Happy on Your Own with Dr. Peter McGraw

george grombacher 0:02
Dr. Peter McGraw is a behavioral economist. He is a business school professor, and bachelor who’s turning his attention to the opportunities and challenges of single Levine, his newest book is solo, building a remarkable life on your own. Welcome to the show, Peter,

Dr. Peter McGraw 0:17
a pleasure to be here.

george grombacher 0:19
I’m excited to have you on. Tell us a little about your personal life more about your work, and what motivated you to put pen to paper and write the book?

Dr. Peter McGraw 0:28
Well, let’s start with that last bit. i This is a new endeavor for me about five years into the solo project, as I like to call it, it started as a podcast. And I had moved my attention away from the scientific study of humor into something that I think is even more compelling and even more important, which is to how can we help this fast growing segment of society singles, live a better life. And I did it, in some ways selfishly, that is that the solo project was designed to help a younger version of me. So I wanted to create the resource that I wish I had when I was 25. And starting to figure out that my path might not be that conventional, but not feeling like there was resources for this, there was no one talking about it. And, and thus, as a result of that, it’s very easy, I think, as a single person, to kind of feel less than feel out of place. And feel like there’s only this one way of doing life. And if you choose not to do that way, or if you’re having difficult finding that way. You You’re in trouble. There’s something wrong with you. And I, I know that there’s plenty of things wrong with me. But I never I learned that my singleness wasn’t one of them.

george grombacher 2:06
I appreciate that. And how is the project is five years in the book just came out? How is it? How is it being received? Do you feel like you have have honored that younger version of yourself?

Dr. Peter McGraw 2:20
I do? Yeah. I mean, I think that this is this project is a little bit polarizing. You know, in the books a little bit polarizing. I have a line in the book that my thesis is that married living is not as good and single living is not as bad as people tend to assume. And I have the data. And you know, that said, the project is not anti marriage in any way. I just happen to believe that it’s overprescribed. There’s almost nothing that humans do. At the rate that we were getting married in 1960 1960 90% of adults married did so on average age of 21. And that number is way, way down now. So half of American adults are single, half of them are not interested in dating or relationship at the moment. And pew research projects that 40 Excuse me, Pew researcher, Pew Research per debt. Sorry about this. That’s okay. Pew research projects that 25% of millennials will never marry. And so these are, this is a huge demographic shift. But in many ways, I believe is kind of more in line with what is right for humanity. Right? Like we live in a world where we have artists and engineers, we have blue collar workers and white collar workers. We have people who are meat eaters, and people who are vegetarians, people who like to go to the beach, and people like to go to the mountains. And so we have diverse interest, values, lifestyles, and this one size fits all have relationships can’t possibly work for everyone. Especially because I know this because marriage was fairly recently invented and is continually changing. Right? So it’s not even the case that marriage was necessary for our hunter gatherer ancestors. It was invented to solve societal problems. And so it, it helps some individuals and it doesn’t help others. And I think we need a little bit wider discourse about that.

george grombacher 4:42
I think that everything you said certainly makes sense. I find it to be fascinating. 1960 90% of people married at 21 That’s an average urinary

Dr. Peter McGraw 4:52
that’s Yeah, yeah, it was I mean, it was a very family focused society and And I like to remind people that, you know, we talked about a rise of single living, but in really, it’s a reprise. In single living, right, there was a time in human existence where no one was married. Because I mentioned, there was no such thing as marriage didn’t exist, it just didn’t exist. And, and it was actually the case where like being single wasn’t as, as challenging per se, there was a little bit more I’d say, openness to these different views, but we, you know, things shifted worldwide in this way. And it’s now starting to unravel a little bit.

george grombacher 5:41
And against the backdrop, for lack of a better term or phrase, when we’re learning that the world is overpopulated or it’s underpopulated. And we need to make more human beings immediately, or we need to stop making human beings immediately. It’s fascinating. But that doesn’t mean that I need to do that, or I am obligated to do that.

Dr. Peter McGraw 6:04
Yeah, amen. GEORGE, you know, it’s funny. So in 1970, you had books, like The Population Bomb, that was worried about overpopulation. And now you have folks like Elon Musk, who are concerned about the existence of humanity, because we’re going to see a drop in, in world population, it’s hard to imagine that but you know, in the next 100 years or so, because we don’t have the same replacement rates, I, you know, my feeling about this is, is threefold. The first one is, I’m not going to tell people to do something that may not agree with themselves, or this world that may or may not arrive, the way it’s being predicted. Right, because we’re already seeing these changes. The second one is, at the same time that everybody’s concerned about a drop in depopulation. We’re also facing this rise in AI and robotics, that is going to start filling many of the roles that people have in society. And so, you know, I think that in some ways, having families in the future might end up getting easier, in a sense. And this, this sounds crazy to say, but I believe that, that having a family will be more of a recreational activity as a result of that, right. So imagine, you know, living a life where you don’t need to work 60 hours a week to survive, in a sense, then the pup, the idea of having a family might become easier in that sense. And then the last one is, let’s make up our minds. Which one is bad, too many people are too few people. And so one of the things that I believe that humans are very good at is adapting to their circumstances, and inventing solutions to their problems. And so I don’t feel like that argument to get people to couple up and have kids is a very strong one.

george grombacher 8:04
Yeah, I appreciate that. And it’s interesting, I don’t know what the what the reason that my grandparents had grown up on a farm to have lots of children. I, you know, I suspect that there were a lot of reasons maybe they just loved big families or kids, maybe they maybe they needed extra hands to work the farm, maybe more kids died back then. So they wanted to have more in case, you know, these are all terrible things, but But part of the human condition. And

Dr. Peter McGraw 8:33
I would add something to that, George, you know, we have a tendency, you know, because really, these big families got started with this agrarian age. And I think there’s some some other reasons that people don’t assume to be the case, they often chalk it up to we need farm hands. But some of it was these structures could accommodate a lot of kids. These were extended families, multigenerational, with both married people and non married people, as part of this corporate family or extended family. And so you had multiple adults there to help the kids. If one person if a if a father died or someone took off. There were other people who could step in. And so it was it was a much different structure than this nuclear family that we have right now. That’s very isolating. And moreover, we just didn’t have reliable birth control back then. And you know, the last I checked human beings like having sex, it’s really fun. And so the one of the biggest game changers here and people the pro population crowd seems to ignore this is that even married people are having fewer kids, because they can write because they can still have sex and not have kids because of this wonderful invention in 1960 called the pill.

george grombacher 9:55
Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense. So Let’s make up our minds is as good or bad. I, I spend a lot of time I spend a lot of time thinking and encouraging other people to make up your own mind, decide what you want your life to, to look like, and then start working in service of getting that thing. And I’m confident that that probably a lot of what you’re thinking is that there’s a lot of systems and assumptions and structures that we’re all working under, if it’s family, or societal, or the place that we work, where we socialize. And I think it’s such a good thing for us to spend a little bit of time as, what is right for me, what what

Dr. Peter McGraw 10:37
do I want my life to look like? Hallelujah. I, I love that perspective, in part, because if you think about it, marriage was designed to solve societal problems, it can solve individual problems, perhaps, right. So, you you want close connection in your life, right? You want financial security, right, you know what I mean? You want good companionship and, and company, you want to have children, and so on. And so in this way, marriage is often a very good path for a lot of people. What I want like you, George, is I want people to choose it, rather than default into it. And I think for them to really choose it, it is worthwhile considering how you may solve those problems in other ways. And so for example, one thing that single people, especially lifelong single people are very good at, is finding other forms of connection, they tend to have many more friends, diverse connections that are more involved in their community, than married people who tend to be rather isolated, which often puts those married people at great risk to you know, due to divorce. One in three, death, one and two, you know, and disability. And so, I agree with you, I think that people who marry should choose, it should be very clear that they’re accepting a set of rules, a set of norms, a set of stages. And, and I invite them to relax or remove some of those rules, if they don’t serve them very well. Yeah,

george grombacher 12:28
I appreciate that. It’s a you know, it’s fascinating. Human beings are fascinating the way we interact with one another fascinating and certainly I’m a byproduct of parents split up and they split up when I was five years old. And that’s a really rough thing. It’s a rough thing and has been now for the left for the left for the next 40 years. It’s been tricky and has created an interesting holiday dynamics and family dynamics and everything else. And it’s not I don’t blame anybody for it, but that’s a reality. And in advance of our conversation today, I spent a lot of time thinking about you know, your choice to be single is not a an irrevocable decision, I can become unsinkable, should I decide to do that? How much time if any, did you spend thinking about the difference of from a man’s perspective versus a woman’s perspective just in that as a man I can, theoretically speaking, father children later in life, whereas women cannot necessarily

Dr. Peter McGraw 13:34
Yes, certainly. And this actually came up in one of my solo podcast episodes, I had a sociologist who does research on the sociology of time, how you know, time is this construct this thing that we invent, and and it has cultural significance to it, and this notion of waiting. Right, and so singles often live in what we call a liminal world, this world that feels temporary, until I find my person. Right. And, and they, as I mentioned, they may feel less than until they find their person because they’re treated as less than until they find their person. And this is especially challenging for women, because of this, so called biological clock, right, that, that that most women who want to have children want to do it with a partner. And that means that some of this, you know, despite the fact that they have everything else in their life, together, their career, their friendships, their health, their family, they, they need the cooperation of someone else in order to do this. And if you can’t make that happen, and you believe the only way that you want to have kids is with a lifelong partner. You can be stuck in this waiting game with this clock ticking and getting a lot of pressure. So honey is there anyone special kind of thing. And so I find, so I have a solo community, two thirds of that community are women, I think women are much more sensitive to the challenges, they feel the pain a lot more. And I think that they’re also better at seeking out solutions to this. And so I think that your observation is, is a keen one, that the world doesn’t treat single men and single women, the same, single men get a different. So single women get this sort of pitying kind of feeling, you know, and single men, you know, they get this, you know, Peter, it’s time to grow up, it’s time to, it’s time to do the hard work. And it’s time to become an adult, it’s time to stop being a Peter Pan, settle down, partner up, you know, I mean, and grow up. And I, you know, I don’t have the experience that women have, and my my heart goes out to them, because I don’t think that they should have to navigate that, that world. I also don’t have a lot of tolerance for that, that view that single people are selfish and not growing up. As I’ve already mentioned, they’re more involved in their communities, they donate more of their time than married people, they’re more likely to caregiver, an elderly parent, they can use the time and energy and money that would normally go to a family to make art to build businesses to contribute to science, you know that there are many ways to contribute to the world beyond just having children be an important way. And so I, I’m very eager with this project, to move beyond relationship status as a way we think about people. Right? So people are very interested in so George, are you seeing anyone? Right? George, are you married, because they want to know how to treat you? Right? But knowing whether you’re single or married tells you almost nothing about someone. Right? It doesn’t tell you about their lifestyle, it doesn’t tell you whether they like to go to the beach or the mountains, right? It doesn’t tell you if they’re contributing to the arts or the sciences. And and it doesn’t tell you very much about how happy they are. And so what I’m eager to do is to not talking about being single, but rather talking about being solo. And Solo has these three elements, we’ve already covered some of that indirectly. The first one is that a solo is wholehearted. That is they see themselves as a complete person, they’re not half of a hole. And that that fundamentally changes how you feel about yourself. And it also changes the way you approach dating, for example, like that you’re willing to add someone to your life, but you, but you don’t have to have this person because you’re not incomplete without them. And I think that that’s, that’s a rather remarkable feeling to have. And it’s really an empowering one. The second one, it, I think it goes completely against this Peter Pan phenomenon, which is that solos tend to be autonomous, they tend to be self reliant. They are a good parent to themselves. And so when I think about what makes someone an adult, it’s not reaching a certain age, it’s not getting married and having kids, it’s Can you parent yourself, right. And then what that allows you to do is to choose partners, and to interact with partners in a way that is interdependent rather than codependent. Right? Because, you know, so basically, you can be a married man and be a child, because you need your spouse to for sure you do clothe you soothe you provide you a social relation, social relationships, and then if that person decides to leave you which, by the way, 80% of marriages are ended by the wife, you’re suddenly cast adrift. And then the last one, the last element is that Solas tend to be unconventional thinkers. And you already alluded to this earlier, George, and that is that they tend to not just accept what the world says they should do and accept what the world says will make them happy. They think about what makes them happy, and then they choose rather than default. And so they have they tend to have unconventional rules about relationships, but then also about life more generally.

george grombacher 19:38
I think that those are are very compelling and powerful. One of my favorite poems is Shel Silverstein is the missing piece. Are you familiar with that one?

Dr. Peter McGraw 19:49
I’m not no I know The Giving Tree. That’s the one I grew up on. Yeah,

george grombacher 19:53
I literally cannot read The Giving Tree without breaking into tears. Oh, yeah. Like it’s yeah, anyway. but it’s it’s essentially what you’ve just described, it’s, it’s this missing piece, it’s a looks like a wheel, and he’s got a little pizza slice missing, and he’s rolling around looking for something outside of Him to fill the missing piece, when all along, we all know, it’s an inside job and becoming self reliant. And then being available to enter into an independent relationship with another like minded person who shares similar values to yours, and you’re not just coming together, because you’re trying to complete one another, you’re already complete. And now you can move forward, however you choose. So I think that makes a lot of sense. And

Dr. Peter McGraw 20:42
moreover, it also allows you to expand what is a valuable relationship in your life? Right. So for example, when you think about a traditional marriage, or what we call the relationship escalator, it has these very strict rules, you need to live with a partner, need to merge your finances, merge your identity, I call it the identification of a relationship, merge your values, right, you have to get the vacation together, you have to do everything together, it’s it becomes the most high status relationship you have crowding out all the others, right? So it’s more important than your friendship of 35 years, suddenly overnight. And it’s a sexually and romantically exclusive relationship. Right? But what if, for example, the most important person in your life is a platonic partner is that friend of 35 years, and you share a residence with that person? Right, they are the most high status person for you. But you don’t have sex with them, and you don’t vacation with them, you know, like nothing? Is that relationship any less worthy of tax breaks of benefits at work? Of 1000 federal laws and benefits that married people get? I don’t think so. And so I think that, that expanding what it means to have close connections in our life will actually do people a favor in order for them to find the best people or them at the at their particular stage in life.

george grombacher 22:19
Do you think that everybody is I don’t know if there’s a right term for this evolved enough to pull this kind of thing off? No,

Dr. Peter McGraw 22:29
no, of course not. But I’m, I believe in people in the sense. And the issue is this is they managed to pull marriages off, for the most part, as messy as that is. And to me, the marriage is difficult. Like, if you just heard all the things that I just talked about, you’re like, Yeah, wow, that’s a pretty tall order, you know, to have. And so what these unconventional relationships demand, and what I would argue even a traditional relationship demands is authenticity, honesty, communication. And so to disagree that you’re breaking the rules. You often have to find a new script, but you can’t find it, you have to create it yourself. And so what I have a chapter in the book called relationship design, where the people in the relationship romantic or otherwise, come together and discuss the agreement. What are our expectations? What are the rules big and small, and then regularly, evaluate, and revise as needed? And so in my dating life, I regularly will say to someone I’m dating. So how do you think this is going? You know, are you happy? Is there any changes that you want to make? Well, that’s the same conversation, married people should be happening in the sense. And so we’re going to need people to evolve in order to allow them sort of more degrees of freedom in the sense.

george grombacher 24:04
Yeah, that’s an excellent point. Excellent point. I believe your wheels are turning. Yeah, man, I think. I mean, for me, I got married when I was 38. And had I’ve been married, any earlier than that, right would have been, I would have gotten divorced, for sure. I just, I had so many things to experience on my own and to think about what to do on my own. And if I had not done those, I would not be available to have a successful relationship with with my wife. And your statistics are, they’re not yours that 80% of marriages or whatever, are not successful or not happy is evidence that people are not doing this work, even though to your point. We’re all capable of living an examined life and to think about these things.

Dr. Peter McGraw 24:57
It takes a lot of vulnerability. Right. So because imagine could your promised, getting married equals bliss? And unfortunately, the data don’t support that. It’s not true. It’s not true. It’s just a different path in life. You know, and and it’s what you make it. And so your promise that this is supposed to be great. And then it often isn’t, because, you know, you have two people who have different, right, different ways of living people change, and so on. But ask someone, how do you think this is going? is really a vulnerable thing to do? Because you might get a, I don’t think it’s going very well response. But but if it’s not going, well, that’s the response you want. Because then you can say, well, how can we get it going well, again, in this in this way, and then you have to be willing to go against the grain of society. And for example, make some changes, I like to say that a non trivial number of divorces could have been avoided, if people talked earlier, and they were willing to relax some of the rules. Like maybe we should have separate bedrooms, maybe we should have separate residences, right? Maybe we should alter the the way that we approach this relationship. Yeah, our neighbors are gonna think we’re weird. Yeah, our parents aren’t going to understand it. But what’s more important, the sanctity of this relationship and the connection, or making other people happy? And I think the answer is clear.

george grombacher 26:29
Well said, Peter, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage? And where can they get their copy of solo? Building a remarkable life on your own?

Dr. Peter McGraw 26:41
Well, obviously, Amazon selling it. You can find more about me at Peter mcgraw.org/solo. The podcast is there I host events called the soul of Salon. And people can learn also, I think they’ll the single listeners can learn what type of single they are. There’s four different types of singles. And so not only can people figure out what are some alternatives to the types of relationships that they’re having, but they can also figure out oh, how should I be thinking about my my single life? Love it.

george grombacher 27:16
If you enjoyed this as much as I did show Peter your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, pick up your copy of solo on Amazon, go to Peter mcgraw.org. Check out the podcast, check out the solo salon and then figure out what type of single you are as well. We all love taking assessments. Thanks again, Peter.

Dr. Peter McGraw 27:38
Cheers.

george grombacher 27:39
Till next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.