#17 Does Getting Married Still Make Sense?

In this episode, Mark and Teal explore humorous Hinge profiles, share personal reflections on daylight savings, and make predictions for the election day. They also discuss the implications of Mia Khalifa's marriage advice, touching on themes of dating, politics, and personal growth. In this conversation, Mark Rosenfeld and Teal Elisabeth delve into the complexities of marriage and relationships, critiquing contemporary marriage advice and discussing generational attitudes towards commitment. They explore the evolution of marriage, its significance in modern society, and the importance of understanding personal motivations for marriage. The dialogue emphasizes the need for depth in relationships and the challenges faced by younger generations in navigating commitment amidst a culture of instant gratification.

Major Takeaways

- Hinge profiles can be both hilarious and revealing.
- Daylight savings can affect personal routines and moods.
- Election predictions can be tricky and polarizing.
- Mia Khalifa's past influences her current perspectives.
- Humor can be found in the most unexpected places.
- Personal reflections can lead to deeper conversations.
- The impact of social media on dating culture is significant.
- Political discussions can reveal generational divides.
- Courage is required to engage in public life.
- Understanding different perspectives is crucial in discussions. Critique of superficial marriage advice is essential.
- Marriage should be viewed as a deep commitment, not a contract.
- Generational privilege affects perceptions of hardship and relationships.
- The evolution of marriage reflects societal changes over time.
- Understanding personal motivations for marriage is crucial.
- Commitment in relationships requires effort and growth.
- Cultural norms around marriage are shifting and becoming more casual.
- The significance of community support in marriage ceremonies.
- Navigating relationship milestones can impact commitment dynamics.
- Advice from those with superficial experiences may be misleading.

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:20 Teal Health Update
1:50 Hinge Hilarity
5:34 Mark Celebrates The Morning Sun
7:38 Mark And Teal Make Election Predictions
13:12 Mia Khalifa's Marriage Advice
15:32 Teal Goes Off
20:42 A Brief History Of Marriage
24:44 Does Getting Married Still Make Sense?
33:48 Want Personal Help? Book A Call!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:50 Hinge Hilarity
• 5:34 Mark Celebrates The Morning Sun
• 7:38 Mark And Teal Make Election Predictions
• 13:12 Mia Khalifa's Marriage Advice
• 15:32 Teal Goes Off
• 20:42 A Brief History Of Marriage
• 24:44 Does Getting Married Still Make Sense?
• 33:48 Want Personal Help? Book A Call!

Transcript

[Speaker 1]
Hilarious hinge profiles, our election day predictions, and Mia Khalifa's marriage advice. That's up next on The Tinder Project. G'day and welcome to The Tinder Project, the podcast where a straight Aussie man attempts to survive 365 days dating online as an American woman.

I'm your host Mark Rosenfeld, Australia's dating coach for women. I'm here with my sidekick, self-love coach Teal Elizabeth, and together we have one mission to make meeting good men fun and easy for you. Let's give it a go.

Teal! Hi Mark. My friend, how are you?

Doing good, doing good. I love your look today. Thank you.

Every day, every time we talk, I feel like you have some comment about how I'm showing up today. It's different this week. Teal, before we were online, said the remnants of her lipstick had been smooshed off by food or something.

And I said, you know what? I like the remnants look. I like that.

Here's some remnants of my lipstick. I'm enjoying this.

[Speaker 2]
Well done.

[Speaker 1]
You know, I just wake up like this. I can't even, you know, I just can't even. You're like those actors in the movies who like after a huge night and all this action and everything's happened, they just wake up looking bloody perfect.

Perfect, as always. Yep, that's me. Anyways, let's talk about, well, what do you want to talk about today?

I want to show you some hinge profiles. Okay, let's do it. Are you healthy?

Are you healthy? Is baby well? Is all that going well?

Yeah, all is going really well. I just made my big announcement to the world about, yeah, the gender. Everything's just feeling so good and exciting and gets to just kind of like sink into the next few months.

You have some very cute Halloween photos on your Instagram. Thank you. Lots of pumpkins and stuff going on.

Man, your little boy looks like Spencer, doesn't he? He's really good. Yeah, he's a cutie pie.

All right. I got some funny hinge profiles that I found, Teal. So I want to show you a few of these.

We're calling this hinge hilarity today. I thought these were a bit of a laugh, so I'm just going to bump you through a few of these. Can you see my screen?

Yes. I'm going to zoom in. I'm going to zoom in here.

First up is Donald. I think that's his name. Douglas.

I knew I started with a D. And we're not talking about Donald Trump, just to be clear. We are doing predictions later.

So that'll be interesting. Let's see how well this podcast ages. By the way, guys, today is election day.

So you'll be listening to this probably about a month afterwards. So you'll have all the hindsight to look back on us and think, these idiots, what were they thinking with those predictions? We got Douglas on the screen.

Douglas made me lol because Douglas is a giant hair enigma, Teal. So have a look at this. All right, there he is.

There he is. Now, for those listening, we've got Douglas. He's maybe 40 or something.

He's got nice short hair, kind of a crew military type cut. Next photo, basically a shaved head with a Navy something hat on or an army hat, whatever that is. Next photo, freaking Fabio hair down past his nipples.

Next photo is shoulder length hair, which honestly looks like what my hair looked like for a very long time when I had it out. It's very rare to find a photo of me with hair like that. And yet another Fabio photo at the end.

So he was a hair enigma for the week. I found that truly, truly fascinating. We had Bora, who was like a very playful version of Darth Sidious from Star Wars.

Wow. Just got the coat. If this coat was black, yeah, he's just got the black hoodie, just Darth Vader.

I wish I could show the eyes. It's just like, I am Darth Sidious, execute order 66, kill the Jedi. That's what's going on in Bora's profile.

We got Corey. Now, Corey's a man who knows how to date. Corey said, I need hinge photos.

What do women love? Lamps. Women love lamps.

I know this from experience because Sam bought six lamps in one day and then proceeded to return all of them. But man, lamps and rugs are the two things that I know Sam. So Corey said, you know what?

I got this one dialed. Guys haven't figured this out. He's got a bunch of lamps in his photo.

Looks like several. He's got a big one, a couple of small ones. He's got a lampshade next to him as well.

So yeah, Corey knows what he's doing online. We got Tom. Tom said, you know, I don't have a ton of online dating photos, so I'm just going to grab a couple.

Where's a good place to take one? Shopping car park, man. He's got a bunch of trolleys in the background.

In the parking lot. I'm like, look, I got to do these photos. My match, no, hinge profile really matters to me.

So I'm out there. I'm a man who can do chores and I'm right in the middle of one right now, so I'm shopping. Shout out to you Tom for the trolleys.

And we got this guy. This guy just made me laugh because he said he had this prompt. It's the good old hinge prompt.

Where is it here? Louie, what's up my man? Louie said, it wasn't that one about the weight stuff.

Oh, Louie said, where is it? It's down the bottom. Louie said, dating me is like a breath of fresh air.

Fair enough. Okay, fair enough. Louie, what are your traits?

By the way, do you, oh, he smokes and does marijuana. Yeah. Breath of fresh air.

Nice Louie, we appreciate you for the entertaining profiles. That's some hinge hilarity for the day.

[Speaker 2]
Teal.

[Speaker 1]
I was just going to say today's also one of my favorite weeks because you may notice to my great pleasure, you probably can't notice actually for the viewers who are watching, but no one can notice other than me, but I have noticed to my great pleasure, it's dark outside. It's dark outside. And that means the God forsaken stupidity that is daylight savings times.

The insanity that seemingly only Arizona and Hawaii have managed to escape has gone again for another few months. And I am thanking my lucky stars Teal. There is morning sunlight again.

The insanity of the clock changes over. So it's a good day. It's election day, but it's also the first week out of daylight savings.

It's very hard to be unhappy when daylight savings is finally gone. Do you feel the same way? No, because I'm trying to sleep train a toddler right now and it's just throwing everything off.

I'm there. Other than that, I will say, yeah, it is nice to have a little more daylight for when we're alive and awake, but I don't know. I'm up so North.

I'm in Northern Washington and it gets dark now around like 4.30. So it's just like coming into the winter time is what it means for me. I love that. Give me that vampire.

I'll take a 6 a.m. sunset or sunrise and a 4 p.m. sunset any day. I'm just like, give me the vampire nights.

[Speaker 2]
I'll take it. I love my nights.

[Speaker 1]
No one agrees with me on this. I'm dying on this hill though, because I hate daylight savings. So every year I ran to Sam about it and she shuts, she's so over it now that I can't rant to her anymore because she just doesn't talk back.

So now you just started a podcast just so you can rant about it. Well, you talk to me about it now. Yeah.

And all the listeners can agree with me. They probably won't, but that's okay. I'm just very excited.

It's over for another year and I'm seriously considering moving to Arizona so I can get away from it forever. There we go. Okay.

It's good to know about you. It is election day though, Teal. I know this is not a politics forecast, but I thought we'd have a little fun today.

Let's see how badly this prediction can age. You're not a political person. I'm not really either.

I kind of dabble a little bit in it, but it's a big election. It's Trump. It's Kamala.

There's a lot going on in the world. The world's very polarized. It's a little bit sad.

I think we should do a podcast on the fact that men and women, especially young men and women, are voting very opposite now. We're seeing a real gender divide in the votes, which I think is sad in terms of men and women coming back together. That's a bit of a worrying trend, but negativity aside, Teal, who's going to win tonight?

Who's your money on? Come on, hit us. Oh, I just don't even want to isolate myself from saying this.

You're like the pollsters. Everyone's like 50-50. I'm not picking, man.

I literally saw a poster that said, fuck them both. It was one of Kennedy's posters and then he went, wait a minute, this isn't working. I'm going to go join one of them.

I have to say, I think Trump might win. Any reason? Like I said, I don't like getting all involved in all this.

There's a huge upswing for Kamala, and I love that she's taking that step forward to be the first woman president and everything that she stands for. It is very abrasive, but it is also so inspiring and empowering in a sense because he has this just ballsy gutsiness that nobody has ever brought, I think, to politics before that I think people just really keep holding onto and believing in and really wanting and feeling like he could be the one that actually could just change and shake things up. I know he had a chance to do that and he did shake some things up, maybe not in the best ways, but I just think people really want that let's shake things up kind of attitude.

But I don't know. I mean, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. That man can and has gotten away with things, saying things that I think no one else could.

It's weird because he's very clearly highly narcissistic and just says some horrible, toxic things over and over again that just make you roll your eyes. The debate, I don't know if you saw any of the debate, but Kamala just baited his ego over and over and over again in that debate. I was like, this man, his ego, it's both his biggest friend because to give the man credit, he got to the top of celebrity status on The Apprentice.

He's obviously very successful in business and then to do politics as well. That's a weird individual that's able to take a personality and do all those things. That's some ego that is very- It's more than ego.

I mean, he's also really into visualization, the law of attraction. He's studied- Is it really? I didn't know that.

He has a lot of extensive training in the laws of quantum thinking and all of that. I have a lot of feelings that he's doing a lot. He seems like just this arrogant, stupid bastard, but there is a lot of finesse to what he's doing behind the scenes.

It's an act that he's putting on on purpose, is what I hear.

[Speaker 2]
Interesting.

[Speaker 1]
Look, I'm not going to lie. If I had to choose between either Kamala or Trump sitting down with Putin, let's send Trump to do that job. Exactly.

Exactly. I may not be a fan of the man, but I prefer him in that regards. Predictions though, who would I predict?

I was thinking a lot about this. It's really hard because I think women's rights and abortion are still so at the forefront and I think the worst thing Trump ever did was that. Whether or not you agree or disagree, pro-choice, if you look at popularity wise, it's clearly an unpopular position.

All you need to do is look at 2022 to realize that. Understandably, and I agree, there's a lot of anger around that decision. For me, it's kind of like, is that angst about abortion and about many people's strong feelings is that still going to come through?

I think that's how Kamala wins if she does. I don't think she wins unless that is still there. Is it there still enough?

I'm also going to predict Trump. I'm going to say it's died down enough that she doesn't quite get over the line just on the back of that issue. That's my prediction.

We'll see. Might age like milk after tonight. Kamala just clean sweeps.

I will give them both credit because it just takes so much courage and guts to even put yourself in that kind of spotlight and the amount that they're both having to field of each other's just constant interrogation and dragging each other down and the propaganda and all of it. I don't know how any one actual human being, if we actually think of them as human beings, can handle such intensity. It is impressive what they put themselves through.

We talked about Matthew McConaughey and how he thought about getting into politics and he went, wait a minute, I would hate that. Why would I subject myself to that? And then a bunch of other people who have certain personality types get into it.

Let's dive off politics and let's talk about something a bit closer to home. There was a video from, for those of you who don't know her, Maya or Mia Khalifa. Do you know how it's pronounced Teal?

Is she married to Wiz Khalifa? Definitely not from what she says in this video. She's a porn star.

So she got really famous, I think, because I'm pretty sure, I don't know how I know this, I promise it's not from personal experience, but I think she did porn in a hijab, which was deeply, deeply offensive to the entire Muslim population. And that's how she got famous. Anyway, she retired long ago, but she put out a video with some marriage advice of all things.

She's 30 now. So all right. She's obviously got a big following.

I want to show you this video and I'm so curious to hear your thoughts. So let me bring it up here. Okay.

I'm going to, I'm going to share the screen. Porn star marriage advice. Yeah.

Porn star marriage advice. Maybe it's the best kind. Let's find out.

Let's do this. Here we go. Here's the clip from Mia, Maya, whatever her name is, giving some interesting marriage advice.

[Speaker 2]
Well, we're comparing stats. Baby girl doesn't know that I am Tom Brady at this game. Married at 15, divorced at 21.

Second marriage, married at 25, divorced at 28. Third engagement, engaged at 29, ended it at 30, but I kept the ring. I'm still keeping Tom Brady on his toes.

We should not be afraid to leave these men. We are not stuck with these people. Marriage is not a sanctimonious thing.

It is, it is paperwork. It's something it's, it's, it's a commitment you make to someone. But if you feel like you're not getting anything from that commitment and you're trying, you got to go, you got to go.

You have to go. I know it's difficult to fill out paperwork and to make appointments and to do all of these things, but this is your fucking life. Do you want to be stuck with someone?

Period. Do you want to be stuck with someone?

[Speaker 1]
Wow. That was, that was some advice Teal. You're looking a bit agitated over there.

How are you doing Teal? What do you think of Mia's advice? I think, oh, she just, yeah, she definitely pisses me off.

Um, one, who does she think she is giving marriage advice? Right? Like, and two, why do people think they should listen to her?

I mean, I guess everyone, freedom of speech, everyone has their, their opinion, the right to their opinion. But being a love coach, same as you being a love coach, this is what we do. We don't need more people filling the internet with ideas that have no basis in actual validity.

I mean, she's literally valid in the fact that she does not have a healthy relationship and that her idea of having a healthy relationship is to get out of health, get out of relationships. So that just kind of makes me angry that she's just muddying the waters for people because there's so much advice out there anyways. And we need to just be distilling the advice, not adding more noise to the conversation, but the actual conversation itself.

I mean, yes, there are threads of truth. If you are in a marriage and you are, you've been really trying and he's obviously just showing no sign of wanting to make this marriage work, then it probably is the right thing to take steps to get out of that marriage. But I think just her attitude and the way she's bringing this all up and sharing it makes it feel very dismissive and apathetic and disrespectful to the concept of what marriage is all about.

To me, a marriage is so much more than just a contract and paperwork. It is a rite of passage for two people. It's a sense of, I feel like a sense of maturity of stepping into putting somebody else's thoughts and needs above your own.

It's a deepening of a commitment that you're making to somebody. And when you make a commitment, I think you don't go into commitments lightly. You make a commitment because you honor your word and you are a person of integrity.

And so just the way that she's just brashly just being like, yeah, it's not working, just toss it out. Every other thing is just such a sign of our millennial generation of just that instant gratification. If it's not pleasing me in this moment, I'm just going to toss you off.

It's not really bringing in any depth of self-development, self-growth, working through challenges, growing, building grit with somebody. I think I have a lot of frustration around people of this generation and younger generations just having no sense of real hardship because we haven't really had much hardship. We are so unbelievably privileged in this generation.

Do you know they call this the great peace? Ever since the 1940s, obviously World War II, it's essentially we've lived in the great peace, which is the longest time. In some ways, yes.

And then I feel like in other ways, the digital world has made it so unpeaceful and we're more anxious than we've ever been. So I wouldn't call it peaceful. I think the two go together is what I'm saying.

To your point, because there's been no major conflicts between international powers, we haven't had that hard times, that resilience. So things that our brains grab onto whatever problems are in front of them. If it's a war and we survive a war, then everything else seems trivial.

But if the biggest problem we have is something going on on the internet, then our brains can't really rationalize that, okay, maybe this is a lot less than the war. It's like whatever is the major problem is the major problem. It could be war or it could be the TikTok video, which sounds obscene, but I think that's why there is so much anxiety because when you've been through a war, it's like, how are you anxious after that?

There's not that much left that you don't think you can handle. When your greatest challenge has been a TikTok video, it's totally understandable that your nervous system's like, well, there could be a lot of other things worse that could happen in the world. How am I going to handle those?

What if I can't handle those? So when I say the great peace, I just mean in terms of international powers. So I think just more than anything, because we haven't had our generation and this next generation hasn't had any serious challenges, and knock on wood, I'm very grateful to that overall.

Please, whoever gets into office, don't take us into more wars. But I think in general, it's making things become a lot more trivial and not really giving the depth and the true appreciation for hardship. I overall agree.

I think you phrased that really well. I think her delivery and attitude is the biggest problem here. I mean, her stats alone, like she's like proud that she's been married and divorced three times.

It's like... Well, she's smoking her what? Marijuana?

Oh my God. How could I take you seriously? I think it's so sad because that is the attitude, isn't it?

It's that throw away if it's not pleasing me in the moment, I'm out of here. If she had said, look, there's always going to be situations where when you fight really hard for a marriage, when you go to therapy, when you uncover every stone, that eventually, unfortunately, you might have to end that situation. If after those years of effort, you can't regulate it and you can put your hand on your heart and say you did everything from your end that you possibly could, then you might have to end that relationship and don't feel stuck there for the rest of your life.

If she phrased it like that, I could get behind it because marriage has a certain meaning now and I think you defined it really well, but marriage didn't start that way. Do you know how marriage started initially? That's true.

Treating cows. Yeah. It was pretty much that the Hebrews were having a bunch of problems with, what's it called?

Not fertility, but knowing whose kid is yours. Like the men were like, paternity, the Hebrews were having a bunch of issues with paternity. Marriage became this thing where they essentially, I mean, it's really messed up 2350 BC.

This is, you know, a couple of thousand years after the first city was built. They started realizing we're having a lot of paternity issues with our women. We need to treat them more like property so we don't have this issue.

Fathers would sell their daughters. Men could have multiple wives and they would legally own the women and then the wives could actually be returned to the fathers, as in you get a refund if the woman couldn't give birth. Oh my God.

I am so fascinated how much knowledge, random knowledge you know. That was how marriage started. If you think patriarchy is bad today, that's how it started.

It wasn't until 2600 years later, 2350 plus, no, almost 4000 years ago, it was about 300 years ago, the first divorce. I believe there's an English politician, I forget his name, but he basically realized his wife was cheating on him and there was this whole thing in I think it was 1660 where he basically was the first person to ever divorce his wife. And for most of that time, marriage was alliances, it was setting up your daughters for a future.

That's what it was. In the 1660s, I think, don't quote me on the date, this guy was the first person to say, no wife, you're out. Or I think she divorced him.

Oh, I should check that detail. The point is, divorce didn't start until very recently. And up until that point, you can totally see how women were completely powerless.

You get married at 18, you get a bad one, not that all are bad, but you get a bad one, you're stuck with him. You can't do much. And it's no wonder that that led to a sort of a women's movement where, okay, I'm not going to be stuck in a situation where I don't have to be.

I can divorce. And then obviously more recently, I can have a job, I can vote. I mean, it's crazy to think those things only came in in the last hundred or so years.

Women having jobs like a hundred years ago was I think pretty unusual, maybe 120 years ago. That blows my mind. Because we're so young, we think about it as it's always been this way, but it's really not.

So I agree with you that technically, and the problem with a lot of extremists is this is how they operate. They say something that if you look at it on paper, it will make sense. If Mia Cleaver says, well, if there's a long-term unhappy marriage, you should leave it.

Okay. That kind of makes sense. If Andrew Tate says, you should work hard.

Okay. As a man, that kind of makes sense. Learn to protect yourself.

Okay. That kind of makes sense. But then they sprinkle in things, whether it's tonalities or attitudes that are just so much more extreme than the original point.

But it's hard to say they're wrong because technically again, they're often speaking truths. But this is the case where her attitude is just so blase and it's so independent focus, independent culture focused. There's no investment sounding in the relationship from her.

It doesn't sound like she's particularly bonded to any of these men. Honestly, it just sounds like she uses them as long as they make her feel good. And as soon as they start to set maybe any kind of boundary with her or piss her off in any way, she's like, all right, I'm out.

And I guess that is the downside of like, well, what really keeps us there in the tough times when we're not making each other feel good? I mean, hopefully it is that commitment, but that's also why I think building the bond is important because if you're not there for money, as women have had to be for thousands of years, what are you there for? Well, there's emotional qualities and a partner and a teammate that you feel is on your side.

And that has so much value, but it's hard to build sometimes. It's uncomfortable to build. It doesn't feel good to build.

And I think that's where the younger generation, even our generation as well, is just like, eh, too hard. I don't like hard stuff. I'll go easy.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Well, that does beg a really great question about why marriage? And this was a really big conversation that Spencer and I had to have before we got married because for a long time, he was very anti-marriage. Did we talk about this already?

No, I'm curious because in Australia, we have an interesting attitude to this as well. Really? What's the attitude in Australia?

Well, I mean, I can't speak for all Aussies, but the marriage rates are definitely down. And I'm definitely the guy that was always like, I'm going to have a couple of kids before I get married. Before you get married?

Yeah. And my brother was the same. He had two kids before he got married.

Are you and Sam married? Yeah. In my head, I thought, okay, I'm going to have my family and then I'll get married, which most of the women listening to this are going, what?

Especially because we have a larger US base, but it's not that uncommon in Australia. It's kind of like the last box that you check. Yeah.

So I sort of thought that's how it would be. And Sam was not having a bar of that. She was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Let's move in together. See how that works. Let's get a dog together.

See how that works. Let's have a kid together. See how that works.

And then we'll do the marriage thing. I'm not speaking for everyone, but that's a pretty common attitude. And it was certainly my attitude.

And Sam was like, nope, not doing that. Put a ring on it. Yeah.

I mean, it's a little bit easier. I was paying a significant amount of money every year, a five-figure amount for my visa. So also marriage made sense for me just on mine and Sam's situation.

It also protects our child now that we have Lainey. So it made a lot of sense for me in our situation. But yeah, we're pretty casual about it, to be honest.

I don't speak for everyone, but a lot of us are. In Australia? Yeah.

Casual about the concept of marriage? Yeah. It's more casual.

It's not like everyone does what I just described, but it's more common. And that was my initial attitude towards it. Not that marriage itself is casual, but like, let's have a couple of kids.

Then we'll kind of do it when it gets done. Yeah. Well, I think there's kind of a dangerous spot with that because, you know, if we are thinking about the milestones of a relationship, even though I know I encourage a lot about not focusing on the milestones of a relationship, but there are milestones of a relationship.

And when you start to get into, well, we're living together, we have pets together, we're sharing all of our finances together. It really starts to make you wonder, well, why do I even need to get married? The man's thinking, I already have everything.

I don't need anything else. I already get to sleep with her, so why would I marry her? And so in my eyes, it kind of takes some of the leverage and the bargaining power away from the woman.

Whereas if you're coming in and saying, yes, I want to be with you, but you need to show me your level of commitment first, and then you get to have all the goods, it does kind of bring the power dynamic, I think, back into more of a healthy normal. And I see this happen actually with some of my girlfriends and some of my clients where they get too far in and then they're like, well, I really want him to marry me. I want him to propose.

And the guy's like, why? You know, there's no need. It's just a label at this point.

And it is just a label at this point, but it gets you kind of almost too far in before you've made that full commitment to each other. And as much as it is a label, like I said, to me, what I felt like it was, I mean, I'd been with Spencer for eight years at that point. We already were all the things already too.

We traveled the world for two and a half years together. We were very much invested in each other, but the step of taking that step as becoming husband and wife and going through the of marriage, it felt like such a rite of passage. Like we were really, truly bonding ourselves in a very beautiful spiritual way.

And from that point, we do agree that we feel more connected, more solidified, more secure as a partnership because of it. I like that. Yeah, I like that.

And it makes a lot of sense. The other issue that Sam and I have had is while we are married, we have not had our wedding yet. So we had a small government ceremony, but our actual wedding has not occurred yet.

So we haven't necessarily crossed that phase and had the big traditional in front of all our friends, like public version of it. So I think that's something I'm looking forward to actually. But we are in a little bit of a, I don't know, in some ways, a pre-phase.

I mean, we're married for all legal and intensive purposes. But yeah, we haven't had our actual wedding yet. I haven't seen her in a true wedding dress.

I haven't had that experience of having her walk down the aisle. Her dad passed her off to me. So that's still something I'm looking forward to.

Such a weird world we live in right now, where there are no rules, there are no traditions anymore. It's like anything goes, which is beautiful in some ways, but I do think it kind of loses some of the, I don't know, the potency. Our situation is weird.

I like some of the traditional stuff. Our situation is just a bit weird because of me being a foreigner.