How To Be Married

A&B are joined by Jo Piazza to discuss the ins and outs of "I do."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and this is Bridgett, and this
is stuff I'll never told you. Today, Um, we're gonna
talk about something that has come up at least twice

(00:25):
on stuff I've never told you, once with you and
Emily Bridget and once with Christy Caroline. And that's marriage,
and specifically a feminist marriage. Is it possible? Can it
be done? Um? And we're speaking with Joe Piazza, who
has written a book How to Be Married, and it
has a new podcast coming out called Committed. It's coming

(00:45):
out Tune six. I've been hearing stories about the production
aspect of the pre production aspect of that show, and
it's been fascinating. I'm very excited to hear it. It's um.
Joe goes out and interviews people with marriages that perhaps
don't fit into what we would traditionally think of as
a marriage and ask them, how are you married, how

(01:09):
does it work for you? And just a look at
all of these different marriages. But I know that we've
talked about this a little bit off, Mike bridget and
you've mentioned it some on the show, but I wanted
to ask, as a kid, did you think about marriage
a lot? I probably did as a kid. Um, I
remember some Looking back, it's embarrassing, but I remember some
fake weddings that we used to have as kids, like

(01:31):
like dress up weddings with my brother as the group. Oh.
I guess it's probably illegal, but it was fake. Yeah,
I mean it wasn't legally bindings that I know of.
Gosh by check into that. That's like a smash cut
and a sitcom. Oh no, it'll be like follow up episode.
So it turns out my brother and I are legally married,

(01:53):
and I'm dealing with that in court right now. It's
going to follow me around for the rest of my life.
How about you? Did you Were you the kind of
kid who dreamed about being married? No? I never did.
And it's one of those things that I always felt
was weird as a young girl because you're kind of,
I guess expected to fantasize about I'm going to wear

(02:13):
this dress and it's going to be at this location. Um.
I don't know if you ever played Mash Yeah, okay,
well this was this game for anyone that didn't know,
it was Mansion Apartment shock House was what Mash did
for It was basically a game to see like where
you were gonna end up in the future who you're
going to marry. I'm a kid. You're gonna have what
dress you're gonna get married in? Um, that was the

(02:34):
extent of my wondering about marriage. I didn't know I
wanted a short dress because I didn't want to have
to fool with the long train when I was dancing
or whatever. I thought that, well, the train is detachable,
I think, actually, don't know what do I help? But um, Similarly,
I knew from the movie Clueless. I knew I wanted
to have a sailor hat, but it was going to

(02:54):
be a veil and then and then all my bridesmaids
were gonna work the sailor. This is from the because
in the movie Clueless, shares friend D describes her perfect
dream wedding and it involves athnautical theme where she wears
her Oliver bride's maids war sailor outfit and that her
cap is going it's gonna be a standards cap with

(03:14):
a veil attached, which I thought sounded very classy when
I was like eleven. Um, so yeah, maybe AL still
do that if I ever get married. I mean, that
sounds fun. At least it sounds like it would be fun. Um.
I as I've gotten older, I have come to the
decision that I probably I'm not the type of person

(03:36):
that will ever get married. I don't think it's for me.
And for a while, UM, when I would tell people this,
they would always say, like, you're gonna change your mind,
You're gonna meet the right guy, Everything's gonna fall into place.
And I believed that for a while too. UM. My

(03:57):
last relationship I just got out of. A relationship is
two and a a half years song and we broke up
because he was I think he thought if he waited
me out, I would change my mind. And he said,
I want to get married and don't have the kids,
and I still didn't and I said, I told him
it's a roll of the dice if I ever changed
my mind. And then he's like, we need to break up,

(04:18):
And I thought, to be fair to him, I did
enter into that relationship thinking maybe I would change my
mind too, But I don't think that that's going to
happen anymore. Why do you think it's not for you?
I think that for a lot of reasons. Um, I
have a really close friend group, and all of our

(04:40):
parents are either divorced or extremely unhappy. There's only one
couple that's like still together. And she's actually my so
my friend's mom in this couple. She's this voice I here,
she's like the Jimney cricket of of my brain. But
she's really really concer servative. Um, and they're Catholic. And

(05:03):
so she used to say that, um, if you take
divorce off the table, you'll never get divorced. And I
was like, okay, kind of an intense, intense thing to say.
But she she used to say to me that the
reason so many people are getting divorces because they we've
made it an option for so many people to get divorced,

(05:24):
almost like it's a cop out, like at the first
sign of trouble, like Okay, I'm getting out. But I
don't think that's that's necessarily true. I just hear her
voice all the time back my Well, Annie, you should
get married because that's that's when you're going to be
happy and that your life will have meeting and it
will be complete. But ah, yeah, but you strike me

(05:47):
as someone who has a very complete life. You have
a close friend group, really dope hobbies, a cool job.
Why do people think that because you're an unmarried person,
that your life is not complete. It sounds very full.
I know that this is a question I asked myself
all the time, and it's such a strange thing because
to me, it's just not a priority. I do have
a full life. But so many times, especially in like

(06:11):
um any kind of family, extended family type thing, that's
the first thing they want to know, who are you dating?
I mean, when are you gonna settle down? When are
you going to find the guy? As if I'm living
this immature, it's to be fair, but it's not immature
because you don't want to get married immature for other reasons,

(06:31):
for other right by late night like going out maybe,
but in the day, I'm a very mature person. But
they all, all those questions always make me feel like
I have failed in some way, or like I am
running out of time and one day I'm just going
to realize I've wasted all of my youth and now
no one will ever want to marry me. You know,

(06:53):
do you feel something similar to that? I do? Where
do I start? I mean, my vibe is similar. I mean,
I'm I'm older than you, Annie, and I think for me,
I'm not against the idea of getting married. I'm at
someone who says I'll never get married. I don't want
to be married. I'm totally open to it. I think

(07:14):
at this point in my life, I wonder if I'll
still do that in my life, and it's sort of yes.
If it happens, it happens. If not, I guess I
have to be okay with it. I don't talk a
ton about my romantic life on the podcast. I like
to keep that private, but I will say that I
was engaged and I never got married, and I think

(07:36):
what I learned from that experience was that there are
lots of different kinds of love that you can have,
and there are lots of different kinds of partnerships that
you can have, and there are lots of different kinds
of ways that you can that people can feel romantically fulfilled,
and that marriage is one of them. But it's just
one of many. And I think, you know, growing up
in the South, it's uh for me, it felt a

(07:59):
tough unusual two not be married. When I was a
bit younger, I remember thinking when I would seeing my
my very young classmates get paired off and and buy
homes and all of that I remember feeling deep down
in my bones that even if I wanted it, that
probably would never be me. And I didn't know why.
I didn't know, I didn't know where that feeling was

(08:20):
coming from. I just sort of knew it. I knew
that that life I probably would never have that life,
and I thought I would stay up late and think,
you know, I probably will be alone forever and so
very it's a very heavy kind of person that thinks
that when they're like, yeah, yeah, but yeah, So as

(08:41):
I've gotten older, I mean, this is making me sound
very tortured, but yeah, I'm I'm as Carrie Bradshaw would say,
I am open for love, ready for love, all of that,
all of that nonsense. But yeah, I guess I guess
to be someone who is and I hate to use
this word, and please don't crucify me, but older, I

(09:01):
feel older. I went to the doctor recently and she
asked if I was planning to have kids, and I said,
I've always wanted to. She gave me a pamphlet about
childbearing later in life and I said, oh, no, this
isn't for me. I'm I'm in my thirties. And she said, well,
and then she just kind of trailed off. I was like, Oh,
I get what you're get what you're thank you for that.
So I think for me, it's like I have to

(09:23):
sort of just be okay with it. It has to
not be a heavy burden in my life, and I
have to surround myself with people who understand that and
understand that it's not something that I'm choosing to be
stressed out about. There are plenty of things in my
life to be stressed at about whether or not I'll
get married. I gotta like that, I gotta prioritize it.
So yeah, long story short, I'm miserable that I'm kidding

(09:47):
my life is fine. I also get um a lot
of times when I say I'm not interested in getting
married or it's not really for me. A lot of
people immediately asked me like, well, who hurt you? As
if I, what do you drake? Annie? Who wounded you?
Tell me Annie? You wounded? It was he had this

(10:12):
song and it stayed with me. And I do have
things that I no or not like healthy outlooks on marriage.
If I ever get married, I'm having my own separate
finances and that's just that's how it is. But it's
not I'm not some damaged person, just like I can't

(10:33):
do it because this gentleman in my youth burned me
so hard. People are always looking for what's wrong with you?
Why is it that you don't want this? And similarly
for me, I'm like, I'm not totally against it, but
it's not a priority. It's very similar, like I don't know, yeah,
kind of like what you were saying with your your
friend group, My parents have kind of an intense marriage,

(10:56):
and I kind of grew up absorbing these signals that
marriage was something that added chaos to your life and
added stress and added difficulty to your life, Like that
was the model of marriage that was presented to me,
that it made your life harder, it was something to
be endured, and I think it was because of that,
it was something that was sort of easy to kind

(11:17):
of not prioritize. Yeah, you you learned the tools of
relationships from the relationships you observe. I don't remember who
said that, but someone said that it might have been
Christian and Caroline from this show. Um. Another thing too
with my friend group that I mentioned, none of them

(11:38):
are married, none of them are close to get married,
So I don't have the friend pressure yet. I have
a secondary friend group that I'm not as close to,
and they're all married with kids and houses, and every
time I hang out with them, I do feel a
little out of place. But I usually end up having
a great time if we go out to bars, because
I get to go out and flirt with everybody and
they have to stay in their group. I'm like, there's

(12:00):
a hot person over there. I'll be back in twenty minutes.
But I don't have that like friend pressure yet. And
I do think of what what's going to happen if
if they all start getting married, it will definitely change
the dynamic. And again, this is something we've discussed on
this show before. UM You and Emily interviewed Jill Philipovic,

(12:21):
Christening Caroline um interviewed Meg Keene, founder of a Practical Wedding.
It's a question we struggle with UM as women. How
do we make these marriages work? Anybody? Really marriages are
difficult at the end. I think we mix up the
wedding of the marriage, especially in United States. Oh God,
I could talk all day about that. Also, I have
a lot of friends who get engaged and it's like,

(12:42):
I mean I love them, but it's like, no one's
ever been engaged, are like coming soon. It's like it
has to be, you know, it's such a production and
I'm gonna do we get it, you know, we get it,
we get it, we get it. Bobuster movie. Yeah. And
so that's so that's irritating. But what's also irritating is
this thing celebrities do you where they get they get

(13:03):
engaged and they're like, oh, we're doing it very private,
and then they still like post on Instagrams. Was like
by virtue, I like, you can't, you can you don't
get brownie points for having a like private, understated engagement
and then also reveal that you did, and then like
want which is it? That's true especially with social media,
that it's it's gone to a whole another level. Speaking

(13:26):
of mixing up the wedding with marriage, I have this
quote from um Psychology Today, which describes the wedding of
the Slayer Sexist beyond parody. The bride appears in a
fussy white dress that symbolizes her virtue and virginity, and
everyone keeps on remarking on how thin and beautiful she looks.

(13:47):
Her father walks her down the aisle to give her away,
and she passes like property from one man to another.
The minister, who is traditionally a man, gives the man
permission to kiss the woman, as if that is the
minister's authority, the woman has none. The man kisses, the
woman is kissed. At the reception, only men are given
to speak, while the bride remains seated and silent. Henceforth,

(14:08):
the woman will adopt the man's name, as will their
eventual offspring. Despite all this, the wedding day is said
to belong to the woman. This would you believe is
her day? Yeah? When you break it down like that,
weddings are weird. They really are. Um And in defense
of the wedding, I know a lot of people now

(14:30):
are customizing it. They're they're stepping away from this, they're
not following these norms to that extent. And or I've
read somebody who's kind of giving a counter argument to
this that like when you see somebody in a white dress,
you no longer think, oh, she must be a virgin. Yeah,
that's I mean, they make they make white wedding dresses

(14:50):
for pregnant women who are getting married while while they're expecting.
I mean I think we I hope, I hope we've
abandoned that idea. It's like I think she might have
already had sex. She's nine months of pregnant. Yeah, I
hope so I do. Remember my mom, Oh Mom, please
don't yell at me for this. She doesn't most for
the show. She showed me her wedding dress once and

(15:13):
she said in such like a funny conspiratorial voice, it's
off And I didn't know what that meant. Okay, that's
such a nice, nice like eupheanism, young Annie. I was like, okay, Mom.
That article also asked a question that um, we'll have

(15:34):
to come back to. We've talked about it several times,
off off Mike. In the US, why does the separation
of church and state go out the window when it
comes to marriage? Oh? This is you know, this is
a pet peeve of mine. Yeah, I don't think that.
I mean, marriage is essentially a contract with the state, right.
I have a lot of questions about the role of

(15:55):
religion in marriages and how it shows up in our
wedding ceremonies. Yes, I do as well. And it's kind
of like the state sanctions of private relationship with benefits
like health care, tax breaks, basically saying this one relationship,
this one way of life is better than any other.
And it's been that way throughout time, think of anti

(16:18):
misgenation laws or the fact that gay marriage is not
equally accessible or it hasn't been um and the whole
thing has to do with raising children, very simplified and
what the government has deemed as the best bet for
doing so without needing social assistance. And it goes way
back to the church, church with a big sea pushing

(16:39):
the same thing. So they wouldn't have to pay for
kids born out of wedlock. They wanted to stable family
to raise the kids, so they wouldn't have to provide
any monetary funds for said child. Definitely a future episode. Yes,
we we've talked about this, like you said, off off Mike,
but when you think about the way that religion it
shows up and what is essentially a contract with the date,

(17:00):
it really it really raises some questions. It does, and
you can go and get a courthouse wedding, you don't
have to do the church thing, but it's just so
in grains in our culture. It's kind of interesting in
terms of sort of nontraditional weddings. I actually have a
policy in my life where I won't attend a wedding
doesn't have an open bar. So you want me at

(17:21):
your wedding, I consider I consider a wedding with a
cash bar nontraditional, and I will not attend. How I
was raised, I will say that you and I might
be on the same page because I always look first like,
is it an open bar? Cash bar? Invite right in
the trash, right in the trash. I my my mom's

(17:42):
side of the family is known to be big drinkers,
and uh, my cousin's wedding, we got kicked out of
the church. Oh my god, wedding must have been lit.
It was fun. I was having I don't know what
went wrong. I was having the time of my life.
And then the next thing I know, it's like everybody
out to clear out. To this day, I'm not sure
we all scattered. Fun wedding memorable. Another article I found

(18:06):
called how to Have a Feminist Wedding out of The Guardian,
talked about the things I, as an unmarried woman, had
no idea about, including bridle underwear, brides right in about
that um and the constant question about um. When wedding
dress shopping, how much weight are you planning to lose?
You also be charged extra for any alterations due to
quote last minute weight loss. And you look two size

(18:29):
as smaller than you did when you first walked in.
And that's no bad thing. Is something that a lot
of like what a wedding dress changing rooms have. UM,
it sort of undermines that whole I love you for you,
no matter what thing. It's just it is bizarre and
we have so many weird things. I mean, anybody out
there who's planning a wedding can tell you that the

(18:50):
second wedding is attached to something. It's like twice the
price you buy a white dress from Macy's. If it's
the same dress, but it's a wedding dress, I have
to up the price. Yeah. Really, it's such a racket.
And we if we just have so many just accepted
weird customs when weddings are in the midst we absolutely do,
and it's I Another thing that I thought was very
strange is that a woman is supposed to plan every

(19:11):
aspect of the wedding and it's always assumed she will.
I read a lot of accounts of this where the
man is planning something that they just addressed the woman
because they assume it's she must be the one planning
it in this heteronormative marriage. But if she goes overboard
in that planning, she's a bridezilla. So it's like, you
have to plan everything but be cool. Okay, Well, that's

(19:33):
just another way that women are are straddled with these
completely unrealistic and also opposing norms that you have to
you have to do all the planning, but if you
can so you know, take the lead, get the bind
or whatever. And if you do it too much, that's bad.
So not doing it at all, that's no good. Doing
it too much? Also no good. Do you have to

(19:53):
find this perfect like Goldilocks area in the middle of
your doing all the work, but you're acting super to
all about it and you really don't care. How can
you know it's too much? That dreaded cool girl stereotype.
Got to do that. I know. I can't wait to
do that one. Are you a cool girl? Is anyone
a cool girl? Bridget I think people might think I'm

(20:16):
a cool girl. In reality, I'm the least chill person
on earth. I have a similar thing, but it's more
that like I uh think of gone girl had that
definition of a cool girl, and it's the girl that
will go out and drink pearce with you and get
a hamburger with you. And somehow I'm still a size too.
I'm that and then I'm like eating way too much

(20:36):
and drinking too much with people. But when I'm home,
I'm like super healthy and very tame. So my outward
like social presentation, I guess is the cool girl, but
I'm not because I don't know that that exists. Yeah,
I'm in that definition. I am cool girl, and that
I will go to a diet bar and drink you
under the table, but I will complain the entire time,

(20:57):
and I will it will not eat chill at all.
The uncool girl. I'm happy to be that. That's fine. Yeah,
that's that's great. So in the US, as of a
divorce takes place every thirty six seconds of marriages. So
how in the world are people making this work? How
does one be married? And to answer this question, we

(21:21):
are getting to this the interview portion of the show.
We're speaking with Joe Piazza, who has done a lot
more research on this than either Bridget or I have. Um.
She's written aboot called how to be Married, as we mentioned,
and in her words, she wrote it because as a
thirty four year old feminist, I had no idea how
the f to be married, to be a wife and
a partner. I tried to explore the concept of how
to be a wife and a feminist and how to

(21:42):
have a marriage of equals. So we're gonna take a
quick break for an ad and then we'll jump right
into the interview. And we're here now with Joe Piat So,
thank you so much for joining us. Joe, thank you

(22:03):
guys for having me. So first off, a tough question,
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? I ken, Yeah.
So I'm actually the host of a brand new podcast
called Committed, where we talked about all things marriage and
people people have been asking me. They're like, why is

(22:23):
it called committed? And I'm like, well, doesn't being married
sometimes kind of feel like being in an insane asylum?
And they're like, oh, yeah, it does. Um, But it
came about I'm a journalist and an author, and you know,
I've been a journalist since I've been a grown up
and writing books almost that long. And when I got married.

(22:46):
I was kind of old. You know, I was on
the geriatric side for most of America, which isn't that
old for other people. But I was thirty five and
I was the last of my friends to get married.
So I was kind of like the Jennifer Aniston of
my friend group, like I was happy with my life,
but everyone else was sad for me. And then when

(23:09):
I got engaged to this great guy who showed up
that of nowhere, I realized I had no idea how
to be a wife, or how to be married, or
what you're supposed to do to be be in a couple.
And I wrote this book called how to Be Married.
I kind of I still don't know if I love
the title, but that was the title where I asked
women all over the world, how the hell do I

(23:32):
do this? And so it was very fancy frenchwomen, women
in polygamous tribes in Kenya and Tanzania, Orthodox Jewish women
in Jerusalem, and compiled this into one book where we
just talked about marriage that wasn't total byes. I mean
marriage off of Instagram, so there's no hashtag couple of

(23:52):
goals or you know, sweetly fakely post date nights. It's
like the nitty gritty of what's this is really like?
And I'd like to think of it as a a
feminists guide to figuring out how to be a wife.
So that brings me to my burden question, how do
you be married? How do you be a spouse in
this country? You know, I still have no clue. That's

(24:15):
and that's the problem. Um. It was really funny on
my on my book tour last year, people kept billing
me as a relationship expert, and I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no,
anyone anyone who calls themselves a relationship expert probably doesn't
know anything and they're definitely divorced. I'm just a journalist
who was asking the questions. But I have a lot

(24:37):
of answers. But I don't have all of the answers. Uh.
The one thing that I found out that was really
interesting is that we have way too many expectations around
marriage in this country. And it comes out of the
fact that we're kind of schizophrenic about what marriage even
means now because it's changed so much from what it's

(24:58):
meant for all of human straight which was essentially just
a legal way for a man to get a female place,
it was transactions in nature romance, so romantic, right, but
it's true. Um, it was a father essentially selling his
daughter to a husband, and the woman would serve the man.

(25:20):
And that's that's what marriage has been, and that's what
those roles have been defined as for all of human history.
Still in a lot of parts of the world, that's
exactly what still happens and until maybe twenty years ago.
And so now that we have marriages where people are
actually in love, where people are equal partners, where and

(25:43):
in a lot of my friends marriages the woman actually
makes more money than the man. We don't know how
we're supposed to act or how we're supposed to operate,
and we have all of these crazy expectations. The biggest
problem with American marriage, I learned is that we think
that our scout because are everything. But there are best friends,
the greatest sex we've ever had, our soulmate, our tennis partner,

(26:06):
are running buddy, our therapist, the person who tells us
our but looks cute, and our new genes even when
it doesn't. And one person can't be everything, and when
that person fails to be everything, we get pissed and
we think that our marriage isn't working. And that's the
story that I hear over and over from Mormon. Yeah,
I do think we kind of normalize this idea that

(26:28):
when you marry, you were marrying the person who's going
to be everything in your life. And so the role
of your girlfriends or your buddies or your work wife, whatever,
all of those roles kind of become I don't want
to say a race, but diminished because now you have
a husband and that person is supposed to be your
end all be all, And yeah, it's just it's not true,

(26:49):
and it's also not realistic. No, and it's not and
it's not healthy. And pop culture does does nothing but
promote that idea. I mean, The Bachelor is still one
of the highest rated shows on network television, and even
Sex in the City, which build itself as being the
feminist phenomenon. Three of the four characters on that show

(27:13):
ended up married by the end of the series, and frankly,
Samantha was the only one who was allowed to not
be married because she was quote unquote the flood. Like,
we're still a culture that says Mary is going to
fix everything. All you need is a husband and all
your problems are going to go away. Yeah, and and
to go back to your sex in the city. Example.
Even at the end of the series, they kind of

(27:35):
seemed to be flirting with the idea that her and
who's the really hot guy she was dating? J Yeah,
M yeah, they kind of they kind of teased the
idea that she had found her quote one and only,
and I remember thinking, oh, brother, like nobody in this
show can get past the idea that everybody has this
one perfect person for them and when they link up

(27:56):
with them, poof, all their problems are solved. Yeah, athlete exactly.
It was such a bummer for a show that claimed
it was so female forward and such a feminist show
that all of a sudden, no, the answer to everything
on that show was a man has to love you,
that whole pop culture thing. I didn't realize how much
for me until I started working on this show, and

(28:16):
we talked about that a lot, about how the audience
of this show has been really like transformative and helpful
for me as a person. But somebody wrote in a
comment once like, we need to stop defining success is
only this one thing is in You get married and
you have the two kids, and you get the house,
and you have the pet, you have the job, and
that is success and that is the only thing, because
we see that over and over again in pop culture.

(28:39):
If you don't have that, then something is missing from
your life. Oh exactly. I mean. I I wrote in
my book How to Be Married that I got more
likes on my Facebook status when I got engaged than
I did when I published a book or a second
book or a third book. Like everyone thought that this
was the biggest thing I'd ever done in my entire life,

(28:59):
and this important thing compared to all of these professional
achievements that I've had the thirty five years prior to
just meeting some dude. That's amazing that you even say
that I have. I have a lot of friends who
sort of work as digital strategists and social media managers,
and they've actually done studies. When you say things like
if you made a Facebook post it was like I'm

(29:20):
engaged in a huge book project. I want to tell
you about actually privileged that post and more people will
see it because they think, oh, she just got engaged.
Huge news. So even Mark Zuckerberg is controlling how we
think about Mary. All I want to do is tricks
Facebook on a daily basis. So I'm like, look at
my new baby, this book Charlotte Walks like to win

(29:43):
by it now on it. That's awesome. But it has
been really interesting just hearing the stories and so now
that now that I am married, and now that I
want to create this marriage of equals for which there's
really there aren't role models out there for it because
we're the first generation or like essentially like the second

(30:05):
and third generation that are really doing this. My mom
certainly was not in the marriage of equals. Um, I
know that my grandmother wasn't. So now that I'm doing this,
I mean, it's really just trial and error. And that's
why the stories of how other people make marriage work,
like the nitty gritty that like the good, the bad,
the really really ugly. I find that so helpful because,

(30:27):
especially going back to social media, always see on social
media are people looking perfect and looking filtered, and that
all of their relationships are super happy. And my friends
who post the most with their husbands and boyfriends on
social media are the ones that I know are probably
getting divorced, so they've actually done studies. According to a

(30:47):
study recently published by the Personality and Social Psychology bulletin
Couples who are always racking about their significant other on
social media, the hubby, the hubster, all of that, Well,
they're actually more likely to be insecure of the state
of their relationships. So the more you're posting, the more
you can't get enough of your hashtag bay or whatever,

(31:08):
the more likely, according to this data, you are to
be in a relationship that you feel insecure about totally.
And I want to ban the word hubby so gross.
I've had to make a bunch of new friends since
I moved from New York to San Francisco, and that's
one of my friend red flag. I if you're a
woman who uses the word hobby, I'm like, we're not

(31:29):
going to hang out again. Well, you bring up a
good point. I mean, why do you think that, especially
women feel this need to depict a version of their
romantic situations, romantic lives and marriages and what have you
on social media. I actually feel quite a bit of
pressure to do that, And I wonder where do you
think that comes from. I think it comes from pop culture,

(31:52):
I really do. Pop culture has programmed us and has
told us that our marriage, our husband is the important
thing about us. And that we need to show the
world that we're quote unquote succeeding at this thing. And
it's so sad because I would love to just post
pictures of me like at the computer finishing a book

(32:14):
or at the office having a big meeting. But you know,
no one, no one is going to like that as
much as like this picture of my husband doing the dishes,
which which he does do because we have an equal
marriage because he's a feminist man. But yeah, I totally
I blame I'd blame pop culture for all of it.
Pop culture has programmed us, and now we're trying to

(32:34):
deprogram us to prioritize what we should be prioritizing in
our lives. And that's not to say that marriage isn't
great and awesome. I love being married, but it is
a struggle to figure out how marriage works for you
as opposed to these role models that we've seen in
the past. That's so funny you bring up the dishes,
because I once was in a relationship where I told

(32:56):
the guy at the beginning the relationship, I will cook,
but you to do the dishes, and lo and behold,
it becomes more and more that I am doing the dishes,
and I wrote a thirty page essay called apologist theory
and why you have to do the dishes and I
never gave We just broke up. I realized that I
was taking it too far. But I'd really I'd really

(33:19):
like you to publish that somewhere because I think that's
the kind of thing that would go virals. Yeah, that's
also the most anything I've ever heard. Um also, can
I just says this as a side note, I have
a theory about dishes. I will never This is a
very privileged thing to say. I will never live in
another living quarters of any kind that does not have
a dishwasher. I moved into an apartment recently that did

(33:41):
not have one, and I was like, I have to
pay to have one installed. I don't care. I think
not having a dishwasher is a It's like you're asking
for your relationship to be doomed, because there are few
types of people in this world. People who let the
dishes linger after a meal, people who want to do
them right away. And if you're not, if you're not compatible,
you're asking for trouble. Get a dishwasher. That is a
Bridget's tip for life. I think that's a great for

(34:04):
happy marriage. Exactly, get a damn dishwasher. I know, knowing me,
it'll be get a dishwasher, separate bathrooms. By the end
of it. It's like, don't live like just live across
the street, don't even live you that's just like Woody
Allen and me a pharaoh live across the park and
we now exactly, Yeah, I have a I have a

(34:24):
really funny dishes story. So one of the couples that
I interview on this podcast committed she has no short
term memory. So she had a stroke and now she
has almost permanent um short term amnesia. So there's this
one story where she was doing the dishes and she

(34:45):
looks at her husband and she's like, how long have
I been doing the dishes every night because she didn't remember,
and he's like, just you know, a few months because
every night he's like, hi, it's she'd turning to deep
the dishes, and she's like, Okay, I guess you must
have done it last night. I can't remember because I
have no short term memory. Pretty awesome, Pretty awesome. That

(35:07):
made me wish that sometimes my husband would have famnisia.
But then I'm like, I think I've just seen the
movie Overboard too many times, a classic of the genre. Oh,
it's so good, It's so so good. Um. Through I'm
situated in a place where I can hear what what
episodes were committed, Um, the editors are working on. So

(35:29):
I've heard like snippets of interesting stories that you've gotten.
Could you talk a little bit, give us a preview
of what kind of stories will be hearing on this podcast. Yeah.
So the goal was committed was to have an open
conversation about marriage, Like I said, to talk about the
nitty gritty, the hard stuff, but also to find couples

(35:51):
that are in these interesting relationships. So that ranges from
everything to a couple where one person no longer has
a short term memory, to a couple of porn stars
who are monogamous in her marriage but they're still having
sex with other people on screen. We have a couple
who've been married for twenty eight years and they're the

(36:12):
longest married couple with Down syndrome. And I mean I
cried probably half a dozen times doing this interview with
them because they're just the most in love, happiest couple
I've ever met. Because they're constantly living in the presence.
They're just they're not worried about what's going to happen
tomorrow or what happened yesterday. They're just madly in love

(36:35):
with each other in the here and now, and it's
it's really amazing. One of our earliest episodes is a
couple that was blown up together in the Boston Marathon
bombing and both of them lost their legs, Just lost
both legs, Patrick lost one leg. And they've only been
married seven months, and this is how they kind of

(36:56):
learned how to be married while going through this really
tragic thing with each other. And so there's a lot
of heartbreak, there's a lot of tragedy, and then there's
a lot of really uplifting stories. I think that it's
a pretty good mix. I just finished up an episode
today about a married couple of journalists to our rivals

(37:17):
at different newspapers. They both cover baseball, but one covers
it for the San Francisco Chronicle and one covers it
for the San Jose Mercury News. And it's actually the
woman who's a much much better baseball reporter, and how
their marriage survives this competitive workplace environment, which was really fun.
And they're awesome. And I got to go to an
AA's game and hang out in the sports writer's box

(37:39):
for that one, and so it was great. And we're
just we're constantly looking for news stories. It's incredible. But
we're getting emails every day from couples who are like,
I want to tell you about my own marriage. And
that's the part that's so cool, because I think that
every marriage has a story and it's our goal to
to bring them out and to try to tell them.
Feel hear more from Joe. After a quick break and

(38:10):
we're back, Let's get right back to Joe. So I
want to switch gears for a minute. Something that I
often here repeated as this idea that half of marriage
is in in divorce. Is that still true? Like, where
are we at with the state of marriage? Is sort
of nationally, it's still true. And the interesting thing I
learned is that half of marriage is and in divorce
in the US, and also in countries that are more

(38:32):
progressive about marriage, that are less obsessed with marriage, like
the Northern European countries, half of those marriages and then
divorced too. And I think that has to do with
the fact that human beings really aren't programmed for monogamy.
We try really hard. There's a lot of studies that
say monogamy is good for a society. I think that

(38:53):
those studies were probably written by men for whom it
was easier to be married than not married. But yeah,
it's still it's still fifty in the majority of countries
that have marriage where a person gets to choose their spouse. Now,
if you go to a country where marriage is arranged,
that number is definitely not But those countries also tend

(39:16):
to have negative attitudes towards divorce. Yeah, this is actually
the thing that you just mentioned about, sort of the
divorce rates. This is one of the biggest reasons that
I feel a bit ambivalent around marriage, because it just
seems like marriage and the act of getting married is
such a huge undertaking and it it can be. I
guess it doesn't have to be. But part of me
is like, if it's just a dice roll, it's going

(39:38):
to work out or not, what's the difference? You know, Like,
there are other things in life that if it's completion
rate was that was why bother? You know, It's like
if that was anything else, if it was you know,
if I was gonna a long car trip and it
was make it. I probably wouldn't go, you know, you
wouldn't get an you wouldn't get in that car. No.

(40:00):
The reason that I don't go windsurfing because they're like,
it's fifty fifty that you're not going to survive this way,
so you can you can get married, or you could
go windsurfing. I could get married or I could go windsurfing,
and they're both probably going to end badly, you know.
And so in other countries that I visited, and I
was in France and Sweden and Denmark in the Netherlands,
in those countries, their way more relaxed about getting married.

(40:24):
It's like we could get married, we can not get married,
we could just be partners forever. It's also often the
woman that is holding holding all of the cards and
that she's the one like, all right now we can
get married, like it's not that the guy gets to
choose to win to propose. And then they also have
way more chill weddings. So we're in Copenhagen and most
people just get married in city hall in life jeans

(40:45):
and a T shirt and then they go out for
beers afterwards and I'm like, this is the most civilized
country in the world. This is fantastic. And the city
hall also serves these delicious little pancakes when people are
getting married, and I'm just like, if our city halls
are cakes, I would get married every weekend because these
are the best pancakes I've ever had. But like, we
invest so much money in this ridiculous wedding, this one

(41:08):
day for something that has a fifty chance of failing,
and I think that scares a lot of people, and
I know it scared me. And we're also from a
generation where all of our parents got divorced. Like my
parents didn't, but they should have. They hated each other.
And but all of my friends at school like had
the dad that lived in the condominium complex with the pool,
like on the other side of town, because no one

(41:30):
was married anymore. So I think it's scary, and I
think we don't talk enough about what happens when marriages
do fail, and we really think of divorces this terrible thing,
and the stigma here in the States. One of the
other cool things about Denmark was that they don't think
of divorce is a bad thing. They're just like, you know,
you had a relationship and it was great, but it

(41:52):
didn't last forever. Uh, it's really easy to get divorced
in Denmark. It's cheap. You can do it online and couples.
I'm not some that celebrate their divorce adversary where everyone
just kind of gets together and hang out, because why
did you spend your life with this person or think
you want to spend your life with this person and
then decide to hate them forever. So I blame the

(42:12):
States too, and pop culture. I blame my racing the
pop culture, I really do, for making divorce seemed like
it has to be this terrible thing, so we go
into it thinking, oh my god, this has to suck,
this has to be the worst thing that ever happens
to me. And maybe divorce isn't the worst thing, Like
maybe you shouldn't be with someone for ten years, and
then maybe you should be with someone else, and maybe

(42:33):
it's okay that you're no longer married to that person.
I think that would make it a lot less scary
to get married if we didn't think that divorce was
the worst thing that was ever going to happen to us. Yeah,
as we record this, I am not big into British
ruralsy at all, So I'm probably gonna mess this up.
But they keep talking about how she is it her

(42:54):
who's had the divorce. One of them I know a
lot about this only because he's marrying a black woman,
and so I I have given zero about any of
this my whole life once there was like a black
woman in the mix. Now I'm an expert, but yes,
so Megan who he was getting married, she is busting
norms because she's black, she's older to be an old maid,

(43:19):
she's been divorced. Also, she was on that show suit
so the little thing um. But yeah, they're acting like
it's this she's this like marked scarred woman because she's
been married before. Like people have acted this as an
actual criticism that people have hurled at her, Like how
could Harry this dignified you know British royal? Dang to
you know himself to let me interject this dignified British

(43:41):
royal that one showed up at a costume party in
a Nazi uniform, right, Harry, I was trying to remember
if that was him earlier today because they were talking
about the wedding. You're totally right, they're like, oh my gosh,
she's this marked, cursed woman because she was divorced. It's like,
come on, it's people. Yeah, And if anything, she should

(44:04):
be a marked woman because she was on a USA
drama for a long time. Just kidding. Suit is actually
a good show. It's not like it was a network drama.
But also also also just kidding, because cable dramas are
way better than network drama. Accurate, accurate. Yeah, but it
just I think you're so right that in this country,
if you are divorced, it's like having a big scarlet

(44:27):
d on your chest, and it makes it seem like
you're unworthy or you're a failure, or that something's wrong
with you. A lot of my friends who have been divorced,
they actually if someone's like, oh, I'm so sorry to
hear that, they're like, no, I was. I'm happy that
I was divorced. I I had a marriage that wasn't good,
and I'm happy that I found the courage and the
strength to get out of it, as opposed to staying
in it and being miserable and just sort of thinking

(44:51):
all your self worth into not wanting to you know,
reverse that that choice. Yeah, And I think if we
didn't have a stigma against divorce, which a lot of
countries don't have a stigma against divorce. We can maybe
just enjoy these parts of our marriage that we're really
good and realize, hey, maybe at a different stage in
our life, maybe when we're not raising children, maybe when
I switched careers, like I might want to be married

(45:13):
to someone else. And I know that sounds almost radical
to say, and I'm almost uncomfortable saying it because I've
been so industrinated into American pop culture. But I think
if we could just be a little bit more relaxed
about the whole thing and realize that marriage isn't a
fairy tale, it's not our happily ever after, and it
doesn't have to last forever, then we would just be
less afraid and we wouldn't beee like a failure. If

(45:36):
you get divorced. I mean you shouldn't. It's just another
stage in your life. It's not it's not that big deal.
But literally, everything in pop culture tells us that divorce
is awful, that it's the worst thing. Ever, So how
do we so this all sounds great in theory, how
do we actually go about the process of un learning
all of this stigmatizing, heavy crap that we've all been

(45:57):
absorbing about marriage and divorce pretty much all of our lives.
It's so hard. It's really hard. I was having a
conversation with an agent in l A. I have this
other book, it's a political novel coming out called Charlotte
Walsh Likes to Win. And this agent was telling me,
she's like I when Hillary Clinton lost, I blamed Hollywood.
I blamed Hollywood because pop culture has told us for

(46:19):
so long that there's things that a woman can't do,
and we've essentially programmed America to believe that a woman
couldn't be president. And I was like, you're totally right.
And her goal, and I've been talking to her about
making Charlotte into something, is to create TV and movies
that d program us. And I think that that's something
that we really need to think about. How can we

(46:40):
deprogram our generation? Every generation that's older than us. They
might kind of be lost to us, but that's okay,
because you know they'll die sooner than we will. But
we have to figure out how to create new pop
culture that will deprogram the next generation. So showing different
kinds of marriage, showing different kinds of love and that
started to happen with being really great gay marriage on

(47:01):
TV and in movies, but they're still so much further
to go. It's incredible that Prince Harry is marrying a
divorced actress on a USA drama who's half African American.
That's awesome, but we just need more of that. And
I think that it's incumbent on creators, people that are
making books and movies and TV shows and podcasts too.

(47:23):
The program the culture is that too heavy and ask
is that a lot? I mean, I'm just a simple podcaster,
but I'll see what I can do. Thank you, thank
you for accepting my mission. And that's that's so. That's
one of the things that we want to do with
Committed is we want to show different kinds of marriage
and different kinds of love, an unexpected marriage, unexpected love,

(47:46):
to show people that there's not just one way that
you have to be. One of the couples that we
have on it's actually well it's not a couple, it's
a what would you call someone that was three people,
so a threesome I guess, or triad, but but they're
not I mean, but not a resom and so they're
in a polyamorous relationship. And since I live in San Francisco,
I'm always skeptical when people say they're in a polyamorous

(48:08):
relationships because in San Francisco people just say it to
be cool. But I don't think these guys are just
saying it to be cool. And it's a polyamorous relationship
led by one of the women. So she's married to
the man and married to the woman, and she's the
one with two partners. It's not a man that has
two female partners. And I think that makes it a
little different. And it's really interesting to not look at

(48:32):
it in a tabloid, e exploitive kind of way, but
to dig into how does this work and what does
it mean for marriage generally to have three people involved.
And that was an incredible episode because it made me
want to get a wife. I was like, Oh my god,
if there could be an extra pair of hands to
hold this baby and clean these dishes and help us

(48:54):
with dinner, I'm in. I'm all for polyamory, now bring
it off. Several times on this show, it's a topic
of interest that the feminist marriage. It's been discussed several
times with different people, and you've mentioned in a couple
of times in this conversation. Can you talk about the
marriage of equals and what it means to be married
as a feminist? How do you do that? What is

(49:16):
a feminist marriage? I think it's really hard to have
what I thought of as a feminist marriage and a
marriage or equals. I went into my own marriage, and
I'm really married to the most feminist man in the world.
Right when he was a kid, he read all of
the Judy Boom books. I think he read more Duty
Bloom books than I did. He can quote the book Blubber,
which is just adorable, and he loves women and he

(49:40):
loves equality. And it's still a challenge, absolutely every single day.
Somehow I've still fallen into this gendered role of I'm
the one that makes all the doctor's appointments, I'm the
one that is planning for meals. I'm the one who orders.
I do order the groceries instead of going grocery shopping,
but I'm still the one that orders them to be delivered.

(50:02):
And a lot of the feminist writers that I talked
to when I was writing How to Be Married and
said the same thing that, like all of a sudden,
they've they've fallen into these gendered roles without even realizing,
and the best thing you can do is to talk
about it. So Nick and I kind of have these
office hours once a week where it's like we have
them over a glass of wine, which our therapist said
not to have them of our glass of wine. But

(50:24):
I was like, I'm not not gonna knocking suck my
husband without drinking a little bit and talk about what's
bugging us. And it came up. I'm like, I started,
I'm making all but that's disappointments and he didn't even
realize it. And that's one of the one of the
things that I've realized about having a feminist marriage is
that we kind of have to program our husbands that
it's that it is our job to decide what we
want our marriage to look like and then to tell

(50:45):
the men, because men want to be told what to do.
And that's that's my mus my feminist stance on marriage.
It's to train and program my husband a little bit
like like a dog. And it's worked for me and
now I have a husband who gets up in the
middle of the night with the baby and I get
to sleep the whole night, and he does the dishes,
and even though I'm making all the doctor's appointments, he
takes the baby to them. So I think that we've

(51:06):
done a really good job. We're still probably sixty in
household duties with me still being sixty, but I think
it's probably better than most marriages. So I'm curious, do
you have any insight into how the situation might be
complicated or made better? You know, it is different in
same sex marriages, so yeah, same sex marriages have the

(51:27):
same challenges, even though it's not necessarily a man and
a woman having an equal marriage. It's really hard and
it's about communication and expectations and spelling it out. And
I think this is where non traditional couples, like polyamorous
couples actually have a small monogamous traditional couples beats, because
if you're doing something like having three people in your marriage,

(51:51):
you don't have a choice but to talk about it
and to explain expectations and have rules and boundaries, and
people in a more traditional marriage just think, oh my god,
odd I had this, letting it's going to work out
everything perfect now, And they don't work on it and
they're just hard work I think that Ben Afflecks said
that before he left John Garner for the Nanny, and
you got the kind of tattoo that a kid who

(52:12):
works at a gas station guests. But it's true. Marriage
is hard work. You have to work at it, you
have to talk about it, you have to set goals
and rules and expectations, or you're I don't think that
that it's possible to be happy in your marriage unless
you're putting in the work. So other than that great
advice that it's just going into it clear eyed knowing
that it's hard work. What advice do you have people

(52:34):
out there who maybe are married right now or thinking
about getting married. My best advice sounds super anti feminist,
and I wrote it in my book and got so
much backlash. But you have you have to unpack it,
you have to dissect it. So I was in Paris
with all of these very fancy French women, and I'm
not very fancy at all, but I was. I was
trying to sit in with them. So I was like

(52:55):
smoking a long cigarette and balancing a glass of red
wine on my knee and my notebook on the other
and and then I spilled the red wine all over myself,
and they all told me the same thing, that you
should be your husband's mistress, and I like, the feminist
side of me is like, oh god, that's disgusting, and
they're like no, they're like, but he should also be

(53:16):
your mistress. There's just no good male word for mistress.
The goal is that you should treat each other the
way that you treated each other when you were dating,
when you were still excited about each other, when you
still wanted to have great conversations outside the realm of
something gross is in the garmage disposal? Why do the
towl smell weird? And what just came out of the
baby's but? And so, to be your best person and

(53:38):
actually show up in your marriage the way that you
did when you were desperately trying to get this person
to like you, and it's it doesn't make any sense
that we do it the other way around. That once
we get this person that allegedly we want to spend
the rest of our lives with, then we start to
treat them like. So I think it is be your
husband's mistress and have your husband be your mistress and

(53:58):
behave as well as you when you were first dating,
because you are on your best behavior, then why do
you turn into a jerk after you already land this person? Right?
So Committed comes out on June six, uh, and where
where can people find you? Where can people learn more

(54:18):
about what you're what you're up to? So Committed is
going to be on the House Stuff Works Network and
it's on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And
we're at the website committed pod dot com, and we're
on Instagram and Twitter as at Committed Pod. And we'll
have a lot of updates and short episodes and previews

(54:39):
there and we're gonna have a lot of fun. We
have a lot of crazy interesting couples. I just got
a text right now that we're trying to land a
couple of astronauts who are who were never in space
at the same time, and how they make how they
make their marriage work when one person is in space.
We all need to know, we all need to know

(55:02):
we do we do. One of my one of my
other favorite episodes actually two married figure skaters, and it's
my favorite because then I got to watch The Cutting
Edge like nine times just to get ready for their interview,
and I kept bringing it up to and they're like, oh,
but we're real life people, and I'm like, but let's
talk about this romantic comedy from the Early Night because
that that's like a documentary, right, It's essentially a documentary. Alright, perfect, Well,

(55:27):
thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you
for having me. This has been awesome. Okay, listeners, that
was a lot of stuff about marriage. I hope that
we've demystified it somewhat, although it is very complex issue
to demystify. Um. But you can look out for Joe's
podcast Committed. It is coming out June six, And if

(55:48):
you want to get in touch with us and tell
us what is that bridle underwear? Any other questions that
were raised, you can. You can find us on Twitter
at mom Stuff podcast and on Instagram at stuff I'll
never to told you. I can always email us at
mom Stuff at host works dot com. Hello, Hey Mom,

(56:19):
So I want to ask you a couple of questions
about your marriage with dad. Do you think you guys
had a happy marriage? No, we didn't. Why not? He
was a narcissistic sociopath, incapable of loving anybody. Do you
think that's why I'm so obsessed with trying to figure
out how a good marriage works. Absolutely. I'm Joe Piazza.

(56:48):
I'm not a therapist. I haven't even been married that long.
I'm just a new wife trying to figure out how
marriage works by talking to a lot of really interesting strangers. Okay,
so what do you want to do a podcast about marriage? Well,
it's the oldest game in the book, right, most people
do it. No one really talks about it. You're worried
about something about our marriage. No, we have a good

(57:11):
marriage most of the time. I think so. Most of
the time, it's pretty good. I think we have an
above average marriage, well above average, well above average. But
we're gonna learn some stuff on this podcast, hopefully. Sometimes
my own marriage seems kind of mundane. I want to

(57:31):
know what it's like to be married to a rock
star or a porn star. I want to know what
it's like to be married to someone who has amnesia.
If you're worried that they're going to forget you forever.
When you're first married, when you first start saying, you know,

(57:52):
my wife would like a coffee, those words seem so weird.
They picked me up on the stretcher. The only thing
Patrick said to me was asked my wife. So in
this really crazy traumatic setting, to hear him say it,
it just really stood out to me. And then he
looked at me and said, we'll figure this out. And

(58:15):
it wasn't just about one person. It was I wanted
to go to the Olympics, Alexa wanted to go to Olympics,
and we wanted to get each other to the Olympics.
And I had always told him that he would be
a great legal investigator because he had trained at least
a dozen private investigators when he worked as a criminal lawyer.
So that was the first thing on my mouth. I

(58:36):
just looked at him and I said, let's start an
investigations agency. And we did. Let me clarify, I cooked
the meals, she washed the dishes, sos me making me
look like I'm the back. I'm not the bag. He
has definitely been Yeah, nothing but wonderful throughout this experience.

(58:59):
You know, m h from how Stuff Works. I'm Joe Piazza.
This is committed. Join me as we find out what
happens after I do. Subscribe on Apple podcast or wherever
you get your podcasts. See you soon.