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What’s Killing Our Relationships? Fear of Dependancy.

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

Everyone seems obsessed with relationships these days. When men and women share their relationship stories with me I see one big epidemic in our culture — fear of dependancy.

For instance, last night I was at a dinner party and when word got around that I am the Ph.D. who studies relationships, an inevitable mini group-therapy session broke out. The stories abounded about our curious relationship landscape. And alcohol-fueled questions popped out that amounted to “why am I like this?”

With few social rules forcing people into traditional relationships, many people are beginning to understand that their relationship style whether it be dominated by promiscuity, serial monogamy, an emotionally avoidant marriage, or preference for solitude, lies on them. With few family and friends forcing us into a legal, heterosexual, monogamous union, we are free to live out who we are. And that’s the problem. Many of us do not want to live out our “natural” attachment style and actually long for a closeness that will help us feel secure. Or we long for a relationship that will help us procreate and create healthy offspring.

Time and time again at these ad hoc therapy sessions, I find myself explaining “fear of dependancy.” Because, in my opinion, that’s what most relationship strife boils down to. In order to have a healthy relationship, we have to trust someone, we have to trust love and believe it will be consistent. And partners have to learn to depend on each other. All these beliefs about love are programmed in infancy and early life.

So when pop-psyche writers like myself identify someone as being comittment-phobic or a bad-boy or a cougar, we are actually looking at a behavior that is the outcome of a mistrust of love. A fear of being dependent on another.

For some reason, our culture places great value on independence. It’s one unfortunate downside of capitalism. My suspicion is that large, intertwined family systems are a threat to commerce and politics. But too much independence is a killer of romantic relationships. A healthy relationship is also not a kind of co-dependence where no one can remember who’s problem is whose. Instead, a mutually supportive relationship involves interdependence, where partners takes turns leaning on each other. And like that game of trust where one closes his eyes and falls back into the arms of a trusted friend, are you really convinced that you will always be caught? Because that’s exactly what’s keeping you single or disconnected in your marriage.

Posted in Dating, Divorce, Emotions, Hooking Up, Love, Marriage | 4 Comments »

Love Style and Birth Order: Does the baby of the family always grow up to desire more sex? And, are divorced couples most likely to have the same birth order?

Friday, May 7th, 2010

An area that has fascinated psychologists for most of this century is sibling birth order in relation to just about everything: intelligence, sexuality, personality, mate selection, etc. A quick review of the research shows that there is also great debate in how much of a role birth order plays in who we are. It seems for every study that claims to have a significant result, another one disputes the data. My personal anecdotal experience indicates that birth order and gender tend to affect mate selection as people seem to choose a romantic partner that matches some early life coupling. For instance, as a middle sister, I tend to be attracted to eldest born men. My little brother seems to go for middle or eldest females too. But again, this is just my speculation.

In scanning some of the current research, here are a few interesting findings that might make you look harder about your objects of attraction and you ways of relating to them.

First of all, here’s a basic run-down of personality traits that tend to be associated with birth order. Do any of these characteristics resemble you?

Birth Characteristics

First Born

  • More responsible then other siblings (Alder)
  • Overemphasize the importance of law and order (Alder)
  • Serious (Leman, 2000)
  • Goal oriented (Leman, 2000)
  • Conscientious (Leman, 2000)
  • Well organized (Leman, 2000)
  • Conservative (Alder)
  • Emotionally intense (Koch, 1955)
  • Upset by defeat (Koch, 1955)
  • Higher esteem (Morales, 1994)
  • Leadership characteristics (Morales, 1994)

Middle Born/Second Child

  • Mediators (Leman. 2000)
  • Acquire fewer problems (Leman. 2000)
  • Set unrealistic goals (Alder)
  • Achievement oriented and often fails (Adler)
  • People pleaser
  • Calm
  • ‘Go with the flow’
  • More cooperative than first born (Adler)
  • Feel they are playing ‘catch-up’ to first born (Adler)

Youngest

  • Entertainers (Adler)
  • Pampered (Adler)
  • Dependent (Adler)
  • Selfish (Adler)
  • Attention seeking (White, 2007)
  • Lazy (Adler)
  • Spoiled (Adler)
  • More open to experiences (Big Five Personality Test)

Only Child

  • An only child has no rivals for the patents’ affection and may be pampered causing later interpersonal difficulties.
  • Only child take more internal responsibility for their actions because they never had other siblings to blame things on. (Falbo, 1981)
  • Only child had a lower need to be sociable

In terms of romantic attachment style, birth order does not seem to play as big a role in partner choice, but it can affect emotions that influence relationships. For instance, one study from the Netherlands found that later borns were more jealous than firstborns, and that only children were only slightly less jealous than firstborns. So, it is suggested that the experience of exclusive love and attention in one’s childhood, leads to a lower level of jealousy among firstborns. In another study published in 2008 in the North American Journal of Psychology found that middle children had the most jealousy. Were us middle’s so neglected that we feel jealous? Another interesting finding of that same study is that the baby of the family grows up to be the biggest romantic.

One of my favorite studies showed that partners with the same birth order (two youngest, two middles or two eldest) did not guarantee a successful relationships. They could be happy or unhappy. Birth order wasn’t a factor. But  this study found something else astounding: Birth order is a huge factor in unsuccessful relationships! A study of ex’s found that they are likely to be of the same birth order. Hummmm. Very interesting. The Ex who fathered my children is also a middle born.

As for sexual behavior, another study showed that later borns seem to desire more sex than first borns. Additionally, first born people desire to have children at a younger age, suggesting a greater pursuit of long-term sexual strategy than the baby of the family. The draw back to this fascinating study is that is was a self-report study and in my opinion, people lie about sex more than they lie about money.

And on the subject of romantic attachment, birth order doesn’t seem to be as influential as a mother’s attachment style. Mother’s don’t tend to change attachment styles between children and first-borns don’t show better attachment skills than second babies. I might add here, that this study didn’t look at later borns from very large families where a mother couldn’t possibly have the time to practice the a secure attachment style with a sixth, seventh, or eighth child.

Finally, back to the profile of me, the middle born. Yes, me, me, me, the ignored middle born. Middle borns express more positive views toward friends and less positive opinions of family in general. Could that be why I live thousands of miles away from my siblings, yet more than two-hundred friends recently wished me a happy birthday on line? Mating strategies are also a bit different for middle-borns. One Canadian study showed that middle borns are the least likely to cheat on a partner. Are you reading that, prospective boyfriend candidates? Of course, studies are just that. A study of a smallish group of people with an attempt to generalize the findings across a larger group. But this is one study, I’ll be happy to wave around. :)

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When Sex Doesn’t “Click.” A Sign to End A Budding Relationship?

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

A guy friend of mine who happens to be single mentioned that he’s had sex with a few women in the past few months and “nothing clicked.” When I reminded him that sex should never be the START of a relationship (the mixture of physical intimacy, budding emotional intimacy and fear can be completely toxic) he argued that if the sex isn’t “good” than it’s a sign the relationship will never work.

I beg to differ.

What is sex, after all, but an exchange of physical care, mixed with a longing for love, or an expression of love itself? Sex without an emotional connection is certainly possible and some people have stand alone sex in order to avoid intimacy. But for anyone looking for a real-world, mutually supportive relationship, early sex is always a sloppy mix of hope, hunger, and fear. Could this be “the one”? Will she/he like me enough? Can I perform? etc.

Waiting to have sex while building a little emotional intimacy can be protective in a number of ways. Delaying sex can establish good communication, trust, and a friendship that can weather the awkwardness of the “first-time.” Waiting to have sex can also screen out those who aren’t looking to create an emotional relationship — that includes bad-boys and girls who disassociate. I’m always amazed when I hear men tell me a dating story where they are out on a date and really beginning to open up to a woman about some emotional issue and the woman dismisses them and instead responds with, “Honey, I just want to f— your brains out.” Those stories confirm for me that sexual equality has arrived, coupled with its downside.

Finally, it’s important to consider that sexual attraction also has great psychological underpinnings. For instance, if we believe deep down that we are unlovable we may be specifically aroused by those who can’t offer emotional love. It’s our brain’s funny way of sticking to what’s familiar. Abuse and inconsistent love experienced as a child can create an attachment style geared toward abusive and inconsistent love relationships. We know we once survived unhappiness? Why risk the uncharted waters of a happy, consistent, supportive relationship?

Sometimes one’s arousal orientation — our attraction to a certain personality style or way of relating — is exactly the thing that brings us pain. The objects of our desire, while bringing us a “hot” physical experience are specifically attractive exactly because they fulfill out worst nightmares. For many people an intense sexual attraction should be a cue that this potential partner is bad for them. Intense lust is often a red flag for those who have an anxious or ambivalent attachment disorder.

Anyone who has experienced healthy, long-term monogamy knows that once the relationship becomes a multi-leveled partnership the sexual aspect of the relationship becomes far less important than the other ways a relationship feeds us — with trust, encouragement, consistency, and care. Relationships are an exchange of mutual care. Sexual attraction is part of phase-one construction that helps us secure a bond. But if we do not trust love, or deep-down feel unlovable, then our libido will be wired for pain. In that case, it is our journey to learn to use mind over heart. To think through our attractions and make different, often scary, choices instead of being led down a path of hormones toward a familiar pain. The key to happiness is our ability intellectually process our emotional life and make behavioral changes that may feel uncomfortable at first, but represent progress.

So can “bad” sex turn into “good” sex? Of course it can. Sexual incompatibility may be a case of nerves, inexperience, or a leap into those uncharted emotional waters. The solution is talk, trust, and gentle exploration. And, if you can’t talk about sex with someone then you shouldn’t be having sex with them.


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Connecting in The Age of Technology

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

New Tools. No Rules. That’s what I call the technological revolution.

I have three stories to tell that illustrate how technology is affecting the way we date, mate, and relate.  Story number one comes from the wisdom of a middle school girl, with one entire school semester of dating experience under her belt and a lifetime of tech training. She reminded me that the game of love has a whole new high-tech playing field. I was having dinner in a California Pizza Kitchen with three twelve-year-old girls and I received a text from a 47-year-old guy I’d been dating for about six weeks.

“Oooh” sang my own daughter in an age-old schoolgirl taunt “Is that from your boyfriend?”

I responded with a defensive girlish quip that I perfected twenty-five years ago, “He’s NOT my boyfriend!”

Her friend immediately took meaning from my response and followed firmly with, “Oh, then you only text.” As if to imply that a texting relationship is indeed a kind of relationship but not one that deserves the title of boyfriend.

Then I confused her. “No, we talk too. But only via cell. I haven’t given him my home number yet. And we have dinner dates,” I said.

I watched her eyes widen as her tech savvy mind tried to make sense of what I was saying. “Well, is he your Facebook friend?”

“No.” I said, “We’re not ready for that.”

“Does he follow you on Twitter?”

“Nope.”

Then she gave me a look that read, “How can you sit at the same lunch table with someone who isn’t even online with you?”

It was then that I realized that today, the level of two people’s tech infiltration indicates a level of intimacy and indeed, commitment.

Story number two is a bummer for one almost-bride and reminds us that technology affords few people privacy. This one from a friend. A guy finally gets up the nerve to ask his longtime girlfriend to marry him. Just weeks before the wedding, he finds her tagged in an old photo on Facebook. The photo was innocently posted by a not-so-brainy gal pal as part of a party album and shows the future bride loopy and draped across the lap of an ex-boyfriend. The album is dated and when the groom does the math (Boys are so good at math, aren’t they?) he discovers that this sexy party shot was snapped just weeks before his marriage proposal. Because of this, he calls off the wedding.

Story number three comes from one of my blog readers. A New York City real estate agent is out on a date with a lovely woman who works in television marketing. She is 35, comes from a family that never divorced, loves her sister’s kids to death, and is seriously ready to have a family. The problem is this: The guy she is sitting at the dinner table with has an online love in Dubai, a real world college sweetheart in Chicago whom he keeps in touch via text and email and visits about once a month, and a line-up of local dates waiting in the wings on Match.com. How can he ever hear the call of true love over the din created by so many opportunities for love? And they all exist because of technology.

The Problem

In this high-tech age, our culture and circumstance run interference against that course of evolution. That is, to attach long enough to breed and nurture offspring who can form their own healthy bonds and attachments. Today, healthy attachments are threatened by a permissive society, a sexualized media, too much opportunity that creates “Love ADD”, all fueled by technology.

Technology was designed to keep us connected but it has morphed into a monster that has millions of people keeping in touch, yet touching nothing tender. Take Twitter as a prime example. The text-based megaphone to your contact list limits your feelings to 140 characters or less (including spaces.) Unless you are Ernest Hemmingway, it is impossible to communicate anything of substance with such brevity. Text may be instant, but it is far from intimate. It is a communication void of body language, eye contact, vocal tone, and pheromones. Imagine your favorite band without the drummer or the vocalist and you’ll understand how inferior text communication is. Even longer messages sent via Facebook, MySpace, or traditional Email, may be filled with more words, but can be seriously lacking in emotional content, especially if one is not a very good writer. So much is lost in this kind of communication.

The Answer

Believe it or not, I’m not down on tech. Technology, if used correctly can be a strategic way to find and keep love. It can be used for its original purpose, to keep people connected. To help lovers express what they may be shy to say out loud, to help families schedule tech-free time to relate, and even to help heal the wounds of a relationship rupture. But the key is the knowledge of how to use technology to grow and keep love, and how avoid its hazards. We need a set of tech rules for love and I’m open to hearing your ideas for how to use these new tools to find and keep a mate.

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Is Sexual Freedom a New Trap?

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

booksPerhaps the Victorians had it right. The flesh is weak but the mind is strong. Or is it? I am reading a fabulous novel called “The Crimson Petal and the White.” The book was written in recent years but is set in Victorian England and the male author, Michel Faber, has a surprisingly good grasp on both male and female psychology and sexuality. (Note: It is a hefty work of 800 pages but the well-written snippets of porn will keep you glued while the story unfolds.)

I’m telling you about this novel because one of the huge themes concerns secrets and miscommunications in adult relationships. In Victorian England, whether the man-of-the-house is tangling with his wife or his prostitute, he does not communicate much at all and his women are expected to pay attention to the smallest of nuances to interpret his moods and his needs.

Not a whole lot has changed today. While we are a country of people who fiercely defend their freedom of speech, crucial words are often void from our most intimate relationships. And that is the very place where they are so vital to our survival. I suspect that fear of being rejected for our honesty may be the obvious factor in our communication flaws. But the underpinnings of wordless love have as much to do with unconscious motivations and carnal urges.

What I mean by unconscious motivations are the early life conflicts that we continue to march into in adult life as we attempt to process what was done to us as tender children. The men whose infidelity may be a complex bid for the love of their distant father whose own infidelities created secret male bonds. The woman who becomes aroused by men who can’t love and resemble an uncaring mother of dim memory. The many complicated webs of our psyche are as varied as there are faces. We each possess a unique (and constantly shaping) blueprint for love and sexual interaction.

As for carnal urges, this is where the Victorian sexual repression makes some sense in light of our current battles over our sexual freedom. The Victorians knowingly or unknowingly knew that exposing of any sexual material, be it a naked ankle or a forbidden word, could create a terrible struggle between animal instincts and mental strength. The flesh is weak, as they used to say. Today, as I pump weights at the gym and my ipod uploads my brain with the suggestive pleading lyrics of Nelly Furtado and Timbaland negotiating a hook up in “Promiscuous Girl,” I wonder about all the real promiscuous boys and girls out there. 200px-NellyPromiscuousWhen they hear lyrics that say, “Chivalry is dead but you’re still kind of cute,” do they really feel free and powerful? Is the lack of chivalry (defined by princeton.edu as “courtesy towards women”) helped women feel more equal?

Obviously not, because the song’s female voice also draws a line in the sexual negotiation by saying, “I’m a big girl. I can handle myself. But if I get lonely, I’m a need your help. Pay attention to me, I don’t talk for my health.”

Sexual taboos may have disappeared, but basic biology has not changed. Women are wired to connect. Being in relationships make us stronger. Men are wired to mate and provide for and protect offspring. But the sexual revolution seems to have made many men and women deny their own biology. Women tell me they “don’t get too attached” it’s not worth it. Men do not associate sex with a relationship or even a relationship with parenthood. I overheard one grown man in my hotel lobby yesterday advise another, “You don’t have to get married to have children.”

So here we are. Women acting like men and getting hurt and emotionally shut down. Men behaving like animals instead of the chivalrous men of Victorian England. The pendulum may have swung to it’s fullest extend. It will never swing back all the way, however. As the women in “The Crimson Petal and the White” show us, repression in deed and word is a killer for women. The hero’s wife literally goes mad and his prostitute spends her private time writing a violent novel about gruesome murders of men.

When the pendulum swings back to center the answer will not only be words and communication. It will be a strong mind that exercises boundaries and grows a deep capacity for empathy and understanding for the other gender. No one will win if we hide our souls or ignore our biology, especially the children who inevitably pop out of many non-chivalrous unions. Feel yourself first. Then think. Then talk about it. Then have sex.

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It’s Complicated. The Shape of Relationships today.

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

images

Not so long ago there were two groups of people: single people who wanted to find the right mate and married people who may or may not have been working on their relationship. Today, virtually every American, no matter their age is in one of three relationship stages: 1. finding and building a relationship, 2. maintaining a relationship, or 3. destroying one. Look at these stats:

• 50% of first marriages divorce

• Up to 80% of second marriages divorce

• Sexual taboos have all but disappeared

• 40% of American babies are born out of wedlock

• More women than men are in the workforce

• Less than 30% of children have one stay-at-home parent

• Hooking up is replacing dating

• It is estimated that instead of til-death-do-us-part, we’ll have three long-term relationships in our lives

Today there is a shopping mall of relationship choices. Some couples marry. Some live together. Some do neither and still maintain committed relationships.  Others live without any kind of commitments yet children pop out of these unions. It is a relationship revolution where rules have yet to be established. It is a place where sexting, hooking up, and expensive white weddings walk side by side.  It is a place where divorce has become a rite of passage, where cougar women enjoy their sexual freedoms, divorced men scramble to figure out what went wrong and young adults try to make sense of their parent’s relationship model. The relationship revolution is affecting everyone.

There are no rules anymore in courting and mating. When a high-school girl has a “friend with benefits” and believes oral sex isn’t sex, when a college student brings a Facebook hookup to her grandmother’s birthday, and when more than half of all American babies are born out of wed-lock, clearly, Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore.

No longer til-death-do-us-part, it is estimated that most people have at least three long-term relationships in their lifespan.  Thus the shape of the family has changed. Families are married, unmarried, separated, divorced, blended, and gender roles are fluid. The lack of rules means that romance, marriage and family are a whole new ball game.

And single life is no longer a short rite of passage; it’s an important consumer demographic. For the first time in history, the majority of adult Americans are now unmarried. There’s even a magazine devoted to the lifestyles of those who have made a commitment to be single. It includes ads for commitment rings to purchase for oneself.

But has love changed? In some ways it has. Once a home for the heart, relationships have become a mess of mistrust. A holding tank for insecurity. A place where people tally up each side of contributions and ask too often, “What has he done for me lately?” Too often people wonder what their relationship is doing for them, rather than what they themselves have done for their relationship.

So what’s the answer to this complicated landscape. I think the winners of this paradigm shift will be the people who acquire the sharpest emotional intimacy skills. Like emotional intelligence was in the 1990’s, emotional intimacy (i.e. using empathy, compassion, and honesty to navigate conflict) is the hot skill for the survival of our species. Statistically speaking, children of a long-term committed relationship do better on all levels. The winners of the no-rules relationship revolution will be the people who make their own rules and their own game — where the champion is the relationship itself.

Posted in Dating, Divorce, Hooking Up, Love, Marriage, Relationship Tools | 2 Comments »

Can Children of Divorced Parents Have Happy Marriages?

Friday, November 13th, 2009

10424_148509696833_115788661833_3395422_7643835_aI was reminded about the underpinnings of love today by a comment posted by one of my blog readers. He was wondering if being raised by a single parent and not witnessing the bumps and joys of a marriage, makes relationships tough. The answer is, probably not any tougher than someone who had parents who never divorced but demonstrated far more conflict than cooperation.

We all carry an internalized model for how adult relationships should look and feel. And everyone has a different picture of committed love. Psychologists believe that a kind of blueprint is formed in our minds during our formative years. And that blueprint is a hybrid of three primary relationships.

1. The child’s relationship with their father.
2. The child’s relationship with their mother.
3. The child’s witness to his parents relationship.

These three relationships combine in an individual way to become our blueprint for love. So, if our mother was a perceptive caregiver, we might value care in our adult love relationships. If mother was intrusive and smothered us, we might value a little distance and autonomy in our partner. If Dad was a strong, silent type and we longed for closeness, we might chose someone more communicative, or we might prefer the familiarity of a quiet person. It’s a bit of a crap shoot, how we combine the traits to create our own special comfort level.

Our parents relationship is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Children are like little sponges absorbing communication styles, conflict rituals, boundary enforcements, acts of love, sexual messages, and supportive behaviors. This relationship is like an artist’s basic sketch before the layers of paint add color to our idea of love.

So, what if Mom or Dad was MIA? How does a child form a blueprint for love if they are missing the first sketches? The answer is a bit complex. Children take bits and pieces from surrogate relationships and other kinds of relationships that they witness. And their blueprint gets heavily weighted with lessons from the relationship with the available parent. It may also be riddled with feelings of longing because of the missing parent.

Is longterm, committed love possible if a child never witnessed it while growing up? The answer is a resounding, yes. Humans have an amazing ability to adapt and create love. Some days it can feel a little like heading down a tunnel without a flashlight, but humans have a innate tendency to connect with other humans across the lifespan. The degree of closeness and style of relationship is our own blueprint. The real growth enhancing experience comes when we marry our blueprint with our partner’s map. The areas of conflict are our opportunities to grow and learn and examine our childhood blueprint with the consciousness of an adult. Love is an opportunity to grow. It is the very best catalyst for human development. And it’s something that all humans crave.

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Ten Rules For High Tech Love

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

imagesText, Email, Facebook, & Twitter give the appearance of instant access to your lover. A way to stay connected. But it’s a clever trick. The very things that are designed to keep us closer, if used incorrectly, can brutally tear us apart.

To understand what I mean, let’s think about the things that keep a low-tech relationship sharp — plenty of face-to-face time, long conversations, great sex (with foreplay and after-play), and intimate activities like Sunday morning toe-touching in bed with the New York Times. These practices are the workhorse of intimacy, and they are irreplaceable.

Now let’s consider a modern “high-tech” relationship. A few texts or emails sent during the week to firm up weekend plans. A rendezvous on the weekend that may or may not involve sex (or may involve only sex and no date) and then a Facebook status report on Monday that confirms that your partner is  indeed “in a relationship.” You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you? Not a bit. People write to me all the time with questions about the meaning and protocol of Facebook’s “In a Relationship” descriptor. And during the week, those same people hang onto their electronic device like it is a life-line to love. They reread the texts. They count the texts. They interpret the texts. They depend on a string of impulsive digital communications to determine how secure their relationship is!

This is not compassionate love, people. This is a crazy mind game. And it is not communication. It is a poor replacement for healthy communication.

I used the example of text because most people are oblivious to how dangerous a weapon it can be. With text’s brevity and it’s inability to gage the mood of the receiver, those 140 characters can be packed with a power to inflict great pain if taken the wrong way, and read at the wrong time. Of course, email has it’s on list of transgressions. A longer format and a safer place to express feelings, email is still void of eye contact, touch, body language, and voice tone. Could you imagine listening to a recording of your favorite band, with most of the instruments missing? That’s what email is to human communication.

With all that said, in the busy world of convenience and multi-taking, is there, in fact, a way to use technology to grow love verses extinguish it? Well, thank you for asking! Yes, there certainly is. Here’s Dr. Walsh’s list of Do’s and Don’ts for high Tech love:

Ten Rules for Using Technology to Grow Love:

1. Make sure phone calls outnumber emails. Emails are not a substitute for voice-to-voice communication. They are just a side dish.

2. Send texts regularly, every other day or so. If you are dating and growing a relationship, a short, brief text can help you stay in his or her mind. If you are married and/or living together a text every now and then can help keep love alive.

3. Don’t bombard them with texts! (or emails) That’s stalker shit.

4. Only say positive things in a text. 140 characters is no room to criticize, complain, offer advice, or explain your complicated life. Stick to greeting card slogans: “Thinking of You” and “Wish Your Were Here.”

5. Use tech to schedule a more intimate phone call. This is what all boys and girls like to read in a text or email: “Missing You! What time can we chat?”

6. If you are on Facebook and see that your date or mate is also online, it is always polite to send a IM of hello. In the real world if you both turned up at the same party, you wouldn’t ignore them, right?

7. Tech is meant to be a two-way conversation. If anyone you care about sends you an email or a text, and you are swamped, you still must respond! Even the most busy of us can find a second to send at least a happy face. Keep the line of communication going and the next phone call will be a happy one.

8. Even if you have a good excuse, do not flirt with anyone on Facebook if your status reads “In a Relationship.” That’s a bonehead move.

9. Never Tweet or Facebook Post any information about your real-world relationships (Especially the one with your Ex!) To do so would be inviting a forum to enter your tender relationships. Intimacy must grow in privacy.

10. Never break up using technology. Period. If you were brave enough to enter the relationship with your voice (or any other body part) you can find the cojones to break up with grace and class. Use your words, people. And say it out loud.

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Love & Las Vegas (They use the same reward system)

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

imagesTo your brain, there are many similarities between gambling and love. They are both an exciting chemical high with a mixture of hope, profits, and potential for loss. Both love and Las Vegas can be intoxicating. But there is another secret way that gambling resembles certain kinds of love attachment — both are based on a behavioral learning theory called random interval reward system.

Learning theorists like Pavlov (and his dog,) Watson, and Skinner spent their professional lives attempting to figure out what motivates animal and human behavior. One of the things that was discovered is that the most effective way to get an organism (that’s you) addicted to a behavior was to administer the reward in a random way. The recipient of the reward doesn’t know when or what is coming but the very the fact that it is random and pleasurable makes them glued to the behavior. This is the basic principle behind a slot machine. Say you were given a consistent, small reward with every fifth pull of the level. You would probably quickly become bored and move on. And if the reward was exactly one-dollar each time, even though it was given at random intervals, still you would eventually become bored.

The secret is the varying size of the reward and varying the interval rate. If on the tenth pull, for instance, you received a nice pay off, your brain would have “learned” to survive ten pulls. To keep you going, a series of small payoffs might come quickly. In this example, the machine knows that you will continue to deposit money for at least ten pulls if it has rewarded you at least once in that manner. Believe me, the owners of Vegas casinos have calculated all these odds years ago, and they know how to set the random intervals to keep the player addicted to popping in coins. Surprise, surprise, the house always wins.

So what has this got to do with love and courtship? Well, imagine that every contact, compliment, or even intimate glance from a lover is perceived by your brain as a positive reward. Now imagine that it is given in a random way. I like to call this the “Bad Boy Success Formula.” Bad Boys are particularly good at using the random interval reward system. And bad Boys are very seductive to women. It’s because a Bad Boy’s fear of emotional intimacy causes him to dash in and out of a woman’s life in what feels like a random way. In actuality, his pattern of advance/retreat is a reflection of how much emotional intimacy he can tolerate, but who’s looking below the surface when you’re staring at the phone wondering why he hasn’t called?

Each time a Bad Boy feels it is safe to return to a woman, their object is usually to obtain physical intimacy. Since sex is their goal they are particularly savvy at coming on with compliments and making their target feel like a queen — all rewards that women thrive on. Bad Boys are also the very best apologizers I have even met. The apology is part of their schtick to wedge back in your door. Sometimes their words of contrition resemble a kind of emotional intimacy so chicks fall for it, again and again.

But Bad Boys aside, the very uncertainty of a growing relationship with it’s emotional highs coupled with feelings of insecurity, can cause a kind of attachment based on a reward system. Something to think about as you date. Are you getting bored with the nice guys or consistent gals who are on time and available? Maybe that’s because your brain has tasted the pain and excitement of a random interval reward relationship. It might be time to sit back, take a deep breath, and look a little closer at the consistent one. The ultimate pay out might be much greater.

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Survive This Dating Trend! The LDR (Long Distance Relationship)

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

217294Many blog readers email me with questions about a common trend in love, the long distance relationship. Far from being a new convention, the LDR has exploded in numbers thanks to internet dating and our capitalistic pressure to chase money and jobs around the country, and indeed the globe. But can it ever really work? Can long distance love eventually become a cozy same-city nest? Can a stay-at-home relationship survive a stint abroad?

The answer is a bit complicated. In general the very dynamics that create and sustain a long distance relationship are different from those of a consistent stay-at-home relationship. LDR’s are marked by plenty of autonomous alone time and peppered with a series of “honeymoons” in various hook-up cities. Stay-at-home love is more often about the daily work of love and life. And the players tend to be different. If you’ve read some of my past blogs about the psychological theory called “Attachment Theory” you’ve probably guessed already that emotionally avoidant individuals might really dig an LDR, while more anxious or preoccupied folks like to have a shorter tether.

So, the big question I get asked a lot is what to do if one morphs into the other. And, how to make an LDR come home to roost. My advice: Be prepared for plenty of conflict. All change is painful. Emotional change has it’s own particular brand of sting. But emotional change, when it brings self awareness and/or a new level of compassion, is ultimately good.

First, consider the clauses that the original unconscious contract contained. We all make silent contracts in every relationship. For instance, all my girlfriends know without me having to say it, that they’ll be rescheduled on my calendar if a work obligation comes up. And, most of them also have signed on with their blessings that a great guy comes first. Girlfriends are a supportive bunch and, above all, we want happiness for each other. We’ve never discussed this, but I know it’s true. It has played out in the past.

And what might be in the silent contract of romantic love? Usually it’s about the amount of contact, the kind of contact (email, voice, face-to-face), and the content of the contact. What I mean is, how much commentary about emotions is contained in the communication. Some partners can handle, and even crave, a lot of honest, authentic talk about feelings, and many, many others would prefer to have a root canal.

In the long distance love contract the clauses about contact are very easy to adhere to. If one partner prefers less contact he or she becomes literally unavailable, on a different time zone, with phones turned off. Period. You can’t argue with that kind of communication boundary. In stay-at-home love, it’s a little harder to duck and cover. There he is, walking in the door, ready for love and the F-word (feelings.) If a long distance relationship is filled with strict communication boundaries, the shift to a day-to-day relationship may be extremely challenging.

And what about a stay-at-home relationship that is about to undergo a transition that involves distance? First, know this. relationships are affected by environmental stimuli. And environment affects our perception of ourselves and our partner potential. For instance, let’s say you live in a small town and your guy is one of the best looking, smartest dudes on main street. Then your job takes you to New York. While you may have firm plans for your boyfriend to follow you out within a year, something happens that you were unprepared for. Suddenly your guy looks like chump change beside the crowds of hunky, capitalists on Wall Street. Or, he takes a semester in London and finds that a Kate Moss clone with a comely accent, is more attractive than his high school sweetheart. Take a deep breath people. I’m not saying that all relationships as so superficial. But many are.

And that’s my point. How do you avoid becoming superficial? By getting below the surface. Yes, I’m back on Dr. Walsh’s soapbox. The real glue of every relationship, both LDR’s and the stay-at-home kind, is the degree of emotional attachment. When we have compassion for our partners, when we trust that they have our back no matter what, when we really feel seen and loved, and when we can love our partners even with their vulnerabilities, we have the glue of real love. Real attachment. That will be the thing that weathers the storms of temptation, distance, and challenging communication. Trust. To trust and be trust-worthy. Work on yourself and the world will line up in accordance with your ethics. I ask you today to be brave and begin to create a real attachment.


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