Robin:

Hello, Agnes.

Agnes:

Hi, Robin.

Robin:

So Taylor Swift got married.

Agnes:

Exactly. That's the topic of our podcast today. She didn't get married yet, though. She's engaged.

Robin:

Or got engaged. Yes.

Agnes:

Yes. We're gonna do a different podcast about her wedding.

Robin:

Okay. Good. Look forward.

Agnes:

Clearly separate those two things. Alright. So it's kind of a crisis situation that Taylor Swift is getting married because Taylor Swift is known for love songs that are either songs about how love doesn't work out and you're you're you are living in the aftermath and devastation of a failed relationship or there's songs about sort of getting together and the magic of the love's beginning. Those are most of her songs are about one of those two things, and I think it's a little bit hard to imagine what is Taylor Swift going to sing about once she's married.

Robin:

Taylor Swift isn't the first person who fell in love and wrote love songs and got married. Right? So there's two separate questions. One is, what will Taylor Swift do? But then, what do people do in general in this situation?

Agnes:

So Okay.

Robin:

Many of us have transitioned from early butterflies love to a long term marriage and attachment. We've gone through those transitions in many different ways, but for many of us, that seems like there is a continuum or connection there. But Taylor doesn't see it yet, but maybe she will.

Agnes:

Right. So the question is, can you see the connection? Can you draw a through line, right, that starts with the falling in love and and it continues on through marriage? Okay. So, like, here's here's, like, the first problem with that. A lot of Taylor Swift songs are about her breakups and how she is devastated about those breakups. And that she is kind of haunted by the ghosts of her old loves is a picture that we have of her from her socks. And but you can't be married and be haunted by the ghosts of all I think you can date. I think you can even be in relationships. But can you be married and be haunted by the ghosts of your old loves? And if you're not haunted by the ghosts of your old loves, then when you sang those songs about how you would never be able to get over it, you were just not telling the truth.

Robin:

Well, sure, but we do slowly get over things. Almost even war crimes and all sorts of terrible things in people's lives that are just crush them even for a few years afterwards, they they do fade away.

Agnes:

Okay. So that's an important premise. We get over things that we don't think we're gonna get over. Right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

So you might express how upset you are about something. Like, I was collecting lyrics where she was like, naked on the floor, drowning, crying and screaming, lying on the cold hard ground.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

A lot of on the floor, naked and alone, barefoot in the wildest winter, like, this is like the disaster of her life after the breakup. My husband was listening one time and he's like, why are they always lying on the ground with no clothes on? She should just she should get up off the ground. She should put on some clothes, maybe a coat. It'll get better. There's this wall kind of wallowing. Right? Right. Lying on the floor, I can't get up. Okay. So that's part of the ethos of the breakup. But your thought is, yeah, it might look like you're never gonna get over it, but you are gonna get over it.

Robin:

I mean, it might be true that you'll never get completely over it. I think there is knowledge in that. There are some things we get completely over, and other things that we never get completely over, and it's worth distinguishing that. But not getting completely over is different than never getting over it at all enough, say, to have a new relationship or even get married.

Agnes:

See, I think there's a big difference between having a relationship and get married there. That is, I think it's typical even for people who are going out on a date or starting a new relationship with someone to be explicit even about the fact that they are bringing in the baggage of their old old relationship. That's often a topic that will get discussed on early dates, it's like how bad the ex was. But it seems to me that there's a difference between that that when you're getting married, that that's not okay anymore. That is you somehow need to erase those x's once you get married. Now maybe you can only, like, 95 erase them. It's okay.

Robin:

Right. So there's this interesting phenomena of the rebound relationship

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

Which suggests the rule that you only ever get stuck on the last relationship, not two relationships ago, as the rebound is sort of blocking off the one, two things ago. That's the whole idea of it. So maybe the only ever risk is the last relationship, and are you over that? And once you're over the last relationship, then maybe it's okay to get fully immersed into this one and even get married.

Agnes:

Right. So maybe each relationship discharges the previous one.

Robin:

In some important way.

Agnes:

It's it's accepted and understood that you're still hung up on the previous guy. Possibly. But then right. Possibly. But then but then you're supposed to be the the the new guy should cure you eventually of that to the point where then you can marry him.

Robin:

Well, rebound relationship, apparently the idea that you don't intend to stay with the rebound very long, and their whole function is to just distance from the previous one, and so now it's gonna be

Agnes:

rebound from them.

Robin:

No. But the point is, they're easier to leave. So the whole point of a rebound relationship is you're gonna be able to get over them because of the nature of the relationship or the sort of person they are. You're not as attached to them. You're not as into them, but you're into them enough that they push away the prior one, and now you can transition to the serious relationship afterwards. That's the whole idea of the rebound relationship.

Agnes:

It's Hey. Fine. But that's not a very Taylor Swift idea. That Okay. She's she's a romantic, and I don't know of any song of hers. I may just not be thinking of it, but I don't know of any song of hers where she's like, I'm gonna have a rebound relationship with you, and then it'll be you'll be easy to break up. There's certainly songs where she's like, I'm not that into you.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

But she's not that calculating. But okay. I wanna, like, I wanna, like, systematically pull together what I take to be the features of love according to Taylor Swift's songs to in order to kind of substantiate my claim that there's a puzzle about the very possibility of Taylor Swift getting engaged. Okay. So there are three features of Taylor Swift songs that I think are what you would draw away from her songs if you were an alien listening to her songs, and you were like, what is human love like? K? The first is that it's super dramatic. You're it either goes incredibly well and you're in heaven and everything is perfect and the lover gives you everything you could possibly ever want, or it's the worst thing ever and you're barefoot in the drowning, you know, etcetera. Like, those are the only two possibilities. That is love, according to Taylor Swift's song, is something that never fades into the background and becomes your third or fourth priority. It's always the number one thing happening because it fully determines how happy you are. It makes you either perfectly contented or perfectly miserable. That's feature number one. Feature number two is that love is this special little isolated bubble world that's just built for the two people who are in it, and they they constitute it because they are somehow the perfect couple who have always been meant to be, Even in fact, in other worlds in in a different life, You Also Would Have Been Mine is like one of her songs. Right? So even in other possible worlds, these two beasts would still have gotten together because, you know, they're the perfect other half. There's an invisible thread that binds them, etcetera. And they live in this bubble because they speak secret languages that other people can't understand, and they uniquely understand each other. He's the only one who knows her. She's the only one who can decode him, etcetera. And the result of that is that the world I have a whole classification of songs. There are 10 songs that fall into this classification. They'll never understand our love, so we have to run away. So the world does not understand this little bubble that we're in, and it's constantly trying to puncture our bubble and destroy our love. It's like Romeo and Juliet, and so we have to run away. Okay. That's feature number two is the the love bubble. And then feature number three is love is a story. So that's just like, you know, she has songs called Love Story, and she set describes herself as a storyteller. And in fact, she is telling stories in her songs, and, you know, there's there might be a happy ending, there might be a sad ending, but it has her songs typically have a kind of narrative structure to them. So if you were listening to her songs, you'd be like, oh, okay. I guess love is a story about, you know, people that are in a kind of bubble, and it's super dramatic. Those are that's that's the account you would have of love.

Robin:

So it seems to me the problem here you didn't say explicitly, let me just try to say it explicitly, is that the story apparently needs these first two features to be true throughout the entire story. They can't the story of love leading to marriage would be a story where those first two features are part of the first part of the story, but they don't continue on until the rest of the story. And for some reason, wanna say, no, the whole story needs to have these first two features through the entire story. And then at the end of the story, therefore, the story's over, so you would have to start a new story, which is the marriage. It can't be the continuation of the love story, because the love story needs these first two stories to be there features to be there through the entire story.

Agnes:

There you go. I I hadn't gotten yet to the part about marriage. So I just wanted to first lay out the features of love. And now once we have the seizures of love, we can ask, okay, can there be can can marriage be understood as a continuation of love, or is there love after marriage? And we assume this is what love is, then we then I think the prima facie answer is no. That is in marriage, first, it just can't be that dramatic all the time. You have to go on with your life, and you have jobs, and you have projects. And then second, marriage typically is gonna involve other people that are in some sense part of your married life. It might be your kids, or it might be just the fact that your marriage is integrated into a social world of family and friends, etcetera. That is the the world hates our love is not a story of marriage. The wedding itself is a story of the world is celebrating our love. Right? Opposite of we have to run away. And and then, like, the the story of love sort of positions the marriage as the happily ever after of the love. And that makes it seem like the the marriage itself, it can't be a story. The marriage has to be the happy ending. Okay. So these are some problems with But

Robin:

why couldn't you just have a larger story where the marriage is the second part of the story, and the story continues, but it doesn't continue with the first two elements of the initial story, which are these two elements of the small world, and the, you know, all consuming. Why must the entire story have those features, is the key question here. You're saying, you know, the end, marriage is the end of the story, and by definition, they can't continue on to have a story if it's the end of a a particular story. But why can't it just be the end of the first chapter of the story?

Agnes:

So I think that I mean, I think it can be the end of the love story. It's just there's a question of the can it contain love as that?

Robin:

Well, can there be other kinds of love other than this one kind of love, which is the beginning?

Agnes:

So, like, it could be like once you're married, it's like you have a pet or something. But the point is we have this conception of romantic love, and that conception of romantic love has been exhausted by these three features. That is what I'm saying is there isn't more in the in the, at least, Taylor Swift love world than small world and passion. And so if you say, well, we still after that, we still have love, but it just doesn't have Those features. Features of romantic love, then you still you have something, but you don't what you have is not gonna be love.

Robin:

Well, it couldn't be it might not be early love. You can have a story where early love is different than later love, and early love has these features, but later love is still love.

Agnes:

So that's like a little bit like saying, look, I mean, there's there's early life, you know, that's from when you're born, and and you go to school, and you get older, you grow old, and then you die. And then there's later life when your corpse is rammed, and that's part two. That's also a kind of life, it's later life. And the point is, well, but tell me something about the life. Tell me something about the features of that life that made it life y. Right? And then I would say things like, you can get up and walk around. And you're like, yeah, well in the second stage of life you can't get up and walk around, but it's still life. And I'd be like, no no, that's not life anymore. And so similarly you might think, look, if you if you don't have the passion and you don't have the small world, then the thing that the thing that made the early part called love means the second part can't be called love anymore.

Robin:

So let me extend this to two analogies that have a similar structure.

Agnes:

Okay.

Robin:

So that maybe we can learn by use trying to think about all three at once, rather than just this one example. The analogies are, one is a sort of research idea project. So imagine, like you and I do, as researchers, the stage of our research projects include search for an idea, and then there's the moment of discovering an idea, and sort of elaborating the idea. And then there's the long period of grind of sort of working out the details, and writing something up, and getting editor feedback, and getting, you know, referees, and then going out and giving talks. Right? And we might think that's all part of the research project, but there's a certain romantic ideal of innovation and insight, which is it only includes the point up to having the insight, and then after that, that's something else, And that's the corpse of the idea, you might say, because you're not actually elaborating the idea, you're just polishing its presentation and presenting it to people. So that's one analogy. And a second analogy is revolution. So, there's this idea of a group of, you know, a youthful generation in some area, perhaps sort of getting to be dissatisfied, coming to realize they're all dissatisfied, coming together to lobby for a revolution, maybe fighting and, you know, getting killed, or barricades. And then, there's the final point where they might win the revolution, and then there's a new government, and now somebody's governing, and there's peace again. And, you know, you might think the whole point of the revolution was to produce this revolutionary change, but once it happens, the revolution's over. And you might think, and many writings about the revolutionary spirit, and the revolutionary energy, and how great a revolution is, is about that early stage, which is trying to achieve the stage of making a change, but once the change happens, then, you know, you might think, well, you need to continue on to actually make it work, and to realize it, and to find problems there, but you might be so attached to the romance of revolution. You might think, no, no, no. We need the continual revolution, and we need to continually be making more changes and bigger changes because that's the only way to stay in revolutionary spirit. Mhmm. So these are two analogous things, or again, there's a process you might think of as a single long term process, but there's an early stage of intense passion, idealism, overwhelming focus, and reaches a peak of ideal, you know, admirable splendor, but then after that peak, it's not actually achieving its purpose unless you do a bunch of other stuff that's less high, less grand, less emotionally intense, less all in engrossed in a smaller sphere of compatriots. Does this help us to see three examples?

Agnes:

So, like, I think with the the research project, right, you might well say, look. There was the fun part of the story where you got to, like, sync something up, and you got to have, like, this experience of innovation and this kind of epiphany or whatever of the idea. And maybe you're not gonna have so much fun anymore, but you gotta do the hard work in order to produce this valuable thing, the the paper or the contribution or whatever. And so what if you don't have all the the that positive feeling or something that you associate with that earlier stage? And with the revolution, we might say similarly, look, I mean, it was those were fun times back in the barricades and so on, and there's something we enjoyed about that. But we can put that to bed, and now we can enjoy peace. And in both of those cases, I think we're sort of okay with saying that the third the stage, the product or the piece is just very different in kind and just doesn't have much to do with that, you know, enthusiastic spirit that animated the insight or the or the revolution.

Robin:

Well, it's different in kind, but it causally is connected. That is

Agnes:

Causally connected. Right. But that's just to say there is no love after marriage. It's just that marriage is caused by love. And I think most people do not wanna say that. They don't wanna say that there's only a causal link between the thing Taylor Swift is talking about and the thing you're supposed to feel during marriage. And part of that is because we don't actually evaluate a marriage fully by its products. Okay. Children are important and, like, yes, but but it's not like a research paper where you then put something out there into the world, nor is it like a revolution where you then put then create peace.

Robin:

So

Agnes:

could have the idea that marriage

Robin:

Let's go with the other examples. I think if you you know, the guy has the insight, and he writes it up in a book, and he goes out on a speaking tour, and you're in the audience listening to this guy speaking, you're not going to say, oh, I wish I could have met the guy who had the idea. This guy in front of me, he's not the idea guy. He's just the guy who wrote a book and, you know, talks about it. Or in a revolution, you know, I I visited Cuba a few years ago, you know, you might be out there and see Castro speaking, and somebody might say, look, the revolutionary Castro, here he is our leader. You say, that's not the revolutionary anymore. The revolutionary died a long time ago. This is just the administrator of the new, you know, government after the revolution. I think in both cases, we want to see this person in front of us as the innovator and the revolutionary. So, there's a way in which we want to see that process continuing in this new form, and I think there is some sense to that. That would be the analogous sense in which seeing the happily married couple is seeing love.

Agnes:

I think that, like, if you had the author come to you to give you a talk, you might wanna have access to that, like, inside spirit through memory. What was it like when you first came? People do actually do that, but they ask you that a line when you are on a book tour is like, how did you decide to write this book? And, like, what made you decide to write they they they're they're they're questing after this moment of epiphany, which I hate in for most people write books. Like, for me, there was no such moment. There wasn't that like, oh, now I have the idea. I'm going to write the book. Like, that's Right. For me. But but that's what they would love to hear. So I think you're right. They want access to that. But that is a report of, like, about of a memory of something that happened in the past.

Robin:

And Well, I don't think it's just that. I think the person in front of you is, in fact, the revolutionary or the insightful person. Their memory of the event is supporting the idea that they still have that feature to some substantial degree.

Agnes:

I don't know. I mean, I think that they have it in virtue of their being numerically identical with the person up with the idea at some time in the past. But

Robin:

Okay. So it seems to me the main issue for you here is just that in the case of the research project and the revolution, you can see why we would want the early process in part to create the later events, and you less see that for the relation of love and marriage. For love and marriage, you less see why someone in love should be interested in using the love process to create the later marriage process, that they should see that as a natural progression, that they should be willing to lose the love to get the marriage in the way they might be willing to lose the insight to get the, you know, book, or they might lose the revolution to get the peaceful government.

Agnes:

They lose the insight experience. They're not losing the insight.

Robin:

Okay. Right. But still.

Agnes:

Inside experience, there's like a the thrill of the insight or something, and they might just be like, yeah. You know, even Einstein be like, yeah. I'm not gonna have that all the time, you know. Right. Like a kind of short window, and then, you know, I worked out some of the ideas. Right. That that's something they're willing to sacrifice. And then the question is, it's a little bit like the question about getting over the breakups, actually. They're just getting over love. Right? That is if you went to the lover at the at the height of their passion or something

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

One of those Taylor Swift moments, they've just fallen in love. They're, like, staring into each other's eyes and Right. You're like, would you like to give all this up in favor of some stability and, like, comfort and, like, you know, you kinda hang out together?

Robin:

Or even children, a place in society?

Agnes:

And and right. And you get a place in society and you get children, but you give all this up. I mean, I think that the people in Taylor Swift songs would say no.

Robin:

But I think she could have written or somebody like her could have written songs about the research project or the revolution where they depicted somebody in the thrill of the insight or in the peak of about to achieve success in the revolution, and also depicted them as so liking this state and experience that they didn't wanna give it up. That also seems to be if you're focused just on the experience, the emotion and the experience and the intensity and and the rightness of the experience, you might similarly not wanna give those up. I mean, for example, I claim that it's actually a problem for me, that I'm so into the inside experience that I do find it hard to give that up in order to produce the grinding, you know, product respected by the world version of it. Right. And many revolutionaries have, in fact, tried to continue the revolution by continuing to make changes. Like the Chinese revolutionaries, Mao, weren't content to just win, then they kept wanting to change society repeatedly to cause more and more revolutionary changes to the society because they wanted to continue in the state of revolution.

Agnes:

Right. So maybe there's, like, a general problem here, which is that we're motivated by certain states. That is, we're motivated because we like to be in those states, but the states are self extinguishing.

Robin:

Think about eating a meal. I mean, before the meal, you might think of the moment when you put the food in your mouth and it's so very tasty, and that's what you're looking for in the meal. But then at the end of the meal, you will be the satisfied full state where you're not very interested in putting more food in your mouth.

Agnes:

Yeah. But I know that when I go for a meal. I I I go into meals with my eyes wide open. Okay. I'm fine with that. Like, I'm fine with just, I'm gonna have this fun experience of satiating my hunger for a little while, and then it will be over. But I just do not think that the revolutionaries, the lovers, or the researchers are fine with that. They're not fine with it ending. They're they're living under the

Robin:

And it might be just because these don't happen as often in our lives. That is it's maybe the main difference in the meals. We just eat several times a day, and after many years, we've just seen the whole cycle, and so we're pretty sure it'll come again. Whereas with

Agnes:

Insights, like, one every three days, so I don't think you can hide behind this.

Robin:

But I don't have my best ideas of my lifetime every few days.

Agnes:

Sure. But you're you still do have insight. Like, you have this the cycle. It might be a small you know, at a smaller scale.

Robin:

And I think, I mean, for many there are many people, maybe not a majority, of people for romance where they, in fact, want to just keep with the romance, and they don't want to have the late later, longer term stable relationship. And many people do actually make that choice.

Agnes:

Right. And they're looked down upon. I mean, people who just go Exactly. Leonardo DiCaprio with a new model every

Robin:

There's also the the idea of the thrill seeker. It's maybe less, in that case, about romance, but they might want to do skydiving, and then deep sea thing, and then, you know, some other climb on that mountain, and they just keep going after the thrills. Gamblers are often also apparently like this, like problem gamblers. The story is it's the thrill of the risk that sucks them back in. That is, they might have this thrill where they bet all this money, and then they finally win, and it's so thrilling. And then you might think, you're set for life. You don't need to gamble anymore. Go, no, no, I need to do this again.

Agnes:

Good. So I think that there's a potential way to respond to this objection. That I think this is of this as an objection to that is I think the thrill seeking approach to love, ideas, or politics seems like a mistake. And and I think there seems to me to be something wrong with just chasing after the love high over and over again with, you know, a series of people such that as soon as it kind of settles into something, you gotta find the next one. And and and the reason it seems wrong is it seems like you're chasing after something that you don't actually wanna have.

Robin:

It's let's so for example, in venture capital, there is this idea that people start businesses, and once they get them going or they fail, then they start another one, and their life is a series of many businesses they start. But in that world, it seems okay.

Agnes:

I I I think that's right. So I I I'm not saying that all thrill seeking is bad. I'm saying that there's at least an argument that I'm about to give you that thrill seeking, it in this particular kind of thrill seeking in the space of ideas, politics, and love is bad. That is that you shouldn't be that kind of revolutionary who's just keeping on starting revolution. You shouldn't be that kind of lover, and you shouldn't be that kind of scientist or whatever. Though maybe you should be that kind of businessman. I'm leaving the business family open. But the idea is that you the thing you have when you're experiencing the greatest thrill is actually a bit illusory. That is, it's a kind of image that is let's say it contains a lot of heuristic shortcuts at the minimum, and that it it's like a picture of something, but not the real thing. And so, for example, the thing that, you know, shows up over and over again in this love bubble thing in Taylor Swift songs is that the lovers are having this experience that no one could understand who wasn't one of those two people. They're having this this sort of radically private unshareable experience that she is singing about in a song to millions of people, all of whom are like, yeah. I totally get what's going there. Right? Or they're speaking in this private, a very idiosyncratic language, and they're using the same phrases everybody has always used to talk about love. Somehow this private language is exactly the same private language as every other love private language. Right. So but there's something funny about that. And that what that suggests is that they have the idea of a very private form of communication in which they know each other extremely well and idiosyncratically, but this actually isn't that. This is just the idea of that. Or the scientists, right, you might think, you come up with this great idea, but you haven't actually sort of worked it out. You haven't worked out all the details, and so it has all these fuzzy spots or these hazy spots that where it's indeterminate how it's gonna meet the world and actually cause a benefit to the world. Or in the revolution case, it's like you have this idea that the society around you is wrong, but you don't have an idea of something of what it would be if it worked, what what should right? Of the good. And so in all these cases, there's something wrong with just sticking with that, with that kind of image or picture that leaves the crucial details in a blurry state?

Robin:

So let me invoke the sacred. There's this ideal of ideals, which is almost all ideals are imagined to be special and unique. That is ideal love, and ideal scientific insight, and ideal revolution, and many other kinds of ideals, they're not only distinguished from ordinary life by being better, they're distinguished by being more special, and unique, and even unexplained by ordinary processes. I think people crave being special, and being part of special, And what that means is, the special things they find, if they achieve them, need to be somehow not very easily substitutable or similar to other people's special things.

Agnes:

Mhmm.

Robin:

That's part of what it means to be special, really. And this is just very common in all of our ideals, and all of our things that we treat as sacred. It's just very common that anything that really motivates us that seems the peak of something we're going for, it can't seem to be just like a 100 others elsewhere.

Agnes:

Right. But

Robin:

takes away from its specialness.

Agnes:

Right. But, like, if the special thing that the lovers are gonna do for which each is irreplaceable to the other is that they're gonna stare into each other's eyes, as happens often in Taylor Swift's eyes.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

You could actually literally substitute any human. That we're all we can all stare into someone else's eyes.

Robin:

Right. But that's not some a truth we wanna face. That's a point. That that's one of our delusions that we find precious.

Agnes:

Right. But maybe, like, one thought might be, so we have this idea of, look, we have this special activity that only me and my lover can do. No one else can do it. It's staring into each other's eyes. And we tell ourselves that, and somehow when you're in love, you can tell yourself that and be like, no. This is the first time anyone has ever stared into anyone else's eyes. But then and and so one way to think about that is, yeah, that's a big joke. It's a big lie. Like, it's a big self deception. It's we're somehow we're somehow so stupid that we could deceive ourselves about something where it's so obvious that everyone has done it, that there could be songs about it in which you hear about everyone does it and you still think you're special and you're the first one doing it. Okay? And then it's a big lie and then the and then that that poof disappears. Or you might think of it more aspirationally as there's a kind of vague idea of we understand each other in a way that is, you know, special and idiosyncratic and and in a way no other two people understand each other, that kind of understanding actually does, like, take a long time. It's not like it's not gonna happen at the love at first sight speed. It's not gonna happen in a month. And so then you might think that the marriage is the realization of the kind of deceptive image that's presented in the love, such that it's not just that we're lying about having this

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

Bubble world. It's that you can actually create it. But before you create it, in order to motivate yourself to create it, you have to lie to yourself and tell yourself that you already have it.

Robin:

In the case of the revolution and of the, you know, research insight, you could say, this feeling you have at the moment of the peak of the revolution or, you know, the the great fight for the revolution, the peak fighting moment, or the peak insight moment, you could feel that those are unique moments, and then, of course, realize that most everybody else who's in a revolution or a researcher is gonna feel something pretty similar in those moments. But the the uniqueness is that if you complete this process, you will have a unique insight or a unique revolution, a new form of government, and that there is a uniqueness there that is realized if you complete the process, and the same way for a marriage. You might say, like, I think I've said to you before this idea, you're not really anybody until somebody sees you all the way through, and that you have complete, you know, understanding of each other. And that can happen toward the end of a marriage after many decades, but it doesn't happen after two months of a intense romance. But that's the promise that is being, you know, basically embraced early on. The potential that we could become this unique thing is the thing we are celebrating early on and feeling that we have a unique relation.

Agnes:

That's right. That is that's not right according to the lyrics of Taylor Swift songs. According to the lyrics of Taylor Swift songs, what we embrace is that we're already there at the beginning. And the problem like and we're not. Right? Right. And but that's that may be the that may be an important character to certain kinds of pursuits is that it's pretty important that you sort of overreach. So you think, oh, look, I've achieved love. And that that's what falling in love refers to. It refers to the feeling that you've achieved love with someone in a very short time. That basically, you've come to know a perfect stranger totally in a very short time, which is impossible. You couldn't do that. Right? But you have the feeling of having done it. And that that feeling is not true in the sense that it doesn't correspond to reality, but Yep. It yet, but it can function as a kind of plan or a program. That's not how you see it, and it's important that that's not how you see it, I think. Because what we have to do is explain why it looks like if you were just going on Taylor Swift songs, there could be no luck.

Robin:

You're making the assumption that the thing I see at this moment is the thing at that moment in time.

Agnes:

So you may think maybe you see the future like a crystal ball?

Robin:

You I mean, you might think you are having this relationship with the future. You are trusting and believing in the future, and that's the thing you think you are seeing and holding onto at the present is this future thing. But it's interesting that then in love well, I mean, so I've heard this thing before. It's like people who are in a relationship and, you know, it seems to go well and then it breaks, and then they say, I never really loved them.

Agnes:

Mhmm.

Robin:

And you might think, well, thought you loved them. Yeah. But because it broke up, I never really loved them. And now that's a more future oriented concept of love. So but maybe that's when you might say, you're you're not really a revolutionary until your revolution succeeds. Otherwise, you're just a wannabe revolutionary, or you're not really an insightful person unless you generate something that the world understands and assimilates. Otherwise, you're just a wannabe insightful person. And we could think of the language of these things either as being about our state at that moment, or about something in the future that we are trying to hold to and have faith in.

Agnes:

So, again, I think if we're just going on Taylor Swift lyrics that first of all, there were just a whole lot of songs about how it didn't work out, and now I'm super heartbroken because it didn't work out. Not like, oh, I guess it wasn't love.

Robin:

But was it love? Does she say it still was love even though I'm now heartbroken?

Agnes:

She definitely said that.

Robin:

Okay. But I've heard many people say something else. So you can see how there's different ways of talking about love.

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

We don't have to accept Taylor Swift's framing of it here. Well,

Agnes:

this is this episode of our podcast is if is dedicated to the paradox of Taylor Swift's engagement. And we have some premises here. One of them is Taylor is being sincere in writing lyrics to our songs in in giving us her approach to love. And then the question question that we are asking is, supposing you have Taylor Swift's approach to love, which clearly has a lot of purchase on a lot of people because she's the most popular singer in the world. So it's not only gonna be Taylor Swift. Right? It's gonna be anyone who finds her songs compelling as I do, but maybe not everyone in the world. Then the question is, well, how do those people justify anything like getting engaged? Right? So I'm not claiming this is universal, but it is a lot of people. But so so I think it's a good point about and maybe it's even sort of a less romantic but more rational approach is to say that the experience of falling in love is like the experience of a window into the future or something like that, a a glimpse of what could be. But I think that a lot of us, a lot of the time, experience it as, no, a thing I have now, such that, for instance, people are devastated if if it doesn't work out, and they're like they maybe the point is they thought they were promised that thing. And so then it's like you're breaking a promise. She even tested one of her lines. You broke me like a promise. So casually cruel in the name of being honest. Right? So she she felt that Right. Like, she feels that this experience of love that she has now is a promise that this this thing is gonna come.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

It's not just a yes or a hypothesis.

Robin:

I mean, there have been voices called libertine sometimes, which say, all it is about is about the momentary experience. Don't expect it to be indication of anything in the future. And many people find that rather repulsive. Right?

Agnes:

Right. Well, I was just explaining, like, I I find it repulsive in the revolution, the love, and the insight thing. You shouldn't just go from insight to insight and never work out the idea too. I think it's bad in all those cases. But I actually think it's okay in the business case. I don't care whether you get attached to your business or not. Maybe you're the kind of guy who likes the startup stage. You're just gonna do a bunch of startups in a row. That that doesn't at least my for my intuition, that's very different because it feels like

Robin:

Well, I just think it's more about the appropriate finish line. So if you start a business and then it grows and then you can sell it to somebody else and hand it off to a new manager, then that's an appropriate time for you to start something new, but not before. It's about, did you complete it? And even in a revolution, you could, like, complete the revolution, hand it off to a new government, and then now go find another revolution to start or something. You know, I think that might be fine. But the still with each of these ideas, there's a sense of completion, and it's sad to only do part of it and not not even try to complete it.

Agnes:

Okay. Wait. I have to read the lyrics as I just looked it up from All Too Well, the line I was for which I was quoting. You wrecked me like a promise, so casually cool, and I'm being honest. Because I think it's interesting from the point of view, the thing we're talking okay. I walked through the door with you. The air was cold, but something about it felt like home somehow. And I left my scarf there at your sister's house, and you've still got it in your drawer even now. So this is after the breakup. She's looking back, and she's thinking about leaving the scarf there. Oh, your sweet disposition and my wide eyed gaze. We're singing in the car, getting lost upstate, autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place, and I can picture it after all these days. And I know it's long gone, and that magic's not here no more, and I might be okay, but I'm not fine at all. Because there we are again on that little town street. You almost ran the red because you were looking over at me. Wind in my hair, I was there. I remember it all too well. So it goes on. And in fact, actually, have to I have look. Photo album on the counter, your your cheeks were turning red. You used to be a little kid with glasses in a twin sized bed, and your mother's telling stories about you on the t ball team. You taught me about your past, thinking your future was me. And I know it's long gone, and there was nothing else I could do, and I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to. Okay. So so the point is, what's interesting with this song is that there's this nostalgia for this the romantic moments they had together, and that some of those moments included nostalgia about the earlier past. Right? She sort of

Robin:

And a future vision. Those moments

Agnes:

That moment is nostalgic because we looked forward to a future that was never going to happen. I'm now living in this alternate future, but I'm nostalgic over this other future that I that we sort of projected that never happened. I didn't even read you the you called me up again just to break me like a promise. Right? But that there was this thought of there was this promised future that didn't happen. So, like, it but it's as though what Taylor is what she loves in loving love is she loves this moment where you look forward to this future. This sort of what's the right word? It's not nostalgia. It's the opposite of nostalgia. It's forward looking nostalgia. You think? It's like this preview, the preview of the perfect life. So her the height of of of happiness in her songs is the preview of the perfect life.

Robin:

So it's a common observation about, say, vacations, that much of the joy of vacation consists in the anticipation of it and then in the looking back on it. And it's just plausible that for many of our things in our lives, they are units that we expect to take a duration in life, and that's important to them. That's an important element. It's not just summing over each momentary experience as if it were an independent experience in our lives. There are these collections of experiences that take that, you know, distribute it over a duration, and that duration is important to them. It's important that at each part of the duration, we expect the duration to have been, you know, farther back in the past, and also go farther into the future. For many kinds of interactions, that's an important part of what we do is we are part of a bigger thing in time. And if we didn't expect that, like, there are people, I guess, who do one night stands, and they know that it's a one night stand, and they fully expect that that's how it's going to play out, and then they have a different relationship to it. They could enjoy it, but it has a different sort of sense to it than the sense of a relationship that lasts over time.

Agnes:

Right. And my mom once told me that she once went to visit her mom in Hungary. So when we were little, you know, we we left Hungary, but every once in a while, we would go back and visit my grandparents. And this one time, she went as a surprise. So she didn't tell her mom that she was coming. And and so she just showed up in Hungary, and she thought it would be such a great surprise for her mom. And her mom was super disappointed because she's like her mom was like, the best part is the weeks before when I wait for you.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

So right. So so so there's but it it isn't just so one thought might be, An event has a different meaning when it has, like, an extended temporality. Right? When

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

You might think for instance, say there's a kid or something, and he shows up in your life and you read them a story, just one day, you know? Right. And then and then you never see them again. It's not like parenting is a bunch of those moments strung together. Right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

It's that they're strung together, each one in the awareness that it's part of that larger whole. Right? So there's the extended temporality changes the texture of the individual experience. That's one point. But the other point that's just as important here that is not maybe not shared between the parenting case and the the love case is that there's this but that is shared with the case of my my grandmother, I'm waiting for my mom, is that there is this period where you get this joy of looking forward. I guess people get that with parenting, like when they're pregnant and they're so fine. Yes. So that's so far in my past that I sort of forgot about it. Because I feel like once your kids are actually born and actually show up, of course, there's this future that you're looking forward to, but every time you are looking forward to that future, and I say this as someone who's like old middle kid is right now, oldest kid finished college, middle kid is applying to colleges, that future is a future where they leave you, and so it's not actually like this beautiful forward looking nostalgia, whatever the right word is, but it's kind of bittersweet. But with love, it's like you're looking forward. It's specifically that you look forward into this perfect future. That's not gonna happen, but that we love doing that.

Robin:

So if we notice that we're more conflicted or confused about the love case than these other analogous cases, and we might want an explanation for that. And I think an explanation is available in the fact that for, you know, several thousand years now, at least, we have been pushing lifelong monogamy as the farming world ideal of romance. But apparently, for hundreds of thousands of years before that, typical forager romance didn't last as long. Foragers were, in fact, shorter term romantic relationships.

Agnes:

More romances.

Robin:

Which lasted but they they lasted enough to have a child and raise it to a few years old.

Agnes:

Right. Though we we have dating, so we

Robin:

get Right. But the point is we could have these two ideals that are very deeply embedded in us that are in conflict that then pull us in different directions where both of them seem the right thing, but whichever way you go, the other one is lost, and it seems just wrong that you're losing the other one. There's just no way to have both. And that's maybe more true about romance than it is about these other areas because these other sort of habits aren't as deeply embedded in us in terms of, like, how long how long should you stick with a revolution? How long should you stick with a research project? I mean, those just aren't so deeply embedded in human nature, really.

Agnes:

Right. That's a good theory. So we're sort of we're very committed to not letting go of the passion in the sense that the thought that, look, I wanna have some of this kind of passion in my future.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

But we're also committed to I'm gonna stick with you forever and ever, and those two commitments

Robin:

are Inco inconsistent. They're in conflict.

Agnes:

I mean, we can achieve them by getting married and saying it's gonna be forever, and then getting divorced, and then so serial monogamy, which is what a lot of people do.

Robin:

Right. But then

Agnes:

Dating is much

Robin:

But you're not staying together in the longer term, so you are giving up on that longer term. Right. Now, of course, I guess, some ideal polygamy or poly relationships could potentially achieve both, and maybe that's part of the appeal, is the possibility of getting both.

Agnes:

Right. I'm not sure you do get both. So so, I mean, like, if we have to specify what kind of what kind of polyamory it is. Right? So Right. I suppose you can have, like you're married to one person. Right. And in the second, you have, like, a slot revolving

Robin:

Right. Exactly.

Agnes:

Right?

Robin:

So now each slot you're getting the thing you wanted in separate slots. Right. Maybe.

Agnes:

But it seems like

Robin:

But but these things could degrade each other. That is the fact that you have this other slot could take away from what happens in the other slot. You know?

Agnes:

Right. Right. So it could be both that your your spouse is resentful because they don't have the spontaneity and passion and whatever that you have with the short term partners. And the short term partner is resentful because they don't Right. The stability and commitment that you have with the spouse, which is to say that we have both of these ideals, and we apply both of them to every romantic situation.

Robin:

And both of these ideals, at least in an extreme version of them, has you being completely overwhelmingly focused on them, but the split doesn't allow that.

Agnes:

I don't think that's quite true. So I don't think that our that is, I think that our ideal of marriage is more realistic than that. It's just obvious that you cannot be overwhelmingly focused on your spouse at all times. For instance, if you have a kid, you have to spend a

Robin:

lot No. But it could be that the two of you just become so close to each other over decades, but it's because they're the only other person who's ever been really close to you over decades. And so if you have this other slot, then you might just not achieve that state of being so terribly close to each other. And similarly, like, imagine in these Taylor Swift songs where she's overwhelming a photophonic lover, what if she had a few verses mentoring her, you know, her stable poly partner?

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

Is that gonna somehow be fit into the story about her overwhelmingly focus on this one new romantic partner? I mean

Agnes:

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So it so it seems like maybe the new romance, since it demands all of your focus, threatens the old one, even if the old one doesn't demand all your focus. If you as long as the old one demands some of your focus, you've got a problem.

Robin:

I mean, the general point is just if we have these two ideals that are deeply embedded in us, then they're just gonna be making us see conflicts. They weren't and they're not gonna be fully satisfied no matter what.

Agnes:

Right. I mean, only if we apply both ideals to every romance. Right? Because you might have thought, no. Look. I'll just do the stable thing with this person, and then the passionate thing with this series, with this revolving door of people.

Robin:

And But the stable thing might not be as stable if you have these other relationships, and the passionate thing might not be as passionate if you have the others.

Agnes:

I mean, there's a question about why unless you're actually applying both norms to the same one. So it's like, let's say that I have the stable thing, but I also have a revolving door of hobbies that I'm super into. Right. And that, you know, every three months, there's a new craft activity or a new sport or whatever that I'm very, very into. And then the question is like, well, can I can I really love anyone if I'm so devoted to these hobbies? And most people will be like, yeah, sure. And then you might think, well, that's what my, you know, polyamorous revolving door would be. It would be like those hobbies. And it seems like that would be fine unless we're actually applying the standard of the, you know, passionate bubble to the long term relationship.

Robin:

Well, for example, if we think of this stable long term relationship, the ideal is you become to know each other. So while you each know and understand each other fully, well, now if, say, my politics differs from my spouse, it could be that we never achieve this ideal, and we're both unhappy because we never get to be the fully close because we both just don't appreciate the other person's politics, and that becomes the sticking point.

Agnes:

Right. But so that doesn't have anything to do with if you have another relationship.

Robin:

No. But it's another example of how, you know, having anything else in your life that isn't fully coordinated with this other person could prevent the achievement of this ideal marriage long term relationship where we just become so synced with each other that we're just on in tune and synced about everything.

Agnes:

Yeah. And so maybe

Robin:

And that is the ideal for many people.

Agnes:

Is it? Now that you're saying now that you're saying that, I'm like, I'm just like, that's maybe that's a little too much. Maybe it's a little creepy that you would have to be so

Robin:

Right. But I think for many people maybe they give it up later in life. But for many people, in early years of marriage, that is what they are going for.

Agnes:

I mean, it seems like It seems to me that there's a very big difference between wanting to be fully understood and have the person get you and, like, you know, understand you better than anyone else does and all of that, and to be fully in sync with them in the sense that you agree about everything. Like, lot of

Robin:

people I agree there's a difference there, but just like in a fully intense romantic relationship, Taylor Swift might be upset that her boy wants to go play video games one night instead of be with her. Right? She just, no. No. You're supposed to be completely into me all the time. Right? And you can see how for most real, even intense romantic relationships, he might need to go to work. He might need to do some other things, see his parents or something. And that if she's really overwhelmingly focused, that might seem a betrayal to her. No. No. We're supposed to be completely overwhelmingly together here.

Agnes:

Right. So that just shows you you can get betrayal, like, without cheating. Right. But this model is so demanding that it's actually very easy to get betrayal.

Robin:

Right. But the key point is the love and the marriage model both have extremely demanding versions to notice. They hopefully, most people learn that that's not feasible, and they they give up on it. But I have seen in both cases, people go to the extremes.

Agnes:

That's interesting. So, I mean, a thing we people say today is that people go to the extreme of parenting. Right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

That is that they embrace an extremely demanding vision of what parenting requires of you and how much attention you have to be paying to your kid all the time.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

And I wonder whether we also are be have been doing that with love. Have we been slowly embracing more and more demanding images of what love requires of us?

Robin:

Right. So, I mean, today, people demand, say for love, that you like the same TV shows, and you like the same songs, you like the same food. Now, like, did the ancients really require that their loves, like, shared all of those preferences with them? Maybe we've just increased those standards.

Agnes:

Right. Right. But also that, like, I don't know that they required that the person be, like, someone you even wanted to talk to.

Robin:

Right. But that's we've added that today. Right? Right. You need to enjoy having conversations with them. You need to roughly agree on politics. You need to roughly

Agnes:

And so maybe maybe we've had these two models that is sort of the short term model and the long term model. Maybe we've had them for a very long time, but it's only when each of them becomes sort of close to the extreme of the most demanding version of itself that

Robin:

You'll see the conflict more.

Agnes:

You see the conflict and sort of it's like you're being torn apart no matter what you do because you're trying to satisfy a set of demands that, like, don't fit together.

Robin:

I guess another analogy that comes to mind is maybe the extreme utilitarian or something, like Peter Singer or something, where you, you know, you up the demands of moral morality to very high levels, where, you know, it becomes more and more demanding, and now you're not a moral person until you give away half your income and

Agnes:

Right. Right. Maybe somehow maybe somehow there's just a tendency towards the most extreme version of any idea. So it could be parenting. It could be utilitarianism.

Robin:

Right. Or or just as we get rich, we raise our standards on a great many things, because we can.

Agnes:

Right. Well, it might be, for instance, it feels like you've gotta change something, and then you don't wanna make it worse, And so it's it's a kinda ratchet in the direction of more demanding.

Robin:

Right. So I guess an inch a related observation is today, people, you know, have much longer lives. They live in densities. They have so many ways to find each other, you know, apps, you know, parties, everything else. And then they seem to just keep raising their standards, and say, I can't find anybody. Right? And you might think, well, you know, if you had just kept your standards constant, surely the modern world would have been making it easier to find somebody acceptable. But you think, no. But I I want as best as I can get. And there's just this very basic adjustment problem. As you have more opportunity, you raise your standards, but that process could get out of whack.

Agnes:

I mean, it's occurred to me that there's an additional possibility, which is that, like, falling in love is something you can't choose to do. But as you could meet someone and they could be perfect in every way, but you're just like, I'm just not falling in love with them. Yeah. It's something that happens to you, and it could be that there's something about the world we live in that makes it hard for it to happen. It involves something like a loss of control. It involves a kind of, yeah, a kind of giving up the reins of your own life and submitting to forces that you're not master of. And so you might say, look, in in the world we live in, we made it so easy. We you can totally control it. You've got the dating apps, you've got and but the the problem is that the thing you can control is then not gonna be the thing that happens to you outside your control.

Robin:

I think the most important parameter determining how happy we are in general is just how high we set our standards. And in the moment, it doesn't feel like we have much choice about our standards, but it does seem like in the long run, we do have many levers that influence our future standards. And that that's a key choice. People do intend tend to raise their standards as opportunities rise, and they also raise their standards when people are ashamed about, you know, their their low choices, and other people look think less of them because they made low choices, or that they get, you know, respected for insisting on high standards. It does look like people do are in fact their their standards are adjusting to their context and may create many detailed ways.

Agnes:

That doesn't entail that they have lovers that influence them.

Robin:

And I I agree, but I do think in fact Right.

Agnes:

So so I so I'm it's not obvious to me that you have any influence over this at all. It's definitely responsive to your environment, but or in any way that it it's not up there among the things you have influence over. But we should stop because we're overturning

Robin:

We should. But we should And then plant a flag here about Taylor Swift. Do we think she will, like, continue to write the same sort of love song she has before in the context of her new marriage, or will she start to write marriage songs which have different values and different things that are celebrated?

Agnes:

Okay. You answer first.

Robin:

Probably the same, because it's really hard to change your style after this many years.

Agnes:

I think that they will change, but only over, like, a longer space, like, ten to twenty years. She's got a lot of songwriting. Right. Yeah. Sure. And I just wanna end by saying, Taylor, if you're listening to this, congratulations on your engagement. Indeed. Congratulations, Taylor. Alright.