Signs You Found Your Soulmate - Jordan Peterson

Summary

The script discusses characteristics of a strong, long-lasting relationship. It emphasizes the importance of truthful communication, compatibility in life goals, shared responsibilities, and an unbreakable bond. A good relationship challenges each partner to grow. The speaker values his decades-long marriage and children, considering family central to a life well lived. He looks forward to grandchildren, as new generations sustain purpose later in life. Though relationships require work, the speaker ultimately sees marriage and child-rearing as deeply meaningful rather than a 'shackling together.'

Takeaways

• 😊 You need enough positive interactions (5:1) to sustain a relationship, but too many (11:1) can also cause issues
• 💡 Basing a marriage only on attraction is insufficient - you need maturity, intelligence and ability to negotiate life's practicalities
• 👫 Living together before marriage surprisingly does not help prevent divorce
• 🔒 Making a full commitment to your partner enables you to take the relationship more seriously
• 🤝 A strong marriage helps build a richer life by combining and strengthening each individual
• 👶 Having and raising children together sets you up for a fulfilling second half of life
• 😥 Telling the unpleasant truth is vital for communication in a marriage, even if neither partner wants to hear it
• 🚩 People tend to reject partners who are too nice and don't provide enough challenge
• 😡 Occasional conflict and tension keeps partners invested in understanding each other
• 🔮 You want a lifelong partner to grow and improve with, not someone who thinks you're currently perfect

Q & A

What ratio of positive to negative interactions is optimal for a relationship?

Research suggests that a ratio of 5 positive interactions to 1 negative interaction is too little to sustain a relationship, while a ratio of 11:1 is too high and can also lead to relationship problems. The ideal ratio is somewhere in between, but the exact number is not clear.

Why is transparency and trust important in a marriage?

Transparency and trust are important in a marriage because they allow the partners to openly communicate, negotiate issues, and tell each other difficult truths when needed to grow the relationship. Without transparency and trust, resentments can build and issues go unresolved.

What practical things should a couple discuss when planning a life together?

Practical things a couple should discuss include how they will handle finances, where they will live, their career plans and how they align, responsibilities for chores and meals, plans regarding children, and how they will interact with extended family.

Why is making a lifetime commitment important in a marriage?

Making a lifetime commitment is important because it signifies taking the relationship seriously and gives motivation to work through difficulties to sustain a high-quality marriage across the decades.

How can having children add depth and meaning to a marriage?

Having children bonds the couple's lives together into a family unit and gives them a meaningful joint project of raising the next generation, which can enable them to invest the later years of life with purpose and excitement.

Why is telling harsh truths important in a strong marriage?

Telling harsh truths, even when difficult, is important because it pushes both partners to grow and confront their limitations instead of resting complacently. Working through tensions makes the relationship stronger.

Why do some reject partners for being too nice?

Some reject partners for being too nice because they want the stimulation of some conflict, tension, and challenge. Without having to work through disagreements, the relationship can become boring.

What are some benefits of having a strong marriage and family?

Benefits include having a sanctuary and support system through life's difficulties, undertaking meaningful adventures and projects together, fulfilling careers enabled by a stable home life, shared joy in raising children, and close family relationships in the later years.

What keeps a marriage linked and vital over decades?

Open and honest communication, the willingness to hear and react to difficult truths from one's partner, ever-deepening knowledge of the other gained through living life together, and shared formative experiences like raising children are some things that keep a marriage vital over time.

Why have marriages and families gotten a bad reputation in modern culture?

They have gotten a bad cultural reputation because of a cynical view that sees commitment as confinement and family as a burden rather than recognizing these relationships as sources of meaning and vehicles for self-actualization across one's decades of life.

Outlines

00:00

😕 Relationships Require a Balance of Positivity and Negativity

The first paragraph explains that for a relationship to be successful and sustainable long-term, there needs to be a balance of positive and negative interactions. If the ratio is too heavily positive or negative, the relationship will not last. Some tension and disagreement is necessary to keep the relationship engaging and allow both partners to challenge each other.

05:01

😊 Long-Term Relationships and Children Bring Meaning in Later Life

The second paragraph discusses how having a good marriage and children sets a person up for fulfillment and purpose in the second half of life. The author describes feeling thrilled to have his children getting married and anticipating grandchildren after having worked through struggles earlier on. He sees this next phase as an exciting new chapter to invest in.

Keywords

💡relationship

The speaker discusses romantic relationships and what factors contribute to their success or failure over the long term. He notes research showing that having too few or too many positive interactions leads relationships to end.

💡commitment

The speaker argues you need a true, lifetime commitment to a relationship partner to approach the relationship with the appropriate seriousness and make it sustainably high-quality.

💡truth

Being able to tell each other difficult truths is viewed as essential for a strong marriage. However, the speaker notes actually doing this consistently is very challenging.

💡negotiate

The ability to negotiate issues like finances and household responsibilities is seen as a prerequisite for cohabiting successfully in a long-term romantic partnership.

💡challenge

The speaker suggests partners should challenge each other to grow and that rejecting overly 'nice' partners is common. Some conflict is viewed as an important dynamic.

💡life quality

The ultimate purpose of marriage is framed as living a high quality life over multiple decades, not just maximizing daily happiness.

💡parenting

Raising children together is discussed as one of the great joint adventures marriage enables. Grandchildren are also eagerly anticipated later in life.

💡sanctuary

The speaker describes his household and partnership providing an essential sanctuary for him during difficult periods in his career.

💡attraction

The speaker notes feeling an enduring attraction to one's long term partner requires real effort to actively maintain.

💡maturity

The speaker ties many elements of relationship success to the maturity level of both partners, including life planning and communication.

Highlights

You should get to know someone long enough to negotiate and formulate a vision of your joint future

A marriage must have trust, transparency, maturity, intelligence to negotiate finances, living situations, joint plans

Unless you've made a lifetime commitment, you won't take the relationship seriously enough to sustain high quality

A good marriage adds depth of life by tying two life strands together into one stronger rope

Marriage and children comprise two-thirds of life, even for career-focused people

Telling painful truths is key to a genuine relationship, though very difficult

If the positive to negative interaction ratio is 5:1, the relationship will fail for being too negative

If the ratio exceeds 11:1 positive to negative, it also fails - challenge keeps people engaged

The goal of a relationship isn't moment-to-moment happiness but to enable a high quality life over decades

You want someone who judges you and pushes you beyond your limitations, though it breeds resentment

A good partner is not someone who thinks you're perfect, but someone willing to contend with and bite

The bitterness keeps you linked in and figuring them out, making the relationship more durable

The lifetime commitment forces you to take the hard truths and friction seriously to hone the relationship

The resulting strength enables jointly undertaking massive shared adventures over decades with hope

Grandchildren give new purpose and excitement to invest yourself into the next life phase with vigor

Transcripts

if you're in a relationship and you only

have five positive interactions to one

negative interaction then the

relationship will end it's too negative

but if you have more than 11 positive

interactions to one negative interaction

then it also ends and you think well

that's pretty bloody peculiar why in the

world would that be don't you want like

a hundred to one positive to negative

interactions and the answer to that is

what makes you think that you want a

relationship so that you can be happy

thank you or at least happy

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said that a marriage must be based on

trust and transparency and being

Shackled together how and

you get to know someone how to set a

foundation oh well you know there's

there's no simple answer to that I think

that you should know someone well enough

so that you know if you can negotiate

with them and so that you have started

to formulate a vision of your joint

future that you can both look forward to

with enthusiasm and confidence and of

course that's going to depend to some

degree on your level of maturity but

that means you've considered such things

as do you have a sufficient number of

joint interests and are you oriented in

the same direction with regards to how

you're going to handle your joint

careers and the possibility of children

and the manner in which you're going to

interact with your in-laws and you have

to start

considering your life together from the

perspective of practicality and

economics I would say so it can't just

be that massive erotic attraction that's

associated with love although I think

that's extraordinarily important and

you're unbelievably fortunate if you

have that and you should do everything

you can to maintain it and that takes

effort that takes real effort and will

but you need to Ally that with maturity

and intelligence and the maturity and

intelligence is okay we're going to put

our lives together what's that going to

look like at the level of detail how are

we going to handle our finances where

are we going to live what are our joint

plans going to be et cetera if you want

to set up a household with someone then

there's a lot of things that you need to

get straight and you either do that by

bringing your unconscious assumptions to

bear on the situation and perhaps

clausing where they don't match or you

sit down like a conscious and aware and

articulate couple and start to negotiate

what your joint responsibilities are

going to be and so that would be well

who's responsible for the meals and when

and what are you going to eat and who's

going to get groceries and who's going

to pay the bills and who's going to do

which part of what household chores

there are to do and how is that going to

be laid out fair and so you should get

to know the person that you're with well

enough so that you can start discussing

the real practical issues of life and

determine whether or not you're capable

of negotiating that and I don't think

that necessarily means that you should

live together because the evidence is

actually quite strong at least the last

time I looked at people who live

together are more rather than less

likely to be divorced that might have

nothing to do with the actual Act of

living together it might be that people

who are more likely to get divorced are

also those who are more likely to merely

live together but I don't think that's a

great solution for reasons I won't get

into now and with regards to being

Shackled together is that that's a

complicated one and and I learned this

at least in part from Reading Carl Jung

and the idea there is that unless you've

really made a commitment to someone like

a lifetime commitment and that that's a

serious commitment one that you're not

going to back out of you're not going to

take the relationship with the

seriousness that's necessary to make it

of the highest possible quality and

sustainability across the course of your

life and it's really important that it

is of that high quality and

sustainability because the relationship

especially when it starts to produce

children is a machine let's say a

machine that you jointly operate that

adds immensely to the quality of your

life and the depth of your life I mean

you have the rope and strand of your

life and your partner has the strands in

the Rope of his or her life and then

those are tied together to make a

stronger rope and then those that unites

you across time and then those you

undertake massive adventures together

and some of that is the establishment of

a household and the establishment of

joint careers and the maintenance of

each other's mental and physical health

and the maintenance of a high quality

sexual life and all of that very very

challenging to do all of that and then

those The Joint production end and care

of children which sets you up properly

for the last half of your life so like

I'm 55 now and both my kids just got

engaged in the last month so that's

pretty bloody amazing and they're both

setting up households and and they're

stepping into adulthood and I'm

fortunate enough to have them in the

city that I live in so hooray for me

that's so bloody fortunate that I can

hardly believe it I mean we've helped

them out and tried to make to make the

possibility of their living here be

something that's viable but I'm

absolutely thrilled that they're going

to be around and I'm looking forward

immensely to having grandchildren and

like what else are you going to do when

you're 55. when you're going to be 55

it's gonna I might have 40 more years

like what am I going to do with those

years well so I have a good marriage

thank God for that and that's partly due

to the outstanding moral quality of my

wife who I'm also extraordinarily

attracted to and we've built a life

together and we've had kids together and

we're happy with our kids and we had

plenty of

struggle with our kids because one of

our children my daughter had serious

health problems which she seems to have

managed to resolve partly as a

consequence of her own Brilliance but

we've set ourselves up now so that our

children are respectable and mature

young adults so thank God for that and

they've got Partners who we both really

like and they're going to have children

and well hooray that means that this

next part of my life is going to be

something that I can invest into with a

fair bit of Hope and excitement and the

idea of having little kids around again

is thrilling because I really like

little kids they're really fun and so

the shackle together is such a cynical

way of looking at it it's more like what

you've produced is an unbreakable bond

between two beings both of them better

in every way if it's a relationship

that's based on trust and genuine

communication that's very difficult

thing to attain because you have to be

willing to tell the truth and the truth

is generally a horrible thing I mean

it's easy to tell truth when everyone

wants to hear what you have to say but

it's very difficult to tell the truth

when no one wants to hear at least of

all yourself and so marriage gets a very

bad rap in our culture and so does child

wearing and I think that's absolute

catastrophe because really being in a

long-term relationship a marriage let's

say

and having children that's two-thirds of

your life even if you're a highly career

oriented person and I'm a highly career

oriented person and my family has been

unbelievably important to me and has

also been something that's enabled me to

be a very effective in my career my

house has been a sanctuary for me and

thank God for that well many times in my

life but especially over the last year

so you should get to know someone long

enough to know that you too can tell the

truth with each other communicate and

negotiate because the most important

part of a relationship is the fact that

you can tell each other the truth and

negotiate if you're in a relationship

and you only have five positive

interactions to one negative interaction

then the relationship will end it's too

negative but if you have more than 11

positive interactions to one negative

interaction then it also ends and you

think well that's pretty bloody peculiar

why in the world would that be don't you

want like a hundred to one positive to

negative interactions and the answer to

that is what makes you think that you

want a relationship so that you can be

happy

or at least happy moment to moment why

do you think that it's not it's

certainly not the case is you know that

too because you I mean I bet you there's

not a person in this room who hasn't

rejected someone because they were too

nice to them something like that

person's no challenge it's something

like that you want someone who you can

get along with them but now and then

they bite you and you think oh that's

that's interesting I didn't really

expect that and then you go and puzzle

over it for a while and you torture

yourself about it and that's one of the

things that keeps you really linked into

the relationship and part of the reason

that you want the relationship isn't so

that you're happy right now it's so that

you can live a high quality life across

multiple decades and so you're looking

for someone that you have to contend

with who's going to push you beyond what

you already are and who's going to judge

you harshly often for your limitations

now that'll make you angry and all of

that and resentful and maybe you'll take

your revenge and and all of that but you

don't want someone who thinks you're

perfect in your current form partly

because why would you want to go out

with someone that deluded

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