- What should I say during sex?
This is a fun one.
(Ani laughs)
(gentle music)
Hi.
- Hello.
How are you? - Good.
- I'm Rabbi Mendel Simons.
- I'm Ani Zonneveld.
- So nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.
I want to get married with my boyfriend,
but I hate his parents.
They lack boundaries and can often be rude to us.
How important is it to have a good relationship
with potential in-laws?
In my culture, in Malaysia,
marriage is not just between two persons.
It's also between two families.
I do think that having a good relationship
with your in-laws is very important.
Now, that said, I know for a fact
that some of the families want to dictate
how the couple should live,
how the children should be raised, et cetera, et cetera.
There needs to be boundaries.
- I'll tend to agree with what you said.
At the same time,
if the option is like choosing me or your parents,
I think that's a recipe for disaster.
If you truly love someone,
you have to learn to at least engage
and be involved in their parents' life.
I'd find a way to like them.
Like everybody's got likable factors about them.
Is cheating a deal breaker
or should they get a second chance?
It's not acceptable.
Is it a deal breaker?
Meaning if you're married already with kids,
100% you should try to work it out.
We believe in forgiveness.
You may never get back to what you had before,
but there's a second marriage
with the same person that you could create.
- Spot on.
I don't have anything else to add.
Forgiveness, yeah.
- Doesn't mean it's easy.
- No.
- And not always possible.
- How do you prepare a person outside of your religion
to meet your parents?
My favorite question.
- We should probably talk about
who's gonna officiate the wedding.
- Oh, Arnold already talked to Rabbi Singer.
- Singer is in.
- [Shelley] Yeah, he'd be honored.
- Rabbi Singer?
So you're not gonna go with an imam.
- Um? - Who's Any Mam?
- Mine's gonna be short.
- Okay, go ahead.
- I don't because we don't do interfaith.
- Yes.
I've done a lot of interfaith marriages
and the way that I've been able to overcome
some of these hurdles
is actually to bring together the common denominators
in the theology.
So there was a time in my life where I thought,
"No, my daughter needs to marry Muslim."
And then I realized there's a lot of good people out there,
regardless of their religion, even atheist.
I just want my daughter to marry a good guy,
someone who's gonna truly love her and take care of her.
- [Interviewer] You said your oldest is 14?
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] A daughter.
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] What would your reaction
and approach be if she was falling in love
with someone outside of your religion?
- I'm not sure.
It's like I'm gonna have to cross that bridge
when I get there.
I don't plan on getting there,
but I'm also not arrogant enough to think
that it's impossible to happen.
- I've seen relationships,
couples where the parents have disowned the child
because they've married outside the faith,
but then they reconcile as parents age.
I find that they tend to be much more forgiving
and much more willing to accept things as they are.
- I'm 18 and I've never kissed anyone.
How do I stop feeling like there's something wrong with me?
I never kissed anyone when I was 18 either.
The feeling that there's something wrong with you
is based on a false belief, a false premise,
that your identity or that who you are as a person
comes down to whether you've kissed someone or not.
Destroy it, get rid of it.
It's not true.
- I have kissed someone by the time I was 18, so.
The pressure that children- - It's huge.
- and teenagers and youth have is immensely negative.
I think it's really important not to be influenced
by your environment.
- The value that you need to have kissed someone
is going to drive you to go kiss someone
that's not very important
and it's gonna make that first kiss not a very valuable one,
not a very meaningful, fulfilling one.
- Yeah.
- Destroy that premise.
By the time you do kiss someone,
it'll be with someone very special.
What should I say during sex?
This is a fun one.
(Ani laughs)
- So I think it really depends on the individual
and individual spirituality even.
- My gut's gonna tell me
that the height of intimacy experiences
when you're completely out of your head and in your body
and just submitting to instinct.
The mind is not involved in great sex.
Let's just put it that way.
How do I escape dating apps?
The apps are really toxic,
but it's the only way I get validation.
I would say you might have to go cold turkey on this one.
The app is just the matchmaker
and once you meet that person, maybe delete all the apps.
- Some of the couples that I've married
they've met through an app.
My daughter's one of them too.
So they have been some successful relationships,
but I do think that there are other ways of meeting people
by way of relationship building by common interests.
Right?
So you don't have to rely on these dating apps.
- Like try to find community, try to go out and meet people
versus only meet people over the phone.
I'm a 21 year old virgin.
It's not that I don't feel ready for sex,
but I haven't met anyone who's offered it
without acting too sus.
Most guys seem to give me the ick.
I think I'm pretty well versed,
but I don't know what the ick is.
- Me neither
- Put off by them.
- Yeah, yeah. - Okay.
Am I being close minded?
I'm very horny,
but don't wanna make a decision that I'll regret.
Sexuality's not a sport.
That should be an act of bonding
and connection with someone you truly care and love.
Society's very proud of the hookup culture
and thinks it's liberating,
but a lot of people report feelings of loneliness,
feelings of unfulfillment.
Have it with the right person
and you'll just hopefully experience the beauty
of what it is.
- I understand she's feeling pressure, like, am I weird?
But for being 21 and being a virgin,
I would caution about jumping into the sack
with someone just for the sake of it.
Right?
It is a very spiritual experience.
Well, in regards to the second question about being horny,
(laughs) well there are always tools
that you can relieve yourself.
There's nothing wrong with masturbating.
The last thing you wanna do is to be anxious
about not being sexually active.
Which is worse, parents trying too hard to be down
with the kids to win over their child's lover
or parents intentionally making life difficult
for their child's lover
as a way to test their suitability.
- Suitability.
If they're not engaged yet
and they're just kind of in a relationship,
then I think it's healthy to test the relationship.
- Yeah.
- In an appropriate way, obviously
- In a way that is really trying
to understand your child's lover
rather than being abrasive or aggressive.
There's an approach to everything.
If I can share something personal, you know,
she's had a boyfriend where we completely disagree with,
did not like, did not approve, but we did not tell her that.
Right?
At the end of the day,
she's gonna have to make that decision.
- Like I do as a rabbi,
when people come to me and ask me advice for something,
I never give them a direct answer
about what they should or should not do.
So if you could guide them in that way,
that might be the healthiest approach.
Parents obviously have to hold back
and give themselves a reality check too,
and let their kids make their own decisions
and that's what I'll hopefully try to do with my own kids.
(both laughing)
- Not easy. - If I see a red flag like.
- I have a really hard time breaking up with people
and staying broken up.
What is your advice for detaching yourself
from someone you loved so much at one point?
It's not an easy exercise,
particularly in social media world.
And so I think it's a matter
of removing those physical evidence
or social media evidence of that person.
- It's perfectly okay to miss someone
that you're not supposed to be with.
That's the part that gets very confusing for people.
They're like, "I'm missing them.
So did I make a mistake?
Was I supposed to be with them?"
You had a close deep relationship with this person.
That's not so easy just to undo.
Keep less focus on what you are going away from
and more focused on what you're going towards.
How do you know he or she is the one?
Honestly, I don't know what love is.
- It's a gut feeling, in my particular case,
and I think it's different for everyone, obviously.
That said, I do think that it's really important
for you as an individual to know yourself first,
because once you are there,
you will be attracting the right person to you.
- Choosing the right one it is a leap of faith
at some point.
You're never gonna fully know,
but there can be certain things in place
and self-awareness is a key one.
The most important thing
that I think most people are missing
before they try to choose somebody
is understanding what a relationship and what a marriage is.
Once you are fully aware of that
and you're fully aware of self,
you're ready to make that choice of who that person is.
- Love is not an easy journey,
but it is definitely worth it.
- [Interviewer] We're gonna have you guys watch a trailer
for Netflix's new movie coming out "You People."
Are you ready to watch it?
- Yep. - Yep.
- [Mo] Your dating a Black girl.
- [Ezra] I've never felt so understood by somebody
in my entire life.
I'm gonna ask her to marry me.
- Do you plan to talk to her family?
- Yeah, just haven't had the chance to meet them.
What's going on?
Tell me about life.
How are you?
- This is your white granddaddy coming back to haunt me.
- What?
Now this is my fault. (both laughing)
- So you wanna marry my daughter?
- Yes
- You can try.
♪ What's the difference between me and you ♪
- Oh, so you're all Muslim.
- Very much so.
- I love it.
- Well, this kufi that I'm wearing was actually a gift
from the Honorable Louis Farrakhan.
Are you familiar with the minister's work?
- Well, I'm familiar with what he said about the Jews.
- You know, let's have dinner.
- Are you trying to compare the Holocaust to slavery?
- Can you pass the potatoes?
- Our people came here with nothing like everybody else.
- It's a very uncomfortable conversation.
Are you kidding me?
- We ever figure out what happened with the potatoes?
Can I get an ETA on those?
♪ What's the difference between me and you ♪
(Ani laughs)
- Oh my God.
- It's gonna be funny.
- That's great.
- [Interviewer] Have either of you experienced any kind
of similar situation to that trailer?
- Yeah.
- She has. - For sure.
- I am so glad you're making this movie.
You have no idea.
I know from my constituency
and the couples that I've,
the interfaith couples I've married,
I think this is gonna be so refreshing.
To see it in comedy,
I think it's actually a really good medium to be doing this
'cause it is a very difficult subject matter.
- Such a joy to meet you.
- Yes, likewise.
- What a great conversation.
- Yes.
- [Interviewer] Hey, good humans.
Thanks for tuning into this special episode
in partnership with our sponsor, Netflix,
for their latest release "You People".
It's all about how families
and cultures clash when two LA. Millennials
from different backgrounds fall in love
and face the ultimate relationship test,
meeting the parents.
Be sure to check out you people now streaming on Netflix.