambulance. So I prayed, I prayed desperate, pray. Yeah. But that was not because I always believed in God. What I was not ready to do is to practice a religion, is to be part of a church. That's what I was not ready. That was the falseism in Spain is a complicated business. Yeah. That was the brainwash is the against religion and church and all that stuff. Not so much about having your own God. And over there, all my friends and my culture, we all have, we all believe in God. They're all spiritual. But not religious, but not religious, exactly. And so that was me. So that day I prayed, of course, to God. But that was not my conversion to our church. One of the things that was very hard for me, my conversion is to understand the importance of the church, what that the church is the actual body of Christ. And I didn't understand that until later on. And because that was, that was something, that was a big obstacle for me to practice the church. Because I always associated the church with corruption in middle ages, whatever in Spain, civil war, all these ideas that you, especially in Europe, you associate the church with a right wing fascism and all this kind. So that for me was an obstacle always, always, always. So, so the more I learned about the church, I ended up getting a master's degree in theology at the Boston Institute. And one of the things that I learned there that I'm so happy is to love the church, to understand what the church is, to understand the need for the church in your conversion, in your practice of your faith, in your relationship with God. I didn't have that. So this, this tragic thing happened, which was not tragic at the end. All I did was to pray to God. It's like a, I don't know, a Mayan could be praying to God's son. It's like it was not, it was, Jesus came later in my life. Did Jesus come before the church, though? For me? Yeah, because you, you were spiritual, God, and even your sons about to die, and you're praying. And so, and your husband's very religious, you're going to mass and all these stuff. Yeah. Then you, when did Jesus come into the picture? Because Jesus came in later when I started learning more about our church. So it was two and two, Jesus and the church work were a team. Yes. Jesus first and the church later. Like Jesus, I always heard was a great man. Like my mother, Jesus was a great man. I don't know if he was God, but he was a great man. So that was my idea. But, but Jesus was there. But when I would pray, I would pray to the father. I would pray to God. Because Jesus Lewis's conversion was kind of like this too. You know, Jesus Lewis says he was a, okay, okay, I'll be a deist. Okay, I'll be a, I got it. There's just too much stuff I can't explain. So I'm going to, I'm going to embrace the idea of God. But the other stuff is a bridge too far. I mean, all these things seem like they're kind of invented and all that. And then little by little, but this is how, this is little by little how you get pulled in. Ultimately, and this was the, this is what I always believed had to be the plan. I mean, a thought had this sense that this had to be the plan that she'd get. She was, she was kind of being carried away softly on this stream. Yeah. And he had to keep plotting away. There was no other way. There was no other way because this was the, this was my, as we social scientists say, my parabond mate, which is a kind of a not very sentimental way to say. This is like a, a woodstork where you have one mate. And if your mate dies, then you're alone. But you went in eyes wide open. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I knew you were marrying someone who wasn't interested in practicing Catholic faith. You are potential. The potential, you married the potential. And look at her now. I know, I know because she's way more sophisticated than I am. When I have, when I have theological questions, I don't, you know, I don't Google it. I, she's my Google on this because she knows, she has graduate training and this stuff. She's, she's laughed at me. It was a funny thing. I remember this at what, when the kids were at the heights at the school that, and you were going to Sunday mass. And then I realized that during the week you're starting to go a little bit more to daily mass. And then just, I don't know when it happened. It was like one of these weird time warp things when I, I just, it occurred to me one day. My wife is a daily communicant. Go on a confession. You were receiving. So, yeah, so what, yeah, what did that? We had gotten married in church by this time. Yeah, this is after the 18 years. Yeah, I was 18 years. We, we landed at the heights. And for, I was thinking just because there were so controversial and they had, they taught the boys to be men. That was my thing. And he probably had other very different thoughts about that. That was my thing. Actually, when, yeah, anyways, so you didn't like that or you liked that? I loved it. I really believed in the philosophical theological underpinnings of it, because I really believed that they were on my side to bring our family together. So you were doing the heights in part for Esther to try to get her more educated? Mostly, the reason we went to the heights is because one of our boys was always punished. In public schools, he was the guy who was like always in the principal's office because he was misbehaving so much. And somebody told us, you need to go to the heights. You guys are Catholic. So you can go to the heights. They, they, they are, they teach men to, they teach boys to be men. And they, anyways, I thought, oh, that's going to be good for my boys. So then that was my reason for going to the heights. They would teach them to be real men. And but little by little, that, that change. And kind of felt they were going to be good for real glue, real Catholic glue for our family. I had a spiritual director who was a priest of Opus Day at the time in downtown Washington, you see, I was president of the American Enterprise Institute in those days, which is a think tank. I remember, I think we're in DC around the same time actually. And we'll be ever cross paths. But I would go to the Catholic Information Center too. Yeah. And so the director of the Catholic Information Center was my spiritual director. And, and I told him when I first got there, it's like, father. That was the first year I'm not married in the church. And he's like, we got to fix that. We have to, we have to fix that like to sweet right now. We got to get on this. And, and by that point, you were sympathetic to the idea. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was like, okay, let's do that. So we did. And so we surreptitiously, we didn't Saturday morning. And we went to St. Peter's on Capitol Hill. And we didn't have a witness. It was just father Arnie Pandula. And, and so we had another priest, a parochial vicar there, and the cleaning lady were our two witnesses. We didn't tell our kids. We kind of alloped. But without telling our kids. Why? They were little. And the whole, it wouldn't, it wouldn't. Yeah. I mean, maybe it was complicated. They know now. It was complicated. Yeah. It was complicated. They would not have understood. They would leave. You were already married to them. So yeah, exactly. And we told them later when they were able to understand. And all our kids got, you know, all our kids are. And we didn't need to have a big celebrate. It was just us. We needed to do that. And, and that would, that's not went to an Indian restaurant for lunch after one of the way home. Yeah. But it was gradual for you, Esther. It sounds like there's not like the road to Damascus moment or it was more just you would, but you were, you were open enough. You were, the kids were going. He was practicing. You started to go more. You're in this Catholic school. Yeah. And before you know it, you're getting your masters. Yeah. In theology. And you're, like, all in. You're like daily communicating. You've been doing it for a long time now. Another thing that I would say, especially if we want to convert hearts is that it was for me, it was not so much what people would tell me. It was what people would do. And I would see that joy that people that had that trust and that belief. And I wanted that. I wanted to be that joy. I always, I've always been a very, very, you know, happy person and optimistic. And I'm not like a depressive personality. But I would see that in people that had that strong faith, that joy, that they were able to, that they would love me, even though they didn't need anything from me. That to me was very, that was the most important thing. I know the thing that I remember, like, I've always been on boards, the schools. And I always been involved in whatever we do, right? And because I didn't work at the time, I had the time to do that. So I would, we would be meeting like a committee, like mothers, the gala, whatever. And I would say it was 950, it was mass. And everybody, not everybody, most, we just get like, like an excitement, they would get up and we'd go to mass. And I said, I want that. It was like as if they were going to see their girlfriends, you know, like it was like, it's time to mass. And they would stop everything. We were in the middle of the meeting. And I said, wait, I need to talk to call the caterer, which one do I call? They were all gone. And I said, I want this. Whatever they have, I want to be more important than the caterer. So it's more important than anything in this world. The ultimate meal of that mass. So that, so it's so it was very gradual. Gradle, I would see how people that would strong faith behave, which I had never seen in my life, by the way, because the Catholics that I would know were not. They're only warm. Yeah, look warm and not don't attractive. That was so attractive to me. And especially there were a few people that just I want to do, I want to have that. And so that was another thing. Did you, Arthur, did you ever have a Christmas morning feeling with her faith, just blossoming, but it did it so slowly. It sounds like though there wasn't really a big moment. There was, there were moments where we would do something for the first time or the first time that we prayed the Rosary is a family. Like, yeah, this is what I've always wanted. And I knew this was something that I wanted. I mean, I envisioned that this was a goal. I mean, I'm very goal oriented, right, tailiological person. And you know, goal orientation is characteristic of people who who are sort of have an achievement mentality. And so this is one of those. What's that? Would you say choleric or choleric? I have a choleric melancholic for sure. And you know, happiness, by the way, is very hard for me. It's much easier for her than it is for me, which is why she doesn't study happiness. But you're a sanguine temperament more naturally. Yeah. And so we complement each other. We're both very high affect, which is to say that we both have salient, both negative and positive affect mood. And, you know, and these temperamental things make it. And that's one of the reasons that sometimes it can be daggers drawn, right. But, but we complement each other in these other particular ways. So I've always had like this. We're very equal there. So that's hard for us. Yeah. Like the intensity of the high effect. High effect is, and that's that's the functioning of the limbic system of the brand word, the console of tissue that produces emotion, which is between two and 40 million years ago. It's not exclusive to homo sapiens. And you have emotions. You have four negative emotions, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. And they're all an alarm system for things that you perceive below your level of awareness. You need them all or you'd be dead in a week. You need your negative emotions. Not everybody, however, has the same intensity of their negative and positive emotions. So our quarter of the population is above average on positive emotionality and above average on negative emotionality. That's called a high affect. Together. Both. Like the high high and low low. And that's what's called the mad scientist affect profile. There's three others. There's high positive and low negative. That's the cheerleader. There's high negative and low positive. That's the poet. And there's low on both. That's the judge. And these are affect profiles are really important for people to understand about each other. And they're really important to understand that the marriages that have the least conflict or complementary. With respect to affect profiles. So if you got one mad scientist, which I'm like the maddest of the mad scientist. I'm at the 95th percentile in positive and the 90th percentile and negative. So I'm like, I feel everything. Does that correspond with neuroticism and ocean as well as openness? Not necessarily. Not necessarily. It can because high negative affect typically will be above average neuroticism as well. So I'm about the 40th percentile in neuroticism. So in ocean. Super high in openness. High unconsciousness. Relatively high in degree able to 96th percentile and extroversion. Right. And so a lot of that goes into that mad scientist profile. And she's like more moderate and negative affect. She's a slightly above average on negative affect really high and positive affect. But the whole point is that that we would have less conflict if she were a judge, which is low low to my high high, because what that would do that would moderate me. I would bring her up and she would mow me out is the way that that actually works. Do you recommend that like if you're talking to a couple that's deciding if they're compatible. I recommend falling in love and asking God if this is your person. I like that. And then working it out. But you wouldn't say, oh, it's best. It's ideal if you have a judge with a mad scientist. You could do two mad science. Are you a mad scientist then? What would you? You're sort of on the cusp between your halfway between mad scientist and cheerleader. Am I saying that she has very, very normal negative affect. She has the most normal negative affect. She doesn't have below average or above average negative affect. But I would just say that that if you have that the same like high intensity that we have, then you're going to have more arguments. You're going to crash more right. That's okay. It's fine. It's perfectly fine. That's what I talk about with my students. They all want to know, is this the right guy for me? I'm like, yes. If this is the right person for you, is the right person for you or you're going to have challenges. Yep. You're going to have temperamental challenges. Maybe. But you can work that out. So we're saying as conflict, the amount of conflict is in no way a nonstarter. You can anybody in any kind of quadrant of those four different types or any levels of oceans or any temperaments or whatever. Anger, uncorrelated, divorce and anger or uncorrelated, which is really really worse and anger or uncorrelated or uncorrelated. What's correlated with divorce is contempt. Contempt is less driven by anger and more driven by disgust. Those are two different negative. Yeah, you're rolling. Yeah. And well, that's it. I believe he said that all sarcasm, derision. So what do you mean, right? I don't know that contempt is is really a mixture of disgust and anger, but we're disgust makes it ice cold. And when you display disgust toward the person who's supposed to be the most important person in your life, that's that's that's interpreted as you think I'm worthless. Now what you said is I think that's a dumb thing that you said, but that's interpreted. Or you can say, I'm so angry. You said that. Yeah. And that doesn't mean you that that means I care what you think. That's a part of motion. And a lot of motion is I care. Yeah. Say, but, but can, but disgust is an ice cold emotion that something is a pathogen. So you have disgust. It's a part of your brain called the insular cortex or the insula is stimulated. And so an on board piece of hardware for you to be disgusted by something that might contain a pathogen. So, you know, the thing that the chicken and your and your fridge that made your stomach growl three weeks ago, now you're taking it to the trash. And the reason is because it smells weird, which indicates to your brain that it might contain bacteria that could kill you. And that trips the insular cortex in your brain. That's reserved for pathogens, not for people. So, despotic rulers throughout history have tried to stimulate the insula in the brains of the public toward their fellow citizens by saying, so if you hear somebody on TV, a politician saying, what they think is disgusting. They're trying to stimulate the insular cortex or brain. Or God forbid, they're subhuman. They're a worm. They're a, they're a, they're a, you know, whatever of dehumanizing term. Kutuz had a word for Tutsis in the Rwanda Genocide called cockroaches. The Nazis refer to the Jews as rats for precisely the reason they were trying to stimulate. Disgusting. Disgusting. Instead of like taking them by the shoulders, what do you mean you believe that? That's stupid. You know, like having, I mean, again, not to say you should yell at someone and say you're stupid. But like, man to man, woman to woman, like I care about you, you know better, like you can have a, you could even have heavy conflict. That doesn't, it doesn't have to include that contempt. There's nothing wrong with saying you're wrong, but there is something we get in angry. Yeah. But of course, you're not going to, that you have to be careful because anger can be very destructive. Anger can be a good thing, but it can be also a bad thing. So you, you would not just go in just in, like I'm not going to start insulting him or just attacking him personally or doing things. But there's nothing wrong with showing my anger, you know, a lot of times things that, things that make me angry, just I talk, I say something and he's not listening or, or, or, or I, I, I, He's writing a book. I see, I was thinking about the next fraction problem or something like that or, or like I'm talking, I'm trying to explain something and he's not giving me clues that he's understanding, that makes me so angry. So then I get angry and I tell him, I just want you to listen to me. Okay, so, you know, that anger, I think it's very healthy. Instead of not showing anything and keep it, you know, that I don't think that's good. That's, by the way, this is utterly characteristic of any marriage. Yeah. And this is the most common thing that men get wrong is not trying to listen to understand. That's the most common thing that men get wrong. And that's a left brain, right brain thing. The left brain is, I got it, I got it, I got it, three words in, I got it, now I'm going to help you solve it. That's not right brain. She's expressing frustration from the highly developed right brain, which is mystery, which is meaning, and I just want you to understand me. Understanding is on the right side. Solutions are on the left side. And so when we do that with kids too, right? When they come to us and they say, oh, such and such, tell me that I don't want to play with me. So the first thing you say is, oh, why don't they want to play? Okay, I'm going to talk to her mom. I'm going to talk, you know, instead of just listening because they need that understanding. And they can figure out why to do if we just listen and pay attention and they feel that we understand. So I think like that's the same thing. We all say, I don't know if women more, you two want to be understood. But to me, it's very important that I know that you're understanding what I'm saying. Right. Otherwise, I feel that I'm not, you know, a lot because it took me a long time to figure this one out. And I just wish that instead of being a French horn player, I was a behavioral scientist in those days. Yeah, I would have been a much better husband. But there's another thing to that women, we don't, we have a tendency. I put myself in that of wanting to our husbands to be something they're not. And so instead of just trying to know them and to love what they are, we're just trying to make them into something else into that perfect idea. Why are women into that? We're very controlling, right? I mean, I don't know all the women, but I know I am. And I've been doing these my whole life. And that's one of the things that I learn as there's enough. Okay. That's why that's so feminine, though, that desire is because that's such a feminine thing of we have expectations. It's usually expectations, right? Yeah. This idea of what we want. And we don't have it. And then we just, you know, and then there's like, then there's the nagging and the judgment and contempt, you know, God forbid, that comes in. And then it's, you know, probably game over like you're saying divorce number one causes contempt. It's very easy, but I'm just from the I'm curious your view on the theology and maybe you have the idea of ideas, but I want to have the data. But I would only say now is an older woman that I that I've done so many times that tried to control and tried to change. And instead of like, okay, so we're talking about something and and and he he has an opinion, a strong opinion about something, but I have another one and I want to change his opinion. So I keep talking and telling him how and blah, blah, blah. And I I've discovered that if I just say, okay, these not right now, I'm just going to listen to his idea. And I'm going to with my free will, I'm going, I'm deciding to go with what he says. That's a mission. Well, that's a mission. But not only is submission, that's freedom. Because freedom is to choose the good, right? Not just to choose what you desire, what your passions are telling you, but it's like the good. So I choose the good. I said, I with my free will decide to go along with what you're saying. And it's very hard to do that. I'm not saying I'm doing this, but the few times that I've done that, I experience happiness. Because it's a sense of freedom that you don't have when you go along with your desires, with your ideas, with your whatever opinions about things. And I discovered that later in our marriage. And it has been, it has made a difference. First of all, in me, when I do that, but in him, because I am respecting him and his opinion without putting, you know, I'm not questioned anything that he's saying. I'm not saying that we have to say yes to everything. But the times that we stop, we think, we listen and we say, okay, let's go along with that freely, not because he's like making it happen, but me freely choose is showing that I trust him is showing that I respect him. I'm exercising my free will and and and and I'm a lot happier. And by the way, this is the same for me that submission is a two-way street. The submission is not a one-way street. And the happiest marriages are those in which men and women submit to each other. And a lot of times when it's absolutely the case that life is better, you're happier. I'm happier when I don't have to be right. When even if I have a difference of opinion, I just decide that I don't have to be right, which is exactly the point that you're making. It's a mutual submission. And I'm sure it shows you're showing me that you love me when you do that. Now it's not to say this is not to say that men and women need the same things because men and women need different things. And this is objectively the case. There's a huge body of evolutionary psychology on this. There's a guy at University of Texas that also named David Bus and he has a wonderful book called the Evolution of Desire. And it talks about how men and women desire and and live together and live together happily or in conflict with each other. It's the one book I would give to people in their 20s. It's not a religious book at all. It's not a Catholic book. It's just it could be actually interpreted quite the contrary. But it's just an actual order. It's just evolution. And he talks about how we were our brains were fully developed but 250,000 years ago to be getting the place to seem period. And we were living in bands, the entire human race, homo sapiens were living in bands of 30 to 50 kin-based individuals. That's how we lived. And everything was about being with your kin, not getting thrown out of your tribe, making sure that you could reproduce, that you could pass on your genes, you could survive another day. And that describes a lot of why we do what we do, including why we may, you know, why we, you know, act the way that we do toward each other. No, that's not incompatible with Christian faith to me at all in the contrary. God created science. I believe in God so much more deeply, the more I learn about science, I'm more in awe of the creation. But it also shows that you make a big mistake in modern life when you say that men and women are the same and they want and need the same thing. And I'll give you an example of this. Everything is, you know, we must respect each other as husbands and wives. That's table stakes and St. Paul talks about that. But beyond that, women and men have one primary need that we actually see in this literature that manifests itself in the following way. Women require to be happy in a marriage adoration. And that means basically the husband is in no small, in not so many words, saying, I would fight a tiger for you with my hands and only you. And the husband, the big thing he needs is adoration. He needs adoration from her. And that means the sweetie that tiger is so big that you fought it or that that gazelle that you dragged in the case. That was the biggest gazelle anybody has ever dragged, dragged into this cave. And, and, and, you know, that's going to feed her family for two weeks. You really are big and strong. And not you got blood on the cave floor again. That's what I would say. I mean, humans, you know, we're humans. My, my, my impulse would be like, oh, wait, do it, right? And the evolution of this is obvious. I mean, the whole point is that women have a huge investment in, in, in family life that, that men evolutionarily didn't. We should, but we don't in our animal impulses versus our moral aspirations. Women have more of a, of an investment in this. And so the result is you need a man who adores you and who shows commitment. Otherwise, you actually can't, your needs can't be met. And a man needs to know that he's raising his own offspring and that there's admiration for what he's actually doing. So he has the, the incentive to continue to provide in this particular way. It's a beautiful sort of complementary complementarity. Exactly what we're talking about here. And what you see in marriages that are failing is that there's a lack of admiration on her part and a lack of adoration on his part. And that actually feeds on each other. So she doesn't admire him and he withdraws the adoration and she admires him less. Now, guys come to me. I get more guys to mend the women because for the obvious reasons. And, and, and, and guys say, okay, what's the secret professor? What's the secret to a happy marriage? I say, well, I adore her and be admirable. And, and, and he's like, well, what if I don't feel adoration? I said, that's not what I said. Adore her notwithstanding your temporary feelings because your limbic system is a, is a stochastic phenomenon. I mean, it's just, it's just feelings happen. This is not about your feelings. It's the, the, the, the to mystic understanding of love to will to go to the other. Adore her all the time and show it all the time and be admirable and peckable to your word. Complete integrity. Always hard working. Always sacrificial. That's what it means to be a good man. And then you will be admired. Then you deserve to be admired. So deserve admiration and always give adoration. And for women, deserve admiration. Adoration. I'm sorry, deserve adoration. Be adorable. Be adorable. I mean, and that doesn't mean like be cute. That means be virtuous, be good. You know, do, do the good things always look for his good. And, and, and also make sure that you respect and, and, and, and admire. But what does husband is an admirable? Can you admire somebody who's not objectively admirable? Can you adore someone who's not adorable? I think, yeah, in a way, the latter is more possible because I think love is a conscious act. Yeah, but also if, if he adores me, I'm going to want to be more adorable. If you, if he doesn't adore me, I'm going to start feeling bad, confrontational, you know, like not loved and, and, but if I see adoration, look, if I come into a room, and he doesn't like, let's say, I, I come from the street now, and he's here, and he doesn't look at me and shows me that he adores me. I immediately put a, like a, like a, like a, I don't know, like a wall, like a coldness in, I lead between, it's silly, but I've noticed through the years. Right? No, I'm nice. I'm not going to be like, oh, get out of here. No, I'm nice, but you're not connected, but I'm not, we're not connected, we're not, I don't feel that thing. It's the Lord. It's the Lord. It's the Lord. It's the like, it's, yeah, it's you and all the year. If he, if he gives a talk, and I'm in the audience, right? And, and right after, or a little bit after, I don't say, that's really good. Good job. Boom. Same thing. It's so pathetic. Why? Because, no, but, but why is that? Because why is it so important for me to respect you? Because that's how you feel loved by me, by, by that respect. And how, why is it so important for me? Because that's how I feel loved that I want to be seen. I want, I want, it's always like, I think we want to be understood. I want to be like known, known, sorry, known, not understood, known, yeah, understand, no. So, and if we don't get that, we don't feel love. I know, I know, it's so, so a week from now, we're taping this before the Sikh conference, which is the great big, you know, you've got a big speech coming up. So I'm going to do a keynote at the Sikh conference for 18,000. You better smile at him after, but there's only one person in the audience as a talk I've never given before on the sacredness of suffering. And I'm very nervous about it because I've never given talk before. And I never give a talk for the first time. I mean, I give 150 speeches a year. And, and they're really, really, really super prepared. But this was a bespoke talk that they asked me to give. And I'm really nervous about it. But there's only one person that's going to be in that audience for me, only one. And, and all I, anyway, I'm kind of setting up here. But that doesn't mean that I, I don't care if he doesn't respect me. That's not what it means. But it means that this is like very important. It's like top of the list. If you, if you do these things and you pay attention to these things in your relationship, things are going to be a lot better than if you don't pay attention to these important things. So this is such a hot button topic when we've had these grooves on the show, some of them just amazing who come from different schools of thought, but they all say similar things, which is admiration, adoration, admiration, respect, love, affection, you know, however we want to adoration, however we want to use the different words. But a big question, especially for women, right? So we have men who listen to the show, we have a lot of women who listen to the show. And, you know, men, I think are good at doing the tough love, like, you know, like you just said, you've got to be admirable, like, better, always keep your word, like be the best ever. - Catholic bro science. - Yeah, yeah, which is great for the ladies, for the women, you know, there's so many women who feel like, oh, well, he is dead of the, you know, he's not doing this, he's not doing that, he's playing the video games, he's whatever the complaint is. And so how, what would you, what do you recommend in terms of how do we keep admiration alive? Does it have to be sincere? I mean, to your point, you were doing the adoration acts, even when you weren't feeling the adoration feelings. As a woman, do we do the admiration? And this is for marriage, we're not talking about you owe this to a man on the street, you owe this to your husband, even if he's not acting admirable. - Right. - How do you show respect, even when they're not acting respectable? - Well, sooner, I mean, sooner or later they're going to do something, even if it's a little thing that is admirable. - I mean, I see, I see with my son. - Look at my little kid. He's like, you're such a good boy. - No, they're not a devil. You know, I see my son now, my sons, right? I have young sons. And so they do, they make mistakes, but if there is one thing that they do good, then you encourage that. You just go there, you admire there. Oh, that's how they admire me. You know, it doesn't, because we're all imperfect. And I think harder of that is, how are we adorable? Because we're so nagging all the time and we're, so I think it's like, we both have a different, a difficult thing to do. So with men, and if you're in a marriage, hopefully your husband is a good husband. So I'm sure you can find something to admire and to respect of your husband. And if you, if you are a wife, so then you have to, that's harder to understand in this culture today, to be virtuous. It's not a cool thing, because people, when you say, oh, you have to be virtuous, it, it, it sounds like, oh, no, we are free women independent and we just want to be like men and virtuous. What is that? I don't want to be virtuous. I want to be successful and powerful and I think that's harder to be adorable in this way than, than for finding something in a guy that is admirable. I think we just, we just, we don't know guys. We don't know how, what they, what, how they think and what there have been guys. And we think that that's bad because they are loud or because they are too strong and they do things and they're not delicate in this, but that's how they are. And we, a lot of times, we don't know them and then we cannot love them. We don't know them. We cannot love them well. You know, through the years, I learn more and more about him and his meleness. And I wish I had known before that, that, that silent when, when I feel he's not listening to me, that just part of who he is, he's thinking about his work. So that, I mean, I'm not trying to be dramatic, but he's, you know, providing for us because he's thinking about his success and all these, you know, things. And I just want him to pay attention to me. Like it's so like nagging, right? It's not, so I think that it's more about knowing what he really is and not trying to change. He's that, okay. And so, and interpretation, right? Because you're saying, like, and this is, I hear this all the time for the show, friends, you know, it's just like the female experience and a marriage or relationship, you know, he're not giving me what I want or need. I feel, you know, there's my adoration. Whereas the, we're always wanting connection. We're wired for connectivity. Men are too, but it's a little bit different because he's seeing this kind of larger landscape of provision. He's on that track. And so we are interpreting his other, you know, his external focus, really, on other things as a lack of interest when really he's actually scanning the environment for Fred. He's trying to provide, he's doing all of the man things that are so hardwired into him. And, you know, we've had, I think it was Allison Armstrong on the show who is such a fun and fascinating lady, so lovely in her, you know, advice that she gives, but she's just talking about how if you can ask the question, when they're ready to hear it, because they might be busy doing their provision or their compartmentalization, whatever they're doing. But say, you know, what is it, you know, what are, ask him questions about what is driving him, motivating him and not interrupt him, not try to like, you know, me too. Let him just, let him just have his open channel. Yeah, it would be a make you mermaise the wells, the depth of the wells that is in a man, in any man. Yes, but we maybe never even hear them as a woman because we're so focused on telling them what to do, but what they're not doing, or what we would like them to do, or things like that. It's not so bad, by the way. It's not so bad. It's mostly awesome. I mean, it's like she is. I mean, it's almost as if it's making you make it sound like you've been like, not understanding me for decades or something. No, contrary, no. But I do, I make mistakes like these and I think they're common and it's good to realize those things so that you can improve. But like one of the latest things that I know is like, I need to learn more how to know you better, not just how to change you into what I want. And I think that's for me has been very important not to get so irritated if you are not listening to me, because like you say, you're thinking about something else that doesn't mean you are not here for me that you're not loving me or something like that. And I can do better. It's interesting that there's these papers that show the men, for example, they have, you know, when men have that kind of that gaze. The thing with the men do right this actually comes from scanning the environment. So defocusing so that so that movement on the horizon will get your attention. That's what men are doing. And what men can't do very well is find something in the fridge. So they're not very good at seeing something that's right in front of you, but they're really good at seeing movement from far away. That's evolved. That's evolved. And that is sort of a metaphor for a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here. Life, life for a man. And look, I'm 61 years old. It's not like I have to provide for, you know, nine little kids in a contrary. I'm setting up college accounts for my grandchildren at this point. You know, I'm pretty much, I've done what I'm supposed to do on this earth, but still I'm scanning the horizon. I'm looking at the horizon. Okay, what moved out there? What is it? I need to protect them from one of the opportunities for game when that happens, it can it can irritate me a lot. Oh, where is the mayonnaise? What's in front of you, sweetie? Right? And then that tone of irritation that sometimes can be back, you know, just an example. So working on 34 years and it's the important thing. A lot of a lot of your audience are young people, you know, young married people and people and people who are not married, but they want to be married. This is a lifelong quest and the whole point is that's the adventure. Another mistake that a lot of couples make is thinking that that they're their conflict and the anxiety they have about their relationship and all that that's somehow evidence of a problem. It's not it's evidence that you're alive. And that you're two human beings getting better at knowing each other and loving each other and going toward having together. That's evidence. If you're not suffering, it means you're already dead. How much conflict is too much conflict in a marriage? That's a question that really depends and that's an empirical question among other things, right? So that's a philosophical question, but it's an empirical question as well. And what you find is that really very much depends on the couple. If you've got two mad scientists that are married to each other, you're going to have a lot of conflict and that's not a problem. It depends on how good you are at conflict. You need conflict technique is what it comes down to. Yeah. And sometimes like we fight or we have arguments about things and I go like, but then I think it's so good that I trust him. That I that it's okay with disagree we rotate each other we argue whatever, but like that that we'll back to the thing trust. It's okay. We can we don't understand each other right now. Okay. It's okay. I don't care. Let's move on. Let's love each other. And sometimes he holds my hand. I don't want to push him away. But then you try again. Okay. You know, that's it because if he does it enough times, I'll hold it. You guys don't think that because the first time she doesn't respond. So she's making a point. Do you ever want to hold his hand and he doesn't want to hold yours? We're we're very. He likes to be touched more than I like to be touched. I like to be seen more than touched. So women have three times as much oxytocin. It's a neuropeptide in the brain that functions as a hormone. Women have oxytocin brains. And the reason is because you have when you're when your children were born and you had direct eye contact with a newborn infant who didn't know you. But you're it was like the fourth of July inside your head. That's a bonding hormone. That's a bonding neuropeptide. Women have it more than men men have it to. But only a third is much. Now the biggest way that you're going to get it from the people that you love the most from your kin is direct eye contact. That's a window to window into the soul, according to St. Paul. But it's also a window. It's it's it's the spigot for for oxytocin. One of the most important things mistakes that men make in their marriages is they don't look at their wives in the eyes when they talk. This will save a multitude of problems. This will save marriages is is eye contact stare at her in the eyes when you're having your conversation. Now men have more vasopressin, which is a neuropeptide. That's that that's not just bonding. That's like loyalty and defense. Right. You get a lot of that when you touch when and and the key thing all your husband wants is when you're walking on the street together for you don't you know you put your arm inside his arm like that and he feels like eight feet tall. Everybody. Yeah. Then love that men love that and the reason is because vasopressin. Yeah, it's kind of like a protection. Yeah, totally. And so and so there's a there's sort of four secrets that could save almost every marriage. Okay, let's do it. And I also want to ask you how to be adorable. But this is probably going to lead us into that. Well, this is all social science. So we'll just get we'll dispense with the science quickly. Number one eye contact every time you're talking. Never be talking where you're not looking at you, especially if you're sitting together on the sofa. No phones. Yeah, no phone for I mean, that's like table stakes, right. Big irritation of mine. That's everybody. That hasn't even fallen to that if we're working or that's what you know, but lying in bed before you go to sleep. Pillow talk means eye contact talking to each other. What's that lights on? Yeah lights up for sure again. You got to see into each other. You got to see into each other's eyes. Guys, don't screw that up. Don't screw that up. Number one, number two, ABT always be touching. When you're together, you're touching. When you're in mass, you're touching. When you're walking, you're holding hands, always be touching. That's number two. This saves tons and tons and tons of relationships. Number three, don't rehearse all your problems. Have more fun. Do stuff you like as opposed to rehearsing your problems. You know, this is a little solving problems or rehearsing. Rehearsing problems is what's actually not solving problems, but you're paying a therapist to do. You go in and you say, okay, let's talk about your conflict. You know, the glass of water with a dirt in it. You're not getting a dirt out. How do you get the dirt out? This is actually where there's a very interesting marriage. A movement in Spain called a motoconio galo. It'll put a yecto and motoconio galo. And we've done it. I mean, it's the marital love project. It's coming to a country near you. It's in the state already, but it's in Spanish. It's going to be translucent. It's phenomenal. One of the things that they point out, which is very good social science, is they say, okay, you're stirring it up and stirring it up and stirring it up. Just pour a whole picture of water into the glass and the dirt comes out on its own. And that's just have more fun. And last but not least, this is the key that a lot of couples don't have. They don't do the single most intimate thing they should be doing together, which is praying together every day, praying together, praying together, praying together. I know couples, Catholic couples, serious Catholic couples, they've been married for 50 years and don't pray together because it's too embarrassing. Like, I know. What do you mean by pray together? I mean, how are we do it? I mean, we pray the rosary and extemporaneous prayer together, pray the rosary or pray, just pray. You know, in times of something's happening that we're praying to God for something to do it together. And it can include the kids. It's better, it's better. It's like, you know, it's bilateral. It's a damn thing. You can include the kids, of course, but as a mayor couple. This is the most intimate thing. There's lots of stuff that, you know, it's just one of the things that's characteristic of really happy marriages is you realize when your kids come along, it's you versus them. It's team parents and team kids and unhappy marriages that have a lot of kids is the kids get between the parents. Yeah. Never let your kids get, never let your, because they will. They're smart. You know, they'll divide and conquer as much as they possibly can. And it's like never, no space, no space. And it's the best thing that you can do for the kids to be close. And one of the things to do, of course, is that is to maintain the deepest kind of intimacy and that's spiritual intimacy. And so that's the big four. It's eye contact, always touching. Having more fun is both rehearsing your grievances and, and, and praying together. None of those four things were sexual intimacy. No. No. Well, they, they, they, they go, they, they will bring you to that. Well, yeah. If you want more sexual intimacy, you know, always be touching and make sure that you're doing eye contact. Also, one of the things that if you want sexual intimacy, you, for, I think for women, we want to be seen. Not just like a naked body, but as a person, we're more like receptive. We, we need to trust that, that admiration from not just physically, but as a person. It's so important. And so, you know, that's a thing. But I've heard not to be devil's advocate, but I've heard there are men, a lot of men that say, and again, this isn't all men. But there's a group of men who say, well, my need is sex. And, and, and in a marriage, you should be having sex, of course. You need to be very intimate. That's, these are keys, I think, to intimacy. But it's more like the, the idea there is, this is the primordial need of a man. Not so much of a woman. And you're kind of trading. The man trades emotional intimacy. And the woman trades back physical intimacy. And this is, again, a whole kind of world view of how the two interact. Do you agree with that? Do you disagree with that? How do you see that? We talk about that in pre-cane. I tell, once you mentioned how you talk about this about affection and sex. Yeah, I think they go together because if you get one, you're going to get the other one. If we women get more attention and adoration, we're going to be more receptive to sexual intimacy. And men too, like, right? If you get more sexual intimacy, then you'll be more willing to adored the women. But I guess the question is to make it more precise. Would men be happy with just sex? No. No, no. Because that's what some people kind of, I know, is sharing that out there. Actually, we have a perfect natural experiment for this whole pornography. Well, maybe when you are. Maybe when they are young, right? Yeah, no, no. But not even that. What you find is that more, more use of pornography is related to much higher race of depression, much higher rates of loneliness, much higher rates of suicide, much higher rates of anxiety. That's a disruption of spirituality. I know, but it's the asymptotic extreme of this phenomenon of shearing sex off from intimacy, shearing sex off from the human experience, from the connection with another person. And so men, for sure, are evolved to be more sexual. They are. I mean, that's pretty easy to anybody who denies that is probably a college professor or something. Don't people deny that, yeah. I know, but my point being that that's not, that's, that would defy common sense. But the point is that that's still not enough for men too. And one of the things that men need to learn about themselves is that men need love, just like women need love. And that your animal impulses are not the same space as your moral aspirations. The human prefrontal cortex, which is the greatest supercomputer in the, in the universe, 30% of your brain by way, gives you two choices. You can live in the space of your animal impulses, or you can choose to live in the space of your moral aspirations. God made us this way. It's an incredible miracle, but that's not even a religious point. We know this is the case that we can stand up to our animal impulses and choose our moral aspirations. And one of the most important things that guys need to get their minds around in marriage is that you need to live up to your moral aspiration in treating your wife the way that you would want your wife to be treated as opposed to what you're feeling right now. Or you just think that as an older man. I've always thought this, but now I actually have the moral, I mean, I have the intellectual backing for it. Is this an evolution in your marriage? Early on the marriage was this not the way that you sought or shared life together? And this is now more as you've done together. We were more immature to be sure. Yeah. And we fought more about dumb things to be sure. But we were, this was these ideas were in co-ate. Yeah. I think they were always there. But it sounds like what you're saying are there, and I think it's controversial for some today, not all. Because there's different extremes, right? But what you're saying is that this idea of men needing sex in a special way versus women. There is a biological reality that's connected to that, but it's not sufficient. It's like to say, well, you need to have calories. But like any calorie is, maybe you actually some calories kill you. Like if you have the wrong kind, then you need a nutritional, it needs to be nutritious, nutritious. And so when you say that men need sex, what you're really saying is men need physical connection in love. That includes sex, but you to say that that's the end game of a man is actually to reduce him. Totally, absolutely. And that's one of the reasons that men will find when they're living in the space of their animal impulses that they're getting unhappier and unhappier and unhappier. Men, the vast overwhelming majority of men are not supposed to be alone. They're not supposed to be alone. They're not complete. They're not completed. And they won't be happy until they actually get beyond that. One of the problems that a lot of guys have is that they're very, very successful in the kind of the mating marketplace. And so the result is because they have a lot of money or they're incredibly attractive, or they just give off resource signals. In the biological evolutionary milieu, resources are incredibly attractive to single women. In a resource provision, the ability to protect the possession of a lot of resources is the way. And so guys who have that because of their life circumstances early on, they'll attract to themselves women who are willing to actually give them sort of at the base level what they think they want. And that screws them up. That messes guys up. It messes up their minds. It messes up their brains. It makes them deeply, deeply unhappier and they don't know why. And the reason is because they're not being completed. They're getting what they want. And that's the problem. They would think they want. You mean they're not, they're not marrying an equal. They're marrying a. They're not marrying. They're not marrying, you know, men, men need to fall in love and marry their best friend. That's what men need to do. I mean, it's not just Mary, a hot babe who's gonna give you. And ideally, I got with that too. But you want both, but she also needs to be your, there needs to be friendship. Yeah. So the way, the way we talk about this in the world of behavioral science is that the human brain has a neuro, neurophysiological cascade that happens when we're in the early stages of the mating. Sex hormones are first instigated when there's attraction. You see somebody from across the library, right? And there's a little spike of estradiol or testosterone, both, actually, both in men and women, but more and more and less than the other. And that's this kind of, it stimulates this interest. You'd call it sexual interest, but romantic interest. What are eros, you know, as the Greeks would put it, the next step when you actually talk to somebody and you feel that real interest, that's a neuro modulators. That's where dopamine and norepinephrine come in, where that's euphoria and anticipation. Like a text. A text from her. I got, there were no texts when we met, but the whole point is a text. It's like, it's a text. Who cares? It's a text, but that anticipation, that weird anticipation and that euphoria you get from a dumb little thing, that's these two neuromodulators that are in the brain. The next step is a big dip in serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that's associated with clinical depression. And when it's too low in the synapse, you tend to have rheumatoid sadness. What turns out that it dips like crazy when you're falling in love. And the reason is because you need to ruminate on the other person to bond, because you're looking for kin. You're making somebody into your kin, but you got to bond to another person and you didn't grow up with that person. You don't want to grow up with that person. That's a gross taboo is to have, you know, you want somebody who's fresh and complimentary to you. So that's why you look clinically depressed when you're falling in love because that your serotonin levels are really low. And then the big goal after weeks and months is the beginning of this oxytocin. The beginning of this oxytocin, investor person, which is that this person is your person. And that's the cosmic bonding that actually happens. The neurobiology of this is so beautiful as a way that this works. But what you want through all of that at the end of the day is not passionate love. It's companion at love, companion, which doesn't sound hot. I got it, right? Plenty, but true companion at love is where you're married your best friend. And there's sex too, right? I mean, it's like every benefit you could possibly want. But you get to walk through the rest of your life hand in hand every day with your best friend. That's what you get and that's what you want. And when it doesn't work because that cascade is out of sync and they don't get the companion to love, that's when they were in love and now they hate each other because the bitterness of the disappointment of actually not getting to friendship is real. And so all the dudes out there, they're not getting this. They're going from step one to step two to step one to step two is testosterone to dopamine and norepinephrine and back up to the top again and it's just hooking up and hooking up. You're not going to get where you need to go and you're not going to be happy. You're just not. They're leaving the lie. And it's so funny because everybody kind of knows it. And when I explain it to party boys and guys that I meet and people that I like and students that I have and they're super attractive and they got money and they got a future. And there's a line of women for them for these guys. They know perfectly that they're doing it wrong. They know perfectly. The red pill would say don't be a simp. Like what you said earlier and because I really wanted to get to this and I'm going to get to the adorable question because I know you've thoughts on that one too. But you said something earlier. I was like, are you talking about our lady? You're like, no, I'm talking about my wife. She's your muse. She's your spiritual guide. She's my guru. She's not your idol but she's on a pedestal. Yeah, no, I have a devotion to her. I have a devotion to her. Yeah, for sure. Because she brings me closer to God. Here's the interesting thing that really. In my view, that's very manly. My husband, I'm blessed. He's, you know, adores me, right? And I feel very blessed. But I think today there's a backlash against feminism, right? Like the ugly modern. I'm a man. No man. We need a man like a fish. She's a bicycle, whatever. There's a backlash against that. It's a glorious, famous quote. It's a pretty funny joke. It is a funny joke. It's a joke, right? But the backlash from men against that rejection of the masculine is, well, I'm going to reject this whole pedestal thing. But again, that's just reaction. Reaction is always like that. I mean, you see reaction in politics. You see reaction. And, you know, all it is is that you're reacting to something and so you go to the opposite extreme. And men do that, by the way. The domesticating, the civilizing force on men is women in society. And so you find that that reaction will be short-lived. Reactions can't exist autonomously. It's such a good point. And so you can't endlessly react. You don't have stimuli. No, no. And, you know, they'll be okay. And I know lots of guys who thought that way and talked that way. We get reactions to this show for saying very like the nine things about love and marriage and everything where they're feminists. You know, like, and again, we don't try to, that's all who we're doing the show for. Obviously we love those people. We hope they'll thrive one day. But, you know, it's, it is a crazy world out there when you have the, the hurt that a lot of men experience. I know. The feminism, the now misogyny and misogyny and it's all just this. It is. And, it's, it's going to be okay because, you know, the American culture is largely propelled by fads and panics. You know? And, and fads and panics and fads and panics and fads and panics. And sometimes when you're young, you get caught up in a fad or a panic. The fad is the weird thing that's kind of awful and the panic is the reaction largely to it. And we kind of go back and forth and the whole thing and you get a little bit older. And what I found is a lot of guys that have this, that have this attitude about women. This really misguided attitude about women. And then they fall in love. And then they meet the person that's really right for them and they say, oh, oh, oh, now I get it. And they have like one healthy married couple that they kind of get, right? Because I've noticed when there's the falling in love and they try to do the right thing, but they don't have good inputs. I have seen that because we get calls even on to the show about marriages that are struggling because the man or the woman is doing weird stuff, right? Or they're just not connecting whatever it is. But if your input is still that reaction is the fad and the, what was the panic? The fad of the panic. And you're feeding your marriage with fad and panic. Right. Then you're going to, I mean, there's marriages today on the other side. They're going to like, let's open our marriage. Yeah. But that's a fact. That's a fact. But that's a fact. It is an absolute fact. That's a fact today. And by the way, that's not a fact that has any sort of basis in what we understand about human parabond mating. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of research on this that the big, I'm sure that there are exceptions because there are all sorts of differences in human species in the human species. But the vast overwhelming majority of people are parabond mating are geared for parabond mating. And there's nobody who actually goes into a marriage and says, well, it's probably only a work for five years. They want it until they die on their wedding day. I don't care if you're completely secular or super Catholic or anything else in between, you want that to work for the rest of your life. And that's the thing to be paying attention to. That's your intention. That doesn't mean it's going to work out. There's lots of problems that people have. A lot of marriages fail. I get it. And there's a lot of marriages that fail and there's nothing that a partner can do about it. That's the reason that we have an annulment process in the Catholic church, as a matter of fact, right? Because there's a recognition of that fact. But the truth is that we want the thing that we're built to want deep down. And everybody watching us knows that that's the key. There's nobody watching us that is saying, yeah, you know, I think about it. He's time to redefine the human species. I think there's a new thing in town, no. And I also think that marriage, family and marriage have always been a goal of the devil to destroy. And so they're going to be always problems and it's never going to be like an easy thing. Even good marriages have to deal with trouble. So we have to keep that always in mind. That it's never going to be a super easy, simple, no-work kind of relationship. It's always going to include a lot of struggle, sometimes more, sometimes less. But it's always like, I think, worth the trying heart, not just whenever things don't work, just give up, just trying hard and just thinking about the importance of it. Not just for the person, but for society, for a culture, for the world. So yeah. With fads and panics, which are all around us, what do you think the disposition we should have towards the fads and the panics, especially the ones having to do with how we're going to live our marriages and our relationships? I mean, I'm thinking about women who now just don't want to get married. They don't want to have children. Well, I think that it should start telling children the truth about their lives. I think I'm working on a project with a Catholic school, a girls' Catholic school. There's going to be different women. They're going to come throughout the school year and talk about poetry for two days or less than that. So I'm preparing one of those residences. It's going to be called "Motherhood in Residence" to talk to girls about motherhood. Because who talks to girls about motherhood? Nobody. We just tell them they can be like men. They can have success in their careers. They can make a lot of money. They can be very happy. They can have a lot of fun. Nobody tells them what they were, that a big part of what they were made to be is mothers. Not just biological mothers, but mothers. There's other different ways of being mothers, right? Because I think that, like I said before, when I was growing up, I saw that families around me, my friends, etc., they had a family. They had a marriage. They had mothers that were actually happy to be mothers. They were being mothers fully or whatever. That doesn't mean that they stayed home because you can do that even if you work, okay? But it means priorities. So, nobody's telling young people that same thing with men, who's telling men that the most important thing they're going to do in their lives is to meet their spouse and to start a family. Nobody's telling men that. So I think in schools, we just focus about academics and all the fun, whatever. The culture is just about me, me, me, and how can I be satisfied and pleasure and fun. But nobody tells them little young men and women about how they're going to be fulfilled, which is the only way they're going to be fulfilled is when they love. And the best place that they can love is the family, is their marriage and their families. That's the place where they're going to be able to love, to serve and to give themselves for the other. And that's what we're made to do in this world. This is how we understand, it's funny. People often ask, why do people get more religious after they get married and have children? And the assumption for a lot of secular people is because that's how you can impose some sort of discipline on your kids, some sort of structure on your kids. That's wrong. The answer is that to begin with, we tend to get more religious as we get older. We believe less than Santa Claus and more than God as we get older. And part of the reason is because we get over this idea that in a good God could exist in an unjust world because life is messy, because Job 38, because where were you when I created the heavens and the earth? All of life is messy. So maybe that one is, but more importantly, when you have, when you get married and somebody loves you unconditionally, and then when you have your children. And I remember Carlos, when our son, you seem like such a narrowed well, now he's like, he went on to become a marine sniper. So let's just say his bellicosity was, was aimed outward toward America's enemies, which was really great. But when he was little, he'd be after a hard day. He'd be in his bed, asleep, little red cheeks, having been running around all day, getting into mischief. And I'd be sitting in the room and I'd be like, yeah, that's okay. God loves me. That's what it means. Because when I'm in my bed and God is like, he was so rotten today, but I just love him. And you don't understand unconditional love until you have your children. You don't understand the nature of what it means to love somebody who's actually unlovable until you have your children. You don't get it is the whole point. That's why the family. And then you don't get it, you don't know, but I think, and then if you don't have examples around you as a child when this is actually happening. So then how are you going to know? You're probably going to figure out like later in your life, but you probably be too late for some people, you know. So that I think we, it's, this is family marriage is something we need to actually talk about. With young kids and, and, and no, I mean, talk about, of course, the example, the, the life example is the best way to teach that. But when that is lacking in schools, in Catholic schools, why don't we talk more about that? Practical. Practical things. Like, when, at the heights, they actually did, they talk about fatherhood. What other high schools do they talk about fatherhood? Like never, never. As a heroic thing. As a heroic. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be awesome. Boys. It's just not, it's not talked about. It's just like something nobody thinks about saying. And same thing with, with women, with girls, right? Talk about that. Um, um, just the, the, the beautiful, the beauty of being a mother, right? What does that mean? Why is that beautiful? Why is it not a burden? No matter what they tell you, how we teaching that to young people, because we're not teaching that to young people, I think, good enough, well enough. I think the motherhood and fatherhood is kind of presented on a menu culturally where of like, you can do this. You can do that. Yeah. Motherhoods go cool thing. You could do it if you want no judgment, but that's not presented as a coming of age necessity for the maturity of every human being, whether they're biological parent or a spiritual parent of some kind, that this is the way you live. Mm-hmm. Like, it's not optional. Parenthood, I believe, biological or spiritual, it's not optional. We all are meant for it. Otherwise, we were cut short. We never really fully mature it. Well, part of it is. And that's when we become more like God. That's when we are closer to God, we become more like God. That's when we are, when we are more fulfilled in our role as human beings is when we, we take that role of parent, you know, mother, father or our role as our spouses, because it's all about love, it's the commitment, love God and love your neighbor. And when you do that, that's when you are fulfilled, that's when you're going to be happy. Mm-hmm. I mean, part of it is that the way that a lot of people have seen family life is that this is something you have to do. And people naturally bridle against that. I do too. I mean, I'm a, I'm a American rugged individualist. I'm an Emersonian, you know, Ruffold Emerson. My favorite, my favorite philosopher, which, you know, it's not very compatible with Catholic thinking. And by the way, he was a Unitarian. But my point being, you know, he would talk about, you know, the sturdy lad who always lands on his feet like a cat. That's from his most famous essay, "Self-reliance." I love that. I love that. I get it. And so when somebody says, "You got to do this thing," I'm like, "Mum, mm-hmm." You're going to do what? You got to do it both. And you got it. You got to college. No. You got to have a family. I will figure that out myself. I'm an American. I'm an individualist, right? But that's the wrong way to think about it. You get to do this thing. I mean, it's like, it's, you know, people are, you know, here are a lot of different people today saying, "How lousy it is to have to do adult stuff." Being an adult is the best. Being, I mean, it's the best. If I want to eat a Milky Way, I buy a Milky Way and I eat it because I actually get to do all these things. I get to do all these. I get to get married. It's like, "Why do you guys get to drink sparkling water whenever you want?" And we're like, "I've heard all these things." And just like, being an adult has, it's almost all great. It's almost all great because even the responsibilities are great. Even the anxieties are kind of a big adventure, as a matter of fact. If you see it as such, and the problem is we're not teaching young people today that this is the adventure of a lifetime is going through your life. I mean, everything about aging is like growing up, it's, "Oh, what a drag, man." The old. What a drag. Right? No. No, no, no, no. It's all this incredible adventure as long as we see it as such. That's the start of life, and that's not what we're teaching young people today. No. And we're also raising kids to be afraid of everything, like of conflict, you know, conflict can be good, conflict can be, can open, you know, different things, fear of failure. I was talking to a young girl, a friend of ours, who's teaching at a private school. And they actually, the parents, some of the parents told her, "You cannot say no to my kindergartener. If you don't want her to do something, you have to give her three options." Like a parent telling that to. What can go wrong with that? So, okay. So this. That child is going to go to college, and never hearing no. It's going to be afraid of everything if somebody doesn't agree with her or somebody has a different opinion. So I think it starts young, and I think that because nobody is telling those kids what's important in life, what it's really going to make them happy. And what they need to do in order to grow as human beings. We only talk about success, wealth, power, and pleasure. And we forget the most important thing. Which by the way, those are the four idols, I think that was Aquinas. Oh, by the way, yeah. Yeah, I mean, Aquinas actually was kind of lifting that from Aristotle. And honor, because now with the Instagram and all that, that's a fame, money, power, pleasure, and fame are. Those are the worldly idols, and all of those, the pursuit of all of those, is in the animal impulse. And none of those, as an end in itself, is in the moral aspiration space. None of it. Now, there's only wrong with money or power or pleasure or honor. Nothing wrong with those things. Only when they're intermediate goals to what we really want, which is the love and be loved, that's what exists in the space of moral aspiration. And so what we teach, showing people, is to. I mean, the hippies used to say, "If it feels good, do it," and we really haven't come very far. We haven't. Except, we've actually added this twist that's made it worse, which is if it feels bad, make it stop. Right. Which is even more dangerous. It's a void of all kinds of thoughts. It's toxic. It's caustic. It's triggering. And I'm, you're out. Yeah. We're not going to go there. I've got to ask, and this is also amazing, but there's a couple of, I need to ask that. And this is back to the dynamic in a, in a healthy marriage, in a beautiful marriage. I think you have a beautiful marriage, and it's an example to other people, and I'm so grateful you're sharing, you're willing to share. But this is just a kind of closed loop on the submission, mutual submission. We're talking about this. You said something so interesting about her being a spiritual guide to you. I'd like to learn more what that means. And then what uniquely, the question for you will be, what uniquely does the woman provide for the man in that he is the head she's not? There is only one. There's a tiebreaker. It's the man, according to Christian teaching. And I think the natural order. Well, I mean, there's this old saying that dad's job is to get the, get the family into church and mom's job is to get the family into heaven. So neurobiologically, what would you say if women have generally, not always, your results may differ, as I say, in the financial ads, a more developed, right hemisphere. This is the spiritual hemisphere of the brain. This is where meaning and mystery reside. One of the biggest problems that we have, the reason that meaning is so elusive to young people today, that we have an explosion of people who say their life feels meaningless. This is literally coincides with the, with the increases in depression and anxiety. Is my life feels meaningless, answered to that question, which arked up, we're starting in about 2008 for the very first time, that what's going on with that is when you, when you spend all your time in technology and analysis and efficiency and online, you're pushing yourself into the left hemisphere of your brain where mystery and meaning are absent. You don't find your, your relationship with God is not easy for you to find, maybe impossible when you're relegating yourself to the wrong hemisphere of your brain. That activity. This is one of the reasons that we're actually getting more nuns, we're getting less spiritual activity, the reason that we're getting more of the maladies that we're talking about here. But back to the complementarity between male and female, women are naturally more adroit at that right hemisphere of the brain. They're naturally more spiritual than men are. Not all. I'm pretty spiritual, not as much as you. Mystery and meaning are really what you're wired for, and that means that for me to understand the mystery and meaning of my life, I need to be wired into you. That's what it means for her. But you're, you're, you're, you're using as the wrong word, but you're sharing our brains are wired together. That's one flash. That's wonderful. That's beautiful. But and also, even in, in scripture, you see, you, okay, you, you talk if, right, she, she, in a way, she guide, she led Adam, right, in the wrong direction, but women have the power to lead men in the wrong direction and in the right direction. And it is a real power. This is not the strength, the masculine strength. This is the, the, the power of a woman of, also, woman in, in proverbs, wisdom is a woman. It's, there's the female figure because we, like you say, the right wing, like the, say, the right brain, the right, the right, the right brain. So when, in our case, when we, we are making a decision about something. Okay. So he just, no, yeah, this and we'll do that, but pro-practical. But I think that many times I can see through things with more clarity because it, I'm more, I mean, I don't want to say like, it's more, yeah, it, I see the complexity of thing instead of just like the, the little details and the things, but just like, no. So what is the, the good thing to do right here, like, with, with sending everything else, all the things that are happening around us, but what should we do, what, what is our goal here? What is the final goal? Um, but you're not pushing it on him. I'm not, sometimes I push because I'm, I, I have a lot of masculine qualities. Like, I'm like, I like fight. I like to push and stuff. But when I use those other qualities are more feminine, I'm happier, I'm more at peace. And that includes the guidance, the wisdom, which a lot of times, like, I think it's more like a woman's, um, grace that we have that sometimes you, because you're so focused on the here and there and the, the protection and then the, the, the, the real situation circumstances everything, you kind of lose a little bit of the sense of the whole picture. And that's what has happened in our marriage with, in regard to decisions or, you said earlier something really interesting, which I think is a secret for a lot of women. If they really take this to heart about how you choose freely to go his way, his desire, his plan, his choice, even when you disagree, even when maybe you see, even in a spiritual way. That's, I don't know if it's the right thing, but he's set and you show him respect by still going his way. It's not a moral issue. No. I'm loving him. You're loving him by giving a little bit of myself in that, in that time. And also another thing, we have the power to make them think that they're doing what they want, but they're not, or you don't know, shut the, close your eyes and you're in another episode. A lot of times you say, I said, oh, yeah, let's do that, but then we have ways. It's not the pure strength in confrontation. It's other ways that are, that are, that are very powerful in, in their own way. But when you've gone his way on something that you didn't think was the right thing and you said you were peaceful afterwards, you felt that you actually happier. Did he eventually come to your way or you eventually saw his way? Like usually, if I do that, I'm going to do his way. But I would just say, like, other ways, I say, all right, but then I keep trying and I keep in different ways, not face to face. But when I do his will in a way and I submit to that, that his opinion and his will on something, I'm just loving him. I mean, people don't understand that submission is a way to love that person, is giving part of who you are. That's actually what Jesus did. He gave himself totally and we just imitate a little bit. I'm giving a little bit of my opinion about something so that I can submit to what he wants to do because I know he wants the good, you know, the goal is a good thing. If he were saying, no, I'm, I'm just going to do something really bad to you and I'm, okay, so go ahead. Do something. No, I'm not saying that. He's thinking about doing something good. I just have a different way to do it. But I'm just offering myself up a little bit so that we can do it your way and I'm showing you, I trust you and I'm showing you, I admire you and I believe you. By the way, that's how I am adorable because I'm showing virtue. That's a virtue. That is a virtue. Self-control, your desires, your opinions, that's very hard to do. It's weakness. Yeah. It's a virtue. It's so hard and it requires so much fortitude, right, and so much like self-control to be meek and to love somebody to the point of you putting yourself under that person. But submission is mutual because he submits to me because he would die for me. He would die for me. He would just write, you would just completely give yourself to our marriage, to ourselves. So we have that common mission that we both submit in different ways, okay, and that's how we love each other because if we just think about what we want to do and what you want to do, we're not loving each other, we're just fighting against each other. So anyway. This one's hard for me. I don't have this one figured out. We get, I hope we get a few more decades to get this one settled, but I use submitting to my will. I don't know. You don't like that, huh? For some reason, it makes me intensely uncomfortable. Well, because we both grew up in this culture. But I think men who really desire that you submit to my will, there's something also off about that. For sure. I mean, the guy's like, like, my husband isn't like, submit to me, like, there's not that. And I've noticed men who are fixated not just like women who are fixated on, you know, provide for me, provide for me. It's like, it's almost like you're missing the, you're objectifying the person. Yeah. You know, you're trading the experience of the person's love for the person themselves who are an opt, you know, they're subject on an object, something like that. I know. It's funny because a lot of it, it makes sense that this would sort of live intention in its way because it's, you should always be uncomfortable about receiving and you should always be comfortable with giving, right? And so the receiving part is something that's, and it's, it's funny because, you know, well, but that's precisely one of the qualities of feminine qualities, receptivity. Yeah. No, I understand. And that's, and that's what makes, makes us more human women when we receive that if that you have, you are like the, the, okay, so you're leading our marriage with a common mission and we receive the, I receive what you're giving to me so that we can fulfill that mission. And that's another quality that is really hard. That's Mary, right? That's, you know, it's funny that one time I was, I would, I've been working a lot with the Dalai Lama for 12 years, right? Then, and, that's so cool. It's great. It's awesome. And he's, when's he going to become Catholic? I know. Well, I, I, I, I give him a rosary, you know, blessed by the pope. And he said to me, I want you to be a better Catholic man. He's never tried to convert me to Tibetan Buddhism or anything, but I've learned a lot. And it's really important, I think, for Catholics to study other people's religions because you learn so much about your own faith. And it's a really beautiful thing to do and the insulin, people were insular about their faith. They miss a lot about the outside world. And one time he, he, he's often critical of Americans who want to become Buddhists. And I, I asked him one time, why are you critical of Americans who want to become Buddhists? Why don't you like, that's great. And he said, because they often do it for the wrong reason, they're meditating because they want to feel better. And I said, so, of course, they meditate because they want to feel better. What should they be meditating for? He says, so the rest of the world feels better. You should be meditating so the rest of the world feels better. And then you might feel better too. But if you're trying to meditate for the benefits of meditation, you're not going to get the real benefits of meditation. You only get the benefits when you stop looking for the benefits. And that's a paradox. But that's a paradox of love. That's a paradox of love itself. When you, when you want submission, it won't satisfy you. That's the problem with all that. When you're comfortable with being submitted to, then power has become your idol, even in your, even in your, in your marriage. And that's just not good. You should always live intention with, with, with, with that, with a submission that you actually receive, I think. And so I don't have that straight in my head yet. And maybe I'm not supposed to have that straight in my head. I don't, part of you, I don't want you to submit to me. I don't want that. I want us to be co-equal. I want us to be partners. Well, I sue me to you a lot, and you don't even know. And I'm learning a lot of this. I'm learning a lot of this. I'm learning a lot of this podcast here. Yeah. Because the beauty is not that you see it, and you tell me, "Oh, thank you." The beauty is that you do it, because he sees it, and it's, you know, it's all about offering yourself for love, for, mostly for God, and then for you. But it's not so that you tell me, "Oh, thank you so much." No, is that so that I love you better? And that's actually that all I love is point, isn't it, that you, you do something for somebody else for their sake, and only there, in the residual sense, do you get the benefit that you saw? But I have to say, it's very hard for me to sue me. That's why I think you have a hard time me saying that, because usually there's like a lot of things. No, I wouldn't have this way. No, we should do this way. We always have different ideas about things, so probably. But anyway. There was one more thing you said, Esther. I had another, and I could talk to you guys for 10 more hours. So this has been amazing. But there's a couple of last things, and there's also your book coming out. One other thing that you said earlier about God and, you know, really coming to Jesus and his church, after 18 years of marriage, getting married in the church after you'd been, you know, married by the state, but I'm curious if there was an experience of you feeling loved by God or receiving God's love or Jesus's love and feeling your heart maybe more full, where he was no longer an idol, like his love, him doing things your ways or loving you the way exactly you wanted, that was replaced more by the experience of God's love. Was that part of it or how did you, what did that look like for you when he was no longer an idol and now you're receiving God's love in this more direct and full way? That was just a period of my time that I was very serious about my prayer time. So I would pray every morning, early morning, before the kids got up and I had my hour of prayer and so it was a time that I felt a lot of love from God and I experienced a lot of love and I had a lot of trust and so it was not just one time, one moment that I experienced something and so it was not just anything like that, it was just a time of prayer that constant prayer and praying scripture and just that connection and just trying to experience more the word of God, what it meant to be an early morning silence which is really hard because we get so distracted and we don't have to do that. But I think that was the day and then I said and at the same time there were feelings of sadness because like I said before, I felt like somebody had died, like my idol had died and I had to look at he was my idol and that had died. I had pushed him away, the way I had seen him before. So it was kind of like a death. It was sad. It was sad for me too. It was sad. Yeah. It was sad. It sounds like a severe mercy where they were like infatuated with each other and then God became there. Is that what you're talking about where God became the primary love as opposed to the love of the other, the lesser of the creative love? It was the creator love. I remember that in the book, it was that was my understanding it. Kind of. Yes. I just realized the only way and I also realized the only way I can love him really truly and the deeply is if I let if I love God first and if I let myself love be loved, I got first and I experienced that and I'm conscious of that, I'm aware of that and so I told him. It's really sad day. Yeah. Because he likes the attention of people a lot. He likes my attention. He likes me to be there and to oh, you're so good and he needs that, right? So I think when when I told you that, then then it was kind of like, but it was my prayer answer because it's just too much pressure and a marriage is too much pressure to be somebody's everything. Yeah. You can't live up to somebody. You can't be somebody's idol. You can't live up to that. You'll never be. They say never meet your idols, they say that because you need somebody to idolize every famous person and you meet them and you're like, you know, it's like kale between his teeth or whatever, right? Yeah. Or he's kind of a jerk or he was mean to the waiter or, you know, this something, right? And the truth is if you're holding, he's putting somebody on a pedestal, that's the person who's supposed to satisfy you, somebody who's supposed to meet your every need including your spiritual needs, you're going to be disappointed and and and I realized that it was too much pressure in our marriage is too much pressure. So the sad day was when you said to him, you're not only my idol goddess, but you're not that God is now what I love most. Yeah. And again, this is, we were Christians, I mean, we were Catholics, we were going to mass, this is this long process, it's not like you had this, you know, burning in experience. No, no, it was, it was, it was not one day, it was like a few days and we had conversations and I said, yes. And I think that's how it was. Super sad. Yeah. Exactly what we needed. I was so happy. Yeah. I was so sad. It's like, when you said you were super sad, but it went for better. It went to better. It's better. Oh yeah. It's just a relief. I wasn't, I wasn't nagging. I wasn't demanding. I wasn't expecting. It was just pure offering. And if he would give me something, it was all a gift. It was not because I asked, because I wanted to, and of course, it was not day and night, you know, we still, I was still loving that argument every day. Yeah. But and ever since. Yeah. And then when we went to that retreat that we talked about, the marriage retreat, the Spanish marriage retreat, it's based, it's all based on the theology of the body of the Paul II. And so there we realized even more of the need of grace for in our marriage that we needed because that's what we're talking about. We keep talking about our problems, talking about our problems, but hey, we have the sacrament of marriage. We're like pouring grace into our marriage so that we can stop talking about our problems and start receiving the gift and using it in ways of love and self-sacrifice for one for another. So great to be a Catholic for this because it's so great. It was like night and day. Yeah. And just just in general, I mean, Catholic couples should go to mass together as much as they possibly can. And daily mass is this unbelievable, it's like, it's like Starbucks. I mean, it's better than Starbucks. It's like a bougie coffee shop. It's so available and it's so uniform and it's just there. And we've got this thing and every day every, every, every day at six thirty in the morning because it's good for us to go early. Sometimes, we don't even talk before we go to mass, but we go together to mass, we go to mass or not, sometimes not, if I'm a little mad, I don't go hands. But then we go to mass and we just, we receive the grace, we receive the Eucharist. We are ready to love during the day. And so that, so we're so blessed to have the church, to have the sacraments. We don't value the sacraments enough. And we have the sacraments every day there. We can go, why would people not go every day? We're like 10 times a day, right? So by we do that, I'm just kidding, it's just a joke. But anyway, so we do that and so we wake up with, with mass, with, with, with Jesus. And, and then we are ready to start the day. It's such a big thing. It's a big understanding of Mary too. Because if we don't go, if we don't go to mass, then it's more likely that we're going to start getting irritated and all, but he left and he didn't say goodbye and he didn't give me a kiss, why didn't he look at me and it's so much easier. And then little irritations, right, that can ruin a marriage or can ruin a day, but just let's start with the sacrament. It's much better. It's this realization, I didn't understand this until only the past five years, that you don't, that I can inadvertently deny God's love to you. That through marriage, you experience God's love through me and I experience God's love through you. And when you're, when you're denying, if you'd deny me your love, your deny me my experience of God's love, that's heavy, that's heavy, but that's a beautiful thing too. Because that's like, it, it, it, it's like, that's the point, right? Show love, notwithstanding your feelings. Yeah. It's the point about submission. Yeah. And it's not about your feelings. It's like, this is an early mistake that a lot of young adults make is, is that they trust their feelings and your feelings are liars, including your feelings about your spouse, about your soulmate. If, if, if love and marriage were about feelings, we wouldn't have been married 34 years. We wouldn't have married 34 minutes because that's probably when we had our first knockdown dragout argument in broken English. And, and so it, so that's a really important thing to keep in mind that this is this cause, again, is the cosmic antenna of God's love is, is the marriage per se, which is, it really raises the stakes, but also it's weird. It raises the pressure and lowers the pressure at the same time. It's like a net, someone told me this, oh, when you get married, we've been married seven years now. So very much babies compared to you guys, but when you get married, there's going to be this sacramental marriage, you kind of have this, like, envelope around you, like holding you up. And it's like, intangible, but very real. And we feel it. Yeah. And it's so beautiful. Yeah. It just gives us such grace and peace. And it's just, it's grace. It's God's grace. I'm working through. That's right. And we found it too. And we saw the difference between living together, getting married in just not sacramentally. And then getting the sacrament of marriage, it's big difference in our marriage, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was never from the minute that we were a couple. There was not, I didn't have the slightest doubt that we would ever break up. No, no break up. Ever. But the way we love each other changed. The way we love each other was deeper and it was more less selfish. It was more metaphysical. Yeah. And the metaphysics of it every now and then for sure more not about me and what my wants and my needs, but about you and God, yeah, just makes itself a much better. How amazing. That is such a gift. I'm so edified, even just listening to this. And there is so much more that you're going to be living in your marriage and teaching. I know in some ways you said this is the first podcast where you're talking about your marriage together. Okay. Thank you. It was so beautiful and I'm so excited to see. I feel like I've seen your work Arthur for, I don't know, 20, how many years has been? You've been out there doing amazing stuff. I think I first heard about you maybe 20 years ago, but I'm seeing a new explosion I see of just incredible fruit from your work. Now your work together. I just want to thank you. Right, Joe. Thank you for making it possible. Because it's so beautiful. And thank you for your work. Thank you so much. You're bringing to people all over the world. Of course. It's spirit of God's love. The dream. How can people find you guys? I mean, you're everywhere Arthur, but Esther, I'm so excited for your show. Well, I'm going to be speaking at Sikh to you. Beautiful. And just, I have a radio show in Spanish in Guadalupe Radio called "Mujer y Palabra". And it means the word of God, the word of God, the woman and the word of God. Beautiful. And what else? And we do things to that. But one of the reasons that-- How come we come to your marriage retreats? [LAUGHTER] We want to go to that precarious. When I-- when we had kids that were little, he would travel a lot. He would be all over the-- you know, the world. And-- We didn't even get into that. We didn't get into the conflict a lot. So you guys have to come back. We've got to talk about it. Yeah, we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it later. But then we would nod together. We were apart a lot. And he would be working. And I would be home. And so now that the kids are gone and everything. So Arthur asked me, why don't I come with him and give him compilé and a trip? And I said, I don't want to do that. I don't like to travel. And so he said, well, but then we started doing the marriage prep talks and everything. We saw that there was a place that there was a need to talk about marriage in a very open way. And in a very like as older people with a lot of experience and faith and science. So I said, why don't we put together faith and science? And so that's what we've been doing. I love it. Yeah. But it's always following him. He's the guy. He's the guy accompanies amazing. You're both amazing. And so what again, anyway, I'm just will keep doing whatever calls us to do. Arthur Brooks dot com. Yeah, Arthur Brooks dot com. Amazing. Stop shopping for all things behavioral science about the human happiness. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Lila Rose Show. A huge happy new year to everybody. Make sure that you hit that subscribe button. Leave this video a like and a comment. We read all the comments. Thank you so much for all your support. 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