Heart Versus Head
A podcast that helps couples fight better and connect again.
Heart Versus Head
Dating is Like Ice Cream
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
It's the peak of the summer season and that means ice cream. I scream... you scream... we all scream for ... dating to be easier. Why can't I find my person? In this episode, Beverly and Randy discuss how picking a different flavor might serve you well - in ice cream and dating.
Heart Versus Head is a podcast about relationship styles and how those relationship styles influence communication in the most important relationships. The hosts - Randy Hampton and Beverly Craddock - are a married couple who are sought-after relationship coaches, award-winning authors and regular people who (like everyone in relationships) are just trying to stay connected through all the noise of life in the modern world. You can learn more about the couple and their work at HeartAndHeadCoaching.com, where you'll learn to fight better and connect again.
Welcome to Heart vs. Head, a podcast that helps couples communicate and fight better. Here are your hosts, Randi Hampton and Beverly Craddock.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to Heart vs. Head. Your hosts are Randi Hampton and Beverly Craddock. Hey, that's us.
SPEAKER_03:Hi, Beverly. That was a very formal introduction to the podcast. For a pretty informal podcast, that was a pretty formal kind of introduction to things. The listeners can't see that when you make hand gestures at me.
SPEAKER_01:It was a smiley
SPEAKER_03:face. It was a smiley face.
SPEAKER_01:So, last time we talked about breakups, the way relationships end, and this time I thought we should talk about dating, how they begin.
SPEAKER_03:Are we doing this backwards? Did we start at the end and now we're talking about how they begin?
SPEAKER_01:That's how we do a lot of things.
SPEAKER_03:It's okay. Yeah, we do. It's because we're completely unstructured in our activities here. No?
SPEAKER_01:No, we're not
SPEAKER_03:completely anything. Not completely, okay. Okay. Anyway, so we're talking about dating.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, a lot of clients come in and they struggle with finding their person. I would say it could be hearts or heads. I would say a lot of females come in in their 30s because that biological time clock is sounding off. And a lot of females have that plan in their head that they should be married with kids by now.
SPEAKER_03:Don't we see that, though? I see that with heads as well, where they have a plan. And so many of them come in and they go, oh, well, I can't get married until I have a career. And I can't do that, you know, and I can't do these things until I have a house or until all my bills are paid off. Everybody seems to have a timeline in their head of when all these things have to occur. And it probably screws most people up.
SPEAKER_01:True. Okay. So yes, heads may have that kind of plan, which is what's causing my hearts to have their problem, which is their head partner won't
SPEAKER_03:won't commit because you can't commit until you have everything we we had we had a client one time and i remember it was a it was an issue where one of the the head partner was drinking a bit too much and and he kept saying well you know i'm a party in my life right now and it's awesome yeah i'm loving it and i'll settle down when i get married And then his heart partner was there saying, I'm not going to marry you until you settle down. And so you can see just the pure conflict in it of why they can't get past where they are. The heart's waiting for the head to mature and stop partying. The head figures they should party while they're single.
SPEAKER_01:We do see this dating issue come up a lot. I'd almost say a quarter to a third, potentially, of clients are affected by the dating issue. And I understand why, because really finding your person is important. It's that one person kind of for life, if you subscribe to those values. And until you find them, it's exhausting, it's frustrating. And we always talk about relationships fail until you've find the one. And so it's just one failure after another.
SPEAKER_03:Is there really one? Oh,
SPEAKER_01:come on. We're not going to debate. We're penguins. Maybe we debate. There's
SPEAKER_03:one. I think hearts look at it because they love having soulmates and this concept that there's somebody out there for them. Oh, if I can just find my person. I remember the ancient Greeks had a belief that when we were originally humans that we were almost And in order to keep us from becoming perfect and becoming gods, the gods split humans into a male and a female. And this is why we're all wandering around looking for our soulmate, the person we were split from. And it's a very romantic kind of thing, but I'm not sure that there's just one
SPEAKER_01:person out there. No, there's not one. I had an uncle who passed away several years ago at the ripe old age of 90-something. And he had three wives in his life, outlived the first two. The last one outlived him. And one time at a family gathering when he was getting married to his third wife and his Late 70s. We asked him, you've been married a couple of times. This is the third. Which one's better? Which one did you love more? Which
SPEAKER_03:wife is better?
SPEAKER_01:Which one did you love more? He had to ponder that for a moment. I guess hadn't really thought of it that way. And his answer was, they're all different. You can't compare them. Each one brings out a different love, a different connection, different chemistry, dynamic. They were all great. And he wouldn't have changed anything. But his pushback was they're just different.
SPEAKER_03:But they're all great in a different way. And that gets back to the whole thing that we're talking about in dating. That's what dating is for. And I think a lot of people miss this. They think dating is for just finding that one person that But really, dating is for sorting out all those people that don't come close to that one person. It's for finding that fit that But it's really dating is a weeding process in a lot of ways. It's about kind of weeding out those people that don't fit the values or qualifications. That's why it's, I guess it's confusing to me as a head when hearts get all hurt about dating. But then again, I have this tendency to take a very non-emotional scientific look at something and go, oh, well, you're dating to find the person you want to be with. Therefore, if somebody doesn't meet that and you break up with somebody that you had been dating for just a little while, and you break up because they don't meet the needs that you have or whatever, that's okay. It's actually probably better to break up. Glad you figured it out before you were married for 10 years and had a couple of kids. Do hearts and heads see it differently? Do hearts just look for the... Oh, it's love. Whereas heads are kind of looking for the disqualifiers. Do we look at it as heads as a numbers game? Whereas hearts look at it more seriously when they date?
SPEAKER_01:I would say the only difference that I would feel pretty solid on would be that if that's what heads are doing, because I don't know, I've never really asked you that question. If heads are really looking for the disqualifiers, I would say Hearts are always looking for the things that are connectors. We always look for the positive. We see the best in this person. And I always give this example to my heart clients. And I say, when women look at a pool of 10 different men, then we're going to look at that and we're going to see potential in probably seven or eight out of the 10. and men look at a pool of 10 women and they're lucky if they can find one.
SPEAKER_03:It's like ranked choice voting. You're like, okay, that one, yeah, maybe this and that. We look at it maybe differently. Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think there's a lot of that. And I base that on our biology, I guess. I go back, a lot of these things, we can't fight our ancestors, the way we were built as humans over the years. So I think One reason why women do that, obviously procreation, it's what we're all about. It's why humans exist is to keep the species intact and moving forward. So I think for women, we have to just pretty much be open to anyone. And that sounds terrible, but it is what I see women doing. Sometimes women come in and it's like, you're with that guy and he's three or four levels beneath her. And I'm totally confused. There's also the good girl, bad guy syndrome. out there where women are definitely choosing beneath them. And I think that that is kind of our biology. How do you overcome these things? One of the things that I've talked about is when you look at dating, dating is kind of like ice cream.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, wait. I love Beverly's brain because it comes up with these analogies, these comparisons, and it's awesome. So what you're saying is dating is kind of like choosing
SPEAKER_01:ice cream. Okay. Okay. So what I tell clients is choosing a partner is kind of like choosing your flavor of ice cream.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. All right. I'm going to stay with you on this. I believe you, sort of.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So when you think about ice cream, we all know there are three basic flavors, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate. And for a long time, way back in history, those were really the only three flavors. And then companies... started branching out with all kinds of things. And now I can walk down my local grocer and there is an entire aisle of all of the frozen delicacies that I might want to entertain. Even gelato or frozen yogurt, sherberts. I mean, you name it. Non-dairy
SPEAKER_03:varieties. Coconut milk. Ben and Jerry put some crazy in
SPEAKER_01:their ice cream. There's amazing flavors. But the thing about it
SPEAKER_03:is
SPEAKER_01:that when you're standing there in the grocery store, it can be very overwhelming. All of these choices, right? And that's kind of what the science is saying right now is with the dating apps and having so many options at your fingertips on your phone is that you're just looking at, do I swipe left? Do I swipe right? This huge pool of opportunities of different people. And at some point, it's so overwhelming that what we have to do is just start saying what we don't want. We start swiping away the people that, oh, he's too tall, he's too short, I don't like the way he looks.
SPEAKER_03:So we've gone from Baskin-Robbins 31 flavors to Tender's 31,000 flavors, and it's maybe too hard for people to make a choice because we compare it
SPEAKER_01:too much? Yeah, that's part of it. I think then also our standards get kind of out of whack as well right? Because when it was just three flavors, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, you pretty much had a preference, a subjective choice on that. But when there's thousands of flavors or lots of options, it becomes this higher standard. Well, maybe I'll try the chocolate, but I want peanut butter in it, or I want the walnuts or the chocolate chips, right? And we start to, if it doesn't have this, then I'm not going to pick it I've done that before where I was looking at even chocolate mint, which is a pretty simple choice. It's just two ingredients really. But yet looking at, you know, fat content, sugar content, how much dairy versus non-dairy. And it's so interesting how this paradox of choice and options drives us crazy. But if we go back, okay, so when we're choosing a person, when we're choosing ice cream, what are the things that are similar? What we wanted to do is we want to try new things. If we look at dating or ice cream and we just always stay with that one favorite, if a person has to be six foot tall and have a certain look, then we're never going to expand outside that box. Same thing with ice cream. If we're going to go peanut butter chocolate, that's what we always have. We might really be missing out on some kind of blueberry ice cream that's literally amazing and we don't even know because we never give it to try. So with dating, with ice cream, each and every one is different. The thing about it is, like my uncle says, they're different. You really can't compare them until you've been experiencing them. So inside of each of us, we have an internal preference, things that we like and don't like. We can make a list, which a lot of people do and recommend on dating sites, but even that list is what we think we want. We're already putting in some boundaries around what we will and will not try when there are times where maybe someone says coffee ice cream and maybe it sounds disgusting, but I'm willing to have a sample and go, wow, coffee ice cream is actually amazing. This is even a personal thing. I know when you and I were dating. So we're coming up. This is our 15 year anniversary.
SPEAKER_03:15 years together with the same person. Happy anniversary. And And that's a long time to actually put up with someone, 15 years, especially if the someone is me. So
SPEAKER_01:thank you for that. You're welcome. And we show up at the restaurant and Randy says, if you'd like, go grab a table. I'll be right in. I just have to finish this cigarette. That was not going to go well with me.
SPEAKER_03:You're saying you did not like ashtray flavored ice cream? It's
SPEAKER_01:a disgusting flavor. I
SPEAKER_03:don't know what could possibly be wrong with that.
SPEAKER_01:There were so many things wrong with smoking that you had no idea about. My father had smoked in one of the big stories growing up. was that when I was born, he gave up his 25-year habit to do chewing tobacco instead, which I get has also consequences. However, he did give up smoking because he didn't want a new baby to be around cigarette smoke. And so I think they finally- Yeah, but if he
SPEAKER_03:would have smoked, then I could have kept smoking.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know about that.
SPEAKER_03:No, probably not. I was opposed. It's actually probably better for me. I had quit smoking years and years and years earlier and then had gone through my divorce from my first wife. And that's really when I picked up the habit again. I was like, oh, I'll try to smoke or whatever. And I wasn't much of a smoker, but I was enough of a smoker that it annoyed Beverly.
SPEAKER_01:Which is why you knew that you were going to quit smoking and that it was easy for you to quit. And that's maybe a whole other podcast. But the point is, if you're so rigid in your standards or your list of what this person must be. And so you show up at the date and you've got this list on your phone. Okay, these 10 things, do they match? Obviously, cigarette smoking was not a match for us. And it was weighing on my mind. By the second date, I was already considering where's this going? Definitely can't handle the smoking. We talked about it though. And communication, once again, saves the day. And that's when I learned that you were quitting. Yeah, so I
SPEAKER_03:was planning on quitting anyways in Beverly kind of said, yeah, it's not going to work out if you're going to be a smoker. That's disgusting. And she's right. And so I went, okay, yeah, this is a good prompting to just not do that anymore.
SPEAKER_01:Good incentive. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Because ashtray flavored ice cream wasn't working for Beverly.
SPEAKER_01:I remember that it was around Valentine's Day and you had quit. It was. And it was amazing. So I appreciate that. Oh,
SPEAKER_02:thank you.
SPEAKER_01:My point is that Had I stayed with that list and this one deal breaker, I wouldn't have found or stayed with you and had this amazing 15 years. So be careful about what's on your list. Be careful about what you will and will not try. I would recommend trying new things that dating and choosing ice cream, they are very subjective. We don't always know what we like or don't like until we try something and after we try something, then maybe it's not for us. That's fine. There's no problem with that.
SPEAKER_03:There's no judgment actually in the ice cream shop. There's no judgment when you select. It isn't like all the other ice creams that weren't selected have to be bad. It's just that you're picking the one you like or at least have the best opportunity to like with all the flavors to choose from.
SPEAKER_01:True. Some people say, well, I still want to have gold and to be very intentional with dating. And absolutely, we support that 100%. You should have goals. You shouldn't date someone who is not looking for a commitment, but rather they're just dating for fun and you're looking for a commitment. That's not going to work. You're not going to change someone else's goals. So being intentional is very important for each partner. Lastly, I think that we talked about dating apps a bit I'm not opposed to dating apps. They have their place. I used dating apps many, many years ago before Randy. And I understand that with technology, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_03:Wait a second. Was that like when dating apps were like stone tablets? What dating apps years ago? Oh, I remember like the old, I'm trying to remember. What are the old sites? Like where you, you know, you go on the website. Harmony. You fill out a form. eHarmony. Yes. Okay. I remember some of those Those old
SPEAKER_01:sites. All right. are finding people organically, just like in the old days.
SPEAKER_03:Just the people that you find in your circle, a friend of a friend or somebody you meet at an event or a night out?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there was a couple where actually two moms were good friends and they were like, well, why don't our kids date? And they suggested it, which sounds really bad to date someone that your mom... Unarranged marriage. Here it comes. Right. But they're actually very happy, very similar values. And that was a good match. Some people who met through dancing, through their hobbies, their interests, their passions, met organically. Actually, quite a few people are doing that now, finding people.
SPEAKER_03:So, Beverly, and as we kind of wrap it up with dating and ice cream, is what you're saying is maybe for hearts? It's really good to kind of look through all the choices and to be able to have not necessarily a complete list of something everybody has to have, because then you'll never find somebody that's quite that perfect, but kind of having an idea of what you like and what you don't like.
SPEAKER_01:I think that we all have a type. I understand that. Certain looks. So there's a physical, visual element to it. There are some people that just won't date someone shorter than them, for example. I also think that the values are really important, which we find is one of the last things that people think about when they're dating. Yet, if I go back to that couple where the moms were friends, values were everything.
SPEAKER_03:Smoking is probably a value in that regard.
SPEAKER_01:Health. Sure. Absolutely. If people really look at their list, yes, it's important to Have your goals in mind of commitment, what it is that you're looking for over time. But as you either go through the app, as you meet people organically, be a little bit more open to different flavors, I guess, going to the ice cream analogy. Be willing to try some things. You know, if it's not your thing, that's fine. I know even coffee ice cream, which is amazing. It took me a couple of times before I finally really settled in that it was good. I think the taste buds were adjusting a bit. And I think as we mature, as we go through life, as we go through the dating cycles of our life, I think that sometimes we do evolve and change as well. So you want to be really open to the people that you're dating.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and even if you pick some of these exotic places that are ice cream places now that make like, it's rosemary lemon ice cream. And you're like, what? And then you try it and you go, wait, that's really kind of cool. Even if you try things, even if you date people that maybe aren't right there in that typical type that you talk about, Beverly, if nothing else, you're going to learn things you don't want. You're going to get the opportunity to go with somebody that's a little bit different and on a date or three. And go, oh, okay, wait a second. There's something that I hadn't really thought about. Something I really want in a person that I date or don't want in a person that I date. So experimenting with different ice cream flavors helps you identify what you like because that's what you have to do first. kind of as a kid when you're first introduced to ice cream. You go, oh, wow, I like this. It's vanilla, it's strawberry, it's chocolate. And then you've got to experiment with it and figure out what you do and don't like.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So the analogy really fits because children, you do usually start with very simple flavors, knowing their taste buds are limited. As they grow, their taste buds also expand and all these more exotic flavors can be examined, can be Experimented with.
SPEAKER_03:And there may be flavors of ice cream out there that frankly make you puke. True. So don't date those. Last thing before we get out of here. Beverly, are you a strawberry, a chocolate, or a vanilla?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, if I have to pick one of those three? Yeah, if you had to pick one. Oh, it's so hard because it depends on the mood.
SPEAKER_03:Right? See, this is hard. It depends on the mood. Head, I actually have a ranking for those ice creams. Vanilla is the top choice Chocolate would be the second choice and strawberry would be the third choice because I don't really like strawberry or chocolate. I'm kind of more in that case of those three options. A pretty vanilla guy. That's what we've got for you this week. Go date or at least buy ice cream if you're in that mode in your life. Thanks for tuning in to Heart vs. Head and we will talk to you next
SPEAKER_01:time. Hello.
UNKNOWN:Music
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to Heart vs. Head. You can learn more at heartandheadcoaching.com and check out new podcast episodes every Wednesday. If you have a question for Randy and Beverly, send an email to info at heartandheadcoaching.com.
