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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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Today we re back with Dr. Dwayna Welsh.
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She s been on the show before, a lot of content there, a lot of really good stuff, so we decided to have her come back yet again.
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We re gonna talk about why love at first sight is actually something true and based on science.
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Hear me out here.
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You re gonna really enjoy that segment of the show, because men
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Spoiler alert, fall for it more than women, which is unbelievable and something I needed to see to believe.
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We re also gonna get into how women shape men psychologically through evolutionary processes and how mating strategies differ between men and women, the best predictors of whether your partner will cheat on you, man or woman, and specifically what to say to somebody you need to break up with.
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All this and more on this episode of The Art of Charm.
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Welcome to AOC, 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, 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 AOC and get some great stuff that we don t or can t share on the show by signing up at theartofcharm.com.
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That s where we ll email you our Fundamentals Toolkit that covers topics like body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, business networking, public speaking, negotiation, and a whole lot more.
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I m also doing regular videos with drills and exercises to help you move forward every single week.
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We ve got our live programs running here in LA.
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We ll tell you about those later on in the show.
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And I want to encourage you to join our social capital challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed, that s charmed, to 33444.
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This challenge is all about improving your networking connection skill and inspiring those around you to develop a personal and professional connection with you.
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This will make you a better networker, it will make you a better connector, and if you want accountability, invite your friends as well.
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That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed to 33444 and they can join the challenge too.
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Alright, here s Dr. Welsh.
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Tell us what you do in one sentence again.
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I use research-based relationship advice to help anyone who would like their love life to go better, whether they re trying to decide how to date, how to date more, how to keep finding the right people or stop finding the wrong people, whether they want to commit to the person they re currently dating, any relationship advice question they have, if science addresses it, I dive in there with them.
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Right, nice run-on sentence.
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But yeah, science is your thing, not grammar, so it s all good.
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I like that you do it with science.
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You ve been on the show before.
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It s been great because anybody can make bold claims, and then I get a bunch of feedback if I don t catch them before the show, and it s like, yeah, that whole thing she said about that, that whole amazing thing, not true at all.
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That didn t happen with yours, which is great because
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science, right?
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What I like best about doing things scientifically is people can argue emotionally all they want, and they do.
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I still get feedback like, well, that s not my experience.
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I m like, well, your experience is wrong.
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Your experience is not the experience of the majority of others that we have tested in a way that is unassailable, for the most part.
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But I appreciate the value of experience.
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I also really appreciate the value of science, especially when it comes to human behavior, because we re really bad at perceiving our own behavior.
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Is that true?
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Actually, yeah, a lot of studies in social psychology show that people are terrible at predicting or explaining their own behavior and their own motives, yeah.
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Okay, good, because I kind of made that up off my own experience, but now you backed it up and you re a scientist.
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I d like to get into the idea that
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men were, quote unquote, actually shaped by women in many ways, evolutionarily speaking.
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I think any married man will argue, yes, I ve been shaped much by my significant other, but I think we ve been shaped as a species, as a subspecies, or whatever you want to call it, as a gender, evolutionarily, according to your work.
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And I could be misreading it, so I ll let you get into it, but I think a lot of guys believe
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the current cultural stereotypes, and in fact, I totally did it as well until recently, that women are more emotional, women benefit more than men do in relationships, and some of these men s rights guys, they re all anti-relationship because of this and that and the other thing, and it s not fair to men.
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It s fun to see that this can be sort of countered very reasonably with science, and I think knowing what male mating psychology is really like, which is
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fundamental focus of the show, how emotional guys are as well, what kind of vulnerabilities, special challenges this creates for guys, can help us as men, and I say us, ignoring the 30,000 female AOC fans, but they ll benefit from this too, we can make better choices, I think, with mate choice, and as studies have shown, mate choice is one of the top predictors of lifetime happiness.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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It is.
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I want to backtrack just a little bit and say that the other show that we did, I got so much positive feedback directly from your listeners that it was such a pleasure to do.
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I m really excited to be back.
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And yes, men are really emotional.
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In fact, I was surprised
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to conclude, along with other scientists, that men are more emotional than women.
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Because the stereotype about men is so contrary to that.
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The stereotype is that, you know, men are more rational, more logical, more calculating in some ways.
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And the science actually goes directly against that.
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And I m happy to give some examples of times when men are more emotional than women if you want.
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Sure, and I mean, people are gonna say you can cherry pick examples all day, but let s define emotional because I m inclined to not believe this, even though you ve got science behind it.
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Well, it s funny because one of the things that got me into relationship science was my own, really the thing that got me into it was my own mistakes.
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Got it.
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in relationships, my own pain in relationships, and I was really happy to find out how often I was wrong, how often science could show me something that I wouldn t have thought of before.
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So by emotional, I mean guided by feelings, sometimes to the exclusion of intellect, or guided by feelings in such a non-conscious way that the intellect gets overridden.
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Okay, so something that causes an emotional reaction to the point where we will ignore other things that we logically, rationally, whatever word you want to use, know are better choices, or better options, better examples, better outcomes, or ways to an outcome, and yet we ignore those because of feelings.
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That s what we mean by emotional.
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Well, the part I would change there is the part where we re emotional and we should be thinking in fact, being emotional sometimes serves men very well.
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So it s not the case that men are necessarily led to make a mistake all the time.
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But it is the case that a lot of times, emotion is seemingly the only
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So for example, my husband and I moved over the summer and the guy who moved us here, he asked what I did and I told him and he said, that s very interesting.
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What do you think about love at first sight?
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Does it exist?
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And I said, it absolutely exists.
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And he goes, ha ha to his friend.
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who was unloading the couch, I told you.
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And his friend said, I don t believe that.
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And I said, well, I didn t believe it either.
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But somebody wrote to me and said, this guy said he fell in love with me at first sight.
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And I think he s full of crap.
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And he swears that it s true.
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And I want to know, is this a real thing?
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Or is he making this up?
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And I said, well, you know, I can t tell if your guy is making this up.
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But I can tell you that studies have shown that men are more likely than women to fall in love at first sight, that it is a
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Fairly common phenomenon.
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Well, let s define love though because I was almost gonna say what is love But I don t want everybody to tweet baby.
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Don t hurt me back at me when this episode airs I think we need to define love here because if we don t it s like well, okay love at first sight You want to have sex with somebody got it?
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I mean, what are we talking about when we say love at first sight?
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I
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if you look at the relationships that you know, in your own universe, you know that a lot of people are having sex, you don t love their partner.
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A lot of people are in unrequited love relationships where they feel a lot of love, but they never have sex with that intended partner so that they sometimes
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Fortunately for all of us, sometimes these two things happen at the same time, but a lot of times they don t.
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Let me stop you real quick.
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I don t think love and sex are the same thing.
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I think that when I look at somebody, I might lust after them instantly because of the way they look, but I wouldn t say like, oh, I was in love with this person.
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That doesn t make any sense to me at all.
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Yeah, so I think you kind of just answered the question.
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Scientists define passionate love as the yearning or longing for total union with another, and it s an obsessive quality where you re thinking about this person all the time.
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It s interesting, there s an actual passionate love scale which has been validated and tested in numerous cultures and societies, including our own, and it shows very clearly that most of the things that people
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think of when they think of passionate love actually aren t sexual.
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When men fall in love at first sight, they may agree with statements such as, I can t get this person out of my mind, or I m eating less than I used to, or I want this person to know all about me, my thoughts, my dreams, my feelings, or my thoughts are obsessively on this person, I can t think about anything else.
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this person has affected my ability to concentrate at work, those sorts of things.
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It s really obsessive quality to it.
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So this isn t like love as in I care deeply for this person, it s just my brain s driving me crazy with the chemical dump that just happened when I spotted this person at the mall.
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Yeah, that s right.
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Because really, we can t expect that that sort of connection can happen when we ve just first seen someone that I mean, my husband and I love each other.
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And it s not an infatuation kind of love, because we actually have been married for eight years, we have a lot of information to go along with that.
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The love at first sight phenomenon is a purely emotional phenomenon and therefore there s not a lot of real data, if you will, that goes into that, I almost said decision, but love at first sight isn t a decision.
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What s really interesting is love at first sight is, when it happens, it s mostly men that it happens to.
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This is interesting.
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So is that the only bit of evidence that men are more emotional than women?
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Oh, no, no, I made a list.
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Oh, you did?
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Well, let s get some of that because I think right now guys are like, well, that never happened to me.
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And love, the definition here is a little bit weird.
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It s not really what I consider love.
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So yeah, maybe I m more emotional than a woman when it comes to lust, but everybody knows guys have a high sex drive.
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So no news there.
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We need to go on to something else.
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Right, right.
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And some of them it s, it s true, scientists have found that some of the men who profess love at first sight are lying so that they can, you know, have sexual access, because most women when they hear I love you grant sexual access.
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So you re right, some of the time, it s real, some of the time, it s I m in lust with you, and I really want access right now.
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And
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So, here s some of the other pieces of evidence.
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When you look at who says I love you first in couples, men tend to say it first.
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When you look at who falls in love harder and faster, men tend to say compared to women.
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When you look at the responses, it s apparent that men fall in love both harder and faster.
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To me, an even better test is who stays in relationships longer.
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Men tend to stay in love longer than women and they tend to be
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much less likely to leave a relationship, even a bad relationship than a woman.
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Why?
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So there s a concept called evolution, which you brought up.
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And there s another concept called co evolution, where where organisms influence each other s development and change over millennia.
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And women have influenced men s development and change over millennia just as men have influenced women s.
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And I think it s a little less offensive to people if I back up and kind of use the peacock analogy.
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You know, Darwin said every time he saw a peacock he felt sick to his stomach because he couldn t figure out
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In Darwin s world, and of course Darwin predicted that psychology would eventually be founded on a basis of evolutionary science, but he didn t really look into it himself.
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In his way of thinking, everything you see on an organism, unless it is, say, a birth defect,
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everything that you see that is part of an entire species, more or less, is an adaptation, meaning it helps that organism solve two problems.
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Problem number one is that organism s personal survival long enough to cast its own genes forward.
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In other words, people often quote Darwin as saying, oh, survival in
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reproduction of the species, actually it s much more specific than that.
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Your genetic program exists to get you to survive.
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It s not about the whole species, it s just about you.
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But if this trait exists in the whole species, the idea is it s helping individual members of that species to survive long enough to procreate.
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And then the second problem that our genetic endowment is helping us to solve is to actually procreate, to send our genes into the future.
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And again, this isn t a species
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It s not like our genes care about the whole species.
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They re actually pretty selfish.
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They care about perpetuating themselves.
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That s why lions don t take care of other male lions  cubs.
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Their genes care about that personal male lion s cubs.
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So the male lion comes in and kills the other cubs.
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He then brings into existence his own cubs and defends his own cubs.
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Well, going back to the peacock,
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Darwin was sick when he saw peacocks because here s this creature with a tail that makes it an easy prey and bright plumage that make it very visible.
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During the height of breeding season, a lot of peacocks do in fact get consumed by predators.
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And when a peacock s actively courting a female, he not only has to have that cumbersome tail, but he has to actually raise it and keep it raised for an impressively long period of time while slowly advancing towards the female and rattling that tail.
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He can t see anything coming up behind him.
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Sounds familiar.
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Okay.
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So Darwin felt ill because he thought, okay, how is that an adaptation?
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This guy s going to get eaten.
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And yet he wondered, was there some sort of benefit?
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Well, there is a benefit.
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We now know that if you randomly mate peahens with the better endowed males, sorry, if you re a peacock, size does matter.
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If you mate female peahens with the better endowed males,
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and you made other peahens with the lesser endowed males, what you find is the death rate of chicks is twice as high if the peacock is a less impressive guy, less impressive looking guy.
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So what the females are evaluating is genetic fitness, but they don t have a conscious program that says, hmm, look at all those eye spots.
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His tail is very heavy and yet he has managed to survive.
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I shall choose him so that my offspring are hardier and survive better.
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You know, these are birds.
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They can t consciously logic this out.
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They just know, hmm, nice tail, all right.
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So, the point is that over long, long periods of time, the peacock s tail has gotten longer and longer and heavier and heavier.
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And the reason it s done that is because peahens want it that way.
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By selectively mating with males that are better endowed, males have become better and better endowed in the peacock world.
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And that s a different way of thinking about mating.
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It s not just as if our mating psychology comes to us from an ancient evolutionary process that s no longer still at work.
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Men and women are continuing to shape each other s, not only physiology, but each other s psychology.
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Yeah, that was my follow-up, right?
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Because, okay, I get it, natural selection for the size of the tail.
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How does that start to affect the male brain in humans, right?
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I mean, so we ve been selected for XYZ by women over the last tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years.
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How does that affect my thinking?
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Yeah, so women really value what I call the two Ps, provision and protection.
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And they can see your ability to provide and protect on a balance sheet.
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You can show them, okay, here are my assets, here are the college degrees I have, here s the house I live in, here s the car I drive, and I can talk to you and you can tell whether I m intelligent.
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Women can check the little box mentally that says, okay, this guy can provide and protect.
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But what she can t tell
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from a balance sheet and access to looking at your resources is whether you re going to stick in there and actually do it.
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You know, 50,000 years ago, when humans were living in hunter-gatherer tribes of maybe 120 people, all women were gamblers back then.
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They were gambling that if they had sex with a guy that he was going to stick around and provide for them because unlike today where I have a PhD and I can support myself and if I got pregnant accidentally I would freak out but it wouldn t be the end of my life in all likelihood, back then it really could be.
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And so the women whose psychology got carried forward were the women who were picky and they weren t just picky about whether a man had resources, they were picky about whether he would share those resources.
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And how did she know that he was going to share the resources do you think?
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I don t know.
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Tell us.
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Commitment.
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She looked for signs of commitment.
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And those signs of commitment, which women are still using today, often amount to signs of love.
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I should have just guessed.
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I would have gotten it.
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Yeah.
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Signs of commitment.
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So stuff women look for a really, really big one is, has he said he loves you without any prompting from you?
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So men say they love first because women need that in order to feel secure.
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Right, and sometimes it s just an outright lie and it s manipulative.
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Sometimes, but most of the time it s not.
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You know, most people are good people.
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And so most of the time, men are actually telling the truth.
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Just like in the studies of actual love at first sight, it s mostly men who experience that.
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And I believe that s evolutionary in origin.
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I think that because women have very strongly valued men for providing cues of commitment,
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that this has over millennia shaped men to offer cues of commitment more and more rapidly just as the peacock s tail has gotten longer and longer.
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So if men are more emotional than women when it comes to this, then does that mean we re less logical by definition when it comes to selecting a mate?
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Short term, we know that s true, right?
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Because we re just like, whatever.
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But for most guys, ask any college kid, doesn t matter a whole lot sometimes.
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But when we re talking long term mating, are we still as emotional or do we switch to logical, better decision makers?
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Yes, so you brought up a couple really good points there.
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One of them is that men have long and short term mating strategies, and that these strategies are vastly different.
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Because see, women also have long and short term strategies, but women s strategies for long and short term are actually very similar to each other.
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We ve covered some of the differences before, but let s get a Cliff s Notes going.
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Yeah, so the Cliff s Notes of this is that scientists
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ask men and women, if you were going to have a casual sexual relationship, what would your standards be?
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And there was a checklist of things that people could indicate that they would have to have before they would have casual sex with someone.
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And they ve also looked at actual behavior.
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When people do choose a casual sex partner in the real world, how do they do it?
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And they find that men s standards for a casual sex partner are loose enough that some scientists, such as David Buss, have noted that guys say that they would have sex with a woman who they weren t physically attracted to, who was passed out, drunk, and barely breathing, and maybe even mentally retarded.
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Wow, that s kind of terrifying, and I really hope that s wrong, but you know, science.
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But then when you ask women that same question and you look at women s behavior, women demonstrate what I call the rock star effect.
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They are even choosier about a casual sex partner than they are about a husband in some ways.
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SPEAKER_03
Wait a minute, hold on a second.
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SPEAKER_03
I need to highlight that.
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SPEAKER_03
In many cases, women are more choosy with a casual sex partner than they would be for a husband.
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SPEAKER_03
What, really?
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, I find mating psychology so much more easy to understand, because really, I have a lot of WTF moments when I first read this science.
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SPEAKER_00
And then I have to remember that our mating psychology is unconscious.
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SPEAKER_00
And it comes from more than 50,000 years ago, when it would have made sense that a lot of our mating psychology doesn t make sense anymore.
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SPEAKER_00
Like, for example, 80% of women want a guy who s at least six feet tall, when in the modern context, you really don t need a guy who s six feet tall.
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SPEAKER_00
So, you know, they want something that in the past where men were constantly raping each other s women, but if you were the six-foot-tall guy, nobody touched your woman.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, that made a lot of sense.
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SPEAKER_00
Or if you had the six-foot-tall guy, you the cavewoman had more meat.
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SPEAKER_00
That makes a lot of sense.
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SPEAKER_00
It doesn t make so much sense now, but we re still carrying forward this ancestral mating psychology, whether or not it makes sense.
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SPEAKER_00
So, yes, women actually have higher standards for a casual sex partner very often than they would have for a husband in some ways.
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SPEAKER_00
For example, the casual sex partner usually has to have more status than someone that they would consider for a long-term relationship.
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SPEAKER_00
He needs to be the rock star.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, why do you think it is guys want to be in bands really?
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SPEAKER_03
It all starts with ladies, for sure.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, you know, you look at some of the guys who are in bands and you note how much action they re getting and how much they would be getting if they weren t in a band.
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SPEAKER_00
Just think about that.
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SPEAKER_00
So women are valuing
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SPEAKER_00
in a casual sex relationship, they re valuing signs of really high status, signs of the ability to become famous, signs of the ability to lead other men, signs of the pure physical prowess.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I had a student years ago who I ve taught college for a long time and my students know that my interest is really relationship science because I don t teach relationship science in a college setting.
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SPEAKER_00
I teach it, but I teach it to
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SPEAKER_00
you know, people out in the community.
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SPEAKER_00
And so in college classes, I m teaching psychology, but they know I do this.
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SPEAKER_00
So they asked me questions.
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SPEAKER_00
And one guy said, I can t ask this question in front of everybody else.
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SPEAKER_00
He said, How do I get women to stop throwing themselves at me?
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SPEAKER_03
And you re like, get shorter ASAP.
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SPEAKER_03
Tame that jawline, sir.
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SPEAKER_00
And I said, what have you done so far to try to get rid of him?
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SPEAKER_00
And he said, I grew a really thick beard and I try to appear shorter than I am.
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SPEAKER_00
And he said this still a couple nights ago, this woman said, I sat down at a bar and the woman, this woman sat down next to me and said, Hey, let s get out of here and go back to my place.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, nobody feels sorry for that guy right now.
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SPEAKER_00
He said, I can t say this out loud to anybody but you because nobody feels sorry for me.
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SPEAKER_00
But his problem was he suspected that because he had sex without any effort that he was getting to a point where emotionally he couldn t connect with women.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it can become a real problem.
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SPEAKER_03
I m being facetious here.
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SPEAKER_03
I just think it s such a rare problem that most guys would kill to have it.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, no kidding.
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SPEAKER_03
It s like having too much money.
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SPEAKER_03
Like, oh, I don t even know what to do with it.
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SPEAKER_03
Nothing seems off limits to me.
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SPEAKER_03
Nothing excites me anymore.
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SPEAKER_03
I ll be upset when I get there, which is what the rest of us say.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_03
So he tried to make himself look shorter, he grew a beard, so he really did try to get shorter and tame the jawline.
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SPEAKER_03
That s funny, I was just kidding.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, he really did the things that you suggested, and what I wound up saying to him was, go out in the world and be you, but try to hold it down on the sex until you start to find somebody more and more interesting, more similar to you, because men s dopamine levels don t rise enough to fall in love until, usually until a man has had time to pursue a woman, and women are,
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SPEAKER_00
cutting short the pursuit, which is why you re never falling in love with one of them.
2
SPEAKER_03
Ah, super interesting.
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SPEAKER_03
Right, he never has to invest, so he s just like, eh, it s all meaningless.
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SPEAKER_00
Correct.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he wanted meaning.
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SPEAKER_00
He told me, he said, my goal is to get married and have a family.
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SPEAKER_00
But I can t seem to do that because I can t fall in love.
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SPEAKER_00
And I m starting to suspect this is the reason.
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SPEAKER_00
And I said, yeah, in all odds, that is the reason.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s not a problem most other people are going to identify with or feel sad about for you.
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SPEAKER_00
But the fact of the matter is, if you could slow the courtship down some and courtship is a scientifically defined term, by the way,
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SPEAKER_00
It means the time between when you meet and when sex happens.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, in the case when he was in the bar, that s not what most of us would think of as courtship.
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SPEAKER_00
Their courtship was like an hour.
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SPEAKER_03
Right, he s like, he s texting his buddies and then he s like, courtship is the Uber ride back to her house.
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SPEAKER_03
No.
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SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_00
Anyway, getting back to the whole concept of how men and women have standards for casual sex, if you put yourself in the ancestral environment, women who were willing to have sex with just anyone were unlikely to solve their problems of survival and reproduction.
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SPEAKER_00
Pregnancy is very difficult and it wouldn t have been any easier back then, it would have been far more difficult.
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SPEAKER_00
And if you give birth and you even survive, providing for the child and for yourself afterward is very difficult.
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SPEAKER_00
I ve been pregnant and given birth and I can tell you that even though I had a PhD at the time, I felt very vulnerable and I felt
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SPEAKER_00
this real sense that if I hadn t had someone who wanted to hang in there with me and make sure that I had enough to eat and make sure that I was basically comfortable and well provided for, that even in the modern context, it would have been such an emotional stress.
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SPEAKER_00
It might have been hard on my child, honestly.
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SPEAKER_00
and might have contributed to her not doing well and that s what studies find even today is when women don t get an invested provider and protector even in societies where there s a lot of socialized medicine and the floor under how far you can fall down is
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SPEAKER_00
is pretty substantial, the societal protections.
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SPEAKER_00
Even in those cultures, women and children fare a lot better when there s someone who is invested in those children, the biological father.
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SPEAKER_00
And so, women today still value commitment.
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SPEAKER_00
And if they re gonna give that up, then they re gonna give it up for a damn good reason.
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SPEAKER_00
And the good reason appears to be what s called the sexy sons hypothesis.
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SPEAKER_03
Okay, I m gonna guess what that means, but I m gonna let you tell, I m gonna let you explain it.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay, so let s say that I decide to have sex with a thousand guys.
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SPEAKER_01
next year, boy I m going to be tired.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you re going to be tired and sore for sure.
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SPEAKER_00
I m going to be tired and sore and my husband s going to be pissed.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he s not going to be happy about that at all.
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SPEAKER_00
But the thing is that if my goal, again non-consciously, my non-conscious goal always is to make more copies of myself.
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SPEAKER_00
And if my goal is to make more copies of myself and I have sex with a thousand fertile guys, I m only going to have one baby in all likelihood out of that whole year of effort.
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SPEAKER_00
Now, however, let s say that I have casual sex with a very famous, very good looking, very rich man, and I get pregnant.
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SPEAKER_00
Let s even take it further.
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SPEAKER_00
Let s say that I know he s not going to invest in me.
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SPEAKER_00
I know this is a one night stand.
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SPEAKER_00
The thing is, if I have one of his sons, even though I can make very few copies of myself, my genes in any given lifetime, if I have a sexy son, he s probably going to be sexy like dad.
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SPEAKER_00
And if he gets access to 1000s of fertile women, guess what, he s going to potentially cast 1000s of copies of my genes, not just his out into the world.
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SPEAKER_01
Right, so the most effective replicators.
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SPEAKER_01
So what you re saying here, what it sounds like you re saying, and it s something we ve mentioned on the show before, is that the person who is most likely to spread your genes the widest is not necessarily the best person to take care of you while pregnant slash for the rest of your life in your old age.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, you know, it depends.
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SPEAKER_00
There are studies on how women cheat.
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SPEAKER_00
When do they cheat?
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SPEAKER_00
How do they cheat?
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SPEAKER_00
Who do they choose to cheat with?
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SPEAKER_00
I want to emphasize, this is non-conscious.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not like rock stars, lovers are thinking, wow, I really want to make a lot of copies of myself, so I hope I get pregnant by this dude and then I have a boy so that someday that boy will be like dad.
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SPEAKER_00
This is all very non-conscious.
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SPEAKER_00
Right.
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SPEAKER_01
This is like a lizard brain doing all the thinking behind the scenes.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because you know, I mean, we got stuff to do, we got to hunt, we got to gather, you know, we have to raise the kids we ve already got.
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SPEAKER_00
So our right side of our brain is really taking charge of a large part of the program and we just don t have to think about it very much.
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SPEAKER_00
Women place a high premium for a marriage partner on fidelity.
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SPEAKER_00
They want a man who is going to love and have sex with them and only them.
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SPEAKER_00
It turns out the single best predictor of whether a man s going to cheat is whether he has the opportunity to do so.
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SPEAKER_01
and not get caught, you mean?
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SPEAKER_00
No, I don t necessarily mean that.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean that men who are, like my former student, routinely approached by women and offered sex are the very most likely ones to do it.
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SPEAKER_01
Right, surprise, surprise.
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SPEAKER_01
He s got a ton of opportunity and he s gonna be weak at some point and do it.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and so what happens is that those very same men are often taxed in the marriage market because women assume that those men are not good marriage material.
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SPEAKER_01
Right, because they just figure, well, he s so good looking that he s probably gonna cheat on me, and that s a subconscious calculation as well.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, it is.
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SPEAKER_00
And so when women have been presented with that calculus, so to speak, when they ve been asked, you know, if you could have a man with these qualities, who would marry you or these other qualities who would marry you?
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SPEAKER_00
It s weird, but for the casual sex scenario, again, in study after study, women are a little pickier.
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SPEAKER_00
For the marriage partner, they want the man who can bring home the goods and continue providing and is loving, but they want him to be less good looking.
3
SPEAKER_01
Interesting so that s an uncomfortable truth for a lot of people.
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SPEAKER_00
I think yeah, it s uncomfortable for me for sure You know, it s funny.
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SPEAKER_00
I do a lot of now that I ve moved I m doing a lot of teaching out in the community and I m teaching among other places that maybe the most liberal high school that I ve even heard of and we re talking about some of this mating psychology stuff and the guy who Sits in the class with me while I m talking with the high school seniors and juniors and
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SPEAKER_00
He actually wears, I don t know what you would call them, but they re pants that you would wear if you were at an ashram and you were meditating.
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SPEAKER_00
And he s very into Far Eastern philosophy.
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And I really wondered if I was going to get fired my very first day at this high school.
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I show up on Fridays and do this seminar.
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SPEAKER_00
And so at the end of it, I said, Hey, Scott, so, you know, the part where I was talking about inherited mating psychology and explaining that to the students, are we cool?
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SPEAKER_00
And he goes,
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SPEAKER_00
you know what, the only thing I wish is that you d come to my high school years and years ago and talked about it, because it would have helped me a lot.
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SPEAKER_00
He said, yeah, it s uncomfortable, but people need to know about it, whether or not it makes them uncomfortable.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, good teacher, because that s definitely a huge concern, right?
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SPEAKER_01
The truth is often uncomfortable, but it doesn t make it any less true.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but then this other organization where I live decided not to allow me to interact with their young adults at all because if the students knew the science, then that would be contrary to women improving their lot in the world.
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SPEAKER_01
Do you agree with that?
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SPEAKER_01
That seems like a ridiculous assertion.
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SPEAKER_00
I think it s just as credible as saying that we can t talk about evolution because what if it was true, so let s leave it out of our textbooks.
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SPEAKER_00
No, I don t think it s reasonable.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I would agree with you.
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SPEAKER_00
I think it s the far left version of what the far right says.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t think it s reasonable at all.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that.
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SPEAKER_01
I m interested to hear what the AOC family thinks about that as well.
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SPEAKER_01
I think that s a really interesting sort of political discussion that doesn t need to be dived into too much further on this program because it s less interesting than the science.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, you know, I mean, science is, what I love about science is it s true regardless of your politics, it s true regardless of your pre-existing leanings, it s true whether or not you believe in it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s something I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson say, I think.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, thank you so much.
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SPEAKER_00
I really am excited that he s gotten people invested and involved in science that way and understanding it that way.
3
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, back to what we were discussing.
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SPEAKER_00
So women have a different way of cheating than men have, just as they are more selective about their one night stand type partner.
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SPEAKER_00
they tend to choose a partner to cheat with who is more of a rock star than their husband in terms of looks.
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SPEAKER_00
Again, it s not that women are never willing to take a sexual risk.
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SPEAKER_00
Men are more likely to take a one night stand risk than women are.
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SPEAKER_00
They re more likely to say they want that to happen than women are, but it s obviously, you can t have a situation where men are cheating and there aren t some women cheating too.
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SPEAKER_00
That doesn t make sense, does it?
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, if men are cheating, therefore women are cheating.
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SPEAKER_00
You can t have sex without a partner.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, yeah, maybe.
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SPEAKER_01
You re the scientist.
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SPEAKER_01
Of course, yeah, sure.
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SPEAKER_01
But sometimes you re not cheating if your partner s totally single, right?
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, that s...
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, but it s interesting.
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SPEAKER_00
A lot of times when people are cheating, they choose other partnered people, so they actually are cheating with somebody else who s cheating, too.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, in those cases, yes, it s true, but it s not always that two people are cheating if one person is simply single and out there and doesn t know that the other person is married.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s nothing they ve done wrong in that scenario.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, you know, that s a philosophical issue I think that science doesn t address is if you let s say you re a guy and you re single, but the woman that you re having sex with is married.
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SPEAKER_00
Are you doing anything wrong?
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SPEAKER_00
I think that s for another show.
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SPEAKER_00
But but anyway, so men and women do have these very different standards.
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SPEAKER_00
And so what women are valuing, though, when they re looking for long term mating situation, which is what most women most of the time are looking for, is they re looking for a lot of emotion for men.
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SPEAKER_00
And this is why, in my opinion, my opinion is based on science, but I m making a small leap here.
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SPEAKER_00
In my opinion, this is the reason why men are more emotional.
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SPEAKER_00
Men, in fact, they are more emotional.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, they re less likely to end a relationship, even when it s miserable.
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SPEAKER_00
They re more likely to have a rosy, happy view of early courtship, even if things kind of suck right now than women are.
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SPEAKER_00
They re more likely to remarry, which shows that men place a premium on commitment, even though society says that men just want to play and they don t place a premium on it.
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SPEAKER_00
It would seem that men do experience a real emotional boost from being married because when you look at who gets remarried after divorce or after being widowed, overwhelmingly it s men.
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SPEAKER_00
Women are much more likely to remain single.
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SPEAKER_00
When you look at who gets more upset during arguments,
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SPEAKER_00
You know, women will shout more than men will, so it looks like the woman s getting more upset, but research by John Gottman and others has shown that if you monitor people s heart rates during an argument, women can be shouting and look visibly upset, and then their heart rate is staying at an even 70, 75.
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SPEAKER_00
They re not really that upset.
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SPEAKER_00
Men, on the other hand, frequently with minimal discussion even, will have a heart rate that reaches 100.
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SPEAKER_00
And what scientists have found is once a person s heart rate reaches 100 beats per minute, they don t hear another word that s said in that argument.
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SPEAKER_00
I wonder how many of you guys out there have had this happen.
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SPEAKER_00
You re having an argument with a woman that you love and suddenly you find that you are staring at the wood grain on the floor, crossing your arms and just waiting for the argument to be over from her side.
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SPEAKER_00
The single biggest predictor of a relationship ending, or marriage ending specifically, is the amount of stonewalling that one partner is doing.
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SPEAKER_00
And about 80% of the time, it s a male partner who does the stonewalling, unless it s against
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SPEAKER_00
male relationship, in which case it s 100% of the time that it s a guy doing it.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, the interesting thing about that is stonewalling is happening to the more emotional partner, which is usually the man.
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SPEAKER_00
It s happening because this person feels emotionally overwhelmed.
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SPEAKER_00
And often when you ask people, male and female, why did you do that?
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SPEAKER_00
Why did you stonewall this person?
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SPEAKER_00
They say, well, I was trying to prevent a bigger fight.
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SPEAKER_00
And what the science shows is that actually, your partner perceives your stonewalling behavior as vastly disrespectful that, you know, it s kind of like you re not even worth engaging with.
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SPEAKER_00
And if you know, perception is kind of reality.
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SPEAKER_00
So if your partner perceives it as disrespectful, it turns out that relationships can survive a loss of love for a little while.
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SPEAKER_00
Fortunately, we can fall back in love with people that we
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SPEAKER_00
aren t in love with right now.
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SPEAKER_00
If we ever did love them, we could love them again.
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SPEAKER_00
But we can t really get over a loss of respect.
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SPEAKER_00
That s really hard to do.
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SPEAKER_00
And so it s a relationally unhealthy behavior, but it s mostly guys who do it.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s because, frankly, women have shaped men to offer a lot of emotion.
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SPEAKER_00
Consequently, when men feel overwhelmed emotionally, they shut down to protect themselves.
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SPEAKER_01
Nice.
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SPEAKER_01
When we go to the evolutionary tapes, can always blame the ladies.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, I could talk about how men have shaped women.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s a two-way street and women have a lot of emotional angst that stems from men s desires.
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SPEAKER_01
I would love to get into that.
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SPEAKER_01
It interests me a little bit less than this current thread here, which was that, okay, men are more emotional, men are less logical.
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SPEAKER_01
In the definitions that we ve postulated earlier, what can men do to be more logical then?
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SPEAKER_01
Because when we re talking about picking a partner, we don t want to be overly emotional.
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SPEAKER_01
When we re talking about a marriage partner, sure, one night stand, you know, whatever.
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SPEAKER_01
Not the end of the world unless there are consequences from that.
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SPEAKER_01
But what about marriage?
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SPEAKER_01
There s always consequences, good or bad, from that.
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SPEAKER_01
So we need to be as logical, would you agree anyway, that we need to be as logical as possible?
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SPEAKER_00
If we were talking about women, I would say absolutely.
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SPEAKER_00
When we re talking about men, I am really conflicted about how logical men need to be.
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SPEAKER_00
And here s why.
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SPEAKER_00
When you look at studies of who s happier in marriage, it s usually men.
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SPEAKER_00
When you look at studies of who
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SPEAKER_00
ends marriages and dating relationships at every stage, usually it s not men.
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SPEAKER_00
When you look at who gets remarried faster because they like being in a partnership, usually it s men.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, and when you look at the specific studies of who falls in love at first sight, and then actually gets married, you talk about something that I would just lay money on it, that it s just not going to work to actually marry the person you fall in love with at first sight.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, it sounds like a terrible plan, which is why I challenged you on the entire concept in the beginning.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it sounds like a terrible plan.
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SPEAKER_00
And so what shocked me about looking at actual studies of people who have done this is not only that this phenomenon exists, not only that men are much more likely to be the person who falls in love at first sight, but stunningly, those marriages usually work and they re happier than most marriages, it just blows me away.
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SPEAKER_00
So at some level, it looks like men just being emotional going through life is working.
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SPEAKER_00
But then you look at the 30% divorce rate, thank God, it s not still 50%.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s, you know, our current lifetime stay-together rate since the year 2000 is two-thirds.
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SPEAKER_00
Two-thirds of people appear to be headed for lifetime solid marriage.
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SPEAKER_00
But still, you know, that one in three people, they re not very happy.
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SPEAKER_00
And so, here s what I think that men can do to be more logical than they usually are.
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SPEAKER_00
And the first one is something that a lot of guys, and women too, they just don t want to do it.
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SPEAKER_00
But really, I m encouraging you to do it.
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SPEAKER_00
Make a list.
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SPEAKER_00
make a list of everything that you want in a partner.
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SPEAKER_00
When you first make it, just make it on the computer on your cell phone or whatever, but brainstorm it.
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SPEAKER_00
Don t try to think too logically about I know we re, I m encouraging you not to be logical about something logical.
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SPEAKER_00
I know that s kind of stupid.
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SPEAKER_00
But at the beginning of the list, I just want you to kind of dream out loud.
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SPEAKER_00
everything you would like.
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SPEAKER_00
Be detailed about the sexual practices, the number of times a week or day or month or however often you want to have sex, what she looks like, what she smells like, the kinds of things she likes to do, everything.
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SPEAKER_00
Be as detailed as you possibly can.
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SPEAKER_00
And then I want you to go back through that list and subdivide it into
4
SPEAKER_00
Things you would really like to have but you could compromise on if she was otherwise perfect.
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SPEAKER_00
I call those desirables or wants.
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SPEAKER_00
And then things that really you have to have or you just couldn t be happy with this person.
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SPEAKER_00
I call those must-haves.
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SPEAKER_00
And this is how I want you to use this logic.
4
SPEAKER_00
I want you to be ruthlessly honest with yourself after you meet someone.
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I want you to go back through the list and if she is lacking even one must-have, you must not.
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even if she has you got 100 things on the list, and only five of them are must haves.
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And she has 99 things.
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But the missing thing is a must have.
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The reason you put that as a must have is because it s a deal breaker.
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Don t ever get involved in a relationship that s broken from the very moment that you entered it.
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We don t have to do that.
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we could invest some thought ahead of time.
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Right now, people are getting involved in what I call mini marriages, where they meet, they have sex, they get deeply emotionally involved, they get married, and then they ask the question, do we belong together?
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Do you know about the research on arranged marriages?
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I do, in that they are more successful.
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Yeah, and they seem to be more successful in part because they do things in the reverse order.
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They ask the hard questions first, and they only ever meet someone who passed all the tests.
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So when they fall in love, it s completely safe to do so.
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Well, they ve already been married for six months by the time they do that, right?
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But it s completely safe to do it then because the groundwork is laid.
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Their parent has done or their parents or their family, extended family or their matchmaker has done the work of finding someone who is kind and respectful and about as smart as you are and highly similar in likes and dislikes.
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all of which we know are really, really important if a relationship s going to last happily for a lifetime.
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So they ve done all that groundwork, and the only thing they don t know is, are you gonna be hot for each other?
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And so they ll present you usually with several options, two or three at least, and you pick the one that you re hot for, and boom, you re done.
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Because as you grow to know each other, you re gonna be giving each other the thumbs up, as long as there s chemistry there.
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So really, the only decision that those folks have to make is their chemistry here.
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What I m suggesting is that more of us need to be our own kind of wise Guide in this matter and ask the hard questions first and allow ourselves to get emotionally invested in people that pass the test What are the hard questions?
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The hard questions are whatever your standards of must-haves are, you have to find out whether they meet them.
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And that s why I can t tell you a lot of specifics.
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I can tell you that your partner has to be kind and respectful, meaning kind to others and respectful to others and about others, even when that other person can t do anything for them, even when that other person has disappointed them, and even when they re having a bad day.
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It s a high standard, but science is really clear that if you can t find and be someone kind and respectful, no matter what else you have going for you, a marriage is not going to work for you.
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That s rock-bottom standard.
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They have to have that.
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You have to ascertain, are they kind and respectful?
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But then you have to ascertain other stuff too.
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Do they want the same things out of life that I want?
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You know, for some men that I ve coached, because I have private clients too, and right now 100% of my private clients are male.
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So for the men that I coach,
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I ll kind of ask him questions to try to find out, well, so what do you want?
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How important is it to you have for you to have kids, you know, some guys, if they met the right woman, and they really adored her, they could really go either way on the question if she really wanted kids fine, if she really didn t find it, it s not that big an investment for them emotionally.
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But for others, you know, I ve had some men say, Why would anyone ever get married without having kids having kids is the whole reason to make a family.
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you re really not anything, you re just playing house if you don t have children.
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I mean, some people do have that perspective, and for them, it s a must have.
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So if they met a woman who didn t want kids, then they would need to stop dating her, even if they felt like they could be in love with her.
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Yeah, I can see that being an obvious deal breaker for a lot of folks.
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Going back to men being less likely to end a relationship, you mentioned that earlier.
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How do we extricate ourselves from a bad relationship if we know that we re predisposed as males to staying in one?
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Yeah, so women have shaped men s emotions so much that women have actually shaped men to stay in relationships even when it s not to the man s advantage.
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Most unhappy women will leave, most unhappy men won t.
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And so, men, I wanna tip you off to some circumstances where you really need to end the relationship and then I m gonna give you some tips about
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how you might do that.
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The easiest way to extricate yourself because it s not natural for you for most of you guys to end a relationship.
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It s just it feels wrong.
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And so times you need to end a relationship if you don t love her enough, or if you don t love her at all, end it.
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She s never going to say thanks for settling for me.
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If she doesn t love you enough or doesn t love you at all, end it.
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Being settled for, that sucks too.
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If she can t manage to be kind and respectful, end it.
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She s going to be a bitch to live with.
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You don t want that.
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You know, I mean, I say the same thing to women.
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If a guy s unkind and disrespectful, end it.
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Don t put up with that.
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It s not going to work, so you may as well end it now.
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If she has a past that you are really worried about, you re going to need to examine that closely and consider whether you need and here s an example from a letter from a guy gotten, by the way, just so your listeners don t get scared that I m going to out them.
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I always change enough details that people who write to me are never going to be identifiable from something I say on error, right?
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Got it.
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So this guy wrote to me and he said that he was really worried about his girlfriend.
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He was in love with her.
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She was in love with him.
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But there was this feeling of unease within him about making a further commitment to her.
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He didn t know what to do about how uneasy he felt.
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He just kind of constantly felt a little bit nervous about going forward.
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And so I said, Well, tell me more about that.
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Why do you feel nervous?
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You know, what is it that s making you worried?
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Do you even know?
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And he said, Yeah, he said, it turns out that she has a very large number of sexual partners.
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And he said, I do too.
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So you know, I realized it s a double standard.
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But he said, it also turns out that some of those sexual partners she had while she was married before.
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I just got a letter about this.
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Yeah.
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And so he said, you know, she tells me that the reason she s revealed this is because she wants a fresh start.
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Uh, and she would never do that to me.
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And he said, but I just can t escape the feeling that in fact she would do that to me.
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Folks, the best indicator of what somebody is going to do in the future.
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I mean, it s, it s not quite as good as a crystal ball, but it s,
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past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior absolutely it s called the law of psychology and so and specifically past behavior in a similar past circumstance so if she was married before and she was having a lot of sexual affairs and she s married again
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odds are she s going to have a lot of sexual affairs.
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And I said, you know, I hate to say this to you because you love her and, and she might not have a lot of sexual affairs.
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So I said, I need to ask you about other aspects of the behavior because this is where we get a lot of gray area.
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It s hard to just give a cut and dry answer on this one.
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I said, so how long ago was this?
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And it had been,
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like a year ago and I said how quickly in her marriage did she start having an affair and he said while they were still engaged.
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Yikes.
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Yeah, and I said, and did she feel entitled to have the affairs?
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Or did she feel like a horrible person?
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And he said, you know, it seemed to him like she has felt entitled, like it s my body, it s my choice, I can do whatever I want as long as my husband doesn t find out.
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Wow, that s, I mean, that s not just a red flag, oh, her past, that s like she just doesn t have any respect for the partnership angle.
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Well, you know, and there are couples where they have an agreement to have an open, but this wasn t an agreement.
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This was not an agreement.
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Yeah.
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The arrangement she had with her husband was the standard arrangement I have with my husband and most people have with their mates, which is we re sexually exclusive and we don t lie to each other about this.
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So, I said to him, okay, here s what I can tell you for sure.
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Sexual infidelity very early in a marriage or during the engagement is a huge predictor that this person is going to be profligately unfaithful.
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Most women who have affairs only do it when the marriage has become miserable, and then they have maybe one affair partner and they feel horrible about it.
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I said that s not what you re describing here.
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You re describing a willful cheater who doesn t really have genuine remorse.
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And I said, yes, she s going to cheat on you.
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I hate to say it, but these are high, high odds.
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I just wouldn t go there.
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And so that s another situation where you need to break up.
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If you
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are willing and I really hope that you are because you know I don t want you to have a marriage end over something that you could have analyzed ahead of time.
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If this person has a past that you re uncomfortable with and they are not showing signs of genuine remorse and a long time period of not engaging that behavior again,
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They need both those things.
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They need a recent history, recent extensive history of not having engaged in that behavior.
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Like if let s say it was addiction to cocaine, you know, I ve been sober for three months and going to cut it, it needs to be a long recovery.
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And they need to have felt real genuine remorse for what they did and see that their behavior that is wrong in your moral universe, their moral universe needs to correspond to yours.
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So anyway, big picture is if you are unsettled by this person s past, if they don t have remorse and a lengthy track record of not having engaged in that behavior, then that s an X. And then there is actually one more circumstance where I really encourage men and women alike to just break it off.
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And that s if you re not happy or happy enough, you re dating.
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That s what dating is for.
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Dating is not, I fell in love with you and therefore I m in love with you forever.
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That s marriage.
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If the pleasure doesn t outweigh the pain, then it s really time to move on.
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So, okay, I think you wanted to know how do you say the words that men just don t feel okay about saying?
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How do you break up?
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Yeah, I get email about when it goes terribly, or when they don t have the guts to do it, or they don t have a plan for it.
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What do we need to do as men to end a relationship successfully and effectively?
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Well, as I ve said it,
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it doesn t feel natural to men usually to end a relationship at all.
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So I m going to tell you how to do it.
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But guys, it s still probably going to feel terrible to you to do it.
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I remember this one guy who was consulting with me and he had been in a relationship for three or more years with a woman who he had never fallen in love with.
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But you know, I mean there was sex on demand and she was nice to him and she was loving toward him and it just doesn t feel natural to a guy to say no to that.
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It doesn t feel natural to a guy also to break a woman s heart.
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Men really at core are kind of heroic.
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They don t like hurting women.
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they in fact when they love someone they like doing a lot for her so he didn t love her but still he realized that she loved him he didn t want to hurt her and the guy was crying this huge mountain of a man sobbing with his head in his hands about this so he realized that you know he didn t love her enough and he realized she was not going to thank him for settling and so the next task was to find the words and so the words we settled on really work for every situation because they re true
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guys, here s what you say, you say something nice about the person, preferably face to face, otherwise on the phone, never do this by text message or email.
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And you re going to start by saying something pleasant or kind about them in the relationship.
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And then you re going to follow that up with one of the following statements.
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But I don t feel the way I need to feel to move forward.
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Or you could say, but I just don t feel like we have enough in common to continue.
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This is the open face breakup sandwich.
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Yes, you re not going to leave her in hope of a future relationship with you because there isn t a hope of it.
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The reason you re breaking up is you either don t have enough in common to continue or you don t feel the way you need to feel in order to continue or both of these things.
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And they re unassailable.
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It s really about you.
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I mean, I guess somebody could be so disrespectful that she says, no, you don t really feel that way.
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But I mean, that would be a sign for sure that you re making the right choice if she doesn t even acknowledge that you have your own thoughts and feelings.
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No, you feel this way, you re just confused, honey, head pat, right?
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Exactly, so that s an even bigger green light for you to move on if she tries to tell you you don t feel how you feel.
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It s unassailable, it s clear, it s concise, it doesn t blame the person for anything, therefore it is kind and respectful in addition to being honest.
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And it s brief, so I actually,
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In my book, I call the guy Kevin.
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I actually counseled with Kevin about, I guess we did some role play, because he told me a lot about her.
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And so I was trying to guess the kind of things she would say.
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And he said, Oh, yes, yes, she would definitely say those things.
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So he would say, Sheila, I really have enjoyed the time we have spent together over the past three years.
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You ve been a really kind person to me, and we ve had a great friendship, and we ve had a good sex life, but I don t feel the way I need to feel to go on.
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I need to break up. 
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And even just saying that to me was very hard for him.
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And so we practiced just having him say it a few times.
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And then the next thing we did is I role-played her and I said, What?
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You ve taken three years of my life?
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You scumbag.
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How could you do that?
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you just don t feel the way you need to feel.
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And the reason I was doing that is I could tell that she was not going to go gently into that good night.
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She was going to be furious from what he had said.
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And so he had to be prepared for that.
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And so what I encouraged him to do at that point was the broken record technique, just keep saying it.
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And I encouraged him to go to her apartment to conduct the breakup.
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He can leave.
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We actually did a whole book about breakups.
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It s free.
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If you go to theartofcharm.com slash breakups, it s a couple years old, but it includes what to say, where to do it, how to do it, what to do if she starts crying, or if the other person becomes unreasonable about it.
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what happens if they try to contact you, what you need to do.
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We outline this whole process because there are a lot of things, right?
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You re like, oh, I ll do it when she comes over today.
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Well, now she s in your house.
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What are you gonna do?
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Are you gonna leave your own house?
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There s a lot of different considerations that you don t see coming and a lot of times guys will say, yeah, we re mature adults, it s gonna be fine.
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And then the next email is, oh my God, what just happened?
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what just happened was somebody s heartbroken.
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People aren t being logical and they re not being their best selves when that happens.
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You can t simultaneously be the source of someone s pain and the remedy for that same pain.
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He really wanted to fix things for because men are heroic.
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They want to fix things.
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They want to help women.
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And I said to him, Kevin, that s not an option.
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You re not going to be able to break her heart and be the source of fixing her heart.
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You re going to have to just take it on the chin here and in very gentle language, but very clear language, you re going to have to end it.
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And you re going to have to do it at her place so that you re not stuck with someone who s at your place, refusing to leave, screaming at you or crying or anything else.
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Obviously, a lot of women handle a breakup well, she just wasn t one of them.
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And so I said, you know, you need to be at her place, it does need to be in person, this is a long relationship, doing it over the phone, unless you fear for your life, which at six foot whatever he didn t.
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That s not cool, you need to be kind and respectful.
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So ended in person, but ended at her place or in a public place, and give her her dignity.
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But also give it a time limit.
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Give it an hour.
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So that s what he did.
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He called me after it happened.
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He said he couldn t sleep at all the night before he threw up on the way over there the next day.
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He really didn t want to hurt this person.
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but he also equivalently did not want to.
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I explained to him he was in for pain either way.
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Guys, if you re thinking about breaking up, you re in for pain either way.
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You can either have the pain now of breaking up with the wrong person for you, or you can have the pain for years and years and years of feeling like you should have broken up with her and probably eventually having it happen anyway.
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I really recommend ripping the Band-Aid off.
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So what he chose to do was go for the shorter term pain and allow her to pursue her own life with someone who would love her.
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He said, you know, over and over,
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Yes, I understand.
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I know that you feel that way.
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I m sorry.
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I just don t feel the same way.
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I m breaking up.
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And he just said that for an hour.
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And then at the end of the hour, he had someplace to be, which we had arranged in someplace he had to go.
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He was able to say to her, Sheila, I gotta go.
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It s an hour.
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I m really sorry about this.
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But I ve said all that I can say.
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And then he left.
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There s so much more I want to get into with all of this, but we are at a great point to wrap and then, yeah, show number three in a couple of months, or a few months, how men have shaped women in terms of evolutionary psychology, mating psychology, and I definitely want to get into that.
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I also want to talk about the role that women have had directly in creating male ambition and things like that, because I just think that s super fascinating.
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Thank you so much for coming on.
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Thanks very much.
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It s always a pleasure to be on Art of Charm.
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Super interesting episode.
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Again, we got so much good stuff.
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We weren t even able to get it all done in this hour, so we re gonna have her back yet again.
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Really, really good stuff.
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Really a home run for the AOC audience.
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Super surprised about the love at first sight stuff.
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Super surprised as well about how women have shaped men s psychology, although that s less surprising the more and more I think about it.
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Always interesting to have the mating strategies discussion.
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And of course, whether or not we can predict cheating, the past behavior in similar circumstances being a great predictor of future behavior holds true in the relationship realm as well as everywhere else in life.
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So I hope you enjoyed this one.
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And of course, if you did, don t forget to thank Dwayna on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes as well as the other resources mentioned on the show.
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You can tap our album art and most mobile podcast players to see the show notes right on your phone.
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I m also on Twitter, at The Art of Charm.
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Of course, any sponsor in this episode is in the show notes or go to theartofcharm.com slash advertisers for the full list.
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Live program bootcamp details at bootcamp.theartofcharm.com.
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Get in touch, we ll get you some info so you can move forward.
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Subscribe and review on iTunes, iPhone and Android apps available.
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Special thanks to both the Jasons and to Fogarty for their help in production of The Art of Charm.
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Now go ahead and tell your friends because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else either in person or shared on the web.
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Now have a great week and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to The Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.