The Art of Manliness - #103 Love Factually With Dr. Duana Welch

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast i get a lot of

00:00:19.480 questions from readers about love and relationships like what should you be looking for in a potential

00:00:25.060 marriage partner and if you want to ensure a long-lasting relationship how do you

00:00:29.040 approach women what do women find attractive in men so i'm really excited about today's guest

00:00:33.960 because we have a phd who has studied the science of relationships and all the the psychology and

00:00:40.280 research that's out there about what men find attractive in women what women find attractive

00:00:43.680 in men and what science says about what makes a lasting relationship work her name is duana welch

00:00:48.960 and she just came out with a new book called love factually 10 proven steps from my wish to i do

00:00:53.400 and today in our conversation duane and i discuss what the research says about what are the most

00:00:58.560 important attributes in a potential partner for a long-lasting love and relationship we discuss

00:01:04.040 what women find attractive in men and what you can do as a man to be a little more attractive to women

00:01:09.520 we talk about the science of dating what you can do to plan a first date that really swoops your gal

00:01:15.480 off her feet and what you can do before you're married to ensure that you have a long and lasting

00:01:21.400 relationship really fascinating discussion i think you're gonna find this really interesting so let's do

00:01:26.140 this duana welch welcome to the show thank you so much brett it's so nice to be here okay so can

00:01:35.240 you tell us a little bit about your background and how your book love factually came to be sure well

00:01:42.280 um i'm basically a lifelong i guess i'm a lifelong nerd really i went to school continually from the

00:01:49.460 age of five to the age of 29 and then i became a professor and all my degrees are in psychology i have a

00:01:55.860 phd in developmental psych and in somewhere during my graduate school years i realized that my love

00:02:01.940 life was just this complete train wreck i was doing really well professionally and i was doing really

00:02:07.900 terribly romantically and having a good love life having a special person in my life was really

00:02:15.380 important to me i really connected with how much i wanted that and it wasn't happening the way that i

00:02:19.640 needed it to happen and it just occurred to me one day that maybe some other nerds out there had

00:02:25.660 actually made that their focus of study how to find and keep good relationships and so i started

00:02:30.240 looking into that and in fact a lot of people had done that research and i started learning how to apply

00:02:35.420 it to my own life so that's really where love actually's idea came from was hey i use this for

00:02:40.700 myself i use this for my clients and now i want it to be available for everyone okay and so i mean

00:02:46.700 it's interesting that you can research scientifically relationships and love because you you know we

00:02:52.260 have this popular idea that it's sort of this ethereal you know magical thing um but i mean how do you i

00:02:59.440 guess how do they research what makes for a good relationship what other what men find attractive

00:03:06.020 in women and what women find attractive in men how do you quantify that well so you're right

00:03:11.300 brett when you're in love it feels ethereal and magical and it is but humans person to person we have

00:03:18.780 more in common than we have different and that means that science can uncover some of those similarities

00:03:24.660 and scientists have a lot of ways that they do that they can use surveys they can use questionnaires

00:03:30.380 they can actually do experiments where let's say they post a particular dating profile and they see

00:03:36.660 who responds to profile a versus profile b and they can see you know from something like that they can

00:03:42.740 see well what do people prefer do men and women have different preferences are there things that men

00:03:47.960 and women everywhere in the world hold to be valuable regardless of culture and so um using a variety of

00:03:54.520 methods actually scientists can study stuff like this sometimes they even study the same couples for 30 or

00:04:00.100 even 40 years to see what makes happy marriages work so you start off your book talking about

00:04:05.460 some of the myths the popular myths about love and relationships what are the big ones and how do

00:04:11.060 those keep people away from finding a healthy fulfilling relationship well there are really four

00:04:18.900 big relationship myths and they're holding a lot of us back i know they were holding me back

00:04:24.260 um and largely because many of us don't even realize we're carrying these myths around with us so

00:04:30.460 an unexamined myth has that much more power to influence us one of the biggest myths that we

00:04:35.960 carry around or a lot of us do is this idea that love is really only for the lucky and the few and that

00:04:42.280 actually marriage is a crap shoot uh maybe it'll happen to you and you'll be happy maybe it won't

00:04:48.540 maybe you'll get married and you'll be miserable and it's just completely random and this idea of random

00:04:53.300 happiness is false scientifically speaking it's really reliable and predictable who's going to be

00:05:00.620 happy but unfortunately because people believe that happiness is something that might be given to them

00:05:07.080 and might not a lot of people are hedging toward remaining single and um unfortunately the the data just

00:05:14.440 don't support that that if you want real happiness that that's the way to go um for example brett uh do you

00:05:21.980 just off the top of your head know what the divorce rate is right now uh well you hear 50 percent but

00:05:27.840 then i hear different things for different socioeconomic groups so that it's like lower for

00:05:32.800 college educated uh but higher for on people who don't have a college education yeah so uh so that trend

00:05:41.300 is correct but the 50 50 number is actually an artifact of the 1970s when divorce was at its peak

00:05:48.580 studies right now are indicating that people who married in the 1990s and early 2000s it looks like

00:05:54.960 about two out of three of those couples are headed for a lifetime together it's also looking like

00:06:00.340 uh the majority of married people are very happy in fact married people are more than twice as likely

00:06:06.700 to be happy than people who are living any other way and by any other way i mean any other way you know

00:06:12.480 if they're widowed or if they're divorced or if they're single or if they're cohabiting

00:06:15.960 so marriage is actually a pretty good deal and it's a good deal in a lot of ways married people

00:06:21.160 tend to wind up wealthier even if they started off poorer because of the way that marriage encourages

00:06:28.020 people to organize their economic lives um and because of all the money you don't spend on

00:06:33.040 repeated breakups you know breakups are expensive if you notice that i noticed that

00:06:36.680 so that's that's one of the myths is that you know marriage is is not going to work out anyway so why

00:06:43.800 really try and of course when we believe that something's not going to work out how hard do we

00:06:47.800 try um a second major myth is that you really don't have to look for love it'll just find you

00:06:54.400 a variation of this is don't look for love or you'll never find it and again science just doesn't go

00:07:00.920 along with that um that that holds true when you're you know in that age group that's meeting

00:07:08.520 single available people all the time if you're in college or if you're in high school uh or if

00:07:14.200 you're working someplace where everybody just happens to be single then then finding someone

00:07:18.660 without intentionally looking really could happen but you know a lot of us don't find the right

00:07:23.460 person when we're in those environments and then there we are in an environment uh that's not

00:07:28.980 rife with the single and available and we're wondering why isn't it happening for me for a lot of us the

00:07:34.120 reason it's not happening is we really aren't looking and it it takes concentrated effort at

00:07:39.140 that point so that would be a second myth interesting um so let's talk about that some of

00:07:44.680 you know if you're looking for a partner i mean what what traits should you be looking and looking

00:07:50.540 for in a potential partner that will not ensure but uh hedge your bets on having a fulfilling long

00:07:57.820 lasting relationship well this kind of ties into another big myth of finding and keeping

00:08:04.100 love which is that love is all you need in fact isn't there a movie right now called love is all

00:08:09.000 you need i think so i think so probably yeah so um and of course the beatles made a fortune off a song

00:08:15.560 about that um you know i don't want to offend anybody who's a big beatles fan i love them too but

00:08:21.220 they were wrong about this love is not all you need you also need at least three other core things

00:08:26.740 you need kindness you need respect and you need similarity so if you just have love and you don't

00:08:34.200 have kindness respect and similarity that's where you see a pretty high divorce rate you know if you're

00:08:41.240 if you're with somebody who you you're in love with them but when things aren't going their way

00:08:46.560 they treat you badly um that's going to kill your love over years your love is going to end but if

00:08:53.840 you're with someone who when things aren't going their way they can still control themselves and

00:08:58.440 be kind and respectful toward you and toward other people that really is kind of a a big i don't want

00:09:06.060 to say red flag because that sounds like a bad thing but it's a huge sign that you have found someone

00:09:10.440 really worthy and uh especially if that person is is really similar to you it's very important to look

00:09:18.280 for someone who's almost just like you there was a study where john and julie schwartz gottman

00:09:24.240 two of the most famous long-term marriage researchers in the world

00:09:27.460 created a list based on their studies of what couples fight about and there was one word that

00:09:35.760 started every single item on the list of things people fight about and that word was differences

00:09:41.560 but isn't that there's a myth out there or i guess i might be another myth that opposites attract

00:09:47.260 right yeah yeah and there's actually a lot of research on that particular myth it's one of the

00:09:53.500 best research of all of them and um it's been researched not just in the united states but

00:09:59.740 multinationally and multiculturally and the answer is if opposites attract scientists can't find it

00:10:06.700 and when people fight they fight over their differences but i do think people have a reason

00:10:13.740 for believing that myth exists you know after you marry somebody um you start noticing the

00:10:21.520 differences you do have because even if you pick somebody really similar to yourself you don't pick

00:10:26.420 your clone right right so whoever you pick there are going to be some distinctions and it's going to

00:10:32.940 be those distinctions that if you're going to have a lot of fights those are going to be the things

00:10:36.900 you're going to argue about and so some people get so focused on their distinctions that the

00:10:42.360 relationship kind of becomes about that and they say oh i married my opposite interesting and i guess

00:10:48.280 i might be too that um i guess someone who's sort of opposite to you sort of attractive because it's

00:10:53.640 novel it's different and the beginning but then later on maybe those differences start to grate on you

00:10:58.820 yeah so that's the idea yeah absolutely brett so helen fisher uh who's a biological anthropologist

00:11:05.960 she's done she's collected this enormous data set of four different personality types

00:11:12.120 um builders negotiators explorers and directors and she found that explorers like other explorers

00:11:21.200 and um builders like other builders but then when she exposed people to uh dating profiles online dating

00:11:29.480 profiles and said who would you like to meet the negotiators wanted to meet the directors and the

00:11:35.560 directors wanted to meet the negotiators in other words that was the one case where science ever

00:11:39.900 found yeah these opposites attract and so a couple years ago i got to interview dr fisher and ask her

00:11:46.540 about those data and i said yeah um dr fisher i noticed in your writing that you talk a lot about this

00:11:53.660 i'm wondering how do those relationships work out because a lot of other studies indicate that people

00:11:58.560 are fighting about their differences but you've really found this one specific area where people are

00:12:03.680 attracted their opposite and she said all i know is that there's an initial attraction i don't know

00:12:09.540 how it works out what does the research say about what women look for in a man for me because most of

00:12:17.140 our reader listeners are heterosexual males so what is it that women are looking for in them and as a

00:12:23.180 potential partner and is there anything they can do to make themselves more attractive i'm so happy you

00:12:28.540 ask that question because um women are we women are not as complex as we seem truly so uh scientifically

00:12:37.800 speaking most people are more alike than different most men and women are more alike than different

00:12:42.000 actually and there are four things that pretty much people of goodwill multinationally multiculturally

00:12:50.220 in at least 37 different societies on every continent except for antarctica uh value and the only

00:12:56.700 reason they didn't study antarctica was you know there weren't many people and they didn't want to

00:13:00.220 survey penguins so uh so here are the four qualities that really really matter a lot and the first one is

00:13:08.760 kindness which i've already talked about a little bit and that comprehensive respect into it you want

00:13:14.480 someone who speaks you want to be someone who speaks well of others and when you can't speak well of

00:13:19.680 them you refrain from being harsh you want to nurture that within yourself because women are definitely

00:13:26.660 looking at that um there are some women who won't insist on it but you have to ask yourself do you want

00:13:32.720 someone who's okay with mean spiritedness that's not a good sign so kindness is the first thing um

00:13:39.040 lovingness is another loyalty is another loyalty doesn't just mean sexual fidelity it also means

00:13:46.320 uh this person kind of has my back you know if i if i come home and i tell my husband about a bad day

00:13:52.700 at work uh a loyalty would mean that he says that bastard how dare you say that to you uh instead of

00:13:59.660 well what did you do wrong at work you know he's got he's on my side that's loyalty and uh then the fourth

00:14:06.520 thing is intelligence and that doesn't mean that women want an einstein but it does mean that they're

00:14:11.980 looking for someone who approximately matches their own intellect so you know be who you are

00:14:16.500 and realize that the myth that uh jerks are the ones that women want is that it's a myth women

00:14:24.960 multinationally do not want jerks do jerks sometimes get short-term sexual action yes but the question you

00:14:31.420 asked me brett was about long-term loving action and that really is a character counts kind of thing

00:14:39.440 so uh those are the big four and you can summarize those as chill kill them with kindness kindness

00:14:44.820 intelligence lovingness and loyalty what about uh there's a lot of uh you know in the pickup artist

00:14:51.200 community that that women look for high resources right like it's like hypergammy i guess is what it's

00:14:57.280 called with you know men who have lots of money that's what they're looking for is there any truth to

00:15:02.300 that well yeah so so it turns out what i just told you was the the list of what men and women

00:15:08.160 alike want there's a much shorter list um that's also heavily validated globally of what women want

00:15:17.880 that men don't want and what men want that women don't want and so the two things that women are

00:15:23.260 looking for actually it's kind of four things when women are looking for a long-term mate they're looking

00:15:30.940 for a man who is all of the following he's willing and he's able to provide and protect

00:15:37.520 willing able provision and protection and so the pickup artist community they tend to focus uh often

00:15:45.140 rather angrily uh on you know women being gold diggers i'd like to counter that with you know men

00:15:52.040 also have their own biologically driven program this is a biologically driven program that women are

00:15:58.020 operating off it's kind of their operating system men also have an operating system and their operating

00:16:02.200 system focuses on fertility and fidelity and women who can't match those standards pay a very high price

00:16:09.460 just like men pay a very high price if they can't offer willing and able resources so um so i you know i

00:16:18.540 often hear the sex is getting very angry at each other uh but you know i want to ask just as i ask women

00:16:26.920 who say i wish you know it's so shallow that men are just about tna i say well would you date a man

00:16:32.860 who was much poorer than you are and they admit that no they wouldn't uh i would say to the men listening

00:16:39.600 to this um if you're upset that women are interested in resources are you willing to date a woman who's

00:16:46.760 20 years older than you and not very good looking and the answer is usually no and these seem like

00:16:52.920 totally shallow concerns but if you look at where we inherited these concerns from you see that

00:16:59.540 there's actually a deep psychology to them even though we might not like them that's the evolutionary

00:17:05.380 psychology correct yes yes so men had to face problems in the ancient past that women didn't have

00:17:11.660 to face for example uh a woman we always know if a woman had sex with a hundred guys and she got

00:17:20.340 pregnant she knows whose baby it is it's hers it's a genetic slam dunk she doesn't have to worry that

00:17:28.160 her genes are not going to be cast forward a guy of when he when a woman gets pregnant at some level

00:17:36.100 most men wonder is it really mine that's that's an ancestral concern that comes from a time when men could

00:17:41.060 never have known for sure now men can know for sure but our psychology comes from an ancient time

00:17:46.640 so men really care about signs of fidelity from women women on the other hand you know now we live

00:17:52.520 where there are grocery stores around the corner and hospitals down the road but women's mating

00:17:57.880 psychology doesn't come from now it comes from a time when pregnancy itself could kill you childbirth

00:18:04.100 could kill you and then the process of trying to raise a young child without a provider and protector

00:18:08.640 could kill you so it was a very dangerous act for a woman to become sexually intimate with a man who

00:18:14.280 either couldn't or wouldn't provide and protect one of the ways that we see this brett is women really

00:18:20.200 like tall guys they really like height you know um i'm a university i'm a college professor and

00:18:27.700 every semester i ask men and women in my classes to please write down a list of everything they consider

00:18:35.240 absolutely essential in a partner that they would get married to and eight out of ten women say they

00:18:41.100 want a man who's six foot taller taller but do you know what the average height for men is in america

00:18:45.660 like five nine or something like that yeah yeah and i tell women knock it off with the height snobbery

00:18:52.680 stop it because um you're cutting out a huge swathe of the population and you're doing it for a reason that

00:19:01.380 made sense to your ancestors in ancestral times brett a woman could be raped at any time by anyone

00:19:07.440 unless she had a guy who could attack her attackers so having a big man really made a difference back then

00:19:15.040 and the big guy probably could hunt more games so you know in the ancient past that preference for the

00:19:19.820 tallest man well that made sense now it really doesn't you know a five foot five computer programmer

00:19:25.600 can bring home the bacon just fine so i really talked to women about that and i know it hurts men's

00:19:31.480 feelings that women are except for the six footers it doesn't hurt their feelings but it hurts guys

00:19:38.100 feelings that women are height focused women are also focused though i'm going to just if you have

00:19:45.340 time i'm just going to tell you it kind of illustrates it yeah i gave i told my my students

00:19:51.400 i teach three classes um and i told all all my students this story yesterday and i'm going to

00:19:56.120 tell you the story and then ask for your reaction then i'll tell you theirs so i had a client years ago

00:20:01.980 who was dating this man who was very wealthy he was actually from a family that was very famous

00:20:08.280 although he himself wasn't famous and this client of mine had two children and i called the client

00:20:13.420 diane in the book so diane had two children and she felt that this man was going to propose to her

00:20:20.940 and she loved him she wanted to say yes but she had some hesitation and i said you really need to

00:20:27.420 listen to that hesitation because that's your the right side of your brain that does all your

00:20:31.540 unconscious processing one of its jobs is to protect you and unfortunately because the right side

00:20:38.180 of your brain is non-conscious it doesn't have language so it can't tell you why it wants to

00:20:42.880 protect you it just gives you an emotional sense which we call intuition and so i said you need

00:20:48.640 to listen to that intuition and if he does propose you need to ask him some questions rather

00:20:54.740 than simply giving him an answer so he proposed pretty soon after that and she said something along

00:21:02.340 the lines of um i love you and i really want to say yes but uh before i do i i really want to

00:21:11.020 make sure that i'm making the right choice not just for me but for you and for my children could you

00:21:16.560 tell me in your ideal world what being married to me looks like and he described it in his view she

00:21:25.580 would move from the city she was living in to the city he was living in uh where she didn't have a job

00:21:32.160 and she would um find a job and she would never own any portion of the house that they shared

00:21:38.760 she'd move into his house and um she would be responsible for making sure she paid for her

00:21:46.680 children's health insurance this is a guy who's worth multi-millions of dollars who had a you know

00:21:51.000 group insurance and he didn't he just didn't feel like doing it and uh he also made it clear that

00:21:56.520 of course she would be the one to earn and pay for half the bills and all of her children's education

00:22:02.220 now i ask you in your opinion brett was that a good deal for her should she have said yes to this guy

00:22:09.480 um i mean probably not i mean it sounds like uh it was more like a business arrangement than a uh

00:22:16.120 relationship yeah uh so yesterday i told this story to all my students and 100 of them

00:22:23.000 said that uh they were strongly in favor of her saying no and i said well that's what she said

00:22:28.760 and the guy believing himself to be a great catch because he knew that women value resources

00:22:33.660 told her she was making a mistake and she would always regret this and in fact what she did is she

00:22:39.560 found a man who is worth probably or was worth probably about 120th financially 120th of this guy's

00:22:49.880 but when he proposed he made it clear that he was all in this is the thing when women value

00:23:00.900 resources they really don't value the resources nearly as much as they value

00:23:05.800 the willingness to provide those resources i don't know if you ever ride a bus but i'll bet you that bus

00:23:12.860 driver's married well yeah i mean that raises an interesting question so there's been a lot of talk

00:23:17.880 uh in the past few years about some of the uh the cultural or social and socioeconomic changes in

00:23:25.140 the workplace where in a lot of cases women are doing better than men and are actually becoming

00:23:30.480 the breadwinners so i'm curious how does that how does that play out in relationships uh where

00:23:35.840 women and men have these sort of biological drives right where women are looking for men with

00:23:41.680 resources but where it's uneven where the women are actually doing better than men how does that play

00:23:48.080 out in relationships is it affecting relationships that is a fantastic question so i'm going to start by

00:23:54.260 by telling you a little bit of research so these scientists um they ask men to rate their own ambition

00:24:00.880 level and the experiment was half the men were unconsciously primed with an image of a young

00:24:08.120 beautiful woman right before being given the questionnaire and the other half of the men

00:24:12.820 were not primed with any particular image interestingly the men who expressed the highest level of ambition

00:24:20.760 were the ones who had just been primed with the vision of youth and beauty

00:24:23.660 we shape each other's evolution women have shaped men to want to provide and protect in fact from a

00:24:34.600 female point of view a man who does not want to do these things is not much use as a man i i can't be

00:24:39.800 more blunt than that just as from a man's viewpoint they're very unlikely to go for a woman they consider

00:24:46.460 really physically unattractive so um yes this is affecting relationships when when women and i say this

00:24:56.680 as a feminist um i believe women should have every opportunity that men have not at men's expense i'm not a

00:25:03.800 a person who believes women are better than men but that that really there should be equality and

00:25:09.960 opportunity and what we're seeing is that most of the college degrees right now are being earned by

00:25:16.020 women and that although there's still a glass ceiling and very few women uh rise much higher than

00:25:22.740 um a well-paid employee at a company very there aren't very many sheryl sandbergs in the world let's

00:25:29.480 face it most of the the big leaders whether we're talking politically or ceos or very high leadership

00:25:36.440 positions almost all of those are still filled by men but when you look kind of at the level that most

00:25:41.940 people live on yes increasingly women are stepping into those kind of middle class positions and a lot

00:25:47.960 of men are for various reasons that sociologists are analyzing right now um they're they're not stepping

00:25:54.480 up and it's again that's for a lot of reasons but yes it's affecting relationships men feel deeply

00:26:00.880 insecure they feel insecure about that because they know that women expect provision and protection

00:26:06.540 and they know that if they've got a woman who's youthful and beautiful other men are going to be

00:26:12.720 attracted to her right yeah so if there's another guy who can provide and protect better than he can

00:26:17.940 and she's really beautiful he's got a he's got actually a realistic concern people who who say oh

00:26:24.140 that's you know that shouldn't matter maybe it shouldn't but it does it's kind of like i got a letter

00:26:30.880 from a woman who said that uh this man who was much younger had asked her out and she realized that

00:26:36.280 she looked pretty good for her age but that in another 10 years there's no way they would look like

00:26:41.680 they belong together and that whereas you know older men and younger women frequently pair up for a

00:26:47.420 lifetime the reverse does not often happen and she was worried you know when i get older and i'm not

00:26:54.400 as attractive anymore but he is very successful he can find someone younger so there in other words both

00:26:59.800 sexes have a corollary of this dilemma and so yes it does affect relationships when one party feels

00:27:06.260 perpetually insecure it's not going to bode well for the relationship is it yes and and you know

00:27:13.380 i've also heard people say well but that's the man's problem he has an insecurity and there's

00:27:19.540 nothing rooted in reality there that's not true you know the fact is um studies in evolutionary psych

00:27:27.340 actually looked at women's income level and their stated and expressed income level that they would

00:27:32.840 like their partner to have and at every income level women wanted a partner who had more resources

00:27:39.440 than she herself had and that was true even regardless of the woman's sexual orientation

00:27:44.360 lesbian women want to partner with more resources than they have straight women want to partner with

00:27:49.060 more resources than they had it's like men with youth and beauty you know if you want to find the

00:27:54.280 two groups that are worried about losing their looks look at gay men and straight women why because

00:27:58.700 men want that they want youth and beauty so it seems like there could be if things keep going the way

00:28:06.580 they are there could be some big social not upheaval but some big social problems where there's lots of

00:28:13.940 women available but men who are falling behind they just they're not marriage material you know it it's

00:28:21.920 really fascinating to me that you're bringing this up brett because uh this past wednesday i sent out

00:28:29.220 50 of my books to celebrities in hollywood and most of them were women not because my book is for women

00:28:37.960 my book is for both but because most of the celebrities that are single are women now let's ask ourselves

00:28:45.500 why when those guys become super famous they have their pick don't they sure when women become super

00:28:52.400 famous do they have their pick no they just have the guys who made it right yes and the guys who made it

00:28:57.780 don't have to restrict themselves just to the a-list do they no so actually women lose power when they

00:29:03.780 gain power this is in in some social scientists definitely in my estimation one reason why a lot

00:29:09.480 of women hold themselves back there was even one guy who wrote a book i'm not going to name the book

00:29:13.920 because i don't like it i don't think it's well done but he actually advises women never to get a phd

00:29:19.380 and of course i didn't like that book because i have a phd um but yes as women gain there will be

00:29:27.560 social and there are and there will be social problems because having a partner who feels

00:29:32.500 perpetually insecure as with a man who uh his female partner has a lot more resources and having

00:29:40.920 a partner who uh maybe is perpetually dissatisfied like some of these women with their lower resource

00:29:47.980 wielding mate that's not an emotionally comfortable place for the long term sure so i don't know what

00:29:56.460 they i don't have a solution i don't i don't have a solution here i mean i think we really need to work

00:30:02.300 on how we're raising boys right now and and give them more self-esteem i i really think that um there

00:30:09.480 are still perks for being a man but uh and and being a boy but i also think that the way we're raising

00:30:16.340 raising boys right now does not make boys feel very good about being boys and they need to feel

00:30:22.540 great about being boys just like girls need to feel great about being girls and uh i do think that

00:30:27.380 we're creating problems for long-term couplehood yeah i do interesting well let's go on to this so

00:30:33.060 you talk about the best place to meet a potential partner um where is the best place because everyone

00:30:39.960 has their idea like you know a lot of people they're looking for a mate they go out to the bars or the clubs

00:30:44.440 are those the best place to find a potential long-term partner it's really interesting there was a huge

00:30:50.540 study done on this this topic um very recently and uh the harris survey looked at uh everyone who got

00:30:59.920 married well it wasn't everyone they had a sample but it was randomly sampled so it was a good

00:31:04.740 scientifically well done survey they looked at marriage patterns over the period from i believe it was

00:31:12.220 2000 to 2008 and the data analyses what they're looking at is is who married whom and where did

00:31:21.600 they meet and how happy are they today and what they found was that uh yeah some people do meet in bars

00:31:29.060 um but a third of people in that period of time got married to someone they met online

00:31:39.180 and that really shocked me i've got to tell you and what's really funny about it brett is i'm married

00:31:46.700 to someone that i met online so it was funny because i'm living the data but i was still surprised by them

00:31:53.460 so it turned out that a third of people in that time period period had married someone they met online

00:31:58.940 what was really interesting was the people who met and married someone they had met online

00:32:04.160 were slightly happier than people who met any other way

00:32:09.320 that really shocked me because i would have thought you know a lot of people online are lying

00:32:15.840 and falsely presenting themselves and i don't know i just i had a lot of stereotypes about it but one

00:32:23.900 reason i appreciate the science so much is i'm just wrong a whole lot of the time

00:32:28.560 and the science tells me where i'm wrong and that's one of the areas where i was wrong

00:32:32.840 uh people actually really are doing well when they find a mate online so yeah there are better ways than

00:32:39.680 than bars um another really good way is i bet some of your listeners have kind of the the one that got

00:32:48.120 away the girl they could never forget and it turns out that uh research indicates that might be someone

00:32:56.360 you should go back to and see if it could work out the there's a profile for lost lovers who find each

00:33:03.800 other again and and get married and uh if people match that profile i just want you to take a guess

00:33:13.120 at the divorce rate for the people who reunite with uh an old flame uh that fit this profile and then

00:33:21.480 they get married what what do you think that divorce rate i'll say 75 are you ready i'm ready

00:33:27.180 two two percent wow two percent the the stay married for life rate for those people is 98

00:33:35.380 and they're very happy together i in fact i really encourage people if they fit the profile and that's

00:33:42.600 a big if if they fit this profile to go back and find that one that they cannot stop thinking about

00:33:48.460 and see if it's going to work out so uh the nutshell version of this profile this is research done by

00:33:56.060 um a scientist named nancy kalish uh these are people who usually met when they were very young

00:34:04.420 the relationship may or may not have even been sexual they might have met in the sixth or seventh

00:34:08.760 grade uh they they probably were told that it was puppy love that it wasn't real but you know what's

00:34:15.480 interesting kids fall in love and it's real love for some of them it truly is uh they the relationship

00:34:23.680 may never have been sexual or it might have been depending on when they met the reason for their

00:34:29.140 separation usually was that their parents tore them apart either by being frankly quite mean and

00:34:37.860 overprotective and just ripping them apart forcefully or by moving them you know military move was a

00:34:44.880 common reason um and usually they'd been separated at least 10 years when one or the other of them

00:34:51.280 decided to reconnect here's who not here's who's not a good idea to get back in touch with guys if

00:34:58.720 this woman that you've been thinking about if the reason you broke up was she was mean to you

00:35:03.960 she's unkind she's she was disrespectful uh you had serious personality differences don't even bother

00:35:11.460 calling or texting or writing or whatever it's just that's that's a no people don't change that much

00:35:16.600 but if the reason for your separation was something that had nothing to do with your chemistry and your

00:35:24.260 attachment to this person that is a really really good place to start looking okay so you use that

00:35:32.440 facebook profile yeah right yeah in fact dr kalish she let me interview her too and she was telling me

00:35:40.900 that facebook has created a lot of problems actually because people who are already married who

00:35:46.520 kind of keep thinking about their eighth grade sweetheart that they never forgot about

00:35:50.400 they'll get back in touch with that person thinking oh it was it was just puppy love it's not going to

00:35:55.520 really make a difference and something like six out of ten of those folks wind up abandoning their mate

00:36:00.840 that they're happily married to and abandoning their children and taking up with someone they knew in

00:36:04.940 the eighth grade okay so i guess another qualification would be if you're married don't do this yes if

00:36:10.180 you're married stay far far away unless you just like your life to implode okay some people like that

00:36:19.540 all right um so let's talk about so we you know let's go out move on to like the date are there is

00:36:24.260 any research on what makes for a good date because i know guys it's sort of even in our uh progressive

00:36:30.280 culture where men and women are seen as equals it's sort of expected on the guy to sort of be the initiator

00:36:35.220 um so what should guys be doing or planning to really knock out of the park when on that first date

00:36:42.300 okay so so another great question so um if we go back to women's inherited desires just like men have

00:36:50.800 an inherited desire for youth and beauty like men can't pass on their genes without youth and beauty

00:36:55.340 and a partner because that indicates fertility women have this inherited desire for willing and

00:37:01.440 able provision and so a man who really wants to impress a woman is going to play into that desire

00:37:08.140 he's going to do everything he can to show hey i'm not only able but much more importantly i'm willing

00:37:13.900 as i started to say earlier you know the bus driver probably has a wife it's not really important

00:37:19.100 how able you are to provide it's very important that you're willing and what this translates to is men

00:37:24.140 the first thing you need to do is be as generous as you can be do not hold back that doesn't mean

00:37:32.000 that you have to sweep her off her feet at expensive restaurants it means that you pursue her because

00:37:37.080 guys if you're waiting for her to take the initiative how willing can you be if you're not even asking her

00:37:42.960 out she's looking for willing much more than she's looking for able so you have to show willing by doing

00:37:48.540 the pursuing you should be the one calling you should be the one texting you should be the one writing

00:37:52.260 letters you should be the one sending cards sending flowers uh opening the doors and pay and picking

00:37:57.680 the restaurant and paying and the reason for that is not because your great-grandfather told you so

00:38:02.960 it's because it's a you're wanting to impress this woman i mean you know now if you just want a booty call

00:38:10.100 just treat him any old way and see if it works but if you want to impress this woman then you need to

00:38:14.860 tap into her inherited psychology which says the man who loves me is the man who puts effort into

00:38:21.300 this and risks himself and sticks his neck out and takes the the chance that i could reject him

00:38:26.940 and so you're going to you're going to take the lead and you're going to be generous and by generous i

00:38:31.900 mean whatever you ask this woman to do you're going to plan it and you're going to pay for it that's

00:38:37.220 generous it's an open spirit it doesn't mean you always pick the five-star restaurant it doesn't mean

00:38:42.360 you ever pick the five-star restaurant actually um if you're a student for example and what you can

00:38:48.360 afford is a picnic at a park you ask her to go on a picnic at the park and you plan the picnic and you

00:38:54.760 bring everything and she will be wowed unless she really is a gold digger she's going to love you for

00:38:59.860 that yeah like when i dated my wife when i was in college uh it was like i took her to a football game

00:39:06.620 she thought that was really fun and i chilies took her to chilies uh of all places but uh she

00:39:12.820 appreciated that i made you know initiated and and offered that and paid uh it worked out we're

00:39:20.480 married now i've been married for almost 10 years now well congratulations yeah and yeah brett that's

00:39:25.740 exactly what i'm talking about right there you know for you that date probably actually wasn't all that

00:39:31.020 easy for you to provide and she probably knew that and she respected and admired you for doing what

00:39:37.640 you did and in good-hearted women view you that way they view you as wow look given what you have

00:39:45.600 look what you've done for me you made this plan for me i know that i did a survey at my website

00:39:52.920 where i asked men and women alike to describe anonymously to describe their best date and their

00:39:59.960 worst date and i wasn't asking for you know the date rape stories i was asking for a normal date

00:40:04.600 where things had gone well and where things had not gone well and women it was very clear there were

00:40:11.020 two huge things that just meant dude we just don't like you anymore and the top thing that women hated

00:40:17.580 was a cheap man a man who got them wherever they were going and expected her to pay half for all the

00:40:23.460 bill and that was true regardless of other studies show that's true regardless of the woman's income

00:40:31.080 level what women hear at uh at an implicit level meaning they're not necessarily consciously aware

00:40:37.140 of this but this is they recoil emotionally because the message there is i either can't provide or much

00:40:44.180 worth i could do it you're just not worth it to me and uh usually when men don't provide it's the

00:40:51.280 latter it's i could do it you're just not worth it to me and that's that's the opposite of the

00:40:56.600 message that women need to hear in order to fall in love with you so um so that's you know part of

00:41:04.620 the deal and then the other thing that women really wrote about uh the top complaint was lack of

00:41:10.620 generosity or presence of stinginess the but what women wrote about when they were really remembering the

00:41:16.680 best state of their lives i mean you could practically hear these women swooning over over pixels

00:41:20.780 they wrote about the guy who planned something that was really thoughtful women are really into

00:41:27.420 thoughtful because thoughtful indicates willingness a thoughtful man is paying attention to what a

00:41:33.720 particular woman likes and he's endeavoring to give her something very specific so one woman

00:41:38.440 the guy told her um you know i'm gonna um i'm gonna surprise you

00:41:45.540 i guess he had told her what she should be wearing but he didn't tell her anything else about the date

00:41:51.680 just the hours and what she should be wearing and if i'm remembering this correctly they hadn't been

00:41:57.280 out very many times most of the people wrote about you know a day that was early in a relationship that

00:42:02.860 made her broke it and uh so you know she had on her biking clothes well he took her on a bike ride

00:42:10.180 through really beautiful country and she valued that he knew that she valued spending time in

00:42:15.320 really beautiful country and then he took her to some kind of a ride your bike up and order at the

00:42:19.880 window kind of restaurant which you know couldn't have cost very much but it was her favorite kind of

00:42:25.880 food and she was wowed it wasn't an expense thing it was a thoughtfulness thing and it showed his

00:42:32.940 generosity and it showed his willingness to do for her he was basically saying without using the words

00:42:38.920 i am into you i am thinking about what you like and that does it for us okay so it's thoughtfulness

00:42:47.480 thoughtfulness is huge okay generosity and thoughtfulness so uh what can men you talked a

00:42:54.140 little bit about in your book but what can men do and women um do before marriage to ensure that they

00:43:01.880 have a long and happy relationship um well it's been said that there are two necessities if you

00:43:11.720 want to be happily married you've got to pick the right partner and then you have to be the right

00:43:15.780 partner picking the right partner means that you're going to pick somebody kind respectful and highly

00:43:23.500 similar to you and this implies that you know what kindness and respect look like i actually go into

00:43:28.660 detail in my book about what kindness and respect are and what they aren't because there are some

00:43:32.800 people who really don't know what that's like think about how most people are raised a lot of people

00:43:38.880 really haven't had very good role models for those qualities so you learn to recognize those qualities

00:43:45.560 and you learn to only continue dating people who continue to exhibit those qualities and you also

00:43:51.900 commit to something that very few men and actually not so many women are willing to do but it's really

00:43:58.100 important to do this make a list of everything you want in a life mate and this list is going to do

00:44:06.740 three really important things for you and it's interesting i ran into somebody the other day who

00:44:12.160 had read my book and she said that she had heard the list idea before she'd never done it because she

00:44:17.360 thought she had the list in her head she really didn't need a list it was so dorky to have a list

00:44:21.480 she said that after she read my book and i made the case for this list that she actually wrote it

00:44:26.600 down and she said oh my gosh it was so different to write it than to think that i just knew it

00:44:30.960 the list does three really important things for you um the first important thing is it makes it more

00:44:38.040 likely that you will notice mr or mrs right so guys you're looking for mrs right she might actually

00:44:46.320 be right in front of you and you haven't noticed her because you didn't really realize what what you're

00:44:51.520 looking for i i drive a mini cooper and i've had the same car for 10 years i love my car i hope it

00:44:56.560 never dies and the thing is i remember when i first got that car i started noticing mini coopers

00:45:03.320 everywhere it was like the planet was just covered with them now did buying the car make mini coopers

00:45:09.340 appear or did buying the car make me notice what was in front of me just noticing yeah it was choice

00:45:15.660 be the list does that it makes you notice who's in front of you so that's one of the things the

00:45:21.480 list does for you and the other thing is it makes you do first things first right now we have a culture

00:45:26.460 our dating culture largely operates like this people meet they're attracted they engage in some level of

00:45:34.220 sexual involvement uh they start getting to know each other and only as the relationship has gotten

00:45:40.120 fairly serious do they figure out whether or not they're compatible the list lets you do first things

00:45:46.580 first getting sexually involved first and then hoping it works out that's backwards that's based

00:45:52.740 on thinking that love is enough but it's not and so doing first things first would be i know what's on

00:45:58.400 my list i know what my deal breakers are and if i see any deal breakers i stop dating that person i

00:46:03.620 determine who gets into my life and then that means that when i fall in love it's with someone where it

00:46:09.740 will work out this is someone who's kind respectful and highly similar to me it really just cuts a lot

00:46:15.380 of the heartache right out of the equation okay and then the third thing the list does is it helps

00:46:21.060 you stick to your standards not just identify them but stick to them um my best friend whose complete

00:46:27.720 story is in the book and she did wind up very happily married but she got she broke up with this guy

00:46:35.220 who um the relationship ended because he was devoutly catholic and she was a devout atheist i use the

00:46:41.960 word devout because really it takes faith to make either decision in my opinion anyway so uh they broke

00:46:48.960 up over that but here's the thing brett they they knew the day they met that she was an atheist and he

00:46:53.760 was a catholic and and they knew that that was a deal breaker but they did what people right now are

00:46:59.200 doing which is they said but she's so beautiful but i'm really attracted to him and they you know

00:47:05.260 got deeply emotionally involved when they broke up four years later over something they knew the day

00:47:09.060 they met it was heartbreaking yeah so that's really what need what people need to look for they need to

00:47:16.160 look for that kind respectful partner who's similar to them and who they additionally fall in love with

00:47:20.940 so the the list sort of helps you uh use your head like bring in your the rationality before

00:47:27.860 sort of like a us like a what's a fire guard against the emotions right getting the best of you

00:47:34.400 yes yeah so falling in love is a very emotional thing and you know it's funny brett it occurs to me as

00:47:41.580 we're talking probably most of your listeners like most people in the world think that women are more

00:47:49.140 emotional than men but it's interesting research across a large number of domains in relationships

00:47:55.840 indicates that men are actually far more emotional than women are and that men are less logical in love

00:48:01.780 than women are they're just more purely emotionally driven and so uh actually in some ways i think that

00:48:08.640 the list is much more important for men to have than for women to have because men tend to fall in love

00:48:15.000 in this very implicit kind of core gut level without really examining anything else and

00:48:23.520 i certainly have known some men who fell in love that way and just lived a train wreck of a marriage

00:48:30.840 for years that made them miserable because they weren't a little bit more calculated about it

00:48:35.560 interesting yeah i've read studies like that too where uh men are usually the first to say i love you

00:48:41.000 yes in a relationship yeah and they're much more likely to fall in love at first sight it's funny

00:48:46.320 i didn't realize that falling in love at first sight was a real thing because it never happened to me but

00:48:51.680 then i had somebody ask me the question of my blog so i did what i do i looked up science yeah

00:48:56.180 it exists and these guys it's mostly guys who fall in love first and when you think about

00:49:01.040 again inherited mating psychology evolutionary psych in a way it makes sense women value willing provision

00:49:09.780 well do you know what the top sign is that a man's willing what is the top sign i don't know

00:49:16.100 if he's in love with you okay so women have basically selected men to be less logical and more purely

00:49:23.740 emotional about this and to fall in love really quickly and really hard and you know sometimes that

00:49:29.260 works but what works a lot more of the time is know what your standards are and do not go there

00:49:36.380 until you're sure a person is meeting your core standards very fascinating well duena where can

00:49:42.140 people find out more about your book and your work okay so uh you can find out more about me and my work

00:49:48.660 at love factually that's with an f love factually dot co and uh my blog is called love science but if

00:49:58.480 you go to love factually dot co you'll see where you can get a free chapter of the book and you'll see

00:50:03.820 where you can buy the book for those who just are like i just want to see what people are saying

00:50:08.360 about the book uh you can get a free sample of the book also at amazon.com the book's available in

00:50:14.120 audio it's available on ebook and it's available in paperback at itunes at audible at amazon and you

00:50:21.400 can see you know reader reviews and um also professional reviews of the book all right well duena welch

00:50:27.860 thank you so much for your time it's been a fascinating discussion thank you i really enjoyed it and i hope

00:50:32.580 your uh your listeners do too and it was delightful thank you so much our guest today was duena welch

00:50:38.500 she is the author of the book love factually and you can find out more information about her book at

00:50:43.300 love factually.co and you can it's also available for purchase on amazon.com as well as itunes and

00:50:50.080 ibooks and bookstores everywhere well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for

00:50:57.140 more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:51:00.420 artofmanliness.com and i'd really appreciate it if you got something out of this podcast to go and

00:51:05.280 give us a review on itunes on stitcher or whatever it is you use to listen to the podcast really

00:51:10.700 appreciate if you'd recommend it to a friend so until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay

00:51:16.260 manly

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#103 Love Factually With Dr. Duana Welch

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