The Coach Daniel Ratner Podcast
Coach Ratner is not a matchmaker, but a MateMaker. With 7 books under his belt, Coach Ratner is an accomplished author and sought-after speaker on topics such as relationships, self-esteem and spirituality. His unique insights and captivating speaking style have helped countless individuals achieve their goals and transform their lives.
The Coach Daniel Ratner Podcast
Love Is A Verb, Not A Vibe
Let me know your thoughts about the podcast. Thank you for listening!
What if the difference between a forgettable marriage and a fierce, lifelong partnership comes down to a few clear definitions and a handful of daily habits? We cut through the noise to explain why love fades for so many people—and how to make yours burn brighter with time, not dimmer.
First, we get honest about the odds and the cause: most of us never learned how to love. So we define it. Love isn’t a mood; it’s the emotional pleasure you feel when you focus on your partner’s virtues and keep associating them with those virtues. From there, we walk through the four phases of love: the initial crush, the research phase where listening beats looks, the moment of commitment, and the deep promise of never leaving—accepting that while someone else may be “better” on paper, your person is perfect for you.
We also reframe marriage as a merger of souls rather than a partnership that tallies points. Scorekeeping kills warmth; mergers protect the whole. Then we tackle the four parts of a relationship—physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual—and why most “physical problems” are actually emotional neglect. You’ll hear the four A’s that build connection (attention, affection, appreciation, awareness) and three crucial questions to ask before you commit: real attraction, a shared meaningful purpose that outlasts children and careers, and the respect-or-love litmus tests that keep couples steady when life shifts.
If you want practical, we deliver: listen to be chosen, date with clear intent, and make what matters to your partner matter to you—even when it feels small. Those daily signals say, I see you, I choose you, I’m not leaving. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs clarity, and leave a review telling us which phase you’re in and what you’ll practice this week.
I got a text this morning from a woman in Brooklyn, and she's been coaching with me back and forth. She was it was essential like a year or two ago. And she's dated a guy six times, and she really likes him, and he's sweet, he's an accountant, and he's good looking. But she says that he's has a hard time opening up to her. Like he's like not being like, you know, what I like to say, emotional. And this is the key to all relationships. We're gonna get in today. I have one purpose in life. I have one purpose. The reason I'm teaching here is I want to build passionate, loving relationships with one person the rest of our lives. And if you take 100 marriages in the world today, how many, how many get divorced? 50% of the marriages get divorced, right? 52. You have a better number than I do. 52. Of the ones that are not divorced, with 100 marriages, 50 are out the window. You have 50 left. How many of those do you think are passionate, happy, loving relationships?
SPEAKER_02:20%.
SPEAKER_00:How are your parents doing? 20%?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:20%. So 20 to 50 is 10 people. That means you walk down the aisle today and you're walking to the hopper and you're in love. And you think that love's gonna last forever. Do you know why? Because love is easy. Because you're 25, 30 years old. It is easy. But the longer you're married, if you don't work in that relationship, that love is going to fall apart. No offense. One in 10 shots. And do you know one of the reasons why? You've probably gonna spend more time getting a driver's license than you are learning what it takes to be in a passionate relationship. I'm being honest, I've I've I'm on a lot of podcasts right now. I've been doing so I was on, I'm gonna be three this week, I was two last week, and everyone I'm talking with is like some divorced 55-year-old woman who's doing a class on you know podcasts on narcissism or older relate people relations with older people, and they've all been divorced once or twice. And I asked them, how much studying or work did you do before you got married? They're like, no, well, not really. I go, what's your definition of love? She goes, Well, there's many things. I'm like, here's a problem we have going on. How many here want to be in love? Who wants to be in love? You're not sure. You're not sure. Is that right? Yeah, I can tell you why. We'll get into it later. Someone tell me the definition of love. You want to be in love and you can't define it. And this is a problem. This is why you have a one in ten shots. If you don't go into a relationship having clarity of what the definition of love and the definite marriage are, with not with me, I'm not marrying you, right? I'm already married, I'm already taken. With the person you're going to marry, you're going to have a hard time. And this we're going to get into today. I think the title of this class is called The Four Phases of Love. And the reason why I called this class the four phases, I was uh, I was uh, how's it going? Welcome back. You know, you have to, you know, you've been in my class before, right? But it's very important. You want to get this stuff ingrained in your brain so you can get on the happy marriage train. Because sometimes you have to come a few times to my classes in order to get it ingrained. So true. Coming to one class, oh, I've been to coach, it's not enough. You got to hear it over and over again to you're trained. You know, even like the small mouth's coaching this morning. All this guy has to do on six dates is says, you know what? I like you. That's it. That's all and she's gonna be like, oh, and like suddenly she's gonna open up to him. She's probably not opening up to him because he's not opening up to her. And she and she's probably maybe afraid, whatever. And all he has to do is say something, and you can train yourself to say things to your spouse, your girlfriend, whatever, in order to open them up and become more emotional. Even a guy who's got emotional constipation, someone who has a hard time opening up, which is fairly common, unfortunately, in the Jewish world, but we'll get to that later. If he can train himself to say some nice things and to open up and show attention, affection, appreciation, awareness to his spouse, he can he can make have a great relationship. You the what's the biggest decision you're gonna make in your life?
SPEAKER_03:Who do you marry?
SPEAKER_00:Who you're gonna marry? Yeah, you spend more time going to college than you do working on what it takes to make a great relationship. And we're gonna get into it right now. I was talking to my wife about 10 years ago. Thank God I just had my anniversary two weeks ago, 24 years. Amazing. In fact, it's so funny because you think you're walking, you think you're in love when you're getting married. You have no idea what love is. You have no idea, right? And so I uh was telling us, why is our relationship equal? Like, like, what I mean, why is our marriage equal to all the other marriages in the world, right? You have people getting divorced, you have people with infidelity, you have dysfunctional relationships, you have abuse, you right? You have people in Hollywood getting married six, seven times. Why is our marriage equal? You should be able to upgrade your marriage just like you upgrade your phone. And so I came up with the four phases of love. Phase one is what I call, by the way, you can take notes if you'd like, but this is all my book called Sunscreen Love. I have free copies out there. You can also get on Amazon. It's I I also read out on my podcast, the Coach Ratner Podcast, just in case you want to know. You want to hear me talk about it, read it, you can listen to me. You've probably heard enough of me already. Anyway, phase one is what I call the crush. This is when you meet a guy or a girl and you think they're kind of cute and they make you laugh and you go on one day with me. You know what? I can see myself dating this person. And it's okay to have a crush. People confuse that with the word infatuation, but the problem is many people get married because of infatuation, because they can't define the word love. And they think that's what love is. And if you can't define it, and you get married because of infatuation, you're gonna find yourself in one of those 90% people in an unhappy marriage or divorce. By the way, just because you're married 50, 60, 70 years, you die married, does not mean it was success. There are many people in this class right now whose parents are married, who stayed married their whole lives, and it was not a successful marriage. That's not what this class is about. This class is for you to be madly in love with your spouse in your 60s and your 70s and your 80s. And you see people who are madly in love with each other, and can tell you it's not because of physicality, right? They're sagging and they're dragging, right, if you get my point, right? Because they get, but they're still madly in love together. I like you to be in my class, Sean. It's great. They're still mad. Why? Because they're married to the souls, not the bodies. The looks only go so far. Of course, you must be attractive. We're getting into this. Okay. That's called the crush. And we have to understand the difference between factuation, the crush, and what real love is. Phase two is what I call the research phase. This is when you're learning the likes and the dislikes this person you're out with. It's a very exciting time in the relationship. Why isn't it exciting? Because everything's new and exciting. You're trying to learn their likes and their dislikes, what makes them laugh, what makes them, you know, curdle, what anything. You're trying to learn everything. And when I was in America, I used to set people up, and here it's a lot more complicated. But and someone would say, Oh, I have a girl, I have a girl for you. And you say, I'm seeing someone already. What does it mean when you're seeing someone?
SPEAKER_04:Are you committed?
SPEAKER_00:It means you're dating. You're dating. I'm dating someone, right? What should they really say? They should really say, I'm listening to someone. Because listening is how relationships are formed. Once you've seen them, what is there love to see? Right? Okay, she has a red dress, she has a blue dress, okay, he has a gray jacket, he has a blue jacket. There's nothing left to see. Generally. I am listening to someone. And it's I was in my early 20s. I was not raised in a religious home, completely secular. And I was dating a lot. I dated until I was 35. My wife, when I was 34, got married at 36. I got married very late. I guess this is why I have so much data on dating. I don't know, whatever. So I um said to my best friend, half of my can't get a second date, who said to me, stop talking and just listen. I'm like, what do you mean just topped up? But he's just I can start in a conversation. He goes, Women want a guy that listens to them. Like, really? He goes, yeah. And he was completely correct. Let me give you an example. To the women, you have a choice. You have a guy who's six foot two, handsome, good looking, nice muscles, smart, but he doesn't listen to you or pay attention to. He doesn't understand your jokes. Or a guy who's five foot six, twenty pounds overweight, but laughs with you, understands you, gets you, who would you rather marry? Somewhere in the middle, right? No, if you had a choice, you're gonna you're gonna want to find, and by the way, I have to say this short guys are discriminated against, or completely discriminated against. Do you know why? I don't know, it's ridiculous. It's from low self-esteem. Why can't you date a guy who's two inches shorter than you? I'm waiting for an answer. It's it's from low self-esteem. Because when you're married five, ten, fifteen years you're the one the woman's low self-esteem.
SPEAKER_04:Because I can't I when I went out with the kids and I high on five one, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You're right.
SPEAKER_05:You have to when you're first in the world.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, when you're married 10-15 years, let me ask you a question. When you're married 10-15 years and he's taking care of the kids and he's giving you emotional care, but he's he's gonna be great. He's gonna be he's gonna be awesome, right? My point. And by the way, in bed, you can't tell a difference. I'm I'm being honest. Okay, maybe a little bit. But you really can't tell a difference. And by the way, when you ask a guy out, you're allowed to ask his age. Are we allowed to ask your weight? No, we're not. We can't ask your weight. So we're being discriminated against.
SPEAKER_05:Like it's just weight, it's like it's like I'm not gonna stay on this.
SPEAKER_00:I just something I've been thinking about recently, how guys are getting discriminated against, but it's a different story. If a guy's in short, just shouldn't be getting. I'm like, listen, he can put he can wear heels, whatever. Anyway, so so listening, so listening, so I said, so I he said to me, if you stop talking, just listen to your date, she's gonna like you. I'm like, really? And he was correct. Women want a guy that listens to them, understands them. And that's no coincidence that the word listen and the word silent have the exact same letters. Because in the words listen, someone you have to be silent. And as a guy, you're talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking the whole time, and not listen to her, she's gonna like you, not listen to me. I was a Christian girl, she was in the Vay recently, and she went on the first date, and the guy had a list of questions he was asking her. He asked question number one, and then she'd start to answer, and then he'd interrupt her and ask the second question. On the second date, he was doing all the talking and she could not pay attention to him. She was bored out of her mind. She said, Should I go on the third date? I told her not to do it. Right? Because you have to, this is a very important part. You're married to someone forever in the same house. You have to be able to talk and understand each other. And if you want to capture someone's heart, you have to use your ears. And it's no coincidence that the word heart has the word ear right in the middle of it. Twice a day in Jewish prayer, we say Shema. In the second paragraph, Shemohav a teachma'u, hear and you shall listen. Seems like the same, it sounds like the same thing, right? Hear and you shall listen, because there's two kinds of hearing. There's one where it goes in one ear, out the other, another one where it goes inside and you internalize it and understand it. If you're on a date, there's three things, successes for a date, you want to get out of first date. You want to make sure you feel heard, right? You want to see feel seen, you feel seen and heard. Second, you want to feel safe. And third, you want to feel sexy. I mean, I don't mean that, but I mean really you want to feel like that you want to come talk to this person again. That's the listen, that's called phase two, that's the research phase. Phase three is what I call the commitment. This is the point in relationship when you I consider marriage, but not everyone's getting married, so it's whatever you feel is the commitment is. And it's not enough. I can have a hundred guys and a hundred girls outside the front door right now, waiting to marry you. That's easy. It's simple to get married. What's hard is to be in a passionate relationship with one person the rest of your life. And I'm gonna give you the tools to do it. Because everyone thinks they know, every psychologist and psychologist I just talked to over the last three weeks, they think they know what they're doing. But there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. They might have the knowledge, but they don't have the wisdom. And that's what this class is about. I'm gonna give you the wisdom on how to give the the, I'm I'm not like some spiritual guy. I'm gonna give you the things you need to do in order to make sure you have a great relationship. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. Big difference. Phase four is what I call the research phase. I'm sorry, phase four is what I call never leaving. Never leaving is the point in your relationship where you've been married five or ten years, and you realize there's someone better in almost every characteristic. There's someone who's a better lover, someone opposite more emotionally, someone who's funnier, someone who's skinnier, someone who's fatter, someone who's a better cook, someone who's my point? There's someone better in every single characteristic. And you come to the conclusion that your spouse isn't perfect, but they're perfect for you. And that's called the phase of never leaving, and that's where I want to get you to in this class. We're not gonna finish it all. We'll go through some dating ideas and so some uh but we're gonna get into a lot of it. Okay. The first thing we're gonna do, it's funny, some people will ask, but what's the difference between the commitment and never leaving? You're only committed to things until you're not committed anymore. How many times have you been committed to, you know what, it's New Year's Eve, I'm gonna join Planet Fitness, I'm gonna the gym three times a week. And then you quit three weeks later. Or you say to yourself, I'm gonna become a vegan. Next thing you know, you're eating this piece of chicken. Yeah, like you say things. I remember when I was young, my my my mom used to uh drive me to Hebrew school. I lived in Alexander, Virginia, and we used to call it Juju, right? And and my mom didn't like having to drive half an hour or three times a week, and she used to complain. So I said to myself, I was 10 years old, I am never gonna drive. And then three years later, I said, I am never getting married. And of course, you know, 20 years later, I'm driving to my wedding. Or you might have said one time, I'm gonna, you know, start keeping kosher, I'm gonna stop smoking pot. Next thing you know, you're eating a bacon cheeseburger smoking a doobie. You're only committed to things until you're not committed anymore. It's not enough. What's the first thing you do when you get when you get engaged? You you plan your wedding, you call your wedding planner, you know who's gonna come, what the theme's gonna be, you know, what the dress is gonna be. Some people go to New York to spend more money on the Louis Vuitton shoes and and uh and and Vera Wayne dress than they do when some people spend their entire weddings. You're planning the wedding day. Yet how long do the average wedding last? Four hours, five hours max in Lakewood, right? Unless you're Jeff Bezos and three days in Venice. The day you get married is the day the hard work starts. I had a couple was it yesterday. Are they here now? Where were they? I had a couple complaints, they're they're they're getting married, and the he wants a they're having an issue about the wedding. I go, this is ridiculous. I even told him this is stupid. I go, the wedding lasts a few hours. You should be planning your life together, where your kids are gonna, this should not be an issue. Have another couple that's coaching where they're coming, they're having an issue with raising the kids. That should have been questions answered before you got married. How you're gonna raise the kids, what kind of schools they're gonna go to, what kind of community do you want to live in? These are all things that should be answered before you get married. If you're a watch of uh romantic comedy, what's the last scene in the movie? What's the last scene? The marriage. You get married, right? How can they never show 10, 20, or 30 years later after the wedding? Because it wouldn't be a romantic comedy, it'd be a murder mystery. The day you get married is the day the hard work starts. And so the first thing we're gonna do today is we're gonna define our terms. The word love. Someone tell me what they think love means.
SPEAKER_04:Wanting to give unconditionally?
SPEAKER_00:Wanting to give unconditionally. You're close. And that's the answer when I call when I when I was when I was putting writing my book, and I thought about the definition of love. Can I have one? I'm gonna give you. I said, there's other things than just the definition of love. There's what I call the feeling of being love. Do you get my point? I feel like I'm in love, and that's called wanting to give. What's your name?
SPEAKER_04:Odelia.
SPEAKER_00:Odelia said wanting to give without getting anything in return. The problem is you give and you give and you give, and you get no reciprocity, that relationship is going to fall apart. Rabbi Torsky calls it fish love. Anyone here like salmon? No one, no one likes salmon? You like salmon, right? You like grilled teriyaki, right? Teryaki's salmon's great with mashed potatoes. My kids love it, right? What's your name? Hadar. The month? Hadar. Hadar. The mall.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the mall, right? That's where caught that's for uh, yeah, anyway. Uh where are you from? Oh, you're from Baltimore. I'm from DC. I'll be in Baltimore next week. Huh? Will you be there? No. Oh, okay. I'll be in hopefully at the go to Serengeti's. Yeah. Um Hadar says, what did I ask you? Oh, she likes salmon, right? Now, if Hadar really liked salmon, she wouldn't kill it and eat it. Hadar would take a live salmon, she put it in a bowl of water by her bedstand. She read it fish stories at night and take on fish play days. Hadar has an infatuation with salmon. Love is different. By the way, love is not a noun because that's how we use it. Oh, I'm in love. It's a noun. Love is a verb. It means I am in the act of loving someone. And we use the word love for everything. We use the love for, you know, my I love my glasses, I love my mother, I love my kids, I love my dog, I love my wife, I love pito with black olives and mushrooms. And the word love gets totally abused. Not just abused, but it loses its meaning because we use it for everything. And it's interesting that the Inuit in northern Canada has 50 words for the word snow. It's actually the same word, but 50 different ways of saying it. Because there's different kinds of snow. There's light snow, there's thick snow, there's wet snow, there's slippery snow, there's six, and all other kinds of snow. And we have one word for love, and it gets abused. The definition of love, you ready? I'm gonna say it to you in a few different ways, and then I'm gonna give you some analogies. It's the emotional pleasure we feel when we focus on the virtues of another person, and we continue to associate them with those virtues, which means there's a reason why we fell in love. I see you in the back row there. Of course. Again, it's all in the book. Don't take notes if you want to. It's the it's the emo it's the emotional pleasure you feel when you focus on the virtues of another person and you continue to associate them with those virtues for the rest of your life, which means there is a reason why you fell in love. Yes. Well, typically people don't change. It's usually you stop focusing on the negative trait you start started focusing on the negative character traits. Bad idea. Bad idea.
SPEAKER_05:It's not a thing that people say you should follow, but people say it's a thing.
SPEAKER_00:They do, of course. Every I I so many women, well, he's gonna get better, he'll stop smoking pot, he's gonna start paying attention. You know what I mean? Let me there's a there's a thing you say to your kids. It's called when you you get what you get and you don't get upset. The same thing in marriage. If you're gonna marry a guy, we're gonna get into this, and there's something about him you don't respect and you think he's going to change, you're going to be one of those 90% of the people, it doesn't mean you're divorced in a bad marriage. Right? Yes.
SPEAKER_02:I never like understood like that, and then also saying like you marry someone for like their pretend of.
SPEAKER_00:There is great. So there's both. So for example, just to give you an example for me. I was 34 and met my wife, and I was a secular Jew, you know, she was a traditional Jew. She went, she read, you know, she went to shul every Saturday, she read Torah three, four times a year for the shul, and she had Shabbat dinners on Friday nights. But that was, she wasn't, she wasn't like in the observant of religious world, but definitely traditional. And I was not not anything, right? So she met me, and she almost didn't go out with me because I didn't keep any sort of kosher. But she met me and she saw my potential and things that she didn't really, and she said to me very early on dating, if we ever get married and you want to eat brave, you cannot eat in front of the kids. And I agree to this very like the first few dates. That was like this the thing for her. That that can't, that that is a she draw the line, and I agreed to it. That wasn't an issue. By the way, it's a whole thing I talk about in my book that you don't know your type until you meet your type. You think you have some of the type that you have in your head, and you have no idea. My wife had not planned to meet a five foot eight red-headed coin dealer who was completely irreligious. That wasn't her in her book of people that she wanted to marry. And then when she met me, I became her type. And this is a problem in dating that you start to date people. Like I have so many stories, I'm gonna get to like it off topic, about people not going with someone because of a certain look, they didn't have like a job. I had a girl I was coaching, and I found a guy for her. I'm not gonna do the whole story, but really I did a lot of work. And I found the guy, and same city, Balchuva, three, four years older than him. Not okay, but it was great looking. He was thin, he was fine, he was average. And she asked me, no picture, no nothing. She said to me, What does he do? And I said, he's an information tech uh educational technology. You know what she says to me? He's not for me. I uh I couldn't believe this because I I I invented the guy, I vent him for coffee. I go, what do you mean he's not for you? He goes, I want a guy in business. I go, you have no idea what educational technology means. It could be Sergey Brent, he can own Google, you can own the billion dollar. What are you talking about? You want a guy in business? He's not for me. I I I I and I that's when I wrote the chapter. You don't know your type until you meet your type. Because you have no idea what your type is. This is why you have to have an open mind going into dating. And this is why we're gonna get into the three-date rule. We're not gonna get there yet. By the way, this is like a four-hour seminar, so you're not we're we're not gonna get everything. Yeah, go ahead. I think you're making a lot of assumptions there.
SPEAKER_05:Like, if someone's a doctor, it's not a child that always gravitate towards things that also go to personality.
SPEAKER_00:You gravitate towards people, you gravitate. So what you're doing is you're holding by past standards. You're gravitating, for example, you knew a guy, like like I knew a woman named Rachel, and she was beautiful. So every time you get Rachel, I think they're beautiful, right? You knew you had you had accountants who are boring in your life. Maybe your father had had was an accountant, or you had friends with all accountants, and they're all boring. So you just assume accountants are boring. So that's in your mind, but it's not, it doesn't hold true for everything. It doesn't hold true all the time.
SPEAKER_05:Like, have you ever met an artist that's like super intellectual and could be a- No, they're very creative people and they're gonna be late all the time.
SPEAKER_00:That's an artist, that's the kind of personality. But doesn't mean they can't be they can't mean they can't make it an awesome husband. It doesn't mean they can't take it just because okay, it's gonna be late all the time. I have to f I, you know, when you're born, you have half a soul, and your soul goes out into the world, it's like a heart, right? Like this. It's zigzag down the middle, split down the middle, and your half goes out and you have half in your world. And your goal is to find your Zivug, you besher it. And when you go into the hoppa, those two merge into one. But the problem is you think that your job is to like, if your husband is late all the time, you think your job is to make him not be late. When your wife is like, you know, spends a lot of money on clothes, you think your job is to get her not spend a lot of money on clothes. By the way, to stop that, you should start constantly wearing clothes all the time. She'll stop buying clothes, right? That's what you have to do. Your job isn't to do that, your job is to accept that person for who he is. If you think you're gonna change someone when you get married, you're in for a rude awakening. We have someone who's older in the class, right? She knows these things. I love it when I have older men in the class who've been married. And I when we get into like some of the things later on in the class, and and they and they go think and they go all like this, because you guys that you guys have no idea. No, you you got men in the class, you have no idea what you're looking for, relationship. It's not your fault. I'm not, I'm and this is what this is what I'm here to teach you. Understand what's important for you in a relationship. The women have a little bit more of an idea because they're more spiritual, they have they're more mature, no offense. They just are. This is why women generally marry men who are older, because they're they need someone who's more mature. You don't see 26-year-old girls marrying 21-year-old guys generally, because like they're babies. No offense, but you are mentally. I mean, it's just a true scientific. I'm just saying a scientific fact that when, especially men, when they go through puberty, they basically have brain damage to 25 years old. I'm just I'm just saying truth. You don't have to like me. That's not I'm not here to be liked, I'm here to give you make you guys awesome. That's what I'm trying to do. Okay, we are talking about, oh, we're talking about love, right? So there's a reason why you fell in love. What happened to those reasons? You stopped focusing and you and you started focusing on their negative characteristics. Okay, analogy. TV show called Chopped. Anyone hear the TV show called Chopped? Right? It's four chefs, they come on. You know this, you know the show? Oh, you know? It's uh on the food network. Are you French? Do you understand me? Oh, okay, great. I love French food. I love French food and French fries. I know that's not French, but like I do, like I do cook French food sometimes. Anyway, so I um when the show you have four chefs that come in to make a dish, uh, an appetizer, and you have two judges or three judges. And what they do is when you have you have like 20 minutes to make an appetizer, and they judge you and they chop it one of the one of the chefs off the show. And then you have three chefs and two and then one, one wins the the chopped champion of the day. Anyway, that's not the talk. So what happens is when they start the competition, the 20 minutes, they're given a basket full of very unusual ingredients. And these are things they have to use in their dish. Things like snake meat and squid ink and yycoma powder and snail urine. I mean, who cooks with snail urine? Who cooks with dried crickets? I'm just kidding about snail urine. Actually, it's not true. My point is, there it's the same way. You're going down the aisle and you have your basket full of unusual ingredients, and the older you are, the more likely you know what they are, but the younger you are, you're completely clueless. And you marry someone who has their own basket full of ingredients, things like inability to open up emotionally, they might have trust issues, they might be a slob, they might not have do listen very well, and you have to, so to speak, cook in the kitchen together, and you have a hard time and you try for years, and many times you fail and you burn your dish. And the relationship falls apart. Why? You stop focusing on why you fell in love with them in the first place. I'm actually going to come up with a whole new class. I thought about this today, about like a statement that you have to say before you decide to marry someone. And these are things that you have to come up with. This is why I love this person, right? Not because of how they make me feel, not because it's not because it's fish love, because of who they are as a person. This is the things that I love about them. And you have this list and you're going through turbulence, which every relationship's gonna go through, some sort of friction sometime down the road. When you have this list, you will remember why you married them. And I do this all the time. Listen, I'm in a marriage. Is it perfect? There's nothing perfect. You know, people they they get in your nerves sometimes, they can annoy you, do things that are wrong, they're in their own world. And I say, this is I didn't marry my wife because she's good in directions. I married her because she's unbelievable. She's she's kind and she's thoughtful, not just kind of thoughtful, she's calm, doesn't get excited, doesn't get emotional. And I love that about her. Are there some other things that are turned on? Maybe, of course. I'm not gonna say it, but like yeah, not perfect. The definition of love is the emotional pleasure you feel when you focus on their virtues and you continue to love them for those virtues the rest of their life. Now we're getting the definite definition of marriage because it's so important. Who here is gonna give them the definition of marriage? Okay, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:Consistent commitment to the person.
SPEAKER_00:Consistent commitment to the person. That's a nice thought. I have a dog, Mocha, and I'm trying to think of anything here to admit to my dog. No one's been here in my house. Okay, dog, she's amazing. I love Mocha. She's you been to my house?
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no. Like uh the ability to build a home and have kids.
SPEAKER_00:Not enough. Not enough. Sorry, mistake. This is why you're here. I'm gonna I'm gonna solve this all for you. It's a merger of two souls, it's a merger, and it's not a partnership. Even though I understand something, oh, we're partners, we are partners, we are, but when you look at something as a partnership, you know what happens? You keep score, and once you start keeping score, you're going to lose. I'm being honest with you. How long have you been married for? 30. 30. You have kids?
SPEAKER_03:I got four.
SPEAKER_00:Four kids, right? And have you kept score before?
SPEAKER_03:All the time.
SPEAKER_00:And how's it work? Horrible. It's horrible. You can't when you partnership is I have, I have, I have an idea for business. Sean's got the cash. And we go into partnership together to build a company. And by the way, my next book called When Botox Met Bezos starts about when Bezos got married, his first wife, Smith Scott. They built Amazon together and they succeeded. And the love falls apart because they don't need each other anymore. Do you get my point? Once you start keeping score, obviously love, I like to say, well, I like to look at love as a game. Just like you like to play Monopoly or Connect 4 or Risk. These are all great games. And you play them why? Because they're fun. If you make love into a game, you're gonna want to play it. And I make love into a game all the time in my house. But instead of playing Monopoly, I play Monogamy. Instead of playing Connect 4, I play Connect foreplay. And of course, Risk is. Risque. I'm just kidding. My point is, if you make love into a game, you're going to want to play. And by the way, my class called Kosher Climax, which I gave last week, I'll probably give it in the next few weeks. I talk about how to make love into a game. Physical things, emotional things, just to do in toward in order to make that pat that relationship passionate. Okay. Merger of two souls. Like I said, you're born, half your soul goes in the world, and you and you when you meet your Zivug or your Basherit, they merge under the hoppa together. And the reason why I say murder of two souls, because who do you love the most? Who do you love the most? Yourself. And would you do anything unless you're emotionally damaged? Would you do anything to hurt yourself? No, of course not. If you look at your wife or your husband as yourself, you would never do anything to hurt them. And that's why it's a merger. They are now you, they are now part of you. Who else is part of you? God and who else? Your children. Your children are part of you. Let me ask you a question. May you all have lots and lots of children on Maine. My question is, are you gonna love your children? How do you know? Because they're part of you, right? What are they the brats that you used to know when you were little in your neighborhood you hated? Are you gonna love them?
SPEAKER_04:My childhood.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, your children's body, you love them. What if your kid is in junior high school smoking pot behind the school with some other losers? Are you gonna love them? Do you know why? More than just they're part of you. You're gonna love them because you focus on your virtues. Your kid's smoking pot behind the school, you're gonna say, oh, he's going through a struggle because he's a good kid. Even parents of serial murders will say they still love their kids. They despise what they did, and generally they still love their kids. Do you know why? They focus on their virtues. Which means if you love your spouse like you loved your children, there would rarely be any divorce. Yet, do you pick your kids? No, God picks your kids. Yet you pick your spouse, you chose them, you chose her, you chose him, and you get divorced? That makes no sense whatsoever. And this is why looking at a marriage as a merger of two souls is very, very important. I am marrying myself. I would never do anything to hurt myself. Yes.
SPEAKER_05:Like focus on the merchant of some changes.
SPEAKER_00:If you're in a great relationship and you know how to treat your spouse, there's not going to be any changes. The changes come from the change. I'm sorry, I wish I had some water. The changes come. Please, thank you. The change, I usually bring a bottle, I just forgot today. I didn't feel like carrying anything. The changes come. I will give you an example. Uh a couple I know back in the DC area got divorced. I knew when they're married, and he was complaining, sending out emails like my wife was cheating on me. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Call me hevaro. I got a cold last week. I lose my voice a little bit. And she he was complaining that his wife was cheating on her. What he didn't say was that he wasn't paying emotional connection to her. And she was looking for an emotion. And I'm saying it's wrong, I'm not saying it's right. But there's usually his side, her side, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. If I'm we're gonna get into let's get into this right now. We have 20 minutes. We're not gonna get too far. The four parts of a relationship. Let's get it down and dirty. Highs. Physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. When there is a physical problem in a relationship, it is not physical, it's emotional. And the most important thing that a husband, a man, and a woman too, but more important for the man, is to show an emotional connection to his wife. And that's done through the four A's: attention, affection, appreciation, and awareness. We're not gonna have time to get into that today. I'm gonna get right into another idea. The three questions you must ask before you get married. Question number one: Am I physically attracted to this person? Which does not make them physically attractive to anybody else except you. You might have been to a wedding of a good friend of yours. She's a beautiful woman, and you saw the groom for the first time, walking to the wedding, and you see the groom for the first time, and you look at him, you go, oh my gosh, he looks like Freddie Kruger, Freddie Krueger. And the reason is because you don't know him like she knows him. Or you're a guy, you've gone to the wedding of one of your buddies one time for the first time, and you saw his bride, and you're like, oh my gosh, she looks like Miss Piggy. Again, you don't know her like he knows her. The more you know someone you like, the better looking they get. And the more you know someone you don't like, the uglier they get. Brad Pitt, good-looking guy, right? They're a woman who can't stand them. Looks only go so far. We need a deeper connection. Like I said before, they're gonna be everything's gonna be sagging and dragon. So you better have a deeper connection, a soul connection to the person you're gonna marry. This is why I have what's called the three-date rule. The three-date rule states you gotta give someone at least three chances. It's a recommendation, it's not halalha, right? It means you have to give someone a chance because usually on the first date, most people are generally pretty nervous. The younger you are, the more scared you are. I remember when I was young, my 20s, I'd go to the first date, especially with a pretty world, terrified. I wouldn't go to a pasta place, forget pizza, I'd order a salad, leave off the avocados, it gives me gas. Forget the salad dressing, it gets in my shirt, and forget carrots get stuck in my teeth. If I'm ordering a bowl of lettuce on my first date, are you gonna get to know me? Not a chance in the world. And I remember how many times women would say, No more about one and done. They don't know me. They have no idea who I am. And this is why they give someone a chance. Question number two do we share a common meaningful purpose, which includes values? And this is so important because what you said in the back row before, oh, you want to get married and have children and build a home together. And then you say that, and what happens is this is a common thing in the world today. Maybe not in the religious world, but it certainly does happen in the religious world. You have a nice young lady, she's 21, 22 years old, she meets to die, they start dating, and they date for six and seven years, and then he breaks up with her, and I ask, and she's upset, and she's wasted her best years. And I said to her, Why are you dating? She goes to get married. Well, seven years is a long time. And this is why you have to have, when you go in the dating world, you have to have a timeline in your head of how long you're dating until you get engaged for. And that is an acronym called DU. Dating, engagement, and marriage. Marriage, wedding. Sorry, not them. It's not democratic. It's wedding. Do. This is the timeline between dating, engagements, and marriage. Sorry, I'm writing fast without a limited time. So I'm gonna date, for example, the more, the more religious you are, the shorter that timeline is gonna be. So if you're in a you know raised religious home, you're gonna say, okay, I'm gonna date someone for no more than you know five or ten times. If I if I if I don't see myself marrying them, I'm not gonna break up with them. By the way, this is an important point. Not so much in the religious world, but in the regular world. And this is such a big issue, and this is so many reasons why there's so many bad relationships. You don't clarify why you're dating. Clarify why you are dating. If you can't clarify it, you're gonna be, you're gonna be in a heap of trouble. Which means if you're dating for marriage, you have a certain set of characteristics you need in a relationship. I am dating from marriage, therefore I need this, this, and this. And if they don't meet those requirements, I go out with them two, three, four, five times. I'm done. And if you're dating because you want a guy that takes you to the movies, or you want to have a guy to have sex with, that's a different set of characteristics. And guess what that bar is? It's gone from here to here. If you can afford to take you to the movies and he has sex with you, he's accomplished his goals and you start seeing him. But what happens is if you don't clarify it, and you start having sex and going to movies with them, what happens is it becomes comfortable and easy and nice, and you're getting along great, and everything's fine, and two or three years later, oh, you want kids, I want kids. Oh, let's get married, and you get married and wonder why you're in a hard relationship for 10 years. Do you know why? If you didn't clarify why you're dating, you have you have no idea what you're doing. If you ask a typical 22-year-old girl living in, you know, living in New York, you know, secular girl, why are you dating? I'm cute, guys. They like me. Are you dating because you want to get married? Are you dating because you want a relationship? I don't know, we'll see what happens. And they get completely confused and they end up in a bad marriage. I'm not saying you should date for physicality. I'm not saying you do what you want. I'm not here to judge anyone. Guy, girl, whatever you want. That's you, that's yours. I'm just telling you, I'm just here to give you Emma, the truth. If you're dating, if you don't clarify it, you're going to be in trouble. And the reason why children are not enough in a relationship, we have today, very common, and I'm sure you know, Sean, you know people like this, it's called empty nest divorce. Again, Jeff Bezos married Lauren Sanchez, his son when he got divorced from Smith Scott, 19 years old. Why? 19 years old, they left the house. You have people who marry because they want kids, and kids that may all have lost control, but it's not enough for a marriage. And the kids have left the house, and they have a couple staring at each other in the kitchen, wondering why they got married in the first place. Because our reason for marriage had left the building. Kids are not enough of a reason to get married. If you want someone to clean the house, hire a butler. They're a lot cheaper. People get married because they meet at running clubs, Pilates clubs, yoga clubs. Again, why you work out together, let's work out together. You have nice common interests, by the way. It's nice to have common interests, like you know, watching more High Shapiro playing Scrabble, but those things don't matter once you're married. Once kids get in the game, forget about it, out the window. Common, meaningful purpose must mean more than physical, more than marriage, more than more than kids, more than money, and more than working out. Personally, for me, spirituality, having God in my life. And we get clues in the Torah all the time, right? In fact, you look at six days of creation, what's the last thing God does? It's not good for man to be alone. He makes a wife out of Eve. And it's interesting that the word for a man is Ish, and the word for a woman is Isha. And they have shared two letters, Aleph and Shin, the word fire, ish. They share those two letters. Why? Because a relationship can be hot and fiery, which you want, or it can be burned, which you don't want. So it can be two different ways. The missing two letters, yud and he, the name of God. This is why the divorce rate in this religious world, I'm not talking Jewish, any religious world, the divorce rate is much, much slower. Why? Because they have God in their life. Now, if you're not religious or don't want to have God in your life, it has to be something more than physical. I'll give you an example. I was, I was last year, I was in LA and I was asked to go to this conference in Miami. I didn't want to go. And they said, we have a couple flying on their private jet from LA to Miami. Would you go on the private jet? And I'm like, okay, twist my arm, right? So I went to private true story. I flew in a private jet from LA to Miami. This couple in the late 60s, no children, Jewish couple, not religious, had an amazing marriage. Why? They share on common meaningful purpose. They help conservative political movements. And they don't just write checks for it. They're involved, they recruit for it, they go then set up. They're actually involved in these things. And that's a common meaningful purpose. If you don't share one with your spouse, you're gonna have a harder time. And that's the second question you must ask before you get married. And the third question you have to ask before you get married is different for a man than a woman. The third question the woman must ask before she gets married. I'm sorry, I'm doing the man first. The first question a man must ask before he gets married, am I willing to make her happy the rest of her life? Am I willing to make her happy the rest of her life if fill in the blank, whatever you want to say? She gains 75 pounds. If you can't answer that with a yes, you should not marry them. It'll take a lot of that infatuation out of the picture. The second, the third question that a woman must ask before she marries a man, and this is the most important thing that I'm gonna teach you today. You ready? Do I respect him? Men need to be respected. They want to be loved, but they must be respected. Woman only must be loved. You should respect your wife, for sure. But for a man, respect is more important. A man can love his wife and not respect her, and that marriage can still work. But if a woman does not respect her husband, that relationship is going to fall apart. Men are easy. We're not so difficult. We're not complicated creatures. We need three things in a relationship. We need food, we need sex, and we need respect. Everything else is a bonus. I hate to put it that easy, but it's that easy. It's funny, when I was on one of the podcasts with a woman, she was like, you make it sound, you make it break it down so simple. It's not, relationships are complicated. It's not so simple. I go, bless you. I go, you know, if you make it complicated, it becomes complicated. It's just I use an example like, you know, you're shooting uh three-pointers in basketball, right? Well, you don't go out in the court and start shooting three pointers. What do you start with? You go to the layup line, you make layups, and you walk three feet and you shoot three feet. Then you go to the foul line. This takes time. And then by the time you get to the three-point line, it's not so hard anymore. If you break things down easy, you'll have a much easier time. Respect is the most important thing. When I'm coaching women after my classes, what I do all the time, and they and they ask me about a guy they're going out with, and they and they and I and they're not sure. I ask them, do you respect them? If they hesitate or they look away, there is an issue. You must respect him for who he is. If your husband, if your boyfriend comes home and plays with lion on trains in the basement for three hours a day, and you don't respect that, you can say, Well, I hope he changes, but guess what? You get when you get and you don't get upset, which means don't expect him to change. Again, there's a fine line between potential and how much things you don't respect about them. And every situation is different, so it's not all or nothing. Any questions? No questions. Okay. Yes. I I think when I say beyond physical, I think charitable causes having a cause that's beyond just for you and you and your wife. And I don't and yourself, I don't think traveling's it. So someone asked me, oh, is traveling? I don't think traveling's it. The reason why I say religion, because you have something in your life that's guiding you. If you go through life with anything to guide you, you're gonna go downhill. It is common. Of course it is. I think religion's a great thing. Oh, for sure. This is why I said, this is why the divorce rate in the religious worlds is much less. We have God in our life. Not only that, I have a guidebook on how I have to act with other women. I can't go into a room alone with two other women, right? Let's a door open or something. I have to, you know, my conversations with women have to be very, very limited. You know, do you understand my point? I teach my girls how to, you know, my wife shows them how to dress modestly so they go out into the world. I didn't get into this, but there's a whole chapter called, if you want to catch the right fish, you need to put up the right bait. And this is a big problem in the world today. You know, women, not with men, I was in my late 20s and I used to lift a lot of weights. I had pretty big guns, like big muscles. And I go to these singles events. I wasn't religious, I go to singles events, I put on a tight black shirt, jeans, and I have great cat, you know, but not like I'm I'm far from a hearthrob, right? Far. As far as you can be. And but I had girls around me. Why? I could talk and had nice muscles. And I found myself on this hamster wheel dating women that were bad for me. Do you know why? They liked me for my muscles, not for who I was the person. I won't, I put out the wrong bait to catch the right fish. I wanted to catch seared halibut and seared salmon, and I was catching good filter fish and fish sticks. And this is why in the religious worlds, you know, they dress modestly. Why? So you can attract the person to your soul, not your body. Do you get my point? I'm gonna get into sunscreen love. I think I talked about this yesterday, but we have a few minutes left. Were there people here? Yeah, we'll we'll skip that then. I'm trying to use my 60 years of wisdom that I've gained, learning from my revisions and rabbis, and also just lots of dating, and just clarity in my head about how to have a passionate relationship. Because all I want to do is give you all my knowledge, even though it didn't come before years of college. If you think we'll sing and dance the horror, I got news for you about the power of Torah. Give it away, give it away, give it away now. Give it away, give it away, give it away now. Give it away, give it away, give it away now. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to put wisdom into your head. Men need to be respected. Women need an emotional connection. We'll stay there for another week when we talk about attention, affection, appreciation, and awareness. I can't keep everything. One last idea. Make what's important to them important to you. Because you go in a relationship, oh, it's easy. Oh, you like to go to the movies, some uh some you know, sad movies, I'll go to some heartprob movie. Okay, whatever, I'm bored, right? And you do it because it's important to them. But the longer you get involved in a relationship, there's things that start to bother you. And you have to understand if you want to be in a passionate, loving relationship, you have to make what's important to them important to you. Let me give you an example. When uh I used to a lot of cooking in my house, and when my kids were little, I'd get seven, I had five kids, I get seven small forks, I put them on the dinner table, and I call everyone in for dinner. My wife finally asked me, can you please bring me a large fork? You see, from my perspective, I don't care which fork I eat with a large fork, a small fork's fork, toothpicks, tongs, queezers. For me, it doesn't matter. I don't really care. But I have to be able to see things from my wife's perspective. Marriage is not about me, marriage is about we. And I want to have a passionate-loving relationship. So you know what I did? I had to start bringing a large fork. Was it hard for me to do? Yes, you know what's hard? For me to get over my ego. Because as a relationship, your ego is not your amigo. And I started to do things for her. I started to bring her a large fork. Does it matter to me? No, I don't understand it. I still don't get it. I still grab small forks just on purpose to show that I don't really care which fork I want to eat with, right? My wife wants a large fork, and I don't understand it. But here's the important thing, I want to end on this note. Every time my wife walks into the kitchen and she sees a large fork, she knows I'm thinking about it. But what's more important is she knows I'm thinking about her for something that doesn't mean anything to me. You want to build passion and relationship, you want to build an emotional connection, do something for your spouse that's important to her or him that's not important to you. And that's the key in marriage. My blessing for you guys today in this class, you take what you learn. We have a lot more to go over. I didn't get anything anywhere near anything today, especially the four A's attention, affection, appreciation, awareness, and sunscreen love. But may you may you take the wisdom you've learned today, may you use it, may you use it in dating and marriage, and you too will have a passionate, loving relationship with one person the rest of your life. Thank you very much.