Well marriage seems to be a crumbling institution.
In the 1950s, 75 percent of the population
was married. Today you have a majority of
people who are single which is astonishing
when you think about it because it means that
in a free country people are choosing to be
by themselves because they don't find marriage
compelling. In places like Western Europe
it's far worse. Countries like Iceland have
a 20 percent marriage population. France,
Russia -- these are all seeing a decline in
marriage, a significant decline which is also
leading to significant decline of the population.
They're experiencing negative population growth.
If not for immigration these are countries
that might soon disappear and they're actually
worried about it. That's why in places like
Russia you have National Love Day where you
get a paid day to go home and make a baby.
Because marriage is losing its passion.
And in an adrenalin fueled 24 hour economy
I think people are gonna make choices that
give them excitement and give them adventure.
And they don't feel that marriage is giving
that to them. Coupled with that is something
that we never expected and that is the sexual
famine that is to be discovered in marriage.
Some statistics have the monogamous marriage
at about one in three here in America. Even
those who disagree say that it's about one
in five. Now think about that. You could be
a couple in your 20s, a married couple in
your 20s, 30s and every night you go to sleep
together, sharing a bed, man and woman, no
clothes on and absolutely nothing happens.
That's astonishing. And I think the ones who
are really paying the price are the wives.
I think in our culture we suppress and deny
a woman's true erotic nature. We seem to believe
that men are the really sexual ones and women
kind of put up with sex in order to get romantic
love. It's summed up in one of those humorous
quotations where marriage is the price that
men pay for sex and sex is the price that
women pay for marriage.
There is no truth to this. There's no truth
to the stereotype of a husband saying to his
wife, how about some sex tonight honey. And
she turns back and says, not tonight, I have
a headache. And yet the husband can have an
axe lodged in his head and he's still ready
to go. Precisely the opposite is true. Women
are much more sexual than men. Men are uniorgasmic.
Women are multiorgasmic. Women have a much
more deeply erotic nature. Think about it.
Women seem to have their emotions deeply connected
with their sexuality which makes it like rocket
fueled. And the suppression, the denial of
a woman's erotic nature, of a woman's sensual
nature is something that is depressing the
heck out of a lot of women which is why we're
suddenly discovering the emergence of the
genre of bestselling books like 50 Shades
of Grey. No one can explain why women in a
liberated feminist age are reading a trilogy
about a guy who takes a liberated college
student and gets her to agree to be a submissive
to his dominance.
In fact, Newsweek magazine did a cover story
about this on why are women reading this.
And the only solution they came up with which
just shows you how shallow we are in our approach
to the erotic mind, they said people are reading
50 Shades of Grey because women are so overscheduled
today with a job at work and then the domestic
chores at home that they love the novel because
they wanted to give up choice. They liked
the fact that Anastasia allows Christian Grey
to make all her decisions for her in order
to -- so that she's less scheduled. So I said
to myself, gosh, I'll sell more books by writing
a book about a woman who has a phenomenal
housekeeper who does all her work for her.
The reason why women are reading 50 Shades
of Grey is that for many women, for many American
wives that book is about the only time they've
witnessed raw lust incarnate. They're not
seeing it in their marriages. Women today
are loved but they're not lusted after. They're
appreciated but they're not desired. They're
complimented but their husbands aren't ripping
their clothes off.
And we need to go back and understand why.
How is it that three, four decades after the
sexual revolution we're having less sex than
ever. Something went wrong and we have to
be courageous enough to understand it. Because
without that I think marriage is gonna continue
to decline. Because all marriage can provide
right now for most people is stability. But
it cannot provide electricity. Now if we were
an age that sought out stability then marriage
would be thriving. Marriage would be the place
where you settle down. It's where you have
the domesticated bliss of raising children.
But if you live in a society where on the
contrary, three 24-hour news channels are
competing against each other for headlines,
people have disposable income to go on exotic
exciting vacations and all marriage can provide
is security and stability. I'm not sure that
people are going to continue to marry. At
most they're going to engage in serial monogamy
-- I love those words. Serial monogamy. They'll
be in a relationship for as long as they think
the emotions can sustain them.
But they're gonna reject the overarching institution
that we call marriage which solidifies the
commitment. The commitment is gonna be more
emotional. It's gonna be why should we force
ourselves to remain together after the passion
is worn off. Maybe humans are not really made
for a 50 year commitment. Maybe they are biologically
programmed to have only an 8 or 10 year commitment.
And we're hearing more and more scientists
make that argument as well. By the way, it's
an argument I completely reject because I
actually think people are intimacy seekers.
I think what we most seek is someone to know
our depth and that's not gonna come from a
casual relationship. But marriage is in crisis.
I believe it's primarily because of the loss
of erotic lust and erotic desire. And it's
time that we began to fathom the erotic mind
in order not just to bolster the institution
of marriage but actually bring back a certain
electricity to the rest of life as well.
