Episode #71:
Marriage & Millennials with Andrew Hall
This week, I have the youngest guest we’ve had on the show, Andrew Hall. At 25 years old, Andrew is a millennial who is full of great knowledge and character, and he joins me this week to represent his generation and share his opinion about marriage.
When it comes to the younger generations, there tends to be a longing for the intimacy and trust that comes with having a relationship and knowing your partner long-term. However, most millennials I know aren’t actually in a long-term relationship or considering marriage. Nowadays, cohabitation is more common than marriage, and Andrew and I explore why that is the case and the changing viewpoints on marriage.
Tune in this week to hear a millennial’s view on marriage and how it might differ to traditional views around the concept. We dive deeper into navigating the complexities of marriage, the importance of having the right mindset when it comes to dating, and why Andrew believes so many people in his generation have unrealistic expectations of marriage.
WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER
Why Andrew believes so many people feel a sense of disappointment in their partner.
The power of mindset in every aspect of life, but especially dating.
How Andrew’s Christian beliefs tie in with his views on marriage and dating.
The different cultures and mindsets that come with online dating.
Where Andrew believes satisfaction is ultimately found.
TRANSCRIPT
Andrew: She was saying, “I didn't really want to get married. Why do you need a piece of paper? Like what's the point of marriage? Why should I do that? We can just move in together. What's the difference?”
Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one on one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you.
By evolving ourselves as individuals. We influence and transform the world around us. Please help me welcome board certified OB-GYN specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and US News top doctor, your host Susan A. Crockett, MD.
Dr. Crockett: Hey, y'all. Welcome back to The Dr. Crockett Show. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. I have with me today probably the youngest guests that we've had on the show, but full of such great knowledge and character. I'm really excited to have a conversation with you, Andrew Hall, welcome to The Dr. Crockett Show.
Andrew: Thank you. Yeah, it's really an honor to be on.
Dr. Crockett: Thank you. So I was talking to you earlier, and we had lunch and had wonderful lunch together.
Andrew: Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: I heard you say something about having your own YouTube channel in the past.
Andrew: Yes. So I used to be a YouTuber back in the day. I think I was in probably seventh grade. I remember at the time I'd see these different special effects videos on YouTube. I was like oh, I want to do that. So I got a green screen. I wanted to clone myself, talking, and doing all that. It's probably some good blackmail material.
Dr. Crockett: So it’s brought you here to The Dr. Crockett Show.
Andrew: Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah.
Dr. Crockett: That’s so cool. Well, actually, what brought you here was the interview I did with Anthony Terry on the dating over 50.
Andrew: Yes.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: Highly recommend. Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: It was so much fun. So if y'all haven't seen that video, it was in my first 10, I think, y'all go back. We'll put a link in the in the show notes for you. But you had the idea that we should do one for dating under 30.
Andrew: Yes, actually, I'll give the credit to my mom. So Anthony, he was my dad's surgical tech, Dr. Gary Hall. That's the connection.
Dr. Crockett: That's how we know because I work with your dad.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Crockett: So one day he was like, “Oh, you really need to have my son on the show. He'd be great.”
Andrew: I don't think I've ever met Anthony, but my dad's told me a bunch of different stories. Super funny guy. So we watched the episode. I think one day my mom was like, “Hey, Andrew, he should be on the show. He could do dating under 30.” I kind of thought like oh, that's good idea. Just kind of chuckled. Then I ended up getting a text saying, “Hi, reaching out for The Dr. Susan Crockett show.” I was like oh, I'm on it. It’s happening.
Dr. Crockett: Well, yeah, because I started thinking we want a diverse audience. We have some themes of the show about helping people become better versions of themselves and making the world a better place. Our little seven seeds, which are seven seed colors. But when we talk about our guests and the conversations that we have on the show, it's important to me that we have diverse groups of people represented.
So I think this idea of talking about the dating scene under 30, even though I'm not in it, is a really important thing for us to bring that up to people's mind and give a little insight into what you're dealing with. That kind of morphed into talking about marriage. The topic of the show today is actually marriage and millennials.
Andrew: Yes.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: Your audience may be wondering why does this 25 year old who doesn't have a ring on his finger, what does he know about marriage?
Dr. Crockett: That's a good question. Yeah.
Andrew: But a lot of what I've learned is from people that have way more experience, especially my parents. They've taught me a lot about marriage. One book that was really informative for me was Tim Keller's The Meaning of Marriage: Navigating the Complexities of Commitment With the Wisdom of God. That one has really good for me.
Dr. Crockett: Well, we can put that one in the notes, in the show notes.
Andrew: Perfect. Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: So what's fascinating to me is so much of what I hear from well, you're the generation of my kids. So just full disclosure, I have four mostly grown children who are 20, 22, 24, and 26. They're amazing kids, but none of them are dating at all. None of them are thinking about marriage at all. They're all in this little space of a little bit of despair about the state of things.
Andrew: So I dated my senior year of high school for a little bit and then graduated. She was a little bit younger than me. So we decided to break up. Then dated my freshman year of college for a little bit. I think when I got to college, that was the first time that I really started thinking about my future.
When I got there, I was like oh crap. What am I going to do with my life? I think at the time I was business pre-med, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my dad being a doctor. I wanted to kind of try that out. So I was really focused on okay, I'm here for school. I'm here for academics. I'm on a mission. I felt like dating, a lot of dating that I saw seem like people were just wearing rose colored glasses, and it was all superficial. So I was kind of jaded I guess.
Dr. Crockett: That's interesting. Yeah.
Andrew: Then kind of toward the end of college, I had a pretty powerful experience. I had a close friend of mine that committed suicide. It really just caused me to kind of reexamine my life. I said I was a Christian, but I started kind of looking how is living and just thinking about what happens when I die. That experience really kind of brought me closer to God. I grew up in the church. But after that experience, I felt like God became really real to me and scripture really spoke to me and became my experience.
So kind of towards the end of that, I wasn't really focused on relationships. I was more focused on my faith. Then after I graduated college, I was kind of thinking well if God brings someone perhaps I'll be open to that. But now I'm kind of like you’ve got to put your faith in action. You’ve got to pray, and you’ve got to look. Someone's not just going to go poof.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah, you’ve got to be actively like, you have to put yourself out there and be in an environment where you would meet them.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Crockett: What do you mean by the mindset habit? Is it part of that?
Andrew: I definitely think the mindset that you have going in, I think that plays. I think your mindset is very powerful in every aspect of life. I think with dating having the right mindset of what am I looking for? What am I doing? I think that's really important. I think a lot of people, dating is kind of something that is fun.
Dr. Crockett: Social.
Andrew: Yeah, so I think having an idea of going into it, what am I looking for? I think that's really important. Sometimes you don't know necessarily what you're what you're looking for, but then you have to figure that out. So I think that plays a piece there too.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah. So one of the things that I've noticed in dating, especially incorporating online dating, is that there's such a diversity now of people. When I was in college and dating, it was a pretty homogenous faith. We all ate the same type of food. Not that we all had similar faith. I certainly had diverse friends. But when you met somebody, there was not so much trying to sort out the details of their preferences and their mindset and how they think.
Andrew: Yeah, that is one interesting thing about online dating. For a long time, I was pretty, I guess, apprehensive to online dating. I didn't want to do it. I had all reasons why I didn't think it was good. I was kind of anti-social media and just seeing smartphone dependency.
Dr. Crockett: Which is certainly an issue. Yes.
Andrew: Yeah. But I remember my older brother and his wife, they got married this past August, and they met online through an app called Coffee Meets Bagel.
Dr. Crockett: Interesting.
Andrew: Yeah, it's kind of a funny name. But so I decided to kind of be a little bit more open to it. One thing, I think it's a pro. Some people could be more critical of it. But on online dating you can put typically, most apps have what's your religion? What's your core beliefs and things about what's most important to you. You can find people that are aligned with you from very core fundamental beliefs. I think.
Dr. Crockett: That's helpful.
Andrew: Yeah. So you have a little bit more. You kind of know what you're going. It’s not a blind date totally but.
Dr. Crockett: So do you find that people in your age group are looking for marriage?
Andrew: That's a good question. I think they are. It is very interesting looking at the statistics. So if you look at around, I think 1950, the median age for men and women was about 23 and 21. Then if you fast forward to about 1970, it's about 24 and 22. You go to 1990 is about 27 and 25. Now, it's about 31 and 29. So it's going up about a year every decade.
I think a lot of people are, their idea of marriage has changed. I think historically, especially when our country is more religious, marriage was in the context of religion of it's a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman before God. It's something that is for raising families and producing a functioning society.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: I think now as people become less religious, marriage has also changed, how people look at it. So it's kind of more focused on where can I find personal fulfillment and self-satisfaction? How can this person to support my goals? So I think what you're finding is people have these kind of unrealistic expectations of marriage. Because of that, they're kind of disappointed in their partner because their partner is a human being. Not perfect.
Dr. Crockett: It doesn't meet all their everything. They can't be their everything. Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, I believe that our satisfaction is ultimately found in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. If you look to an imperfect person for that satisfaction, you're going to be disappointed. So I think people are looking to alternatives, whether that's cohabitation or some people, I remember, there is a coworker of mine.
I was listening to her conversation, and she was talking about she and her spouse got married. She was saying, “I didn't really want to get married. Why do you need a piece of paper?” It was just interesting that her view was it's a piece of paper. She thought, “What's the point of marriage? Why should I do that? We can just move in together. What's the difference?” I think there's kind of a much different view largely today than 50 years ago.
Dr. Crockett: Well, just speaking from my own personal experience, my background, I don't know if y’all know, but I was married for almost 30 years to two different men. I've been divorced twice. My first husband, who's the father of my children, passed away of a heart attack about, let's see, it's been six years now. So I function mostly as a widowed family. Single mom and the only parent to my kids.
My views have changed. So I was raised in a very Christian household, very conservative. I actually didn't have sex with my first husband until we were married, which, even back then, was very conservative. I went into it with the same views that you're talking about. In fact, I've written, I wrote a book about Christian marriage and all of that. We're not going to talk about that because I've got some different views now. So we're not advertising that.
But I totally understood the spiritual side of it. The spiritual side meaning the connection between men and women becoming one. The religious side, which is the structure of the church and the functioning of the family within that structure, and the legal structure of it, which is the piece of paper that you're leading to.
Now that I'm in the position that I'm looking through this in hindsight, I still love the spiritual and not so much the religious. My worldview for religion has expanded. I'm still very much a Christian at my core. But I like to say love draws a bigger circle. I've expanded my ability to love all different kinds of cultures and people in that way.
But I still would love that spiritual oneness of a marriage. I'm still looking for it. But the legal stuff is just ridiculous. So, for me, it's not the piece of paper that I want. It's the piece of paper I don't want because it caused me so much pain, the legal part of being married.
Andrew: Yeah, whenever I met a lot of people that are divorced, and you hear the statistics of one in two people go through a divorce that are married.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: There's so much hurt. I think there's the obvious, the economic ramifications of the legal costs and all of that, but just the emotional hurt. There's so much that you go through with that. That's something that I think for me, really, I put a lot of thought into thinking about marriage and finding the right partner because the pain and the suffering that comes from divorce, I can only imagine.
Dr. Crockett: Well, the spiritual part, the spiritual divorce was difficult because that's loss of oneness or loss of relationship. But the legal and the financial part of divorce is what makes me not want to do it again.
If you separate out the emotional/spiritual part of marriage from the legal marriage, which is basically a business contract, the business contracting of marriage within our society is it's like having two businesses joined, and joining those businesses is really. That's a separate issue than the whole spiritual demise of a marriage. Right?
Andrew: Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: So I'm looking at it now. People say, “Do you want to get married again?” I'm like yeah, but not legally. Maybe I do. Maybe with the right person with the right legal protection in place, but you know that that never would have been me 30 years ago. I never would have thought that I needed to protect myself from the person that I loved and adored and was marrying to.
I know your generation sees through this lens of seeing my generation going through divorces. Yeah, what does your generation say about not having the piece of paper? That's where this, I'm wrapping back around to where this part of the, I digressed. Where this digressed from was your friend who's like I don't want that piece of paper.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people are looking for alternatives. I think a lot of people think oh, cohabitation. We don't have to do all the legal hurdles. If it doesn't work out, we can just part ways. It's kind of a try before you buy.
Dr. Crockett: That's not the answer either.
Andrew: I would agree, yeah. I think because marriage at its core, when you look at it, what's the origin of marriage? I would say it comes from Scripture, the Bible. Back in, it's very interesting. If you think about reading a book, if you want to get the gist of it, you could read the first two pages and the last two pages.
Marriage is mentioned at the beginning of the Bible and the very end of the Bible. When you have the creation of Adam and Eve, that's kind of the first marriage that talks about a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, the two shall become one. Then at the end of the Bible, you see this marriage supper of the Lamb of Christ and the church.
That's kind of the transcendent meaning of marriage. That God became man so that you could have oneness and unity and we could be reconciled back to Him, despite us being sinful and rebelling against Him. I think that's the most beautiful thing of marriage. Anyways.
Dr. Crockett: So that's more of a unification between the spiritual realm and our physical realm, like our soul in our physical reconciling to God.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I would say that you have the kind of the physical institution of man and woman, but there's also, it's kind of a drama that portrays Christ coming down, sacrificing himself for the church for us. Then the church being presented holy and blameless. There's a great passage in Ephesians that talks about that.
Dr. Crockett: The bride and the bridegroom. The bride being the church and the bridegroom being Christ.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly. That wonderful call, that husband and wife. The husband can love his wife as Christ loved the church, laying down his life for her and this sacrificial love and commitment to her. The wife trusts and loves her husband to lead her and to guide her.
But anyways, the digression from kind of alternatives of cohabitation. Where I was getting at was marriage inherently is this promise that till death do us part. I'm going to love you thick and thin, rich or poor, healthy or sick. You don't have that if it's a well, let me just try it out and see if it works out just in case if we’re compatible.
Dr. Crockett: What if you, because when you get married, you have a religious ceremony if you're in a religious congregation. Then you have the legal paperwork, right? There are two separate things. What if you just did the religious one and didn't do the legal one?
Andrew: That's a really interesting idea. I think another question comes to mind of well, who has the authority to mandate a marriage? Is it the state or the church?
Dr. Crockett: Right?
Andrew: That's a whole other.
Dr. Crockett: Or just the two people between themselves.
Andrew: Yeah, we're just you and me. We’re making this covenant, this promise between each other, death do us part. I think that is a very interesting alternative.
Dr. Crockett: I'm not advocating by the way. I'm just throwing ideas out and deconstructing the whole marriage thing. I'm throwing it at you because I'm curious about your generation. So I think that is a very different thought than the we’ll just try it out and cohabitate thing.
Andrew: Yeah. I think what I've seen a lot is I feel like it's probably more common in my generation of kind of cohabitation. I think, though, there is this longing kind of for. Like when I hear different stories of people saying oh, we're high school sweethearts. That's such a rare thing, but I think more and more people are longing for that. There's that intimacy of knowing each other.
Dr. Crockett: Long term and the trust connection.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Crockett: I have your back. Do or die, you know.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I know with online dating it's how a lot of people meet. There's different dating apps out there with different kinds of cultures and mindsets of what you're looking for. So it really depends kind of what you're looking for. I think.
Dr. Crockett: You can find a place to meet your peoples in some place.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: So talk to me a little bit about your generation’s thought about health and diet and their worldview. Society and economics are changing so much. There's so much that your generation has access to to think about and choose from that our generation didn't have until now. We have it now, and we're adapting to it. But tell me about how that influences your dating. You mentioned that you had been vegan or vegetarian in the past.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I tried. I've really experimented when it comes to eating and diet. I remember in high school, I got into working out because I wanted to become better at basketball. Then eventually I got into it so much that I stopped playing basketball and just worked out. So I think that was kind of my first attempt at trying out fitness and prioritizing that.
Then I think when I got to college, I tried a lot of different things, keto, vegan, intermittent fasting. Now kind of more whole foods and focusing on the quality of the food. But when it when it comes to I think eating and dating, diet and dating, that would be an interesting book title.
Dr. Crockett: Right. There you go.
Andrew: I think just the overall mindset with millennials, I think there's a lot of kind of looking for different preferences. I think the thing that I'm thinking of is with work, work-life balance. That's kind of a millennial thing. A lot of the boomer generation, all these millennials don’t know how to work hard. They have a point.
I think there's a lot of, with dating, it's kind of like how can I design the perfect relationship or fitting all my criteria? That fits with dating apps. Okay, I want to find someone who eats this way, believes this, does this, does that. Checks off all these boxes. I have this list. Oh, they check this list. All right. I'm going to match with them.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: So it becomes a little bit, what's the word? Inorganic. Like, sometimes you can't just label people.
Dr. Crockett: You can't choose what love’s going to find for you.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes I think you have to, I think being aligned on certain things is important, but there's going to be other things that you just you see things differently. But I think diet is becoming more and more of a bigger.
Dr. Crockett: Consciousness.
Andrew: Yeah, I think it's an important thing for me of I would want to be with someone who prioritizes health and fitness, that wants to live a healthy lifestyle.
Dr. Crockett: Right because you want them to be with you for a long time, right.
Andrew: Yeah, we want to enjoy life together for a long time. Have health and longevity, all of that. I think that's more than just what are we going to eat for dinner. It's a whole mindset thing.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: How can I live a life that's healthy? How can I live a life that's getting rid of the bad things and the toxic things?
Dr. Crockett: Yeah. You have such awareness. You're so articulate. I've just loved our interview. Thanks for coming on the show today.
Andrew: Yeah, it's been great. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah. You want to tell folks how they can find you?
Andrew: Yeah, sure thing. You can find me on Instagram. That's AndrewHall122998. I need to get one more creative with that. Then I also recently started writing on Medium. You can find me Andrew Hall1229. then I also write a little bit for an organization called The Washington Stand. That's washingtonstand.org.
Dr. Crockett: Cool. Well, thank you very much.
Andrew: Yes.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: Awesome. Thank you.
Dr. Crockett: Hey, guys. Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed Andrew’s conversation with me, please like, share, and subscribe. Those are the three words I always have to remember. Hit the like buttons below. If you have ideas for us about what you want on future shows, please drop me a comment. Tell me what you think about some of the things we talked about. I look forward to seeing you next week on Tuesday. Take care and have a wonderful week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com, or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful or think it might help someone else, please like, subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.
Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one on one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you.
By evolving ourselves as individuals. We influence and transform the world around us. Please help me welcome board certified OB-GYN specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and US News top doctor, your host Susan A. Crockett, MD.
Dr. Crockett: Hey, y'all. Welcome back to The Dr. Crockett Show. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. I have with me today probably the youngest guests that we've had on the show, but full of such great knowledge and character. I'm really excited to have a conversation with you, Andrew Hall, welcome to The Dr. Crockett Show.
Andrew: Thank you. Yeah, it's really an honor to be on.
Dr. Crockett: Thank you. So I was talking to you earlier, and we had lunch and had wonderful lunch together.
Andrew: Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: I heard you say something about having your own YouTube channel in the past.
Andrew: Yes. So I used to be a YouTuber back in the day. I think I was in probably seventh grade. I remember at the time I'd see these different special effects videos on YouTube. I was like oh, I want to do that. So I got a green screen. I wanted to clone myself, talking, and doing all that. It's probably some good blackmail material.
Dr. Crockett: So it’s brought you here to The Dr. Crockett Show.
Andrew: Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah.
Dr. Crockett: That’s so cool. Well, actually, what brought you here was the interview I did with Anthony Terry on the dating over 50.
Andrew: Yes.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: Highly recommend. Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: It was so much fun. So if y'all haven't seen that video, it was in my first 10, I think, y'all go back. We'll put a link in the in the show notes for you. But you had the idea that we should do one for dating under 30.
Andrew: Yes, actually, I'll give the credit to my mom. So Anthony, he was my dad's surgical tech, Dr. Gary Hall. That's the connection.
Dr. Crockett: That's how we know because I work with your dad.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Crockett: So one day he was like, “Oh, you really need to have my son on the show. He'd be great.”
Andrew: I don't think I've ever met Anthony, but my dad's told me a bunch of different stories. Super funny guy. So we watched the episode. I think one day my mom was like, “Hey, Andrew, he should be on the show. He could do dating under 30.” I kind of thought like oh, that's good idea. Just kind of chuckled. Then I ended up getting a text saying, “Hi, reaching out for The Dr. Susan Crockett show.” I was like oh, I'm on it. It’s happening.
Dr. Crockett: Well, yeah, because I started thinking we want a diverse audience. We have some themes of the show about helping people become better versions of themselves and making the world a better place. Our little seven seeds, which are seven seed colors. But when we talk about our guests and the conversations that we have on the show, it's important to me that we have diverse groups of people represented.
So I think this idea of talking about the dating scene under 30, even though I'm not in it, is a really important thing for us to bring that up to people's mind and give a little insight into what you're dealing with. That kind of morphed into talking about marriage. The topic of the show today is actually marriage and millennials.
Andrew: Yes.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: Your audience may be wondering why does this 25 year old who doesn't have a ring on his finger, what does he know about marriage?
Dr. Crockett: That's a good question. Yeah.
Andrew: But a lot of what I've learned is from people that have way more experience, especially my parents. They've taught me a lot about marriage. One book that was really informative for me was Tim Keller's The Meaning of Marriage: Navigating the Complexities of Commitment With the Wisdom of God. That one has really good for me.
Dr. Crockett: Well, we can put that one in the notes, in the show notes.
Andrew: Perfect. Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: So what's fascinating to me is so much of what I hear from well, you're the generation of my kids. So just full disclosure, I have four mostly grown children who are 20, 22, 24, and 26. They're amazing kids, but none of them are dating at all. None of them are thinking about marriage at all. They're all in this little space of a little bit of despair about the state of things.
Andrew: So I dated my senior year of high school for a little bit and then graduated. She was a little bit younger than me. So we decided to break up. Then dated my freshman year of college for a little bit. I think when I got to college, that was the first time that I really started thinking about my future.
When I got there, I was like oh crap. What am I going to do with my life? I think at the time I was business pre-med, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my dad being a doctor. I wanted to kind of try that out. So I was really focused on okay, I'm here for school. I'm here for academics. I'm on a mission. I felt like dating, a lot of dating that I saw seem like people were just wearing rose colored glasses, and it was all superficial. So I was kind of jaded I guess.
Dr. Crockett: That's interesting. Yeah.
Andrew: Then kind of toward the end of college, I had a pretty powerful experience. I had a close friend of mine that committed suicide. It really just caused me to kind of reexamine my life. I said I was a Christian, but I started kind of looking how is living and just thinking about what happens when I die. That experience really kind of brought me closer to God. I grew up in the church. But after that experience, I felt like God became really real to me and scripture really spoke to me and became my experience.
So kind of towards the end of that, I wasn't really focused on relationships. I was more focused on my faith. Then after I graduated college, I was kind of thinking well if God brings someone perhaps I'll be open to that. But now I'm kind of like you’ve got to put your faith in action. You’ve got to pray, and you’ve got to look. Someone's not just going to go poof.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah, you’ve got to be actively like, you have to put yourself out there and be in an environment where you would meet them.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Crockett: What do you mean by the mindset habit? Is it part of that?
Andrew: I definitely think the mindset that you have going in, I think that plays. I think your mindset is very powerful in every aspect of life. I think with dating having the right mindset of what am I looking for? What am I doing? I think that's really important. I think a lot of people, dating is kind of something that is fun.
Dr. Crockett: Social.
Andrew: Yeah, so I think having an idea of going into it, what am I looking for? I think that's really important. Sometimes you don't know necessarily what you're what you're looking for, but then you have to figure that out. So I think that plays a piece there too.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah. So one of the things that I've noticed in dating, especially incorporating online dating, is that there's such a diversity now of people. When I was in college and dating, it was a pretty homogenous faith. We all ate the same type of food. Not that we all had similar faith. I certainly had diverse friends. But when you met somebody, there was not so much trying to sort out the details of their preferences and their mindset and how they think.
Andrew: Yeah, that is one interesting thing about online dating. For a long time, I was pretty, I guess, apprehensive to online dating. I didn't want to do it. I had all reasons why I didn't think it was good. I was kind of anti-social media and just seeing smartphone dependency.
Dr. Crockett: Which is certainly an issue. Yes.
Andrew: Yeah. But I remember my older brother and his wife, they got married this past August, and they met online through an app called Coffee Meets Bagel.
Dr. Crockett: Interesting.
Andrew: Yeah, it's kind of a funny name. But so I decided to kind of be a little bit more open to it. One thing, I think it's a pro. Some people could be more critical of it. But on online dating you can put typically, most apps have what's your religion? What's your core beliefs and things about what's most important to you. You can find people that are aligned with you from very core fundamental beliefs. I think.
Dr. Crockett: That's helpful.
Andrew: Yeah. So you have a little bit more. You kind of know what you're going. It’s not a blind date totally but.
Dr. Crockett: So do you find that people in your age group are looking for marriage?
Andrew: That's a good question. I think they are. It is very interesting looking at the statistics. So if you look at around, I think 1950, the median age for men and women was about 23 and 21. Then if you fast forward to about 1970, it's about 24 and 22. You go to 1990 is about 27 and 25. Now, it's about 31 and 29. So it's going up about a year every decade.
I think a lot of people are, their idea of marriage has changed. I think historically, especially when our country is more religious, marriage was in the context of religion of it's a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman before God. It's something that is for raising families and producing a functioning society.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: I think now as people become less religious, marriage has also changed, how people look at it. So it's kind of more focused on where can I find personal fulfillment and self-satisfaction? How can this person to support my goals? So I think what you're finding is people have these kind of unrealistic expectations of marriage. Because of that, they're kind of disappointed in their partner because their partner is a human being. Not perfect.
Dr. Crockett: It doesn't meet all their everything. They can't be their everything. Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, I believe that our satisfaction is ultimately found in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. If you look to an imperfect person for that satisfaction, you're going to be disappointed. So I think people are looking to alternatives, whether that's cohabitation or some people, I remember, there is a coworker of mine.
I was listening to her conversation, and she was talking about she and her spouse got married. She was saying, “I didn't really want to get married. Why do you need a piece of paper?” It was just interesting that her view was it's a piece of paper. She thought, “What's the point of marriage? Why should I do that? We can just move in together. What's the difference?” I think there's kind of a much different view largely today than 50 years ago.
Dr. Crockett: Well, just speaking from my own personal experience, my background, I don't know if y’all know, but I was married for almost 30 years to two different men. I've been divorced twice. My first husband, who's the father of my children, passed away of a heart attack about, let's see, it's been six years now. So I function mostly as a widowed family. Single mom and the only parent to my kids.
My views have changed. So I was raised in a very Christian household, very conservative. I actually didn't have sex with my first husband until we were married, which, even back then, was very conservative. I went into it with the same views that you're talking about. In fact, I've written, I wrote a book about Christian marriage and all of that. We're not going to talk about that because I've got some different views now. So we're not advertising that.
But I totally understood the spiritual side of it. The spiritual side meaning the connection between men and women becoming one. The religious side, which is the structure of the church and the functioning of the family within that structure, and the legal structure of it, which is the piece of paper that you're leading to.
Now that I'm in the position that I'm looking through this in hindsight, I still love the spiritual and not so much the religious. My worldview for religion has expanded. I'm still very much a Christian at my core. But I like to say love draws a bigger circle. I've expanded my ability to love all different kinds of cultures and people in that way.
But I still would love that spiritual oneness of a marriage. I'm still looking for it. But the legal stuff is just ridiculous. So, for me, it's not the piece of paper that I want. It's the piece of paper I don't want because it caused me so much pain, the legal part of being married.
Andrew: Yeah, whenever I met a lot of people that are divorced, and you hear the statistics of one in two people go through a divorce that are married.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: There's so much hurt. I think there's the obvious, the economic ramifications of the legal costs and all of that, but just the emotional hurt. There's so much that you go through with that. That's something that I think for me, really, I put a lot of thought into thinking about marriage and finding the right partner because the pain and the suffering that comes from divorce, I can only imagine.
Dr. Crockett: Well, the spiritual part, the spiritual divorce was difficult because that's loss of oneness or loss of relationship. But the legal and the financial part of divorce is what makes me not want to do it again.
If you separate out the emotional/spiritual part of marriage from the legal marriage, which is basically a business contract, the business contracting of marriage within our society is it's like having two businesses joined, and joining those businesses is really. That's a separate issue than the whole spiritual demise of a marriage. Right?
Andrew: Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: So I'm looking at it now. People say, “Do you want to get married again?” I'm like yeah, but not legally. Maybe I do. Maybe with the right person with the right legal protection in place, but you know that that never would have been me 30 years ago. I never would have thought that I needed to protect myself from the person that I loved and adored and was marrying to.
I know your generation sees through this lens of seeing my generation going through divorces. Yeah, what does your generation say about not having the piece of paper? That's where this, I'm wrapping back around to where this part of the, I digressed. Where this digressed from was your friend who's like I don't want that piece of paper.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people are looking for alternatives. I think a lot of people think oh, cohabitation. We don't have to do all the legal hurdles. If it doesn't work out, we can just part ways. It's kind of a try before you buy.
Dr. Crockett: That's not the answer either.
Andrew: I would agree, yeah. I think because marriage at its core, when you look at it, what's the origin of marriage? I would say it comes from Scripture, the Bible. Back in, it's very interesting. If you think about reading a book, if you want to get the gist of it, you could read the first two pages and the last two pages.
Marriage is mentioned at the beginning of the Bible and the very end of the Bible. When you have the creation of Adam and Eve, that's kind of the first marriage that talks about a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, the two shall become one. Then at the end of the Bible, you see this marriage supper of the Lamb of Christ and the church.
That's kind of the transcendent meaning of marriage. That God became man so that you could have oneness and unity and we could be reconciled back to Him, despite us being sinful and rebelling against Him. I think that's the most beautiful thing of marriage. Anyways.
Dr. Crockett: So that's more of a unification between the spiritual realm and our physical realm, like our soul in our physical reconciling to God.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I would say that you have the kind of the physical institution of man and woman, but there's also, it's kind of a drama that portrays Christ coming down, sacrificing himself for the church for us. Then the church being presented holy and blameless. There's a great passage in Ephesians that talks about that.
Dr. Crockett: The bride and the bridegroom. The bride being the church and the bridegroom being Christ.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly. That wonderful call, that husband and wife. The husband can love his wife as Christ loved the church, laying down his life for her and this sacrificial love and commitment to her. The wife trusts and loves her husband to lead her and to guide her.
But anyways, the digression from kind of alternatives of cohabitation. Where I was getting at was marriage inherently is this promise that till death do us part. I'm going to love you thick and thin, rich or poor, healthy or sick. You don't have that if it's a well, let me just try it out and see if it works out just in case if we’re compatible.
Dr. Crockett: What if you, because when you get married, you have a religious ceremony if you're in a religious congregation. Then you have the legal paperwork, right? There are two separate things. What if you just did the religious one and didn't do the legal one?
Andrew: That's a really interesting idea. I think another question comes to mind of well, who has the authority to mandate a marriage? Is it the state or the church?
Dr. Crockett: Right?
Andrew: That's a whole other.
Dr. Crockett: Or just the two people between themselves.
Andrew: Yeah, we're just you and me. We’re making this covenant, this promise between each other, death do us part. I think that is a very interesting alternative.
Dr. Crockett: I'm not advocating by the way. I'm just throwing ideas out and deconstructing the whole marriage thing. I'm throwing it at you because I'm curious about your generation. So I think that is a very different thought than the we’ll just try it out and cohabitate thing.
Andrew: Yeah. I think what I've seen a lot is I feel like it's probably more common in my generation of kind of cohabitation. I think, though, there is this longing kind of for. Like when I hear different stories of people saying oh, we're high school sweethearts. That's such a rare thing, but I think more and more people are longing for that. There's that intimacy of knowing each other.
Dr. Crockett: Long term and the trust connection.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Crockett: I have your back. Do or die, you know.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I know with online dating it's how a lot of people meet. There's different dating apps out there with different kinds of cultures and mindsets of what you're looking for. So it really depends kind of what you're looking for. I think.
Dr. Crockett: You can find a place to meet your peoples in some place.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Dr. Crockett: So talk to me a little bit about your generation’s thought about health and diet and their worldview. Society and economics are changing so much. There's so much that your generation has access to to think about and choose from that our generation didn't have until now. We have it now, and we're adapting to it. But tell me about how that influences your dating. You mentioned that you had been vegan or vegetarian in the past.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I tried. I've really experimented when it comes to eating and diet. I remember in high school, I got into working out because I wanted to become better at basketball. Then eventually I got into it so much that I stopped playing basketball and just worked out. So I think that was kind of my first attempt at trying out fitness and prioritizing that.
Then I think when I got to college, I tried a lot of different things, keto, vegan, intermittent fasting. Now kind of more whole foods and focusing on the quality of the food. But when it when it comes to I think eating and dating, diet and dating, that would be an interesting book title.
Dr. Crockett: Right. There you go.
Andrew: I think just the overall mindset with millennials, I think there's a lot of kind of looking for different preferences. I think the thing that I'm thinking of is with work, work-life balance. That's kind of a millennial thing. A lot of the boomer generation, all these millennials don’t know how to work hard. They have a point.
I think there's a lot of, with dating, it's kind of like how can I design the perfect relationship or fitting all my criteria? That fits with dating apps. Okay, I want to find someone who eats this way, believes this, does this, does that. Checks off all these boxes. I have this list. Oh, they check this list. All right. I'm going to match with them.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: So it becomes a little bit, what's the word? Inorganic. Like, sometimes you can't just label people.
Dr. Crockett: You can't choose what love’s going to find for you.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes I think you have to, I think being aligned on certain things is important, but there's going to be other things that you just you see things differently. But I think diet is becoming more and more of a bigger.
Dr. Crockett: Consciousness.
Andrew: Yeah, I think it's an important thing for me of I would want to be with someone who prioritizes health and fitness, that wants to live a healthy lifestyle.
Dr. Crockett: Right because you want them to be with you for a long time, right.
Andrew: Yeah, we want to enjoy life together for a long time. Have health and longevity, all of that. I think that's more than just what are we going to eat for dinner. It's a whole mindset thing.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: How can I live a life that's healthy? How can I live a life that's getting rid of the bad things and the toxic things?
Dr. Crockett: Yeah. You have such awareness. You're so articulate. I've just loved our interview. Thanks for coming on the show today.
Andrew: Yeah, it's been great. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah. You want to tell folks how they can find you?
Andrew: Yeah, sure thing. You can find me on Instagram. That's AndrewHall122998. I need to get one more creative with that. Then I also recently started writing on Medium. You can find me Andrew Hall1229. then I also write a little bit for an organization called The Washington Stand. That's washingtonstand.org.
Dr. Crockett: Cool. Well, thank you very much.
Andrew: Yes.
Dr. Crockett: Yeah.
Andrew: Awesome. Thank you.
Dr. Crockett: Hey, guys. Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed Andrew’s conversation with me, please like, share, and subscribe. Those are the three words I always have to remember. Hit the like buttons below. If you have ideas for us about what you want on future shows, please drop me a comment. Tell me what you think about some of the things we talked about. I look forward to seeing you next week on Tuesday. Take care and have a wonderful week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com, or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful or think it might help someone else, please like, subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.
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