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  • 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.

Well marriage seems to be a crumbling institution. In the 1950s, 75 percent of the population

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