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Why modern relationships feel harder than ever · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:04
  We are faith and fury.
• 0:06
  Love and fire.
• 0:09
  This is the human equation where every voice counts and every truth cuts deep.
• 0:17
  With your host, Joseph Pangaro.
• 0:20
  Good evening, my friends, and welcome to the human equation.
• 0:25
  I'm your host, Joe Pangaro.
• 0:28
  So while we talk about what makes us human and how we get along, I wanted to talk about a topic that I see a lot out in the world.
• 0:39
  I have my own personal experiences with relationships.
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  I see a plethora of sites dedicated to men and to women of all ages.
• 0:53
  And trying to address and understand why it seems that modern relationships are so difficult.
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  I see lots of people who are struggling with relationships.
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  I see them not being able to achieve the things that they want in a relationship.
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  And I see them having a really difficult time in life.
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  And it's painful.
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  For me personally, you know, one of the things that we do here, because the human equation is about being a person, I I'm pretty open about my life and what I think and what I believe, and I try to be as absolutely as honest as I can about things and revealing.
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  Because I think each of us have stories and have experiences that can help other people.
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  That's really one of the things that you can do as a person to help other people is by talking about your experiences.
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  What did you do?
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  How did you deal with them?
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  How did you react to things?
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  So for for most of you who have been listening for a little bit, you know that I lost my wife, Kathleen very unexpectedly last summer.
• 2:07
  We had a 42-year-long love affair.
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  She was my best friend, she was my lover, she was my uh the mother of my children, she was the center of our lives here.
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  She was a really, really wonderful person.
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  Now, does that mean in 42 years we didn't have the same difficulties that lots of people have in relationships?
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  No, doesn't mean that.
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  Of course we did.
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  We had ups, we had downs, we had growing pains.
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  You know, we got together when we were very young, in a time when getting together young was almost the norm.
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  I mean, people met when they were in their late teens, maybe early 20s, they dated for a while, and if they thought it was right, they got married.
• 2:51
  The problem that we started to see is that uh we got married in 1983, and at that point we started to see the divorce rate in America was really out of control.
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  It'd been building for years, the divorce rate in America, and we find that uh most marriages, about 50 50% of all marriages across the board, uh, were ended in divorce within the first five years.
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  And then we found if we go out seven to ten years, another 25%.
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  So if you got married uh in 1983, the chances are pretty good that 75% of those marriages would be over and done by 1993.
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  That is a really terrible statistic for lots of reasons.
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  First of all, the tragedy of the people who are involved to have a uh a 10-year marriage break apart for all different kinds of reasons.
• 3:50
  You know, there's there's financial reasons, there's uh personal in incompatibility, you know, that sex and money are are two big destroyers of of relationships.
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  Uh, and and all of these things are taking place in the context of a changing society.
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  So changing society of values, of understandings of relationships, of who people in the relationship are, expectations.
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  All of these things change.
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  And I I remember looking at you know, my life at the time when I met Kathleen, she was she was uh a wonderfully smart uh girl.
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  She was beautiful, she had a heart of gold.
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  Uh, and I remember, you know, I was a guitar player, and I was a player player out there, you know what I mean?
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  Uh I I was always a fun guy, and I loved women.
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  I loved uh all different kinds of girls.
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  I I just I I found it wonderful to be around women, and I was easy to uh fall into what at the time what I thought of fall in love, you know, easily.
• 4:58
  As a guitar player, uh, you know, I wasn't a rock star, but we had a successful band and in the area, and which means we had a lot of people who came to see us, we had a lot of opportunities, you know, everybody was young.
• 5:10
  The culture of uh the 70s of free love and all of that really was as I became into a teenage years, you know, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, all of that was happening around me.
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  You know, the world was changing.
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  We had gone from the the 50s, 1950s with certain social norms, then we saw the the uh change in the 1960s, the rocking of the boat of social norms.
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  The 70s was called the nothing generation, but it was really they were crazy and amazing times when you we were not as radical really as the people of the 60s, the generations of the 60s, but we had radicalism in us.
• 5:52
  We had new ways of looking at the world, we had a different set of social norms, right, that previous generations didn't have.
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  You know, the idea in the 1950s of an unmarried couple living together to check it out, to try it out and see how it would work, was pretty much unheard of.
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  It happened, but it was not certainly not the norm.
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  Uh even into the 1960s.
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  By the end of the 1960s, as the counter-culture and the free love culture and all of that started to take effect with younger people, the norms of society were no longer adhered to.
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  You know, uh casual sex became a thing that was extremely common.
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  Uh it was it was not common in the 50s.
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  Of course there was a premarital sex in the 50s and the 40s.
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  Of course there was.
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  You have human beings, they're gonna involve themselves in that.
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  But the society frowned upon it, and people pretty much stayed away from the constant forms of um sexual freedom that they saw in the late 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and then that right up to the modern time, which we see completely out of control our society.
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  So is it is it strange to see that relationships are harder when all of the things that made relationships work have been either tossed aside, reinvented, turned inside out.
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  Is it really a strange idea?
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  So I wanted to comment on that.
• 7:31
  I know as a young person, uh I was in the middle of that world, and like I said, I loved women and I dated lots and lots of women, and I had I was a guitar guy, and we had groupies and all that kind of stuff.
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  And then I met Kathleen, and she was nothing like any of those young women.
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  She was smart and beautiful, and she had her own uh thoughts in her head about of who she was, her worth, her value, what she wanted out of a relationship, and I remember uh, you know, one of the things that became common for me was that like I said, I could I fell in love easily, really.
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  You know, I saw a girl I liked, I really we dated for a couple of weeks, and next thing you know, oh I love you, man.
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  This is awesome.
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  And I said that to her, and she said to me, you know, we were dating for a couple of months, I guess, and I was trying to hold back, and I said, Oh, I really love you, and she said, Don't tell me you love me.
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  You don't even know me.
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  We only been dating for a couple of months.
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  That statement alone knocked me on my heels because in all honesty, I had never experienced a young woman say that to me.
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  You know, uh it was it was just it it caught me, caught me off guard.
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  Who who is this girl to tell me, don't say I love you because you don't even know me.
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  And it caught me off guard so much that I could have went one of two ways.
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  I could have said, you know what, I'm out of here.
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  I don't need this, you know.
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  I uh I want uh a faster uh relationship, if you know what I'm talking about.
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  And she would have none of it.
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  You know, this was if this was going to be a relationship, this was gonna be uh a relationship that took time to develop, time to build to get to know each other before we go giving ourselves to each other physically or emotionally, right?
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  And because of that, I chose the other way.
• 9:19
  It caught me so much off guard because the culture, the culture was not that at the time.
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  The culture was you met somebody, you like them, um, and you could engage them physically, like very soon, very quick.
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  Second date, sometimes first date.
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  Sometimes you meet somebody at the bar and go to the parking lot and engage in uh, you know, uh uh adult activities, let's put it that way.
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  And to have somebody say, Whoa, whoa, stop, slow down here.
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  Uh who, you know, who do you think you are?
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  Uh I'm not one of them.
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  I'm not one of them girls, right?
• 9:53
  And there was so much value in that for me to see see her as so valuable that oh.
• 10:00
  Wait a minute, I do I really like this girl enough to go slow, to slow down, to get to know her first, to get to know myself a little better in this relationship.
• 10:10
  And that is what I chose to do.
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  And really, that was the hallmark, I think, of our relationship.
• 10:18
  Um we valued each other, we valued ourselves, and we were trying to find ourselves in this new culture.
• 10:28
  So I remember looking back and seeing the relationship between my father and my mother.
• 10:34
  And I was very, very lucky that my mother and father were very, very much in love.
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  They were very much a team.
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  Uh, there's no doubt about it.
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  For those of you know, I told you my father passed away very early, but um they met when they were 18 or 19, they fell in love, they followed the traditional path, which at the time, 1959 is I believe they got married.
• 10:59
  You know, they dated, they dated, they dated for a couple of years, they got engaged, they didn't live together, um, they didn't get together uh until they were married.
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  And once they got married, they figured out their lives, they moved in together, they figured out who they were as people, as young adults, and then they started a family.
• 11:19
  You know, what do we see today?
• 11:21
  We see young people get together, they hook up, the whole hookup culture, uh, and it's at all ages, believe me.
• 11:27
  Um it it's out every every age group has its hookup culture, but it that's that's a factor, I think, of the change in the nature of society and the relationships.
• 11:37
  So, anyway, but what I saw in my mother and father was I saw a team.
• 11:43
  I saw intense love between the two of them.
• 11:46
  They were physically affectionate at all times, kiss in the morning, kiss in the afternoon, hugging, uh well, my mother was making dinner.
• 11:55
  Um, my father was was very protective of her and me and my brother.
• 11:59
  Uh, he was very much the provider.
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  My mother was at home, she took care of us every day.
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  Uh, she took care of uh the home.
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  She made sure that you know, my father who was out working, you know, 50, 60 hours a week, when he came home, there was a hot meal on the table.
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  Um, it was a traditional relationship.
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  I didn't see anything oppressive in the relationship.
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  My mother absolutely adored my father, loved him, uh, told us all the time how much she loved my father.
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  And my father was constantly telling us how much he loved my mother.
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  It's the it's the modeling that I saw of how to have a relationship.
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  Now, it it sounds it sounds counterintuitive because I just explained to you how how as a young person, I I fell into the modern culture that was a much faster kind of relationship, less traditional.
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  And I think part of that, as I look back on it, um I lost my father early.
• 12:59
  I was a young kid, I was 14 years old.
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  I was basically raising myself, you know, and I I fell into working and playing music and the different kind of lifestyles that were going on, and I fell into it.
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  I never lost my respect though for what my mother and father had, and I always envisioned that someday I would get married, you know, I would get married someday, and I would have a family, and I envisioned that I would have the kind of marriage that my mother and father had.
• 13:31
  I had a vision that we I would be the provider and the protector, and my wife would take care of the home and the children and raise those kids so that we would together work together to make a successful family because that was the model that I saw growing up.
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  Now, my mother wasn't um she wasn't oppressed by my father because she took care of the home.
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  Her her natural desires were to take care of the children and create a beautiful home, a comfortable home, a home that everyone could grow and learn from each other and become their best persons.
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  My mother's constant comment to to me and my brother was you can be anything you want.
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  You just have to work hard, right?
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  My father taught us you have to work hard to get what you want.
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  You know, he he broke off, he was a union electrician.
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  He broke away from the union and started his own business.
• 14:24
  I've told this story in previous episodes, you can go back and listen to it.
• 14:27
  But my mother totally supported him in the struggle that they had to go through for the next couple of years, going from a good union job to a basically start your own business from scratch, from nothing.
• 14:41
  Uh, and you have a mortgage, you have two kids, you have uh you have cars, you have life payments, right?
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  But they did it together.
• 14:48
  They did it as a team.
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  There was no complaining that, oh my gosh, things are not like they were a couple years ago.
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  There was someday it'll be better, and we're gonna work together to make it better.
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  That's what I saw.
• 15:00
  That's the relationship that I saw.
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  And in that inherent relationship, there was an equality that I saw.
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  I didn't see my father as oppressing my mother or my mother had you know, submitting to everything my father wanted and just not losing herself in the relationship.
• 15:18
  The reality was she got to be herself in the relationship because my father provided for for all our needs, our home to live in, money to supply, and he protected the family from anything that could have been dangerous out in the world.
• 15:32
  My mother then got to be who she was, right?
• 15:35
  So I always saw that as a completely respectful relationship on both sides.
• 15:42
  My father got to do the things that he wanted to do to take care of his family, create a business, and my mother got to do what she wanted to do in creating the family.
• 15:50
  And it was a beautiful family.
• 15:52
  We had an absolutely beautiful family.
• 15:54
  It became the model for what I saw, no matter what I was doing personally at 17, 18, 19 years old in the new culture, it's what I saw as well.
• 16:08
  When I finally decide I'm gonna get married, because I want to be married someday, I want to have a family, I want to have kids.
• 16:14
  Not right now, right now I'm a rock and roll guy, and I'm I'm having a good time, I'm enjoying the world, right?
• 16:20
  It's wonderful, but at some point, I'm gonna want to have all that.
• 16:25
  I knew it.
• 16:25
  I knew I wanted to have those things, and I wanted to have a traditional kind of relationship, like the one I saw in my parents and in in lots of the other people in our world.
• 16:37
  My aunts and my uncles and how they got along and how they had their relationships.
• 16:41
  Um it was kind of the norm of what was going on, and that's what I always thought I would want.
• 16:48
  So when I met Kathleen, after uh a string of, you know, sure very, very short-term relationships, then I met her, and she said, Whoa, slow down.
• 17:00
  Uh I I don't know, I I don't know what you've been doing the last couple years, but uh that's not me.
• 17:07
  Um that really knocked me for a loop.
• 17:10
  And I I said, Wow, this young woman is different.
• 17:15
  This young woman is special.
• 17:18
  This young woman values herself.
• 17:22
  And I fell head over heels in love with her.
• 17:27
  And she fell in love with me, and we started very, very early in our relationship.
• 17:33
  Once it got serious and we were dating exclusively, um, then we decided, you know, if this is going to continue, if we're gonna, if this is going to be the relationship that we both see as being the one for our future, we weren't looking at it as a well, we'll give it a try and see how it works out.
• 17:52
  We were looking at it as wow, we didn't expect to find each other this young, but we seemed to be compatible and mesh in our ideas and what we thought a family was supposed to be, how each of us was to bring ourselves to the relationship and sacrifice for the other person to make the relationship the goal.
• 18:18
  So when I say over the course of 42 years, uh, of course we had ups and downs.
• 18:24
  Of course we we had difficulties as we transitioned from being young people to being young adults as we transitioned from being uh a couple focused on couple things to now becoming a family and having children to raise and all of the stresses that come with that.
• 18:41
  How do you make the decisions about what's important?
• 18:45
  Well, we decided that raising the kids the best possible way we could, providing them with a spiritual background, providing them with as much I don't know how else to say, as creature comforts as we could afford to make their life as easy as they could to give them uh educational opportunities.
• 19:06
  Our goal was to make them into young men and women who would be decent people and would have a great opportunity, more of an opportunity than we had.
• 19:16
  That was the idea.
• 19:18
  We were going to build a family that was in our minds what we had hoped our family would be.
• 19:23
  I lost my father early, and that goofed up my family.
• 19:26
  You know, Kathy had problems in her family, and we decided we wanted to have a solid family, and we would do anything to make that happen.
• 19:38
  We would do all the things we had to do as hard as they were.
• 19:42
  So when hard times came up, or when difficulties came up, or when we grew as people because we started out young, and you know, you get into your 20s, then your third, you grow, you become different people.
• 19:54
  Our careers, our jobs, the things that we wanted, you know, sometimes.
• 20:00
  They clashed with what was going on.
• 20:02
  And we had we had choices like lots of people do to say, you know what?
• 20:07
  Uh this ain't worth it.
• 20:09
  I'm gonna do my thing.
• 20:10
  I really want to do this.
• 20:11
  You disagree.
• 20:12
  Well, then guess what?
• 20:13
  You go about your business, and I'm gonna go about mine and we'll move on.
• 20:16
  We got to those places.
• 20:19
  And we made the decision to say, wait a minute, let's think about this.
• 20:24
  Do I want to go and do this thing because it's what I feel I need to do for me and forsake my family.
• 20:33
  Do I want to give up my family for personal enjoyment or personal whatever?
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  About me only.
• 20:44
  And Kathy, too.
• 20:45
  Do I want to move off and do this thing and you know, not have the family anymore?
• 20:50
  And in every single instance.
• 20:54
  We chose to have the family and the love life that brought us together in the first place.
• 21:00
  We remembered what brought us together.
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  We talked about it openly.
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  We had to deal with some very painful thoughts, some very painful kind of things that we had to work through, otherwise we couldn't have survived.
• 21:13
  But we made the choice.
• 21:15
  I remember we went to uh we used to be part of in the Catholic church is a thing called precana.
• 21:20
  And pre-cana is uh a s uh uh a situation before people get married, they have to attend pre-cana classes, either two weekends in a row or all in a day, and you you have married couples that are married in the church, and they are the team leaders, and each each couple has, you know, eight or ten young couples who were pledged to get married, and each group makes a presentation on a different uh topic about married life.
• 21:50
  Children, raising children, jobs, family, moving away, sexual attitudes, um, responsibilities, all of these different topics that go into a relationship, and the the married couples in the group give their experience to the young people that are there that want to get married, so that they're exposed to some of the things maybe they never thought about.
• 22:13
  And we did this for about five or six years.
• 22:16
  And I have to tell you that in that five or six years, we we met so many of these young couples, and many of them got married, and we saw them later on when they started their own families, and you know, they were always very nice to say, boy, it was such a great experience, and we never thought about something.
• 22:31
  And then we saw some people that would come to the first session, and they didn't come back to the second session because they talked about things that came up in the pre-Cana sessions about married life that they had never even considered.
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  And once they started talking about it, they realized they were so opposed to each other that they didn't even get married.
• 22:52
  They broke up and they moved on, right?
• 22:55
  And and the difference now is that in our modern world today, people don't do that so much.
• 23:01
  They don't talk about it, they just oh, it's gonna be great, and I'll be me, you be you, and you know, we'll we'll have a great life, and then they have problems and they say, nope, this isn't worth it.
• 23:10
  And that's why the divorce rate is what it is.
• 23:13
  That's why relationships are so difficult for for many, many people because I don't know that there's this adherence to understanding, you know, what is this all about?
• 23:24
  What is the relationship all about?
• 23:26
  So as Kathy and I grew as individuals, as we grew as a couple, as we grew as a family, when these things came up, we had the ability to talk about them honestly.
• 23:39
  And they weren't always easy.
• 23:41
  Sometimes there were some very difficult conversations that we had to have, and the choice always came back to do you choose to love.
• 23:50
  So I remember there was a priest that was like the advisor for pre-cana, and he came out and he gave, you know, gave a talk to the to the team before we started the session.
• 23:58
  And he said, what it comes down to in long-term relationships, you have to choose to love.
• 24:05
  It's not always once the whole excitement, once the whole initial relationship and all that starts to fade, and then you have real life comes in and jobs and works and children and stresses and this and that, you can lose your relationship.
• 24:19
  So what you need to do is always remember why you had the relationship, why you wanted this relation, why you wanted this other person, and then you have to choose to love.
• 24:32
  You have to choose to love that person, sometimes even when it's hard.
• 24:37
  But if you you choose not to love, then you're gonna you're gonna lose your relationship and potentially your family and lots of other things.
• 24:44
  So throughout our entire marriage, we always remembered that, and we weathered every storm that came up.
• 24:54
  Every single storm that came up, we weathered it, and we came out of it at a time in life, probably when we hit our early 50s.
• 25:04
  When we hit our early 50s, a lot of the drama of life was settled down.
• 25:12
  The children were older, you know, it's not it's not like when you have brand new little babies and how it that disrupts your life and how hard it is to take care of children and function.
• 25:21
  You know, we were settled, I was settled in my career, I was successful.
• 25:26
  Uh we made the choice that she would be a stay-home mom to raise our children so that they weren't, you know, going out to daycare and all this other stuff.
• 25:34
  She wanted to keep a direct hand on how her children were raised.
• 25:39
  And we made that choice together.
• 25:41
  Uh that that was the right thing to do.
• 25:44
  And it turns out we have four beautiful, wonderful young people, young human beings that are good and decent people.
• 25:51
  But it's all because we chose to love.
• 25:55
  We had to remember.
• 25:57
  I've told you before, we have a sign in our house for the last 10 or 15 years, and it says, it's a wonderful life.
• 26:03
  And that was something that we had to fight for.
• 26:06
  We had to choose, we had to sacrifice for constantly to make sure we maintained that, not just for our our children, but for ourselves, right?
• 26:17
  And until I lost Kathy last summer completely unexpectedly, out of nowhere, she got sick and I lost her.
• 26:24
  We had I don't know, probably the greatest relationship I could have ever imagined having in my life.
• 26:32
  And while I'm sad today that she's gone, that I lost her.
• 26:36
  I look back at that and I say, you know, it was a wonderful life.
• 26:40
  And I cherish every moment of it, and I'm thankful to God that I had the time with her to make this family.
• 26:46
  So when I thought about this topic, I saw some young people that are struggling, and I wanted to talk about it.
• 26:52
  So when we come back, I got some more to go over.
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• 31:07
  Okay, we are back here on the human equation.
• 31:12
  I'm your host, Joe Pangaro.
• 31:15
  So you can reach me.
• 31:17
  It's uh Jay Pangaro, P-A-N-G-A-R-O.
• 31:21
  J Pangaro at America out loud dot news.
• 31:27
  J.
• 31:28
  Pangaro at America Outloud.
• 31:30
  News.
• 31:31
  So I'd like to hear from you, like to see what's going on with you.
• 31:34
  Do you agree with me, disagree with me?
• 31:36
  Your stories, what do you want to talk about, etc.?
• 31:38
  All of the things that take place in the human equation.
• 31:42
  But our topic today is relationships.
• 31:45
  You know, uh why relationships are seem so difficult in this modern world as compared to what they were before.
• 31:51
  So in the first part of our show, I tried to use my own experience to describe how we my wife Kathleen and I worked our way through having a great relationship.
• 32:01
  Um and the difficulties that came with that.
• 32:04
  So this part of our little get together, I I want to talk about some other things about the idea of male loneliness, which is a big trend going on out there.
• 32:13
  Young women being so independent that they many of them on social media, they don't need men or they don't want men.
• 32:20
  Men and women don't trust each other anymore.
• 32:22
  They they can't count on each other anymore.
• 32:25
  They're very angry with each other, uh, you know, it's it's a totally different world.
• 32:31
  And through the eyes of many young people that I work with, uh, and young people I have in my own family, I see these realities that they're going through on the ground.
• 32:43
  I see them as they're actually happening, and it's helped me to to do my research and to try and come up with some information that we can use to discuss.
• 32:53
  But before we do that, I want to tell you about something that you can participate in that is absolutely awesome.
• 33:00
  That is very cool.
• 33:01
  If you like America out loud, if you are a fan of the station and the network, if you love all the shows that are on here, because there are tons and tons of amazing shows, amazing people, voices that you don't hear anywhere else.
• 33:15
  Uh it's it's really uh a blessing of free speech, America Out Loud.
• 33:20
  So the website is AmericaOut Loud.news.
• 33:23
  I think most of you know that.
• 33:25
  Uh but what you want to do is this summer.
• 33:27
  This summer is the celebration of America's 250th year and the celebration of the tenth year of the America Out Loud network.
• 33:37
  So what we are doing as a network is we are having kind of a conference, a get together, a uh a time for us to uh talk and meet each other in person and enjoy the the amazing thing that is America and the free speech that we have here on the network and get to, you know, meet the people that you listen to all the time.
• 33:59
  And how can you do that?
• 34:01
  Well, this summer, July 2nd, July 3rd, and July 4th, we are having our get together, the America Out Loud get together in beautiful Nashville, Tennessee.
• 34:14
  It is gonna be an amazing time for those days.
• 34:18
  We're gonna we have tons of events and speakers, and there's fireworks on rooftops and you uh uh opportunities to get together to get to know each other, to meet each other.
• 34:27
  Uh all you have to do is go to AmericaOutloud.news and go there and look for the celebration that's going on.
• 34:34
  You can buy uh tickets to the events, you can get tickets to the fireworks, you can get tickets to all the get-togethers.
• 34:42
  Come on out and meet everybody.
• 34:44
  It's gonna be a great time.
• 34:45
  You can meet Lieutenant Joe, isn't that great?
• 34:47
  You can come out, you can also meet the great Malcolm Out Loud, the man who who started this entire network with the idea that there should be expression without any holdbacks, ideas, thoughts, uh conversations, so that we can all have a say.
• 35:04
  So come on out, July 2nd through the 4th.
• 35:06
  It's gonna be an amazing time in a beautiful city.
• 35:09
  We're gonna celebrate America, we're gonna celebrate America out loud.
• 35:13
  Alright.
• 35:15
  So talking about relationships.
• 35:19
  You know, I I talked about my own personal experience through a relationship.
• 35:23
  And like I said, I I feel blessed that I had the life that I had.
• 35:27
  I'm sad that my Kathy is gone now, but you know what?
• 35:29
  I'm I'm a man of faith, and and she was a woman of faith, and we know we'll be together again.
• 35:34
  Um, like I told her as she was as she was going, as she was going, passing on to uh to the Lord's house.
• 35:41
  I said, listen, it's only a short period of time.
• 35:43
  I'm right behind you.
• 35:45
  And that's a reality.
• 35:46
  You know, uh, you know, what do I got?
• 35:47
  Sixty eighty years left?
• 35:49
  No.
• 35:49
  Come on.
• 35:49
  We're we all know uh life is life is limited.
• 35:53
  So love as as best as you can, work out your problems, enjoy your life, eat the cake, go on the trip, is what I say all the time, right?
• 36:01
  Um so but when I look at this, I say to myself, seeing all these young people, and then well, in all honesty now, people my own age, people who've been married, divorced, married, divorced a second time, people who lost a relationship, lost a loved one.
• 36:17
  I see people grieving still after years and years and years, and they they can't they can't seem to get their lives together, and then they go out, okay.
• 36:26
  Well, I don't want to be alone, I'm gonna get a companion, I'm gonna meet somebody, I'll uh you know.
• 36:30
  And uh people have different different ideas, you know, they want to get remarried.
• 36:34
  Some people are just marriage people.
• 36:35
  They want to be married.
• 36:36
  So I got friends of mine that either got divorced or lost a spouse to to a disease or an accident, and after a year or so, they I I want to find somebody, I don't want to be alone, all right, right.
• 36:47
  Um there's all different kind of relationships.
• 36:50
  So at all different ages, I see it.
• 36:52
  I see the young people all the way up through people my age and older than me.
• 36:56
  Relationships are difficult because times times they are changing, right?
• 37:01
  So when we talk about things that are affecting millions of people without them even realizing why.
• 37:08
  So is it possible to have real lasting, meaningful relationships?
• 37:12
  They seem harder than ever before to build.
• 37:15
  Uh, and it's not because men and women don't want to fall in love, not because, you know, they've been called suddenly all of a sudden everybody's cold and selfish.
• 37:24
  Um it's the world around us has changed.
• 37:26
  And I think I started saying that at the beginning of the program.
• 37:28
  Is that's that's what I see.
• 37:31
  Has our emotional skill sets kept up with the changes, right?
• 37:35
  We live in a culture that celebrates independence, personal freedom, self-expression, uh, and those are good things.
• 37:43
  Those are all very good things, but some along the way, we stop talking about the other side of the equation.
• 37:49
  The side that requires commitment, sacrifice, patience, and the willing to put someone else's needs next to or in front of your own.
• 38:00
  That seems to be like a really foreign idea, especially for younger people.
• 38:04
  You know, that's uh, you know, hey, I'm not here to take care of you.
• 38:08
  I'm here to take care of me, and I expect you to take care of me.
• 38:11
  It's it's a really strange situation.
• 38:15
  So as an as an experience, I know this young couple.
• 38:20
  And they're both professionals, they're both college educated, they're both very, very smart, they're both very good looking.
• 38:26
  Uh, they got together and they created a relationship.
• 38:29
  They went slow at first, and then it picked up speed, and next thing you know, they're deciding they're probably gonna get married.
• 38:37
  They're probably gonna get married, and it seemed like, okay, they seem like a really good couple.
• 38:43
  They both had good jobs.
• 38:44
  They they seemed to have an idea of what they wanted.
• 38:48
  You know, the idea of of children and family was in their picture, but it wasn't their main picture.
• 38:55
  You know, they wanted to live uh a modern a modern life with with the amenities that come with it.
• 39:04
  You know, they wanted to live in a beautiful apartment in a really nice city where they could enjoy city life and night life and you know, do things on the weekend.
• 39:12
  They seem very connected.
• 39:13
  They seem very, very connected.
• 39:16
  And that you know, really beautiful.
• 39:18
  I I was very happy for them.
• 39:20
  I thought, hey, you guys are you guys are gonna have a good life, man.
• 39:22
  You're on the same path.
• 39:24
  There was some different ideas about how quickly to have a family, but it was something that they were working on.
• 39:30
  They were having these conversations, and me and other people that know them knew the conversations they were having.
• 39:37
  Like, yeah, well, we we will probably want to wait uh, you know, till we get through our 20s.
• 39:41
  We're gonna enjoy our 20s, we're gonna travel, we're gonna work hard, make a lot of money, live in a beautiful apartment, you know, have a very casual lifestyle, go to dinner, and when we get closer to 30, we'll probably start with the family, you know, and that's probably yeah, we're gonna put that off for a little while.
• 39:59
  Okay.
• 40:00
  That's a that's not an unreasonable choice.
• 40:02
  Now you start to get concerned about how old you are when you have children.
• 40:06
  Some of the things they may not think of.
• 40:08
  For any of you out there who remember having kids when you were in your 20s, your early 20s, you have a lot of energy and stamina to take care of all them kids that are running around and going to the baseball games and going to the friends and getting up in the middle of the night with the baby and they're throwing up.
• 40:22
  And it takes a lot of energy to uh to take care of children, especially a couple of children within a couple of years of each other.
• 40:32
  And we know when I heard this, I'm like, hey, you know, that's it, that's a good plan.
• 40:35
  You guys are making a good plan.
• 40:36
  I think it's a good idea.
• 40:37
  I said, but when you're in your 30s, you're not gonna have the energy you have now in your 20s.
• 40:43
  But that's a personal choice, you know, as long as you know going into it that it's a huge commitment to raise children and to raise them properly.
• 40:52
  And we all know that relationships uh relationships change once you bring children into the picture, right?
• 41:01
  They you no longer have all the free time you had before.
• 41:04
  You no longer have the money that you had before.
• 41:07
  You don't have the freedom to just, hey, let's go to Cancun this weekend.
• 41:12
  You know, you can't do that.
• 41:13
  You have children, they need stability, they need uh they need good clothes, they need good food, they need good medical care.
• 41:21
  There's a lot that goes in.
• 41:23
  It changes a relationship.
• 41:25
  And I think a lot of people are not prepared for that, and that commitment that goes into that.
• 41:32
  And the more I looked at this, um, I I I saw uh the commitment thing is probably the biggest problem.
• 41:44
  Uh for this couple that I'm talking about and other young couples I know that that broke up, is that the commitment part of it was not something that they were prepared for.
• 41:56
  The culture has told them that each one of them is the most important, their desires are the most important, uh, their goals are the most important, and the other person should go along with them, should help them, should support them completely in it.
• 42:13
  And I for some people, I know that works.
• 42:16
  I know some of you out there going, well, that's the relationship I have, and we are completely on our doing our own things, and we support each other, and that's great.
• 42:24
  If that works for you, I think it's great.
• 42:26
  The reality though is it doesn't work for most people, and hence, again, that's why we see this huge uh divorce problem, relationships ending badly, um it can lead to financial ruin, emotional ruin, it's destructive.
• 42:42
  We all know people that were madly in love, had a great relationship, and then a tragedy struck their family.
• 42:49
  Maybe they lost a child to an illness or to an accident, and we see that they never really recover from that.
• 42:56
  Um, some people do.
• 42:57
  I know people who have lost children tragically, and they manage to work their way through it and come out on the other side of it uh whole and united.
• 43:09
  But I also know quite a few people who lost a child and they didn't make it through it.
• 43:16
  It is it is too stressful, it it creates cracks in a relationship, and people are not prepared for that, right?
• 43:24
  They're just not prepared for it, so we see relationships fall apart.
• 43:28
  But it's the commitment part that I see with this one young couple, and I have to be honest in that I I tried to to talk to them, you know.
• 43:39
  I know them, and I talked to each one of them independently.
• 43:44
  They had some difficulties, some things came up in their lives outside of their relationship, work-wise, family-wise, that were extremely difficult, that were emotionally draining.
• 43:59
  And what I saw was that instead of coming together to fight against the problem, what they did is they retreated into their own camps, uh, their own needs to be met, and the other person's needs were, yeah, I understand them, I hear them, but my needs are more important.
• 44:22
  Um you should get over that, you should change, you should be differently.
• 44:26
  You know, the word should a very powerful, powerful word that causes a lot of problems.
• 44:34
  When you say to somebody, you should do this, you should do that, I should do this.
• 44:39
  It's an expectation in a word, the word should.
• 44:44
  Instead, a better word, I think, is could.
• 44:48
  I could do it differently.
• 44:50
  I could do it the way you want.
• 44:52
  I could see the problem differently.
• 44:55
  So when we start shooting each other, you should have known I was upset.
• 45:00
  You should have known I wanted to do that.
• 45:03
  When you use that word should, you are creating a situation that creates distance between people.
• 45:11
  And when I see this young couple, I realize that they had these things happen in their lives, and it was Yeah, they they were they were pretty serious things that happened to them.
• 45:25
  To a series of two or three things that happened to them within eight months, nine months of of their lives.
• 45:32
  And the whole idea was one partner was saying, okay, that's enough time, you should be over this by now.
• 45:40
  And then the other partner would say, Well, I'm not, and I need you to be this, and that person the other person says, Well, uh I would be over this uh if it were me.
• 45:52
  So I think I think you're dragging this out, you're doing it for different reasons, and that led to unfortunately a a gap in their relationship.
• 46:01
  They separated into their own camps and their expectations of each other in a moment of crisis revealed that they were really not together.
• 46:13
  They were really not willing to commit to each other, to sacrifice for each other for the relationship, right?
• 46:22
  So the reason I told you the story of me and my wife Kathy is that when we went through those same exact kind of things, we chose the relationship and the sacrifice for the other person, right?
• 46:36
  Sometimes it was me, sometimes it was her, but we chose to do those things to maintain the relationship.
• 46:42
  This young couple, they didn't.
• 46:45
  And I remember speaking to the young man and saying, you know, I think the reality here is that yes, this last year has been very difficult for you as a couple, as individuals.
• 47:00
  I said, but the reality seems to me that you are not ready for a long-term committed relationship because you've only been together a couple of years to begin with, and in a couple of years to have the difficulties you're having really tells you that you are not ready for a long-term committed relationship to each other.
• 47:26
  Because you're breaking down in only two years.
• 47:29
  In two years, you should still be on the greatest high of the entire world.
• 47:34
  You have jobs, you have your health, you have money, you have the ability to do whatever you want to do.
• 47:40
  You should be happy.
• 47:41
  See, I even I use the word should.
• 47:43
  Um you would think you would be happy, and that that would be this would be your glow-up time.
• 47:50
  This would be amazing because you you don't have the responsibilities of children and a mortgage.
• 47:55
  You can do whatever you want to do.
• 47:58
  And instead of it being wonderful and outrageous and great, it's become difficult and depressing and upsetting.
• 48:08
  And neither one of you are happy.
• 48:10
  I said, and when I look at it and I see what both of you are doing and saying, it becomes very clear to me that you, as the man are not prepared to have a long-term relationship with a woman that requires you to put her basically on a pedestal.
• 48:33
  Now I know a lot of people, younger people out there right now are jumping up and down, you're going crazy.
• 48:38
  But the reality is both partners need to do that.
• 48:42
  You know, both partners need to put the other person on a pedestal and say, I am here for them, and put that person's needs first.
• 48:51
  And if both of you do that, then you move forward as a couple because then you have a united front.
• 48:58
  What this young couple was doing is that they had difficulties pop up in their life, and how the difficulties affected them, they went into their own camps.
• 49:07
  And they said, Well, you know, I've given and I'm tired of giving now.
• 49:11
  Uh I want you to you to give more.
• 49:13
  I want you to change.
• 49:14
  I want you to do this, that, and the other thing.
• 49:16
  Instead of working together to figure out how to move forward.
• 49:21
  And I don't know that the relationship can be saved.
• 49:25
  I think they both want to save the relationship.
• 49:28
  They've said that, but the reality is we're not seeing the um, we're not seeing the changes in the two of them that need to be made.
• 49:38
  They're they're not looking at the problem as a team.
• 49:41
  They're looking at the problems that they're facing as individuals and what's best for each one of them, and that is a road to ruin.
• 49:49
  That's what leads to divorce, that's what leads to uh loss of love, loss of intimacy, loss of caring, uh, when you have to do things on your own and you don't feel cared for.
• 50:00
  You know, uh, when you don't feel cared for.
• 50:01
  And I and I see that happening to this young couple, and I feel bad for him.
• 50:04
  I've seen other young couples go the same way.
• 50:07
  And that's why I want the juxtapose.
• 50:10
  Yeah, Kathy and I went through really difficult times, really hard times outside of our family, inside of the family, all kinds of things.
• 50:17
  But we always made the choice to choose the other person, put them first, deal with their emotional needs, their physical needs first, and save the family and the relationship.
• 50:32
  And over time, that's the greatest satisfaction that we had.
• 50:36
  You know, we made it to 42 years, and we would have gone on into the sunset as two old people, uh, you know, sitting in the room drooling on each other.
• 50:48
  Uh we would have had a more years had God given Kathy more time.
• 50:52
  But the reality is we made it for 42 years.
• 50:54
  A lot of people don't.
• 50:56
  This young couple and other young couples I see, they're struggling with this modern society and what it dictates for them.
• 51:04
  Um sometimes that can be very difficult.
• 51:07
  So some of the points, you know.
• 51:09
  The culture shifts to hyper individualism.
• 51:13
  And that's that's what I see happening.
• 51:15
  You know, it's it's about me, and we're both going to be in this together, but it's it's about me.
• 51:21
  And the other person's worried about them and they don't see forward.
• 51:24
  Um, they want connection without inconvenience, okay?
• 51:30
  Um, intimacy without vulnerability.
• 51:32
  You know, when you give your body to another person, whether you're a man or a woman, you share intimacy with another person, that is a special and sacred thing to do.
• 51:44
  Right?
• 51:45
  It is, it is it is the sharing, you know, it religiously, you know, when you get married, uh, the priest tells you, you know, uh, you know, two people into one.
• 51:55
  You know, two people become one person.
• 51:58
  Symbolically, in lots of wedding ceremonies, you'll see people take two candles.
• 52:03
  Uh each carry a candle up to the altar and they light one candle and they extinguish the two they they were carrying once that middle candle is lit.
• 52:13
  Symbolically, that's describing we were individuals, we are now one.
• 52:19
  And therefore, when you're one, caring about your spouse first and foremost is natural because you're in that one candle.
• 52:28
  It's your life, it's what you're all about.
• 52:29
  And I see that that's that whole idea of compromise and working together when it's difficult, sacrifice, is really hard for for people.
• 52:39
  You know, the readiness for commitment.
• 52:41
  I I kind of talked about that.
• 52:43
  Being relationship ready means emotional maturity, not just desire.
• 52:48
  You know, we all get desire.
• 52:50
  Everybody, oh, I see somebody, oh, she's so hot, he's so hot, oh, it's beautiful.
• 52:54
  I want to be with her, I want to be with him.
• 52:56
  He's so great.
• 52:57
  Oh, he's got a great job, and you know, oh, it's fantastic.
• 53:00
  And that fades away over time.
• 53:03
  That those kind of things fade away over time.
• 53:06
  And it is the long-term love that you build for common goals, for a common desire.
• 53:13
  And I don't know, you know, uh, again, we we can look to a lot of things in religion.
• 53:20
  Religion was such a big part of people's lives, not so much anymore, which is unfortunate.
• 53:25
  We see the downfall of our society, the more we really remove religious teaching and God from our lives.
• 53:33
  The more we take God out of our lives, the more we see the human creature can't make it on its own because in reality, uh the relationship between the people, humans, and God is a lot like marriage.
• 53:46
  That's that's why when you get married, you're supposed to stay married.
• 53:49
  You've you've made a commitment, right?
• 53:51
  Like God made a commitment to us, and I'm not getting into the whole religious thing here, I don't want to do that.
• 53:55
  I'm saying the the conceptual points are the same, and they're there.
• 54:00
  And as more we remove God, the more we see our beliefs change, our commitments change, our desires, our understanding of what's right and wrong comes apart, right?
• 54:13
  And we've seen that in our society in general and specifically as we go.
• 54:18
  So commitment, the readiness for commitment means to take those two candles, light one in the middle, and extinguish that other.
• 54:27
  It doesn't mean you can't be yourself, doesn't mean you can't be a person, a good person, and have your own thoughts and ideas.
• 54:33
  That's not what that means.
• 54:35
  It means adding to your situation this concept of family.
• 54:41
  Whether it's just the two of you or the two of you and children, you become a family, you become connected at the spirit, and therefore what you do for the other person, you're doing for yourself because it makes the relationship stronger.
• 54:53
  It makes it makes it healthier, right?
• 54:56
  And if the other person does the same thing, that's how you get a 42-year marriage, right?
• 55:00
  So we have commitment problems.
• 55:02
  Um, the independence thing.
• 55:04
  I see I see a lot of young women out there uh on social media and they're posting all over that how how independent they are.
• 55:13
  And that that's good.
• 55:14
  That's good.
• 55:14
  I have a daughter.
• 55:15
  She's a brilliant young woman, she's a professional, and she's independent.
• 55:20
  Well, it's good to be independent and to be able to take care of yourself.
• 55:24
  You have to understand what each person wants in a relationship.
• 55:27
  It's kind of funny when you watch that these young women are on here.
• 55:30
  I got my own job, I can buy my own things, I got my own house.
• 55:33
  Uh, why doesn't man find that attractive?
• 55:35
  Well, men don't find those kind of things attractive.
• 55:38
  That's what that's what men do, right?
• 55:40
  Men are looking for a woman to be a partner to help them raise children, to be together, to love them.
• 55:46
  They're looking for a softness uh in a person.
• 55:49
  They're looking for someone that they can make a family with.
• 55:52
  And uh a lot of these guys that are that are not suitable for taking care of a woman, for treating her properly, respectfully, helping her to grow, you help each other to grow.
• 56:02
  You see the idea, you work as a team.
• 56:04
  But there's in this independence uh thing.
• 56:08
  We're seeing that it's leading to two things.
• 56:10
  Number one, we see uh a lot of young women very, very frustrated that they can't have the relationships that they want.
• 56:17
  They can't find someone that they're happy with to be together.
• 56:21
  Uh, and then we see uh young men on the on the male loneliness crisis because they they can't provide of themselves the way the women in their lives need them to be.
• 56:31
  They can't sacrifice for them, and therefore the two different groups, men and women are not getting along very well, and they're not being able to build relationships.
• 56:42
  So we're seeing these this male loneliness crisis where men are saying, I'm just giving up on the dating world, and these women, I'm giving up on the dating world.
• 56:49
  Men are horrible, they you know, they only are out for themselves.
• 56:52
  Well, it really comes back to this uh hyper individualism and commitment and respect and understanding what a long-term relationship is.
• 57:06
  It is a sacrifice for the other person.
• 57:09
  It is a sacrifice to a degree of yourself.
• 57:13
  You want to become one with the other person, right?
• 57:17
  And that's what I think is missing in a lot of relationships today, and I think that's why it's so hard for people to find that relationship that they truly want.
• 57:28
  So I want you to think about this.
• 57:30
  Uh please write to me, J Pangaro at America Outloud.news, let me know what you think.
• 57:35
  Uh, tell your friends and young people to listen to this program.
• 57:38
  Have them have them listen to it.
• 57:40
  Maybe it'll provide some insight for them.
• 57:42
  But in the meantime, remember, be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.
• 57:47
  You'll be back before you know it.