The Relationship Therapist: "This Statistically Is The Best Age To Get Married So You Don't Get A Divorce!", "Men Should Not Split The Bill", "80% Of Women Want Men Over 6ft When Only 15% Are 6ft!"

Relationships and romance aren't easy, but are you making it harder than it needs to be? Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and a bestselling author, she is also the co-host of the ‘Dear Therapists’ podcast. Her New York Times bestselling books include, ‘Maybe You Should Talk to Someone’ and ‘Mr Good Enough’. In this conversation Lori and Steven discuss topics such as, why men should always pay for the date, the best age according to statistics to get married, what women really want in a man, and the simple trick to show what is missing in your relationship. (00:00) Intro (01:08) How to Live the Life You Want (04:06) Lack of Human Connections Leads to Relationship Pressure (05:21) Why the Majority Aren't Satisfied with Their Relationships (07:01) The Need to Be Understood (08:47) Why Men Struggle More Opening Up in the Relationship (15:34) Setting Unreal Expectations When Looking for a Partner (18:40) We're Too Picky on Dating Apps (23:57) High Expectations, Can They Be Lowered? (27:04) Gender Differences in Dating (32:44) The Type of People That Seek Bad Partners (34:11) How to Help Those People (35:49) Financial Differences in Dating (41:53) People Are Choosing Not to Have Kids and Get Married (48:02) What Happens When a Woman Earns More in the Relationship (50:08) The Big Debate on a First Date (55:35) Red Flags in First Dates (58:51) The Age You Marry Is Linked to Divorce Risk (01:02:32) You Need to Learn to Unknow Yourself (01:04:35) The Impact of Seeking Approval (01:11:20) When Your Friends Sabotage You When You Try to Change (01:19:46) Do Women Express More Emotion Than Men? (01:21:38) Do Our Dreams Have True Meanings? (01:24:08) The Safety of Self-Compassion (01:25:55) The Opposite of Depression Isn't Happiness (01:28:46) The Grief of Heartbreak and How to Recover (01:36:53) How to Help Someone Going Through Heartbreak (01:44:02) Last Guest Question You can find the link to the graph on age and divorce risk here: https://bit.ly/49KpKrM You can pre-order Lori’s book, ‘Maybe You Should Talk to Someone’, here: https://amzn.to/43aSMyq Follow Lori Twitter - https://bit.ly/434PAEB Instagram - https://bit.ly/3PeOVup Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  Some of the studies I was looking at shows that if you get married after 30, each additional year of age increases your chance of divorce by 5%. And I couldn't figure out why.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I think there are several reasons for this. So first of all.

• 0:13Steven Bartlett?

  Laurie Gottlieb. Renowned psychotherapist.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Best selling author. Couples counselor. He's helped thousands of people find or save their relationships. People use the first date as I'm supposed to feel this one thing or else forget it. And people will come into therapy and say, I didn't feel like butterflies. So I'm not going to go out with him again. People said they wouldn't go on a second date with somebody because he ordered tap water. He must be really cheap. There was one where somebody said, oh, he did this impression from Austin Powers.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, baby.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  He was just nervous and he was trying to make you laugh.

• 0:44Steven Bartlett?

  What about he asks to split the bill? Would that be an ick?

• 0:47Speaker 01

  If he doesn't pay, that would be a huge ick for me.

• 0:51Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 0:52Speaker 01

  But it's really important to understand why, which is.

• 0:55Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Now your partner has to be your best friend, have the same interests. He has to rock my world and better. Someone who's really ambitious, but also really family oriented. No one human could possibly do that. If you look at what are the most important things that would predict whether a relationship is going to last, these really important [BLEEP] are very important. And then emotional [BLEEP] is really important.

• 1:18Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean?

• 1:19Speaker 01

  It means.

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  You went to therapy because of heartbreak?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:23Steven Bartlett?

  How do we navigate through that dark cloud?

• 1:25Speaker 01

  One strategy that might be helpful is.

• 1:38Steven Bartlett?

  Laurie, if you had to summarize what it is you have done for people over the last couple of decades, how would you summarize that?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I would say that I help people to learn what gets in their way from living the life that they want to live.

• 1:55Steven Bartlett?

  And what departments of their life do you tend to focus on?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  All of them. They're all so important, but I think it's really about people's relationships. And I mean relationship to self. What is going on with the way that I talk to myself, the way that I make decisions and choices, the way that I hold myself back, relationships with friends, with romantic partners, with family members, with professional colleagues, all of it?

• 2:21Steven Bartlett?

  And of all of those subcategories, what are the categories within there that people come to you with advice for most often through your podcast, through your articles, through your therapy work?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting because it's usually somebody coming in and saying, I really want something in my life to change. And what they want to change is someone else. Right? And so I think what they're surprised to find is that, yes, there are difficult people in their lives. You know, we like to say that before diagnosing someone with depression, make sure they aren't surrounded by assholes. So, you know, there are really difficult people out there. But the question is, where's your agency? What are the choices that you're making? Are you setting boundaries with these people? Are you adding to the tension between the two of you because you're kind of in a dance and you're doing some old pattern that you're

• 3:14Speaker 01

  in with this person? So I think it's really important to become self-aware and say, what am I doing in the world that gets me closer to the way that I want to live? And what am I doing in the world that keeps me from getting there?

• 3:27Steven Bartlett?

  And since you got into this line of work and since your sort of education in this area began, what changes have you seen in the types of questions and the types of issues that are being presented to you in a sort of clinical setting or online or through your DMs, et cetera?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  I think most people are really seeking connection of some sort that they don't have in their lives. And there's a sense of being alone, whether it's, I'm the only person who feels this way. I'm so ashamed. I don't know why I'm so anxious, or I'm so depressed, or it's a feeling of, I feel like I'm, I have all these sort of friends, you know, kind of peripherally or friends in the world, if you look at their social media, but they don't really have someone that they could call and say, I really need to talk to you about this. Who's this person you can confide in? There are these studies that have been done where they they looked at, you know, several decades ago, how many people said, I have someone close that I can call.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  And most people had at least someone, usually a few people. Now, most people have zero people. They have said zero, I have nobody that I can call and confide in in that deep way.

• 4:36Steven Bartlett?

  Does that mean that there's a greater pressure now put on our romantic partners to meet more of our needs?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. And that's one of the things that I think you see in dating, especially with younger generations. Because it used to be that your community was there to meet all different kinds of needs. So now it's, you know, people like to say, well, my partner is my best friend. Well, but you also have a best friend. Most people also have a best friend, right? So so what happened? Or maybe they don't anymore because of what we've been talking about. So the question is now your partner has to be your best friend where they are there to meet all of your emotional needs. Whereas before you had, you know, I could talk to this friend about this. And I had this friend that my partner doesn't like this hobby, but I get to go. My partner doesn't like move these kinds of movies, but I could go to these kinds of movies with this person or, you know, whatever it is.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  And now it's like, we have to kind of have the same interests and we have to be able to talk about all the same things. And we have to, you know, he has to rock my world in bed, or she has to rock my world in bed, or they have to read my mind. Right? And so no one human could possibly do that. There is no human who can do that. And so what happens is we think something's wrong with this relationship if I'm not getting that from this person.

• 5:51Steven Bartlett?

  And what are the other sort of big picture items that are making it harder for us to be satisfied romantically these days?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I think, again, the sort of expectations of what it means to be loved. I think that when people really put everything into this other person, they aren't getting the the kinds of emotional nourishment that they would be getting from the larger community. So whether it's extended family that used to be around, most people, a lot of people don't even live where their fan, where they grew up anymore. So they're kind of putting down roots somewhere else. They are kind of, you know, they have to form like a whole new group of people. There's something to be said for the people who knew you when you were young. There's something about that, about really being known, because I think in relationship, people really want to know and be known.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I remember I had a couple come in and this was so striking to me where she said to her husband, you know what three words I really want to hear? And he said, I love you. And she said, no, I understand you. And that was so profound that how deep a yearning we all have to want to be understood. And I think that that comes from, you know, you have history with people and you have shared experiences with people. But we're moving around so much nowadays that we don't have that history or those shared experiences. And people didn't know us at different times in our lives. When you're truly known, oh, you went through this transformation or you went through this difficult time.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Or I remember that fun time we had when we were 16 years old. And so a lot of people just don't have those kind of deeper connections anymore.

• 7:31Steven Bartlett?

  What is it about being understood that we want? Like, what is it? What is the fundamental there? Is it, does it make us feel psychologically safer or what is it?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Oh, it makes us less lonely.

• 7:44Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  If you feel like you're the only one who understands what's going on for you, you're all alone. And that's why it's so interesting, you know, having the Dear Therapist podcast or having the column, where most people write in and think that they are alone. And yet I have thousands of people writing in the same exact thing. So they're not alone, but they think that they're alone. They feel no one understands or no one would understand. And I see this more with men also than with women, although both I get that. But it's interesting because they think that with, with men, you know, often they'll come into therapy. Men get into therapy sort of one of two ways. They either come in because they're in a couple and there's a problem in the relationship.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  And so they come into therapy or they come in kind of secretively. Like, you know, no one knows I'm here. And they'll say, I've never told anyone this before. And the thing that they tell you is something that women will talk about quite easily. And it's not that men are less deep than women. It's that women feel more comfortable to, over lunch with a friend, say something like that. And when women come in and they say, I've never told anyone this before, they'll say, except for my mother, my sister, my best friend. So they've told a few people, maybe one person, maybe two, maybe three. And so I think it's interesting because I think that, you know, men can be particularly lonely because they really don't have the place to

• 9:10Speaker 01

  kind of connect in the way that women are more culturally acceptable to do so.

• 9:17Steven Bartlett?

  Women sometimes have an expectation that their partner will open up in the same way that their best friends will open up.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:25Steven Bartlett?

  And many men fall short of that expectation. I, you know, I think there's often a narrative that women want a man to kind of sit down and talk about his problems and open up and listen and all those kinds of things that a woman might do with her best friends. But men, for some reasons, tend to struggle with that.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they, they, women want that and they don't want that. So women say they want that and they think that they truly mean it when they say they want that. But in couples therapy, I'll, I'll see something like a woman will come in and, and, you know, she'll say that exact thing to her partner, you know, I really want you to open up. I feel like we're not connecting. I want you to be more vulnerable with me. I want you to tell me what's going on inside. And if he does, and let's say he starts crying, tears up, or really starts crying, she inevitably will have this reaction of, I don't feel safe when he doesn't open up to me because I don't feel connected to him. But I don't feel safe when he's that vulnerable with me either

• 10:25Speaker 01

  because there's something, just some cultural programming in her around what it's like to be with a man who's crying or a man who is vulnerable. And so I think that that's really problematic. And I think that makes it, you know, kind of harder for men to feel like, well, I have a safe space to open up. Like, it takes a lot for a man to really feel like, oh, this is something that I want to share. Whereas I think women just feel a lot more free to do that with their partners.

• 10:54Steven Bartlett?

  I saw a video yesterday that I'm actually going to play to you because I saved it. Head of this conversation, it caused a lot of discussion online on Twitter.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:02Steven Bartlett?

  So this is the video, okay?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  I just want somebody who's so obsessed with the Bible and so obsessed with Jesus and who understands and like you said, like who can teach us things. Yeah. Like I want my dude to speak in tongues and have tattoos. I just want a good man. Like a nice, classic man. I want somebody who will literally protect me and beat someone's butt if they need to, but also will sit there with compassion and just like a good-hearted man. That's what a true man is. There has to be that dichotomy. It's the same thing with feminine women too. There's always a dichotomy, but there's a softness and a strength. And for men, being masculine is being able to beat someone's butt. You know, maybe not physically, but like being a protector and like doing what he needs

• 11:46Speaker 03

  to do to protect his family, but then also being soft enough to like be able to tend to his wife's feelings and like to be a good man.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  That's hilarious. But that, that, that's, you know, people would say, well, I'm not like that. But yet, when you actually talk to people about when you, when they're dating and you're talking to them about what's going on and why they're not going out on another date with somebody, or you know, why they won't even go on a first date with somebody. Those are the kinds of things, that's an exaggerated version of the kinds of things that you will hear.

• 12:18Steven Bartlett?

  Which is, what kind of things? Like they're, they're not six, four, they're not strong and soft at the same time?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you know, they have to be this and this, these two, you know, they want someone who's, you know, I want someone who's really, really ambitious, but also really family oriented. I want someone, right? These kinds of things that are hard to find both of those in equal measure in the same person. Someone who's extremely ambitious is probably going to spend a lot of time at work. You know, I want some, you know, someone, so I'm five, two, and it would be, you know, someone like me saying, you know, and, and he has to be over six feet. Really?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  You know, just all of these kinds of things. So in my book, Marry Him, I wrote a whole book about this because I was looking at, how do we date today? And what are the expectations that we have? And, you know, the publisher called it Marry Him, The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. It's not about settling at all. It's actually about having higher standards, not lower standards, but having higher standards about the things that actually matter. So I looked at all of the data and I talked to behavioral economists and sociologists and historians and I talked to, you know, people, therapists who specialize in divorce, who specialize in couples therapy. And it was really interesting to hear, to see like how expectations have changed over time.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  And then also to see what it is that actually matters to have a happy, fulfilling, long-lasting relationship and how, when we're dating, we're not even looking at those qualities. And so, for example, the character qualities. If you look at what are the most important things that would predict whether a relationship is going to last? What qualities do you want in a partner? Flexibility is really important.

• 14:04Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  So flexibility, meaning you're not a really rigid person. People who are really rigid, it has to be this way. I need it this way. I expect this of you, right? You know, on social media, we might call that boundaries right now. And boundaries are really important. Don't get me wrong. Healthy boundaries are very important. But rigidity is when you say that, well, I'm just very boundaried, but you're actually really rigid. So we have to have flexibility. We have to have room for the person to also be them and that you are a separate person from the person that you're with. And oftentimes, it's hard for people to see that because they're so focused on what I need without thinking about what does this relationship need? And what does the other person need too?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Emotional generosity is really important, that you give someone the benefit of the doubt, that you're not bringing your old wounds into the relationship and projecting them onto your partner. So I would call emotional maturity or emotional stability. So many times, people overlook that when they're dating. So that looks like, you know, someone comes into therapy and they say, I don't understand why, you know, I love him so much and I don't understand why he didn't call when he said he would, or I don't understand why he canceled. And I will say, what do you love exactly? Do you, is this how you want your life to go? To always be on edge, to always wonder, to be with someone who's unreliable, who doesn't do what they say they were going to do?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  What, what part of this do you love? Oh, but he's so funny and attractive and, you know, um, he's so smart. You like qualities about him, but you don't like the way he is with you in relationship. And so people need to have higher standards about the character qualities, things that are important to them, like loyalty, reliability, emotional stability. Again, emotional generosity. Can they be supportive of you when things are going well for you?

• 16:04Steven Bartlett?

  On that point of expectations and how expectations are evolving, I've, I've found some stats. I think some of them are very much inspired by your first book, Marry Him. One of them is that 80% of women want to date a man over six foot tall, when only 15% of men are over six foot tall.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yes, that's, that's in the book.

• 16:21Steven Bartlett?

  I found some other studies. An eHarmony study found that 40% of single people have deal breakers that are associated with physical appearance. And 50% of singles expect their partner to be their best friend, soulmate, and to fulfill all of their emotional needs. That was a study done by Match.com. And then the other ones that I found quite interesting were, you talk about in the book, how this sort of generational shift in expectations and where that's come from. But in like my, my granddad's generation, or even my dad's generation, I would assume they wouldn't have had the same set of impossible expectations. I would assume. Is that, is that what you found in your research?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  I think everybody wants to feel that really deep connection with their partner. And so I think that the way that society has improved is that we are not just marrying for sort of practicality, but we are also marrying because we genuinely enjoy being with this person and want to go through life with this person. But I think what we're losing a little bit is do our values align? Like the practical part matters. So I think the pendulum swung in the other direction, went from almost Pretty much all practical to now it's all like, is this person my soulmate? And do they move me? And I think you have to have both. I'm really attracted to this person's essence.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  And what I mean by essence is you're, you know, most people will say, this is I, I, I don't know where the study came from, but I remember reading this study, that most people will say that the person that they are, that they chose to spend their lives with is not the most attractive person they ever dated. And I think that a lot of people say, well, I wouldn't want my partner to think that. But you're, you're more attractive to your partner holistically. That's why they chose you. That's why you chose them. That's why you're together. So it's not just about, is this the person who was the most, you know, the hottest person you've ever dated? And so I think we really have to think about holistically, who do we want to be with? And that's what kind of trips us up because the practical side matters.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Do you have similar ideas about the kind of life you want to live? Do you have similar ideas about how, if you want to have kids or if you don't want to have kids and how many you might want to have? Where you want to live? What kinds of, what kinds of things you want to do in your lives? What matters to you? Who you are in the world? Political beliefs? Often people say, well, that doesn't matter as much. I think when you have very different views, not necessarily about like what political party you're with, but more about how you see the world. If you see the world very, very differently, that can cause a lot of problems in the relationship later on, not because you're fighting about the world, but because those differences will show up in the way you treat each other.

• 19:10Steven Bartlett?

  I, I hear you saying all of that and I have to say, I agree. And I think everyone would really agree because it makes perfect sense. But in reality, I was thinking about if I turn to some of my friends that are really struggling with dating right now, and I said all of that to them, I don't think any of it would work because they are so hardwired to.

• 19:31Steven Bartlett?

  To be in search of this like perfect person. You know, when I, when I speak to some of my friends who are single and they're, say they're over thirty five. They've really like never been in a relationship before this, the things that they say. As reasons for why they're not giving this person a chance are so unbelievably petty like. I have one friend and she knows who she is. She's a very good friend of mine. She's been a good friend of mine for more than a decade.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Shout out to your friend.

• 19:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, but I was, I was on her profile once and she told me that the reason she wasn't going to give this guy a chance on this dating app. Was because in the back of the picture that he, his display picture, he had boxes on top of his cupboard. And she was like, oh God, he puts boxes on top of his cupboard like. So that's why she didn't give him a chance.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  So here's, here's the thing. What happens is people look at dating profiles and are going through the apps. And I think, you know, men and women tend to do this a little bit differently. Men are like, am I attracted to this person swipe? Which also doesn't necessarily work out for them. Like they're not really looking for who do I want to be with? And women do the opposite. They look at it at, you know, they'll look at all the pictures. They'll read everything that the person wrote. As if, do I want to marry this person potentially or not? As opposed to, do I want to spend forty five minutes having coffee with this person? That's really different. And also on a first date, it's the same mentality where a lot of people think. Oh, you know, like people will come in to therapy or even friends will say.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  You know, I went on this date. I had a good time. It was fun. I just, I don't know. I didn't feel chemistry. I didn't feel like butterflies. I didn't. I wasn't, didn't feel that, what I feel like I should feel. So I'm not going to go out with him again. And I'll say, well, why don't you just go spend, you know, another hour with this person and get to know this person and see if something develops? No, no, no, no, no. Right? And so, but it's like you had a good time. You, you did think, you know, they said, I did think he was attractive. But I didn't feel chemistry. So it's interesting because there's a study in Maryham where. It was a longitudinal study and it followed people from the time that they met their partner, like that first date.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  All the way through, they checked in with them every five years for I think twenty years. And what happened was they found that the people who were very happy together.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Had kind of revisionist history about what it was like on their first date. So people who were really happily married said, oh yeah, I knew immediately. I felt immediate chemistry with this person. I knew this person was the one. But if you go back to what they reported at the time, often they reported at the time, yeah, nice person, not sure. Okay, so, so, but they've changed the story. They really, truly believe that they felt something different. But we have data saying, no, you didn't. On the other hand, if people did not last, if people are divorced, that kind of thing, they will say, oh, I was never attracted to the person or I knew there were red flags in the beginning. But that's not what they reported at the time. At the time, they reported, wow, this person's amazing.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  So it's really interesting that people use the first date as, as like, I'm supposed to feel this one thing or else forget it. When people who are very, very happy together, totally in love, totally attracted to each other, often didn't feel those sparks on the first one, two, three dates. You know, maybe they were even friends for a while. But people don't give each other the chance to get to know the other person or to let the other person get to know you. And I think that because the apps give this illusion of, so many people are juggling multiple people at a time. So someone will go on a date with someone and then they'll say, yeah, that was fine. Eh, not, you know, maybe it was like a seven, so nah. And then they, they're like, I have another date tomorrow.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Or they just, they're leaving the date and they're walking to their car and they're swiping on the apps already. Because they have the illusion that there's so many people out there. But if you just keep juggling people, you're never going to get to know anybody and to know if that person is someone that you want to be with.

• 23:37Steven Bartlett?

  So what would you say to a serial data then? You'd say to go on the second date, even if the person is a seven? Or is there, because I know, so I know people that have gone, go on hundreds of dates a year. And I think statistically, they must have met someone that they would have been happy with. By now.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe. It depends if they're making good choices about who they go on dates with. So some people will just go on dates to go on dates. Other people, if they're being really, you know, if they're saying, hey, this person seems like someone I would want to be with, and that's who they choose to go on a first date with, then yes. But I would say, the question you ask yourself at the end of a first date is, did I have a good time? The answer is yes, I would go on a second date. Doesn't have to be, I had a life-changing, transformative, you know, I was, Cupid's arrow shot me. No, just, did I have a good time with this person? Yeah, go on a second date, see what happens the second time.

• 24:29Steven Bartlett?

  Who has higher expectations typically, men or women? And who is most likely or most willing to adjust their expectations?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Hmm. I think it really depends on the person. And I think that the expectations are higher in different areas. I think for men, the expectations are very high around physical appearance. And, and I think for the younger generation especially, because they're growing up on all of these thirst traps that are posted on social media. And they're seeing all of these girls just posting, you know, all of these really provocative pictures that have been filtered, that have been, you know, it took them 30 shots to get that one shot that they put up. And so when they see people in real life and what they really are like on a day-to-day basis, they have these very unrealistic expectations.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  And I think that's different from in the past, when you saw many more people in real life than you do now, where you're seeing more people online most of the time. And I think for women, the expectations are, you know, I think it's confused with feminism. So feminism is great, I'm a feminist, but I think that feminism is not, this person has to meet all of these criteria that are not really human. And I go through them in the book, you know, the kinds of things that people say, and I have all these surveys in the book about the kinds of things people say they're looking for, and they're not finding the right person. And I talk about this study that Barry Schwartz did, he wrote The Paradox of Choice. And he looked at the difference between maximizers

• 26:04Speaker 01

  and satisficers. And this applies to dating as much as anything else. But, you know, the way it doesn't apply, the way that you can look at it, the way he did in his study was, he said, look, if you go into a store, And you want to get some jam. And they have thirty different varieties. Most people just leave because they can't choose. They're just, they get, they get anxious, they don't know what to pick. It's not like more is better. If you have two different choices, it's easy. You say, oh, I like this one and you're really happy with it. The people who did choose from the thirty, they're less happy. Because they, they're trying to maximize. And then when they taste it and they go home with it, they think, oh, I wonder what that other one would have tasted like. You know, because there were so many choices.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  The person who picked from one of the two is very happy with their choice. So if you look at the kind of dating analogy, it's like, I, I like to use in the book, I talk about a sweater. Say you want a sweater and you know exactly what you want. It needs to be this material, so it's not itchy. This color looks good on you. This is the right size. This is the right price. This is the style you're looking for. You go into a store and you find it. The satisficer will buy it, be really happy that they found it and really enjoy it for a very long time. The maximizer will say, oh, I found this. But while I'm at the mall, I might as well just put this one, you know, back on the, on the shelf. And I will go look at a few other stores to see if I can find something that's maybe a little, like the color is a little bit better

• 27:33Speaker 01

  or the, the prices, maybe there's something on sale. Or maybe there's something that's a slightly different material. And they keep looking and then they find something that's maybe slightly better in their mind. And they buy it, they're less happy with it. Because then it took them all this anxiety and energy to find it. And then they find it and they're always looking over their shoulder. Well, maybe there's another one. Maybe there's a better one. Maybe there's a different one. And the next time they're walking and they pass the store window, they think, I should have gotten that one. So maximizers think that they're putting in all the research to find the thing that's going to make them happiest. But going through that process makes them unhappy, not only by going through that process, but when they get the thing that they decide on.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  So with dating, we want to be satisficers, which means we have very high standards. It's not like, oh, I'm satisfied, that's enough. It's like, you're satisfied because your standards are very high. But you're not always looking over your shoulder to wonder what you're missing out on. You're not always in this state of FOMO.

• 28:36Steven Bartlett?

  Do you see a gender difference between satisficers and maximizers at all?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Again, it depends on the person. It really does. I mean, I think that when you, when, when you look at the surveys in Maryham, women do tend to be maximizers more than men. But I think that, I think that men do have very high standards. But I think that men are also like, after they get over the, oh, I need to be with a supermodel, and then they come back down to earth and they say, oh, I need to be with someone that I'm really attracted to, which is a different thing. They're much more holistic. Like, who do, they ask the right questions. Who do I enjoy being with? And I think for women, it's, there's so many different things there. You know, in Maryham, I talk about the things that people said they wouldn't go on a second date with somebody over. And it was like, he ordered tap water instead of sparkling water. He must be really cheap.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  You know, these assumptions that people make, like when they came by and said, which, which kind of water do you want? And maybe he's just accommodating. Maybe he just said, tap water's fine. Um, or, you know, he wore this, he wore those kinds of shoes with that kind of belt. He doesn't have any fashion sense. There was one where somebody said, oh, he did this impression from Austin Powers, this movie. He did this impression and it was really embarrassing and I, I was so cringey. It was like, he was just nervous. He was on a first date and he was trying to make you laugh. Why don't you go on a second date? And if he does something cringey on the second date, okay, then you know. But a lot of times on a first date, people are just really nervous. So they did one thing, but the rest of the date was great? Go on another date with them.

• 30:08Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think it's really that? Like, in the case of the, like, the Austin Powers impression or whatever it was, is that really the truth? Is it, was it really that? Or is there something else going on in their psychology where they've got commitment issues or, you know, the, because I just think surely it can't be that.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I, I think you're right. I think when you really get down to it, you see that, you know, there are reasons that people will find something wrong with a partner if they are avoidant of intimacy. So you do see that, but also I write about in Maybe You Should Talk To Someone. One of the patients that I write about is this young woman who I call Charlotte in the book. And Charlotte is somebody who is in her twenties. She's attractive and professionally successful and, you know, like a lovely person, but she keeps going after men who replicate her childhood. And she's not alone in that. Most of us, if we haven't really worked through whatever it was that that we didn't get growing

• 31:11Speaker 01

  up, or that we got too much of, or not enough of, what happens is we end up seeking out the familiar. We end up, our unconscious has, our subconscious has radar for people who are like the person that hurt us in childhood, because it's our experience of love. Even if it wasn't a positive experience, it's the only experience that we have had of love. And so the imprint that we have is, oh, that's love. So what happened for Charlotte was she would meet somebody and he would seem very different from her parents. Her mother was very depressed. Her father was very, kind of, either very present for her, or then abandoning her. And he also drank too much and had alcohol issues.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  So she would find somebody, she would think, oh, this person's so different from either of my parents, then she'd get to know him and realize, oh, wow, he drinks a lot, too. Didn't realize that. Except her subconscious did. Like, she somehow had radar for that person. Or, this person yells a lot, too. Or, this person is really inconsistent with me. They're either love bombing me, or they're disappearing, and I never know where I stand with them. That was her experience of her father. So if, once she really kind of processed what happened with her family, she started going out with different kinds of people, meaning she started being attracted to different kinds of people. In that transition period, she was like, oh, I'm going out with this person, but I'm not, he seems really good for me, but I'm not really attracted to him.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  That was because she was still attracted to sort of the father and the mother, the different qualities, the victim-y mom and the... And the unavailable mom and then the dad who was kind of inconsistent with his availability and also his temper and his drinking. So it's interesting to see that she would date people just like that without realizing at first that she was choosing them. So I think that one thing that therapy can really do for people is to help you see, why is it that you're having trouble meeting someone? Why is it that you're having trouble, once you're in relationship with someone, if you get that far, maintaining that relationship or finding someone who's good for you?

• 33:14Steven Bartlett?

  If you sat down with someone who had repeatedly made the choice to date and have one night stands with people that were clearly going to hurt them or were clearly not going to call them back the next day, but they had this pattern of continually going for people that were clearly either not interested in them or saw them as like a one night stand transaction. What would your assumption be about that individual's backstory?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  You know, I hate to make assumptions, but I would say in general, what I would probably find would be that this person is terrified of intimacy. This person doesn't feel that anybody will love them. They feel unlovable. They feel like nobody would would want to be in a relationship with them. So it's you can't fire me, I quit. Right? So it's, I'm not even going to put myself in that position. I know this is going to be a one night stand. I don't have any expectations. I'm empowered. Right? This is the story they tell themselves is, I'm so empowered that I don't have to feel. I don't have to get attached. Look at me. I I am above my feelings. But the thing is, they're really terrified of their feelings.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  They're terrified of being attached. They're terrified of seeing whether somebody can love them. Because they're worried that they're going to get what's confirmed by somebody else, which would be the confirmation would be, oh, look, I tried, I got attached to this person and they didn't reciprocate it. Or we dated for a month and then they broke up with me. So see, that proves that I am unlovable. And that doesn't prove anything. It just proves that this person was not the right person for you.

• 34:54Steven Bartlett?

  Where would you start with trying to help somebody that was in that situation?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  I would go straight to the question of lovability. I would go straight to the question of, you know, what would it be like to feel your feelings? And how terrifying is that for you? To feel attached to someone? How scary is that? To feel like they are the arbiter of your worth? And how can we switch that? So when you go on a date, it's not, will they love me? But am I interested in them? Do I want to spend time with them? So it's not about, am I going to be chosen? But I get to be the chooser. What is that like? Because that person has never been able to be the chooser. And yes, sometimes you will choose someone who doesn't reciprocate that. But you also get to choose someone. Sometimes you will choose some, uh, you, someone will choose you, but you don't reciprocate that.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  So you just, you know, so it's not, this person is not saying, whoever you go out with, they are not determining your worth. That you know what your worth is, no matter what happens. And I think you really have to work on the self-worth part and where the story came from. Because we all come into therapy with narratives about ourselves. And there's stories that someone told us about ourselves. Either verbally, they told us like, you're not good enough. You're not this enough. You're not that enough. Or they told us with their actions, like they, they weren't nurturing to you. They didn't love you in the way that you, you saw other kids being loved. And so you took in this story of, I must not be lovable.

• 36:19Steven Bartlett?

  Jumping back to something you said earlier, because I was thinking about this, the, the, the general disconnect amongst men and women these days. You used the word feminism earlier. There's been a lot of changes in society's expectations and views of the role of a man and a woman in a relationship, but more broadly in the workplace and society. And this has caused a lot of Interesting dynamics that I think might be having an impact on people's expectations and their amount of satisfaction in dates. Some of the studies I was looking at ahead of your arrival today was one study that shows that 71% of people say it's very important for a man to be able to support family financially, to be a good husband or partner.

• 37:04Steven Bartlett?

  But by comparison, only 32% say it's very important for a woman to do the same thing, and that's Pew Research survey. But also, another study that said, this is on Sage Journals, that men showed less attraction towards women who outsmarted them. And when you look at the changes in income and intellect, in 1980, women earned about 60% of what men did, but by 2020, that had risen to 83%. And there's obviously still issues with gender pay gaps and such. But what we're seeing here is the kind of macro trend is that women are more educated and have more money. The expectation that a man is going to be the provider in the household still persists,

• 37:47Steven Bartlett?

  and men don't want to date, again, speaking generally, according to some studies that show attraction preferences, women that outsmart them.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Right. So the interesting thing is that when people say, you know, I want, I want to have flexibility, meaning a lot of women will say this, I want to have, they'll say, I absolutely expect that I'm going to have a career, but I also don't want to be the sole provider for the family. And if they're really honest, a lot of women will say, I would like my husband to earn more than me. At the same time, more women are getting college degrees, more women are getting graduate degrees, more women are getting ahead of men in those areas. And so women will also say, and I want someone who's as educated as I am. But there aren't as many men, just number wise.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  So if there are more women who are educated, meaning college, graduate school, than men, but those women want men who have those degrees, they're not, there's low inventory of men who have that. And so there's a, there's sort of a problem with that. And so what I really want to encourage people to do is when they're dating, and this is not about lowering your standards, it's about saying to women, there are lots of kinds of intelligence. So you, yes, you want to be with someone who is equally intelligent. But that doesn't mean that they have the same degrees that you have. Who do you want to talk to? Who do you have interesting conversations with?

• 39:18Steven Bartlett?

  Is this causing an issue for successful women that are over thirty? I was reading an article, I think it was on the Washington Post, where a lady was interviewing another lady who had written a book called, I think it's called like The Gender Gap or something. And they concluded that much of the reason why successful women above the age of thirty were struggling in dating is because of this issue that men don't want to be with a woman that is like better than them and it's somewhat emasculating to a man. And so I've had lots of private conversations with very successful women. I know a lot of successful women that are in very exceptional relationships. But I've also got a small cohort of women that tell me that they're struggling in dating because they're too successful and men don't like it and are emasculated. Is that true?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I think there's this narrative in our culture that women who are successful are not finding men because they're focused too much on their career. And I think that's absolutely false. I think that when you are out there in the work environment, you are meeting men. And that's where you're, and you're meeting other people. You're meeting other women who maybe are married and their husbands have friends. You're out there in the world and people are seeing you. So I think, and also you have meaning and purpose in your life and you're doing something you enjoy. And I think that that's very attractive. I think that there are, you know, I think that people are wanting someone who can not live their work, which is different from being successful. Because you want a partner who's also available to you.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  But I don't think that it's because women are too focused on their careers that that's what's happening. I think it's because of this gap that the women who are maybe achieving certain things in the world are not finding men who are achieving at the same level. And so they're not, there just aren't enough men for those women. The numbers just don't work out. And so then there's this question of, as a woman who is a very high achieving, do you have to be with somebody who is high achieving in the same way?

• 41:18Speaker 01

  And that's a very hard cultural shift for a lot of women to make. And the other problem is that when high achieving women want to be with high achieving men, a lot of those high achieving men are not great partners. And that's the thing that so, so they might be dating a lot of high achieving men and they, maybe they are finding them, but then they find that this person doesn't have time for me, or this person isn't really nurturing, or this person is, um, you know, married to his job and I don't like that. I think it's hard when you have two people who are extremely focused on their professional lives and neither one of them has time for the relationship. So I'm not saying, you know, there are a lot of relationships where that works really

• 42:01Speaker 01

  well, where both people are very focused on their careers, but they also understand each other in a way that helps them. And then there are the relationships where you have two very high achieving people and they both expect that the other person is going to be more involved in the relationship to help them support their own career. And they can't because they're supporting their career. So you can't, you can't do both.

• 42:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, just with this stat in mind, that 71% of people say it's very important for a man to be able to support a family financially, to be a good husband or partner. If we get to the point, a point which is kind of the trajectory we're on, where women and men are earning the same, women already have more sort of college degrees than men by about, I think it's roughly about 10% at the moment, roughly. We're going to find ourselves where, yeah, expectations for what a man can offer are really, really high, but reality is really low. And then you, that it feels like that the amount of women that are not finding what they want is going to continue to increase. And the amount of men that don't feel like they are good enough for a woman, because they're not smart enough, they don't have enough money, they can't contribute in the same way, is also going to increase.

• 43:08Steven Bartlett?

  But then also with general working dynamics, we're seeing that people are getting married later and later, they're having less and less kids. So are you at all concerned about this trajectory?

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Yes, very, because I think it leaves a lot of people who really want to partner and and could really enjoy having a partner who maybe is different from what this cultural norm is, they don't go after that. So a woman will say, oh, I'm not going to even go on a date with this guy because he's not successful enough. You know, we're too different. And a man, on the other hand, might say, I'm not going to even go on a date with her because she's so focused on her career, or you know, or I'm not good enough for her. So they don't even get a chance to even see if they might be a good match. And and sometimes it's a great match because you don't necessarily want two people who are exactly the same. And I see this all the time with couples who come in for couples therapy, where they

• 44:02Speaker 01

  thought that what was so good about their relationship when they first got together was we're so the same. And then they find that, wait a minute, but there's no one here to be more of the nurturer, or there's no one here to spend more time with the household, or there's no one here to do more of kind of logistical things in the house because we're both doing exactly the same job.

• 44:24Steven Bartlett?

  Isn't that sort of central to the equality narrative, that you should share the responsibilities?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Right, so equality doesn't mean that you have exactly the same responsibilities. It means that you feel that there's not a power dynamic. So equality means one person doesn't have more power than the other person. But that doesn't mean that, you know, I do laundry 2.5 days of the week, or 3.5 days of the week, and you do laundry 3.5 days a week. Maybe someone only does, their responsibility is the laundry. That doesn't mean that there's a power dynamic. It means the other person, maybe they're always doing the dishes, or whatever it is. It doesn't have to be split up in this way. So I think that when people think about having an egalitarian marriage, we're talking about that there's not a power differential. But you still get to choose, like a woman might say, and I'm being stereotypical here,

• 45:12Speaker 01

  it might be the man, but often it's the woman who says, you know what, I want to do, I want to switch to part time with my work. So that doesn't mean she has less power in the marriage because he makes more now because he's working full time. It means that they've divided up things differently because that was their choice. That was, that was something that was chosen. It wasn't like you can't work. It was, I would like to do less.

• 45:37Steven Bartlett?

  Do you tend to see issues unique to relationships when a woman is earning more than a man?

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I still think this is something that is, is very primal for us around, you know, what it means. I think that women sometimes feel resentful. That's why they want to be with someone. It's funny because a woman can be making a lot of money and she won't even go out with someone who makes the same amount. She has to go out with someone who makes more, which is interesting because she won't necessarily say that. I think it's hard to acknowledge the contradictions. And I think for men, the same thing, that a man will say, you know, I want a woman who has her own life. I want somebody who is doing something in the world that is important to her, but I don't want her to make more money than me. It's hard to say that out loud. This comes out in couples therapy where people start talking about, wow, there is this difference.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  And maybe it didn't even start out that way. Maybe it started out where he was making more and then things shifted. And then she started making more and it changed something in their dynamic. And so they start fighting a lot, but they're not fighting about that. They're fighting about all different kinds of things. And so it comes out in different behaviors. And they come to couples therapy saying, we're having, we're fighting all the time, or we're not having sex, or here's what's happening. And it turns out it was really about this issue of who has power now. But they didn't realize it was about that, or they weren't willing to kind of look at that.

• 46:56Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think it's getting increasingly harder to know what the role of a man and a woman are? Cause I think, you know, I've had so many conversations on and off this podcast with people who have sons or daughters. It's often the ones that have sons. I'm thinking about a lady that I know. And she says she's so confused by what to tell her son a man is these days. And, you know, when I think about suicidality and how, how much of a big killer it is, especially in the UK. I know it's sort of a Western trend, but I think it's the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 is themselves. I'm thinking, you know, there's often a narrative that that's because.

• 47:32Steven Bartlett?

  Masculinity is changing, they're not being masculine enough. And then there's another narrative that says, no, it's because they're not being feminine enough. What's typically associated with sort of feminine traits?

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's true that more men die by suicide than women do. And some people say, well, that's because the method that men choose is we're lethal. But I also think that that's only part of the story. Because when men do come into therapy, they they truly, truly feel that conflicted about exactly what you said. That I don't know how to be a man in today's world. It used to be much more clear. Now, I'm not saying that was a good thing, that it used to be much more clear, because there were all kinds of power dynamics that that weren't so healthy for men and women.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  But I think now what men are saying is, you know, I maybe don't want to be the person solely responsible for, you know, like, I would like my partner to also bring in some income. But, you know, that creates all kinds of problems. Or I want to be able to, again, open up to and talk to my partner in this way, but I'm afraid that it makes her feel unsafe. So so what do we do? What what does it mean? And and I'm raised, so I could say I'm raising a boy who is now eighteen years old. And even things like, you know, does he still pay? He always wants to pay on a date. And then some people don't like that.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  And he thinks, well, I'm just being, I'm just being sort of chivalrous or, you know, but but there are all these ways in which you don't know sort of like what is expected of you. So it's like, if he pays, then some people take offense. If he doesn't pay, then some people take offense. And he just doesn't know what to do. You know, like, how much of these things that I feel are being sort of the role of a man in a nice way? Like protecting, taking care of, will be offensive to some people because they see it as kind of a power dynamic.

• 49:28Steven Bartlett?

  So what is the role of a man?

• 49:30Speaker 01

  It's really unclear. I mean, that's the thing, and I think that it really needs to be discussed. And that's where I think there's hope is that when people can actually say, hey, I'd really like to pay on this date. And, you know, if she says, well, I don't feel comfortable with that. I think a question is, okay, that's fine. We can split it, but I want to, let's talk about why. And to be able to talk about, you know, what are, what does this mean that I pay? What does that mean to you? You know, I think a lot of people would say, oh, well, it means like, you know, that you expect something back from me. You expect, you know, that we're going to have sex or you expect, you know, whatever these old ideas are.

• 50:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  And I think that we need to be having these conversations. That's my point is that it's not so important that we, that we know what it means. It's more important that we know what it means to the person that we are interested in. What does it mean to them? It's going to mean something different to everybody. So if we can't talk to this person that we're interested in about what it means, then we're just going to, both people are going to be mired in confusion.

• 50:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I'm a bit of a old school romantic, as they say. My, my partner, she has a great job. She has her own money, but I just absolutely feel the need to open up every door for her, pay for every bill for her. I would absolutely not have it any other way. Maybe that's because I'm insecure or something, I don't know. But I just, I watched my dad do it for my mom. And it's like hardwired into my DNA that my role is to protect, take care of, do everything I can to support. And if she, I, yeah, God, I, I'd really struggle with her paying for me. And she's got her own money. She's, she's got her own business, her own job.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  But have you talked about it or it just worked out that way? She never said, she never said, can I pay this once or can I?

• 51:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. She pays, she pays. You know, she's, she, it's like a bit of a competition. She'll like sneak off to the bathroom and pay and stuff. But generally, I, I think it's, I've always wanted to do that on dates. And I, I think, you know, if you sat people down and asked them the question, you go on a first date with a guy. And he asks to split the bill, or he asks, or you know, he doesn't immediately pay. Would that be an ick for you? Would that turn you off them?

• 51:41Speaker 01

  That would be a huge ick for me. Yes.

• 51:44Steven Bartlett?

  So even for you it would be?

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 51:47Steven Bartlett?

  If you went on a first date with a guy and he didn't pay?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:49Steven Bartlett?

  Would you?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 51:51Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 51:52Speaker 01

  It's hard to articulate because, and this is what people, you know, will say, all women will say of all ages. I think for my age, we grew up with that was the expectation. I think for younger generations, maybe it's not the expectation, but I think a lot of people still like it or want it. There's something, there's something about it that, that says, I really, I really valued our time together. I care. I'm interested. It's a way of signaling interest, but I think even if the person isn't interested and you're never going to see each other again, it's just a nice gesture. But I don't have any, any rational way of explaining why. And if, and if I were to get rational about it, I would talk myself out of it.

• 52:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yes, I think that's a very honest answer. And then the counter sort of rebuttal to that means, okay, so if men are expected to pay, then we're going to need more money.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. And it gets very expensive to date.

• 52:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  It does. I mean, you know, people will say, oh, you can go on a hike. It doesn't, doesn't cost anything. You can do a picnic. You can, you know, watch a movie. There are all kinds of things you can do. But the reality is, it's kind of like, I remember that, that old Chris Rock joke, in the first three months of a relationship, you're not you, you're the ambassador of you. So, you know, you want to impress somebody. You're, you're trying to show interest in somebody. But I do think there's that, that really primal need for safety that is gender based, that we don't like to talk about or acknowledge, but that I think women really, I think if, if somebody doesn't pay on a first date, if a guy doesn't pay on a first date, I think a lot of women. Don't feel safe. That's what it comes down to.

• 53:36Steven Bartlett?

  It's a tricky world and it's getting increasingly trickier, it feels, you know?

• 53:40Speaker 01

  It feels like an insult almost that the person doesn't pay.

• 53:44Steven Bartlett?

  Not many people. Some people would, but no one would really publicly say that though, because it's like not socially acceptable to say.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 53:50Steven Bartlett?

  But in private conversations, of course.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:53Steven Bartlett?

  Everyone I know is that if they want on a date with a man, so in a heterosexual relationship, and the man either asked to split the bill or suggested that you might pay. This person's not going to get a second date.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Of course not. No, no. Unless it was the woman who said, oh no, let me split that with you. But if it was his decision and he said, oh, let's split this, or he put it in the middle. No, no. In therapies, the young woman came to me recently and she said, she went out with this guy and they went to a cafe and they got coffees. And he asked her to split it, coffee. And she said, and she was having so much fun on the date until the bill came. And she was shocked. And she thought, okay, well, she made, it was very personal to her. At first, she thought, I must, he must really, really have had a

• 54:48Speaker 01

  horrible time with me to have, want to not pay for my $5 coffee. And then he asked her out again. And she said to me, I don't understand this at all. So he was interested in me and he didn't pay for my coffee. And she did not go out with him again. So these are the kinds of signals that it very much is emblematic of something. Who pays on that first date?

• 55:13Steven Bartlett?

  Do you agree with that decision that she made?

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And I didn't say that as her therapist. It's really about understanding it for her. But I do agree with that decision. And I think it's because there's something, there's something like a half note off about a person who doesn't even see that. It's a $5 coffee and you're interested in this person. And she wasn't making any moves to pay. She was just sitting there for a very long time. And the, she said, is the way she told the story was that the person came around and a couple of times and said, are you ready? And the guy said, oh no, we're not ready yet. And then at a certain point, he said to her, oh, do you wanna put your credit card down? Right, to her.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  And so she just said, I could never go out with somebody like that. Even though they had a really good time before that.

• 56:06Steven Bartlett?

  So if we zoom back out then.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 56:08Steven Bartlett?

  So are you saying that that is a telltale sign of a broader character issue that this individual has? Because earlier you said that we really should be focusing on like, character traits. Is that a red flag of some kind of other character trait?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  I think that when things are hard in the beginning, that's not a good sign. So I think that when there's like, a big disconnect in the beginning, that you should pay attention to that. So a big disconnect is not, you know, the example I gave earlier of, you know, he said yes to the tap water. That's different from, he didn't pay for my coffee. That's, that's different. The tap water might be, oh, I don't know, is, is he cheap? I don't know, let's see, let me get to know him better. This is, this is about generosity. They're different things. And so, you know, I, I feel like relationships, I always say to people, when they, when they overlook things in the beginning, I think there are two camps on this. There's the people who think everything is a red flag.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  That's not, like the tap water, not a red flag. But there are people who don't pay enough attention to the red flags in the beginning. So they say, yes, this person, they kind of disappeared for a couple of days and I didn't like that. And, you know, but, but, or they, they were, they're late all the time. Or, you know, whatever it is, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a deal breaker, but it's kind of a, a flag that you wanna discuss early on. So what, what happens is if you don't discuss it is, a person will say, you know, after they're, now they're in a relationship and they've been dating for several months and, and they're moving along. And the person says, I can't stand it when you're late every time. And he says, why is this a, I've always been late. Why is this a problem now?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Right, so if you bring it up early, before the cement dries. So, you know, I always say relationships are like cement. That there's room for things to move in the beginning before things kind of really get hard and difficult to change. But once the cement dries, it's much harder to change those habits or those interactions or the dance that you're doing with the other person. So if you don't like something in the beginning, you might want to bring it up to see how much wiggle room is there here? Can this person be more aware of being on time? Because I don't like sitting there for half an hour every time we make plans.

• 58:25Steven Bartlett?

  We're getting married a lot less and we're getting married

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Later.

• 58:28Steven Bartlett?

  Later, later, yeah. So there was a stat that I found that said, for the first time ever, but people over the age of thirty have been, haven't been married in high numbers than ever before. So, yeah, marriage is getting later and later in people's lives. But I also found this really interesting graph, which I printed out, which shows that there seems to be an optimal time to get married.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yes, I was just gonna mention that, that there's a window.

• 58:53Steven Bartlett?

  So I'll put it up on the screen for anyone that's looking and I'll put it in the description below. But it essentially shows that if you get married after thirty, you're more likely to get divorced than if you got married between twenty-five and thirty.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Right, so there's a sweet spot. So if you get married too young, you're more likely to get divorced, meaning if you get married sort of under twenty, I think it's twenty-two or twenty-three. But if you get married over, I think it's twenty-eight, you have more likelihood of getting divorced.

• 59:23Steven Bartlett?

  So the study which I have in front of me by the Institute for Family Studies says there is an optimum age to get married. If you want to statistically avoid a chance of divorce, and it seems to be around ages twenty-five to thirty-ish. Someone who marries at twenty-five is over fifty percent less likely to get divorced than someone who weds at age twenty. Before the age of thirty-two or so, each additional year of age at marriage reduces the odds of divorce by eleven percent. However, after thirty-two years old, every year increases your chance of divorce by five percent. I couldn't figure out why.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Oh, I think there are several reasons for this. So first of all, I think it's sort of obvious about marrying too young, that you don't necessarily have the skills, you aren't really established in your own life, and you don't necessarily have the maturity to do what you need to do to be in that kind of relationship for the long term. You also don't really know who you are yet. And so you might think that you want a certain kind of life, and you find out your partner wants something very different. But once you get into your mid twenties and even sort of later twenties, it's an optimal time because you have a better sense of who you are, you know more of what you want, and you can grow together as a couple.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  And I think that's really important. You're going to have more shared experiences. You're going to know more of each other's families. Your parents are probably still alive on each side. You're going to get to know each other's siblings if you have siblings. You're going to be more integrated into each other's lives. As you get older, first of all, you're more sort of set in your ways. We talked about rigidity earlier. You're more rigid. You have different expectations. I think when you're younger, you're more flexible in terms of just being more open-minded. We get less open-minded generally as we get older around relationship, around the things that we expect. And we also have a history as we get older. So we have more negative experiences

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  of maybe heartbreak, being broken up with, breaking up with people, relationships that didn't work out, that then inform the way we behave in our relationships. And I like to say, it's almost like we're punishing our current partner for a crime they didn't commit. So if you were in a relationship before where maybe you were cheated on or someone didn't treat you well, then you are less trusting of the partner that you're with, or you're more on guard or more closed off because you're worried you're not going to get treated well. So it's almost like the more dating experiences that you have, some people would think, counterintuitively, they would think, you know, if I have more dating experience... Then I'm going to be a better partner later on.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  But often because those were not great dating experiences. Sure, you might have learned something in them. But if you have too many of them, it's good to maybe have a relationship or two before you get married. But to have five, it's harder, right? Because you have all this baggage that you're bringing in. And the other person who's also your age has all this baggage that they're bringing in. And there might also be something, it's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you. That maybe you are doing something in relationship and that is why. It's not that you haven't been able to meet someone. It's that you've been pairing up with people in a way that is not really healthy. So you haven't spent the time to really figure it out. So you're just going to keep repeating and repeating those not great relationships.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Even if you marry the person, it might not last because something has not been working in those last five relationships. And you haven't figured that out yet.

• 1:03:04Steven Bartlett?

  In your TED Talk, you talk about part of getting to know yourself is getting to unknow yourself. Why do we have to get to unknow ourselves?

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Well, I think that so many people think I'm going to come into therapy and I'm gonna learn so much about myself. And you do, but part of learning about yourself is learning what the faulty narratives are that you've been carrying around. Whether it's I'm unlovable, or I can't trust anyone, or I'm no good at this, or this thing is wrong with me. These again are stories that you picked up about yourself from a long time ago. And it might not even have been your parents, it might have been at school. Maybe you were bullied in school, or maybe you were in an environment that maybe you had ADHD. And you were told you weren't smart because people didn't realize that you learned differently. And you actually are quite intelligent.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  So you have these stories, so it's to unknow. People will come in and say, well, I'm not that, I'm not really smart. Well, you have to unknow that because that might not be true. Let's find out. So it's really, you know, it's interesting because I was a writer long before I was a therapist and I still am a writer. But I use so much of of writing and narrative in the therapy to kind of help people edit their stories. Let's look at, you know, is the protagonist going in circles or is the protagonist moving forward? Who are the supporting characters? And and do the major characters need to be more minor characters in your life? And do some of the minor characters need to be more major characters? And what is going to be the next chapter? How do we look at where the story is going?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  So a lot of this is unknowing stuff about the character, which is you. You know, if you come up with a character as a writer and you say, well, this person's not very smart. They're kind of weird and they're unlovable. Well, you're going to write the story a certain way, thinking the character has those traits. But if you say, actually, this person's quite smart and they're quite lovable and they're quite attractive. Well, you're going to write a different next chapter for them.

• 1:05:07Steven Bartlett?

  I've always, on that point about sort of narratives we've written, I've always considered myself to be very productive. Maybe the more honest answer is a bit of a workaholic to some degree. I think that my work is fundamentally attached and associated with my own self-esteem. So I think when I'm working really, really hard and I feel really productive, I think at some deep level, I think I'm worth more or I'm like, I fit in and kind of, it goes back to when I was younger and I felt like I didn't fit in. It feels like I'm more valuable. Now, the problem you have as an adult, when you're trying to achieve a different set of goals, like have a healthy relationship, is this kind of gets in your way.

• 1:05:47Steven Bartlett?

  And I think I found that in myself, that I still have this urge to be really successful and work really hard, because at some level, it's making, it's doing something for my image of myself. But as I get older, I kind of need to figure out a way to drop that down a little bit, or else I'm going to miss out on something that's going to make me happy, which is relationships. And a lot of people that I speak to, a lot of people that listen to this podcast are in a similar situation where they just can't get off the train in terms of their work.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So we were talking about defense mechanisms. And so one of the defense mechanisms is where you take something that comes from an unhealthy place and you put it into something that looks on the surface healthier. So I don't feel worthy or as worthy as I would like to, so I'm going to succeed in this incredible way. So on the surface, it looks great. It looks like you're doing something really healthy. But actually, you're not really working on that self-worth piece. Another example might be somebody who has a lot of anger and they take up boxing, right? Or they become a surgeon because they cut into people. You see this a lot, where somebody takes their anger, so they put it into something that looks healthy.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  But they're not really dealing with the underlying issue, which is the anger.

• 1:07:01Steven Bartlett?

  You see that a lot, that people that have anger issues sometimes take up roles like surgeons?

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:07:07Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anything where you where you can do, again, boxing, it could be anything where you where you're putting it into a socially acceptable container as opposed to dealing with the issue. So there's nothing wrong with being a great surgeon. There's nothing wrong with being somebody who succeeds in work that they love. But then what happens is when you're not doing the thing that gets the societal approval, then where does, you know, what do you do with, in one case, your anger and the other case, your self-worth? And so I'm glad that you're looking at at the self-worth piece because that's going to be important because you're not always going to get it from your work.

• 1:07:45Steven Bartlett?

  How do you improve your self-worth? What would you do with a patient like me?

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  I, you know, I, I think it's, we do this on the podcast where we do something very practical, where we have people make a list of the things that other people would say. So there's two columns. There's one, what would other people say are your best qualities that have nothing to do with your work?

• 1:08:06Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  What do they appreciate most about you? And then what do you appreciate most about yourself that has nothing to do with work that you think other people don't see? And when you, when you start to look at those, they're very quiet at first. You know, people don't have a long list. They're kind of like, I don't really know. And and I'm looking for really tiny things, like this person really appreciated that when they were sick, I called them. This person really appreciates that I'm funny, that I make them laugh. I appreciate that about myself, you might say, right? You might say like, I really appreciate that about myself, or I appreciate that I can be calm under really stressful circumstances. I appreciate that I, I notice my partner.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  And I do nice things for my partner. I appreciate, not my partner appreciates that. That'll be on one column, but the other column is I appreciate that about myself. So looking at how can I pay more attention to some of these areas that I I don't pay enough attention to because I can only see the real shiny thing out there, which is how many people, you know, how many millions of people follow me or how many people, um, you know, download the podcast, those kinds of things.

• 1:09:13Steven Bartlett?

  And is there a reason why, okay, the reason why you separate work from that is because you're trying to find your self-esteem in other places outside of the work.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Right, so it's both and. It's not to say, don't get, don't, don't feel worthy because of what you do with your work. That's a big part of what we do with our lives. Think of the number of hours that we spend in work. We're spending most of our days doing work. So of course we want to get self-worth from that. But we also want to know that we have other areas in which we are worthy and that we don't pay enough attention. We don't give ourselves enough credit. It's kind of like in a relationship, there's a statistic about the bank of goodwill. So in a healthy relationship, there are, we think of deposits of how many positive interactions do you have with your partner to how many negative interactions do you have?

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  And so you want to have 20 positive interactions for every one negative interaction in a relationship. And when things are not good, you want to have, you know, you, you hope you can do five positive ones to one negative one. But that's, that's a lot. So it's, it's really noticing. These are, these are small little deposits that you make. Like I held, I, I took my partner's hand when we were walking down the street. You know, those are like small positive interactions. You're not counting them. It's just a way of being. But what happens is when your self-worth is all in one bucket, you don't notice, you're not making enough deposits to yourself of, into the self-worth bank.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  So it's, it really is about noticing what are the deposits that I'm making? So I'm making a lot of deposits in the, in the work bucket, but I'm not making a lot of deposits and noticing that was really, I really liked that. I was really funny in, at that dinner party. That was really fun. Um, I was really kind to that stranger on the street. That was really nice of me.

• 1:11:00Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think that some people are scared to go to therapy because they think if they are to heal from something, whatever that means, it will rob them of something that they value? I if I go to therapy and I work through my childhood trauma, then maybe I won't be as ambitious or successful or driven, et cetera.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  I think the fear is I will have to change. I will have to change and I will have to do something different and I might not like that. And that's why people are like, if I go to therapy and I take off my mask and this person sees the truth of who I am and I see the truth of who I am, I might need to do something difficult and I might need to get rid of one of my defense mechanisms, like I'm avoidant, maybe, right? Or I'm or I might not be able to, you know, to do things that maybe I get away with that are not very healthy because they're easier.

• 1:11:52Steven Bartlett?

  In your book, you say something, your new book, maybe you should talk to someone. You say something that really surprised me, which is that sometimes when someone changes, those around them will sabotage them and basically get in the way of that change because it changes the dynamic that that relationship has with a person. And I mean, we see this generally when someone becomes successful. For example, their friends from their hometown might be a little bit resistant because they want to keep the dynamics the way that they are. But the examples that you talk about in the book about like, you know, someone gets over their alcohol addiction and then a friend might sabotage them by, I don't know, giving them alcohol or taking them to a bar.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Steven Bartlett?

  Really, really striking.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that happened with Charlotte in the book when she realized that her drinking was a problem. She was the young woman who's in her twenties and was dating and she realized that she drinks too much and it's really affecting her life and her functioning. And so she decided that she was going to do something about that. And then when her she was having a birthday party and her friends said, oh, let's do it at this bar. And she said, no, I'd rather do it at this other place because I don't want to be in that environment. And her friends were like, you're no fun anymore. And you don't come out with this anymore. But the but the real issue is that she was holding up a mirror without realizing it to her friends. Because they were saying, oh, maybe we aren't drinking in a healthy way. And they didn't want to look at that.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  So if they could get her to go back to the old way, we see this in couples a lot. When one person decides they're going to get healthy in a certain way, like I'm going to start exercising. And the person starts exercising and the other person doesn't exercise at all and they're really unhealthy. And that person says, why do you get up early and go to the gym? You're no fun anymore. You know, you're obsessed with exercise when they're not, they're just going to the gym in a normal way. And really they're feeling threatened. They're like, you know, this is changing the dynamic between us because we used to be both unfit. And now my partner is looking really healthy and hot. And now it's really clear that I'm not really healthy and I don't look as good as I could look. And maybe I'm going to have to do this and they don't really want to, they're resistant to doing that. And the partner's not asking them to do, to go to the gym.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  They're saying, I'm going to the gym, you do what you want. But there's this implicit pressure of I have to look at myself. That's why people, again, don't come to therapy is because I'm going to have to look at myself and maybe make some changes that are healthier and I'm not sure I'm ready to do that yet. And I write in the book about the stages of change. Because I think it's so important that people understand that New Year's resolutions, for example, don't often work because people think I just decide this thing. I have this goal, I'm going to do it and I either succeed or I fail. And that's just not true. There are these stages that people go through and it starts with pre-contemplation, where you don't even know you're thinking of making a change. And that's usually like if your partner starts exercising,

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  you didn't realize that maybe in the back of your mind that that was something you had been thinking about, but weren't ready to deal with. Contemplation is you know, you're thinking about making a change, but you're not ready to do it yet. That's usually when people come to therapy. They're thinking about it, but they don't really, they're not really ready. Preparation is when you you start to get ready, you're preparing, you're maybe getting a gym membership, or you're taking an anger management class, or whatever you're doing. And then, action is when you put the change, and it might also be like you're preparing to break up with someone who's not good for you, so you're getting, thinking about, how am I gonna do this, what are the logistics of this? And then, when you, action is you actually do the thing.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  You break up, you go to the gym, you change jobs, you apply for a job that you always wanted, you go back to grad school, you do the thing you wanted to do. But then, the next stage is the most important stage, which is maintenance. And maintenance is, it's not like you're on this upward trajectory, and if you, if you go off the trajectory, then you failed. It's not like that. Maintenance is, how does this become more habitual in my life? So, let's use the breakup example. You broke up with this person, you're having a really bad day, you're feeling really lonely, you called them at midnight, or you texted them at midnight, because, oh, I don't know, you know, like, and so, now you say, oh, well, I better get back in a relation, I guess I'm back in a relationship with them. No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  You, you slipped off, it's okay. Then you say, you know what, I was feeling really lonely, I didn't know how to cope with it, I'm gonna go to therapy, I'm gonna have an extra session, I'm gonna call my friend, I'm going to watch a TV show that, that, that I like, I'm gonna read a book that I like, it will feel different in the morning. Next time, that's what I'm gonna do. And so, you, you have to get used to, you know, we talked about the familiar earlier, about going toward familiar partners. Making a change is really hard, because we're changing something that was familiar to us. It's like, when I was in therapy, my therapist said, you know, you remind me of this cartoon, and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out, but on the right and the left, it's open, no bars.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  So, that's us, where we think, you know, I would like to make a change, but I'm really afraid of going outside, I'm more comfortable being in jail, in this miserable situation, than knowing that I have freedom, but I have to change. I'm gonna have to take responsibility for my life if I walk around those bars. And so, I think with change, it's really about How do I give myself self compassion? When I have trouble making the change and help myself get back on track? And what kind of support do I need? People think if I beat myself up, if I self flagellate, if I tell myself I'm awful and I'm a failure, I'm going to get back on track because that's going to help me. No, it's not going to help you. In the short term, it might help you a little bit. But what's really going to help you is to have self compassion.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  Because that actually gives you more accountability. You're more able to say to yourself, okay, let me think about what I can do differently. It's kind of like if your kid comes home from school and says, I did really badly. I failed this test. Are you going to scream at them? Is that going to help them do better on the next test? Or are you going to say, let's sit down and figure this out. What do you think happened here? And your kid might say, I didn't really understand it and I didn't get help. Or your kid might really be honest and say, I didn't study enough. So we can say, okay, well, what can you do next time? Let's kind of think about, can you make a schedule? Can you, do you need to study with a study partner? What do you need to do? That's what helps people make long term change.

• 1:18:15Steven Bartlett?

  Is that the wise compassion that you spoke about versus the sort of idiot compassion? Which you talk about as well?

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Idiot compassion is what we tend to do with our friends. So your friend says, listen to what my partner, my coworker, my, you know, my sibling, my parents did or said. And we say, yeah, they're wrong. You're right. How dare they? Because we're just validating their perspective. And like we were talking about in my TED Talk, there are many different versions of a story, all of which are true. So you're only getting one narrow perspective when you're hearing one, one person's perspective. That's why couples therapy is so great, because I can hear the same incident told by two different people who were there, both of whom are telling the absolute truth of their experience.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  But they're leaving out the other person's experience. And that's where things get dangerous. So in idiot compassion, we don't consider what the other person's perspective might be when our friend is telling us something. We just back up our friend. But they're not learning anything from that experience. It's, and, and when you hear them over and over, you kind of get a sense that maybe they're doing something. Like an example would be, um, your friend keeps getting broken up with. And We can say, yes, these men are jerks. They're terrible. You deserve better. Or we can say, you know, I think that sometimes you're a little bit too possessive early on in the relationship, and I think they start to feel overwhelmed. And then they break up with you. But if you could just hold your anxiety a little bit more

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  at the beginning of the relationship and not be so overwhelming to them, that you might develop something different the next time. That would be wise compassion. That's what they're going to hear in therapy. So in therapy, we hold up a mirror to them and help them to see something about their role in the situation that maybe they haven't been willing or able to see. And so we think we're being a good friend by offering idiot compassion, but we're not actually helping our friends. And that's where therapy, I think, can be really helpful.

• 1:20:16Steven Bartlett?

  When you're sat with a man and a woman in a therapy session, do you typically find that the woman expresses more emotion, tears than the man?

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yes, often. I also think that emotions can be used as manipulation. So an example is a pattern in a relationship might be that he brings up something that he wants to talk about. She cries because of what he said. And he said it nicely, but it's something they need to deal with. And she cries. And then he gets terrified by her crying. He thinks, oh, my gosh, I've hurt her. And so then he shuts down. And so really, her crying is a manipulation. It's a, I don't want to hear anything that I'm, quote, doing wrong. And so I'm going to shut that down by crying and being the victim and being hurt. Being a victim is actually a power position

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  because you are making it impossible for anyone to deal with whatever is going on between the two of you. Because now you're the victim, and now they look like a horrible person if they're making you cry. So I will call that out in therapy, and I will say, you know what? He's going to talk. And we're going to do something different where he's going to be able to say what he wants to say. She might cry, but if she cries, I want you to please go on. She's going to be fine. I'm going to be here with her, and you don't have to manage her feelings. You're going to tell her about your feelings. I will be here to help manage her feelings.

• 1:21:44Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  And you see that if you're not in therapy, you'll see that pattern where it's just, you know, someone will play the victim in the relationship. And it could go either way. It could be anyone in the relationship. But when someone plays the victim, the other person actually becomes the victim. They become so helpless in the relationship. The true victim is the person who has to interact with the person who plays the victim.

• 1:22:08Steven Bartlett?

  Dreams, something I was quite surprised to find in your book, but pleasantly surprised.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:22:13Steven Bartlett?

  Do our dreams have meaning? Or are they just random?

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  I think both, but I think that dreams are really helpful. And in the book, I do give examples of dreams where dreams are often a kind of a story that we tell ourselves that we aren't giving ourselves permission to think about when we're awake. So an example might be somebody who has been, who is worried that they have been doing something financially that is not legal. They have a dream that they were speeding on the highway and they got caught. Well, what is that dream really about? It's this, I don't really want to think about this thing that I'm doing that's not quite above board. And I know I shouldn't be doing it, but I'm not going to think about that. You know, the dream that I have in the book where,

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  so I come into therapy because of a breakup and I have a dream that I ran into my ex. And it's this very elaborate dream. But the point is that in my first therapy session, I had said to my therapist when I was talking about the breakup, I said, well, half my life is over. And he really glommed onto that statement that that was really why I was in therapy. What was this about for me? It wasn't so much about the breakup. The breakup got me into therapy, but this whole question of what am I doing with my life? And how am I living my life? And this question of mortality was really what was on my mind. And so in the dream, I think, I see that he has a new girlfriend and I see that she's older than me. And I feel very self-satisfied by that in this petty way.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  And then I look at myself in the mirror in the dream and I'm like this 80-year-old wrinkled person. And I realize, oh, this is really about this fear that I have about getting older and that half my life is over. And so dreams really do inform our biggest fears and our biggest preoccupations that feel too...

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Scary to think about in our waking life. And if we pay attention to our dreams, and what I mean by that is when you wake up and you remember your dream, if you write it down immediately, but you write it in the present, not we were here and this happened, but I'm here and I see so and so and so and so says to me, if you write it in the present, it will bring back more of the dream for you and it will help you understand what connection it has to something that you really do need to be dealing with in your life that you're probably not dealing with.

• 1:24:40Steven Bartlett?

  Dreams can be a precursor to self confession.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  Yes, that's what I say.

• 1:24:44Steven Bartlett?

  Self confession, they can tell you things about yourself before you're willing to admit them about yourself and to yourself.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  Yes, and it's so liberating. I think that there's something about the safety of a dream, sometimes our dreams are really scary, but you wake up and you say, okay, now I can deal with it. Now that I've acknowledged it to myself, I can deal with it in the dream, I just had to go with the flow of the dream. But now I can actually make choices about what I want to do in my waking life.

• 1:25:14Steven Bartlett?

  At the beginning of each therapy session, you'll often ask your patients to describe their last 24 hours.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:25:20Steven Bartlett?

  Why is that useful to know what someone's been doing for the last 24 hours?

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  I think most of us don't realize how we spend our time. We have no idea. If you said to somebody, you spend three hours a day scrolling on Instagram, they would say, no, I don't.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  We don't realize, and I think that at the end of the day, most of us want to live our lives with intention. And what I mean by that is, I think that knowing that life has 100% mortality rate, that all of us has a limited time here, we're living on borrowed time, that's not to freak people out, it's to make people say, how are you actually spending this borrowed time that you have here? Because one day you might look back and wonder why. And I always say that regret can lead us in one of two directions. It can be a way of self-flagellating and living in the past, or it can be an engine for change. And I really think regret is the most powerful engine for change.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  I regret that I lived my life this way. So if we don't realize how we are living our lives, we don't have the engine for change.

• 1:26:27Steven Bartlett?

  In that chapter 24, you say the opposite of depression isn't happiness, but vitality.

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's Andrew Solomon in that I'm quoting there. And I thought that that really struck me when he said that in his own book and his own TED Talk. Because I think that people think about, well, I'm either happy or I'm sad. And, and I think what we're, there's no, you can't be happy all the time. There's no such thing, you would never know any other emotion if that's all you were feeling. So I think that, that vitality is what people are looking for in life.

• 1:27:00Steven Bartlett?

  What is vitality?

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  It's a sense of aliveness. And this is why people have affairs, by the way. Often when you ask people, why did you cheat when you love your partner? I didn't feel vitality in my life. I felt the sense of aliveness and awakeness when I was with this other person. And it was, had not much to do with the other person. And it really didn't have much to do with your partner. It had to do with you didn't feel vitality in your own life. And instead of looking at yourself and saying, what can I do to create vitality in my life? I blamed it on my marriage. I blamed it on my partner. I said, I was going to find it with this other person. And what they find is, yeah, that works for a little while, but not very long.

• 1:27:44Steven Bartlett?

  Does menopause play a role in this? In terms of, I heard a stat from someone that was on the podcast previously where they said, post-menopausal women, but also women going through menopause will often divorce their partner. Because they have a lot of sort of psychological doubts about themselves and they, maybe their expectations. I think someone said to me that their expectations go up. So they end up divorcing their partner because they're clear on what they want now. But I was just wondering what role menopause will play in someone's marriage? And their expectations, their view of themselves, their chance of maybe getting a divorce? And if you see anything in therapy associated with this?

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  I think what menopause does is it goes back to this idea of, I don't have forever here. And if they weren't happy with the marriage that they were in, then I think people really wake up and they really say, what do I want in my life? It's a, it's a very, there's a lot of psychological changes that come with, it's not just the hormonal changes, but it's what does that represent? That I am done with that chapter of my life. And I'm now, I'm, I'm, you know, halfway through, again, half my life is over. And what do I want to do to more intentionally? Because often women have been serving others. So that's what they've been doing. They've been taking care of other people's needs, whether it's their partners or their children

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  or their parents, um, you know, they tend to be the caretakers. And now they're saying, wait a minute, I only have this much time left and I really want to find that vitality in my life.

• 1:29:18Steven Bartlett?

  You went to therapy because of heartbreak?

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:29:21Steven Bartlett?

  I've been through heartbreak.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  Who has not?

• 1:29:23Steven Bartlett?

  It's one of the, it's one of the worst feelings in the world. And it's, it's really hard to give someone advice when they're going through heartbreak. I had a friend reach out to me recently and said, listen, I'm going through a heartbreak and I just don't know what, who else to turn to. It's this big, dark cloud that hangs over everything I do, think and say that just won't go away. What have you come to learn about heartbreak from your own experience, but also from your, your patients? How do we navigate through that dark cloud?

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  I think what people don't understand about heartbreak is the grief. And, and so this is why I talk about it so much and maybe you should talk to someone because it's not just that you lost the present with that person. It's that you lost the future that you had created in your mind. So you're losing the dailiness. There's something really profound about the person you tell all the minutia of your day, the person you, you know, you know so much about each other and you know each other's habits and quirks, this again, being understood, being truly known. It's such a delicious feeling, being truly known. And so this person knows like what you, what kind of pizza you like, or, or, you know,

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  this quirky habit you have, or what TV shows you watch, or that, that thing that you do with your eyes when you're excited. They know all those little seemingly trivial details that are so important about being known. And they know your history and they know about your family and they know who your friends are and they, you've had shared experiences with this person. So you have all that history together, even by the way, if it was only six months, you have a lot together, a year. And so in that time, you started to imagine. Oh, and then this is gonna happen next year, and then in five years, this will happen, or we're gonna grow old together, whatever you imagine will happen. And you've become attached to their friends, and they attach to your friends.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  And then you lose the dailiness of being known, you lose the bigger circle that you had, and you lose the companionship, you lose the physical connection. You lose all of that, but you also lose this idea of what was to come. And so every day, you're living in this future that is radically different from that day as it would have been if you were in that relationship. So it's very hard. People think, well, it's been this long, how come you're not over this person? It's kind of like the same thing when, you know, someone has a breakup instead of a divorce. People think, well, it's not that big of a deal. Why? Why is it less of a big deal? It's still loss and grief. Or, you know, it's like when, if someone loses a child, everyone surrounds them.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  There are all these rituals for how do we help people through that kind of loss? Someone has a miscarriage, people are like, well, you can still get pregnant again. At least you got pregnant, you know. Or the things, there's a chapter in the book called What Not to Say to a Dying Person, because one of the patients that I work with in the book is somebody who's a young person in her 30s, who is newly married and then gets a cancer diagnosis. And people say the most well-meaning but ridiculous things to her. And so I think the same thing happens in heartbreak, where people try to minimize it, they try to cheer you up, they won't sit with you in your loss. And that's what you really need, is someone to sit with you in your loss and to acknowledge how profound the loss is.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  And people don't do that. They don't, they either don't see how profound it is, or they do, but they, they feel like, well, we don't want the person to wallow in it, or if I bring it up, you know, they're gonna be worse. No, what, they need to be seen, and actually, that's gonna make them better, and it's gonna make them heal faster.

• 1:32:55Steven Bartlett?

  What impact did it have on you?

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  The way people reacted, or?

• 1:32:59Steven Bartlett?

  The heartbreak.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  The heartbreak. I think for me, it was a big wake-up call, again, around this idea of half my life is over, and what do I want in my life? And why was I willing to overlook certain things in my relationship that were clearly there, but that I didn't want to see?

• 1:33:21Steven Bartlett?

  And how? Did you go about recovering? Is that the right word? Moving forward? How did you go about moving forward?

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  That's, that's the whole narrative of the book. I went to therapy and it's really about what I learned about myself in therapy that, that helped me heal and helped me move forward.

• 1:33:43Steven Bartlett?

  I was thinking about the, the advice that I could give to my friend and how I could have been a better support act. Cause my natural disposition is to try and fix. And from what you've said, that's not necessarily the best approach to take. You know, cause my, my natural inclination is to go, tell them the future will be better. Share my experience of my heartbreak.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  And those are all good because as a therapist, I want to hold hope for when somebody's really, really dealing with a difficult situation, whether it's a breakup or something else. I want to hold hope that they can't access. They can't access any hope at that point. So I'm going to hold the hope for them, but I'm not going to try to cheer them up. I'm just going to be the container for that hope so that they know that someone else is holding that hope. So you did two things really well. One was that you shared your experience so that this person knows this happens. This person isn't alone in this thing. Cause I think when you go through a heartbreak intellectually, you know, other people have gone through it, but you feel like yours is so much worse than anybody else's. And so to know that, that you went through it too. And here's what helped you.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  And it also took time and it sucked and all of those things. And then I know that it will get better, even if you can't see it right now. To let them know that peace, I know it will get better for you, even if you can't see it right now. And the third, but so those are the two things that, that went well. The third thing though, is to be able to sit in the grief with them. To say, tell me about how things are different for you. Tell me what you missed, tell me. And people think, oh, that's just going to stir up all the stuff. They're just going to ruminate, this isn't helpful. You need to give them a place where they can feel understood. And you can say, one strategy that might be helpful is you can give yourself thirty minutes a day

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  to go through all the things you miss, everything that sucks, how horrible it is. You get that thirty minutes so that the rest of the day they're not ruminating because every time they catch themselves thinking about it, they say, wait a minute. At six o'clock, I get to do this nonstop for thirty minutes. And so if you can hold it, you rewire your nervous system neurologically, this actually happens, where that pathway gets interrupted. If we can put a stop sign up between the feeling and the behavior, which is the rumination, I feel sad, oh, now I'm going to ruminate on this. We put a stop sign up and say, I get to go there later. Then later, when we start having more of these feelings, we have a stop sign that we're used to now. Now we're wired that way.

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  So we put more time between the thought and the rumination.

• 1:36:24Steven Bartlett?

  On the point of heartbreak, at the deepest human level, is it about, you know, you talked about the bigger picture, the loss of the future, etc. in the past. Is the fundamental reason we have heartbreak has a device built inside of us? Because we are creatures that need connection and it's a mechanism to make us stay connected and avoid becoming disconnected?

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  You literally could not survive in early societies without being part of the group. You had to belong. If you did not belong, you couldn't survive. You wouldn't get food, you wouldn't get shelter, you wouldn't survive. So belonging is just hardwired in us. It's something that keeps us alive. And we actually do need it to stay alive, even now. And what I mean by that is, you take, for example, when they did these studies and they looked at babies who were in orphanages. And they thought all they need is they need, they need food, they, you know, they need to get, they need to be fed. They need to be nourished. They need to have their diaper changed. They need those things.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  These babies didn't develop and many of them died. It's called failure to thrive because they weren't held. They weren't held. They needed love. They literally died from lack of love. They just, they couldn't, they couldn't survive, no matter how much you could, they just stopped eating. They failed to thrive. They wouldn't meet their developmental milestones. This happens, this happens in really traumatic childhoods even. Um, so you actually cannot live without love. You need some kind of love. It doesn't have to be romantic love, but you need love. So we need that. So our main goal in life is to love and be loved. We may think it's about success and it's about appearance and all the things that we see on social media. We may think that's what life is about and everything that our culture sells us.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  But ultimately what we need is we need love. We need to love and we need to be loved. And so when that gets cut off, we forget that we have other people who love us. Um, we forget everything else. Everything just feels extremely black or white. It's like I, I was loved and then I wasn't loved. And that's how it's going to feel for a little while.

• 1:38:37Steven Bartlett?

  It's scary. It's scary because so much of your work is centered on connection. I like the fundamental level and we're living in a world that feels like it's getting more and more disconnected than ever before. Um, if you go back a couple of decades, young people used to see their friends once a week or twice a week. About, about 80% of people, people did. Now it's getting down to about 30, 40%, which is really, really crazy. I did a talk on stage the other day and there was five, 600 people in the audience. And the kid sat to my fart bottom left here, raised his hand. And his question in front of 600 people was essentially, I'm lonely and how do I make friends? He sat in a room with 700 people that are his exact age. And he's asking me in front of all of them, which I respect.

• 1:39:22Steven Bartlett?

  He's asking me the question, how do I make friends? A lot of people ask that. A lot of men come up to me and whisper it to me. It talks. They'll say it to me. So they'll, they'll make, cause we film a lot. They'll come up really close to me and basically express that. They'll say it in my DMs. How do I make friends?

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I get that all the time to the podcast, to the column. That is one of the most frequent questions is, I'm lonely. How do I make connections? How do I make friends from younger people especially? But older people too. And I think that it's really frightening because when I watch my son who's 18.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  People think, look, going back to your graph, that they are, quote, "seeing their friends" because they're sending pictures of themselves back and forth on Snapchat to their friends. And they think that that's socializing. But it's so different. We learned this during COVID, that there's such a difference between being in a room with someone and, you know, being mediated by a screen. But they're not even having conversations like you would if you were with your friend. Things happen. You have shared experiences. You're doing things together. Conversation just more naturally flows. They're literally, you know, they're sending texts to each other that are just emojis or, you know, a picture of this. They're not really learning. So it's not just how do I meet friends, but it's how do I be in friendship with someone?

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  And it's hard because a lot of people aren't interested in doing that. Like, if you said at that age, you know, "Let's hang out", sometimes people will, but really more people are just on their phones 24/7, and they think they're super social. But they're not. It's like the difference between vulnerability online and true vulnerability. So a lot of people, in fact, I was just on Instagram, and I saw somebody saying, "I'm gonna be so vulnerable." I see this all the time. "I'm gonna be so vulnerable with all of you and share this thing." And all their followers say, you know, "That was so brave", and lots of heart emojis and all of that. That's not vulnerability.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  To put that out on a public platform? True vulnerability is what this kid was asking you, which is when you are face-to-face with someone, if you're with your partner or a close friend or a family member, and you want to share something you need in the relationship or something that you feel shame about or something that is scary for you to take the mask off and share with somebody, that's true vulnerability because the stakes are high. What is this person going to think of me? Again, going back to, "I need to be loved." We all need to be loved. What is this person going to think of me? How will they love me if they know the truth of who I am, this thing that I'm about to share? Very different from sharing it on Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  So I think that it's really important that we as adults look at how much FaceTime do we have? FaceTime in person time do we have with people? Are we really prioritizing that and are we modeling that for the next generation?

• 1:42:25Steven Bartlett?

  What would you have said to him? Because what I ended up saying to him, because it really took me off guard. No one had asked me that, obviously, in front of a huge group of people. I said to him, um, what you've just done, do more of that. And what I meant by that is he had been so vulnerable and open. And I've come to learn that vulnerability in and of itself is a magnet, not a repellent that we think it is. So I said, do more of that. But I, I thought maybe that's not the best possible answer I could have given him.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  I love that answer. That's a great answer. I also might have said, um, turn to the, I want everybody in this room to turn to the person on your right and introduce yourself to them and ask them about one thing that they want you to know about them, because that's how you're going to start making friends.

• 1:43:09Steven Bartlett?

  We didn't do that anymore.

• 1:43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we can. You see, they're simple things. It's not like, you know, people say, it feels so overwhelming. How do I make friends? And they think they're going to have to learn all these tactics and techniques when really it's just about be curious, ask someone about themselves. And the people who are receptive to that, they might become your friends. People who aren't, I'm not really interested in them. Doesn't really matter.

• 1:43:36Steven Bartlett?

  Laurie, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:43:42Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, this is a fantastic question. If you had 60 days left on earth,

• 1:43:52Steven Bartlett?

  what would be the first and last thing that you'd do?

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  Hug my son. No question.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  It's simple for me. There are so many things I would, I would like to do, but I think that if you read, maybe you should talk to someone, you'll see that what I did was I made sure that I'm already doing the things that I want to do now, instead of putting them off for later. So there's nothing that, that I would be doing in these 60 days that would be drastically different from what I'm doing now. And I think that that's where I'm trying to get people in therapy, is to live the life that you want to be living now, so that you don't, when you get these questions about if you only had 60 days left, you're not like, I would do things entirely differently. Why? What are you waiting for? We shouldn't have to wait.

• 1:44:41Steven Bartlett?

  Laurie, thank you so much. Thank you for writing the book. There's this quote on the front of the book, which I think perfectly encapsulates how many people will feel if they get this book, which is rarely has a book challenged me to see myself in an entirely new light, and was at the same time, laugh out loud funny and utterly absorbing. It's a quote by Katie Couric on the front of the book. And the remarkable thing about all of your work is that it's both so incredibly accessible, but it's so clearly built on real world experiences that I think so many people can relate to. And you really tend to focus on the fundamentals of a problem, not the things that just appear on the surface. And an ability to get to the fundamental of the problem, I think, is a really magical thing to be able to do. And I just wish there was, you know, I would, I wish you

• 1:45:27Steven Bartlett?

  could be everyone's therapist, but I think the book can be, if you can't be, because you only have a certain amount of time in a day. It's really, really remarkable, the mission that you run, and how many people you're serving by your column, by your podcast, by the books that you've written, and everything that you continue to do. Thank you so much.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  My pleasure. Thank you.