Unlock the transformative power of breakups with relationship scientist Dr. Gary Lewandowski, who joins us to offer a fresh perspective on the end of love affairs. Through the lens of his book "Stronger Than You Think" and the innovative tool StayGo, Dr. Lewandowski guides us through heartbreak's hidden opportunities, drawing on the Japanese art of kintsugi to illustrate finding strength in our fractures. The dialogue promises empowerment, emphasizing personal growth and liberation that often go unrecognized amidst the anguish of a split.
As we navigate the aftermath of a relationship, Dr. Lewandowski shares groundbreaking findings on how rediscovering oneself can be self-care. We discuss the study, revealing a surprising twist: the comfort found in re-engaging with pre-relationship interests outweighs that of new pursuits. This episode probes the complexities of identity and the intertwining that occurs within a partnership, highlighting the importance of a diversified self. We also tackle the weighty decisions that come with potentially ending a relationship, underscoring the gravity of such crossroads in life.
Turning the spotlight on the enigmatic dance of attraction and power within relationships, we scrutinize the halo effect and its deceptive sway. Dr. Lewandowski and I dissect the allure of physical beauty, its fleeting promise, and the stability found in more profound, more compatible matches. Finally, we dive into maintaining an equitable power balance and how authenticity and self-reflection can foster healthier, more balanced connections. This episode promises not just insights, but practical wisdom for those seeking to understand the heart's journey through love and loss.
Unlock the transformative power of breakups with relationship scientist Dr. Gary Lewandowski, who joins us to offer a fresh perspective on the end of love affairs. Through the lens of his book "Stronger Than You Think" and the innovative tool StayGo, Dr. Lewandowski guides us through heartbreak's hidden opportunities, drawing on the Japanese art of kintsugi to illustrate finding strength in our fractures. The dialogue promises empowerment, emphasizing personal growth and liberation that often go unrecognized amidst the anguish of a split.
As we navigate the aftermath of a relationship, Dr. Lewandowski shares groundbreaking findings on how rediscovering oneself can be self-care. We discuss the study, revealing a surprising twist: the comfort found in re-engaging with pre-relationship interests outweighs that of new pursuits. This episode probes the complexities of identity and the intertwining that occurs within a partnership, highlighting the importance of a diversified self. We also tackle the weighty decisions that come with potentially ending a relationship, underscoring the gravity of such crossroads in life.
Turning the spotlight on the enigmatic dance of attraction and power within relationships, we scrutinize the halo effect and its deceptive sway. Dr. Lewandowski and I dissect the allure of physical beauty, its fleeting promise, and the stability found in more profound, more compatible matches. Finally, we dive into maintaining an equitable power balance and how authenticity and self-reflection can foster healthier, more balanced connections. This episode promises not just insights, but practical wisdom for those seeking to understand the heart's journey through love and loss.
I'm Carrie Brett, and this is Shot at Love. Today's guest is Dr Gary Lewandowski. He's a professor, relationship scientist, author and speaker who's given over 120 conference presentations and written articles for over 150 media outlets. Over 2 million people have viewed his TED Talk about breakups. His new book, Stronger Than you Think, opens readers' eyes so they can accurately and confidently view themselves when searching for a relationship they want. In this week's episode, we will discuss blind spots that undermine your relationship and how to see past them, so we don't have to learn the hard way when we come back. We'll talk about everything from science of heartbreak to why learning scientific data leads to better decision making and why breakups don't have to leave you broken because you're stronger than you know. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Dr Gary Lewandowski has been featured as a relationship expert in hundreds of publications, including the New York Times, NPR, CNN Time, Marie Claire, Men's Health and Forbes, to name a few. He's also a professor and former chair in the Department of Psychology at Monmouth University. Dr Lewandowski's research, writing and public speaking focuses on romantic relationships, self and identity. He recently published his first book, Stronger Than you Think the 10 Blind Spots that Undermine your Relationship and how to See Past them. He also co-created the app StayGo, which tells you whether it's time to commit or quit. Using this app, you can make informed decisions about your love life while deciding faster to stay or go. He's dedicated his life to helping people build resilience and find meaning in the face of adversity.
Speaker 1:It is my honor to welcome Dr Gary Lewandowski. Hi, Gary, Thanks so much for being here. Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited that you're here. This is the first time I've had a dating or relationship scientist here, which is going to be fascinating for people and especially me.
Speaker 1:And I discovered you from an interview that you did on the podcast Save the Date, which was created by the CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel, and you talked about your TED Talk. So when I heard that that, I looked you up and I couldn't believe that. You compared the japanese art of kintsuki to being broken and in your and in your ted talk you said you could take, damage and repair and make something beautiful. I also compared being broken to kintsuki on an episode that I did with John Fleming and Karen Akal, the Chai Rum guys, and I thought it was such a like a random thing that we were talking about on the podcast and I, just when I ever heard that, I thought I've got to reach out to this person, because we must think alike about a lot of things, and I could tell that you were a really nice person and that you truly cared about helping others.
Speaker 3:Well, I guess it's not every day that people compare broken pottery to broken relationships, and so if you find two people that have done that, those two people should find their way to have a conversation. That's right.
Speaker 1:So I'm an artist, so my information different things that I pick up, I'm guessing is different than, say, science, like art and science are a little different. But today I want to talk about your book and your TED talk and I I have to tell people about the beginning of this TED talk because it's it must have been nerve-wracking. But I love how you walk out on the stage and you ask the audience how many of you have experienced a breakup or divorce. Can I see a show of hands? And then everybody puts their hands up and then you say, can you please keep your hand up if you've survived that experience? And then everyone just starts laughing and and then you say keep your hand up, learn something about yourself going through a divorce or a breakup. Can you talk about how you had this idea or what that experience was like, or the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, any of that? Just take us to that time.
Speaker 3:Sure, you know. And so that they say you know research ideas come from a lot of personal experience, and I think that's often the case. You come up with ideas, or at least questions about how the world works by drawing upon. Some of them have been bad, but actually some of them have been pretty good too.
Speaker 3:And so you know I'm like everybody else, like I've lived through those experiences where you know, I had a breakup that I thought was just like the end of the world, like I thought it was all going to be over, and you know this is not what I wanted or expected or any of those kinds of things. And so you know, living through those experiences, you start coming up with ideas about what it means and what it could mean. And then you wonder if other people have the same kind of experience. And you know, for most people they just have to kind of wonder. But when you know you do science in the world of relationships, you don't have to just wonder, you get to be nosy and you get to ask a bunch of people. And so that's basically what I did.
Speaker 1:Right. So you researched this group of particularly sad people and I think honestly you could have done the whole case study on me during my breakup. But there's this devastated group and I think it's one out of three considered a breakup negative, but but you also said that overall it was positive and it was almost like being paroled.
Speaker 3:Now you're free, can you talk about that? Yeah, and so you know, this is the thing with breakup is everyone just kind of assumes it's a negative experience and and you know, don't get me wrong, it is. I mean, even the best breakups, best breakups, they're still a negative piece of it. But this is the thing, is that most experience in our lives, I mean, they're not a hundred percent bad or a hundred percent good, and so breakup is no exception, and so there's a mix. And so you know, you're absolutely right about the percentage.
Speaker 3:Like one in three said it was negative, but what that means is the rest didn't consider it overall negative, and so what we actually found was about 40% considered their breakup overall positive and, as you pointed out, this was a group of people that should have been especially sad.
Speaker 3:These were people who had broken up, generally within the last three to six months and hadn't found a new relationship, so they were single, they were alone and it was still relatively fresh. So you know, if anything, this was a group primed to not find the positives in this experience, and yet four out of 10 said you know what, overall, this has been a good thing. You know, and if your math's good, you kind of know, like the rest of them fell in the middle, right. I mean, if one out of three negative is about four out of ten that said it was positive. The rest basically said it was neutral, which which is actually pretty darn good too, considering that you know they'd broken up recently and they were still single and so, um, you know, we we tend to think breakups are going to be worse than they are, and that's important to kind of get a hold on, because if we start thinking our breakups are going to be worse than they are, they can encourage us to stay in relationships longer than we should.
Speaker 1:So what happens when people get out of an impoverished relationship? Can you talk about the addition by subtraction process? What happens?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and so you know, a lot of the research I've done really focuses on this idea of self-expansion, and self-expansion is a person's motivation to become a better person. We seek out relationships to help us grow, and relationships, particularly romantic relationships, are one of the primary sources of self-expansion in our lives, and so our romantic partner really takes a lot of the responsibility for helping us grow. And so if you're in a relationship with someone who's not doing that for you, they're not helping you grow, they're not helping you become a better person by getting rid of them. It's essentially addition. By subtraction, by losing this person, that's kind of holding you back. You now have the opportunities to achieve that self-expansion that the previous relationship was preventing you from attaining right.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I know myself, I wouldn't even have this podcast if it wasn't for the support of my boyfriend and encouragement, and it's been so. He, like, gave me the wings to fly and he isn't threatened by my produce, is rolling his eyes. But I feel that way because I had been held back before and I and I'm always just honest about what I've been through and because there was there was lack of information of how I could navigate a breakup and the pain. It took me a lot longer and I think this is why I love your book so much, because, like you said, you were able to find all these people in relationships and like, wait for them to break up and then gather the data.
Speaker 1:And these are the things that you found that people's lives weren't destroyed. They were once they could get. Lives weren't destroyed. They were once they could get past the hard part. They could, you know, really expand and be happier than before. And to go back to your TED Talk, you say that relationships are the most important thing in your life and it's the source of your best memories and your worst memories. But a breakup can also break you, and what have you learned from people who felt completely destroyed?
Speaker 3:you can't not realize that after talking to somebody who's had a bad breakup, because even if they've ended what the outside world might consider a horrible relationship, that for that person that breakup and that partner was a really big part of who they were.
Speaker 3:And so when you lose something that is that much a part of you, it's devastating, it, it's identity shifting and it's it's altering to your to core. You said something about your partner has given you the wings to fly, but imagine if you feel like that and then those wings are taken away and now you just walk around. It's a very life-altering experience. You really start to appreciate how important relationships are and I think you know a lot of my early research was on breakup and then you know partly the book that I've written recently touches on breakup. It also touches on just overall the importance of relationships and what you see is when you see how badly a bad relationship and a breakup can hurt people, it really drives home the importance of having really strong relationships, high quality partners, and that you know that's something we really need to spend more time focusing on and dedicating our lives to.
Speaker 1:Right, and so people think about it like they research organic food or they research where they're going to go to dinner or whatever, and relationships affect our health, our emotional well-being and our career. So, if you, it's proven that people sometimes get sick if they lose someone or they lose their job. They don't have the skills or the information to get through that tough time and you felt that you could write a book that would educate people on the research you found. I was always someone who researched relationships so that I could avoid pain, and I was someone who made a lot of mistakes. Tell me what was the true inspiration or the mission with your new book, stronger Than you Think what was?
Speaker 3:the true inspiration or the mission with your new book.
Speaker 3:Stronger Than you Think. Yeah, I mean, really, what motivates me in almost everything that I do is trying to help people leverage all of the great information science has learned about important areas of our life and actually make it accessible and usable in their life. And when you think about, you know some of the areas that are super important to everyday life, you know, as you point out, relationships are one of them and you know it. The former surgeon, general vivick murphy, basically says you know, loneliness and bad relationships are as bad for your health as smoking. Right, I mean, it's, it's that important in some way? So trying to help people?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm a relationship science. I've been doing, you know, relationship science for 20, 25 years, trying to help people. I'm a relationship science. I've been doing relationship science for 20, 25 years and I know how much good information is sitting out there in journals that are hard to read, hard to find and expensive to pay for, and yet we all acknowledge that relationships are important. And so, you know, I really try to write this book to help bridge that gap, to take some of the best science that we have, at least the most useful science that we have to help people just lead better relationships, because I think a lot of times, you know, in perfectly good relationships people aren't always appreciating what they have, and you know there's a lot of sort of you know happiness and fulfillment left there out on the table, so to speak, where you know they're not really optimizing their relationship experience in a way that they can, so they're actually at risk for losing good partners, and so you know it's almost the flip side of breakup in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1:Right, so you, what you did was you invited others into your lab and you had them rediscover themselves. What helped and what information did you find when you did that?
Speaker 3:Sure, and so this is what you know when people deal with breakup, you know, trying to look to see, you know what kinds of things can we do for people and and study this in a scientific way to see what might actually help people. And you know, one of the things that we thought was going to help people was having them do some new, interesting and challenging activities. Right, you know, go out and try some things you've never done before, pick up a brand new hobby, that's really going to help. But we also thought, well, let's compare that to something relatively close, and what we decided to compare those new, brand new activities to were activities that were kind of new, and what I mean by that is these were activities that people had done before their relationship, but because of their relationship, they kind of set them to a side, set them to the side, kind of minimize their role in their life.
Speaker 3:you know, you know, maybe you had been an artist before your relationship and because your relationship partner didn't like it, you just stopped painting and you stopped doing some of those things while you're in your relationship. And so what we said to that group of people was you know, let's identify some of those types of activities and now, like, take the opportunity to rediscover those, like, reinvigorate those interests, rein, you know, reinstitute some of those hobbies and interests and try those things. Um, and then we had a third group that just we. We said, you know, carry on normal right, just kind of do your normal thing. And we actually, you know, to be honest, walked into that study thinking it was the new activities that were going to be the best.
Speaker 3:But it turned out it was the rediscovery of the self. It was going back to those things that had been you before you were with your partner and in retrospect, after the fact, it made perfect sense Because, you know, these were activities that people already knew, that they liked, they were already central to their sense of self and identity, and so it helped people remind themselves about the kind of person they were before they met their partner, and that that was, you know, a full, important, you know vibrant person as well. Those new, those new activities were helpful, you know, more helpful than nothing. But the problem with some of the new activities was, you know people would try a new activity and realize they hated it. Right, and so you know, we had, we had somebody who you know they were. They were determined, you know what they wanted to try. Brand new was horseback riding.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:You know, we had them kind of you know keep like little logs of their activities and things, and what that person realized was when they got on a horse the horse bit them and they didn't like horseback riding as much as they thought they were.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. Right and so you know, metaphorically, it's like get back on the horse, you know.
Speaker 3:Right, it was like, oh, I want to do is ride a horse and that just it didn't work out for them. But you know, and so you know, there's a little bit of, you know, uncertainty. I guess with brand new activities. They were still better than nothing, like I said, but it was. It was those rediscovery things that really helped people the most.
Speaker 1:That's good. Well, I think when you're busy and you're doing something new, you have to concentrate so you can't run those negative storylines 24-7. And I would think the people who were just destroyed and completely heartbroken their whole life was built around someone else and their life was nothing about them and so that's when that loss of identity you talk about really comes through very strongly, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. You know one of the things we know when people are entering relationships they start overlapping their sense of self and their identity with their partner. It's something we call inclusion of other in itself. And then as that relationship takes hold, you know your overlap becomes so substantial where you actually have a hard time. You know disentangling where you begin and I end off, and you know it's less about me and you are more about we and us. Where we start asking you questions about you and say, you know how much, how much do you enjoy going for walks on the beach?
Speaker 3:And people that have high inclusion of self in an ongoing relationship will say, well, we really like it, but you know we're just to one person and but you know they're so ingrained with you, know their sense of self, with their partner, that they just automatically think of everything as a we and us kind of thing. So you can imagine if you're, you know, mentally overlapped and merged with your partner to such an extent that you know you're thinking of yourself that way that when you lose that person extent that you know you're thinking of yourself that way that when you lose that person you know part of who you are can potentially go with it. And so you know, when you lose that big chunk of yourself, you know finding ways to fill in the blanks is really important and that's where that rediscovery process we found to be really helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I didn't even know about that. What is it called the inclusion?
Speaker 3:of other in the self.
Speaker 1:Yeah, had I known that, that term, that would have been helpful to me, but I didn't know that. So I think people have this loss of identity. But they also have, and I know myself. If I invest a lot of time into anything and then I lose it or it doesn't work out, I'm angry about that amount of time and effort.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, you know it becomes such a big. You know our sense of self is so important to every little, every last aspect of everything we do in our lives. And so you know, when you've devoted that sense of self to a particular activity or a person, and to the extent that you've overlapped and merged with that into your part of your identity, a loss of you know that activity is a loss of part of who you are. You know, which also speaks to why it's not such a bad idea to diversify your sense of self instead of, you know, putting your whole entire self into one entire thing. You know that that's potentially fantastic, but it's also potentially risky.
Speaker 1:Right, definitely. So we're going to talk about different blind spots. So you have in your book, stronger Than you Think, the 10 blind spots that undermine your relationship and how to see past them, and so I want to definitely talk about this because I know it's going to help a lot of people. In your research, there was a lot of common things people did when they were deciding if they should stay or go. Can you talk about how difficult this internal conflict is when making this probably the most important decision of their life?
Speaker 3:Sure, one of the things when people find out that I study relationships, people will kind of in a tongue-in-cheek or joking way, say, well, relationships are kind of easy, aren't they? But the fact of the matter is, if relationships were so easy, people wouldn't break up and people wouldn't have as many troubles and complications and drama as they do, and we wouldn't have dating apps, right, I mean, it's just, there's a lot of things that we wouldn't have, but it's because, you know, the fact of the matter is relationships are tough, they're hard to navigate, and part of what makes them so hard is that we have a lot of doubts and there's a lot of things that push and pull us in different directions. And so that particular research we're talking about is from Sam Joel and colleagues, some Canadian relationship scientists and what they. Basically, they do a lot of research looking on the decision making process in relationships, and so they asked people about how much they want to stay in the relationship and what are some reasons to stay. And then they also asked them for reasons that they should go, and what they found is there are 27 reasons to stay and 23 reasons to stay. And then they also asked them for for reasons to that they should go. Um, and what they found was there were 27 reasons to stay and 23 reasons to go. And so, you know, that's kind of a, that's a. That's a tough split, right, I mean, because we like to think, we like things to be a lot clearer than that, right, and so it's. There's that ambiguity, right.
Speaker 3:And it goes back to something I said earlier is that you know, nothing's kind of 100% one way or the other. It's not. Even the world's worst partner has a few redeeming qualities, and even the world's most ideal partner has a few things you might like to be different. And so you know, despite having doubts, roughly half of all the participants had an above average inclination to stay, right, and so they were conflicted, basically like they had a bunch of reasons to stay and a bunch of reasons to go. But when you ask them like, well, are you going to stay or are you going to go, you know over half of them said no, I'm going to stay. But those same exact people that had an above average inclination to stay also had an above average inclination to go to stay, also had an above average inclination to go Right. So I mean, they basically convinced themselves in both directions, that maybe I should stay, maybe I should go.
Speaker 3:And you know, I use that study as sort of the first big study that I talk about in the entire book, because I think this study does a really nice job of doing a couple things. And the first is just showing all the different considerations that people make when they're kind of thinking about their relationship. Right, I mean there's, you know, 27 plus 23, I mean there's like 50 things at least. Um, and so you know, when I came up with the 10 blind spots for the book, I relied very heavily on those 50 considerations and basically took the greatest hits, um, for the blind spots in the book. And I also start off the book with that, because it really just shows how confusing relationships can be and how much doubt is just a natural part of relationships and how, you know, I think a lot of the doubt that people have in their relationship comes from just not knowing that much about relationships. Right, you know, experience isn't the same thing as expertise.
Speaker 1:Right, I love that one.
Speaker 3:And as much as yeah, as much as you know you can have. You know, if I don't know, you know for one person I don't know what's considered a lot of relationships, but it's still not nearly as many relationships as we can talk. You know, touch in one relationship science study, right, and so you know we're always going to learn more from doing a research study than we are from one person's individual experience.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, it's funny because I listened to some interviews that you've done and you would ask questions like say, oh, not like you're tricking someone, but you would be like, do you think? And I always had the right answer and I was like I'd love that, Cause I. It was just funny to me because I just I have a lot of experience but I don't have the data.
Speaker 1:And you have a test within your book about power in relationship and it was funny because I did that test with my boyfriend and we didn't even know what end was up pretty much through the whole thing, because my answer was always the opposite of his and he was like you have all the power, I'm like you have all the power. So I was kind of laughing about that because it just showed that we were equal, that we weighed each other there wasn't one person just driving the bus, that we were working, that we weighed each other's, there wasn't one person just driving the bus, that we were working together as a team. But I do think these questions and all the different things that you have in your book are super helpful. And so what are the big blind spots in your list of the top 10? You know the the hits, the greatest hits, like you say, is that people are generally persuaded or led by attractiveness. Why do we put so much value on beauty and why is this not a good thing?
Speaker 3:I think we put a lot of emphasis on beauty because it's easy, right, I mean, like every armchair psychologist in the world likes to come up with.
Speaker 3:You know, hey, that person's got these kinds of eyes and it makes you know they have kind eyes, they have curious eyes with. You know, hey, that person's got these kinds of eyes and it makes you know they have kind eyes, they have curious eyes, they. You know, we like to just kind of infer a lot of personality information from other people's appearance, right, so it could be their physical features, it could be how they dress, it could be how they wear their hair, you know all kinds of things, because we like, on some level, to have the inside scoop, to kind of have some special privilege information about others, and so the easiest thing to know about another person, when you don't know anything at all, is how they look, and so you know, it just kind of starts there, like I think there's just that natural draw. The other thing is that that's really working, you know, against this in some ways is our own brain. I mean, your brain processes another person's attractiveness in milliseconds. So even if you, you know, decide, you know.
Speaker 3:I read this chapter and I'm not going to let attractiveness sway me as much. You almost can't help it, at least initially, right, like so. When you look at someone who's attractive, you know you're going to see. A beautiful person is beautiful, you're going to see, you know a hot guy is a hot guy, like there's just your brain just automatically registers such a thing. But you know what the benefit is of you know. That particular chapter is just to really really emphasize how it's not a winning characteristic necessarily for a relationship and so a lot of people want this super attractive partner because it's, you know, it's appealing like why, you know at some level, why wouldn't you? But it's. It's not something that's actually going to benefit your relationship in and of itself If you're looking for long-term stable, happy, healthy relationships.
Speaker 1:Wow. So you have this study where you have people view photographs to judge attractiveness. Can you tell us what the halo effect is?
Speaker 3:Sure. And so what happens with the halo effect? You know it sounds kind of angelic, but it's really just the stereotype where you think, once somebody is attractive, that's like one good quality, and the idea with a halo effect is that one good quality kind of casts this golden glow over the entire person. So once you see them as attractive, you also start thinking well, they must be a good person, they must be nice, they must be honest. Um, you know, there's a very famous study in social psychology, um, where they talk about, you know it's the halo effect, and they also call it the what is beautiful is good effect. And you know, they ask, they, they show people these pictures and some are attractive and some aren't, and people think that the attractive person is going to be the better parent, the better marriage partner, better in bed and all those you know, types of gray qualities um more successful, better job.
Speaker 3:Exactly Right, Only that it's not true, right? I mean those things you know, your hot partner isn't necessarily the better husband or wife or long-term relationship partner, and those things just aren't related in the way that we think they are. Because, again, you know, I think we just are inclined to. It's easy and simple and it's kind of a mental shortcut, but it happens to just not be true.
Speaker 1:Well, I've never heard that term before and I think all these different studies are so fascinating. And you said in your book that most people look for someone who's 25% better looking than them.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:And so say an attractive woman that they thought was better looking would potentially lose interest or be more apt to cheat. Or say the woman thought she was less better looking than she tend to focus her life around diet and maintaining being very thin and are perfect. And did you anything else that you found in that study?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And so you know what happens with this is, you know, we all kind of want to date out of our league a little bit right. And so that particular study you're talking about the 25% that was with online dating. And so you know, when people are online dating, they're really, you know, saying yes to the matches, people who are more attractive than them, and, as you said, by about 25%, because you know, on some level again, who wouldn't want this attractive partner.
Speaker 3:But you know, what I'm pointing out in the book is, let's say you're successful with this strategy and you're able to land this partner who's 25% more attractive. Is this even a good thing? And it's not Having mismatched couples where one's hot and the other's not. It leads to instability and it encourages these really bad tactics. So if you know your partner is more attractive than you, you're now constantly kind of worried about them potentially cheating on you or other people hitting on them, right? So it increases jealousy, and so you try to almost block them from encountering some of some of these other alluring possibilities by monopolizing your partner's time, putting down other competitors, some emotional manipulation you may. You might even try to make your own partner jealous so that they're worried about you finding somebody else.
Speaker 3:And so you know, just, you had, you got what you wanted. You got this more attractive partner, but you also got a bunch of other things you didn't necessarily bargain for or think far enough ahead about, and so that's, that's a problem, as you point out, you know the women, when they're the more attractive partner in the relationship, if there's going to be one, if there's going to be a partner who's more attractive, it's better for it to be the woman. But it's also problematic in terms of you know, the women start worrying too much about their appearance and dieting and those kinds of things, and it's the one kind of like really fun attractiveness finding is that, you know, when people are in happier relationships they tend to be a little, a little bit overweight.
Speaker 1:You also had some research about being out of shape and that is better. It's better to be a little out of shape, because if you're in a healthy relationship then you feel secure about yourself. So can you tell us why relationships could be bad for our waistlines?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, it's sort of you know, a lot of times, you know, think about what happens when you're single and you're looking for a partner. I mean, you're, you're putting out your best possible version of yourself, and so you know, if you're about to hit the dating scene, you're, you're going to make sure you're hitting the gym, you're about to hit the dating scene, you're, you're going to make sure you're hitting the gym, you're toned, you're, you're dieting, you know you're, you're, you're in the best possible shape you can have. Um, so it's kind of the opposite.
Speaker 3:If you're in a stable, healthy, healthy relationship, like if, if you're very much in love and very much committed and you're going to be with this partner forever, you know, I mean, of course there's reasons to be healthy in and of themselves, but you know you don't have that extra motivation of needing to attract potential partners. And so you know it suggests, you know, the the a little bit you know of a bad waistline, suggests a certain level of comfort and security in a relationship which you know in a lot of ways. What I argue in the book a lot is this is what we want, this is what relationships are for, is for comfort, stability and security, and so you know, if you're constantly worried about does my partner like how I look and you know, are they going to leave me if I'm not attractive enough? I mean, that's a really bad situation.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean, there's no peace there. Right, there's absolutely no peace. So it's like you say well, you got what you wanted. You got this super hot, high-maintenance headache in a sense, and it's basically something you call fatal attraction. You had this Bridgewater survey. Can you tell me about this? Because I love this survey and it was about this woman did a survey of men in high school, like the babes, and she followed their lives. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 3:Sure. And so you know you think being attractive is going to be helpful. But what we find is so, in that particular study the yearbook study, you know, looked at high school photos and they rated them for attractiveness. And so what they found was, when they tracked those people over time, people who were hotter in high school experienced more divorce. And you know they also found the same thing with celebrities.
Speaker 3:You know, more attractive celebrities have the same kind of problem, and so you know it ends up being one of those problems where you think, like, who wouldn't want to be the most attractive and if this is going to be great for my relationships and, um, it's, it's a real destabilizing factor a lot of times. Um, you know the, the solution, you know. So, just so you, you know we don't go too far overboard with this, you know it's. If you're a nine out of ten, it's not like. You know the solution is like, well, you know, make yourself a six and you don't have to do that. Um, what you want to do is, if you're a nine out of 10, you find another nine out of 10. And so if you're both nines out of tens, then you're even right, and so you have that match and it's something we call the matching hypothesis, and so, to the extent that you and your partner are matched on attractiveness, your relationships are more stable. There's less jealousy, there's less inclinations to cheat. It's just a much better overall kind of situation.
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Speaker 1:Well, I want to talk about this dark triad because narcissists, you know, women can be initially swept up and taken by the confidence of a narcissist. But a narcissist may not be better looking than, say, the woman, but his inflated sense of self, you know, thinks he's better looking than he is. And I love your analogy of the flight instructor who jumps out of the plane and can you, can you talk about that? Because that is the perfect analogy of an unhealthy relationship.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know the jumping out of a plane is, it's exciting, right, like who? Who doesn't want to do that on some level, right? I mean assuming safety aside, I don't, I'm afraid to hide so getting a chance to jump out of a plane on some level, but you know it's more about what it does to you. You know, almost physiologically, it's like your heart's racing. It's exciting. There there's this nervous tension before you you jump, and there's there's this excitement and tension before you land. And so you know, a lot of times falling in love is a lot like that, like you know. A lot of times falling in love is a lot like that. Like you know, it's this high wire act where you know, when you're initially falling in love, you have all these really really strong emotions, and you're not 100 percent sure if the other person reciprocates to how they feel, or where this is going to go, how it's going to turn out, and so there's just all kinds of excitement. And so the point I make in the book, though, is that, as much as that's really exciting, in a lot of ways this is what we're after those passionate love kinds of feelings they're just not sustainable. You can't maintain that level of high wire excitement throughout 20 years of a relationship. It's just really really difficult to do and time consuming most likely. Really really difficult to do and time consuming most likely. And so you know, that's just not as much as that sounds exciting. Perhaps it's just it's we habituate to almost anything, right? And so the other thing I point out with that is as much as your partner is exciting.
Speaker 3:And you know, if maybe it does feel like jumping out of a plane or maybe something a little less exciting like a roller coaster, your instructor who's strapped to your back when you're jumping out of a plane, they're not freaking out at all because they've done this enough times and so they've habituated, they've adapted, they've gotten used to it. And that's exactly what's going to happen in your relationship, even the very best relationships. People start getting freaked out. That you know. A year, two years down the road, they're just not getting butterflies the same way that they used to. But what people need to realize is that's an unrealistic expectation. You know it's. It's one of those blind spots where we tend to overemphasize the importance of that feeling without realizing that that feeling is always going to go away. Right, we, we get used to things really fast, right, it's just, it's just how we're wired.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all fun and games until you hit the ground, and it's just unless you've lived through that. I don't know if anyone can really appreciate that analogy as much. But those types of relationships are like crack cocaine, but they're not sustainable. They're like a mixture of like heroin and McDonald's, Like it's never going to be good for your body.
Speaker 3:Like a not so happy meal.
Speaker 1:All right, so we covered looks. I want to talk about personality, and I think my listeners would be super interested in why you discovered the data around why a person's personality makes you more attractive.
Speaker 3:Sure, I mean, this is another one of those. This is a study I did and was completely based on my own dating experiences where you know, I mean you'd have those dating experiences where you know you meet somebody who's like super, super attractive, um, and that's great, for you know the immediate term. But then, as you get to know them and you really start to learn about their personality, you meet somebody who's like super, super attractive, um, and that's great, for you know the immediate term. But then, as you get to know them and you really start to learn about their personality, you realize like, oh my gosh, this person is just not a good person. Like they have all these problems and all these things, like they're materialistic and they're dumb and you know all that kind of stuff and what.
Speaker 3:What I found in my own life was that when I found out those kinds of things about their personality, it actually made them less attractive. But I also found the exact opposite too. There were people that weren't tens out of tens, they weren't models, but then their personality, all these fantastic qualities they become more attractive. Not just the personality becomes more attractive, but you actually see them physically as more attractive. Not just the personality becomes more attractive, but, like you actually see them physically as more attractive. But the opposite is true as well is that if you see somebody who's attractive and you find out bad things about them, they actually you see them later as less physically attractive. It's literally like one of the favorite study I've ever done, I think, because it just it's so incredibly fair.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, how often is life this fair?
Speaker 1:I know Well. I think that's why your personality came through in the TED Talk and I think that's why you got over 2 million views, because you know you drew stick figures and diagrams when you're trying to explain the information, but you know you really used your personality in that talk. And it wasn't like you were just a scientist with these lists of studies, like you used your personal stories and your personality to relay that information, and I think that's why it was so successful.
Speaker 1:So, I want to talk about opposite attracts and how likely are people to choose the opposite of them.
Speaker 3:Um, in the short term it's possible, um, but what we, what we like to say in relationship science is opposites may attract, but eventually they attack. And so you know that person, if you're, you know, let's, let's take something that's like a true opposite, right, like you're very introverted, that highly extroverted partner might seem appealing because it's like maybe you want to be a little bit more like that person, and so in the short term maybe that's okay, but the fact of the matter is we don't change very easily as people, very easily as people, and so, as much as you maybe want to aspire to be more extroverted, that's probably not going to happen in the way that you want, and so you're going to still end up with the opposite kind of partner. And so you know, when you, on a Saturday night, when you know stay at home and you know just chill, um, your partner's going to go out and see people and maybe that's probably gonna be the last thing you want to do. And so over time those opposite features lead to conflict. Because you know you take another opposite and I think I use this one in the book is you know, you like going to the beach and your partner hates the beach. I mean that's opposite, right, but you know, in a relationship we kind of know we have to make sacrifices. So your partner that hates the beach still goes to the beach with you but they don't enjoy themselves. And you know they're not enjoying themselves but they're still doing it.
Speaker 3:And so as much as people will try to make it work, it's just not as harmonious as if you both liked the damn beach, like if you both liked it. There's just going to be infinitely less conflict. There's going to be less, you know, problems associated with simple activities, and so you kind of extrapolate that out to all the other areas of your life. And so as much as people will say, oh, you know, my partner and I we're opposite on these things, and yeah, I mean two people, you're going to have a couple of opposites, but if you look at the totality of all the things that you are and your partner is, you guys are a lot more similar than you're different most likely Right, right, Okay.
Speaker 1:So my last question is about power within the relationship, and I think this is really important for people who are handing their power over online, which I know a lot of people I've done it myself and it's lack of information, lack of all the data and science that you have. The person who has more power is less interested and typically men fill that role, and I know you have this principle of lesser interest. What is that?
Speaker 3:So the principle of lesser interest is the person who needs the relationship the least right. That means that's their less interest in the relationship wins, and it wins in the sense of they have more power, and so you can imagine this as the person who doesn't need the relationship. You know, when there's some point of conflict about you know, maybe one partner needs to move for their job and the other person doesn't want to move, the person who has more power can basically say you know what, if you do this, I'm going to leave you. And then they mean it Right, and so they tend to get their way and it's a real. It's a problem because you know in the best relationships we should have equal power and share power and be equal partners, but when you have less interest you're more willing to kind of exert that power and make decisions and have more influence and those types of things. Right.
Speaker 1:And so that that person is never going to. If that person has the power once, they don't have the power. Like you can't put someone on a pedestal forever. You can't live your life for someone else forever. So that is is one of those unsustainable things. So you can be in a relationship with someone who has all the power, but it's just not going to be long-term. Do you think that's right?
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely, and you know, and I think some people and as you kind of pointed out quite appropriately, is that you know this the high power position tends to be men, particularly in our society, right, and so you can find women in heterosexual relationships who are quite convinced that this is okay.
Speaker 3:I don't care that he makes all the decisions, I'm easygoing, I don't care about making decisions, I don't care about any of those things, I'm perfectly fine with this and that sounds good and possible in the short term. But that starts to get really old after a year, two years, five years, 10 years, you know, et cetera. And so the problem is a lot of times it does get old and then the person who was allegedly perfectly fine without having power decides they want to have more of a say. And you know, in some ways, to be fair to the person who always had power, like they're now, like the other person, changing the rules, like this is not the arrangement that we had, this is not, you know, the rules of our relationship game that we were playing by, and so now, all of a sudden, you want something very different and that can be really destabilizing to a relationship.
Speaker 1:Right, well, you talk about now. I try to give the information for women to protect themselves, so that they they have the power and they hold their cards to their vest. And you say you know it's not a good thing to start off a relationship by playing games games. But I feel like if women don't operate like they can take or leave somebody, then they are going to have a more challenging time online. Yes, just in the beginning.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, I actually I mean, I think, in the beginning and throughout the relationship. But I think there's a difference, though that doing that authentically is absolutely the way to go. I think doing it as like a tactic or a strategy isn't horrible, but there's potential problems there. Depending on how strategic you're a clear, confident view of who you are and you're an authentic person with a strong personality, who's not looking to other people to define them, to make decisions for them, and you know you're you're kind of in charge of your own journey, then yeah, I mean you, you wouldn't have to you see what I mean, like it wouldn't have to be a strategy then Then you're just kind of you know you're going to hold ground and do your thing Right. You know, I think it has to be a strategy when you haven't done the work on yourself and you're kind of faking it until you make it, and then that I think you know that can be problematic.
Speaker 1:Great. Well, that's really good advice. So, gary, thank you so much for teaching us the importance of our role in relationships, while sharing what's helpful as well as harmful in our selection process. Where can people find out more about you or purchase your new book?
Speaker 3:Sure, the easiest way to find me is on Twitter, instagram at LewandowskiPhD or on my website, wwwgarylewandowskicom.
Speaker 1:Okay, great. And what about your new book?
Speaker 3:Same thing. Website's probably the best you know, garylewandowskicom, or you know, if you.
Speaker 1:Google stronger than you think book. They should be the first thing that comes up. Okay, well, I'm telling you you've got to run out and buy this book. It's amazing. I think it's a dating Bible. Honestly, it's phenomenal and congratulations on it. It was great. I loved it and I and I loved having you on the show and the time you gave me today. I can't thank you enough.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely, I would love to be back.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much Awesome, thank you.
Speaker 3:All right, take care.
Speaker 1:And for now, this week's Tinder tips In honor of today's guest, Dr Gary Lewandowski. These tips are inspired by him. Number one remember the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. Number two a common thing women do is accept bad behavior from men because we think all men are like this. Guess what they're not. Number three often it isn't the case of love at first sight in the beginning, and the research has shown that people can grow on you. So don't forget personality goes a long way. I hope you found some of my tips helpful this week. This is what Shot at Love is here for To help you find love. Keep up the commitment to yourself and commit to helping someone else by sharing this podcast. Remember to stay safe and stay tuned for more episodes. I want to thank Feedspot for naming Shot at Love top 10 in dating podcasts. If you like this show, please subscribe and leave a five-star review. I'm Carrie Brett and we'll see you next time you.