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B1 Intermediate US 37672 Folder Collection
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Every year in the United States alone,
2,077,000 couples
make a legal and spiritual decision
to spend the rest of their lives together ...
(Laughter)
and not to have sex with anyone else,
ever.
He buys a ring, she buys a dress.
They go shopping
for all sorts of things.
She takes him to Arthur Murray
for ballroom dancing lessons.
And the big day comes.
And they'll stand before God and family
and some guy her dad once did business with,
and they'll vow that nothing,
not abject poverty,
not life-threatening illness,
not complete and utter misery
will ever put the tiniest damper
on their eternal love and devotion.
(Laughter)
These optimistic young bastards
promise to honor and cherish each other
through hot flashes
and mid-life crises
and a cumulative 50-lb. weight gain,
until that far-off day
when one of them is finally able
to rest in peace.
You know, because they can't hear the snoring anymore.
And then they'll get stupid drunk
and smash cake in each others' faces and do the "Macarena,"
and we'll be there
showering them with towels and toasters
and drinking their free booze
and throwing birdseed at them
every single time --
even though we know,
statistically,
half of them will be divorced within a decade.
(Laughter)
Of course, the other half won't, right?
They'll keep forgetting anniversaries
and arguing about where to spend holidays
and debating which way
the toilet paper
should come off of the roll.
And some of them
will even still be enjoying each others' company
when neither of them can chew solid food anymore.
And researchers want to know why.
I mean, look, it doesn't take a double-blind, placebo-controlled study
to figure out what makes a marriage not work.
Disrespect, boredom,
too much time on Facebook,
having sex with other people.
But you can have the exact opposite of all of those things --
respect, excitement,
a broken Internet connection,
mind-numbing monogamy --
and the thing still can go to hell in a hand basket.
So what's going on when it doesn't?
What do the folks who make it
all the way to side-by-side burial plots
have in common?
What are they doing right?
What can we learn from them?
And if you're still happily sleeping solo,
why should you stop what you're doing
and make it your life's work
to find that one special person
that you can annoy for the rest of your life?
Well researchers spend billions of your tax dollars
trying to figure that out.
They stalk blissful couples
and they study their every move and mannerism.
And they try to pinpoint what it is
that sets them apart
from their miserable neighbors and friends.
And it turns out,
the success stories
share a few similarities,
actually, beyond they don't have sex with other people.
For instance, in the happiest marriages,
the wife is thinner and better looking than the husband.
(Laughter)
Obvious, right.
It's obvious that this leads to marital bliss
because, women, we care a great deal
about being thin and good looking,
whereas men mostly care about sex ...
ideally with women
who are thinner and better looking than they are.
The beauty of this research though
is that no one is suggesting
that women have to be thin to be happy;
we just have to be thinner than our partners.
So instead of all that laborious
dieting and exercising,
we just need to wait for them to get fat,
maybe bake a few pies.
This is good information to have,
and it's not that complicated.
Research also suggests
that the happiest couples
are the ones that focus on the positives.
For example, the happy wife.
Instead of pointing out her husband's growing gut
or suggesting he go for a run,
she might say,
"Wow, honey, thank you for going out of your way
to make me relatively thinner."
These are couples who can find good in any situation.
"Yeah, it was devastating
when we lost everything in that fire,
but it's kind of nice sleeping out here under the stars,
and it's a good thing you've got all that body fat
to keep us warm."
One of my favorite studies found
that the more willing a husband is to do house work,
the more attractive his wife will find him.
Because we needed a study to tell us this.
But here's what's going on here.
The more attractive she finds him, the more sex they have;
the more sex they have, the nicer he is to her;
the nicer he is to her,
the less she nags him about leaving wet towels on the bed --
and ultimately, they live happily ever after.
In other words, men, you might want to pick it up a notch
in the domestic department.
Here's an interesting one.
One study found
that people who smile in childhood photographs
are less likely to get a divorce.
This is an actual study,
and let me clarify.
The researchers were not looking
at documented self-reports of childhood happiness
or even studying old journals.
The data were based entirely
on whether people looked happy
in these early pictures.
Now I don't know how old all of you are,
but when I was a kid,
your parents took pictures with a special kind of camera
that held something called film,
and, by God, film was expensive.
They didn't take 300 shots of you
in that rapid-fire digital video mode
and then pick out the nicest, smileyest one
for the Christmas card.
Oh no.
They dressed you up, they lined you up,
and you smiled for the fucking camera like they told you to
or you could kiss your birthday party goodbye.
But still, I have a huge pile
of fake happy childhood pictures
and I'm glad they make me less likely than some people
to get a divorce.
So what else can you do
to safeguard your marriage?
Do not win an Oscar for best actress.
(Laughter)
I'm serious.
Bettie Davis, Joan Crawford, Hallie Berry, Hillary Swank,
Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon,
all of them single
soon after taking home that statue.
They actually call it the Oscar curse.
It is the marriage kiss of death
and something that should be avoided.
And it's not just successfully starring in films
that's dangerous.
It turns out, merely watching a romantic comedy
causes relationship satisfaction to plummet.
(Laughter)
Apparently, the bitter realization
that maybe it could happen to us,
but it obviously hasn't and it probably never will,
makes our lives seem unbearably grim
in comparison.
And theoretically,
I suppose if we opt for a film where someone gets brutally murdered
or dies in a fiery car crash,
we are more likely to walk out of that theater
feeling like we've got it pretty good.
Drinking alcohol, it seems,
is bad for your marriage.
Yeah.
I can't tell you anymore about that one
because I stopped reading it at the headline.
But here's a scary one:
Divorce is contagious.
That's right -- when you have a close couple friend split up,
it increases your chances of getting a divorce
by 75 percent.
Now I have to say, I don't get this one at all.
My husband and I
have watched quite a few friends divide their assets
and then struggle
with being our age and single
in an age of sexting and Viagra
and eHarmony.
And I'm thinking they've done more for my marriage
than a lifetime of therapy ever could.
So now you may be wondering,
why does anyone get married ever?
Well the U.S. federal government
counts more than a thousand legal benefits
to being someone's spouse --
a list that includes visitation rights in jail,
but hopefully you'll never need that one.
But beyond the profound federal perks,
married people make more money.
We're healthier,
physically and emotionally.
We produce happier, more stable
and more successful kids.
We have more sex
than our supposedly swinging single friends --
believe it or not.
We even live longer,
which is a pretty compelling argument
for marrying someone you like a lot
in the first place.
Now if you're not currently experiencing
the joy of the joint tax return,
I can't tell you how to find a chore-loving person
of the approximately ideal size and attractiveness
who prefers horror movies and doesn't have a lot of friends
hovering on the brink of divorce,
but I can only encourage you to try,
because the benefits, as I've pointed out,
are significant.
The bottom line is, whether you're in it or you're searching for it,
I believe marriage is an institution
worth pursuing and protecting.
So I hope you'll use the information I've given you today
to weigh your personal strengths
against your own risk factors.
For instance, in my marriage,
I'd say I'm doing okay.
One the one hand,
I have a husband who's annoyingly lean
and incredibly handsome.
So I'm obviously going to need fatten him up.
And like I said, we have those divorced friends
who may secretly or subconsciously
be trying to break us up.
So we have to keep an eye on that.
And we do like a cocktail or two.
On the other hand,
I have the fake happy picture thing.
And also, my husband does a lot around the house,
and would happily never see
another romantic comedy as long as he lives.
So I've got all those things going for me.
But just in case,
I plan to work extra hard
to not win an Oscar anytime soon.
And for the good of your relationships,
I would encourage you to do the same.
I'll see you at the bar.
(Applause)
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B1 Intermediate US

【TED】Jenna McCarthy: What you don't know about marriage (What you don't know about marriage | Jenna McCarthy)

37672 Folder Collection
VoiceTube published on November 28, 2013

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