The Right Spouse Makes Life Easier, Not Harder

I believe that one of the most important factors in having a good life is selecting the right spouse or significant other. I deliberately use the word “selecting” because I cannot expect to change someone after I marry them. That person needs to already be someone I want to spend my life with—not someone I hope will eventually become that person. The right spouse should make my life easier, not harder.

When I was growing up, I learned the wrong way to select a spouse. I was constantly exposed to the idea that beauty is everything. If I dated a gorgeous, sexy woman, I would receive incredible positive feedback. In the hockey locker room I heard, “Wow, you lucky dog. What a babe.” If I brought her home, the reaction from family was, “She is beautiful.”

I would tell 18-year-old Barry that physical attraction matters, but it is only one of many factors. I could encourage him to make a long list of pros and cons, but I’ve discovered that hasn’t helped much with life’s most difficult decisions. Over the years, I have come to see that I often have an inner knowledge that already knows the answer. This is the idea behind the phrase “Ask Yoda.”

While dating, I believe my brain is processing far more information than I can consciously follow. Yoda taps into that information. Before young Barry makes a lifelong commitment, he should ask one question: “If I marry this person, will the relationship make my life easier or harder?” “Easier” does not mean the marriage will never be difficult. It means that, overall, the person will make his life better rather than become a constant source of problems.

He should not follow Yoda blindly. He still needs to make a careful conscious evaluation. But if Yoda’s answer is “harder,” he should not get married. If Yoda says “easier” and his conscious evaluation agrees, the relationship has a much better chance of working.

Be You So You Can Always Be You

I have learned that to form and maintain rewarding relationships, it is critical to let the other person see and experience the real me. I want to give them the opportunity to decide whether the real me is the person they want to be with. If they like me for who I really am, then I can just “be me.” If I put on an act and they fall in love with it, I am going to have to keep it up forever.

Unfortunately, it is not always easy to avoid putting on an act. I think of it as “dating mode.” When I am attracted to someone, it is natural to be on my best behavior, and in the past I would mask who I am and what I actually like to do. For example, if the other person loved opera, I would go to the opera and even say something like, “Oh, what a lovely opera we saw tonight.” The truth is that I hate opera, I was miserable the whole time, and I would just as soon never go again.

If she likes shopping, let’s go shopping. Vegan restaurants? Sure, let’s go all the time. She doesn’t like my friend Joe, so I’ll never see Joe or even talk about him. If I am good enough at being the person she wants me to be, I may succeed in getting her to marry me. To keep that marriage going, I am going to be faced with a lifetime of opera, shopping, vegan restaurants, and never seeing my best friend Joe. Or we can get divorced.

The phrase “Be you so you can always be you” does not mean that I never do something that is important to my spouse that I do not really enjoy. If she truly loves opera, I will go once in a while, but I make it clear that I am going because I love her, not because I love opera. If she understands that, we will probably work things out so she goes to the opera with her opera friends and I go to the hockey game with Joe.

Love Is Earned

I believe love is earned. To me, love is a response to who someone is and what they do, not something that magically strikes me like lightning. If someone asks me, “Why do you love this person?” I want to be able to give a list of reasons. If those reasons all disappear, I think it makes sense to question whether the love still exists.

I know many people disagree with me. When asked why they love someone, they might answer, “I don’t know. I just love him.” I think that view can get people into big trouble. If I say I love someone but have no idea why, it makes me wonder whether I am describing love, or something else, such as habit, dependency, or addiction.

Growing up, I had one sibling, a brother who was two years older. From my earliest memories, I was terrified of him. This was not normal older-brother behavior. He would find my favorite toys and completely destroy them in front of me. If they were replaced, he destroyed them again. When we were left alone, he would throw me against walls, often causing significant injuries. In high school, he became involved with drugs and would come home, hit my mother, steal her money, and raid the liquor cabinet. I was five feet tall and weighed ninety-two pounds. He was over six feet tall, weighed 220 pounds, and was solid, angry muscle. When he came home, I often had to leave the house and hide in the woods until he was gone.

My grandmother and other relatives would tell me, “He is your brother. You have to love him.” I thought there must be something wrong with me because I actually hated him with a passion. My view changed in my early twenties when I discovered Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. One of the characters, Hank Rearden, is a successful steel entrepreneur with a worthless brother. Hank’s mother insists that he must help his brother because they are family. Rearden refuses, and what I took from his response was simple: Love is earned, and his brother had not earned his love.

That was an incredible aha moment for me. I remember thinking, “Yes, that is absolutely correct. That is how I have felt my entire life.” My brother had done nothing to earn my love and a great deal to earn my fear and hatred. For the first time, my lack of love for him made perfect sense. There was nothing wrong with me.

From that moment on, I had nothing to do with my brother, and I was perfectly at ease with the decision. When he died in his early thirties, I did not attend his funeral. Relatives pressured me, saying, “He was your only brother. You have to go.” They wanted me to forgive a lifetime of horrors, attend the funeral, and act as though I had lost a great friend. I refused to pretend that a loving relationship had existed when it had actually been filled with fear and cruelty.

Loving someone who has not earned that love can be dangerous. For example, some people stay in an abusive marriage because they believe they still “love” the spouse. They may be beaten repeatedly and still go back. Challenging the belief that they are still in love with someone who repeatedly abuses them may remove one of the barriers to leaving.

Being related to my brother did not automatically create love. His actions mattered. The same is true in every relationship. Love is not created by blood, obligation, or simply repeating the words “I love you.” It has to be earned.

Don’t Work on a Relationship All the Time

When I am going through a difficult period in a relationship, I often hear the advice, “You have to work on it.” While it is true that from time to time I may have to work on it, I have learned to pay attention to what percentage of the time I am working on the relationship rather than enjoying it.

Working on a relationship can seem responsible, however, it can also become procrastination when the real solution is to end the relationship. I have noticed that many therapists and marriage counselors encourage their clients to “keep working on it.” They may sincerely believe that, but as long as the clients keep working on it, the therapist gets paid. I don’t know how often the financial incentive affects the advice, but it is worth considering.

How do I determine whether it is time to end a relationship or continue working on it? I pay attention to what percentage of the time I am glad I married the person compared with the percentage of the time I wish I had not.

When I am in a good relationship, I am glad I am in it about 99 percent of the time. This does not mean I spend 99 percent of my time with that person. For example, writing this book is very important to me and requires a great deal of concentration. I work best when I am alone with no distractions. My wife understands this and is content to leave me alone. As a result, I am very glad I married her while I am writing the book, and that time counts toward the 99 percent. Conversely, if I were married to someone who interrupted me every fifteen minutes and made me feel guilty for writing the book, all that writing time would count as time I wished I had not married her.

It is obviously impossible to calculate these percentages accurately. However, it is easy for me to notice when the amount of time I wish I were not in the relationship is growing. When that happens, I have learned that it is time to work on the relationship. I encourage my wife to watch for the same thing and tell me if she begins spending more time wishing she had not married me. If the amount of time I want out continues to increase—day after day, week after week, and month after month—despite repeatedly working on the problems, then “working on it” is not the solution, no matter what the therapist says. As the old saying goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Don’t Lose a Loved One Over Politics

I know people who have lost contact with loved ones because of political differences. It seems to me that this is happening much more often today than it did in the past. I hold strong political beliefs, and I have loved ones who fervently believe the opposite. Conversations with them can easily become heated and get out of control. When that starts to happen, the phrase “Don’t lose a loved one over politics” pops into my head. I change the tone of the conversation and make the message very clear: That person is 100 times more important to me than any political position.

I like talking with people about whatever topics are important to them. When chatting with a scientist, I enjoy learning about their specialty. If someone loves chess, I will learn more about chess from them. If a political issue is very important to someone, I am happy to talk about it. I do not follow the old rule “Don’t talk about religion or politics.” The trick is to develop the ability to talk about those subjects in a way that is stimulating and enjoyable without damaging a relationship. Here is how I apply this:

1. If I meet someone new and we strongly disagree about politics, I do not go out of my way to create a relationship with that person. My position may make them angry, and they might never talk to me again, but that is okay.
2. Existing relationships are totally different, particularly relationships with loved ones I cherish. Spending quality time with that person is paramount, and any particular political topic is virtually meaningless by comparison. We can still talk about anything, but I make sure we both remain aware that our relationship is 100 times more important than any topic.

Spend Time With Your Foxhole Friends

In World War II a soldier had to dig a hole in the ground so that bullets and shrapnel would pass over him, not through him. This was called a foxhole. If the enemy was advancing from two directions, you needed someone to sit back-to-back with you in the foxhole. He protected your blind side and you protected his, your “foxhole friend.”

The foxhole friend had to be completely reliable. If he panicked and ran away, the enemy could attack and kill you from your blind side. Ideally you picked the most courageous person you knew to be your foxhole friend, as it was literally a matter of life and death.

I have a lot of acquaintances, and a reasonable number of people I would call friends, but only a very few foxhole friends. That is someone I know would help me in a difficult time, no matter the cost to them. They would drop everything at a moment’s notice, without hesitation. If they were in the foxhole they would never leave. We would protect each other no matter what.

I had lost touch with one of my foxhole friends. When I did call him, he told me his wife had died of cancer after an eighteen-month battle. I was aghast, first that she was gone, but also because I didn’t even know about it. I had not been available to help during the struggle, and I missed the funeral.

How did we let this happen? We talked about it and both took some responsibility. Neither one of us had contacted the other for over a year and a half. We decided we were never going to let this happen again. We now talk on the phone frequently and visit each other several times a year. I also make sure I do the same with my very rare, wonderful foxhole friends.

Your Parents Had Parents Too

My father was very hard on me. No matter what I did, it was not good enough for him. If I got four A’s and a B, all I heard was criticism about the B. I started a company, and it was going well, but what I heard from Dad was, “You should be making more money by now. You are doing it wrong.” I bought a house in Los Angeles and proudly showed it to him, and I got, “This place is poorly built. It seems like a shack.”

As I got older and reflected on this constant negativity and criticism, I became very angry with him. I blamed him for the negativity I had developed in my own life. I was living in Los Angeles, and he was in Chicago, and I didn’t want to visit him. I was starting to eliminate him from my life.

Then one day, I was complaining to a friend about the issue, and he said, “You know, your parents had parents too.” That was a profound moment for me. My father had grown up during the Great Depression, and I had no idea what his parents had been like. I had learned negativity from him, but he had probably learned it from his parents, along with perhaps many worse things.

The phrase “Your Parents Had Parents Too” helped me stop blaming him and start remembering all the good things he had also done for me. He had provided me with a great house to grow up in, food, clothing, vacations, a college education, and so much more. This led me to visit him in Chicago quite often, and I was able to enjoy that time.

There was still criticism, but now it didn’t bother me as much. I didn’t take it to heart. My thoughts were something like, “That’s okay. It is probably what he learned from his parents. That’s just Dad being Dad.”

I didn’t need to argue with him about whatever critical thing he had just said or try to stop the behavior. I could let it pass and change the subject to something we both enjoyed. “Hey, Dad, what movie should we go to tonight?” Or, “What time do you want to play golf tomorrow?” Or, “Where would you like to have dinner?”