Video summary
The episode opens with a poignant reading of Richard Feinman's love letter to his late wife, Arlene, dated October 17th, 1946. In this deeply personal piece, Feinman expresses that he writes not merely because she enjoys hearing it, but because the act itself warms him from within despite having gone nearly two years without contact due to his stubbornness and realism about her condition. He articulates a complex grief where he wishes to continue loving her even after death, finding comfort in the idea of discussing problems or starting projects together that they can no longer do. Feinman acknowledges the difficulty of understanding love for someone who is gone yet insists she remains superior to anyone else alive, rejecting societal pressure on him to find another partner while admitting his own inability to move on emotionally. The discussion then shifts to a broader reflection on modern dating culture and the biological realities facing women today. The speaker critiques the trend where high-achieving individuals delay marriage until their careers are established, arguing that this approach ignores the fact that biology has not advanced alongside cultural expectations regarding fertility. He points out that pregnancies past age 35 carry significant geriatric risks, creating a narrow window for those who wish to have children if they also want time in college and early career development. By calculating timelines where one might graduate at twenty-two but need six years just to raise four children with realistic spacing, he concludes that the first child should ideally be born around age 29 or later, making it difficult to marry shortly after meeting someone without rushing into a partnership before fully knowing them. To illustrate how relationships function in modern society compared to fifty years ago, the speaker introduces an anecdote about his mentor whose wife was not involved in his business at all yet they maintained a very happy marriage. The mentor explained that he did not need her for professional collaboration but rather needed her for other essential life functions, highlighting a shift where people now live together constantly and have their various needs fulfilled by many different individuals outside the home. This contrasts with the past when spouses spent less time together, allowing them to rely on separate social circles for specific aspects of life like church or business discussions. The speaker suggests that while finding someone who can cover multiple boxes is amazing, it is not a requirement for happiness and warns against the fallacy of seeking a perfect soulmate who completes us entirely. Ultimately, the core argument presented is that partners should be evaluated based on whether they help each other become better versions of themselves rather than fulfilling every single need or acting as a magical solution to life's problems. The speaker emphasizes that suffering is constant and individuals must choose how their relationships evolve within that reality, rejecting non-negotiables like wanting children if one partner does not share that desire unless it aligns with both parties' goals. He concludes by noting the excitement of learning how to be married lies in navigating differences rather than finding a flawless match, while also addressing the unfairness placed on women who face strict biological clocks compared to men who can wait their entire lives without such constraints.
Read the full video transcript
Have you ever read Richard Feman's love
letter to his wife? Uh, no. I read the
pleasure of finding things out. Okay.
But I love Fineman. Love, love. I mean,
you can see a lot of influence. I might
I might not be able to say this without
crying, which is going to be very
embarrassing, but I'm going to
try. October 17th,
1946. To Arlene, I adore you,
sweetheart. I know how much you like to
hear it, but I don't only write it
because you like it. I write it because
it makes me warm all over inside to
write you. It is such a terribly long
time since Alash wrote to you, almost
two years. But I know you'll excuse me
because you understand how I am stubborn
and realistic and I thought there was no
sense to writing. But now I know, my
darling wife, that it is right to do
what I have delayed in doing and that I
have done so much in the past. I want to
tell you I love you. I want to love you.
I will always love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind
what it means to love you after you are
dead. But I still want to comfort and
take care of you. And I want you to love
me and care for me. I want to have
problems to discuss with you. I want to
do little projects with you. I never
thought until now that we can do that.
What should we do? We started to learn
to make clothes together or learn
Chinese or get a movie projector. Can't
I do something
now? No.
I am alone without you. And you were the
idea woman and general instigator of all
our wild adventures. When you were sick,
you worried because you could not give
me something that you wanted to and
thought I needed. You needn't have
worried just as I told you then. There
was no real need because I loved you in
so many ways. So much. And now it is
clearly even more true. You can give me
nothing. Yet I love you so that you
stand in my way of loving anyone else.
But I want you to stand there. You dead
are so much better than anyone else
alive. I know you will assure me that I
am foolish and that you want me to have
full happiness and don't want to be in
my way. I'll bet you are surprised that
I don't even have a girlfriend except
you, sweetheart, after two years. But
you can't help it, darling. Nor can I. I
don't understand it for I have met many
girls and very nice ones and I don't
want to remain alone. But in two or
three meetings they all seem
ashes. You only are left to me. You are
real. My darling wife, I do adore you. I
love my wife. My wife is dead.
Tough to play the reverse out. It's
like, would I want Leila to write that
letter? And I don't think I
would
unless she was happy writing that
letter. But if the removal of me as a
contingency of reinforcement for her um
meant that
she couldn't find that in somebody else,
um would sadden me. And so I've already
so like with Lelay life I've told her I
tell her a lot. Um I was like I'm going
to die before you statistically there's
I'm for sure going to die before you.
She's a little younger. She's younger
and I'm bigger like and she exercised
like she's for sure going to live
longer. And I was like I want you to
spend as little time as humanly possible
from the time that I die to finding
somebody else. Um you do me no service
by making yourself miserable. And you do
not discredit or dishonor me by finding
somebody else to spend your life with.
So yeah, just I I only think about that
from reverse. There's
a the joy of melancholy. Yeah. Is an
interesting kind of emotion that's kind
complex. Mhm. You know, this strange
think wallowing satisfaction in
wistfulness. Um and yeah, wallowing.
whileing maybe a little a little more
loaded.
Um, but melancholy, you know, there can
be odd joy and sadness and and a kind of
beauty that you get to experience after
something is gone that you can't
experience during it. That I've not had
anybody in my life die. Only child with
a mother and a father that is still
alive. Like, I've got there's no one.
Must be nice. Yeah. [ __ ]
Um, but there's not been many things
that I've lost. And this is me [ __ ]
Monday morning quarterbacking. Uh, I
don't know. But
maybe what's a mood setter?
Modern women see Ila and think, "I'll
wait to establish myself in my career
before I date or get married or have
kids." But they forget we got married
when she was 23 and we built this
together. Love is one of the rare times
you don't do life in order, but rather
all at
once. If you find someone that makes
your world go round and makes the world
make sense to you, where you both look
at the same thing and say, "Oh, you saw
that, too?" Like, I feel like I was the
only one. I think that for high
achieving individuals, finding someone
who sees the world the same way is
incredibly rare. And when you find that
person, you should stop what you're
doing and then you should get them to
stay with you. And it's been, you know,
one of the best decisions of my entire
life, marrying Ila.
And
there's there's this especially
unfortunately for women right now
there's this huge you know put it off
delay there's no rush but it doesn't
actually take into um consideration two
things. One is that biology hasn't
advanced with culture and society. You
can't have kids past you know 35. I
mean, you can, but you're a geriatric,
you know, it's a ger geriatric pregnancy
past 35. Ruthless tum. Yeah. I'm just
being real, right? Yeah. Um, and so I
mean, I I this is like super prevalent
and I know this is a much more common
theme on the show and I don't touch it
very much, but it it just I just say it
more like cuz it I think it sucks. Um,
it's not fair. It's not Yeah, it's
objectively it's not fair. Guys can wait
the you know, their whole lives. They
can do everything. Um, and you have to,
if you go to college, graduate college
at 21 or 22, and if you want to have
four kids, assuming that you have
perfect pregnancies and you have exactly
one year, you know, 18 months between
each one, okay, that's six years by the
time you're done. And so if we if we
rule out ger that geratric pregnancy is
our last, then it means that we have to
basically have or we you have to have
your first kid at 29. Well, okay, maybe
it'll take, let's just tack one year on
of marriage to have the kid and be
married. Okay, 28 you're married. All
right, do you want to marry somebody
within six months of meeting them? Let's
give it two years to give our logical,
you know, brain in. Okay, so
26, 26, you graduate at 22, you have 48
months. And I think that again, this is
if you have if you don't want kids, then
all of this is null. If you do, then you
have a very small window um to piece
that together. Now, of course, there's
surrogates and maybe in the future, you
know, like I I'll say in general,
betting on I'll smoke I'll smoke
cigarettes now because by the time I'm
old, they'll have a cure for it. Um I
don't know. I just I don't make those
bets. And so, it's easier to work with
reality the way it is, not the way you
hope it's going to end up landing. Yeah.
to to knowingly incur basically a
guaranteed price for the potential of
maybe a non-existent solution is
probably not the best decision-making
process. And to be clear, I say this,
Ila and I, you know, we don't have kids.
She's not 35. Um, but I think
that we have these unrealistic
expectations that someone is going to
make our lives, that they're going to
complete us in some way. when I think
that for me the the the best thing that
a partner can do is help you be the best
version of yourself and that may mean
that you also have other friends who who
fulfill other needs for you. I remember
a mentor of mine uh you know he he had
had a wife that well most people have
wives that are not involved in their
business. I'm more the exception there.
Um but his wife wasn't involved at all
in the business and they had a very
happy marriage. Uh, and he said, um, and
I said, 'Do you ever like wish you could
talk shop with, you know, your wife? And
he said, "God, no." And I was like, "Uh,
why not?" He said, "That's what I got
you for."
And it was just such a business. It was
just a such a flippant like off-handed
answer that I was like, there was
actually a lot of wisdom in that. And
he's like, "I don't need I don't need
her to do that." He's like, "I need her
to do this." And he's like, "And I've
got you and you and Kevin to do these
things with." And he's like, "And when I
want to do like church stuff, I go to
these people." And so um and I think a
lot of that is because we've become
increasingly remote. People live
together in close quarters for extended
period of time. And so it's like our
exposure, our surface area with one
another has gone so far up compared to
how the vast majority of kind of uh
relationships were call even 50 years
ago. Like you didn't spend nearly as
much time with your spouse. And so it
was more normal to have different people
or different parts of your life that
were or needs being fulfilled by many
people and only the ones that are
confined by the laws of marriage being
delivered on that. Now if you get
somebody who can who can take two of
those boxes or three of those boxes
amazing. But I think the idea cuz I tend
to reject the idea of soulmate and I
think that people have this fallacy of
the perfect pick like I have to pick
this person perfectly when there's also
the Buddhist perspective which you and I
have both you know spoken length off off
off camera about which is like suffering
is going to be a constant and this
person will
like we get to choose how we want this
to go and so I think that If you take
off the societal pressure of a perfect
partner and think does this person make
me better, will this person hold me back
from my goals? Um, if the answer to that
is they will make me better, they will
make it more likely that I I do the
things that I want to do and we have no
what I would consider non-negotiables. I
want to have kids, they don't want to
have kids, I want to travel, they never
want to travel. If those things are
good, I think part of the excitement of
life is is learning how to be married. A
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