The 4 Easy Ways to Improve Your Marriage — Harvard Professor Arthur Brooks

0:00 Here's how you fix every marriage. You do four things. Number one, you have more fun together as opposed to rehearsing grievance. More fun, less grievance. Therapy is like grievance, grievance, grievance. And have more fun together. Number two, >> and how long have you been married? >> 34 years. >> Mhm. Okay. >> Second is pray together >> because you're the fusion. One flesh is the fusion of the right hemispheres of your brains. >> This is the goal. If you get married to him, the goal is to fuse your right hemispheres. The best way to do that is by meditating together, is by praying together, is by doing right hemisphere activity together.

0:35 >> The third protocol is to make eye contact whenever you talk. >> Never be talking without making eye contact. Way more important for your wife than it is for you. >> Way more important because she gets three times as much oxytocin, which means she's better at bonding, but it also means that she's better at starving when she's not getting enough oxytocin. eye contact from the beloved which is you know when you have eye contact with a newborn baby oxytocin is like the fourth of July inside your head which is why you wouldn't leave the baby on the bus because suddenly the baby's kin right it's an evolved phenomenon and last but not least is remember ABT always be touching always be touching always be touching more important for men than for women as a matter of fact that's why when you're with your beloved and she hooks her arm into your arm while you're walking down the street you're like I'm big and strong why because that's super important so the Last thing before you go to bed when you're reading to each other or when you're talking, go five minutes earlier to bed. 5 minutes earlier to bed and stare at each other.

1:33 >> And it's hard. >> Yeah. >> It's scary. It's like the eyes according to St. Paul are the windows to the soul. >> And that's when you know you really feel it. And biologically the reason is because oxytocin is just like old faithful >> for her. She will love you more if you have 5 to 10 minutes of intense eye contact before you go to sleep while you're holding hands under the covers. And by the way, for anyone who has not tried this, >> you've done this, right?

2:02 >> I have done this. >> 5 to 10 minutes is so long. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> It's really intense. >> You could start lower. >> You can start lower. Here's the most intense exercise you can do if you want like the break glass plan for fixing your relationship. Right? Here's what you do. >> You stand in front of each other staring at each other in the eyes, silent, >> and you hold your arms out to the side like in an iron cross holding hands like this for eight minutes.

2:33 >> And so what's going on here? >> The Shaolin monk therapy school. >> Yeah. You know, it's super painful. And it's going to be more painful for you because after about four minutes, you're holding her arms up, right? So he's like 5 lb weights in each hand. And so you're in intense excruciating pain while having your soul opened with a crowbar, right? >> And this is like intense. >> How did you arrive at this? >> I've experimented with this and also I read the research, right? And and I participated in the research. I've actually done this a number of times.

3:01 There's a number of religious traditions that will do exercises actually that are like this. >> I did one in Spain last year. It's called El Pto Moroyal and that's the marital love project. It's a very big deal across Spain. It's not in English yet. And so it was in a little retreat center outside Madrid and we were seeing cuz my wife and I we do a lot of talks together and you know we counsel couples that are that are engaged etc. This is our side hustle right is you know helping people fall in love and stay in love.

3:30 >> Yeah. >> And so we were like what's this method everybody's so crazy about? We were doing stuff like this and it was like holy mackerel. I mean because they don't know how much neuroscience they're actually doing. >> Yeah. >> Somebody came up with this and said I wonder if this works. It's like >> it's really really heavy. It's just topnotch >> neuroscience matched up with it's as left and right brain as you can get. >> Wow. And also not yet in English. That sounds like a job for Arthur Brooks and some AI tools and Esther Brooks. She's she's the spiritual leader in our family. There you go. Job for Esther who wouldn't need the AI.