Brad Wilcox is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and Director of the National Marriage Project. Why are some people naturally happier than others? Whether it's genetics, upbringing, or life circumstances, how can you finally rediscover joy and feel like your true self again? Expect to learn why young liberal women are so unhappy and why in contrasts conservative women are happier, if finding your one true soulmate is actually a myth, if people should be pursuing happiness instead of marriage, the factors that predict social mobility and how people can rise up out of poverty, what you can learn about the heritability of family desire and family stability, the current state of American politics based on the demographic results of the last election, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the soulmate myth and how does it affect relationships?
What do you think about the story of the book Eat, Pray, Love?
You know, Liz Gilbert's book obviously got a lot of attention, a lot of popularity among women especially. And, you know, it's kind of first glance really attractive and appealing. But what's, I think, striking about the book is that she kind of ends off by, you know, this sort of storybook romance in impossibly romantic Bali in Indonesia.
She meets what seems like the perfect guy who's a feminist, a great cook, a great lover, et cetera, et cetera. They have this incredible connection. But then you learn 10 years later, Chris, what do you think happens?
I already know how this story ends, unfortunately, because I did my research. Yeah.
Yeah, she leaves him for another soulmate. And so the point I make about this story in my own book is that we have this soulmate myth out there. There's the perfect person that will complete us, with whom we'll have really no major problems, and with whom we'll have this incredible romantic and emotional connection on a pretty regular basis.
And, you know, I think the Eat, Pray, Love book and the last kind of, you know, storybook romance that she gives us in that book is kind of emblematic of this whole way of thinking and approaching relationships, love and marriage.
And yet the problem with it, of course, is that by making feelings the foundation of love, feelings the foundation of marriage, you're kind of putting things on a very insecure footing. And that's why we see in the real world is that Liz Gilbert seems to go from one person to the next on a regular basis, including the guy that she meets at the end of, again, Eat, Pray, Love.
I noticed that you degendered a person because she pivoted from the guy in Bali to a woman for, I think, about five years. And then, really sadly, that person passed away. And then she started dating the woman's best friend, who was a guy, and then recently announced that she was happily single at 55 and had broken up with that. So, look...
Elizabeth Gilbert, fantastic book, did very, very well, super successful. But I do think it's fair to say that she makes for a tenuous role model for happy marriage and love. I don't think that that's a particularly controversial thing to say.
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Chapter 2: What is a better foundation for marriage than feelings?
One of the mistakes that many of us make, including me, Chris, is that we tend to think about a lot of our problems unfolding kind of in a linear fashion, kind of things getting worse in some way or moving in this direction in some way.
And yet I think at a certain point, oftentimes, at least the successful societies or the successful subcultures figure out a way to build up a new institution or pattern. And so I do think we're going to figure out Or some subcultures, Chris, are going to figure out how do we get kind of dating on track again?
Because they recognize either explicitly or implicitly that this is so vital to adult flourishing and to the future of our society as well.
Yeah, there's a... It is interesting to me whenever I see women, particularly liberal women, sort of castigating men for falling behind, sort of, oh, poor whining patriarchy, sort of... almost scolding men for not performing the way that they should. And women are doing it. You can too. Look at all of the advantages you used to have.
And then within the next couple of weeks from the same Twitter account or the same publication, asking where are all of the good men at when it comes to dating prospects. And you think you do understand that we're seeing cause and effect occur here, that men falling behind and them struggling in this new world in terms of the workforce are
is creating precisely the dearth of eligible partners that you're going to complain about in future. So, you know, it is of benefit to both sexes for both sexes to flourish. And it is of detriment to both sexes for either sex to fall behind.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it is kind of ironic. Some of the critics of my own book, Get Married, have kind of made the point, well, how can Wilcox argue for marriage if it's so hard for me as a talented or decent young woman to find a good guy?
But they're kind of making this argument from the left, and they're not kind of, I think, appreciating how so many of our institutions have gutted boys and young men's chances of flourishing, and they're not attentive to the ways in which, again, in education,
in even some ways in the labor force today and in the larger society, we're kind of not giving our boys and young men the kinds of supports and the kinds of challenges and the kind of cultural identity that would allow them to be the kind of man that they would want to date, mate, and marry later on in life.
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