Why Are Liberal Women Becoming Unhappy? - Brad Wilcox

What do you think about the story of the book Eat Pray Love?

You know, Liz Gilbert's book obviously got a lot of attention, a- a lot of popularity among women especially, and, you know, it's at kind of first glance really attractive and appealing. Um, but what's, I think, striking about the book is that she kind of ends off by, you know, this sort of storybook romance in impossibly romantic Bali in Indonesia. She meets what seems like the perfect guy who's a feminist, a great cook, a great lover, et cetera, et cetera. They have this in- incredible connection. But then you learn 10 years later, Chris, what do you think happens?

Mm. Did... I- I already know th- how this story ends, unfortunately, because I did my research.

Yeah, she leaves him for a, for another, uh, (laughs) another soulmate. And so, the, the point I make about this story in my own book is that we have a, kinda like this soulmate myth out there. There's kinda, like, the perfect person that will complete us, with whom we'll have, like, really no major problems, and with whom we'll have a kind of this incredible kind of romantic and emotional connection o- on a pretty regular basis. And, you know, I think the Eat Pray Love book and the last kind of, you know, storybook romance that she gives us in that book is kind of emblematic of this whole way of thinking and approaching relationships, love, and marriage. And yet, the problem with it, of course, is that by making feelings the foundation of love, feelings the foundation of marriage, you're kind of putting things on a very insecure footing. And that's why what we see in, in the real world is that Liz Gilbert seems to go from one person to the next on a regular basis, um, including the guy that she meets at the end of, again, Eat Pray Love.

I noticed that you degendered person because she pivoted from the guy in Bali to a woman for, I think, about five years, and then, really sadly, uh, that person passed away. And then she started dating the woman's best friend, who was a guy, and then recently announced that she was happily single at 55 and had broken up with that. So look, uh, Elizabeth Gilbert, fantastic book, uh, did very, very well, super successful. But I do think it's fair to say that she makes for a, uh, tenuous role model for happy marriage and love. I, I don't think that that's a particularly controversial thing to say.

Yeah, so I think kind of looking at love and marriage as primarily an opportunity to kind of have this strong emotional connection. And she talks too in her book about kind of her desire to kind of directly pursue happiness. If that's kind of... If you've kind of this more romanticized understanding of love and if you're directly seeking happiness in love or in marriage, I think you're kind of headed for trouble. And I think certainly her, her own life is emblematic of the way in which at least if kind of, like, your goal is to have a strong and stable marriage and family, kind of taking the Liz Gilbert soul matey approach to, uh, to love and marriage is not a, uh, a great strategy.