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17- What Is Love? Hopefully More Than Baby Don't Hurt Me
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In this episode, we wrap up our discussion about Jewish lifecycles by looking at love, relationships, and marriage.
Episode transcript-
Hey everyone. I'm Menachem Lehrfield and this is Zero Percent. We are now wrapping up our Jewish life cycles with a conversation about relationships, from a Jewish perspective. Specifically where we see the growth mindset research in the Jewish approach to relationships, the Jewish approach to marriage. And I hope that it will help enhance your relationships again, whether you're Jewish or not.
So we left off last episode talking about the difference between love and infatuation. We said, love is not blind, love is a magnifying glass. Just as your parents love you more than anyone else, they also see your faults more than anyone else. The thing that is blind is infatuation. If you recall, we talked about the three phases of every human experience. There's phase one, the male phase, which is all about quick flashes of inspiration. Then comes the middle phase, the phase where it's unclear and it's difficult and it takes work and effort. But in that phase, in that stage, things become real. And that's why it's so hard, that's why it takes work and effort. That is the stage and the phase where real life happens. That is the growth mindset at its best. It's about rolling up our sleeves and working hard. And then the beauty of phase three is I get to experience phase one again, but this time it's real. This time it's worked for, its earned.
The Rambam Maimonides uses the analogy to describe these three phases and the concept of inspiration in general. With the analogy of a person who's lost on a dark night, and imagine it's pitch black and you're lost trying to find your way home. And all of a sudden there's a flash of lightning. And in that instant, the entire sky lights up. I'm from Miami, we have these torrential downpours in the summer. And when you hear that crack of thunder followed by that lightning, that lights up the sky. You know what I'm talking about. The sky lights up and in that instant, you see everything clearly. But as soon as it comes, it goes. So now you have to reconstruct in your mind the way home. In that moment, in that instant, you saw everything clearly, you understood you have to move a little bit to the right and then go straight and then turn a little bit. And now you have to make your way home with the memory of what that all looked like when it was clear.
And then a little while later you get another flash of lightning and that allows you to course correct, and figure out how to get home. The same is true with life. You have those moments, those flashes of inspiration. But those are not real. It's not really light. You have moments where you see those things clearly. You have those moments where you feel inspired. But if I think that that inspiration is there to last forever, I'm setting myself up for a life of disappointment. The inspiration lasts exactly as long as it has to. And as soon as I think this is the way it's supposed to be, that's exactly when it ends.
So you might ask, "Why would God create the world that way? Why would the Almighty make us in a way that we have this artificial fake experience at the beginning of the process?" I think in relationships, we understand this analogy the best. What is infatuation? What is the initial stage of a relationship where we feel this deep romance? We feel all the feels. The fireworks and the feelings and the emotion, and just this walking on clouds experience. What is that? What is infatuation? It is, I think, the most tangible way we can understand phase number one. It is completely artificial, it's fake. So why would God give it to us?
And as soon as we think it's going to last forever, it doesn't. And then we say, "You know what? Maybe this relationship is not what I thought it was. Maybe it's broken. Or even worse, maybe I'm broken. Maybe she's broken." The Almighty gave us the gift of phase one to show us how great phase three can really be. It's a preview, it's a taste. Just like in the trailer, you get to see the best parts of the movie without watching the whole movie. Phase one is a trailer of phase three. But we can't skip the phase in the middle. We can't skip the work of phase two or else we'll never truly get to phase three. But if we do it right, phase three is just as remarkable and magical and exciting as phase one. But now it's real.
You see this all the time. You have a friend who's dating a girl and he tells you, "Oh, she is perfect." First of all, if you say someone is perfect, you know that is a red flag. But he says, "No, she is perfect. She's amazing. And she's funny. And I feel so great when I'm with her." And sometimes all those things are true, but more often than not, it's not true. And the friends are all looking at each other, like, "What does he see in her? This girl is a psycho." And yet he cannot see it. Why? Because he's infatuated. And as we said, infatuation is blind as a bat. And only once the relationship is over, does the guy say, "What was I thinking? She was totally wrong for me. But I couldn't see it because the three parts of my soul were not in the proper order. I wasn't thinking with my head."
Once a person enters that infatuation stage, it's so hard to think clearly. And what makes it even worse? What makes it even more difficult is when the relationship becomes physical. Because as soon as it becomes physical, now I am completely lost hook, line and sinker. When we think that stage one, infatuation, is really love. When we confuse love and infatuation, we make really bad choices. The reality is that real love takes a lifetime to build. In describing Isaac and Rebecca's relationship, the Bible tells us that Rebecca became his wife and then he loved her. And many people look at this verse and they say, "It's out of order. Surely he loved Rebecca first and only then married her. Why would he have married her if he didn't love her?"
What it's teaching us is that true love takes a lifetime to build. And in Judaism marriage comes first. If your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, then don't get married. I tell this to every single couple that I marry. Every single time I officiate a wedding, my blessing to the bride and groom is that this should not be the happiest day of your life. If it is, don't do it. And we see this so often, couples who live together for years and decades and they're happy and everything's great. And then all of a sudden they get married and within six months they're divorced. What went wrong? Now that they're married, things became real. Now there's a real level of commitment. And you know what? Relationships are hard. Relationships take work.
The problem is that we grow up with these ridiculous ideas that we get from fairy tales. I mean, just look at the story of Cinderella for a second. Years ago I was reading ... I wasn't actually reading, you'll see in a second. But I was tucking in my daughter, [Rahel 00:08:23] she was maybe three at the time, now she's 11. So this was a while ago. And we were laying down in her bed getting ready to go to sleep. And I had on my iPad this ebook which was the story of Cinderella. And it basically had the pictures and you pushed the button each page and it would read the words and continue to the next page. And I don't think I truly understood how stupid the story of Cinderella was until I heard this ebook reading it to my daughter. To Disney's defense, they did a much, much better job with the remake of Cinderella, with the real characters.
But at least in the original story, you have a prince who's looking for a princess. He dances with this girl and she runs off leaving behind a glass slipper. And they search the kingdom high and low, trying to find the girl whose foot fits in the glass slipper. And they're trying it on the ugly stepsisters and stop for a second and think about that. He wants to marry this woman, he doesn't even remember what she looks like. He can't pick her up out of a lineup. You're telling me the ugly stepsister who looks nothing like Cinderella, maybe that's her. I don't know. We're reading this page after page and at least in this book version, the prince is actually going along through the process. He doesn't know what the girl looks like. He knows nothing about her or aspirations or her thoughts or ideals or the things that are important to her. And yet he wants to spend the rest of his life with this girl.
And then all of a sudden Cinderella comes out, she tries on the slipper, it fits. And then the prince says, "Oh, that's the girl." Flip to the next page, they're getting married. They're standing there under their altar or at the altar, under their ... not quite a chuppah, but looks like a chuppah. And the prince turns to Cinderella and says, "I love you." Because of course they always have English accents. And she looks to the prince and says, "I love you, too." And the next page, they all lived happily ever after. Are you kidding me? That is the worst ending to the worst story ever. They lived happily ever after. They don't even know each other. What is the statistic probability that they lived happily ever after? No, I bet you, the next morning they had some blowout fight over some miscommunication because they don't know each other. They know nothing about each other and they probably don't even like each other. And the whole basis of their relationship was that a stupid shoe fit on her foot. Or that the prince like dancing with her.
Get the full transcript here: www.joidenver.com/zeropercent/17---what-is-love%3F-hopefully-more-than-baby-don't-hurt-me
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Episode transcript-
Hey everyone. I'm Menachem Lehrfield and this is Zero Percent. We are now wrapping up our Jewish life cycles with a conversation about relationships, from a Jewish perspective. Specifically where we see the growth mindset research in the Jewish approach to relationships, the Jewish approach to marriage. And I hope that it will help enhance your relationships again, whether you're Jewish or not.
So we left off last episode talking about the difference between love and infatuation. We said, love is not blind, love is a magnifying glass. Just as your parents love you more than anyone else, they also see your faults more than anyone else. The thing that is blind is infatuation. If you recall, we talked about the three phases of every human experience. There's phase one, the male phase, which is all about quick flashes of inspiration. Then comes the middle phase, the phase where it's unclear and it's difficult and it takes work and effort. But in that phase, in that stage, things become real. And that's why it's so hard, that's why it takes work and effort. That is the stage and the phase where real life happens. That is the growth mindset at its best. It's about rolling up our sleeves and working hard. And then the beauty of phase three is I get to experience phase one again, but this time it's real. This time it's worked for, its earned.
The Rambam Maimonides uses the analogy to describe these three phases and the concept of inspiration in general. With the analogy of a person who's lost on a dark night, and imagine it's pitch black and you're lost trying to find your way home. And all of a sudden there's a flash of lightning. And in that instant, the entire sky lights up. I'm from Miami, we have these torrential downpours in the summer. And when you hear that crack of thunder followed by that lightning, that lights up the sky. You know what I'm talking about. The sky lights up and in that instant, you see everything clearly. But as soon as it comes, it goes. So now you have to reconstruct in your mind the way home. In that moment, in that instant, you saw everything clearly, you understood you have to move a little bit to the right and then go straight and then turn a little bit. And now you have to make your way home with the memory of what that all looked like when it was clear.
And then a little while later you get another flash of lightning and that allows you to course correct, and figure out how to get home. The same is true with life. You have those moments, those flashes of inspiration. But those are not real. It's not really light. You have moments where you see those things clearly. You have those moments where you feel inspired. But if I think that that inspiration is there to last forever, I'm setting myself up for a life of disappointment. The inspiration lasts exactly as long as it has to. And as soon as I think this is the way it's supposed to be, that's exactly when it ends.
So you might ask, "Why would God create the world that way? Why would the Almighty make us in a way that we have this artificial fake experience at the beginning of the process?" I think in relationships, we understand this analogy the best. What is infatuation? What is the initial stage of a relationship where we feel this deep romance? We feel all the feels. The fireworks and the feelings and the emotion, and just this walking on clouds experience. What is that? What is infatuation? It is, I think, the most tangible way we can understand phase number one. It is completely artificial, it's fake. So why would God give it to us?
And as soon as we think it's going to last forever, it doesn't. And then we say, "You know what? Maybe this relationship is not what I thought it was. Maybe it's broken. Or even worse, maybe I'm broken. Maybe she's broken." The Almighty gave us the gift of phase one to show us how great phase three can really be. It's a preview, it's a taste. Just like in the trailer, you get to see the best parts of the movie without watching the whole movie. Phase one is a trailer of phase three. But we can't skip the phase in the middle. We can't skip the work of phase two or else we'll never truly get to phase three. But if we do it right, phase three is just as remarkable and magical and exciting as phase one. But now it's real.
You see this all the time. You have a friend who's dating a girl and he tells you, "Oh, she is perfect." First of all, if you say someone is perfect, you know that is a red flag. But he says, "No, she is perfect. She's amazing. And she's funny. And I feel so great when I'm with her." And sometimes all those things are true, but more often than not, it's not true. And the friends are all looking at each other, like, "What does he see in her? This girl is a psycho." And yet he cannot see it. Why? Because he's infatuated. And as we said, infatuation is blind as a bat. And only once the relationship is over, does the guy say, "What was I thinking? She was totally wrong for me. But I couldn't see it because the three parts of my soul were not in the proper order. I wasn't thinking with my head."
Once a person enters that infatuation stage, it's so hard to think clearly. And what makes it even worse? What makes it even more difficult is when the relationship becomes physical. Because as soon as it becomes physical, now I am completely lost hook, line and sinker. When we think that stage one, infatuation, is really love. When we confuse love and infatuation, we make really bad choices. The reality is that real love takes a lifetime to build. In describing Isaac and Rebecca's relationship, the Bible tells us that Rebecca became his wife and then he loved her. And many people look at this verse and they say, "It's out of order. Surely he loved Rebecca first and only then married her. Why would he have married her if he didn't love her?"
What it's teaching us is that true love takes a lifetime to build. And in Judaism marriage comes first. If your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, then don't get married. I tell this to every single couple that I marry. Every single time I officiate a wedding, my blessing to the bride and groom is that this should not be the happiest day of your life. If it is, don't do it. And we see this so often, couples who live together for years and decades and they're happy and everything's great. And then all of a sudden they get married and within six months they're divorced. What went wrong? Now that they're married, things became real. Now there's a real level of commitment. And you know what? Relationships are hard. Relationships take work.
The problem is that we grow up with these ridiculous ideas that we get from fairy tales. I mean, just look at the story of Cinderella for a second. Years ago I was reading ... I wasn't actually reading, you'll see in a second. But I was tucking in my daughter, [Rahel 00:08:23] she was maybe three at the time, now she's 11. So this was a while ago. And we were laying down in her bed getting ready to go to sleep. And I had on my iPad this ebook which was the story of Cinderella. And it basically had the pictures and you pushed the button each page and it would read the words and continue to the next page. And I don't think I truly understood how stupid the story of Cinderella was until I heard this ebook reading it to my daughter. To Disney's defense, they did a much, much better job with the remake of Cinderella, with the real characters.
But at least in the original story, you have a prince who's looking for a princess. He dances with this girl and she runs off leaving behind a glass slipper. And they search the kingdom high and low, trying to find the girl whose foot fits in the glass slipper. And they're trying it on the ugly stepsisters and stop for a second and think about that. He wants to marry this woman, he doesn't even remember what she looks like. He can't pick her up out of a lineup. You're telling me the ugly stepsister who looks nothing like Cinderella, maybe that's her. I don't know. We're reading this page after page and at least in this book version, the prince is actually going along through the process. He doesn't know what the girl looks like. He knows nothing about her or aspirations or her thoughts or ideals or the things that are important to her. And yet he wants to spend the rest of his life with this girl.
And then all of a sudden Cinderella comes out, she tries on the slipper, it fits. And then the prince says, "Oh, that's the girl." Flip to the next page, they're getting married. They're standing there under their altar or at the altar, under their ... not quite a chuppah, but looks like a chuppah. And the prince turns to Cinderella and says, "I love you." Because of course they always have English accents. And she looks to the prince and says, "I love you, too." And the next page, they all lived happily ever after. Are you kidding me? That is the worst ending to the worst story ever. They lived happily ever after. They don't even know each other. What is the statistic probability that they lived happily ever after? No, I bet you, the next morning they had some blowout fight over some miscommunication because they don't know each other. They know nothing about each other and they probably don't even like each other. And the whole basis of their relationship was that a stupid shoe fit on her foot. Or that the prince like dancing with her.
Get the full transcript here: www.joidenver.com/zeropercent/17---what-is-love%3F-hopefully-more-than-baby-don't-hurt-me
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