RULES OF (MARITAL) ENGAGEMENT!

Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
  • last month
In this lecture, Stefan from Freedomain examines the dynamics of conflict in marriage, offering guidelines to enhance communication and understanding between partners. He likens conflict to a game governed by rules, emphasizing the necessity of recognizing different conflict types—win-lose versus win-win scenarios. Through practical examples, he illustrates how couples can navigate disputes by addressing underlying issues and fostering open dialogue, free from blame. Stefan discusses the significance of honesty and integrity in communication, advocating for prompt resolution of grievances to prevent resentment. He highlights the importance of adhering to established agreements as a foundation for trust. Ultimately, the lecture provides insights into cultivating a resilient and fulfilling relationship through constructive conflict resolution and mutual commitment to shared rules.

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Transcript
00:00Hey, everybody, hope you're doing well. It's Stefan from Free Domain. And I had a question
00:05from a live stream the other day, which I will attempt to do some reasonable justice to here.
00:10And the question was, what are your rules for fighting in a marriage? What are your rules for
00:14conflict in a marriage? Well, the first thing to understand about conflict in a marriage,
00:18and this is really conflict in any reasonable relationship, is that you have to play by the
00:22rules. Conflict is a game and there are rules. Clearly, you wouldn't play chess with someone
00:27who just made up whatever rules they want, who threw the chess pieces at you, who put mercury
00:32in your drink or roofied you. You would not sit down and play chess. So a conflict is a game,
00:40a sport. You try to win, of course, but you have to play by the rules.
00:47So there are two kinds of conflicts in a relationship. The first kind is when you
00:55know you're right and you have to win. And the second is you're not sure if you're right or not
01:02and you're open to some sort of win-win situation. So a conflict, for instance,
01:08where you know that you're right and you have to win is your girlfriend wants to go
01:16to some grungy party where there's going to be a bunch of lowlifes in a really bad section of town.
01:25So that would be an example of that is a win-lose and you have to win. And what I mean by that is,
01:33if you don't win, then the relationship probably won't continue. To take a more extreme example,
01:40if your wife comes to you and says, hey, I want an open marriage. Well, that is a debate or a
01:48conversation or an argument or a fight or conflict that you have to win and there is no compromise.
01:54You can look for a win-win situation if she's feeling lonely, spend more time with her. If she's
01:58feeling isolated, spend more time socially with people. If she is feeling starved of affection,
02:05find ways to bring more affection to the relationship. But if your girlfriend wants
02:09to go to a skeety party with a bunch of thugs, and if your wife wants to open up your marriage
02:15so that you can sleep with a police station, well, then that's a fight and you kind of have to win.
02:23If your wife or your husband, let's say your husband, let's flip it around a bit,
02:28if your husband has a friend who is bad for him, right? If your husband has a friend who is bad
02:35for him, if your husband's friend constantly gets him drunk, wants to take him to strip bars,
02:41enjoys doing, you know, coke off the Hooters girl's butt crack, well, then you got to win that
02:48and that's not a compromise situation, right? If every time your wife spends time with person X,
02:57Y, or Z, she's stressed, tense, unhappy, miserable, aggressive, unseated, unhinged,
03:02dissociated, whatever, then you're going to have to pry her out of that unhealthy relationship,
03:08and that's not a compromise situation, right? So there's win-lose conflicts, which are, I would
03:17say, to the death in that if you fail, the relationship is significantly jeopardized,
03:24right? So if your husband hangs out with some skeevy guy who offers him drugs and constantly
03:31wants him to get him to sleep with strippers, take him to strip clubs and get him lap dances,
03:35I mean, taking extreme examples, but, you know, this is important. If your husband keeps going
03:40out with skeevy guy who tries to get him laid by strippers, then your relationship is not going to
03:46survive that, right? So that's really a fight to the death. So it's really important to know which
03:51you're in. Now, another kind of conflict is you and your wife are kind of annoyed with each other
03:56and you don't know why, right? So you'll have some surface story, you know, like I put my book down
04:02here and you've moved it again and you're always moving my stuff and, well, you never do the dishes
04:06and, well, why can't you put your laundry in the hamper and why do you keep bringing your muddy
04:12shoes into the room, into the room by the garage? And he said, well, it's called a mud room,
04:17it's supposed to, why don't you just eat them, do it outside and, you know, why do you keep eating
04:21the last peanut butter without telling me and, you know, whatever, right? Like just little surface
04:24crap, right? That's obviously a sign of something more significant and deeper that's going on.
04:30So in those situations, the first thing to do is to recognize, of course, that you're not,
04:36the surface topic is not the actual topic, right? Nobody gets that mad if somebody finishes the
04:42peanut butter, nobody gets that mad if there is a pair of sweatpants on the floor by the laundry
04:48basket, right? It's unimportant, not worth fighting about, life's too short, that kind of stuff,
04:52right? So then you have to say, okay, well, the rules are don't lie, right? So if you're
04:58annoyed at your partner and you're picking at unrelated things, then you're lying. So if you
05:03wake up annoyed with your partner and you're just kind of looking for stuff to be upset about, well,
05:09that's a form of lying. Because if you wake up annoyed and then pick at your partner, you're
05:13pretending that you were fine and then whatever your partner did or didn't do put you in that bad
05:18mood, whereas in fact, if you wake up crabby with your partner, you're upset with your partner,
05:22you're angry at your partner, maybe you had a bad dream that's significant about your marriage or
05:26something like that. But if you say, no, no, no, it's about the laundry, it's about the peanut
05:29butter, it's about the towels on the floor, it's about you never putting your toothpaste back cap
05:33back on the toothpaste tube, you know, then you're lying and don't lie, right? So one of the rules of
05:38conflict is don't lie, right? If you're not willing to compromise on an issue, don't lie and say that
05:44you are. But if you're annoyed with your partner for some reason, and then you pick at things,
05:50then you're lying, you're saying the issue is the laundry on the floor, it's not that I'm annoyed
05:54at you for some reason. Now, if you are annoyed at your partner for some reason, the rules of
05:58engagement are, you say, I'm annoyed with you, I don't know why I'm not saying it's you, it could
06:04easily be me, it could be any number of things, but I feel this annoyance towards you. I'm not
06:09saying you did anything, I feel this urge to make it about the toothpaste cap on the toothpaste
06:13tube, but I know that's not really it, because the feelings predated that, and I'm just looking for
06:17something. So I don't know what's going on. I'm sure you haven't done anything wrong, or if you
06:22have, it's an accident, but I do feel annoyed. And then the rules are, okay, well, when did it
06:28start? And what happened? And how things been going? And is there anything else? Is there anything
06:32in your past? You just have this curiosity about where the feeling started and what's been
06:38going on. It's all perfectly reasonable, and that's the rule. The rule is don't pick at the
06:43surface stuff and be honest, because when you fight about the surface stuff, you're lying to
06:48each other. And because everyone's lying, the conflicts can never be resolved. A, because
06:54everyone's lying, and B, because you can't respect people who just lie in that kind of way or to that
06:58kind of degree. So you have to make the commitment to tell the truth in a conflict. I'm annoyed at
07:05you. I don't know why. And the honesty is that feelings are not proof.
07:11Just because you're annoyed with your partner does not mean that your partner is objectively annoying
07:17in some fashion. And that's one thing. The other rule, of course, is that feelings
07:24are not proof. Just because you're annoyed, and you've heard me say this a million times in call
07:27and shows, I'm annoyed. I'm not saying you're annoying. I'm just saying my experience is of
07:31being annoyed. Maybe it's valid. Maybe it's not. But we don't know for sure.
07:36If you know for sure why you're annoyed, then you should say why you're annoyed.
07:42So honesty is really, really important. And humility. I don't know why I'm annoyed.
07:49Now, another rule that's important is don't hold on to grievances and redirect them to other things.
07:55So let's say that your partner, you were at some dinner and your wife kept correcting you
08:02on inconsequential things while you were trying to tell a story. Well, that's annoying, right?
08:07That's annoying. And if you find that annoying, well, you probably don't want to deal with it in
08:13the moment because you're in a social engagement. So you repress, not suppress, you repress your
08:19emotions. You say, I will deal with this later. And then on the way home, you can say, I felt a
08:23little annoyed at this. I think this is why. Tell me what you were feeling, what you were thinking,
08:27and so on. And you have that discussion. But you don't hold on for two days and then snap at her
08:32about something unrelated because that's lying. So if you know why you're upset, then you should,
08:40as soon as reasonably possible, talk about the upset and what you feel and possibly why and so
08:46on, at least as a theory. So you have to have integrity and to be honest. If you're annoyed
08:53at someone, well, I mean, you can try and talk yourself out of it if it's just something minor.
08:57But if you remain annoyed at someone, then you should be honest about it. And you should be
09:02honest about it as soon as possible, because otherwise it spills out in unexpected ways.
09:07And then you're kind of in the wrong. Well, you've been mad at me about this for two days. Why didn't
09:11you say something? And then the other person has to say then, right, to be fair, I just found out
09:15about this. I didn't know, or maybe you did know, but didn't say anything. If your partner notices
09:20that you're annoyed or seem a little short-tempered, then they should say, are you feeling
09:24short-tempered? I'm noticing this. So just being honest in the moment. The longer you let things
09:29fester, it's like an infection. The longer you let things fester, generally the worse they become,
09:33and the harder they become to determine the source of, because it all gets muddied and
09:37murkied in the past. And of course, if you're mad at your wife for correcting you a bunch of times
09:43about inconsequential details while telling a story, if you're annoyed about that,
09:47and you don't say anything about it, that annoyance is going to come out in other ways,
09:51and you end up not actually getting to the root of the issue, or at least it's going to take a long
09:55time. And then your wife has a legitimate reason to be annoyed, which is, well, you were annoyed
10:00with me, and you didn't say anything, and you picked at me about my cooking for three days.
10:04That's just also annoying, right? So that's important. Now, you shouldn't get into relationships
10:10where the first one, the win-lose, fight to the death of the relationship stuff is going on. You
10:15should get all that stuff resolved before you get married. After you get married, then you have to
10:20have the commitment, no name-calling, of course, no aggression. You can get frustrated and so on.
10:25A little bit of raising voice is not the end of the world, right? But no yelling, no name-calling,
10:29no insults. You have to be ruthlessly honest if you're annoyed. If you know why you're annoyed,
10:36be direct about it. If you don't know why you're annoyed, be direct about the fact that you are
10:40annoyed, while also being honest about the fact that you don't know why you're annoyed. It really
10:45all just comes down to having the basic rules, and no yelling, no insults, no escalation,
10:53no dredging up things that you've already solved. Once you say something is solved,
10:58then it has to go into the memory chest, never to be dug back out. In other words,
11:03if you work through some particular issue, then it can't come back later as a proof of anything,
11:09right? Because otherwise, then there's no point working through anything if it can just be
11:13dug up and resurrected and reanimated and regouled into the current discussion.
11:19And you'll find, very interestingly for me, and this has been the case, and I'm sure it'll be
11:24the case for you as well, you'll find that if you are annoyed at someone, and you say,
11:28I'm kind of annoyed, I'm not saying it's your fault, but I am feeling annoyed,
11:32and if you do it in a non-aggressive fashion with the humility and honesty of saying,
11:36I don't know why, then you actually don't end up with escalations. You don't end up with things
11:42getting worse and snowballing. Because when you avoid conflict, then it just comes out in ways
11:48that are much more complicated and confusing and hard to figure out the source of, and then you
11:54just end up in this quagmire or this quicksand, which is generally a huge disaster. So yeah,
11:59know which fights are deal breakers and have those before you get married. After you get married,
12:04all the fights, all the conflicts are to do with annoyances along the way, usually the result of
12:10misunderstandings or some sort of past issue that is interfering with the current productive
12:16relations and so on. If you are just relentlessly honest, then you're constantly defusing these
12:20bombs before they aggregate and end up going off in surprising ways. So really, really work on that,
12:26just be honest. Honesty is a sign of self-confidence. Honesty is a sign of respect
12:31for your partner that they can handle it. And you just have to be honest to jump to conclusions and
12:36say, well, you pissed me off when you did this, and you were bad for it and so on. Well,
12:41there's a lot of complicated stuff in emotions and marriages. And once you marry someone and you say,
12:46I love you, then you cannot impugn destructive motives to them. When you marry someone,
12:54you say, I do, you're saying, I love you for who you are. And then you can't just later after you
12:58say, I love you for who you are, impugn all of these negative motives. So that's another rule,
13:03which is don't hallucinate negative motives for people. Well, you just did this because you're
13:08spiteful about my success. And they don't impugn negative motives because that's just a form of
13:12mysticism. And you don't have the knowledge and you'll never get confessions, even if there might
13:18be unconscious negative motives, you'll never get the confessions of that. If you attack someone
13:24for their motives ahead of time, without any proof, well, would you like that in the court system?
13:29If somebody were to say, you're guilty of this without any kind of trial or without any kind of
13:35advocacy or without any cross-examination or anything like that. So a trial has rules,
13:41of course, right? And sports have rules and all games have rules. And even war has rules,
13:48right? I mean, the rules around prisoners of war and torture and name, rank and serial number,
13:52all of that kind of stuff. So yeah, don't break the rules, man. It's absolutely not worth it.
13:58Relationships are agreed upon rules. A contract is an agreed upon rule, right? And games are
14:09agreed upon rules. In tennis, you get two serves. In pickleball, you get one, right? These are the
14:13agreed upon rules. And you can't play the game called relationships, called marriage, called
14:21love, called parenting, if you can't agree on the rules. And civilization is when we negotiate
14:28rules and then we stick to them, right? I mean, if you use a credit card, the rule is you pay the
14:35credit card bill. And civilization can't function if people get the benefit of saying they will
14:43follow rules and then have the option to not follow rules. So the most foundational rule is
14:49that you have to have rules that you call the other person on, right? So if the other person
14:54says, oh, you did this because you hate my cat. And it's like, well, no, no, we don't make up
15:01motives, right? If you start raising your voice and say, no, no, no, we don't raise voices, okay?
15:06Right. If there's name calling, no, no, no, we don't, right? So you have to have these agreed
15:10upon rules. And that a relationship is the set of rules that you agree on in the same way that
15:15you would not play a game of chess with someone who could make up their own rules. You wouldn't
15:18play a game of hockey or tennis or baseball with someone who could just make up their own rules.
15:24And so a relationship is the rules. Like the game of baseball is the rules of baseball. The game of
15:32squash is the rules of squash, right? A gold medal is given to the fastest runner. That is the rule
15:40of the Olympics. You don't just make it up and say, well, I have the biggest calves, therefore,
15:44I get the gold, right? That's not what people are training for. And that's not what they
15:48are entering the game for. And nobody would enter a game where the rules could be changed at will.
15:52And so when you have rules that you've agreed on, if you break the rules, you are ending the
15:59relationship. I don't mean if you slip up and you get called on it and then you correct, right?
16:03That's fine, right? If somebody says in pick a ball, they try to take a second serve and they
16:10say, no, no, no. Second serves are for tennis, not pickleball and squash. Then, oh, sorry, sorry.
16:17But if you want to play pickleball with people, which is one serve, and you say, I'm going to
16:22take two, they won't play with you. They'll just be like, well, no, it's one serve, right? I mean,
16:29if you say in chess, the queen can move like a knight or the king can move four squares instead
16:36of one, well, that's not chess, right? If you want to play chess with someone, chess is the
16:39agreed-upon rules and a relationship is the agreed-upon rules. And so if you go into a
16:45relationship with agreed-upon rules and you break those rules, you are breaking the relationship,
16:50right? A relationship isn't proximity, isn't sex. It isn't what's called love. It isn't
16:56any of these things. A relationship is the rules that you agree on. A marriage is the rules you
17:01agree on. What do you agree on? Well, we're going to put no others before us,
17:06before each other and monogamy and love till death do us part and better and worse, sickness
17:11and health. These are the rules. These are the rules. And the marriage is the rules. That's what
17:16makes marriage different from being boyfriend-girlfriend. Boyfriend-girlfriend, there
17:19are no particular formal rules. There should be rules that you agree on, right? But when you were
17:25a kid, right? I mean, what did you always say? What was always the problem? The problem was you
17:30play tag and I touched you. No, you just touched my shirt. Well, that counts like you're just
17:35trying to agree on the rules. There's no game of tag where I saw you, therefore, you're it,
17:40right? I mean, that's not touch tag, whatever, right? And so the rules are the game. The rules
17:45are the interaction. You can't interact with anyone without rules. I mean, you can't have
17:50a conversation with someone without following the rules of grammar and meaning and not both talking
17:55at the same time and using the same language. There are tons of rules even just in having a
17:59conversation with someone. So civilization is rules and love is rules. And if you can't stick
18:06to rules, you can't have relationships. If you can't stick to rules, you can't have love. If you
18:10can't stick to rules, you can't have a marriage because rules and your willingness to stick to
18:16them is what generates trust. And you can't love if you can't trust someone. If someone is just
18:21random and they're nice to you one day, nasty to the next, they kiss your cheek one day, they scream
18:26at you the next, they massage you one day, they smack you across the face the next, right? Then
18:31you can't love that person because you can't relax enough to trust and their behavior is not predictable
18:36enough to be virtuous because virtue is excellence in consistent goodness, right? I mean, any
18:43blindfolded fool can hit a hole in one from time to time in golf or mini golf or whatever, but it's
18:48being able to do things consistently that is the mark of excellence. I mean, you've seen these guys
18:53who just throw a basketball from one end of the court to the other and sink it. Well, that's just
18:56an accident, right? So consistency in virtue is sticking to the rules. And so you have to stick
19:06to the rules or you don't have a relationship. Rules are life. Rules are love. Rules are
19:10civilization. Rules are the free market. Rules are trust. Rules are predictability. Rules are
19:18civility. Politeness is a series of rules and standards. If somebody tells you a secret and
19:25you promise to keep the secret, you have to keep that rule. And if you really desperately want to
19:29tell the secret, then you have to get released from the secrecy in order to tell the secret
19:34because it's no longer a secret. Yes, it's fine. You can tell Bob or whatever, right?
19:38So all of these things are really, really essential to understand. If you can't follow
19:43the rules, you can't have relationships. You can have proximity, you can have conflicts,
19:48you can have entanglements, you can have codependency, but you can't have a relationship.
19:54And if you can't follow the rules, you can't have virtue. If you can't have virtue, people can't
19:59trust you. If people can't trust you, they can't fall in love with you. Pair bonding occurs when
20:04you are certain that someone will follow the rules. And again, that doesn't mean perfectly,
20:09right? I mean, every now and then, everyone drifts a little bit over the speed limit,
20:13but that's a little bit different from turning your will deliberately into oncoming traffic,
20:16right? So life is rules. I mean, our body has to follow particular biological rules. We have to
20:24get air, food, water, shelter. I mean, it's all rules, right? And people who say, I love you and
20:31are unpredictable are saying that they deserve the results of integrity while retaining the
20:38ability to commit fraud, right? So if a woman says, well, I love you, and then acts randomly
20:43and expects you to love her, then she's defrauding you because she's acting in a way that can't be
20:48loved while demanding that you love her, right? So this is a kind of fraud, right?
20:54So rules are just absolutely essential. If you can't agree on the rules, you can't agree on
20:59anything. If you can't agree on the rules, you have no particular interactions. You're just like
21:04a bunch of, you know, if you take a bunch of rubber balls and just throw them really hard at
21:08the ground and they just bounce randomly, well, that's your relationship. It's not predictability.
21:11There's no rules. There's no game. And it's fundamentally boring. I mean, imagine a game
21:16of chess where you could just make up whatever rules, there'd be no point play, none at all.
21:20And so the, when the rules break down, the game breaks down, the love breaks down,
21:23the marriage breaks down, the life breaks down. And of course the civilization breaks down too.
21:28So we don't want that. Freedomain.com. If you find this helpful, thank you so much. Bye.