Oxytocin’s Marriage Promise Outruns the Evidence

Asked what he would work on if he had to start over, Anduril and Oculus founder Palmer Luckey told Peter Diamandis he would try to “end the tragedy of divorce with oxytocin doping for marriage counseling.” Luckey’s pitch joined a painful problem to a proposed intervention: people drift apart, he said, and oxytocin is associated with pair bonding in mammals. If people accept SSRIs, he argued, oxytocin to help people stay together should be acceptable too.

Sam Parr was taken not only by the proposed product, but by the way Luckey got to it. Divorce, Parr said, is a large problem with many possible interventions: helping people find the right partner or have better conversations early in a relationship, for example. Luckey’s answer was striking because it was specific and already packaged as a pitch. Parr said he did not know enough about oxytocin to endorse the intervention. He was interested in how a business might form around the idea.

Parr said he first encountered oxytocin through biohacking forums, including a Reddit community where users posted journals about taking it. He described the forum as including people with autism or Asperger’s and people with PTSD. In the posts he cited, users recorded physical sensations, emotional changes, and interactions with family. One account said that after taking a dose, eye contact with the writer’s children became easier and a conversation went better. Parr found the journals striking partly because they described a specific change in social interaction, rather than just a general feeling of wellbeing.

Oxytocin is a hormone that occurs naturally in the body. Parr described it as involved in bonding between mothers and infants, and associated it with the warm feeling people may experience while cuddling after sex. He also mentioned studies in which people looking at their dogs released some oxytocin. Puri added an account from his own marriage: during a silent, sustained eye-contact exercise, his wife began crying within about 30 seconds. He did not feel the same urge to cry, but said the intensity of the exercise surprised him.

Puri’s larger interest was the possibility that feelings people experience as mysterious or purely psychological might sometimes be influenced by a chemical state. He compared the question to weight-loss drugs: a “magic pill” for weight loss once sounded impossible, he said, but now drugs in that category exist. He wondered whether there could also be a chemical intervention that made it easier to feel bonded to a partner.

He described oxytocin not as a love potion but as a kind of “highlighter”: in his account, it might amplify an existing social response rather than make someone fall in love with whoever happened to be nearby. He said that if a person’s underlying response to someone were negative, oxytocin might heighten the desire for distance; if the response were warm, it might heighten that warmth. Puri saw this possibility as potentially important for people who have difficulty connecting socially.

The prairie-vole example gave Puri a way to explain why the idea caught his attention. He described the animals as forming unusually strong, lifelong bonds after mating. He also recounted small human experiments in which men in relationships kept more distance from an attractive woman after taking oxytocin than after receiving a placebo. A chart shown during the discussion put the average distance at 70.4 centimetres after oxytocin and 55.9 centimetres after placebo. Puri called the studies small and said they were not robust proof. The result interested him because it suggested a possible link between a chemical and behavior people may think they control through intention alone.

The business signals Parr noticed were more immediate than the research. He showed search results for oxytocin nasal sprays and said some websites appeared to let customers order without a prescription. He also pointed to a BlueChew article describing oxytocin as a “social amplifier” and promoting a product that combined it with other active ingredients. Parr speculated that Hims might enter the category. That was his prediction, not a claim that the company was already selling oxytocin.

Puri’s response combined interest with caution. He said he did not know enough about oxytocin’s safety or efficacy, and Parr said the idea could be “bullshit” and was understudied. Still, Puri had seen practices move from fringe to more familiar. He cited peptides and psychedelics as examples, while describing his own views about their uses as partly anecdotal. He could imagine people using a nasal spray before a team retreat, although he acknowledged that the scenario sounded implausible to him at the time.

The commercial possibility sits in the gap between a memorable promise and an uncertain intervention. Parr and Puri imagined that products might be marketed to couples as a way to reconnect, and Puri predicted that consumers might see ads claiming oxytocin would cure divorce. The promise is easy to understand; what oxytocin would actually do for a couple is the harder question.

Parr’s next idea was to build an institution around a shared identity and use that relationship to offer financial products. He began with the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s organization founded in New Haven in 1882. As Parr recounted its origins, a priest named Michael McGivney saw a family left without an earner after a parishioner died. He organized men in the parish into a mutual-benefit society: members contributed money, and the group helped a deceased member’s family.

Parr described the Knights today as a large fraternal organization with millions of members, local chapters, charitable activities, and a substantial insurance business. Members pay dues and gather through their church to organize projects such as pancake drives and help for people experiencing homelessness. The group also sells life insurance and other financial products to its members. A graphic shown during the discussion listed more than $124 billion in life insurance in force, $32.2 billion in assets, and 1.6 million policies. Those figures helped Parr illustrate the scale of an organization whose starting point was mutual aid among parishioners.

He was also interested in the organization’s reported growth among younger men. Parr said the Knights had once been mostly older men and had seemed to be declining, but that men in their thirties and forties were joining. A displayed article described men under 35 as its fastest-growing membership group. For Parr, this challenged the assumption that fraternal organizations necessarily appeal only to older generations.

He saw related structures in groups organized around other practical interests. Good Sam, he said, serves RV owners with membership benefits that include roadside assistance, campground access, discounts, and insurance-related products. The U.S. Concealed Carry Association offers gun owners training and other resources. Parr said he had been a member and described a roughly $300 membership that included monthly training and insurance support if a member were prosecuted after shooting someone. He put the organization’s annual revenue at about $400 million.

The examples differ, but Parr and Shaan Puri drew out a common sequence. A person joins because of an interest, identity, or practical need. Membership provides services, discounts, or a way to meet other members. The organization then has a relationship through which it can offer financial products itself or work with a provider.

Puri described the economic opportunity as selling a financial service to members who already have “some preferential attachment” to the community. The membership offers value apart from the financial product: people can meet others, get discounts, or take part in shared activities. That relationship may make the organization a natural channel for products relevant to its members.

Not every group in this model has to underwrite insurance itself. Parr used AARP to make that distinction. He described it as a membership organization for older adults that provides a magazine, events, discounts, and services, while partnering with UnitedHealthcare on Medicare plans. AARP supplies its name and connection to potential customers; the insurer provides the health coverage. Parr said this kind of partnership is more typical than a membership organization running every financial product itself.

Healthcare-sharing programs raised a separate question. Puri described them as arrangements where members contribute to a pool that may help pay another member’s medical costs. A diagram shown during the discussion contrasted a conventional insurance payment with a healthcare-sharing contribution and noted that payouts in the latter arrangement were not contractually guaranteed in the same way. Puri wondered whether the model depended on tax advantages or offered a different value proposition. Parr said some structures may receive tax benefits, but that those benefits are not necessary to make the broader membership model work. He also said health insurance was complicated and not an area he would readily enter.

That distinction matters to the business idea. The opportunity Parr identified was not simply to become an insurer. It was to build a community people have a reason to join, make membership useful, and then offer relevant financial products—often through a partner. The examples he cited suggest that insurance or another financial service can be part of the economics, while the group’s identity and member benefits give people a reason to belong in the first place.

Nor did the speakers say that loneliness alone would sustain a membership business. Their examples were organized around specific affinities or needs: religion, owning an RV, or carrying a concealed weapon. The business question is how to give members enough shared purpose and practical value to keep participating. A financial product can contribute to the model, but it does not supply the community by itself.

Faith-based businesses supplied a bridge between the membership idea and entertainment. Puri described Angel Studios as a values-oriented entertainment company with a membership community called the Angel Guild. He said the company had hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue and millions of members. He described its audience as people who want content without cursing, drinking, or drugs, and stories featuring characters who can do good rather than a uniformly bleak world.

One example was The Chosen, a series about Jesus. Puri said 200 million people had watched it, that Angel helped produce its first three seasons, and that it had reached a seventh season. He offered those figures to show the scale an entertainment company could reach with content directed at an audience that wants a particular kind of story.

The Guild gives members more than streaming access. They can vote on concepts and films. As Puri explained the process, Angel may show members a trailer or a sample of a completed movie. If fewer than 70 percent vote to greenlight it, the deal is dropped; if more than 70 percent vote yes, the film can enter Angel’s marketing pipeline. A screenshot of the Guild site described members as deciding what shows are worth making.

Puri said the company had a higher average Rotten Tomatoes score and hit rate than popular studios, but did not provide figures for that comparison. The voting system was one part of the business he emphasized: the Guild gives the company a way to collect member responses to projects before deciding whether to promote them.

The company’s origins, as Puri told them, were in filtering existing films for viewers who wanted to remove objectionable scenes. He described the founder as a marketer associated with campaigns such as Poo-Pourri and Squatty Potty, and as a Latter-day Saint concerned about what children might encounter on YouTube. The early product let users filter out cursing, sex scenes, and drug scenes while leaving the rest of a movie intact. Puri called it “the gluten-free movie.”

The filtering service attracted customers but also legal trouble. Puri said it was sued by studios and that a settlement reduced a $62.4 million jury verdict to $9.9 million. He described the early service as using a workaround in which a customer rented a DVD and received a filtered streaming version. Rather than continue fighting the film industry over edited versions of existing movies, the company eventually turned toward making content that was clean by design.

That history connects a defined audience to a production business. The original service addressed a specific complaint about existing movies. The company’s later approach was to make films and shows for viewers who wanted the material filtered at the source. Membership then gives Angel a relationship with people who may watch and vote on its projects. Puri described the Guild as a community of millions, and the company as a values-based studio operating at substantial scale.

Puri’s explanation of A24 began with a general business principle: look for the reaction to a dominant action. Facebook made personal photos public and permanent, he said; Snapchat offered photos that disappeared. Abundant food and delivery services created demand for weight-loss drugs. Endless screen time has prompted products designed to limit it. In these examples, the reaction gains relevance because the original behavior is widespread.

He applied the same idea to film. In Puri’s account, major studios became cautious about financing projects that might appeal to only part of the audience. They favored sequels, superhero films, and established properties that could reach multiple demographic groups. He described this as the four-quadrant logic of film: men under 30, women under 30, men over 30, and women over 30. A movie like The Big Short might appeal especially to one segment; Harry Potter can appeal to adults who grew up with it as well as children encountering it now.

Puri argued that this preference left an opening for a studio willing to make distinctive films for audiences mainstream studios were not prioritizing. A24 could acquire or produce projects at relatively low cost, he said, because there was less competition for that material and expectations were lower. He acknowledged that his account was simplified and that people in the industry might name other elements of the company’s success. The contrast he drew was between familiar properties designed to reach a broad audience and films that stood out by doing something different.

Puri also credited A24 with marketing that creates curiosity rather than simply announcing a release. He described a campaign for a Timothée Chalamet film that presented a long, seemingly leaked video-call recording instead of a conventional trailer. For a Kevin James film, he said, the actor created an Instagram identity as a teacher and painter named Matt Taylor, without immediately explaining the connection to the movie. At the Super Bowl, the campaign placed James in a tuxedo holding flowers amid empty seats, echoing a scene from the film. Influencers nearby could notice him and ask why he was there.

The campaigns Puri described made promotion part of the experience of encountering a film. The Matt Taylor account invited people to wonder whether its subject was Kevin James; the Super Bowl setup gave people an image that needed explaining. Rather than present a standard trailer and its claims about the movie, these examples relied on audiences noticing unusual details and discussing them.

The economics of production and release are less romantic. Puri described a film that cost $14 million to produce and $40 million to market, or $54 million all in. He said filming itself might take about 30 days, while writing, financing, editing, post-production, and distribution could stretch the overall process across years. The shoot is only one part of the time and expense involved.

He then used a hit film to explain why box-office gross is not the same as the studio’s return. If a movie grosses $250 million and theaters and distributors take roughly half, the studio might receive about $125 million. Against $54 million in production and marketing costs, that would be a little over twice the initial spend, before other costs or the losses from projects that fail. Parr pointed out that a hit has to help cover flops.

A chart shown during the discussion identified Sound of Freedom as an Angel Studios hit, with a $14.6 million production budget and $250.6 million in worldwide box office. The gross is large relative to the production budget, but the comparison does not include marketing or show how the ticket revenue is divided. Those were the distinctions Puri was making when he walked through the example of a film’s costs and receipts.

The speakers compared film with publishing and games, where a small number of hits can carry a larger portfolio. Parr recounted hearing that Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck* had sold around 20 million copies and that its success had been important to its publisher. Puri’s point was that a book can have attractive economics when it becomes a major hit, because printing costs are low relative to sales. Films can also succeed at scale, but their production and marketing costs, along with the split of box-office revenue, make the upside less like the 50-times or 100-times returns Puri associated with startup investing.

That leaves film as a difficult business even for a studio with a recognizable brand and a specific audience. Puri said many films are made but far fewer are distributed. He also pushed back on the idea that movie financing is an easy tax write-off: as he described it, a project has to enter production, and a tax benefit does not stop an investor from losing the principal.

Angel’s model and A24’s model address different parts of the challenge. Angel, as Puri described it, has a member community that can vote on projects and a defined preference for values-oriented entertainment. A24 found room for films that did not fit the priorities Puri attributed to the major studios, and built marketing campaigns that make a film noticeable. Neither model removes the risk of making a hit. An audience, a brand, and a distinctive campaign can shape the path to viewers; they do not make the outcome predictable.