 What is our obsession with superficial dating reality shows? Well, since I have my own fascination with it, I'm really excited to be introducing Dr. Friedman Bernbaum, who's a research psychologist and a psychoanalyst in New Jersey, and we're gonna talk about this today. So welcome, Dr. Frieda. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, well, I'm excited. So let's just jump right into it. Well, since I have a professional fascination with it, which has turned into a little bit of a personal obsession, why are people obsessed with dating reality shows these days? It is just amazing. I have been in practice for more than 30 years, and I've never seen such superficial dating sites as I have. Lately, they're showing body parts, switching partners, sexual promiscuous adventures that they're having, and it's really not helping these people. If anything, it's making the relationships worse. They're 50% of the population that's married, they're divorced. So give me a break. It's just for entertainment. So, okay, so it's just entertainment, but there's obviously a reason, particularly. And my demographic happens to be what I call midlife, which is after baby making years and before retirement. And given that probably the highest, one of the highest demographics of singles these days are probably people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. And I believe here in the United States, we have something like 120 million singles. Now, I'm assuming that's based not married that doesn't necessarily include people in relationship. There's obviously a need being filled by watching these shows. What is that need being filled? You know, it does help because you supplement. If you're having problems with your spouse, instead of attacking that person and saying, you know, I guess what so-and-so is doing, what do you think they should do instead? Does it sound familiar? So actually it is helping people that are watching and those people are not going to the movies. They'd rather stay home on Netflix and watch, you know, Love is Blind, Marriage at First Sight. There's so many others. It keeps going on and on. And it's intriguing, you know, there are these little cubicles, they don't show each other, but then they decide to marry each other and they propose. I mean, give me a break. I mean, it's hard enough when you meet the person and you don't even know who you're looking at. So I actually have a contrary point of view for a moment and I'd like to get your take on this. So, and I want to differentiate, you mentioned married people watching it. Let's talk about like the single demographic that's watching it from that vantage point because I want to talk about married people for a moment, but let me tell you why I have an interesting fascination. So mind you, Love is Blind is, you know, two people connecting in these pods, they can't visually see each other. They create this connection with one another and then they have to, or one person has to propose and then they, if the other person agrees, they physically meet, they go on a brief hunting or they go on a brief vacation together and then they live together for eight weeks. Okay, now let me tell you why I'm interested in this. Our current dating process is a lot, is basically you go out, you meet someone, if you like them, you go out a second time, you, if you like them again, you go out on a third time and then they start engaging in either physical intimacy or they choose to explore a relationship together, okay? Now I say this because a lot of people are having physical intimacy before there's any agreement to a relationship. But why I'm fascinated with this model is that it accelerates everything in a compact period including the living together piece and why I see that so critically important is, I've observed that we really don't get to know another human being until we live with them, you know? The dating process is almost a long drawn out version of friends with benefits and by accelerating it, you get to make a decision much sooner rather than dragging out for years and I'd like your take on that. I don't know if I necessarily agree with that because in reality, you know, we're looking at pre-nups for divorce. What about a pre-nup for making it work? I was wondering why they don't do an emotional pre-nup. What are the things that are going to happen that will help you if you know about it now? When you live together, that's true, you're experiencing life together, but going into the history of the person, do they have secrets? Today, you know, what is the real gender orientation? Do they believe in monogamy? What about money? That's the biggest factor for divorce today, how to spend money. And of course, being faithful to the other person. So those things really would be better off being developed before you go into a relationship, before you can live together because really living together sort of overrides everything. You have this intimacy, you have these strong feelings towards each other and then that person, the romantic period three years can do no wrong. So you forget about all that stuff. There's some religions, the Orthodox religion, the Orthodox Jewish religion. They don't care how you feel about each other. They don't care about the attraction. They care about the history, the parents, is their divorce in the family. And then after the third date, they have to decide whether there's an attraction or not. But the other stuff really, and those marriages, believe it or not, last longer. So we really have to redefine the way we're looking at marriage today because it's not working. And the way people that are single, what it is they want. My daughter just texted me and I hope she doesn't look at this in her boyfriend. And she says, he doesn't listen to me. I'm talking. He's not responding. That in itself, the differences of different gender roles and how that is complicated that people don't wanna put up with much today. It used to be that you got married because it was practical. My mother used to stand outside the door of my office and say, this little Jewish woman, say, why are they coming to see you? They have food on the table. They have a place till they have shelter. What's the problem? Like, they have everything. That's the first thing my parents did when they came here to this country. They went and bought food. They were so excited. But today, values have changed. And even the marriage vows are very antiquated because women today know there are 16% of female students actually in college. It's 50 years ago, it's been reversed. So these women are really often making more money than the men. They have children before often. The men often stay home and work and take care of the children. What about extended families? All these things that have changed really need to change in the marriage vows because happily ever after, what does that mean? And the marriage vows till death do us part. What happens in between? So we need to change all this stuff and we need to look and see how our relationships can shift into looking at it seriously first before we even get that interaction. I know you don't agree with me because I've heard your thoughts. Oh, well, no, no, no, no. First off, let me be clear about something. I am in full agreement of having clear conversations before there's physical intimacy. I am absolutely staunchly clear and quite frankly, I'm encouraging my clientele to have these conversations before you physically meet someone and bringing it back to reality shows. In particular, there's the Indian matchmaker and the Jewish matchmaker show, which I actually, I- Where's the entire matchmaker? Well, yeah, we need, and then we need a Turkish matchmaker because my family is from Istanbul, Turkey. So, but interestingly enough, I'm in full agreement that the idea of living together, and I only bring this up as a conversation, is when two people agree they're gonna explore a relationship, you get to learn about them much quicker when you live together. That was my only point. Now, does that mean that's necessarily a practical thing? Absolutely not. Is that most likely gonna work? Probably not, but I think the point is that there's an intentionality. Is that when you live together, you talk about finances, you talk about spending expenses, you talk about things- But then you get a divorce. I hate to interrupt you. Because living together is an open door for finding problems, and there are going to be problems either way. When you have that marriage certificate, people say, who needs that piece of paper? Guess what? There's more commitment and there's more need to work it out because it's messier. Divorce is much messier because one switch of a button and we're on to the next person and the next person could be worse or better, who knows. We have too many options today and that's why living together often doesn't work. And you have to understand I recently went through this experience. So I have a slight bias in this for those who know me. Again, I'm talking about the getting to know you period, whether it's practical or not, I don't even wanna define this practical. I would absolutely agree that being married is more of a substantial commitment. Now, given my demographic is a lot of people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, there is a real reservation to getting married for this demographic. And I understand the why, especially if they've gone through some contentious previous relationship. But I wanna bring this back both to dating sites or excuse me, dating reality shows because there's a new show that's coming out there is a new show called The Golden Bachelor. Oh yes. And I'm actually really excited about watching this for a couple of different reasons. One, it's addressing the probably the highest growing demographic of singles today is probably 50, 60s and even 70 year olds. That's probably the highest growth demographic of singles. It's gonna be interesting because the 20 year old, a lot of the shows you and I've talked about, they're all for 20 year olds. It's a whole different mindset when you're in the, you know, get a really good job, meet somebody, get married, buy a house, start a family. You're in a different mindset. When you're in a divorced mindset, it's a whole different ball game. And I'd like your take on it. Well, that's so true, but those 20 year olds are gonna be 40 year olds and 50 year olds and they'll be divorced. So they're gonna be in that category. So it's about, and I'm telling you, we all get there. Yeah, statistically speaking, they're gonna be in that category. Statistically, we're gonna be there. And it's funny because I, as I'm talking to you and I don't know for some reason, I'm thinking about my past and I do come from an orthodox background although I'm not orthodox. And I took my husband, my pro-husband, I met him at a single's weekend, a Jewish single weekend in Grossed. I don't know if you've heard of those things a long time ago. Yeah, sure I have. There's a separate background. So after three months of being with him, he brought me to my parents and my mother said to him, you better marry my Frieda or she's not going out with you again. I'm thinking, what is she talking about? Who's even wants to get married? I was 22. But the way that was looked at was you have to work at it. You have to grow together. You have to be practical about it. So moving forward with divorce and all the things that we've gone through today, we need to be able to see that the second time around and the third time around, you have to know what to look for, how to respond. And it's not about you, it's about us. How do we, as a couple, was that your question was I went on into a different whole thing? No, well, where I'm going is, well, let me jump in because I think we, this really, this conversation is more about intentionality. You know, the fact is, is people that get married a second and third time divorce it even a higher rate. And I think it's because quite frankly, you know, they, I want to say, they certainly don't want to, they want to avoid the mistake they made before. Okay, that's clear. Most people go, I don't want to make the same mistake. However, they bring no new skills, no new awareness to making a relationship work because there's this belief, oh, if I meet the right person, it will just magically work out. And that's what these reality shows are kind of intimating. When you meet the right person, magic fairy dust is going to make all of this work out. And what at least I like to show, married at first sight, particularly, is that they have some psychologist and they have some therapist on the show talking about the importance of conflict resolution skills, talking about the importance of being mindful in the process. And while it's very peripheral, at least it's important to have these conversations and bringing it back to the single population. You know, when you say we need to do something, well, that's why I have a platform. I'm here to encourage doing things differently, like holding off, having sex and having these conversations. Yes. Like your mother did or your family did. Oh, my mother was right. I mean, I was so upset with her because who's this guy and whatever. And she says, I mean business. You're not gonna go and fool around and distract yourself because that's what it becomes. The romantic period is not really the in-depth time for a relationship. The in-depth time is when problems do happen. Arons or kids or health responsibilities, whatever that is. And who are you at this point in time? There are going to be problems when you're together. But when you're together for a long time, it changes, you're feeling shift into another place. Couples that live together often don't give themselves that opportunity to leave that romantic stage. But they can see each other in a way that's much more unconditional. Oh, we're not going out Saturday night anymore. We're not going to those places that I love to go. What happened to our traveling? What happened to our interesting couples that we used to go out with? All that stuff that's set up in the beginning that's really sort of superficial to tell you the truth. How often can you go out anyway? They maintain those standards. And when those standards are broken, the real marriage, the real stuff is never really encountered. And that real stuff is really what gives you more depth is what makes you closer and what makes you more unconditional to the other person rather than he did this or she did this. How many times is that person going to do something wrong without you looking at it and saying, okay, how can we fix it as a couple? It's too narcissistic today. It's about I and me, that person's doing something wrong. Well, how can we make it work? Where's the we here? I don't hear that enough. And that's what we need to look at more. Well, certainly I'm an advocate for people being more aware of how they show up in the process. It's interesting. I recently had Rabbi Manis Friedman on my channel and just a few weeks ago. And I was actually what inspired me to wanna interview him was something he said in the video that said particularly about men. He said, a man should want to be a husband. And that really struck me because I think in my 20s, I was looking for a wife, but I didn't think about what it meant to be a husband other than just pay the bills and do the so-called provider protector. I didn't know what it meant to really be a husband. And I've gone through a number of experiences since my divorce, and I've really stepped into this desire of wanting to be a husband and what that entails. And I'm looking for a wife who wants, I'm looking for a woman who wants to be a wife and what that entails. Do you have any thoughts on what I just shared? Wanting to be a husband, you know, it's interesting because my thought went right away. I went to the park with my husband and my son. I know it comes to my mind. And there was this man painting. This was yesterday. Okay. And I said, my husband likes to paint. So I said, you know what, why don't you go look at him? No, I don't want to look at it. And he did it. And his good feelings fed me. It was as if it was happening to me. So that's what it's all really all about. It's not about being anything. It's about integrating who you two are as one. And when that happens, it's often a lot of work. It really is a lot of work, but the feelings are great. And I keep doing that without being aware of it. And sometimes it happens at my expense. I will ask him things because I'll know he wants to be part of it. And I will not be in a good place because of it. But something about that feeds me. So am I your wife, I see a husband. It's just being intertwined with the right feelings for that other person. So being a husband, what is being a husband mean today? It's very confusing what being a husband means today. Because it used to be easy. You went out to work, the woman stayed home, had the kids and you came home and it was it. Today the woman can often make more money than the man. What role does that mean for the man? What does the man want? Does he want a woman to make equal and more money? Does he want a woman who's going to stay home? Because my research showed that when those things changed and if a woman changes, divorce happens because the real agenda for a wife having some kind of standards that the husband adheres to shifts for whatever reason. So I did a study on that that women who are not going to became professionals or educated in the midst of it, they were divorced. But if it worked, guess what happened? The marriage is better than ever because there was respect on both sides. A stamp symbol outside the home goes ahead and comes into the home as well. So being a good husband means not feeling that you have to have somebody that you're going to have to show what to do or somebody who's not as bright as you are, somebody who is not feeling as good about themselves. Because sometimes our pathologies set us up to pick certain people so our self-esteem can go up. What is that called? Gaslighting? I just did something on that. I hate to say this. Well, let me jump in because I want to address something. So, and let me be clear, when I say being a good husband is really showing up in your sovereignty and not being dependent upon the other person for your happiness. And I mean it the other way. Yes. You know, the white. I mean, what that means to me is more about how you show up in this process. At the same time, I am completely in agreement on the concept of there's a you, there's a me, and then there's a we collective. It's the recognition that the relationship is about a we and how do I as an individual and the other individual integrate into the we, I'm in full agreement with that. I think, you know, I just don't believe that we are taught this to some degree. I don't think there's any, it's certainly, at the time, it isn't role modeled in our homes. It isn't certainly something taught in school and no teenager or even a 20 year old is gonna listen to this conversation. I think it really comes back to, it's rarely role modeled in our society. It's rarely ever talked about and what's happened because of reality TV in particular and certainly our current dating marketplace with the advent of the swipe connection. We've turned in, I've just noticed that we've turned in more into a short term mating strategy of physical pleasure, basically. It's kind of like, and I wanna say one more thing and I want your take on it. I've often said romance should be reserved for those in a relationship, not as a precursor to enter into a relationship. We typically use a highly romantic field to get someone to physically be intimate with you. And as you said before, all that seems to change. I think the problem is most people aren't going in very intentional with the idea of basically getting married, if you will, or at least creating some sort of partnership with one another. Well, you need two people to bring excitement into the relationship equally. If you don't have that, something is missing on one side or the other. So that's right away a different premise than what we used to have. And those two people, when they have, they're fulfilled with each other, then they can have a relationship with the other person. So there's something to give back and forth. That has changed a lot. When we're looking at the 20 year olds, it's all about being physical. It's all about being intimate. It's all about being more assertive and aggressive and getting other people jealous of them. All that superficial stuff. And the scary part about that is we're teaching our children what they need to do as far as the role models that they have in front of them. We don't have role models that have interesting situations happening to them where they're growing together, they're productive together, they're taking turns, change, we don't have anything of that. And by the way, it's not boring. Marriage, it sounds a blah, forget about it. I've been married more than 50 years, by the way. Oh, congrats. More than anybody's oldest or whatever with everything. But the thing is, it's not blah if you're growing. If you're changing, if you're evolving, if you're making differences, that everything that you need is important to you, changing jobs, changing locations, changing different lifestyles, friendships, whatever that is, if you keep growing, it could be more exciting, the romance, the intimacy, then a relationship where there isn't that kind of commitment. So people have the wrong role models today. These reality shows are hope are not being taken too seriously because everybody looks like a model. Everybody looks fantastic, come on. And the skinniest clothing, the tightest clothing, the thinnest they can be, you know, you get so intrigued with what they're wearing and what they look like, you forget everything else. We forget about what is it that keeps these two together? It cannot be possible that those people are together for a long term because after all, things do change, and your preferences do change. So we're talking about the essence of that person is when you see older couples, if you ever see them sitting on the couch together on TV and they say, why did you leave them there looking? And I'm thinking, what do they see each other? What they see each other is the essence in the soul of that other person. People that knew each other in high school get together 30 years later. And I'm thinking, boy, they look so different, they're falling apart. That's not what they see. They remember the vitality, the genuine person. And that's what keeps people really together. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a show, like, whatever, that emotional prenup or happily ever after something, where you do talk about those things that keep people together and what defines a successful relationship that could be a lot of fun, really. It really is constantly changing. I'm not the same person my husband met. If he met me now, he wouldn't have a problem. We probably wouldn't even be with each other because we've changed a lot. So what occurs to me, and I've witnessed this habitually, so I wanna be clear, but I believe that we also have a very wounded population, emotionally wounded population who is entering into the single population. What I mean to say is childhood wounds and traumas and adult traumas that have gone unhealed. And what happens is they're seeking relationship, and I'm certainly, I'm very guilty of this. I am very guilty of believing that if I'm in the right relationship, I'm going to feel better. And what I didn't realize and took me years of recognizing that it wasn't about the other person, I had to do inner work. I had to do work to heal those childhood wounds. I had to do work to heal my adult traumas, particularly the ending of my marriage and such. And I think one of the challenges we have and why reality shows are a form of escape is that it causes people not to necessarily address the reason why they're single. And that is usually because you have an unhealed wound or wounds or many wounds. And what's the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result? I think that's a huge problem that we face as a single population. And they're bouncing off of each other. And this is true coming back to divorce. There's a reason why folks get divorced. It's not because they're not growing together. It's because they got a lot of unhealed shit that they're bouncing off of one another. As a therapist, I would be interested to hear how you feel about this from the wounded single population being out there in the dating population. Absolutely. We marry other people or we partner with other people and expect these strangers to make up for what happened to us with our parents. And these strangers are clueless. So they're attacked and they defend themselves. And here we go again. And then they go to people like myself. So really what happens is we tend to marry our opposite sex parents. So I hate to say this but if you have a relationship bad or good, if you adored by your father and he thinks you're the best of one everything, then you marry somebody who sees you that way. And if that person can't keep up with that, that person's in trouble because that person's a human being. He's not your father. He's not trying to make you feel better and vice versa. So it's true, we do marry our parents and we have to be able to say, wait a minute, this is this person here. What can I do with this person? And what can I do with what happened in the past? If it's bad news, if it's something that you have to work on, that's okay. But just know the difference. When you have an argument, don't use your background because arguments can really be dirty and can really be horrible. And you can really know how to get to that person. You'll use their parents, you use their income, whatever you can get to make them feel bad, you'll absolutely do. And then what happens with that, you're both in different corners. It's like two boxers trying to fight each other because you don't get it. You just don't get it. So the important thing is to know when you're looking at a person, don't identify that person with somebody that you know. And most people do. Oh, that person reminded me of my father. He's easygoing, he's low-key. No, he's not. You don't really know that about him yet. Find out who he really is. Find out that he's maybe more assertive. Find out that he has differences and different needs. Give that person a chance. But we stay stuck with our background and then what happens is we get disappointed because we're not getting what we set up to get. And then again, we split up. We split up way too easy. We don't feel that we have to put up with anything today. In the past, we used to have to put up with different things that we have to, you know, work ethics, poverty. It was really hard. Today we have higher standards. But sometimes those standards are too superficial and they're too high. We need to get back to the basics of what's really important. So forget about your parents. You're a grown adult. You were a child. Forget about years of therapy. You know, grow up. This was then you couldn't do anything about it then. Now you can't marry the right kind of person. Don't marry your mother or your father. Well, I'm gonna say this though. And, you know, we can just simply wave a magic wand, marry the right person. Okay, that's an easy thing to say out loud. I've observed that, you know, the first three or four months of dating, you're oftentimes, you know, like Chris Rock says, you're dating the ambassador of someone's best self. In other words, you're not really seeing who they are. Okay? And again, because dating today is more entertainment-based. It's about the doing of things. Why, and I wanna come back for my argument of living together, and when I say living together, I'm saying a trial run in this particular capacity, is that, or at least like the TV shows are, is it requires you to integrate into each other's lives? In other words, you're making, like we're saying, look, we're gonna dive into this and see if this really works. I'm coming back to the reality show, particularly Love is Blind or Married at First Sight. As a trial run to see if we actually get along with each other, if we actually are, you know, you can start to see who that person's personality is much quicker. The thing is, when you say marry the right person in our current dating environment, it's years dating someone. And oftentimes you really don't see who they are until you actually really integrate into each other's lives. I mean, really integrate. That's when you start to see, when you start to spend time with family and friends, when you really start to do social activities together, when you're integrating your professional lives together. I think this is more of the challenge is people don't know who the other person is and the fact is, is our current dating process, you could spend years and not even know who this person is. You will never know who the other person is. You'll never be happy. I'm actually glad you're talking to me. You'll never get what you want. Well, when you say you never get to know a person, I think, well, no, no, when you say never get to know, I'm gonna suspect that you and your husband trust each other, okay? It has nothing, listen, we've been married a long time, it's true. And we've had, almost every other day, why am I here, believe me, it goes through my mind because things happen. Being married a long time doesn't mean success and being divorced doesn't mean failure, but here's the real logic of this whole thing. When you're married, you're going to have problems. When you're married, you're gonna be disappointed and when you're married, you're not gonna be with the person you thought you were going to be with. So forget about all that. Let's face it, forget about the wedding and the honeymoon and all that stuff. And then when you're ready to say there're gonna be problems and here comes one of them and then you can endure it. Then you can endure a relationship because we say relationships are, oh, I have to find the best person for me. When I say the right one, I'm saying figure out what it is, but then when you get on that ride, you're going to be on a bumpy rope, a bumpy slopey, whatever that is and get ready for that. People are very disappointed when that happens. And it used to be in the past because life was harder. Today, actually there are upsets too, economically, politically, all kinds of things are happening, the pandemic. There's a lot of stressors out there as well. But when you go ahead and you say, I am ready and I think the word happy is overplayed. I think the word comfortable, do you agree comfortable is something that's a much more- Contented is the word I think of, content. Contented, okay, contented. Yeah, you're right, that's a better word. Contented is really more at-propos to who we are. Happyness is a fleeting moment. You can be happy for a second. I mean, you can't go around happy all the time because something's gonna hit you over the head eventually. But we need to be realistic. So yes, these TV shows, they're fun. They're fun to watch. They're fun to see how possibly, let me ask you this question, how possibly can anything work? If you let's say you're in the best relationship and they put you into a room with some beautiful person of the opposite sex for three weeks, how can you not flirt with that person? How can you not be turned on by that person? And how can you not make your partner jealous? It's not possible to do that. So all these things are a setup for things not to work. So this is something that is not good for the people who are involved, although they wanna be in the media, maybe they wanna have their own show, things like that. That's the way. Sure. I mean, I think the impetus for those that actually go on these shows is some sort of, maybe it's their 15 minutes of fame, which is longer than 15 minutes, but there is that egoic aspect to it, the people that do the shows. And yet there is still a huge population of people that, especially the bachelor, there's the bachelor nation, there are bachelor groups and forums where people are talking about the show. And in fact, it's kind of an interesting social commentary, particularly the bachelor, because it's the water cooler conversation the next day, not in your physical water cooler like it used to be in the past, it's the virtual water cooler. And it's interesting because I think a lot of people see what not to do. I actually watch these shows and start to really recognize, hey, these are the things not to do. And to that extent, if a person goes in with a truly introspective mind instead of a brainwashed mind, in other words, you're being brainwashed by what's happening, if you can go in with this introspective mind, it can really be an opportunity to say, okay, these are the things not to do. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Yes, well, we have to be able to know that it's nice to have fun and it's nice to be able to let go. But what are the consequences of it? Where are we going with this? Momentary pleasures, instant gratification is something that just happens now when we look at where we're going with it and when we're looking at our responsibilities, it could be even more fun because you end up finding things out about the other person that you never would have imagined. Oh, that person's afraid to go on high, you know, buildings or something. Oh, I don't too. Oh, let's navigate. Let's go through life this way. Let's do this. Let's fight for ourselves and for, let's be the ones that are gonna protect each other for everything that's out there. So it becomes much more effective when you're looking at each other in a way that says, you know what, we can do this, all our insecurities that we have, but we don't show insecurities. We only show people who are, I don't know what they are, they're not real because everybody has stuff. Everybody has, as you said, pathologies from the past. When you go hand in hand and you face those insecurities, that's really fun. That's when you have somebody that you can really say, we're in this together. Hey, honey, do you wanna, I know you don't like to do this, let's do this and enjoy that. So I'm talking about being vulnerable. Being vulnerable is being genuine, you know, and that's when you're the most like, not when you're perfect, not when you look like a model, not when you have a perfect body or whatever, but being somebody who is authentic, that's the person that's interesting because you can only, well, I don't know about men, men are very visual, but you can only look at somebody so long when you get born to the depth of who that person is. Isn't that more exciting, you know, a meeting of the minds? Isn't that really what makes a person a much more interesting from day to day? What are they doing? Where are they going? What can they bring to the table to make us grow together? So that's really something that some cultures have. American cultures really don't have enough of that. Other European cultures have more of that mindset of the person who has wisdom, the person who's sensual, it doesn't have to be a 20 year old, actually they think older women are more sensual. I should move there, but it's not practical for me. I've been living in this house for a long time. But, you know, that's something that needs to be really looked at when we're looking at going into a long-term situation. When you go into a second marriage, you go into a third marriage, you're saying it doesn't last as long. You know why it doesn't last as long as the first one? Because you find out, what? No, I was gonna say, what is it? I wanna know what it is too. No, because you find out what really is happening is, hey, if I were to work them the first one, I wouldn't have to go through all that stuff. I'm going through garbage again, and I'm going through garbage again. You see, so why bother? So a lot of that is a wake up call for you. And so the marriages are not, or their relationships are very disappointing because you see that it is, as you said, it's about you. How much are you willing to work on the problems? How much are you willing to work on somebody who has these red flags around them, who's narcissistic, who's jealous, who wants you all to themselves, and you're complimented, but then it works against you because you don't have your life in the essence of your year. But you can get out of that. You can go into a different place, it's up to you. So you're right. That person that is with you doesn't have all the availabilities that you need, but you can work around it. So I want to dive into back to the reality shows and something occurred to me while we're speaking. I think it would behoove therapists to actually start their own YouTube channels merely just talking about the psychology, the pathology, the intricacies of these reality shows literally in real time talking about what is actually happening. And why I'm bringing this up is, I think when people begin to start to understand human behavior, and we can use this as a forum to get the conversation started, that's what my channel is all about, is I continually draw attention to the importance of doing inner work. And this is just anecdotal on my part, but I would venture to say that 80% of the population has weak emotional maturity and very weak relationship skills. I mean, truly weak skills. And in the past, when you had family to support the entire relationship, it allowed for margin of error if you had weak emotional maturity, weak relationship skills. Now, most people enter into relationship, particularly those in midlife, and they don't have any support system, very few actually go to therapy and work on their own individual stuff so that when it comes up in the marriage, they can actually work on it. So coming back to my idea, I would offer the, I'm gonna start doing this with the Golden Bachelor, but I'm gonna offer my commentary from a human behavior perspective and not an entertainment perspective. You know, it's so true that we used to have communities of cousins and families living together in one area. So there was a lot of bouncing off back and forth of opinions and help and support system. Now we move away from our loved ones, we're isolated and so we go to therapy and something's therapy becomes too intense and you come too much into yourself and then you have this bubble around you. That's not always great either, I don't think. So we become too serious as well. So what do we do? We need to be able to expand our horizons, our center that we're involved with to have more people around us, to not to move away from our family, to stay with relatives and friends and see that other people have issues, how other people resolve their issues, that it's not the end of the world, that there are other things that you can look at and talk about as well and to integrate all kinds of lifestyles and decisions within one mindset. Instead of just dwelling on per little me, what do I have to do? Because we're larger than us ourselves and when we used to have those kind of communities around us, it wasn't only the marriage, but it was people that you'd go to church, there'd be organizations, there'd be different entertainment types of celebrations, holidays. We don't do that today. We hardly do that. Certainly to the same degree it was in the past, there's no doubt about it. People live too far away for the holidays, often so you end up Skyping or Zooming, which they say is as good, but it's not as good. It's not the same. No, it's not the same. You don't see the same thing with Thanksgiving and they're bothering you about who are you marrying and the kids or whatever, you don't get the same dynamics, but it's different. So those are the things that are keeping people from growing in a way and they're taking themselves way too seriously because when you look around you, you'll see all kinds of situations that people are stuck in or they're working on. And then you say, hey, wait a minute, maybe that's life. Maybe that's the way I grow by conquering these things. When you reach the depth of sadness, that's when you can reach the heights of happiness. That's the only way. That's the way to do it. I think people don't know that. They think, what, there's no sadness. So this is not allowed in my life. I'm only allowed to feel good, look great and then move on to the next. Well, that's the housewife reality show. Some Botox and you know. I was gonna say, that's the housewives reality show. That's the Kardashian. I wanna bring, before we come to a close, I wanna bring it back to two reality shows that I actually found incredibly fascinating and I mentioned them earlier was the Indian matchmaker and the Jewish matchmaker. I really actually enjoyed those shows, particularly the Indian matchmaker, the woman who was the Sema auntie or auntie Sema, I can't pronounce it properly or not can't, I'm not recalling it. I find them fascinating because the family is part of the decision-making process. And in particular, what I like about it and this is what I advocate on my channel, you've watched a few of my videos, I always talk about, I'm your big brother. If I could be there for you on the first date, my job would have a shotgun pointed at the guy's head and saying, what's your intention with my little sister? Now my point is, it's not to be in a hostile way but the idea is to really get someone's clarity before they go down this emotional roller coaster because it is an emotional roller coaster to begin relating with another human being, especially when there's physical intimacy. That changes the dynamic dramatically. What I like about the show and particularly there was a episode or two with the Jewish matchmaker where the siblings were there interviewing the guy or man because it's like, look, if you ever want to have a chance with my sister, you have to go through me. You got to prove yourself to me, not from a, you know, worth perspective but certainly intention. As we're getting come to a close, what are your thoughts on those two particular shows once again? First of all, I love it what you just said because as I was talking about community, that we have each other's back, we have different opinions what the other person's saying. So that's really a lot of fun but they both have similar context to it and that is the richness of the history of where they come from. And it's funny, yes. And it's funny, I mean, it's true when you marry somebody with a similar background when you argue, you'll hurt each other less because there's less things that you can find. Trust me, although I married somebody in my religion still it's very different. So that part of the show when you watch the ethnic backgrounds and their expectations of what it is, a lot of it is community. A lot of it has other people involved. A lot of it is other people doing their work. So today, as I said before, we're isolated and we don't have that backup from other people. So we don't have the cousins, the parents to introduce each other, to know who this person really is, the friends. What do the friends think of this person? What about through the relatives? Do they have something good to say about this person? So when you have all that stuff going for you, then it's much easier to get involved in the relationship. But do not have intimacy first because that really marks the whole picture. That's exactly it. Everything's wonderful. Everything is coming up roses. But those roses after a while, what happens to roses? Yeah. They wilt. Well, Dr. Frida, I really appreciate you coming on my channel, being able to share your wisdom, your experience. This conversation about dating, reality shows in particular, dating reality shows was something that I really was looking forward to. I hope we provided some value to those that watched. Before we wrap up, is there any, how can people reach you if they wanna follow you or can you just share? And I'll post a link in the comments below. I have a podcast. It's called The Dr. Frida Show, DOCTOR Frida for our ETA Show. And if they wanna contact me, it's DOCTOR for our ETA at email.com. Okay. And I'll post a link below. Well, we have something in common and I just wanna end this show by once again, giving you a big, gigantic Jonathan Bear hug of appreciation and love. Love it, thank you so much. Yeah. Everyone, I hope you found value in this. Please post a comment below if you did. Please hit that like button. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel and check out all the links below as well. I'm gonna wrap up this broadcast by saying, thank, bye to everyone. Bye. Thank you.