Dr. Michael Laitman

A New life

Talk #27 -- Relationships: The Need to Change Public Opinion Concerning Relationships

July 1, 2012

Oren: Hello dear viewers and thank you for joining us for this series of discussions, New Life, with Rav Laitman. Hello, everyone. Hello, Orit Dolev. Hello, Nitzah. We are sitting around the table and we want to understand, with Rav Laitman, how we can transform and improve the different systems of relationships in our lives, to make our lives happier. We have different systems of relationships at home, with our spouse, our children, we have relationships at the workplace, with friends and colleagues. In this series of discussions we want to gradually go through these, system by system, identify the major issues that concern people, and make suggestions on how to enhance everyone’s lives for the better.

And I saw, before we started filming, that everyone is filled with impressions from the previous talk. So rather than addressing a specific topic, Rav Laitman, maybe you want to add something?

Dr. Laitman: Yes, I want to add clarification and, maybe, try to justify myself, if it is possible. I know that sometimes I may sound harsh, chauvinistic, too traditional of a thinker, or anti- something. I may appear as though I do not understand people. But here I am not talking about understanding or about what is standard in society today. I am attempting to explain who we are from the point of view of nature.

It may seem difficult to accept that from the point of view of nature, we have to be closer to how it is in nature. So if we do not have a desire for family life, than we do not have a desire for family life. However, everything that we see in nature is still closer to us and our own inner nature. No matter what all the psychologists and sociologists say. It is not from nothing that we are in a crisis in our understanding of people, in building families, in educating children, or parents. Maybe it is because we really do not want to see things in a true way, we are always coloring it in some way. And this lie comes right back to us.

If I said some harsh things about the differences in the nature of men and women, and the physiology and psychology of the two genders...it is because it is true. The fact that a person in our time suddenly does not want to consider his nature, is his problem. And in every area that he does not want to take nature into consideration, he receives such a response from nature, that he suffers. And we do not even know if we will survive with all we are doing to nature.

The fact that we think we are conquerors, and we are allowed everything, and we can do everything, puts us in a state where no one is truly happy in the family, no one today wants to just get married and be committed for long periods of time. Who even knows how to get married? Women and men suffer from this.

Our education in this area, even though it is based on research and wisdom, does not give the correct solution. So maybe we really do need to go back a bit and go back to being closer to nature. Maybe we need to learn how it occurs in nature and, accordingly, give a person a more suitable niche. Because we are talking about the animal level, not about a human being within a society. The family is not a result of 21st century development, family is the foundation that comes from the animal level, and even from the vegetative, and inanimate, where there is plus-minus and all the accumulation of atoms and molecules and so forth. All these things are the foundation of creation. So I can see that I give the impression of being very extreme in my opinions. But it is because I feel the inner essence of men and the essence of human society. We need to do something about it.

People are unhappy. People are unhappy in their relationships, in their marriages; we do not know how to give our children correct direction so they can build successful families and so we can see our grandchildren raised with joy and not through suffering.

Right now, chances are, if my daughters get married, they will get divorced. They will remain alone to raise the children. And I’m looking, hang on a second, where do I see something like this? I see it in nature. Every male comes to the female, he mates with her and leaves. And now the same thing with us. So it is like we went back to our natural state.

Orit: In nature we can observe herds of wolves, where it is true that there is one male that is in control, and he is the one who mates with all the females. And all the females belong to that one male. And we also have the opposite example, with different types of birds - doves, parakeets, for example. Where each one has a partner for life until something happens. And for years they go back to the same place, to the same nest, and that is where they have their offspring. So I see there is a difference between herds and couples.

We go back to our world, we are no longer herds, we do not live in tribes. We live as a couple. How do we manage in this marriage so that the relationship will succeed? How do we deal with men’s basic nature that we are talking about? Today we are in a completely different world, we are in a world of couples.

Dr. Laitman: We are not in a world of couples. We left that behind a long time ago. We were in a world like that as long as it was convenient for us. Because of our egoistic desire to enjoy every moment of existence, at a certain time we needed a spouse. At a certain time we needed a family, our parents close to us, children next to us. The family was a support we were a support to them. Our emotions, our minds were also organized according to this system.

Then something happened. We reached a state where we do not feel a need for a relationship anymore. It started in the 30s of the 20th century. Less and less the family is like a nest. Before it was said, “my house is my castle,” now it is not like that anymore. We do not need it. We do not really need a family. We have pensions, insurance, healthcare; we have retirement homes and nursing homes. Children do not take care of their parents, the spouse - who knows where the spouse is, out with friends, maybe. Wives have to work; without a second salary a couple cannot manage financially. Life has become something that rips the family apart into little pieces. Children go away to school, to college, they are never home. We just have to worry about giving them money and paying for all their activities and studies. That’s it.

Husbands and wives, when do they see each other? In the morning, when they send the kids off to kindergarten? Who’s taking to whom in the morning? It is more like who is escaping first to their workplace. And in the evening it is the same thing. Maybe they help each other with something, help to fill the washing machine or prepare dinner. But none of this is what a family should be. There is no warmth at home. When the husband come home same time as the wife, he does not receive the warmth of being expected, of someone waiting for him and greeting him with a warm welcome, his favorite slippers and his favorite chair. I do not mean it in a literal sense, I am just describing the feeling. A man does not get the chance to experience this at work, where he is running around, being active, productive. Then when he comes home, the same experience continues. Where does he meet with his wife? In bed when they are totally exhausted?

Orit: So how do we correct this?

Dr. Laitman: What can we correct? We can not correct it. We built it. Or rather, it was built this way for us. They built for us an environment that has caused the breaking of the family. Who built it? People who saw an opportunity to make a lot of money, to gain control, they caused the human society to arrive at this state because it is worth it for them. It’s worth it for them to put more and more people into the workplace because from each of them they get a few dollars profit. And then altogether they see us as some kind of system. You put in this much money to organize it and you get this much profit out of it. And that’s it. And what happens with us is not important, we are just a system for them to make as much money as they can.

Nitzah: So actually a person today is living in a conflict. On the one hand, his happiness is dependent on being in a relationship, and on the other hand, he does not really want the connection.

Dr. Laitman: He is not interested in the connection because the whole framework of life is built in such a way that he cannot implement it, he cannot realize the relationship, the beauty; cannot develop it in any way. We are not educated that way. Why? Why for decades now in all our developments in so called psychology and science about human beings, why are we not receiving education on how to correct our lives? Who is interested in that happening? We have the Ministry of education, ministry of health, ministry of ministries...but the central point has to be the person.

We want the person to be happy. Everything is built to achieve the opposite. Where is that person who is happy? According to statistics, everyone is depressed, everyone is anxious, everyone needs a psychologist or a psychiatrist, everyone needs medication, all the children are prescribed Ritalin. This is the situation. It does not matter who is the cause, but for sure it is our ego - egotistic people who are in control. But at the end of the day, this is the framework, the environment, that we are a result of, and it is not like we can go to an average person and start blaming him, and telling him that he needs to behave differently. He is a result of his education, of the framework in which he was raised. He follows the example of those he sees and that is how he behaves.

Orit: So today we are slightly more aware. We understand the nature of man and the fact that we are in a bad state; there is a lot of pain, my heart breaks for the children growing up in such conditions.

Dr. Laitman: We discussed this two talks ago. Why don’t you, the psychologists, get up and form an association of psychologists like they have in some countries and demand change in society. But what you doing is what is more lucrative for you. You quietly continue to make a living from the suffering of others and you go on. You can just say that you are suffering with people, you are not suffering. People are suffering and you are profiting from it. I am sorry for being so blunt, but that is actually how it seems.

Oren: Ok, we are getting a bit off track. We are not trying to fix the psychologists, we are coming from the perspective of the individual who is suffering. The result is that we have people suffering. In this project we are trying to talk from their perspective. I just want to restore our focus.

Dr. Laitman: So what is the question?

Nitzah: We have decided...

Dr. Laitman: I just want to summarize everything by saying that without a new education system, where we educate people on how to build correct connections between each other, we will not be able to achieve any positive results.

Nitzah: The question is, if in this project, while watching this program or reading a book, we can inspire a person to want to go through an educational process on his own. Is that possible?

Dr. Laitman: Yes, yes, it’s possible.

Nitzah: This is our intention. We want to begin from here. It is clear that many people suffer. They need and desire solutions in their daily life. The hardship is unbearable. So let’s take advantage of this opportunity to build a person correctly. That is what we want to achieve.

Let us return to the subject we spoke about earlier. You mentioned compromise. It is important to explain what this word means, because a word like ‘compromise’ can be interpreted in many different ways by different people and can easily be misunderstood. For example, many people, but especially women, say that in order to have peace at home, peace in their relationship, to not get into conflict, to have peace and quiet, they are willing to sacrifice much, sometimes they sacrifice so much that they feel, in the end, that they have lost something of themselves. They sacrifice their desire, their needs, even to the point where they feel they are sitting in front of some system that they do not understand and do not know what to do with. And the result, instead of appreciation for their sacrifice, for being willing to forgive and compromise, they get the opposite - lack of appreciation, lack of respect. So what is the correct sacrifice? What is the right way to go about it?

Dr. Laitman: Correct sacrifice, correct compromise, is for connection. We need to meet, for example, this woman, in the middle of the table. When I go towards the middle of the table, I give up of myself. And the further I go, the more I give up of myself. I look back and I seek all that I have given up. At the same time, she is doing the same. But I do not see what she is giving up or if our connection point justifies it. What are we achieving here? I see only what I am giving up for this connection; I do not see what she is giving up. In the meantime I am an egoist, I know what I am giving up and I feel that I have to give more and more, cut from my flesh, not go with my friends to the bar, not do this, not do that - a thousand and one little things like that.

I remember when I was a small child, it was not like that. And the man, subconsciously, continues to assess the situation this way. A man’s first woman is his mother and she did not ask of him any compromise in order to be adhered to her. He was adhered to her from birth. And now we come to this point with our spouse where, with great difficulty, we move toward connection with each other. The closer we move toward each other, the greater the sacrifice we make. You understand the problem? The picture is clear. If the circumstances support this connection and we see a benefit in being together, we have something common - like a house, or finances, or some other other resources - that we would not have unless we were together, then it is clear. However, we are presently in such an environment, such an atmosphere, with technology and everything else we need, that we do not need each other.

Our society has changed in such a way that we no longer have rich people who depend on the poor to work their piece of land. At that time you only had a piece of land, a house, and nothing else. Where would you go? Where would your wife go, if she were to leave you? And what about the children? There were conditions that obligated.

Today there are no such obligations. You rent your apartment. If you want, you can go and rent another one; and that’s it, he is no longer at home. Everyone has a separate bank account. Now everyone has their own salary. He brings home a thousand shekels, she brings home a thousand. I hear it all the time and do not really understand it. “I bought something with my own money,” “I bought something for myself.” I hear this from women. What does it mean “from your own money,” I do not understand this. Up to this day, when I get my salary it goes into the bank account. I do not even know the bank account number. I do not have a bank card or a credit card. My wife deals with all that. What do I need it for? Even when I had a large business I never touched the money, I brought the money home.

The home is the wife. Today there is no such thing. And I never control how much she spends, it is none of my business. That is how I was raised. You get married and you do not get divorced. You have to provide for your children, make certain that they receive an education, get married, have a home, you support them them in life. You earn money, and you do not see it, it belongs to the family. That is how I was raised with very strong examples. And that’s it.

Nitzah: In this project we are really trying to be practical. Let us say, there is someone sitting in front of us watching the show, and they want to find that point of connection.

Dr. Laitman: Point of connection in what? If there was social pressure or financial pressure, to own a piece of land or something. Then it would be beneficial for a person to move away from personal interests, to sacrifice, to be in a relationship. But nowadays we do not have a reason to do it. What is the benefit of sacrificing?

Nitzah: So basically, we are lacking a purpose?

Dr. Laitman: We are lacking social support, obligation, necessity for a relationship. We can get married; next day, get divorced. There is nothing obligating us, holding us together, there is no support from society. I remember times when I was young, that in order to get divorced, you had to go through a very complex procedure, you had to even take out an ad in the paper announcing that you are getting divorced. It was very, very stressful for people. Today, it is nothing like that; it is simple.

Nitzah: But let’s say that the people who are watching understand that they are having a difficult time on a daily basis. They want to learn to compromise because they are suffering in their relationships. How do we help them to find that point of connection and realize it?

Dr. Laitman: We need to offer courses and teach people these things, these psychological principles. The question is whether we can realize it without support from society. Will we be able to restore healthy, happy family life without support from society, from the environment?

Nitzah: The environment also includes TV, movies, books. It’s everything. So let us try to focus on that. Because the moment you send a person out into the “environment” it becomes very abstract, not very practical. But if I have some guidance from a book, or a show that I am watching, it is also my environment at the moment. How can this environment help a person?

Dr. Laitman: The fact that a person is watching our program is more like they are taking a course. But we are not the environment. An environment is public opinion, social pressure, worldview. That is the source of the problem.

There is no social pressure for this. The person is a social animal, he is shaped by his society. He cannot resist it. He can take a thousand courses and the moment he walks out onto the street, he gets brainwashed by the environment around him. The environment controls him.

It is good that we offer courses, roundtable discussions. That is all good. And hopefully, gradually, there is a chance that we will reach a state where people will want to change their environment, the media, that they will begin to look at the world differently. But we need to understand that our goal is to reach the individual, to offer him courses. And we need to reach a wide audience; wide enough that we will be able to change public opinion, media - so that they will begin to support us, to relate to us more favorably. Only then will we be certain that the individual is supported in this and has a chance to succeed.

Nitzah: So you are saying we need to work on two levels. From bottom-up, through the individual. And from top-down, through the society. We agree that there are these two levels. However, in this project we are not talking about the social level. We know it is absolutely vital, but we want to focus on the individual.

Dr. Laitman: On the level of the individual we have to organize groups. So that, at least, they will have the support from the environment of the group. Say 20 people who come to a group where they can begin to work on what it means to be a human being.

Oren: Let us take a specific principle - sacrifice. You have given us a basic picture: there is a point in the centre. And everyone has to take a step, and another step, and another step toward it.

Dr. Laitman: And the problem is, that with each step, they are moving further and further away from their initial conditions. Say, like this: at the beginning, I have a list - 100% of what I want to have from a relationship; my demands toward her. And she has demands of me, and also has a list, 100% of what she wants to receive from a relationship. And now we start advancing toward each other. The more we advance, the more things on our lists we have to give up. Suddenly we realize that our lists are completely erased! When I finally reach the point of connection with her, I see that on my list I only have: “a cup of coffee once a week,” or something like that that. That’s it, that is all I get from the entire list of all the conveniences, benefits or demands that I thought I would get from a relationship. Is that where we are directing couples? Because that is the system nowadays.

Oren: I do not understand.

Dr. Laitman: I was not clear enough?

Oren: The scene is clear, but is that where we want to bring the couple in order to connect?

Dr. Laitman: Otherwise we won’t connect them. In any case, we are talking about two people who are egoists, each of whom has their demands, each has their subjective understanding of what is convenient and how much each desires to serve the other. Even when I love her and I want to give her the whole world, it is because I receive pleasure by doing this, by serving her.

Oren: I don’t get it. No, really, it is very interesting what you just said, “even when I…

Dr. Laitman: Even when I am willing to give up everything and give her everything, I want to bring the whole world to her feet - why do I do it? - because I enjoy the fact that I am doing this. And here she is also an object for me. An object through which I gain pleasure. Why do I bring the whole world to her feet? Because it brings me pleasure to do so. That is called “bestowing in order to receive” by us in kabbalah.

Oren: Without mentioning kabbalah here, we can say, ‘I do good for her and it makes me feel good too.’ And if she does the same for me, then we are a really happy couple.

Dr. Laitman: There is a question about that.

Oren: It sounds good to me. If each is doing nice things for the other…

Dr. Laitman: It could lead to arguments...

Oren: You’ve built a model here. You say each should take a step toward the other, each should compromise. From what I see in this world, it does not work like that. Maybe it is some ideal situation that we want to get to.

Dr. Laitman: On the egotistic level, that is how it should be.

Oren: But what are you sacrificing here? You made your list, she made her list.

Dr. Laitman: I am saying that this will not help. We will not do it. I see that I am not being clear here. We spoke about what happens at the table on an egoistic level, which will not help us arrive at anything. Even if society supports us, we will continue to feel that we are giving up too much. We are not willing to give up so much. There is no support for us for doing that. We no longer have land or assets together. A man can walk away from his wife without losing any material comfort. He can just leave her.

Today, are we able to still exist together? Especially since our ego is grown so big? We used to have smaller egos, there was less to give up. What kind of education was there? A woman learned to take care of the household, she learned how to take care of children by taking care of her brothers and sisters at home. She learned to cook, to do laundry, clean the house, milk the cows, the goats. It was all clear.

Today it is different. Today we are more equal. And it appears that we both need to make an effort. The family structure cannot be saved until we demonstrate to the couple that there are higher values in saving the family structure than just them being together. Today there is nothing about family that could attract someone. There are no real reasons. People want to be independent; to have their own space - even just their own room! We see this with our children. It is now natural for children to be distant from their parents. In the past, the entire family lived in one room, mother, father, children, and maybe even the grandparents. Today there is no such thing as living in one room. Everyone needs their own room. How many rooms do you have? Four. Why four? One for the son, one for the daughter, one for the oldest son, the youngest daughter, etc. etc. And when they do not have their own want a room, they are looking to move out as soon as possible.

So what do we want? If we evolved to have such a huge ego, how are we going to build a family? That is a problem. How are we going to maintain it? Another problem. And then there is public opinion, habit, and other pressures.

Oren: So what are these higher value?

Dr. Laitman: If you give them a tip that there is benefit for a man, for a woman, to maintain the family structure. What benefit? Let us think about that together.

Oren: This is exactly the essence of this project. How do we do it? How do we show people the goal and how to achieve it?

Dr. Laitman: What can a man profit from having a family, when he already has everything? He earns money, he has his own place to live, he has a car, he has his friends; if he needs a woman, he can arrange that too. What obligates him to live differently? He has medical insurance, healthcare, he does not need anything else.

Oren: You are talking about a bachelor?

Dr. Laitman: Yes

Oren: I wouldn’t even go to a bachelor, I would take someone who is already married and wants to improve his relationship.

Dr. Laitman: You want to make it easier for me?

Oren: Yes, I do. Explaining to a bachelor is a topic for a different program.

Dr. Laitman: The biggest problem is: with what can you obligate a person?

Oren: Obligate? I don’t know. What do you mean to obligate?

Dr. Laitman: Food he has, sex he has. Family, does he need it or not? Money he has, after money - respect, and then wisdom. This is what we can use, on this attribute we can play - respect. Are we a society that respects a person who is behaving in a way that does not appear to us as correct. Public opinion should be such that it is negative toward a person who is not married and does not have a family. He will not be advanced in his work, like others; he will be taxed more. By doing this, by our contempt, we obligate him to do all kinds of things. It has to be public opinion. A person has to feel that he is vulnerable, that he is flawed, half a body.

Oren: That is disconnected from reality today. Maybe 200 years in the future we can have a society like that. You took too big a project to convince people to get married. Let us focus on someone who already has a wife, has children and wants to improve his relationship.

You offered a framework of principles in previous conversations. And our goal is simple; it is not to correct the whole world. We want to focus on one man and his one wife, and their relationship. You said, in previous shows, that there are principles on how to transform a bad relationship into a good one. One of the principles you mentioned, was that we are missing “the higher” value of the act of compromise. You said that by sacrificing they can get to something better than they have today. Let us focus on this picture.

Dr. Laitman: That does not matter! You are always bringing me down to this level of the individual. But, what I am trying to say is that the conditions that you are giving me, the initial conditions - as in any math problem, they say, “These are the initial conditions. Solve the problem.” So too, you are giving me initial conditions, but with them I can not solve the problem!

A man does not want, in most cases, to continue in the family in family life. A woman does not want to continue in family life. I hear this everywhere, we know this. This is life. And the society does not support it.

Oren: The society supports the opposite. In Givatayim a child lives in two houses - the mother’s and the father’s. These days the child is with the mother, and those days he is with the father. That is standard. But we have to do something, we have the principles. How do we improve the relationship between people?

Dr. Laitman: But it is not worth it for them to do it, to sacrifice. There is no support for it - not internally, not externally. There is no reason to sacrifice, unless we take the men and the women who want to raise a family, who want to have a good relationship between them, who are already inclined to be in a family.

Oren: They are already a family.

Dr. Laitman: It is not important that they are already a family. They have to want to continue to be a family. That is something different.

Oren: I am giving you a situation of a married man and woman who want to continue to stay married, but they do not know how. They want advice.

Dr. Laitman: If they want to continue to stay married, we need to teach them how to enjoy sacrificing for each other.

Oren: That is exactly what we want to do today. Take the principle of sacrifice and use it as the foundation for this process. So how do we sacrifice correctly? What should we sacrifice? What shouldn’t we sacrifice? How do we use this list and take the first step? Teach us. We want to do it, we want to learn. We are not all of humanity. We are two people who want to learn how to implement this principle of sacrifice. Where do we start? We are talking about a married couple with children.

Dr. Laitman: With children? Children can be the basis for sacrifice; we can work with that, we can raise the importance of parents staying together for the children. Children have to be the good psychologists in the family and show their mother and father how important it is for them that the parents stay together.

It is also desirable to connect such a family to two or three other families, so that they can support each other, spend time together, be good examples for each other. They can sit together, drink coffee, watch TV, but always be good example, good support for each other. You need to create influences that will obligate them to stay connected. And always have clear evidence why sacrifice for each other is beneficial. What is the benefit? The benefit, they will see, is in the way they serve their children.

We are always talking about two egoistic individuals, whose egos only grow, within a society that has a negative influencing in the most cases. We have to choose appropriate influences - children, other couples, who will be a positive example, and obligation.

Oren: What kind of obligation?

Dr. Laitman: Obligation. Something that might make it difficult for them to break up the relationship. Maybe ownership of a business together or some other type of foundation. Something that will have the same effect as land ownership had a hundred years ago. You have to develop connections that will serve as handcuffs that will hold them togherther.

Oren: But who’s going to create it?

Dr. Laitman: I expect them to create it themselves. I can only give guidance.

Oren: We are going to teach them to put handcuffs on themselves?

Dr. Laitman: Yes.

Oren: Today they do the complete opposite. They make prenuptial agreements about assets, with the option of easy escape!

Dr. Laitman: You are telling me that there is a lot of work ahead. Therefore, we must find a solution. We need a way to influence people through food, wisdom, money, honor. If you are talking about an average person - he has nothing else. Therefore, if we can provide these things, then we can reach him through respect and honor. Make it so that he is vulnerable in the eyes of his children, in the way they see him, in the way society relates to him.

Orit: You said something that sounds innovative, that I have never heard of in all the psychological methods. You said we have to work with the children. Do parents need to make demands on their children to work together with them? Should parents include the children in their conflicts, their difficulties?

Dr. Laitman: No, I do not think the parents are capable of doing this properly with the children; to include them in all the relationships issues between them. It does not set a good example. We would be educating them very poorly for the future.

Orit: So what did you mean by “we have to work with the children”?

Dr. Laitman: That the children will be between us, not against us - whose side are they taking, the mother’s or the father’s. They should be for us, like the glue that binds us.

Look, a person is very dependant on habits. If, from the beginning, we establish specific habits, such as, every Monday and Wednesday my wife and I go for a walk; every Tuesday and Thursday we take the children out; every Friday we visit the grandparents. Then, even when I do not want to do it, I continue to do it because this routine has become habit for me and it maintains me. We need to focus on building the right kind of habits. But just to involve the children in family problems, is not a good idea. If we do this, then we will just be modeling the wrong kind of habits for them, that they will take on in their lives.

Orit: I know families that have this glue that you are talking about. But it is not clear what it is. They live together, but do not have a very positive relationship, and the children feel it. They go on trips together and weekend outings, they are still a family, but they bring their problems with them - from the house to the car, to the hotel. Despite all that, they are still together.

Dr. Laitman: And here is the question: why do they continue to fight when they are together? If they go on vacation with their children, the whole family, why do they not have enough sense to, at least for one day, start a fresh page and have fun together? Psychology can help here. I do not understand.

Orit: The question is, if this glue - the children - that connect and hold the family together, are suffering because of it on so many different levels - in school, emotionally - is it right that we still use them in this way - as the glue? Should we leave it like that? Is it right?

Dr. Laitman: When we see unhappy families and single-parent families, we see that these are negative examples. Nonetheless, It is still far better to be in a complete family, than in a single-parent family. Ask the children - when father takes them out once a week to the planetarium, to the zoo, has a good time with them, the child still feels that the is father cheating on him. And the child does not love the father because of that. He feels that the father is betraying him; he does not accept this arrangement. For the child, tt would still be better for the father to be at home and argueing - at least it is still a family.

Orit: But we are actually being bad examples to our children. We are teaching them that in family life there is continued arguments, fighting.

Dr. Laitman: And the other way, we give them an example of divorce. Ask the children, themselves, which they prefer.

Orit: We know what they will say, you are right, the children would prefer the parents to be together no matter what. So what tools can we give the parents to break out of their negative habits? How can we help them make it simpler?

Dr. Laitman: Even if we offer them courses and explain to them the type of system, the type of society in which they live, we still do not know what tools to offer them to develop their emotions, their feelings, their intelligence. We would only be opening up for them this pandora's box that each of them is an egoist.

How do we show them that they need to sacrifice, that they need to be connected? Where is the benefit spiritually, financially, in terms of honor, control, food, sex? What would be something that is worth it for them? What desire do they have that could only be filled by the family?

We built such a society where these desires do not exist. The family does not offer anything worthwhile, society does not support it, no one demands it from anyone. What is the incentive for entering into such a commitment?

We have to find such factors that would strengthen and hold the family together. First, we must educate the couples; offer them information, guidance, instruction on how to connect, how to sacrifice, how to compromise. However, this may not be powerful alone. Second, is to change public opinion, the environment, the media. When this occurs, there will be different social pressure, different public opinion regarding the way we relate to young couples, and this will hold them together - society and right environment.

Oren: And with these words we have to conclude. Thank you, Rav Laitman, thank you, Orit Dolev, thank you, Nitzah Mazoz. Thank you dear viewers for being with us. We will continue this series of discussions. And we wish you all the best, good bye.

(End of the conversation)