TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Marry Young!
Date: 03/22/2026 Length: 00:35:10
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, Happy Warriors and thank you for being tuned to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I your rabbi reveal how the world really works. And one of the ways the world really works is that there is almost always a big discrepancy between the ideal and life in reality, there's a difference between pure mathematics and pure physics, and applying mathematics and applying physics in the real world, where there's friction and there's air resistance and there's deterioration of material strength, there's mental fatigue, there are all kinds of problems, but while one is still in first year or second year, physics or math, one can happily ignore all that, because we're trying To master the principles. And so when I am working with an individual or a couple, when I'm working with a coaching client, obviously my only concern is the person in front of me, the client. I've got to work with the situation in which they find themselves, and I've got to work within the boundaries of practical possibility, what they can do and what they can't do. And if the very best advice lies outside the realm of the possible, well then the second best advice moves up in rank to become the best advice. And but when we speak on this show, on this show, we're talking about revealing how the world really works. And that means that my concern is no longer any one particular individual. My concern is all of you, so that each and every one of you, every happy warrior out there, is able to derive maximum benefit and grasp the timeless truths that You can then apply into your own life and your own challenges, and so it's not with any intention of helping them that I pick out Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and his former fiancé Sarah Jane Ramos, who early in March, and I'm recording this now mid March, but early in March, they ended their engagement, which had lasted for somewhat over two years, and reportedly they ended it because Dak Prescott with a multi million dollar contract with the Dallas Cowboys and making money at the peak of his career, wanted a prenup. He wanted to make sure that if and when they would divorce, there would be a very strict limit on what Sarah Jane Ramos would obtain. It would certainly not be half of everything that that he has. And I obviously am not privy to the details, but the popular press says that she didn't want to preen up. He insisted on it, and there may have been some other issues as well. They also have two little girls. They have a little girl called Margaret, Jane and a little girl called Aurora, both of them both under three years. Both, yeah, under three years. I think they're little two little girls. Okay, so this question has been all over the internet. Well, should they shouldn't love really count for something? After all, if they really love each other, do they need a prenup? And that's with other people saying, well, you know, sports celebrities shouldn't marry until they retire from their careers, all kinds of stuff like that. My position is, is not exactly like that. I am looking at it from a completely different perspective. I'm not trying to extricate them from their predicament. I'm just trying to extract lessons from this pertaining to how each and every one of us. Can more effectively run our own lives. So, you know, imagine somebody comes to me and says, you know, I've got the addiction or the habit or the custom of eating a quart of ice cream every day, and I'm really not much into exercise. But what advice do you have for me? So again, if we're talking about a coaching relationship, I have to, I can't just say to him, Well, stop doing it and start exercising, because he knows that, and obviously he's long ago come to terms with not doing that. And so I've got to work slowly and gradually helping the person decide what his goals are. Does he really want to lose weight, or is he comfortable weighing 295, pounds, and we make do with it, but in the more theoretical mode of this show, I'd simply say he's got to stop doing it, end of story, because you can't ask somebody to help you with your health and your physicality. If that's what you're doing to your body, it just, it just doesn't work. And so in the same way, I have to now say to the Dak Prescotts of the world and the Sarah Jane Ramos's of the world, stop it. Stop doing that. But I'm not really talking to them, because they never consulted me, obviously. And I'm really speaking to all of you and so to all of you, I will say they've made at least four major mistakes to begin with. Number one, they didn't start talking about marriage until they were both 32 they're both 32 years old at the moment. That's a little late to start talking about marriage. They were talking about getting engaged, getting married sometime during this year, maybe they'd be 33 that is one big mistake right away. And I noted a couple of other things I wanted to tell you about as well, not thinking about that till 30 till they're 32 second big mistake. They've been engaged for about two years, stop with the long engagements. Number three, having children. Stop having children. If you're not married, don't do it. That's all. Just don't do it. It's not good for the children, for sure, and it's also not good for you. And number four, not sharing a bank account. Well, you might say that's not really a mistake, because the financial disparity between the two of them is such that he doesn't want to risk losing at all in the case of the divorce and so on and so forth. But bottom line is, four mistakes is for too many right out of the gate, and so let's talk about number one, marrying so late. Yeah, 32 is late. Okay, I know it doesn't seem that way, but it really is. So let's talk about why marrying a 32 is a mistake, and why my recommendation to you is, and again, if, if you are a young man or a young woman, you're in your teens, late teens, early 20s, I'm talking to you. You should be thinking of getting married when you're 25 not when you're 35 or when you're 23 or 22 not when you're 38 why? After all, you know, hasn't Rabbi Daniel Lapin ever heard of the statistics that people who marry before under the age of 25 are twice as likely to get divorced. Yeah, I know about those, but statistics do not decree that you participate in those statistics, right? We know that by the end of 2026 somewhat over 30,000 people will have died on the roads of the United States of America in traffic accidents. Doesn't mean you have to be one of them. Statistics don't compel conformity.
Daniel Lapin 9:58
There are people. Who get married young, and the results are not good, okay? Why is that? Well, for one thing, they're more than likely to be marrying on impulse, through emotional impulsiveness. Oh, we fell in love, we should get married. Okay, that's a really big problem. So obviously there's a high probability of divorce. Something else would very often people who get married young are doing so because they have children or expecting a child, and again, not a good way to start a marriage. So marriages like that, higher probability of divorce. Obviously, it's not a question. Young below 25 more likely to be afflicted by financial stress, and that's obviously a factor that contributes to divorces. So, yeah, absolutely, there for those reasons. They're typically those marriages of people under the age of 25 are typically not long lasting, high probability of divorce. But that doesn't have to be you, because I'm recommending that you marry by a as a result of a joint decision, a shared vision and a genuine understanding of building a long term life together. That's very different from the way many, many people get married young, and so that's I think we can dismiss that statistic. I acknowledge it exists. But it doesn't mean that if you are listening to this show, that you are somehow condemned by mysterious, invisible, sinister forces that will make you divorce as a result. No, because we're talking about how to go about getting married correctly. But let's talk about some of the reasons of why a young marriage is a very, very good idea. What are the reasons to marry young Well, the number in no particular order, actually, but a big one is much less history, much less previous breakups. Listen, do you know how posted notes work? Do I have one on my I don't have one right here, but you all, you all know what posted well here, here is a post it note I have in a book, all right, and so I very often Mark passages in books with post it notes. Now, as soon as I finish this, if I'm going to make a note of it somewhere, or if I'm going to store it away, I take this post it note off and I throw it away. You guys, is Isn't that a little bit non frugal? After all, why not reuse it? Well, the reason is, my friends, because every time you stick a post it note onto something and tear it off, it loses a little bit of a stickiness. Do you get the problem if you marry somebody with a long history, and again, the older the person you marry is, the more of a history they have. You marry somebody who's a post it note that's been stuck many In other words, the human being is not well created for serial matings and breakups. Matings and breakups, we are like post it notes. We lose a little bit of our stickiness every single time that happens. That's a reality. And so this is one of the explanations behind another statistic. And I'm not laying a huge store by this, because there are many, many other factors as well, but one of the factors in the in in marriages in which the two spouses have had many previous partners, one of the reasons is loss of stickiness. That's what happens. And I think everybody recognizes intuitively if I say that nobody ever matches your first love. Do you remember your first love? Most people do. How many years ago might it be? You know. Who knows 3040, 50 years ago? People still remember it. Why? Because it was the first time. It was still strong, and every subsequent one is just that little bit weaker. When a couple marries young, there is much less likelihood of a previous history, and the stickiness remains strong, and that's a huge factor. It's wonderful. It's an incredibly powerful and it's so important that you wonder, why would anybody advise young people to, first of all, build your career, first of all, travel the world. First of all, join a circus. First of all, before you think you're getting married, it just doesn't make sense. Okay. Retroactive jealousy, okay, what is this? Is a really big thing. Retractive Jealousy is when you feel yourself eaten up, incredibly uncomfortable having unbidden visions and unbidden thoughts of your spouse with an earlier partner. It's not good. This is called retroactive jealousy, and it's a very real thing. Why? Because the sexual bond is so powerful that it is meant to be a one timer. Ideally, it's a one timer, meaning that the person that you marry is the person with whom you first have physical intimacy, and that bond is hugely powerful. But if you marry a little older and there's an earlier history, then you are very likely to experience retroactive jealousy in exactly the same way as if the person to whom you are married betrayed the marriage. You wouldn't feel good about that. Oddly enough, even though, if you like the betrayal was at a different time period. It was before you ever met them, before you ever knew them. So it shouldn't matter, right? But that's not how human beings work. We have retroactive jealousy. Now let me tell you how this gets dealt with if you go to a psychologist or a therapist, they are going to help you get over your retroactive jealousy, except they never will, because it's not possible to get over it. But they're going to talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about how you can overcome and stop feeling this destructive, retroactive jealousy. This is, you know what it's like. It's a little bit like going to a doctor, you've broken your leg, you're in terrible pain, you're dragging around this, this broken leg, and you realize, I mean, it's got to be set it's got to be put together again. May, may even need surgery, orthopedic surgery, and you go to the doctor, and he says to you, you know what? I want to help you get past this issue you have with your leg. Just accept it. Don't feel pain, don't feel bad about it. So other people have two functioning legs. You have one. You're special. You're not different. You're special. Just get over it. You'd think such a doctor was insane, and that's exactly what psychologists and therapists do. They call retroactive jealousy. They call it a form of OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. So it's just a disorder you have. That's why you're feeling jealous, and that's why you're having these uninvited visions and pictures in your mind. You don't want them. Yeah, you just have a disorder. That's what they tell you. And we will, we will, we'll go through forms of therapy and that will, will help you overcome it. There's exposure and Response Prevention therapy, right? The mind boggles. But this is to go through a process so you stop being bothered by the fact that
Daniel Lapin 19:37
the person you are about to marry, has had many previous relationships. That is a problem. No, you don't have to or you do. You have OCD disordered will help you. And you know what, if our exposure and Response Prevention therapy doesn't cure you, no problem, we have medications that. Will. We can medicate you with SSRIs, alright, SSRI medications, those are selective serotonin re uptake inhibitors. That's really that's what they are, and they have trade names like flavox amine and citalopram. As you can tell, I've looked into this area, but somehow or another will cure you of your disorder, either with therapy or with medication. No stop doing it is the correct solution. Fix the broken leg, marry somebody who doesn't have a history, easier to do if you marry younger than if you marry older. Another thing is, and this, again, is self evidence really obvious, isn't it? And that is that the pool of available singles shrinks every year. That's obvious. We don't have to walk through the math on that. Obviously it does. And so why would you want to wait until you're older, when your choice has shrunk? And why? And in any event, your choice is better when you're younger, because at that point, you are mixing more with circles that are more likely to throw up a possibility, family, schooling, hobbies, activities, but when you wait beyond a certain point, your life is pretty much work, and you're not supposed to take up with people at work because it creates legal problems, or at the very best, a visit to HR human resources. So why wait till then? Good question, right? But this is what the culture is telling you all the time. And so I know that I'm trying to swim up a waterfall here. I mean, I'm really going against the current, and the river is flowing strongly against me, and I'm being a desperate salmon, trying to swim upstream, trying to give you over some really important life enhancing information. I'm doing my best. I'm swimming upstream, and all I can hope for is that there is not a grizzly bear upstream ahead of me getting ready to scoop me out of the water into his jaws, which is the fate of many salmon swimming back upstream in the rivers of British Columbia and Alaska. And there's, there are plenty pictures of that online. You can, you can see it happening. So, so, yeah. So another, that's another reason why younger is is better. You're more likely to find more single people and you're more likely to find more compatible single people because you have many circles of involvement, as opposed to so what I'm talking about is, you're in your early 20s, right? You're connected with many more different groups and people that are thinking of you and looking out for you by the time you're 35 and 38 and 39 and 42 not so much. Not so much. Here's another reason to get married young, and that is that whether you are a man or woman, if you're getting married at 38 you got to start if and you want to have babies, like most people do, you got to start right away. You don't have time. You know, sometimes the the early years of the first couple of years of marriage where it's just you and your beloved and no children, yet they can be good years. They can be time. They can be positive. Now, obviously they shouldn't go on too long, but there is something special about that time get married in your mid to late 30s or early 40s. You don't have that luxury. You got to get going right away on having a baby, okay? It's just an it's just another disadvantage that's all and look, it goes without saying that just in terms of the rigor of having babies and raising children, having babies in your 20s is much better than having babies in your 30s, and that's true for women and men, and how, how obvious is that? And you know, let's not even talk about freezing eggs and fertility dropping with advancing age. Let's not go into those dismal topics. Let's just talk. About nothing more than the simple fact that just your energy levels and your resilience and your enthusiasm and your ability to adapt, all of these things are much better when you're 25 than when you're 35 that's that should be self evident, right? That's not hard to figure out. Something else. So you're staying single during your 20s and into your 30s. That comes with a cost socializing and dating and meeting people and all of that costs money, and it's sunk costs. It costs money, it costs time and energy, and it costs emotional bandwidth, and it's all gone when you finally, eventually do marry somebody, all of that is just lost. It makes so much more sense to start building a life together with a special person when you're young, and so you don't waste the time and the energy and the emotional resources on this whole process of socializing, because you have a built in friend, you have a built in person with whom to socialize. And it goes without saying, a built in person with whom to enjoy physical intimacy as well. Which brings me to another thing, and that is again, statistics and polling and so on. But forget that. Let me just say it's obvious. Couples I'm talking about later on, couples in their 30s, 40s, 50s, all report, not all report better lives if they started, if they married young. Reason, I don't really know, but it's possible that if you you marry in in your 20s, it's possible you have a more passionate, physical relationship at the outset, and sometimes the way you start is also the way things subsequently continue. That's possibly the way that works as well. I'm not sure, but it is. It does seem to be a fact, marriages that start younger, enjoy longer and more passionate relationships, and then perhaps, well, I don't want to say most importantly, but it certainly is important, and that is, it's our money. When you build your money together, it's our money. And that's a really big thing. I repeatedly say in my 5f training that family and finance. I always say marriage means sharing a bed and a bank account maintaining separate finances in marriage, and I understand the Dallas Cowboys quarterback in his Fiona different situation. Don't get in that situation. That's what I'm saying to you. To them, if I was counseling them, I'd have to deal with the reality as it is. But to you, I'm saying don't do what they did. Don't get into that don't wait till you're 32 don't have separate finances. Don't have children before you get married. Don't do those things. Keeping separate finances when you're married is a lot like keeping separate sections of the refrigerator for each of your food or a separate part of the pantry or the larder, his food's on that side, her food's on the other side. You're not eating together. What sort of marriage is that you're not building your finances together?
Daniel Lapin 28:55
Finances is fundamental. It's not like saying he likes tennis. She likes going to museums and art galleries, fine. They can have a perfectly good marriage, perfectly fine. They adapt around that, but separate finances, very tough. What results is not necessarily a marriage. It might be a workable socio economic arrangement, but it isn't a marriage. A marriage, you know, be like saying we, you know, we're not sharing money, we're not sharing our bodies with each other. It's but other than that, we're married. No, you're not. You may be roommates. You might have a socio economic partnership. You're not married. Married means sharing bed and bank account. That's fundamental. You got to be able to speak of our money and in an ideal situation, the man is supporting the woman in the i. Ideal situation, the husband is bringing in the money, and the wife is building a cocoon of security and stability and peace and tranquility called the home. That's ideal. Oh, Rabbi, I can't believe you sound like such a dinosaur. We're way past that point now, again, when I deal with couples who approach me for coaching and counseling, obviously I have to deal with the realities. And yes, you know, she may well be out earning him by a lot, and we've got to, we've got to function within that and try and make that work. But to you presenting an ideal, it's got to be that way. Why? Well, I don't want to make today's show unduly long, so I'm just going to give you one thing, and again, initially, your reaction might be horror, but I don't want to just massage you with warm butter. I want to tell you the truth, even if it is a little bit difficult to deal with, and that is that when husband and wife are both working and when they are both contributing financially, the husband becomes a sexual supplicant. He has to beg for physical intimacy, because to her, it's just one more chore. It's one more burden. It's just one more thing on her schedule. But if he is taking care of her, he is looking after her, he's providing for her. He's saying to her, honey, you got nothing to worry about. I've got this covered. You just take care of our kids, build our home, make sure our social and family relationships are all kept in good shape. And if, when I come home from work, you are relaxed and happy and that's all I want, I would consider that to be a wonderful bargain in that sort of situation, the physical intimacy is on a totally different level, because he's not a supplicant enough. Said, it should be clear to you, if it isn't, please send me a note on the We Happy Warriors website and go ahead and ask me for clarification, if you like, but it should be clear, is it feasible for you individual? I don't know you're not my client at the moment, and so I haven't got into your own personal situation, right? I don't even know you personally, but ideally, I'm telling you what works best in marriage. That's what works best. Are we saying that a woman can't support herself? Of course not. Don't be silly. Of course, there's no question about it. But I will tell you this, and I most honest women will agree and will tell me, I'm right now, I've had this happen many, many, many times for a woman, there is something wonderful, almost sensual, about being taken care of by a man, being protected by a man, being provided for by a man. There's something wonderful. It's, it's like being able to roll over in bed and know that he'll be there, he's, he's, he's with you, you, you are one. You've created this new entity called a marriage. And everything is ours. It's our home, it's our children, it's our money, it's our career, it's, it's everything. But for that to happen, it needs shared beds and shared bank accounts. That I think you know, there's so much more to really talk about in all of these areas, but I have learned that not going too long works better for most people on a podcast. The long form is much more difficult. Most of us even even a 30 minute or 30 or 40 minute podcast, most of us have to listen to it in sections in order to make it work. And so there we are for today, and as far as we're going until next week, this is the rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I help you move forwards with your family with. Your finances, with your friendships, with your faith, and yes, even with your fitness. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin, God bless.
