Hello and welcome to assssssskkkkk Cristen. I landed in the ocean. Whomp-whomp-whawhawha.
Your questions after the intro.
So hello everybody as you can probably tell I am not at home but I am at work on the set
of Herstory the Stuff Mom Never Told You history show that you should totally be watching if
you haven't already and if you have then forget what I just said. No actually just watch all
of those videos again. To kick things off I wanted to share a few comments from last
week's video on 'Don't Fear the Break up' because you all really spoke from the heart
and I appreciate that. EbyKat said, 'I always remind myself that no one ever died of a broken
heart. I know at the end of various relationships it's always like love will never happen again
but I always reminded myself to keep trying because I felt the same thing last time and
was proven wrong.' LIza G said, 'I'm terrified that I'll be alone forever? What if I go through
life without ever being in love?' I think a lot of people are terrified of ending up
alone and that maybe it would be helpful to change that what-if mentality to a what-is.
If you spend so much time being terrified over a future that you can't control whatsoever
you're going to lose out a lot on the present. SausageDogss, that's with two 'S's' wants
to know, 'What advice would you give for people who are scared of commitment?' You need to
figure out what exactly about commitment you are so scared of. Having to be monogamous
for the rest of your life? Getting hurt? Getting bored? Get to the bottom of that and if in
the meantime you get involved with somebody then you need to disclose that commitment-phobia.
But not on the first date. Question of the week from Kaitlyn D, 'Why is marriage a thing?'
she wants to know. 'As in why do two people, already in love, need to be together by law?
What makes it such a big and important thing?' It's interesting that you mention two people
being in love because when you look at the history of marriage, love is a relatively
new wrinkle in this whole situation. Marriage historian Elizabeth Abott actually wrote that,
'Love was considered a reason not to get married. It was seen as lust, as something that would
dissipate.' Marriage as many of us know started out as economic arrangements. Marriages were
extremely successful ways to do things like bond families together, bond larger communities
together, combining resources, maintaining peaceful relationships, even brokering diplomatic
unions. Obviously there's the whole procreation aspect. So this brand of marriage as economic
arrangement goes on for centuries. It's not until the Industrial Revolution that we start
to see the shift of marriage away from just being a practical financial arrangement to
perhaps a union of two people who are genuinely in love and want to be all like [kissing sounds]
I love you, I love you. For example in 1840 the wedding between Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert was a huge deal. If you think that Kate Middleton and Prince William was a big
deal, forget about it. It was hailed as being revolutionary for being a love union. As a
symbol of how big of deal this wedding was, the reason why brides often wear white these
days, because of Victoria. Perhaps because of those more practical, economic underpinnings
of the institution of marriage throughout history, if we move into the present day it
is still highly incentivized for practical reasons. Social scientists for instance find
that people who are married tend to be happier, healthier, live longer, and now the wedding
industry is still such a big deal because we're constantly being told that it is this
marker that we've arrived into adulthood, there's a certain legitimacy to it. Marriage
is still a big thing because it affords privileges. That doesn't mean that you have to spend the
average $26,000 on a wedding. I want to hear from you, what do you think about this whole
marriage thing? Why do you think it's still a big deal even though frankly marriage often
gets a bad rap these days. Let me know in the comments and as always, ask away and I'll
do my best to answer. Stay terrific and I'll see you next week.