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This is The Art of Charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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The Art of Charm is where ordinary guys become extraordinary men.
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Welcome to The Art of Charm.
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I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise
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and packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a curriculum.
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We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have all the questions.
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Make sure to stay up to date with The Art of Charm and get some great stuff that we don t or can t share on the show by signing up for the newsletter at theartofcharm.com.
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That s where we ll email you our Fundamentals Toolkit that covers topics like body language and nonverbal communication.
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dating, attraction, persuasion, networking.
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In fact, we just gave away our networking strategy guide, and we might still be able to get you that if you sign up at theartofcharm.com.
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Also, we have got public speaking, negotiation, and a whole lot more, and we ve got our live programs running every week here in Los Angeles, so get in touch if you re interested in that.
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We re sold out a few months in advance, so if you re interested in that, get in touch.
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I m Jordan at theartofcharm.com, or call the office.
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Looking forward to meeting you here at AOC.
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Today, we re talking with Dr. Duanna Welsh.
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This is a really interesting show.
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I really dig this one.
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We re talking a lot about evolutionary psychology and something called attachment styles, which dictate how your relationships are gonna function or not function, how to change your attachment style if you re dissatisfied with your relationship results, along with a few other myth-busting marriage versus living together, and we re gonna use science a lot in this one, because she is a scientist, so data-backed conclusions only.
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So enjoy this one with Dr. Duana Welsh.
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Tell us what you do in one sentence.
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Well, Jordan, what I do is I take social science and I help other people apply it to their romantic lives.
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I don t know anything about that.
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Hmm, that s interesting.
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That s almost like what our whole business is.
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This should be an interesting conversation.
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Excellent.
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And you wrote a book called Love Factually, where if you say it fast, kind of sounds like that movie.
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I see what you did there.
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Yes.
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Love Factually.
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And Dwayna, thanks for joining us as well.
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I mean, are you a scientist?
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Yes, I am.
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Okay, good.
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I m a social scientist.
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What does that mean?
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That means that I do the same stuff that they do in other sciences, but I apply it to social phenomena.
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In my first incarnation as a social scientist, I applied research techniques to memory and aging, and now I apply them to people s romantic lives.
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Alright, awesome.
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Here s what I like about your work so far, having seen only a small portion thereof, to be fair.
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But you use social science to solve real-life relationship issues, but again, emphasis on science, not your BS opinion from hanging out with cats, not some crap you read on the internet, not pontificating as
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a single person or as a married person or as a girl or as a woman or as you know somebody who s dated somebody before at some time in the past you have real creds you know you ve got your opinions are backed up by data.
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which is unusual in this industry.
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Most coaches, they don t back anything up.
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They don t need to because people will buy their crap without any data.
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And Art of Charm, we try to find scientific studies and data for everything we do, and it s tough.
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So I understand how tough this pursuit must have been, writing about things that are only backed by science.
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There s not a whole lot of room for creativity in there.
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Yeah, it s really difficult.
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This work came out of my own pain, as much work in the world does.
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I was not particularly effective at dating when I was in my early to mid-20s.
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Most scientists aren t, to be fair.
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Yeah, this is true.
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But it finally occurred to me in the middle of a really awful breakup that maybe there was some social scientist who had studied this kind of stuff.
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And in fact, there were a lot of them that I d never heard of, because at the time, all this stuff was in scientific journal articles.
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And I wasn t in that field.
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So I wasn t reading those journals.
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And it wasn t being publicized at all.
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And so I started amassing and accumulating these studies and applying them to my own life.
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and seeing good results, and ultimately that culminated in my blog and my book.
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But yes, it s very difficult to control myself sometimes, because of course I m a human being and I do have opinions about things, but I try very hard to base my opinions on science instead of just what I might be inclined to think.
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Science has shown me that a lot of the things that most of us are inclined to think are probably wrong.
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Yeah, and I want to talk about some of those as well because I love it when people are wrong and we get to prove it to them, myself included.
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So definitely want to dive into some of this here.
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I especially love how hidden relationship agendas, challenges, and things like that can be either debunked or explored.
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So what is attachment style?
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We sort of mentioned this a little bit, and you mentioned this in some of your work as well early on.
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attachment style beliefs about relationships and marriage.
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Can we look into that science?
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Can we start with that science?
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Sure, that s one of my very favorite areas.
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So I was surprised to find that I had a non-optimal attachment style and it was wrecking my love life.
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I was in my late 20s or even 30s when I had discovered that.
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I m now in my 40s.
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Your attachment style, and by the way, every one of us has one, is your habitual way of behaving in a relationship with an intimate partner or with people you re really close to.
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And there are three attachment styles, but the third one can be subdivided, so I often say there are four.
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We ve got four attachment styles, A, B, C, and D. So A, B, C, and D, you may feel like you re a combination of styles, and that s fine, but pick the one that fits you the best.
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Here we go.
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A, I find it relatively easy to get close to others.
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I am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me.
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I don t often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.
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That s A.
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Here s B. I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like.
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I worry that my partner doesn t really love me or won t want to stay with me.
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I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away.
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C.
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I am uncomfortable getting close to others.
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I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely or to depend on them.
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I worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others.
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And finally, this is D. I m comfortable without close emotional relationships.
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It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient, and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.
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So by the way, if you re listening, which 100% of you are, we ll have that transcribed in the show notes.
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So you don t have to pull over or like die on the highway trying to write that down and do it yourself.
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Okay.
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So what do we do with that?
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Do we pick, we find one that we re close to and then dot, dot, dot science.
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That s us.
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Your attachment style began when you were an infant and it is related to whether your caregiver met your needs or not.
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If your caregiver changed your diaper right away and fed you right away and nursed you or held you when you wanted to be held and didn t make you go off and cry it out, you learned that the world was a safe, trustworthy place and that you could bond very deeply with this one or a couple caregivers.
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And so most of us get our attachment style from our mom because most of us in our very early life, that s our primary person that we connect with.
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Not everybody.
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Of course, there are the stay-at-home dads out there and there are kids who are raised in institutions and other situations.
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But for most of us, it s mom.
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And what s interesting is most of us have the same attachment style our mother has.
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So this apparently is passed down from generation to generation.
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It s partially genetically mediated and it s partially caused by parenting styles.
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Parenting styles can overcome the genetic component of it.
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Well, we could get a second opinion by having our mother take this quiz too.
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You could, you could.
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And so what scientists found, especially Shaver and Hazan, when they gave this short questionnaire that I just gave you, was they found that not only do people sort out into one of these attachment styles, but most people have had the same attachment style since they were toddlers.
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In other words, Shaver and Hazan looked at people s attachment style results from when they were very little.
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Of course, you don t get that questionnaire when you re little.
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There are behavioral dimensions when you re little.
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And they associated the behavioral dimension from when people were toddlers to people in their 20s taking the Schaefer and Hazan attachment scale.
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And they found that the attachment style for about two thirds of people had not changed.
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So odds are that odds are 100% that you have an attachment style.
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Odds are about two thirds that you still have the same one that you had when you were really little.
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And so what I found out was I had a very disappointing attachment style.
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At least it was very disappointing for me.
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I was not an A.
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Those of you who are an A, and that s about 70% of people, you have a secure attachment style.
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A secure attachment style is the one that starts out saying that you find it easy to get close to others and that you are comfortable depending on them and having them depend on you.
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that you don t often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to you.
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These people are exactly what that name would indicate.
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They are deeply secure.
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They are not worried that their lover will want to leave them.
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They ll worry about it if you say, I think I m going to leave you.
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They don t have a good warning sign.
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Yeah, that is it s a clue.
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They don t have insecurities that come out of nowhere.
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If they have an insecurity about this relationship, it s because of something specific to this relationship, not because of something they brought to it, not because of baggage.
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And that s that s about 70% of people style B and C and D. Those styles are all non secure styles, but they have variations among them.
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And these variations are very important in determining
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how your romantic relationships are going to go, how many of them you re going to have, whether you re likely to cheat on a partner, all kinds of things.
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So style B is the anxious style, and that s the style that I had.
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And of women who are not secure, the non-secure women are likely to be style B, the anxious style.
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And those of us anxious people tend to really, really yearn for complete bonding and closeness with another person, but we re so worried that the other person is not into us or that the other person is gonna abandon us, that ironically, some people with this style actually do the number one thing that social science indicates will get you abandoned.
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They find a backup partner, they have an affair.
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Oh, interesting.
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Yeah, so that s not really very helpful or adaptive for them.
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I will say the vast majority of people with an anxious style don t have an affair.
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They don t get a partner on the side.
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They do tend to scare themselves needlessly and do what I call, I m going to push you away because otherwise you ll push me away, so I m going to leave you before you can leave me.
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Right, so those are the people that sabotage their relationships before they can get ruined?
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Well, actually, B, C, and D all sabotage their relationships, they just do it in different ways.
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Okay, all right.
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So that s just a real common B or anxious way to do it.
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And so in a minute, we talked about how to change yourself, you don t like it, because I ve definitely done that with mine and wound up with a lot more happiness and security and love in my life consequent to doing so.
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But style C, and D are both variations of a style that s called avoidance.
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And I don t like that name.
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I wish the scientists in charge of this had chosen a name other than avoidant, because avoidant sounds like these people are not looking for a relationship, as if they re literally avoiding it.
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And that s not what it means.
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Evolution pretty much all but got rid of the people who don t want any level of relationship.
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Even if you look at studies on asexual people, they still want a relationship.
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They just may not want sex with anyone but themselves, but they still want a relationship.
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So evolution pretty much got rid of the people who didn t want any level of relating.
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So avoidants want a relationship, but they have it in a way that keeps everyone at arm s length.
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So here s the secure person who is neither too hot, not too cold, just right, like Goldilocks finding the soup.
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And then there s the anxious person who clings too tightly.
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or may run away prematurely because they re worried you won t stick with them.
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And then there are the avoidant people.
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And I will tell you, men who are not secure are more likely to be avoidant than they are anxious.
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So women are more likely to be anxious, men are more likely to be avoidant.
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People who do this, male or female,
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They do get in relationships and they do usually even get married, but they do it in such a way that they keep people at arm s length.
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If you ve ever been involved with a person who is doing this, some of the behavioral markers would be getting up and leaving immediately after sex.
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Even if you re married, getting up and leaving to the next room right away or going and taking a shower right away.
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Avoiding emotional discussions, avoiding physical intimacy except for sexual intercourse, or having sex in such a way that it s very perfunctory and there s no eye contact.
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I knew a guy who was extremely avoidant who did get married, but insisted on taking separate vacations from his mate and actually got a vasectomy without telling her.
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Wow.
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Yeah, that s an extreme case.
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That s extreme.
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But I ve heard from a lot of men and women who are avoidant, and they don t want to avoid relationships.
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It s just that they either, in the case of the C people out there, they re either avoidant, but fearful.
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They fear other people needing them too much.
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Yes, I want a relationship, but as soon as I detect that you re needing me,
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It feels like ankle weights and I feel like running away.
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So I just hold you at arm s length so I can control my fear is basically how that works out.
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And then style D, which is avoidant dismissive and the style D, these folks tend to have a series of relationships where they don t allow themselves to get emotionally invested almost at all, because they really don t value emotional closeness.
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The C people do value emotional closeness.
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They re just afraid of being needed.
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The D people don t value emotional closeness.
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They really value independence and they see the two as mutually exclusive, which is fascinating to me because science shows that you wind up with such better outcomes if you can embrace interdependence and you wind up with a lot worse outcomes
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in health and happiness and sex life, in career progress, in lots and lots of ways, if you don t manage to get and keep a stable relationship.
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So this sounds maybe a little bit obvious, but it might not be, or I could be very wrong here, but it seems like we should all be aiming for that secure one, right?
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I mean, is that the healthiest way to be?
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Well, it really is in the sense that it gets you everything that people say that they want.
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If you can become secure, then you can have the things that people claim that they want, such as the freedom to pursue your career.
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It s ironically much easier to pursue a career full bore if you have someone cheering you on in your corner than it is if you re by yourself and constantly cycling through partners and thus expending a lot of your energy looking for someone.
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So there are psychological advantages to being in a healthy relationship.
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Doesn t really sound too surprising, but it helps that we have science to back this up.
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Yeah, Sue Johnson, who s a great researcher on attachment style in adulthood and on therapies about that.
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One of the quotes that I really like from her is that dependency is a dirty word in Western society.
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And there s a lot of excellent
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science in this field, the science shows very clearly that it s the people who can form and sustain an intimate bond, who are better off in literally every dimension, except how good looking they are.
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I can t promise you your relationship will make you better looking.
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But I can tell you that
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Science has looked at, for example, how much pain can you tolerate?
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Physical pain.
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And they find that people can tolerate greater and greater amounts if their partner is there holding their hand than if their partner is not there or even if there s a stranger holding their hand.
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I was just going to say, because we beat on each other a lot.
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Jenny beats me up a lot.
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I ll tell you, my relationship has had the opposite effect on my physical good looks.
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I am significantly less good looking than I was when I began this relationship, in my opinion.
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I need to work on that, I think.
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But yeah, I can see that.
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That makes sense, right?
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Because you feel like you ve got somebody who has your back, who knows you really well.
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Yes, actually, that s the deepest question that any of us asked about our relationships.
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And my reading of the science indicates that when we fight with our partner, usually we re fighting about this question.
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And the question is this, are you there for me?
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If you think about the fights that you have with your partner, a lot of the fights are going to boil down to am I a priority?
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Am I the number one priority?
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Are you really there for me?
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Or is there something else that s more important, something you d rather be doing?
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Especially at the beginning of relationships, that can be a big source of fighting.
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So one of the interesting things to me is science has actually looked at who belongs together, which attachment styles do really well together.
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And it s also looked at who gets attracted to one another.
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And science in general finds that similarity attracts and that opposite opposites detract.
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The old saw opposites attract is almost never true, except in one case.
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And that s the case where an anxious person like me gets together with an avoidant person.
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It turns out that those two, I don t know why it is, but they love to date each other and it does not work out.
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Hey, Art of Charm listeners, I m excited to share a new podcast I ve been absolutely binging.
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Listen to Ways to Win wherever you get your podcasts.
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Back to Duano Welsh.
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Yeah, I think that we talked about this with Mark Manson earlier, and in fact, you can often fall in love due to sort of different chemistry, rationales and whatnot, but it doesn t mean that you re gonna be compatible on an intellectual level, on anything but an emotional level for a short time, right?
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That s sort of the whole negative concept of love conquers all when that s just BS.
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It s something we tell ourselves when we re all hopped up on dopamine or whatever.
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Yeah, love doesn t conquer all but at the same point love is the reason that most of us have for living.
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We like to tell ourselves that it conquers all but the point in fact is
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If you are avoidant and this person that you like is anxious, that s like oil and water.
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The two just don t mix.
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Research has come in.
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It s crystal clear.
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If you re avoidant, you need to find somebody else who s avoidant unless you feel like changing your attachment style, which again, we can go into.
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Yeah, let s talk about that because if we re aiming for the secure attachment style, we don t want to be B, C, or D. Let s talk about how to get to A.
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Yeah, so there are two ways to get to A. One of them is if you are anxious, date someone who s secure.
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Pick a partner who s secure.
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And hope they don t dump you because you re anxious or avoidant?
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Well, I didn t give that advice for people who are avoidant.
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I just gave it for people who are anxious.
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Oh, sorry, I thought that was just in general.
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Find somebody else.
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SPEAKER_00
No, it s not for all the non-secure people.
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It s just the anxious people.
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So if you re anxious, one clear,
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research-approved way to get to secure attachment is stop falling for these people who, frankly, you re attracted to because they don t seem to be that into you and you think you can win them over and they push all your buttons, namely the avoidant people, stop dating them.
2
SPEAKER_00
And instead, logic your way through to being open to someone who s secure, who you will at first think is boring.
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They re not boring, they re stable.
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they re good for you, allow them to have a shot at you.
2
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One of the things about secure people is they don t tend to come on really strong and develop a relationship super quickly.
2
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And the avoidant people tend to do what I call the full court press.
2
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They tend to pursue hot and heavy because they re not going to put the time in it takes to establish a really deep lasting bond.
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So they just need to tell you all the stuff up front, get you in bed, get you to be their girlfriend or their boyfriend.
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And then all of a sudden you re shut out in the cold.
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Because now that they ve got you, they just expect you to keep being there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Unfortunately, the anxious people tend to respond to that.
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They tend to think that that s love.
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SPEAKER_00
Hold yourself open for the securely attached person, the person who is steady and warm and does not hold you at arm s length and there s no game playing and it s just there.
2
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It s dependable.
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SPEAKER_00
Dependable is not boring.
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It s actually what love, real love looks like.
2
SPEAKER_00
So have I taken this advice?
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Yes, I ve taken this advice myself and I m very happily married to a secure man.
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But there is something else you can do.
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When I figured out how messed up I was, I was not willing to just kind of use other people as my dating therapy.
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I decided that I wanted to work on this on my own.
2
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And so there is a scientifically proven therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy that shows that the following two things can help you change almost anything about yourself.
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It sounds really, really simple, but it s a bitch to do.
2
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Here it is.
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Notice and redirect.
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So what that means is, and this is true if you re avoidant also, I m just going to give different examples for anxious versus avoidant because there s such different styles.
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If you re anxious, you would simply notice when you re having thoughts that are anxious.
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not beat yourself up about it.
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If you catch yourself having an anxious thought and then you pile guilt and shame on top of it, you re actually less likely to change.
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So you simply want to notice without judging yourself.
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And then once you ve noticed that thought, you want to redirect it to align with reality.
2
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So an example I give is I was dating this guy who early, early in my
2
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attempts to change myself.
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I caught myself having the thought, I really don t think he s into me.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was a real breakthrough for me when I could catch myself having the thought instead of just going about my day as if it were true and potentially breaking up with him or creating drama or what have you in order to get more attention from him.
2
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And instead I caught myself and I thought, okay, is there evidence for that?
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That s the redirect.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is there evidence for that?
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SPEAKER_00
And in fact, he had sent me a picture of flowers that he had picked for me that he was going to give me later that week.
2
SPEAKER_00
He had text messaged me a couple times and he had called me that day.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, Dwayna, really not evidence for a lack of interest, isn t it?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s really easy, but it takes a lot of
2
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vigilance in order to be able to pull that off because your attachment style is almost like your personality.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s been with you such a long time.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s so habitual.
2
SPEAKER_00
You do it unthinkingly and so to change that is going to be a long process, but I was not willing to have my attachment style continue to ruin my life.
2
SPEAKER_03
So we have to think like a scientist almost, like what evidence is there for this?
2
SPEAKER_03
So instead of engaging our emotional brain that says, oh my God, this is gonna happen and I m gonna, I gotta form a backup or I ve gotta avoid this or whatever, we have to start looking for evidence and engage our logical brain.
2
SPEAKER_03
And then where we find none, that s what helps us reshape our thought patterns.
2
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you know, there were times when I would ask myself that same question, I would catch myself thinking, oh, this guy s lost interest.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in fact, he had lost interest in the evidence for that out.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in that case, that s not anxiety, that s reality.
2
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But what I m saying is you have to catch yourself and find out whether it s reality or whether it s your old tapes playing in your head or your old CDs playing in your head.
2
SPEAKER_00
For those of you out there who are avoidance, I ve got to tell you, I have never
2
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seen an avoidant person change their attachment style.
2
SPEAKER_00
I know that it can be done, but I ve never personally seen it happen.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the reason I haven t seen it happen is the avoidant people who ve come to me for help have wound up saying, you know what, I m comfortable being avoidant.
2
SPEAKER_00
I really don t value this.
2
SPEAKER_00
I really don t want this that much.
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I m just going to let it go.
2
SPEAKER_03
So you ve never seen anyone change their attachment style from anything or just from avoidance?
2
SPEAKER_00
Just from avoidance.
2
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I ve seen a lot of anxious people make strides and change it.
2
SPEAKER_03
I feel like I was anxious and I changed it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like a decade ago or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
And for a lot of us, there s also research on how attachment style changes.
2
SPEAKER_00
And for most people, it changes accidentally.
2
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They get in a great relationship and it makes them more secure or sadly, it can go the other way.
2
SPEAKER_00
I believe that I grew up with a very secure style and I became anxious
2
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after I got horrifically dumped, frankly.
2
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And it had never occurred to me that that could happen.
2
SPEAKER_00
I thought all the evidence had pointed toward us being together forever.
2
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So it can go either way.
2
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There are two ways to fall with this.
2
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But I ve never seen an avoidant person decide to take this step of using the cognitive training and willingly, consciously change their style this way.
2
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But it could happen.
2
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And what it would look like is this.
2
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So let s say you re a style C person and you want intimacy.
2
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It s just that you re afraid that the other person is going to need you too much.
2
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And that feels terrifying to you, frankly.
2
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I ve talked to a lot of these people and it feels really scary when they figure out, you know what, they re starting to need me and I don t like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So an example would be a man who approached me and he told me that he thought that this woman he had started seeing was out of line.
2
SPEAKER_00
She wanted way too much of him and he just wanted to push her away.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so I guided him through this exercise where I said, okay, so tell me about your most recent date.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he said that they d gone out to get breakfast, and then she had suggested that they go on a walk.
2
SPEAKER_00
And his immediate thought was, she wants too much of me.
2
SPEAKER_00
She s starting to need me already.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, my God, what an ankle weight.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m out of here.
3
SPEAKER_00
And all she had said was, I d like to take a walk with you.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I said, so when you catch yourself thinking those things, the next thing to ask yourself is redirect.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do the circumstances really support this?
3
SPEAKER_00
And he thought about it.
3
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And he said, no, all she asked for was a walk.
3
SPEAKER_00
I said, yeah, she didn t say, would you loan me $2,000 for a new car?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or can I move in with you?
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve run out of money for my rent, or, you know, she hadn t done anything.
3
SPEAKER_00
that was frankly clingy or overly meaty or inappropriate for the stage of the relationship that they were in, if that makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, definitely.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you, again, have to disengage that emotional part of the brain and start going into the logical part to make your selection.
3
SPEAKER_01
And sort of rolling into something practical from this, how do we select a partner, for God s sake?
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, what if we figure out which one of these we are?
3
SPEAKER_01
Can we use that for something as well in selecting a mate, for example?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
So in my book, I have this list of attachment styles.
3
SPEAKER_00
I talk about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what you can do without memorizing the list or anything is when you re getting involved with someone, if you are secure, look for someone who s either secure or anxious.
3
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Frankly, anxious people are a great match for secure people.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the reason is this, we want what you re selling.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you re secure, we want exactly what you ve got.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so, yes, persisting and pursuing someone who is secure or anxious is a really good play for you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Going for someone who is avoidant, if you re secure, that turns out to be quite risky.
3
SPEAKER_01
A freaking disaster.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, it can be.
3
SPEAKER_00
It isn t always.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes the secure person s way of being kind of wins out and they are so secure that they are actually able to ignore constantly being pushed into the background of this other person s life.
3
SPEAKER_00
Some people are really just that secure that they ll just do that, but most people aren t.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so what winds up happening is you can wind up being the person who was formerly secure, kind of like the artist who used to be formerly known as Prince.
3
SPEAKER_00
That was formerly you, but not anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now,
3
SPEAKER_00
you are heartbroken and you re anxious.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, now you re all screwed up and anxious.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so you don t want to go there.
3
SPEAKER_00
Really, if you re secure, you want to stick with someone who either feels like you do emotionally.
3
SPEAKER_00
You want to look for someone who, when you approach them, they approach you also.
3
SPEAKER_00
That as you get closer and as the relationship naturally progresses to a level of deeper understanding of one another, where by deeper understanding, I m not just speaking about a sexual relationship, I m speaking about the definition of intimacy is sharing every aspect of yourself without fearing the loss of your identity.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, as you establish real intimacy where you re sharing more and more layers of yourself without fearing loss of identity, if this other person s doing the same and they re not pushing you away, that s a yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Anxious people, same advice.
3
SPEAKER_00
You want someone who is bringing you closer as you get closer.
3
SPEAKER_00
If, in fact, you start getting closer to someone and they freak out and push you away, this is not going to work well for you.
3
SPEAKER_00
So secure and anxious people need each other or they need a secure person.
3
SPEAKER_00
In fact, anxious people, I m just going to lay it out.
3
SPEAKER_00
Anxious people, you don t even need another anxious person.
3
SPEAKER_00
You need a secure person, period.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you can do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Almost two-thirds of people are secure, so go for it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if you re avoidant, you really need somebody else avoidant, and here s why.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you partner with someone secure, it s going to make you feel crazy because you re going to feel like they need you too much or they expect too much from you.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you partner with somebody anxious, you can double that statement.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re also going to be perpetually perplexed at why these people are angry at you and sad around you and why they re telling you that you can never meet their needs.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s going to be unpleasant for you.
3
SPEAKER_00
So unless you want to do the notice and redirect to logic your way through changing that attachment style, if you re avoidant, you need to pick somebody else who s avoidant.
3
SPEAKER_00
You need to pick somebody else who, as I say, mates like a porcupine very carefully.
3
SPEAKER_01
I see what you did there.
3
SPEAKER_00
Someone who s going to also be like, you know what?
3
SPEAKER_00
We re both keeping each other at arm s length.
3
SPEAKER_00
We both have a lot of independence.
3
SPEAKER_00
We both keep our finances separate and we never want to combine our lives and et cetera, et cetera.
3
SPEAKER_00
I knew a couple like that where they lived on opposite ends of a duplex and that worked great for them.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve heard about that and I know people like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s so weird to me because I m not like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at first I was like, oh my God, these people, this is destined for disaster.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I know a lot of folks that are maybe a little bit older and they re divorced and maybe that s changed their attachment style.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they re like, look, I don t want to move in with anybody.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t want to mix the bank accounts.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll go on vacation with somebody.
3
SPEAKER_01
We can stay in the same room then if needed.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, but they just have no desire for that sort of intimacy that they had before that went wrong.
3
SPEAKER_01
Possibly because they were always avoidant and possibly because they became so.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you have just said something so brilliant.
3
SPEAKER_00
It turns out that research shows that the people who wind up getting back on the dating circuit again and again are the most likely to be avoidant.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so one of the things that happens is as the population ages, and of course, I ve had this blog for years where people write to me with their romantic issues, and I try to help them solve it, you know, and kind of talking to them like they were in my house drinking a glass of wine, but based on science.
3
SPEAKER_00
In other words, I don t throw jargon at them, but I give them advice that s based on science.
3
SPEAKER_00
And one of the things that I ve noticed is people who are going back out there after they ve been in a long marriage, including long happy marriages where maybe their partner died, and they re going back out there, they re looking for someone, they come back to me with, Dwayna, you wouldn t believe what it s like out there.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, these people don t know how to have intimacy.
3
SPEAKER_00
They don t know how to have a relationship.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m not finding anyone who s compatible with me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Unfortunately, science finds that there s some reality to that, that the people who are secure are very good at getting involved in a lifetime partnership, a marriage, while they re still fairly young.
3
SPEAKER_00
Usually, it works for an entire lifetime for them.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so they re not back out on the dating circuit.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so the people who are recycling again and again and again, often do have an avoidant attachment style.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s fine if they get together with each other, but it makes it really hard on those of us who wanted the security and who are looking for that security.
3
SPEAKER_00
I felt like I was very fortunate.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I also, you know, I was armed with science, so I kind of had a cheat sheet there.
3
SPEAKER_00
I knew exactly what to look for when I met my husband when I was in my 30s.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he was actually, let s see, I was 39 and he was 52.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wow, okay, quite the age difference there.
3
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, a lot of life lessons and some attachment style shifts in there as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we always have ridiculously detailed show notes here at AOC, so go to the website, go to this episode with Dr. Duena Welch, and we ll have that set up.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can go to 459, you ll find the notes here, and we re gonna outline all those attachment styles, as well as sort of the combinations that are supposed to work, so don t feel like, what the hell s going on?
3
SPEAKER_01
Listen, relax, enjoy, and then you can come back to the worksheets that we re gonna have for you on the site.
3
SPEAKER_01
So if you re not driving, you can tap the album art, which shows the cartoony AJ and Jordan, and it should flip around or move and show you all the notes that we re referring to with the cheat sheet here.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s not a new feature, it s just one you probably didn t know about.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I want to thank everyone who s not going to tap their screen while they re driving.
3
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, don t do that while you re driving.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I love this.
3
SPEAKER_01
Science showing us a pathway towards relating better that leads to better outcomes across the board, hopefully.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why are some people so pessimistic about it, depending on other folks?
3
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, that s a harmful way to think, but why does that happen?
3
SPEAKER_01
This is nurture, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Not necessarily nature?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s definitely nurture.
3
SPEAKER_00
If it was nature, we know that the human genetic code is unlikely to have changed substantively in the last 45,000 plus years.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, we know that these sudden changes in beliefs about marriage are culturally based and they re not genetically based.
3
SPEAKER_00
They are nurture.
3
SPEAKER_00
Pew Charitable Trust in their research recently found that not only is the age of first marriage climbing in the United States, where for both men and women it s almost 30 now, it s 29 for men and I think it s 28 or 27 and a half for women, but that fewer people are expressing marriage as an important life goal.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s a big mistake.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s directly related to pessimism about marriage, and I want to tell you that pessimism about marriage is misplaced.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you want to be pessimistic, you should be pessimistic about staying single, and here s why.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why?
3
SPEAKER_00
There are loads and loads of studies that compare different ways of living, people who are engaged in different arrangements of living, and that compare those people to other people in other arrangements of living on lots of different measures.
3
SPEAKER_00
For example,
3
SPEAKER_00
happiness.
3
SPEAKER_00
Another measure would be life satisfaction, which is a very general measure of just how happy or how satisfied are you with how your life is going.
3
SPEAKER_00
Another measure is economic well-being.
3
SPEAKER_00
What social class are you in from a financial standpoint, from an educational standpoint?
3
SPEAKER_00
Another measure would be your career trajectory.
3
SPEAKER_00
Are you advancing in your career?
3
SPEAKER_00
What kind of career do you have?
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you find it rewarding?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yet another measure would be how much sex do you have or how often are you having partnered sex.
4
SPEAKER_01
And yet another measure would be, and I think this is one of the most important ones, how happy are you with the sex you re having?
4
SPEAKER_01
And finally, how healthy are you?
4
SPEAKER_01
And what is the rate of morbidity that is in a given year, how many people in your type of relationship arrangement are dying.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so here s how the data shakedown marriage beats the pants off everything else.
4
SPEAKER_01
First of all, you are six times likelier to die from every single cause, every single year, compared to married people if you re not married.
4
SPEAKER_00
Sorry, Jason.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, I m sorry.
4
Thanks.
4
SPEAKER_00
Appreciate it.
4
SPEAKER_00
No worries.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m always here to call out your singleness.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, you know, singlehood is curable.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can always find somebody great and get married if you want to.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s true.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, the pessimism is just completely misplaced.
4
SPEAKER_01
Not only that, you are likely to be significantly healthier.
4
SPEAKER_01
In fact, so much healthier that it s actually more deadly to remain single than it is to smoke a pack a day every day for 30 years.
4
SPEAKER_01
Wow, really?
4
SPEAKER_01
much better health outcomes.
4
SPEAKER_01
There are much better outcomes for people s children.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s possible that a lot of people listening to this show don t have children, but it s also probable that almost everyone listening to this show will someday have children, whether or not they ever married.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I will tell you this, the outcomes for your children, and when you have them, you will care more about them than you care about anything else.
4
SPEAKER_01
The outcomes for them are much better if you find the right partner and then keep that right partner.
4
SPEAKER_00
Back to Duanna Welch.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think my favorite aspects of talking about this have to do with well being which is higher for married, married people are more than twice as likely to say that they are very satisfied with their, their overall lives.
4
SPEAKER_01
In other words, not just their relationship, but life in general.
4
SPEAKER_01
And part of that is because when you ve got a good marriage, it gives you kind of a springboard to launch out there into the world and you don t have to worry about what s happening at home.
4
SPEAKER_01
It gives you this real secure place to launch from and you get more done.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s why you get more money and you get more career success and you get more advancements because you re not always in the middle of a breakup or figuring out where you re going to find the next person to have sex with or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that brings me to the point about sex.
4
SPEAKER_01
I kept getting letters at my site about people who were saying that they were having arguments with their friends about who has the most sex.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so basically over the years how my site has worked is people pose me a question and only then do I bother to learn the answer unless I just happen to have already known it for my own mate search.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so when a couple people asked me this question, I went and looked it up and it turned out that if you compare married people to single people,
4
SPEAKER_01
Married people have so much more sex than single people, it s ridiculous.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s directly contrary to the stereotype.
4
SPEAKER_01
When you compare married people to cohabitors, it turns out that they are about even Steven on how much sex is being had.
4
SPEAKER_01
But there s a deeper question, and that is, how much do you enjoy the sex you re having?
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, what the word on the street says is, married people hate the sex they re having.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re bored, they re looking for affairs.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, how did Ashley Madison even happen, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And so the word on the street is that marital sex is deeply unsatisfying, but representative surveys, in other words, not like a survey from a magazine that took the first 50 people that answered it, real surveys that scientists conducted, which do speak to the entire population.
4
SPEAKER_01
Those surveys show that the married people, men as well as women, are not only having more sex, they re having better sex.
4
SPEAKER_01
They are more satisfied with the sex they re having, and that s more and more true across time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
So how come this anecdotal stuff is so much louder?
4
SPEAKER_01
I think, first of all, that we evolved to pay attention to bad stuff because bad stuff can kill us.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, keep in mind that most of human history, until Sir Francis Bacon, there was no scientific method.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so for most of human history,
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, science is a blip on the screen.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s barely, barely arrived on the scene, and so what people used to have was stories, and what they basically had was horror stories.
4
SPEAKER_01
They had cautionary tales.
4
SPEAKER_01
Don t do this.
4
SPEAKER_01
Look what could happen to you.
4
SPEAKER_01
Our current cautionary tale is, look what happened to so-and-so who got in a high-profile divorce and lost everything.
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Look at what happened to so-and-so who married this other celebrity and wound up getting beaten half to death.
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You know, the bad stories make news and the good stories.
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Paul Newman and John Woodward, how many people even listening out there even know who they are anymore?
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They had a long, extremely satisfying, lovely marriage, but there wasn t much coverage of that.
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Interesting, yeah, that s very true.
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And I can see the evolutionary process at work here.
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I think it was Rick Hansen that talked about this, where our brains are Teflon for the good and Velcro for the bad.
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They are, and there s so much science behind that.
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There s so many experiments that prove the bad is stronger than good, is how a lot of social scientists phrase that.
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And we really attend to bad news because it can save our bacon it can keep us away from danger so our brains are primed for bad news so that we can potentially fight it but if the bad news that you heard is marriages are ideal how do you fight that you avoid marriage and ironically that s contrary to your health and wealth.
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and sexual well-being, and your kid s well-being, and your kid s success, and almost everything you care about, again, except for your looks.
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Dr. Rick Hansen is a doctor, by the way.
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Anyway, thank you, yes.
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That s fascinating, and I m glad to, again, glad to see actual science behind this.
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I really do, I love that, and I love the attachment style.
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Here s a question that science can maybe answer, and I feel like this is right up your alley.
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A lot of people live together before they get married, including my whole friggin  family, but,
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I ve heard from a lot of people, oh, you know, it s a great way to sort of make sure you guys get along, and then other people say, no, it s not a great way to make sure.
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In fact, it does the opposite because X, Y, Z. What does the science say on both sides, and what happens if you re already living with your significant other, hypothetically?
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Hypothetically, of course.
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Yes.
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So I want to give your family some relief here in the sense that what they think is what almost everyone thinks.
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In surveys over the past few decades, more and more people believe that living together, it used to be that a few people thought that it would help you to find out whether this was the right partner for you.
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And now a lot of people actually see it as a prerequisite.
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They say they would not marry someone they had not lived with first, because that belief is so entrenched.
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And I m preparing myself for the hate mail that I m likely to receive after telling you what science shows.
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And this is science in the United States, but it s also science in Scandinavia, which is of course an uber liberal
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part of the world.
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And science in I believe there s some of these studies have been done in China.
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So in other words, some, some of these societies are quite different.
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And some of them are quite similar in some ways to the United States.
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Interestingly, the studies all come to the same answer.
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I find this fascinating, because I ve known some of these social scientists.
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And you know, there s there s a belief that a lot of people have, which is the confirmation bias that you
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only see what you re looking to see.
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So if you re a social scientist and you re liberal and you think that living together helps people to find the right partner, then that s what you re going to find.
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But here s what I have to tell you.
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All these studies find that if you want to find the right partner, living together actually does not help you at all.
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In fact, it hurts you.
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People find that so hard to believe, and I ve got to tell you, I found it so hard to believe that I literally read every one of the studies that existed about this.
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Yeah, I kind of don t totally get it.
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I mean, I guess I should buy it because dot dot dot science.
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But can you explain?
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Yeah, see, I m one of those people who I m not just going to believe it because you told me I m going to have to have an explanation.
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So, right.
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I also started looking at what the deepest thinkers who are immersed in this field think people such as Dr. Linda Waite as sociology at the University of Chicago.
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It turns out that when people are living together, they have a different time horizon than people who
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just went ahead and got married.
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People who got married, they do things like they immediately get life insurance to cover the other party so the other person won t lose all their stuff if they die.
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People who are living together will co-insure.
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They will get one person on the same health insurance.
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People who are married will do that.
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People who are married will immediately create a will.
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so as to protect the other party.
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In other words, the person who s married doesn t just think of a time horizon that is for the next few years.
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They think of a time horizon that exists even after one person has died.
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Literally an endless time horizon.
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So, it turns out that people who are cohabiting live with a different time horizon.
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For example, here s something that my husband did.
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He s been working at zoos as an avocation.
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In other words, it wasn t his profession, but he really is like the big cat whisperer.
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He s raised lions and tigers and, by the way, also bears and hippos and all kinds of things.
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I was going to say and bears, oh my, but there s that one.
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Yeah, he s done the whole thing.
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You name the animal, he s probably raised that kind of animal.
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animal.
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A couple years ago, I took a couple extra teaching assignments and I gave him all the money and sent him to Kenya for three weeks.
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I would never have done this for a boyfriend, including a live-in boyfriend.
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This is something that you do for your mate.
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He has done things for me that science indicates a live-in partner would not do.
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For one thing, he encouraged me over a period of years to write that book.
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I met him using science in that book, but
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I kind of felt like, who was I to tell anybody anything?
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And he s the one who kept saying, Duaney, you know stuff that nobody knows and everybody needs to know, and this needs to be a book.
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And he just kind of kept on at it.
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And he made it possible for me to actually pursue that.
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He made it possible for me to pursue only doing my professorship part-time.
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He started doing all the grocery shopping, all the food preparation.
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He just said, this has to exist.
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Let s do it.
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He invested in that.
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And so that s really what it s about is the commitment and the investment.
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Now how this explains why cohabiting doesn t help you.
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When people are cohabiting, they do stuff like the following.
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They re worried about getting rid of the second set of dishes because what if we break up?
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They re worried about getting rid of the other couch because what if we break up?
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They don t share a bank account.
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They don t co-insure.
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They don t make plans for even after I m dead.
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Whereas some of those people eventually do get married.
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Some of them break up.
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They were within appropriate partners and they break up.
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But some of them get married.
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And here s where the problem exists.
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Unfortunately, living with the limited time horizon has trained you to continue living within that limited time horizon.
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It s a psychological thing.
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So in other words, people are not very able to suddenly flip the switch to, and now we re married and I will send you to Kenya and we will live together forever and I will get the insurance.
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I will consider that this is forever.
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People who ve lived with one foot out the door or the option to have one foot out the door, it turns out tend to still have that psychology after they take vows.
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Interesting.
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So even though you might think, I don t do that, science says in the back of your head, you re totally thinking in a temporary mindset, with a temporary mindset.
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Now, not everyone.
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So that s a great question.
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So there is a loophole here.
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Those of you, I can, in my classes, when I teach students, some of them are just desperate for a loophole because they re already living with the person that they love.
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Yeah, that sounds familiar.
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Go on.
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And by the way, this is one of many, many, many things that influences the trajectory of your life.
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It s not the only thing.
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It s not even the main thing.
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So it s not like, oh my God, I m doomed.
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It s just something that s not working in your favor, if that makes sense.
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That s okay, I m gonna break science.
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It s fine.
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Yeah, science is about odds, not about certainty.
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That s true.
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I like that.
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I m gonna throw that one out there.
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Yeah, and it s a messy world.
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So there are a lot of things that are impinging and influencing on how happy you are with your partner.
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And this is just one and the odds are that you would be happier if you didn t live together first.
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In fact, I like to tell people there already is an institution for finding out if someone s right to you and it s called dating.
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Yeah, good point.
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Right.
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You know, I mean, there is an institution that is specifically for deciding whether or not somebody fits with you.
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But I want to make it perfectly clear.
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I m not morally opposed to cohabitation.
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A lot of people seem to think that I am.
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I m not morally opposed to it.
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You re scientifically opposed to it.
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When the data change, I ll change my tune right away, but I haven t seen the data changing.
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If anything, they re holding rock steady decade after decade on this point.
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Here s the group that can get away with living together and not have it harm their relationship in any way.
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What s interesting to me is there s no group where their marriage is stronger consequent to cohabiting first.
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But there s one group where they don t pay a penalty for it.
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And this is the group.
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If when you started living together, you already had the dress bought, the hall rented, the engagement ring, the date set, if you in fact, moved in together, because you are already married, you already psychologically have the endless time horizon, and you just couldn t wait.
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No problem.
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It s the people who move in together with the mindset of we re just going to try it out and see if we re right for each other that pay the penalty.
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It s not a good test drive in other words.
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Right.
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No.
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Right.
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That s a good point.
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Hmm.
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Well, anyway, something to think about for sure, because yes, it s not about certainty.
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It s about odds, but obviously we want to increase our odds.
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It just seems very counterintuitive to not live with somebody and take that opportunity to get to know them that much better and then get married and hope that that process works out.
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Yeah, but you know, for all of human history, that s been the most successful process.
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And strangely enough, even in modern times, it s working really, really well.
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I have to admit, my husband and I lived together for five days before we got married.
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I don t know if that counts, yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, but again, we were the people who knew exactly, very precisely, exactly when we were getting married and we had everybody invited over for the wedding and all that already.
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The big important word is commitment.
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And there are some people who should just cohabit.
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I want to emphasize that.
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And never get married, you mean?
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Yeah, they should just cohabit.
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These are people who strongly value freedom above interdependence.
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They should just cohabit.
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But if what you really want is marriage, I just want to tell you, science shows that cohabitation is not marriage light.
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Perfect.
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Is there anything that we haven t asked you that you want to make sure you deliver?
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Of course, we re going to link to your work in the show notes, but other than that,
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Yeah, you know, I really want to tell everyone out there that if I had to summarize all social science on relationships into one statement, here s the statement.
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If you can find and be someone kind and respectful, your love life will work great.
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And if you can t, it won t.
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Thank you very much, Duana Welch.
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Thank you, Jordan.
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It s been a delight.
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I love the science-backed conclusions.
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I m a fan of that because you can argue with a lot of things and the moral aspect of things and all the different psychology involved and those are theories.
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In science, you can still hit a flawed study or whatever or claim to be the exception, but it s always nice to see data.
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and see somebody who s studied the data and used that to make their conclusions rather than just trying to come up with something clever or something based on their own experience, which is what we see from a lot of thought leaders these days.
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So I particularly dig that.
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It means you can lean into it a little bit more.
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It s a little bit more reliable.
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Show feedback and guest suggestions.
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The show s a fanarchy, it s run by you.
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Dwayna was a suggestion, so if you know someone like Dwayna who s a good fit for the show, let us know, guests at theartofcharm.com.
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If you enjoyed this one as much as we did, don t forget to thank Dwayna on Twitter.
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Follow us on Twitter as well.
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Darn it, we re posting all kinds of good stuff there.
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Now have a great week and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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