The Best Relationship Advice No One Tells You

- [Mark] In 1967, John Lennon wrote a song called "All You Need is Love. " He also beat both of his wives, abandoned one of his children, verbally abused his gay Jewish manager with homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs, and once had a camera crew film him lying in bed for an entire day. - [Reporter] Can you tell us anything whatsoever?

(TV static hisses) - 35 years later, Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails wrote a song called "Love is Not Enough. " Reznor, despite being famous for his shocking stage performances and his disturbing videos, got clean from all drugs and alcohol, married one woman, had children with her, and then canceled entire albums and tours so that he could stay home and be a good husband and father. One of these two men had a clear and realistic understanding of love.

One of them did not. One of these men idealized love as the solution to all problems. One of them did not.

One of these men was probably a narcissistic asshole. One of them was not. (air rumbles) In our culture, many of us idealize love.

We see it as some kind of lofty cure-all for all of our life's problems. Our movies and stories and history all celebrate it as life's ultimate goal, the final solution for pain and struggle. And because we idealize love, we overestimate it, and as a result, our relationships pay a price.

When we believe that all we need is love, then, like Lennon, we're more likely to ignore fundamental values such as respect, humility, and commitment towards the people we care about. - We were on the break! - After all, if love solves everything, then why bother with all that other stuff?

You know, that hard stuff. - Anybody thinks that you're gonna be on your honeymoon for 51 years is ridiculous. - But if like Reznor, we believe that love is not enough, then we understand that healthy relationships require more than pure emotion or lofty passions.

We understand that there are more important things in our lives and relationships than simply being in love. This, in my opinion, is the best piece of relationship advice that no one ever tells you, that relationships should be based on more than merely just feelings. Love is a touchy subject, so to make sure I'm not crazy and I'm not getting divorced, I asked my wife to sit down with me and have a short conversation about love.

So. (wife speaks Portuguese) - (laughs) Already. - Just kidding.

- So we've been together for over 11 years and we're still happy. (air whooshing) - Very. (bell dings) - Okay.

(wife laughs) Just checking. What percentage of our relationship success would you attribute to love? - I'll say 50.

- 50? - Yeah. - What would the other 50 be?

- Well, commitment, the ability to grow together. - Yeah. - Values.

Values are actually, I think is the biggest one. - I think I would go like 30 or 40. - Really?

- Yeah. - Why? - I think values would probably be the biggest one.

Values would probably be 50 and then trust is probably as big as love for me. So love is not enough. - No.

(laughs) - It turns out that things like trust and respect and aligned values matter far more than the passion or romance that we're experiencing. People don't like to hear this because it shits all over the fairytales and rom-coms they grew up with. So just to make sure I ruin your Sunday completely, here are three harsh truths about love and why they matter to you.

The first one is love does not equal compatibility. Just because you fall in love with someone doesn't necessarily mean that they're a good partner for you over the long term. It's possible to fall in love with somebody who doesn't treat us well, who makes us feel worse about ourselves, who doesn't hold the same respect for us as we do for them, who has a dysfunctional emotional life themselves that can threaten to bring us down with them.

It's possible to fall in love with someone who has different ambitions or life goals that are contradictory to our own, who holds different philosophical beliefs and worldviews that clash with our reality. - All we did was resent each other and try to control each other. - That's marriage.

- It's possible to fall in love with somebody who sucks for us and makes us unhappy. Maybe they're a great person and they seem right on paper, but in reality, they just hurt us. When I think of all of the disastrous relationships that I've seen or I've been a part of, most of them were entered into purely on the basis of emotion.

We felt that spark, and so we just dove in head first. Forget that he's a born-again Christian alcoholic and she's an LSD-dropping bisexual. It just feels right.

And then six months later, when she's throwing all this shit onto the lawn and he's praying to Jesus 12 times a day for her salvation, they look around and they wonder, "Huh. Where did it go wrong? " The truth is it went wrong before it even began.

When dating and looking for a partner, you must not only use your heart, but also your mind. Yes, you want to find someone who makes your heart flutter and your farts smell like cherry popsicles, but you also need to evaluate a person's values. How do they treat themselves?

How do they treat people close to them? What are their ambitions? What is their worldview in general?

Because if you fall in love with someone who is incompatible with you, as the ski instructor from "South Park" likes to say. . .

- You're gonna have a bad time. - What do you think we have gotten right that your previous relationships got wrong? - I think it was very important to learn from the mistakes of previous relationships and not repeat those.

- Yeah. - For me, the biggest one was the ability to open communicate what I want and how I feel. And you were very open to listen, so that also helps.

- I think for me, the biggest mistakes in my previous relationships was not being aligned on, I guess, long-term goals or long-term visions. This kind of ties into values. Like, we loved each other, we had fun together, but our visions for our lives were very divergent.

They went to different places. Harsh truth number two: Love does not solve relationship problems. My first girlfriend and I, we were madly in love with each other.

We also lived in different cities, had no money to go see each other, had families who disliked each of us, and went through weekly bouts of meaningless drama and fighting on the phone. And every time we fought, we'd come back to each other the next day and make up and remind each other how crazy we were for one another and that none of those little problems matter because, OMG, we are so in love and it will work out and everything will be great. Just you wait and see.

(soft uptempo music) (messenger beeps) Our love made us feel like we were regularly overcoming our issues, when on every practical level, absolutely nothing was getting solved. The big lesson I took away from it was this: While love might make you feel better about your problems, it doesn't actually solve your relationship problems. And see, this is how toxic relationships work.

The rollercoaster of emotions is, well, intoxicating. - No, no, no, no, I don't want to do this. - Put your arms up!

- Each high feeling even more important and valid than the one before. But unless there's a stable and practical foundation beneath each of your feet, that rising tide of emotion is eventually gonna come and sweep everything away. - Holy shit!

I don't want to do this! I don't want, can't do this! I can't do this!

(riders scream) I want to break up! I want to break up! (groans) - Harsh truth number three: Love is usually not worth sacrificing yourself for.

One of the defining characteristics of loving somebody is that you are able to actually think outside of yourself and your own needs to help care for another person and their needs as well. - What do you want? - It's not that simple.

- What do you want? - It- - But the question that doesn't get asked enough is, what are you sacrificing? And, is this worth it?

Because in loving relationships, it's normal for both people to occasionally sacrifice their own desires or needs or wants for one another. I would argue that this is completely healthy and a big part of actually what makes a relationship great. But when it comes to sacrificing one's self-respect, one's dignity, one's physical body, one's ambitions, and identity just to be with someone, then that same love becomes toxic and destructive.

A loving relationship is supposed to supplement your individual identity, not damage it or replace it. If we find ourselves in situations where we are tolerating disrespectful or abusive behavior, then that's essentially what we're doing. And if we're not careful, it will leave us a shell of the person we once were.

So last question. What is the best relationship advice you have gotten? - Oof, that's a tough one because I don't think I ever got (laughs) good relationship advice.

(laughs) But for me, I think the biggest lesson I learned, it was from watching other people's relationships, and especially my parents' relationship, which was really bad. And from those, I learned what not to do and what I didn't want for my relationship. - One of the things that's great about getting married is that old people start just giving you unsolicited marriage advice.

And I remember a lot of my older family members, the thing they all told me was friendship is most important. And I remember my Aunt Linda telling me this. She said, you know, "If you're gonna be together for 50 years, you're gonna go through periods where maybe you don't like each other or you're driving each other crazy or you're working on different things.

But as long as you're still friends, you'll always be able to come back together. " I've found that to definitely be true in our case. - Linda's so wise.

- She's so wise. (wife laughs) Why do we tolerate behavior in our romantic relationships that we would never ever tolerate in our friendships? Imagine if your best friend moved into your house, trashed the entire place, refused to get a job or pay rent, and got angry and yelled at you each time you complained?

That friendship would be over faster than Logan Paul's music career. ♪ It's everyday bro ♪ ♪ With the Disney Channel flow ♪ - Love doesn't solve your problems. In fact, love often creates more problems.

And I see this all the time. You take an unhappy couple who is in love and they think, "Maybe if we just get married, things will get better," and then they get married and it gets worse, and then they think, "Maybe if we have a kid, it'll get better," and then they have a kid and it gets worse, and then they think, "Maybe if we go into tons of debt and buy a really gigantic house, maybe then things will get better. " Spoiler alert: It gets worse.

The only way to truly enjoy the love in your life is to make something else more important than the love in your life. Love is not unique. It's not special.

It's not scarce. But your self-respect is, and so is your dignity, and so is your ability to trust people. There can potentially be many, many loves throughout your life, but you only get to lose your self-respect or your dignity once, and they are very hard to get back.

Love is a wonderful experience. Don't get me wrong. If love was a restaurant on Yelp, I would give it five stars.

- [Kid] Wow! - It's one of the greatest experiences life has to offer and it is something that everybody should feel at some point and enjoy. But like any other experience, it can also be healthy or unhealthy.

We cannot let it consume us. We cannot sacrifice our identities or self-worth to it because the moment we do that, we lose love and we lose ourselves. Because you need more in life than love.

Love is great. Love is necessary. Love is beautiful, but love is not enough.