Jordan Peterson's Advice on Maintaining the Romance in Your Relationship
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I was really excited when Gerhard surprised me with a copy of Jordan Peterson’s newest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life—which is the companion to his 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. They are, as the titles tell, the ying and yang of each other, warning us of the two extremes we can fall into: disordered living or stifling order.
In his second book, Beyond Order, Peterson offers advice for managing the unexpected in our lives. Chaos—or anything unpredictable—is not something we can actually eliminate, nor is it something we can completely predict or control. The chaos of our life is like the weather, every day it’s new and every day we have to adjust to things outside of our control. And like the weather, we need to predict and prepare for the best and the worst in our lives. We need rules to help us adapt and thrive to whatever life has to offer.
I’m going to jump give a summary here of Rule X, which I find is most relevant for our G & J Show: “Plan and Work Diligently to Maintain the Romance in Your Relationship.”
In this rule about romance, Peterson touches on a variety of topics that I have summarized and amalgamated below into 14 simple points. The theme is: romantic relationships can be chaotic, so how do we adapt to keep the romance afloat? The simple answer is through communicating. But as you will see, there’s more to it than that, in terms of what practically one has to do in order to keep the doors of communication open.
So, in 14 points, here is a condensed version of Peterson’s Rule X:
Spend Time Together
The first point that Peterson makes (and reitirates throughout the chapter) is that making a great relationship takes practice and time. How much time? Here is approximately how much time a couple should spend doing the basic necessary things to build romance:
Time for romance (ie. dates): 4h per week, could be divided over two dates
Romantic interludes (ie. sex): once or twice a week
Conversation: min. 90min a week, it can be broken up throughout the week. This is time to specifically discuss practical and personal matters. Ask about each other’s work, the kids, what needs to be done around the house, and if there is anything bothering either party that needs to be addressed. In other words, find time to tell your story and encourage your partner to do the same.
“…[D]esire is not something that can be managed in isolation: “Let us fix our sex life” is a resolution too narrow in ambition to fulfill its aim.”
—Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order, p.270
2. Set a relationship Standard
In order to get the kind of relationship you dream of, you will have to negotiate with your partner to make it happen. Many people are leery of being vulnerable about their needs because of the fear of not getting what they want, so they express their needs in a vague way, or worse, hope their partner just figures it out. So Peterson insists that to be able to negotiate as a couple, each person needs to be clear in what they want and to be willing to discuss their needs openly.
So agree on a relationship standard: make a pact that each partner will agree to be sincere and to openly negotiate his/her needs.
3. take the risk and trust each other
The risk we take in opening up to our partner about our deepest needs is that they could use this intimate knowledge against us. But rather than be naive or cynical about it, the best option is to trust. Without trust, there is no intimacy. When we choose to trust, we encourage our partner to show us their best side. This ability requires two things from us when communicating: courage and the determination not to lie.
“Life is too difficult to negotiate alone. If you tell your partner the truth, and you strive to act so that you can tell the truth about how you act, then you have someone to rely on when the seas become high and your ship threatens to founder. This can literally be a matter of life and death. In a relationship where romance remains intact, truth must be king.”
—Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order, p. 272
4. subordinate yourselves to a principle
In the marriage vow, we promise that we will not leave each other, no matter how difficult things become. The intention is honourable, but those of us who are married know that living out these vows in the day to day, through the mundane and the tragic, can be more than challenging. But what we do when we choose to come together again and again despite difficulties is that we hope—we hope that life, and whatever it brings, will be better managed together.
So how do we live in peace, or, how do we come to a mutual and shared vision that doesn’t suppress each others’ needs? How do we make sure there are no winners or losers, that one person’s vision doesn’t dominate the other’s?
The answer is that both partners should subordinate themselves to a principle. Peterson calls this principle the principle of illumination. It is an imagined ideal wherein we imagine the best possible future together. In this best possible future, we are both able to fully live out the truth of ourselves.
5. do not find, but make
When we were dating, we did not have time to look through the billions of people in the world to find the absolute best partner for ourselves. It follows that we do not find but rather make a great union with our partner. And it means we cannot give up hope on someone because the relationship we have committed to for life is getting shaky. We cannot create an escape route. We have to lock ourselves in and make the effort needed to stick together and mature through the difficulties. That’s the only way to grow in wisdom.
6. make peace with your partner
There are three fundamental states of being: tyranny, slavery, or negotiation. Tyranny is always being able to do what you want. It is a life filled with cynicism, cruelty and the “hell” of unregulated anger and impulsivity. On the opposite end, slavery is always agreeing to do what the other partner wants, leading to a build up of anger and resentment. And one cannot help but take revenge on a tyrant, and maybe the worse thing a slave can do is be much less than they could be.
So if you do not make peace with your partner, Peterson warns, through sincere negotiation, then one of you will tyrannize the other.
As we know, negotiation isn’t easy. Peterson talks at length about the problems that those attempting negotiation can face. When asked to communicate, they can face refusal (“What’s wrong?”—“I don't know”), irritation, outright anger, or even tears. But we cannot stop the communication because of this negative emotional push-back. Persistence is necessary, as Peterson emphasizes, “a terrible necessity.” We have to trust that negotiating is good for us both and that pushing through the emotionally stressful moment will help us both achieve our goal of mutual peace.
To do this kind of negotiating, we need hope. As well as a little bit of desperation. Since we are determined to stick together until death, we have to agree that many difficulties will have to be worked through until we can reach the happy and fulfilling marriage of our ideal. Marriage is a work in progress and the journey transforms us.
“You will be tempted by avoidance, anger, and tears, or enticed to employ the trapdoor of divorce so that you will not have to face what must be faced. But your failure will haunt you while you are enraged, weeping, or in the process of separating, as it will in the next relationship you stumble into, with all your unsolved problems intact and your negotiating skills not improved a whit.”
—Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order, p. 282
7. recognize a hierarchy of joint needs
After recognizing our individual and mutual needs, we have to determine in what order of priority we should both place them. Peterson recommends the following hierarchy of joint needs:
To have a marriage that works.
To have children. Peterson writes that we lie to young women that what they are most likely to want in their life is a fulfilling career (and then he adds that most people have jobs, not careers). Most women by their thirties will perform whatever sacrifice necessary to have a child. He advises we avoid the misery of disappointment and not to take pregnancy for granted. The current statistic is that “30 percent of couples experience trouble getting pregnant.” (And the footnote reads, “Defined as inability to conceive within one year of trying”: W. Himmel et al., “Voluntary Childlessness and Being Childfree,” British Journal of General Practice 47 (1997)).
A good job or career. Peterson defines work success as becoming a mentor for younger people, a helpful peer, a reliable subordinate, and an improvement to your workplace.
Time for leisure. This is time away from family and work that is meaningful and productive.
8. be realistic about what life has to offer
This point could probably summarize Peterson’s whole chapter, but specifically, when Peterson speaks about being realistic about what life has to offer, he is speaking about recognizing what our needs are and what we have to do to achieve them, in the timeframe we have available. This includes the time it takes to build romance in a relationship and struggle through years of negotiating peace. It also includes, as mentioned above, not taking children (and our fertility) for granted.
Peterson also argues that we should be realistic about the outcomes of affairs and co-habitation.
Jordan Peterson on affairs:
“You do not have a life with someone when you have an affair with them. You have an endless array of desserts… You see each other under the best possible conditions… An affair is not helfpul, and people end up horribly hurt. Particularly children—and it is to them that we owe primary allegiance.”
—p. 286
Peterson on co-habitation: “Cohabitation without the promise of permanent commitment, socially announced, ceremoniously established, seriously considered, does not produce more robust marriages. And there is nothing good about that—particularly for children…” (287) He also goes on to point out that the time it takes to “try” out partners and find the right fit decreases a person’s chances of finding a life partner—especially since it’s harder as we get older to attach ourselves to another person (and to another person’s family).
9. determine your roles
Another thing that married couples need to negotiate (or rather, argue about) is who does what in the domestic economy. He warns that these things will either be argued about in the open or borne with stubbornness, silence, and half-hearted attempts at “cooperation.” So his advice is to fight it out until peace arrives—and peace won’t come without a little conflict.
some examples of roles to negotiate:
-Whose career is going to take priority, when and why?
-Who will raise the children?
-Who sets the table?
-Who cleans the bathroom?
-Who shops for groceries?
-Who cleans the dishes?
some examples of structures to negotiate:
-How are the bank accounts going to be set up?
-When are we going to eat? Will we eat together?
-How do we want to be thanked?
-How fast should the dishes be cleared from the sink?
10. Accept that most of your married life is made up of the mundane things you do together
“When I am helping someone straighten out their marriage, let us say, we do very mundane things… I want to know what interrelationships constitute the bulk of your typical day.”
-Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order, pp. 292-293
Think about all the mundane things you do together like getting up in the morning to greeting each other when you come home from work. Though those are small moments, when you add them up over the years they take up hours even weeks of our time. Negotiating with our partners about how we can improve these micro-interactions can make so much of our time together more pleasant.
Here’s an example: do we attend to each other politely and without cell-phones while we eat?
11. other people keep us sane
I like this point by Peterson because I have seen so many times in my own marriage how my husband helps me react or interpret events in a way that is more realistic. He helps balance me and I help balance him.
No one is perfect, and there is no perfect partner out there for us. Because we are all damaged in some way, Peterson argues that it takes courage to get married. But it is through the process of marriage that we are both transformed into one reasonable person.
“…if there was someone out there who was perfect, they would take one look at you and run away screaming. ”
12. the answer is not “no sex”
“Romance is play, and play does not take place easily when problems of any sort arise. Play requires peace, and peace requires negotiation. And you are lucky even then if you get to play.”
—Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order, p. 296
A precondition of the stability of marriage is that there will be regular romance, ie. sex. Peterson writes that from observation, a typical couple with kids, jobs, and a functional domestic economy might manage once or twice a week. He urges that “zero” should not be an option. The result could be an affair.
We make a lot of effort when we are dating, but getting married does not get us off the hook for making the romance happen. Making the romance happen if it hasn’t happened in a while might lead to some embarassing conversations about which days work well for both partners. Though that seems cut and dried, that’s the reality of managing two incomes, kids, and a reasonable standard of living. So if we want sex to happen, we have to agree to make it happen, the frequency, and even have it on our schedule or to-do list.
“Here is a rule: do not ever punish your partner for doing something you want them to continue doing. Particularly if it took some real courage—some real going above and beyond the call of duty—to manage.”
—Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order, pp. 299-300
13. determine how you want the romantic interlude to happen
Besides negotiating when it will happen, we have to also negotiate what we like in a romantic interlude. And it takes courage to discuss and plan what great sex looks like, including:
-the set-up
-ambiance (eg. lighting, music)
-lingerie or attractive wear
-words of affirmation
He writes that we should acknowledge and discuss the preconditions (we all have them) for erotic satisfaction. Maybe we are afraid our desires cannot be met by our partner. But have hope (and give each other time) to not only mutually satisfy each other but to give and get more than you expect.
14. do not expect the beauty of love to maintain itself without an all-out effort
Peterson’s final concluding paragraph is a summary of everything he spoke about in Rule X. It can be summed up, I think, in three words: practice negotiating bravely. There are three main aspects to the advice that he is sharing: time, communication, and just plain determination to push through.
“…maybe—just maybe—you will maintain the love of your life and you will have a friend and confidant, and this cold rock we live on at the far end of the cosmos will be a little warmer and more comforting than it would otherwise be. And you are going to need that, because rough times are always on their way, and you better have something to set against them or despair will visit and will not depart. Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship.”
—Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order, p. 301
final thoughts
As you can see through the quotes that I have included throughout the article, Peterson’s language is dramatic—even describing negotiation as a matter of life and death. He feels strongly about the importance of building up a life relationship that can give us satisfaction and get us through the toughest times. Recall that Peterson wrote or at least edited this chapter as he was struggling through immense personal difficulty—traveling from hospital to hospital as he sought to overcome his serious physical and mental health difficulties (he explains in detail in the Overture). Believing that he might die perhaps led him to more dramatically emphasize the importance of the familial relationships that literally helped him remain alive.
This chapter reads a bit like a rant, but I would argue that he is trusting and believing despite such an awareness (and secondary experience through his profession) of how many ways a relationship can go terribly wrong. I think it’s beautiful that he still holds on to the hope that marriages can work and that they are meaningful, and I thank him for that encouragement.
There is a lot that Peterson, like I said, rants about. But if you can read the Canadian humour in it all, you can see that he is laughing at some of the absurdities of our inability to connect or to get it right. I have to mention that because I was reading an article about Beyond Order written by an American journalist who characterized his book as lacking humour, which made me realize that his humour isn’t obvious to all cultural audiences. If you’re not familiar with it, Canadian humour is tongue-in-cheek, bouncing between understatements and exaggerations—it’s all about the play on your emotions and on catching you off-guard. You get a better sense of it when you watch his videos; despite the serious tone, he is often hiding an ironic smile.
While I agree with a lot of what Peterson has written, I can say that he hardly goes into any depth. The facetiousness of his ranting is meant mostly to provoke thought and get people to think critically about how they are living. For a deeper dive into two key topics that he covers in this chapter, negotiation and sex life, here are two books that I’ve covered on this site:
Crucial Conversations : Tools for talking when stakes are high
In this book, the VitalSmarts authors teach readers how to negotiate difficult topics. You can read my summary of their chapter on managing emotions in conflict here.
Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3tTg3Cp
Holy sex!
Dr. Gregory Popcack has a very similar approach to Peterson in that he argues a couple must get their marital life in order before they can enjoy a satisfying sex-life. I cover the first part of his book, on what makes up a loving relationship in general, in my article here.
Dr. Popcack does become more specific, and goes into more depth than Peterson, about what a satisfying loving sexual experience can look like practically speaking.
Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3gGhpNo
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