Mariana: So first I was like, well, we know if it ends, it wasn't successful. So that's an easy way to define lack of success if you end up in divorce. But how about the opposite? Like, how do you define success? Just because 98% of marriages that practice NFP remain married, from my perspective, that doesn't mean that they have a successful marriage. Welcome to Look Again. Look again is a podcast where we revisit the cultural movement shaping modern life and ask whether the stories we were told are true. I'm Marianna and this is Nicole.
Nicole: Hi.
Mariana: And today we're going to be finishing our conversation that we were started last week about strangers, a book by Belle Burden, where she talks about the ending of her marriage, how her husband lets her know one random day that. He has been having an affair and he's done with the marriage and he's leaving her and he's not interested in seeing the children ever again. And the economical fallout that that has because Belle Burden had signed a prenup the day or a week shortly before getting married. And because of that, she ends up losing almost everything when they get a divorce. So last week we talked about that and what we thought. I was telling Nicole that I think that it is a like. Cautionary tale for women everywhere that this can happen to you in a marriage, and and you can think you know who you married, you can trust him, but really we at the end of the day, we could all be married to strangers who could steal, or not steal, but position themselves in a way to take all the money and have an affair when we when we don't even know. Belle thought her husband was loving and kind. So that was a really interesting conversation. And if you haven't listened to it, I'd like to encourage you to go back. Last week and listen to that episode. And this week we wanna compare and contrast strangers with Eat Pray Love, a novel by Liz Gilbert. So why don't we start with just a little bit about what Eat Pray Love is about and what is happening in Liz Gilbert's life?
Nicole: Okay, so I I think one of the things that we're doing also is we're well I'm mostly focusing about Eat Pre Love the movie. for multiple reasons, but anyways. But that is a a movie and a book about a w an author named Liz Gilbert who has seemingly everything. She's got a loving, handsome husband, she's got a very sex successful career, she's got this great home in New York, you know, on on paper, everything looks great. Which is very similar to Belle Burden's story, right? She she had everything also. The difference is is that Belle Burden h had the rug pulled out from under her by her husband just saying, I'm leaving you and taking off and then taking up with another woman. And in Eat Pray Love, in her search for her true self or her, you know, quest for self discovery, she abandons the husband, the loving husband, and she goes off, And hooks up with a man who's, I think, 14 years younger than than she is, and then does a after that rebound relationship goes off on a year of of self-discovery. So I I think it's an interesting th film to compare with strangers because I think this is again an example where we see women behaving badly, but it's okay because when a man does these behaviors, we're in this weird situation, I think, right now where If a man does something, he's a horrible person. He's an ass. Like I think James, the the actual husband of Bell, has been, you know, I don't know if he was fired, but he's been ostracized by a lot of his society. Like everybody knows who he is now. It's caused all kind of chaos in his life. And I don't know. I I don't have a huge problem with that. But what I do have a problem with is then saying in Ypre Love, like, the story of Ypre Love is basically she's really strong for going off on this. year discovery of self and that and that she just the the pain in her heart is because she needs to forgive herself for having caused so much chaos, but she did it was really strong for her to do it and she's such a strong person and it just it's all like I want so much to be able to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it really it drives me kinda nuts. And I think it's it's us as society saying that the I d it feels to me like it what we're saying is the ideal for women. is to do the shitty behavior that we've seen men do for years. And that's what makes us strong. And that seems ridiculous to me.
Mariana: And I think you're right that it's really tricky to have this double standard for men and women. And at the same time, because we've had a double standard for thousands of years, we have judged women much harsher than we have men on things like this. That I feel like as a society, we start to overcompensate by being more and more lenient with the women and much harsher with the men because we're trying to fix what for generations have felt the other way, right? Like I feel like for many generations. Men we're seeing like their like a Don Juan we would call in Mexico, like a suave guy is the guy that can sleep around and gets all the women, kind of like James Bond in America. And he's you know, he's the guy that has all the gadgets, everybody thinks he's so handsome, and that's what's cool. But the woman, the woman that looked cool for thousands of years, I think, was the one that was quiet and sexy at home, but very modest outside of the house. And so I think that what's happening is we're trying to fix that. We're trying to compensate. And so that's why we get society give Liz Gilbert such an easier time than they give Belle's husband. And I also want to mention that something that for me makes a very big difference is that Liz had no kids when she left her husband. So she was leaving her marriage, but she was not leaving her children. Whereas James, Belle's husband. was leaving his kids. And Liz in the book, and I believe in the movie as well, is portrayed as she was not cheating on him. She was just profoundly unhappy in her marriage, but she never cheated on him. She left, whereas James did cheat on her. So I could see how we would treat him much different because he was a father and he was cheating than her, who was married and very unhappy.
Nicole: yes, I agree. I think that you know, we what he's done is significantly worse because of the children, but I don't think that excuses Liz Gilbert for the chaos that she created in in her marriage. And I don't think the solution to one problem is another problem. That would be like saying, Well, black people were slaves for hundreds and hundreds of years, therefore now white people should be slaves. That is a a ridiculous reaction and I'm sorry, I don't want to say ridiculous because I want have this actual conversation with you. But that occurs to me as that doesn't make any sense, right? Like that we can't we can't correct a wrong with another wrong. That's not how we get to something right. So just because men have been behaving badly, the enlightenment and freedom of women doesn't mean now bad behavior is is going to be allowed for women to do. and and I think that And I think part of the problem is is we're why are we constantly there's even a scene in Eat Pre Love. So I feel like we've done a good j good job summing up the film. I hope so, despite my my personal feelings about it kind of interfering in my summary. But one of the things that they say in Eat Pre Love, there's a scene where she's it's their last dinner in Italy. And when she's in Italy, she's on her part of the journey where she's having this like episode of, you know, the it's the beginning of her self-discovery where she's kind of shedding all the the stereotypes that women have to go through in the real world. And I just want to say the scene of Julia Roberts sitting with some other skinny Danish white blonde woman and them talking about how fat they are now and that they have muffin tops that they've put on 10 pounds and Julia Roberts saying, who cares? It's okay if we're fat. It's like, I really think you should have recast to this film. If you want to try and hold up freaking Julia Roberts as the one that's like saying Giselle is going to tell me she's had a bad hair day. I don't want to hear it from Giselle and I don't want to hear from Julia Roberts about how freaking fat she is. That's I'm sorry for sorry for my French, but that's bullshit.
Mariana: Ha ha ha
Nicole: She she has no idea what fat is. You wanna talk about fat? Have six children, friend, and then we can talk about being fat. So that was that was pretty irritating. That was a big eye roll for me. but there's a scene
Mariana: Another unfair standard from Hollywood. That that is what
Nicole: Okay.
Mariana: they say. Like that's
Nicole: think I'm a size two. no.
Mariana: But it's okay, you can be a size two if it's your self-discovery year.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Only if you it's your self-discoverier. But but they have this this Thanksgiving dinner when they're in in Italy and and it's her last night and they're with one of her friends' mother. And the mother asks, you know, well, is is she a lesbian? Like why is she doing this weird year without a man? Like who is this weird woman, this weird American woman? And her friends defend her and say, Look, if a man did a year of self-discovery, we would all praise him to the skies. It's actually really hard and strong for a woman to do that. And that is not true. I don't know anyone who would say, if if if your husband or my husband or anyone, even my friends who's who don't have children, let's take children out of the equation completely, if their husband, the man they made vows to, suddenly decided, I'm unhappy. I'm gonna take all my money and I'm gonna go travel Europe and find myself for a year. I even if he's a single young man, I think you're kind of an idiot. Like a year? That just feels like so self-indulgent. So the idea that we're supposed to think she's really strong because she's destroyed her marriage and because she's she's going off and doing this year of discovery in Italy and Bali and India. It's like that's not a year of self-discovery. That's just an a year of having a good time. Like if I go and spend six months in at the OHI Valley Inn, that is not six months of self-discovery. That's just me. Lounging, getting facials and massages all the time. So calm down.
Mariana: But that aside, did it sound attractive to you? Like if somebody offered you, like let's say you weren't married and if you were not married and you did not have six kids, if somebody offered you a year that they were like, Okay, we're gonna sponsor you, Nicole, like all expenses paid, we'll send you four months to Italy, four months to Bali, four months to Indonesia. Would you be interested in that?
Nicole: course if somebody else was gonna pay for me and I get to stay at these beautiful places and I get to look like Julia Roberts, yeah, I would absolutely do that. And then wow, all these beautiful people want to hang out with me because I freaking look
Mariana: Ha ha
Nicole: like Julia Roberts. That's so weird.
Mariana: So we both agree that it's an attractive idea. Like it does sound interesting, attractive. like we can see why somebody would want to do that.
Nicole: Absolutely. The thing I balk at is the story that they're trying to tell me, which is that this is a sign of her strength, that it took strength for her to take a year off and do basically a very elaborate year-long vacation. And it took strength for her to destroy her marriage. And I know she didn't have children, but I I f I'm I'm tired of Hollywood telling me putting these these movies out where there's so much heartbreak about destroying a marriage and then saying to each other, Well, I really did love you. If you really loved that person, love is not just as long as you have good feelings in your heart. Love is an act of the will that you make sacrifices for that person and you stick around despite the fact that you maybe don't feel all warm and fuzzy about that person anymore. He was a good man. He had a hard time with his job and he kept flaking, but he even said, Have a conversation with me about it. Don't just break up the marriage.
Mariana: I totally agree with you, Nicole. I think that the standards have really lowered for what it takes to end a marriage. And I think it's really to the detriment of society. I think that marriage is the nucleus of society. And as a society as a whole, if we have marriages that are breaking down, society will break down. And I think it's unfair to say like we need to feel, I don't know, excited and so in love in order to keep the marriage alive. And on the other hand, something I wanted to really bring up about how we ended last week's conversation was that we were talking about if we should be more careful financially when we're going to get into a marriage because 50% of marriages end in divorce. And you mentioned, well, actually 50% of marriages end in divorce, but if you go down and you see the statistics for people that are actually practicing NFP, I think you said it was something like 2%. And super low.
Nicole: Something like that, yeah.
Mariana: And so the what I wanted to bring up both in to finish our conversation from last week and this week is how would you define success in marriage? So first I was like, well, we know if it ends, it wasn't successful. So that's an easy way to define lack of success if you end up in divorce. But how about the opposite? Like, how do you define success? Just because 98% of marriages that practice NFP remain married, from my perspective, that doesn't mean that they have a successful marriage. So
Nicole: Mm-hmm.
Mariana: I think what would be more valuable is if we could find a way to measure what is a successful successful marriage and in light of the definition of that we agree o of love, that is to will the good of another, and that marriage requires a commitment, whether the feelings are there or not, that still does not mean that we cannot find a way to define success within marriage.
Nicole: Mm-hmm. I think I think that's a really good question. And I think that it could be something that if people understood what a successful marriage really was, then maybe it would slow people down from actually entering entering into a marriage. And it could also be something that would be the ideal that once they've made that commitment would have hopefully help them to stay in that marriage. So a couple of things. First of all, The thing that I kept thinking about with this movie and with her year long pity party that just drove me crazy. And I wanna also just point out I'm sorry, I'm I know I'm I'm digressing a little bit here because I really do want to answer your question. But I did a little research on her afterwards because at the end of the movie, I'm gonna just spoil it if for those of you who haven't seen it. The end of the movie is she's finally learned to love again and she falls in love with what's that guy that Spanish actor who's made married to Penelope Cruz, like, wow, that took so much for you to learn to love him. Javier Bartem. Wow, you've grown. You're so good. That must have been a stretch. It's like if I came to you and said like I've learned to love George Clooney circa two thousand and ten. Wow. Amazing. Amazing. I'm so holy now. mature. But so
Mariana: You've grown so much in this year!
Nicole: the idea of the film that she has learned to love again and that like she's learned to forgive herself and love another person. Well, that relationship also fell apart a few years later and then she took up with another she took up with a woman and got married to that woman who was dying and then you know, so obviously that marriage also fell apart. And and I don't know if she married these people or just was deeply in love and learned to maybe stop getting married to people. but so I do want to talk about I wanna talk about like what does What does it really I I think the two questions have are are linked that what is successful marriage? I think part of what is a successful marriage is two people who are willing to be selfless. Because if if love is an act of the will, then being in a successful marriage is being willing to make those sacrifices to be a person who is always seeing their good as dependent on on the love that you have for each other and being willing to be sacrificial for each other. and I think also I think part of it has to be also not looking for the other person to really make you happy. And I think that that's part of the problem in this movie, that she says, you know, you he's so so heartbroken that she's leaving him and he doesn't want her to leave him. And she says to him That, you know, I I just I can't want all the things that you want. I can't be all the things that you need me to be. And he says, I I never asked you to be all of those things. And I think that that part of a successful marriage means you don't look to the other person to be your everything. We learn to we learn how to be really loving people by being with the person that we have taken vows with. And that means not always thinking about our hurt and our good and our needs and desires, but learning to become a person worthy of love through that marriage. So I feel like that's I don't know if that's a really straight answer, but that's that's my that's my first thought.
Mariana: And I think that that's really wise in in why society keeps ending marriages, because their definition of a successful marriage is wrong. So if your definition of a successful marriage is that other person has to fulfill all my wants, wishes, dreams, that other person has to complete me, then you will always fail. It literally does not matter who you marry because no human can fulfill you. No human can, you know. Do what really the only person that can do that is God. And so I think that both Belle Burden's husband and Elizabeth Gilbert, they both are seeking something that cannot be found. And the same thing happened with Bell Burden's husband, I think his name was James. He was cheating on her with this woman, and then shortly after that relationship ended as well. So it's not like he's
Nicole: Wow.
Mariana: now with that woman and he's so happy. I feel like unless you can find happiness outside of a human, like if you're not religious, it still has to be outside of a human, outside of yourself, outside of the relationship. You cannot find happiness by giving that the keys to your happiness to another human. And
Nicole: Mm-hmm.
Mariana: so I think that if 2% or 98% of marriages that actually practice NFP remain married, hopefully it's because of that. Because their definition of a successful marriage is to sacrifice for one another.
Nicole: Mm-hmm. And you know what I honestly, at least the way she portrays herself in the book Strangers, I think that Belle Burden was or sounds to me like someone who just by her nature, she loved being a wife and mother. She loved caretaking for her family. And I don't know if she would say that now, but at least the way she portrays herself in the book, she seemed like she saw her life as really complete. And I mean on the outside too. It it sounded really ideal. They live in Manhattan
Mariana: Ha ha ha.
Nicole: and, you know, the upper west upper east side. And then they have a home like in on the Cape or I don't know, Martha's Vineyard or wherever rich white people like to vacation with they are in New York.
Mariana: Yeah.
Nicole: You know, they had a very ideal life, but she was truly happy loving and caring for her husband and her children. And so she was sort of that rare person who I think really took joy and pleasure in in caring for her family. And I think that, you know, when we when we talk to just because you have the faith doesn't mean you are naturally going to have that proper disposition. I think a lot of times, you know, we we're talking about very secular women in these in this book and in this movie, but I think sometimes as Catholics, the mistake that we make is we have this very clear ideal. I need to be selfless. I need to be Christ like. I need to be giving of myself all the time. And we're not doing any of those things out of love. Right. The way we show up instead is we show up this is what freaking love looks like and I'm gonna frickin' make you guys dinner again and you guys suck. I am second carry for dinner
Mariana: You see how loving I am?
Nicole: for you guys. So I'm gonna stay up till two AM and binge watch Killmore Girls. Not that anyone here has ever done that. But
Mariana: Never, never. Gilmar, who?
Nicole: We've never watched that, so but but we're we're not we're not learning we're not really learning to be loving. We're we're we're going through the motions and so it's funny because I think on the on the secular side they're not g they're really trying to practice love, but they are doing all the wrong things. And on I think on the Christian side we have a tendency to do what occurs or what looks like all the right things, but without actually any sense of real love. Sometimes. I think
Mariana: Which
Nicole: that's the default, sometimes.
Mariana: Yes, absolutely. And actually, now that you say that, I think it even makes Elizabeth Gilbert's journey make even more sense. Because if you don't have God and you have to try to find fulfillment and love outside of yourself, where would you find it? Like I do think it makes sense to say, Okay, if there's no God and I don't I'm not gonna do it with my husband and giving myself to my family, then her idea of just saying, like, okay, well let's just eat our way through Italy Pray our way through India and love our way through Bali, I think it makes sense. Like I I think those are it's the foundation of what we really do want to look for. We do wanna feed our family, pray to our Lord and and love. It's just that she was looking for it in the wrong places, perhaps.
Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah, the funny thing is that that occurred to me reading the book and then watching this movie is that Belle Burden is living a is has is living in a secular society, but according to traditional Christian values. And Liz Gilbert is living, is trying to live a Christian or a godlike relationship, but in a very secular way, right? Like she's trying to enter into this deeply spiritual world. But in a very self centered mentality and and and way of doing it. Does that make sense?
Mariana: Yeah, and it's interesting because when you say that, i I agree with you that Belle was the one that sounded happier and fulfilled. Right?
Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mariana: Yeah, I think that was really interesting. And
Nicole: And the funny thing is that Eat Pre Love, I think, was really transformative to a lot of women. I think it it was on the New York Times bestseller list for like 20 weeks or something like that. It the movie sold over 200 million made over 200 million dollars. Like it it did very well. but so there I there's it's it's resonating with women in in a way, but I I I I don't know that it's actually a a healthy way. I think it's I think it's kind of this escapist mentality. And I I I don't know if it's not. that different from if maybe the Mommy Noir films that we were talking about with Jenny are sort of the culmination of of the eat pray love mentality, right? If if you spend your time doing the things like being in a marriage where now things are hard or being a mother with a lot of kids, the idea of escaping that can sound really pleasant if you don't start to see you have to stop doing this with yourself in mind. And you have to start doing this out of love for the other, right? And really out of love for the other. Like take care of yourself. Like I'm not saying stay up all night and eat over the counter or some eat over the k kitchen sink or something like that. you have to take care of yourself and you have to learn to really love for someone else's sake, not for your own. And if we stick in that mentality of loving being what makes us feel good, then that means, you know, we end up we end up hating the people around us.
Mariana: Paradoxically, right? Paradoxically, the more we try to love ourselves, the less happy we are. And the more we try to love others and give of ourselves, the happier we end up being. about to say cut again to go back to the conversation, but I've totally lost my train of thought. What were we saying?
Nicole: We were talking about you said that
Mariana: So, Nicole, what do you think if you had a friend, if you were friends with Liz Gilbert and you were trying to share with her what we were just saying about how you will find happiness and fulfillment by staying married to your husband, by serving your family, by thinking of others, instead of going on this amazing trip to Italy, to Bali, to India? Like if you were her best friend. How would you share with her what you were saying? And you know she's not Catholic, she's not religious at all.
Nicole: Yeah. So I think I would tell her, you know, I would sit her down and I'd say, What you really need is for me to go with you. I'm loving my friend. I gotta go.
Mariana: And can I come too?
Nicole: All our friends are coming. It's gonna be a year. That'd be amazing. no, just kidding, Ray. I would never do that. no,
Mariana: Ha ha ha.
Nicole: I think I I I would tell her, I I would encourage her to stay in her marriage and give it another shot and to I and to sp say what would it look like if you spent if you instead of spending a year trying to find yourself, what if instead you spent a year just trying to really make your husband happy? You know, what if you spent a year not rolling your eyes when he talks about his next venture or shutting him out of of large parts of your life or, you know, just you know, not not really having conversations with him, whatever it is that's making you unhappy? What if you actually spent a year trying to be vulnerable with him and because he seemed like a very loving and patient person, what if you spent a year really trying to support him and if he is trying these new ventures, just say, Okay, I love you, I trust you. you know, she's making enough money with her career, they can pay for this beautiful home in Manhattan. They're not financially struggling. If he's taking time to kind of figure out who he is, what if she just gives him a year and she's really supportive of him? I wonder they don't show it in the movie, but it was clearly her big complaint when they're with the divorce lawyer, her big her she's yelling at him because he he can't get focused on anything. And so even if she thinks she has not been letting him know that and she thinks this is the big reveal in front of the divorce attorney, I'm sure he already knew that. Right. If
Mariana: Mm.
Nicole: you're living with someone and they're secretly rolling their eyes at everything you're doing, they see it. There's especially after eight years of being married and however long they were together before that, you know each other so intimately and so powerfully. Unless she's a narcissist and has just been flat out lying to him like a psychopath all these years. He knows that she's she's frustrated with him. And so what if she stops focusing on that? Sorry, go ahead.
Mariana: And you know, as yes, and as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about this book that recently both of us read called the was it called the Empowered Wife?
Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mariana: So I don't you think that
Nicole: We should do an episode on that too.
Mariana: Don't you think that the Empowered Wife, like I think that's exactly what the book is kind of talking about. okay,
Nicole: Yeah.
Mariana: All right. So yeah, Nicole, do you want to share with our audience, who maybe haven't read The Empowered Wife, what you think the takeaway is that could apply to Liz Gilbert?
Nicole: Well, without going too much into the book, I think that one of the things that one of the skills that she talks about roughly is n staying off of his paper. That's what I'm thinking of. So you stay on your paper, you don't go on his paper. So what he's doing for a living, the fact that he's having to restart his career all the time, the fact that he's kind of lost, what if you just let him deal with that? What if you let him just kind of go through that process? And figure that out for himself and just support him and love him without trying to correct him or roll your eyes at him or make those little passive aggressive comments that we as women unfortunately sometimes will make, right? Like, another career. Wow, that's great. You know, things like that. Where we're we're
Mariana: Ha ha ha.
Nicole: very clearly letting our our loved one know what we're thinking. What if you instead just let him take full ownership over that? And what would that look like? I think in their in their situation, what would that have looked like? But I think also if she had just stopped focusing on her own unhappiness and had just, you know, like she had to go to Italy to figure out that she needs to slow down and eat and and and drink good wine and gain a little weight, like you could have done you could have done that in New York. You've got a lot of money. You have so
Mariana: Ha ha
Nicole: much money you could take a year to do absolutely nothing. You could have done that in your marriage. And he even says that to her. He says, Why couldn't you have done this path of self discovery in our marriage? And I think that's a fair question for him to ask. So I I go ahead, go ahead. Sorry.
Mariana: And it also reminds me of this other book I was reading, which was also a an autobiography of this woman that she was saying how she ended her marriage because she was so unhappy with her husband. And then she started a second relationship. And once she started the second relationship, she noticed how she would make the effort to laugh at his jokes, to look pretty for him, to go out on dates, and kind of like what you said, to stay on her paper and not roll her eyes. Like she just did that naturally because it was a new relationship and they just started dating. And one of the things she said in the book was, I wonder what would have happened if I would have behaved like this within my marriage. And so she said, like I clearly had the capacity to behave like this because I'm doing it right now in this brand new relationship. But I just was not willing to do it in the current relationship that I was at.
Nicole: Mm-hmm.
Mariana: And she was mentioning this right when she was starting to feel that it was harder to do it in the current relationship, in her new relationship. And she's like, no, I've started doing it. I've stopped laughing. I've started rolling my eyes. I've stopped being kind and patient and loving. And she's like, if I started a new relationship at the beginning, the first six months or nine months, where the chemicals are going crazy in your brain, there's this explosion of chemicals in your brain, and the hormones are just really helping you. To be kind and loving. And I think the act of maturity is to be able to behave like that even when the chemicals and the hormones are not exploding in your brain. You will come down from that high and the feelings will go down and you will have to use the will to say,
Nicole: Mm-hmm.
Mariana: like, I will laugh at your jokes, I will pay attention to your conversation, I I will be there for you. And I wonder if Liz, like you said, like you mentioned at the beginning, her second relationship where she ends the book so in love, it ends slow slow shortly after that. And I think it's because of that, because one of the bigger lessons of the book. for both for Belle Burden's husband and for Liz Gilbert's Liz Gilbert herself, is the feelings will die. The
Nicole: Mm.
Mariana: only thing that is left is the will.
Nicole: Right. Right. Right. I think that's exactly right. Not to beat up on my own, not to beat up on other women, right? But I think that there's something the reason why we were made to be the weaker sex, the reason why women for generations have been the ones who were caretakers of the home and stayed home and raised the children why that work was so taxing and so hard. It also meant they were the ones who were the protectors of the family. They were the ones like husbands protect the family insofar as they provide, and if there's like ever a a bull or a bear or a lion who comes traipsing through your village, he's gonna kill it, right?
Mariana: Ha ha ha.
Nicole: But 99% of the time, it were women, it was women who were holding down the fort. And it was women who were upholding those standards. And I think and who saw who were living every day that that reminder that love is an act of the will. It's making those decisions every day because there are there are other people in in in for generations there were other people who were dependent on that. And now I think that we have gotten further and further from that sense of others are dependent on us and that women can be so independent and men are so independent. There's less of a sense of an understanding that the marriage is still something that is sacred. It's still something that's supposed to be held together and we still have an obligation to not just stay in this because it feels good. We have an obligation to stay in it because we took vows and we said that we would. And otherwise, just freaking stop getting married. Just like promise to be each other's boyfriend and girlfriend for a super long time. Do that instead. Stop saying I'm gonna be there till death do us park. Don't make promises you have no intention of keeping. Just don't get married. Just do that, you know? Whatever. Whatever that looks like.
Mariana: Ha ha ha
Nicole: Pinky rings, I don't know, matching necklaces, tattoos. Get a freaking matching tattoo. That's gonna be permanent, unfortunately. But
Mariana: Ha ha.
Nicole: But that would be better than lying, than going up and lying, which is I think where we are today.
Mariana: Yeah, and I also think that it's important to realize that your marriage, you staying married, affects the people around you and it's not j a decision just about you and your children. So Giuliani, when he was trying to clean up New York City, he started just like boarding like fixing the broken windows and cleaning up the trash. And people are like, well, that's not gonna help anything. But the more you clean up the city, the more others clean up the city. And the more you let the city get dirty, the more others will get the city dirty. And the same thing happens, I think, with other aspects of society. And for example, if you and I get a divorce, then other people will see the divorce, and divorce becomes more prominent, more accepted, more easy, and marriage becomes less sacred and less valuable. So I think that there's also it's it's also important for Liz. To realize like, I'm just gonna leave my marriage is not I'm just gonna leave my marriage. It's I'm going to break down the nucleus of society.
Nicole: Right. Right. Yeah, I think that's right. So just remember that people, you have a moral obligation. And also Mariana and I are not getting divorced 'cause we're not married. But otherwise, yes. I agree
Mariana: Ha ha.
Nicole: with all of that. okay, well I we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up now. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we obviously did. So this is Nicole.
Mariana: And this is Mariana and don't forget to look again.
Nicole: Bye.
Nicole: Hi.
Mariana: And today we're going to be finishing our conversation that we were started last week about strangers, a book by Belle Burden, where she talks about the ending of her marriage, how her husband lets her know one random day that. He has been having an affair and he's done with the marriage and he's leaving her and he's not interested in seeing the children ever again. And the economical fallout that that has because Belle Burden had signed a prenup the day or a week shortly before getting married. And because of that, she ends up losing almost everything when they get a divorce. So last week we talked about that and what we thought. I was telling Nicole that I think that it is a like. Cautionary tale for women everywhere that this can happen to you in a marriage, and and you can think you know who you married, you can trust him, but really we at the end of the day, we could all be married to strangers who could steal, or not steal, but position themselves in a way to take all the money and have an affair when we when we don't even know. Belle thought her husband was loving and kind. So that was a really interesting conversation. And if you haven't listened to it, I'd like to encourage you to go back. Last week and listen to that episode. And this week we wanna compare and contrast strangers with Eat Pray Love, a novel by Liz Gilbert. So why don't we start with just a little bit about what Eat Pray Love is about and what is happening in Liz Gilbert's life?
Nicole: Okay, so I I think one of the things that we're doing also is we're well I'm mostly focusing about Eat Pre Love the movie. for multiple reasons, but anyways. But that is a a movie and a book about a w an author named Liz Gilbert who has seemingly everything. She's got a loving, handsome husband, she's got a very sex successful career, she's got this great home in New York, you know, on on paper, everything looks great. Which is very similar to Belle Burden's story, right? She she had everything also. The difference is is that Belle Burden h had the rug pulled out from under her by her husband just saying, I'm leaving you and taking off and then taking up with another woman. And in Eat Pray Love, in her search for her true self or her, you know, quest for self discovery, she abandons the husband, the loving husband, and she goes off, And hooks up with a man who's, I think, 14 years younger than than she is, and then does a after that rebound relationship goes off on a year of of self-discovery. So I I think it's an interesting th film to compare with strangers because I think this is again an example where we see women behaving badly, but it's okay because when a man does these behaviors, we're in this weird situation, I think, right now where If a man does something, he's a horrible person. He's an ass. Like I think James, the the actual husband of Bell, has been, you know, I don't know if he was fired, but he's been ostracized by a lot of his society. Like everybody knows who he is now. It's caused all kind of chaos in his life. And I don't know. I I don't have a huge problem with that. But what I do have a problem with is then saying in Ypre Love, like, the story of Ypre Love is basically she's really strong for going off on this. year discovery of self and that and that she just the the pain in her heart is because she needs to forgive herself for having caused so much chaos, but she did it was really strong for her to do it and she's such a strong person and it just it's all like I want so much to be able to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it really it drives me kinda nuts. And I think it's it's us as society saying that the I d it feels to me like it what we're saying is the ideal for women. is to do the shitty behavior that we've seen men do for years. And that's what makes us strong. And that seems ridiculous to me.
Mariana: And I think you're right that it's really tricky to have this double standard for men and women. And at the same time, because we've had a double standard for thousands of years, we have judged women much harsher than we have men on things like this. That I feel like as a society, we start to overcompensate by being more and more lenient with the women and much harsher with the men because we're trying to fix what for generations have felt the other way, right? Like I feel like for many generations. Men we're seeing like their like a Don Juan we would call in Mexico, like a suave guy is the guy that can sleep around and gets all the women, kind of like James Bond in America. And he's you know, he's the guy that has all the gadgets, everybody thinks he's so handsome, and that's what's cool. But the woman, the woman that looked cool for thousands of years, I think, was the one that was quiet and sexy at home, but very modest outside of the house. And so I think that what's happening is we're trying to fix that. We're trying to compensate. And so that's why we get society give Liz Gilbert such an easier time than they give Belle's husband. And I also want to mention that something that for me makes a very big difference is that Liz had no kids when she left her husband. So she was leaving her marriage, but she was not leaving her children. Whereas James, Belle's husband. was leaving his kids. And Liz in the book, and I believe in the movie as well, is portrayed as she was not cheating on him. She was just profoundly unhappy in her marriage, but she never cheated on him. She left, whereas James did cheat on her. So I could see how we would treat him much different because he was a father and he was cheating than her, who was married and very unhappy.
Nicole: yes, I agree. I think that you know, we what he's done is significantly worse because of the children, but I don't think that excuses Liz Gilbert for the chaos that she created in in her marriage. And I don't think the solution to one problem is another problem. That would be like saying, Well, black people were slaves for hundreds and hundreds of years, therefore now white people should be slaves. That is a a ridiculous reaction and I'm sorry, I don't want to say ridiculous because I want have this actual conversation with you. But that occurs to me as that doesn't make any sense, right? Like that we can't we can't correct a wrong with another wrong. That's not how we get to something right. So just because men have been behaving badly, the enlightenment and freedom of women doesn't mean now bad behavior is is going to be allowed for women to do. and and I think that And I think part of the problem is is we're why are we constantly there's even a scene in Eat Pre Love. So I feel like we've done a good j good job summing up the film. I hope so, despite my my personal feelings about it kind of interfering in my summary. But one of the things that they say in Eat Pre Love, there's a scene where she's it's their last dinner in Italy. And when she's in Italy, she's on her part of the journey where she's having this like episode of, you know, the it's the beginning of her self-discovery where she's kind of shedding all the the stereotypes that women have to go through in the real world. And I just want to say the scene of Julia Roberts sitting with some other skinny Danish white blonde woman and them talking about how fat they are now and that they have muffin tops that they've put on 10 pounds and Julia Roberts saying, who cares? It's okay if we're fat. It's like, I really think you should have recast to this film. If you want to try and hold up freaking Julia Roberts as the one that's like saying Giselle is going to tell me she's had a bad hair day. I don't want to hear it from Giselle and I don't want to hear from Julia Roberts about how freaking fat she is. That's I'm sorry for sorry for my French, but that's bullshit.
Mariana: Ha ha ha
Nicole: She she has no idea what fat is. You wanna talk about fat? Have six children, friend, and then we can talk about being fat. So that was that was pretty irritating. That was a big eye roll for me. but there's a scene
Mariana: Another unfair standard from Hollywood. That that is what
Nicole: Okay.
Mariana: they say. Like that's
Nicole: think I'm a size two. no.
Mariana: But it's okay, you can be a size two if it's your self-discovery year.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Only if you it's your self-discoverier. But but they have this this Thanksgiving dinner when they're in in Italy and and it's her last night and they're with one of her friends' mother. And the mother asks, you know, well, is is she a lesbian? Like why is she doing this weird year without a man? Like who is this weird woman, this weird American woman? And her friends defend her and say, Look, if a man did a year of self-discovery, we would all praise him to the skies. It's actually really hard and strong for a woman to do that. And that is not true. I don't know anyone who would say, if if if your husband or my husband or anyone, even my friends who's who don't have children, let's take children out of the equation completely, if their husband, the man they made vows to, suddenly decided, I'm unhappy. I'm gonna take all my money and I'm gonna go travel Europe and find myself for a year. I even if he's a single young man, I think you're kind of an idiot. Like a year? That just feels like so self-indulgent. So the idea that we're supposed to think she's really strong because she's destroyed her marriage and because she's she's going off and doing this year of discovery in Italy and Bali and India. It's like that's not a year of self-discovery. That's just an a year of having a good time. Like if I go and spend six months in at the OHI Valley Inn, that is not six months of self-discovery. That's just me. Lounging, getting facials and massages all the time. So calm down.
Mariana: But that aside, did it sound attractive to you? Like if somebody offered you, like let's say you weren't married and if you were not married and you did not have six kids, if somebody offered you a year that they were like, Okay, we're gonna sponsor you, Nicole, like all expenses paid, we'll send you four months to Italy, four months to Bali, four months to Indonesia. Would you be interested in that?
Nicole: course if somebody else was gonna pay for me and I get to stay at these beautiful places and I get to look like Julia Roberts, yeah, I would absolutely do that. And then wow, all these beautiful people want to hang out with me because I freaking look
Mariana: Ha ha
Nicole: like Julia Roberts. That's so weird.
Mariana: So we both agree that it's an attractive idea. Like it does sound interesting, attractive. like we can see why somebody would want to do that.
Nicole: Absolutely. The thing I balk at is the story that they're trying to tell me, which is that this is a sign of her strength, that it took strength for her to take a year off and do basically a very elaborate year-long vacation. And it took strength for her to destroy her marriage. And I know she didn't have children, but I I f I'm I'm tired of Hollywood telling me putting these these movies out where there's so much heartbreak about destroying a marriage and then saying to each other, Well, I really did love you. If you really loved that person, love is not just as long as you have good feelings in your heart. Love is an act of the will that you make sacrifices for that person and you stick around despite the fact that you maybe don't feel all warm and fuzzy about that person anymore. He was a good man. He had a hard time with his job and he kept flaking, but he even said, Have a conversation with me about it. Don't just break up the marriage.
Mariana: I totally agree with you, Nicole. I think that the standards have really lowered for what it takes to end a marriage. And I think it's really to the detriment of society. I think that marriage is the nucleus of society. And as a society as a whole, if we have marriages that are breaking down, society will break down. And I think it's unfair to say like we need to feel, I don't know, excited and so in love in order to keep the marriage alive. And on the other hand, something I wanted to really bring up about how we ended last week's conversation was that we were talking about if we should be more careful financially when we're going to get into a marriage because 50% of marriages end in divorce. And you mentioned, well, actually 50% of marriages end in divorce, but if you go down and you see the statistics for people that are actually practicing NFP, I think you said it was something like 2%. And super low.
Nicole: Something like that, yeah.
Mariana: And so the what I wanted to bring up both in to finish our conversation from last week and this week is how would you define success in marriage? So first I was like, well, we know if it ends, it wasn't successful. So that's an easy way to define lack of success if you end up in divorce. But how about the opposite? Like, how do you define success? Just because 98% of marriages that practice NFP remain married, from my perspective, that doesn't mean that they have a successful marriage. So
Nicole: Mm-hmm.
Mariana: I think what would be more valuable is if we could find a way to measure what is a successful successful marriage and in light of the definition of that we agree o of love, that is to will the good of another, and that marriage requires a commitment, whether the feelings are there or not, that still does not mean that we cannot find a way to define success within marriage.
Nicole: Mm-hmm. I think I think that's a really good question. And I think that it could be something that if people understood what a successful marriage really was, then maybe it would slow people down from actually entering entering into a marriage. And it could also be something that would be the ideal that once they've made that commitment would have hopefully help them to stay in that marriage. So a couple of things. First of all, The thing that I kept thinking about with this movie and with her year long pity party that just drove me crazy. And I wanna also just point out I'm sorry, I'm I know I'm I'm digressing a little bit here because I really do want to answer your question. But I did a little research on her afterwards because at the end of the movie, I'm gonna just spoil it if for those of you who haven't seen it. The end of the movie is she's finally learned to love again and she falls in love with what's that guy that Spanish actor who's made married to Penelope Cruz, like, wow, that took so much for you to learn to love him. Javier Bartem. Wow, you've grown. You're so good. That must have been a stretch. It's like if I came to you and said like I've learned to love George Clooney circa two thousand and ten. Wow. Amazing. Amazing. I'm so holy now. mature. But so
Mariana: You've grown so much in this year!
Nicole: the idea of the film that she has learned to love again and that like she's learned to forgive herself and love another person. Well, that relationship also fell apart a few years later and then she took up with another she took up with a woman and got married to that woman who was dying and then you know, so obviously that marriage also fell apart. And and I don't know if she married these people or just was deeply in love and learned to maybe stop getting married to people. but so I do want to talk about I wanna talk about like what does What does it really I I think the two questions have are are linked that what is successful marriage? I think part of what is a successful marriage is two people who are willing to be selfless. Because if if love is an act of the will, then being in a successful marriage is being willing to make those sacrifices to be a person who is always seeing their good as dependent on on the love that you have for each other and being willing to be sacrificial for each other. and I think also I think part of it has to be also not looking for the other person to really make you happy. And I think that that's part of the problem in this movie, that she says, you know, you he's so so heartbroken that she's leaving him and he doesn't want her to leave him. And she says to him That, you know, I I just I can't want all the things that you want. I can't be all the things that you need me to be. And he says, I I never asked you to be all of those things. And I think that that part of a successful marriage means you don't look to the other person to be your everything. We learn to we learn how to be really loving people by being with the person that we have taken vows with. And that means not always thinking about our hurt and our good and our needs and desires, but learning to become a person worthy of love through that marriage. So I feel like that's I don't know if that's a really straight answer, but that's that's my that's my first thought.
Mariana: And I think that that's really wise in in why society keeps ending marriages, because their definition of a successful marriage is wrong. So if your definition of a successful marriage is that other person has to fulfill all my wants, wishes, dreams, that other person has to complete me, then you will always fail. It literally does not matter who you marry because no human can fulfill you. No human can, you know. Do what really the only person that can do that is God. And so I think that both Belle Burden's husband and Elizabeth Gilbert, they both are seeking something that cannot be found. And the same thing happened with Bell Burden's husband, I think his name was James. He was cheating on her with this woman, and then shortly after that relationship ended as well. So it's not like he's
Nicole: Wow.
Mariana: now with that woman and he's so happy. I feel like unless you can find happiness outside of a human, like if you're not religious, it still has to be outside of a human, outside of yourself, outside of the relationship. You cannot find happiness by giving that the keys to your happiness to another human. And
Nicole: Mm-hmm.
Mariana: so I think that if 2% or 98% of marriages that actually practice NFP remain married, hopefully it's because of that. Because their definition of a successful marriage is to sacrifice for one another.
Nicole: Mm-hmm. And you know what I honestly, at least the way she portrays herself in the book Strangers, I think that Belle Burden was or sounds to me like someone who just by her nature, she loved being a wife and mother. She loved caretaking for her family. And I don't know if she would say that now, but at least the way she portrays herself in the book, she seemed like she saw her life as really complete. And I mean on the outside too. It it sounded really ideal. They live in Manhattan
Mariana: Ha ha ha.
Nicole: and, you know, the upper west upper east side. And then they have a home like in on the Cape or I don't know, Martha's Vineyard or wherever rich white people like to vacation with they are in New York.
Mariana: Yeah.
Nicole: You know, they had a very ideal life, but she was truly happy loving and caring for her husband and her children. And so she was sort of that rare person who I think really took joy and pleasure in in caring for her family. And I think that, you know, when we when we talk to just because you have the faith doesn't mean you are naturally going to have that proper disposition. I think a lot of times, you know, we we're talking about very secular women in these in this book and in this movie, but I think sometimes as Catholics, the mistake that we make is we have this very clear ideal. I need to be selfless. I need to be Christ like. I need to be giving of myself all the time. And we're not doing any of those things out of love. Right. The way we show up instead is we show up this is what freaking love looks like and I'm gonna frickin' make you guys dinner again and you guys suck. I am second carry for dinner
Mariana: You see how loving I am?
Nicole: for you guys. So I'm gonna stay up till two AM and binge watch Killmore Girls. Not that anyone here has ever done that. But
Mariana: Never, never. Gilmar, who?
Nicole: We've never watched that, so but but we're we're not we're not learning we're not really learning to be loving. We're we're we're going through the motions and so it's funny because I think on the on the secular side they're not g they're really trying to practice love, but they are doing all the wrong things. And on I think on the Christian side we have a tendency to do what occurs or what looks like all the right things, but without actually any sense of real love. Sometimes. I think
Mariana: Which
Nicole: that's the default, sometimes.
Mariana: Yes, absolutely. And actually, now that you say that, I think it even makes Elizabeth Gilbert's journey make even more sense. Because if you don't have God and you have to try to find fulfillment and love outside of yourself, where would you find it? Like I do think it makes sense to say, Okay, if there's no God and I don't I'm not gonna do it with my husband and giving myself to my family, then her idea of just saying, like, okay, well let's just eat our way through Italy Pray our way through India and love our way through Bali, I think it makes sense. Like I I think those are it's the foundation of what we really do want to look for. We do wanna feed our family, pray to our Lord and and love. It's just that she was looking for it in the wrong places, perhaps.
Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah, the funny thing is that that occurred to me reading the book and then watching this movie is that Belle Burden is living a is has is living in a secular society, but according to traditional Christian values. And Liz Gilbert is living, is trying to live a Christian or a godlike relationship, but in a very secular way, right? Like she's trying to enter into this deeply spiritual world. But in a very self centered mentality and and and way of doing it. Does that make sense?
Mariana: Yeah, and it's interesting because when you say that, i I agree with you that Belle was the one that sounded happier and fulfilled. Right?
Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mariana: Yeah, I think that was really interesting. And
Nicole: And the funny thing is that Eat Pre Love, I think, was really transformative to a lot of women. I think it it was on the New York Times bestseller list for like 20 weeks or something like that. It the movie sold over 200 million made over 200 million dollars. Like it it did very well. but so there I there's it's it's resonating with women in in a way, but I I I I don't know that it's actually a a healthy way. I think it's I think it's kind of this escapist mentality. And I I I don't know if it's not. that different from if maybe the Mommy Noir films that we were talking about with Jenny are sort of the culmination of of the eat pray love mentality, right? If if you spend your time doing the things like being in a marriage where now things are hard or being a mother with a lot of kids, the idea of escaping that can sound really pleasant if you don't start to see you have to stop doing this with yourself in mind. And you have to start doing this out of love for the other, right? And really out of love for the other. Like take care of yourself. Like I'm not saying stay up all night and eat over the counter or some eat over the k kitchen sink or something like that. you have to take care of yourself and you have to learn to really love for someone else's sake, not for your own. And if we stick in that mentality of loving being what makes us feel good, then that means, you know, we end up we end up hating the people around us.
Mariana: Paradoxically, right? Paradoxically, the more we try to love ourselves, the less happy we are. And the more we try to love others and give of ourselves, the happier we end up being. about to say cut again to go back to the conversation, but I've totally lost my train of thought. What were we saying?
Nicole: We were talking about you said that
Mariana: So, Nicole, what do you think if you had a friend, if you were friends with Liz Gilbert and you were trying to share with her what we were just saying about how you will find happiness and fulfillment by staying married to your husband, by serving your family, by thinking of others, instead of going on this amazing trip to Italy, to Bali, to India? Like if you were her best friend. How would you share with her what you were saying? And you know she's not Catholic, she's not religious at all.
Nicole: Yeah. So I think I would tell her, you know, I would sit her down and I'd say, What you really need is for me to go with you. I'm loving my friend. I gotta go.
Mariana: And can I come too?
Nicole: All our friends are coming. It's gonna be a year. That'd be amazing. no, just kidding, Ray. I would never do that. no,
Mariana: Ha ha ha.
Nicole: I think I I I would tell her, I I would encourage her to stay in her marriage and give it another shot and to I and to sp say what would it look like if you spent if you instead of spending a year trying to find yourself, what if instead you spent a year just trying to really make your husband happy? You know, what if you spent a year not rolling your eyes when he talks about his next venture or shutting him out of of large parts of your life or, you know, just you know, not not really having conversations with him, whatever it is that's making you unhappy? What if you actually spent a year trying to be vulnerable with him and because he seemed like a very loving and patient person, what if you spent a year really trying to support him and if he is trying these new ventures, just say, Okay, I love you, I trust you. you know, she's making enough money with her career, they can pay for this beautiful home in Manhattan. They're not financially struggling. If he's taking time to kind of figure out who he is, what if she just gives him a year and she's really supportive of him? I wonder they don't show it in the movie, but it was clearly her big complaint when they're with the divorce lawyer, her big her she's yelling at him because he he can't get focused on anything. And so even if she thinks she has not been letting him know that and she thinks this is the big reveal in front of the divorce attorney, I'm sure he already knew that. Right. If
Mariana: Mm.
Nicole: you're living with someone and they're secretly rolling their eyes at everything you're doing, they see it. There's especially after eight years of being married and however long they were together before that, you know each other so intimately and so powerfully. Unless she's a narcissist and has just been flat out lying to him like a psychopath all these years. He knows that she's she's frustrated with him. And so what if she stops focusing on that? Sorry, go ahead.
Mariana: And you know, as yes, and as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about this book that recently both of us read called the was it called the Empowered Wife?
Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mariana: So I don't you think that
Nicole: We should do an episode on that too.
Mariana: Don't you think that the Empowered Wife, like I think that's exactly what the book is kind of talking about. okay,
Nicole: Yeah.
Mariana: All right. So yeah, Nicole, do you want to share with our audience, who maybe haven't read The Empowered Wife, what you think the takeaway is that could apply to Liz Gilbert?
Nicole: Well, without going too much into the book, I think that one of the things that one of the skills that she talks about roughly is n staying off of his paper. That's what I'm thinking of. So you stay on your paper, you don't go on his paper. So what he's doing for a living, the fact that he's having to restart his career all the time, the fact that he's kind of lost, what if you just let him deal with that? What if you let him just kind of go through that process? And figure that out for himself and just support him and love him without trying to correct him or roll your eyes at him or make those little passive aggressive comments that we as women unfortunately sometimes will make, right? Like, another career. Wow, that's great. You know, things like that. Where we're we're
Mariana: Ha ha ha.
Nicole: very clearly letting our our loved one know what we're thinking. What if you instead just let him take full ownership over that? And what would that look like? I think in their in their situation, what would that have looked like? But I think also if she had just stopped focusing on her own unhappiness and had just, you know, like she had to go to Italy to figure out that she needs to slow down and eat and and and drink good wine and gain a little weight, like you could have done you could have done that in New York. You've got a lot of money. You have so
Mariana: Ha ha
Nicole: much money you could take a year to do absolutely nothing. You could have done that in your marriage. And he even says that to her. He says, Why couldn't you have done this path of self discovery in our marriage? And I think that's a fair question for him to ask. So I I go ahead, go ahead. Sorry.
Mariana: And it also reminds me of this other book I was reading, which was also a an autobiography of this woman that she was saying how she ended her marriage because she was so unhappy with her husband. And then she started a second relationship. And once she started the second relationship, she noticed how she would make the effort to laugh at his jokes, to look pretty for him, to go out on dates, and kind of like what you said, to stay on her paper and not roll her eyes. Like she just did that naturally because it was a new relationship and they just started dating. And one of the things she said in the book was, I wonder what would have happened if I would have behaved like this within my marriage. And so she said, like I clearly had the capacity to behave like this because I'm doing it right now in this brand new relationship. But I just was not willing to do it in the current relationship that I was at.
Nicole: Mm-hmm.
Mariana: And she was mentioning this right when she was starting to feel that it was harder to do it in the current relationship, in her new relationship. And she's like, no, I've started doing it. I've stopped laughing. I've started rolling my eyes. I've stopped being kind and patient and loving. And she's like, if I started a new relationship at the beginning, the first six months or nine months, where the chemicals are going crazy in your brain, there's this explosion of chemicals in your brain, and the hormones are just really helping you. To be kind and loving. And I think the act of maturity is to be able to behave like that even when the chemicals and the hormones are not exploding in your brain. You will come down from that high and the feelings will go down and you will have to use the will to say,
Nicole: Mm-hmm.
Mariana: like, I will laugh at your jokes, I will pay attention to your conversation, I I will be there for you. And I wonder if Liz, like you said, like you mentioned at the beginning, her second relationship where she ends the book so in love, it ends slow slow shortly after that. And I think it's because of that, because one of the bigger lessons of the book. for both for Belle Burden's husband and for Liz Gilbert's Liz Gilbert herself, is the feelings will die. The
Nicole: Mm.
Mariana: only thing that is left is the will.
Nicole: Right. Right. Right. I think that's exactly right. Not to beat up on my own, not to beat up on other women, right? But I think that there's something the reason why we were made to be the weaker sex, the reason why women for generations have been the ones who were caretakers of the home and stayed home and raised the children why that work was so taxing and so hard. It also meant they were the ones who were the protectors of the family. They were the ones like husbands protect the family insofar as they provide, and if there's like ever a a bull or a bear or a lion who comes traipsing through your village, he's gonna kill it, right?
Mariana: Ha ha ha.
Nicole: But 99% of the time, it were women, it was women who were holding down the fort. And it was women who were upholding those standards. And I think and who saw who were living every day that that reminder that love is an act of the will. It's making those decisions every day because there are there are other people in in in for generations there were other people who were dependent on that. And now I think that we have gotten further and further from that sense of others are dependent on us and that women can be so independent and men are so independent. There's less of a sense of an understanding that the marriage is still something that is sacred. It's still something that's supposed to be held together and we still have an obligation to not just stay in this because it feels good. We have an obligation to stay in it because we took vows and we said that we would. And otherwise, just freaking stop getting married. Just like promise to be each other's boyfriend and girlfriend for a super long time. Do that instead. Stop saying I'm gonna be there till death do us park. Don't make promises you have no intention of keeping. Just don't get married. Just do that, you know? Whatever. Whatever that looks like.
Mariana: Ha ha ha
Nicole: Pinky rings, I don't know, matching necklaces, tattoos. Get a freaking matching tattoo. That's gonna be permanent, unfortunately. But
Mariana: Ha ha.
Nicole: But that would be better than lying, than going up and lying, which is I think where we are today.
Mariana: Yeah, and I also think that it's important to realize that your marriage, you staying married, affects the people around you and it's not j a decision just about you and your children. So Giuliani, when he was trying to clean up New York City, he started just like boarding like fixing the broken windows and cleaning up the trash. And people are like, well, that's not gonna help anything. But the more you clean up the city, the more others clean up the city. And the more you let the city get dirty, the more others will get the city dirty. And the same thing happens, I think, with other aspects of society. And for example, if you and I get a divorce, then other people will see the divorce, and divorce becomes more prominent, more accepted, more easy, and marriage becomes less sacred and less valuable. So I think that there's also it's it's also important for Liz. To realize like, I'm just gonna leave my marriage is not I'm just gonna leave my marriage. It's I'm going to break down the nucleus of society.
Nicole: Right. Right. Yeah, I think that's right. So just remember that people, you have a moral obligation. And also Mariana and I are not getting divorced 'cause we're not married. But otherwise, yes. I agree
Mariana: Ha ha.
Nicole: with all of that. okay, well I we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up now. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we obviously did. So this is Nicole.
Mariana: And this is Mariana and don't forget to look again.
Nicole: Bye.
