#288： Love is Overrated
Episode Stats
Summary
Do you find yourself making the same mistakes in your relationships? You have a tendency to ignore red flags and constantly end up in relationships that aren t healthy for you, or maybe you end up with a relationship where the initial chemistry is good but a few months later you re looking for any way out? Well if any of those descriptions describe you or a friend who needs some advice, then give this podcast a listen. My guests today argue that your problem is that you let yourself get suckered by love.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast do you find
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yourself making the same mistakes in your relationships for example you have a tendency
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to ignore red flags and constantly end up in relationships that aren't healthy for you
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or maybe you end up in a relationship where the initial chemistry is good but a few months later
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you're looking for any way out well if any of those descriptions describe you or a friend who
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needs some advice then give this podcast a listen my guests today argue that your problem is that
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you let yourself get suckered by love their names are michael and sarah bennett michael is a psychiatrist
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sarah is michael's daughter and a comedy writer i had them on the show previously to talk about their
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book f feelings in their latest book f love they focus on the most messed up feeling of all love
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and despite the irreverent title of the book the bennett's provide surprisingly solid and
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old-fashioned advice when it comes to establishing long-lasting and fulfilling relationships they
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discuss why our emotions can lead us astray in relationships and why men are actually more prone
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to being bamboozled by romantic feelings than women they then share both the red flags and the
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positive qualities you should be on the lookout for in a partner if you want a happy relationship
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they also discuss what you should do in a relationship in which you're not happy
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and why couples therapy is often not very useful this podcast is full of laughs as well as some
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seriously helpful insights on how to navigate relationships effectively don't worry despite
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the title of the show the show is family friendly safe for work so you don't have to worry about
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anything like that there's no bad salty language in it after the show's over check out the show notes
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at aom.is slash f love all right dr michael bennett sarah bennett welcome back to the show we're glad
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to be here yes hello thank you so last time we had you on we had you on a year ago to talk about your
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book f feelings and we got a great response with it the whole idea of it you're you're a shrink
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michael and the idea is based on your experience and your practice is just letting people know that
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feelings are overrated and you you can't put too much credence into them and how to manage those
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feelings we have but you got a new book out about one of the most troublesome feelings that has plagued
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humanity since adam and eve basically f love and it's uh subtitles one shrink sensible advice for
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finding a lasting relationship and the whole thrust of the book is basically love love is overrated
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why why is that why is love overrated and how does it lead us astray in life um sweetie you want to
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you want to take that one well sure also this is maybe a good time to mention since there's been
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some confusion with people that don't know us we are not married he is my father he called you sweetie
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i know but it's better than him calling me bunny or any number of names i've had since childhood so
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i'll take it so why is love overrated well we're talking here this book is for people that are trying
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to figure out how to have a long lasting relationship or whether they want one in the first place
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um and when you're really looking for someone that you want to be with for the rest of your life
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the romance element isn't really that important in the long run i mean i'm not a married person i'm sort of
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a happily not married person but my parents have been married for 40 years my sister's been married
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for i don't know 10 years with four kids um and what we always say is that the bulk of married life
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isn't about flowers and chocolates it's about you know wiping children's butts or just paying bills or
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doing stuff that isn't romantic at all uh so when you really follow your feelings and follow your heart
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or your gut uh you know another thing we always say follow your brain not your gut your gut's
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literally full of shit um so that's why it's important to not get tied up in romance and good
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feeling when your goal is to be with someone through a lot of boring or bad feelings or a lot of conflict
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because that's really what a lot of marriage is to know that you have a strong enough partnership
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that you can get through that stuff and still like each other even if you're not still
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totally hot for each other all the time and this isn't to say that romance you can't you shouldn't
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discount romance completely it's a part but it's only a part of a relationship exactly you can't
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force yourself to be with someone that you don't feel some spark with or have you know some romantic
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attraction to but when you're looking for that partner you want to be with long term the romance
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part isn't the most important there it has to be there to some degree or else you know you're going to
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end up presenting the crap out of whoever you're with and being really annoyed with yourself you
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sort of force yourself to be with someone but there's so much stuff that's more important than
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romance in the long term and if you want to be with someone for the long term you can't let romance
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blind you to uh those elements and whether they're there or not you see i i see a lot of people in my
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practice who are um uh suffering because their relationships are falling apart they're on the edge of
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divorce or uh and it's not that um the romance uh has dried up it has more to do with uh the pressures
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that come from survival or raising kids or going through economic hard times if one of them it doesn't
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work as hard as the other or isn't reliable or doesn't hang around um um isn't a steady kind of person
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it creates uh so much pain and disappointment and there's nothing anybody can do about it once you
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get to that point so this is a sort of a plea for people to be their own matchmaker even if they're
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carried away by lots of love and attraction uh they have to have some to you know to make somebody eligible
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but to go through a sort of logical sensible routine way of vetting and screaming people
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so that they don't wind up with a heartbreak i see five or ten years later yeah we'll talk about how
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you screen that but i think it's interesting about your approach it is in a lot of ways old-fashioned
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because i think in the past few this particularly in the 20th century this idea that a relationship
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should be all about love you know and you have to have that spark and you have that chemistry and if
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you don't have that chemistry anymore then you just end the relationship and it seemed like before the
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20th century love was relationships or marriage was more practical like you married someone because
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they were going to help you further your goals you're going to help them further their goals
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you could establish you know you created a family you could help each other economically and so it was
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all it was it was very geared towards that and it seems like you're in a way reviving that
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a little bit very much so um and in previous times uh families knew one another more there was less
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mobility you have more and more single people in the city where there's nobody to do any screaming
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for them where families don't know one another where you don't know uh if you see somebody on uh
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tinder or match.com you don't know what their backgrounds are or whether they are who they say they are
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so you have to do it all yourself all right so let's talk about uh this screening process so
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instead of searching for a soulmate which a lot of people it's the goal for relationships someone
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that fulfills them completes them as jerry mcguire said you suggest seeing yourself as a romance
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recruiter so what what does this involve well the the major things i think you you look for i think
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recruiter is a really good word to use because a lot of the common sense elements are the same
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ones that people use when they're recruiting somebody for a job i think you begin by asking
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yourself what you want the person for what they're supposed to do to make your life better
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i say you know do you want them to start so you can start a family do you desperately need some more
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financial resources in order to do what you want to do do you need somebody who's calm because you get very
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very anxious um the things that you think you need um you want to list them it's a good way to begin
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and put that into a job description and then you try to think of the aspects of of character and
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accomplishment that need to be there which is exactly of course what you do when you recruit somebody for
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any job the experience they have to have the the strength of character reliability honesty
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their ability with money and once you get into that mindset i think you have a grounding that helps
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you when you do fall in love and care a lot about somebody that you can keep on coming back to
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so that you hold off a little bit on the intimacy and the trust until you're really sure they they check
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out yeah because a lot of the patients my father sees that have romance or relationship related
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issues i mean he said you know already said a huge segment of them are people getting divorced but
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the other chunk of them are people usually women that are getting burned out on online dating um
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and that's why having a sort of list for yourself whether it's you've literally written it down or you've
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just given it good consideration i mentioned that because the idea of doing homework for me
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personally seems entirely irritating and daunting and that's what writing a list seems like but really
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thinking about it so that when you do look at profiles and subsequently decide on dating someone
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you don't waste time uh trying to figure out you know well i know this guy seems like he might not be
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right in these ways but he seems really nice maybe i should give him a chance no hold firm to your
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standards so you don't end up spending a lot of time with a guy because you feel obliged to you don't
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want to be mean you're not being mean uh to him and you're being mean to yourself because you're going to
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end up burned out and going to see a shrink and you know an office building in middle of nowhere in
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brookline massachusetts uh so keep that list in mind to keep yourself from not wanting to date period
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it's what's going to keep you from really burning out entirely so i mean what are some of the the
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things you should be looking it's like just like big picture things you should be looking for in a
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person to figure out like this would be good this person would be good for a a long-term fulfilling
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relationship well they'd be very very much if you were going into business partnership you'd look for
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these these same things you'd look for reliability a good track record with relationships a good track
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record of being honest and responsible if they aren't good at money that they let you manage
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their money you look at what they've spent their money on as an expression of what their values are
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what they care most about how hard working are they how decent are they those are the kind of
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things that are really going to matter in the long run and as you you've said in the book i mean
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these things are important because they're character attributes and character attributes typically
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are static i mean the temperament we have now is probably the temperament we're going to have when
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we're 40 or 50 i think there's a lot of idea that people think well if i just if i marry her like she'll
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change i can help change her but that typically doesn't happen right you put your put your finger
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on it most people come to shrink because they really want something to change and it's clear by that
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time that what they're upset about was there at the beginning and it's not one of those things that's
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going to change we also talk about how you can tell whether somebody's going to change i mean it's a
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it's not a matter uh that shrinks have any great insight into it's common sense uh first of all does
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does somebody really want to change not just to make you happy but because they don't like that quality
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in themselves and then second of all when they really try do they get anywhere if they want to
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try you know if if you want them to change but they don't see it they're not motivated other than
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to make you happy you know what's not going to happen and that's you know that's when people come to
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see a shrink and say you talk to him and you try to make him understand that he needs to change
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except if they haven't been able to make somebody see i can't do it it's you know it's game over and
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you just have to accept that they are who they are yeah it's not even a matter necessarily of change
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as much as management you know if you know you have a terrible temper and you try and learn uh you know
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exercises and anger management uh then at least you you recognize the issue and you you're doing all that
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you can't about it but if you meet someone and figure out you they have a bad temper and they
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don't even want to talk about it then that's not going anywhere that person doesn't even think they
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have a problem that needs management in the first place and that should be a major sign that this is
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probably not going to work out well this is some major signs like red flags right people always talk
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about relationship red flags that you should be on the lookout for are there any red flags that people
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should look out for that are in the words of liz lemon from 30 rock deal breakers well i always try
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and point out what should be obvious ones uh but aren't because they are really attractive qualities
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um you know in terms of people that uh you meet them and they they're very intense and they don't have a
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lot of boundaries because that can be very exciting but that's usually the especially if it's women
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those are the kind of women that guys later say you know all women are crazy and it's like no you you
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just dated someone who was literally crazy someone's telling you uh their life story and how much they
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want to make a baby with you within an hour of meeting you that should have been obvious that that's not a
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stable human being but it's a very attractive thing or guys that are sort of you know uh the the sexiness
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of not seeming to care about a lot or you know the all the cliches that go into the bad boy
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um these are very clear signs as appealing as they might be that some guy doesn't you know
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seems to live in a leather jacket or god forbid couch surf eternally or use a lot of drugs these are
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all things that you think oh well that's obviously terrible but some part of our lizard brain is like
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oh that guy seems nice no no not good not good red flag don't get suckered in and it's easier as you
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get older certainly because you just sort of you've been there and you've done that or you know
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you've seen it happen to your friends or you're just you know a jaded old fart but um it's certainly
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important to to remind the youth or remind yourself that is and you know lots of women fall into the
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trap of falling for the same kind of loser over and over again you know certainly like the guys i
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mentioned that say all women are crazy at a certain point you need to recognize you have a weakness
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for these really bad attributes that are really appealing unfortunately and that you cannot let
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yourself fall into that trap again but the most obvious the things that you think would be the most
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obvious red flags for you know just because they create that attraction all the time they they aren't
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they end up being green or checkered flags and uh drawing people into these bad relationships they
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should have known to avoid in the first place but it's hard though um they've done studies on this
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and we've written about is that like love literally blinds us like we have all these chemicals when
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we're in that romantic feel-good phase of a relationship at the beginning like it literally
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like we just become dumb like we ignore these these things and what i think is interesting too is that
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men have a tendency to fall in love faster than women like they they just they really hit it hard and so
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you tend to overlook these things so how do you battle that how do you battle those
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the the dopamine the oxytocin whatever that oxytocin stuff that floods your brain that makes you blind
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to these red flags or these attributes how do you overcome that uh well our our advice was simply to
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borrow um well-established techniques in business and say uh develop your techniques while while you're
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feeling particularly sane and grounded drawing on your past experience before the endorphins hit you
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before you go blind with sex or lust or love or neediness or whatever and and stick with it
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and then use your experiences to where your weaknesses are sarah often talks about recruiting a friend
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and asking your friend to hit you over the head if they think you're making the same mistake
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so it's not personal you're not saying to your friend do you like him do you like the way we are
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together do we look good together are we good for one another you're saying to your friend if if you
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think i haven't done my due diligence and if you think uh this person is showing some bad signs don't
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hesitate to speak up and and tell me to review the facts harder and look you know um improve my technique
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yeah in terms of you know we say to make a list of qualities you want but if you have a habit of
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dating losers over and over again um it's worth sitting down making a list of the qualities those
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losers had in common you know they they didn't have a fixed address they had final notice bills uh
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lying around whatever home they were crashing at uh they seem to be using a lot of drugs and not being
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very open about it you know and then giving that list to your friends and saying if i bring a guy
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around or meet if you're with me in a bar and a guy has any of these qualities feel free to tap me
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on the shoulder uh and say hey this guy's got three five and just a heads up uh you wanted me to tell you
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and i'm telling you so it's not uh it doesn't feel like a personal attack on the new love of your life
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but it's also you know in terms of you have your wing woman or really your your bodyguard that could
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help you to avoid those feelings but like you said one thing i i found interesting that my dad told me
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years ago is that if he has patients that are bipolar especially women and they feel mania coming
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on one of the signs is sometimes that men start finding them irresistible you know like they'll men
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will stop them on the street and that that to them is aside from any of the other internal or you
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know mental signs to them that maybe they're becoming a little unbalanced releasing this mystery
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chemical of nuttiness that is a magnet for guys as always to them a reminder like oh i probably need
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to check in with my shrink and maybe adjust my meds i think i'm going a little off so yeah there is a
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very strong natural magnetism uh that even among sane people that can be very hard to ignore
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but if you have fallen victim to being tricked over and over again into dating the same bad people
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or are just you know get fall in love too fast like you said it's worth having someone spot you
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but it's also you know in doing events for this how the audience breaks down to the majority of it being
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women instead of men you know it's i don't know whether it's biological or whether it's conditioning
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but certainly since the age of 11 or 12 i've been remember being in summer camp and issues of 17
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and ym being passed around that had quizzes in them you know that's kind of why we put them in the book
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that are i say well what kind of guy is right for you what what kind of guy is good meshes with your
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horoscope you know that nonsense and i don't think guys are asked to think that way i again i don't know
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if it's women naturally think that way or not but i know that that isn't what's in guy magazines it's
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usually gay for boobies or whatever uh or as i keep joking around sometimes i think the checklist
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that guys develop is based on country songs in terms of does she wear tight jeans will she ride the
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back of my pickup party down by the creek you know guys need to think more about this stuff in general
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i think so they don't fall in love so fast so they develop a better bs detector that women have
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been developing since they were tweens you know i i think it will be more helpful to them it will
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save their sanity more save them from heartbreak save their credit um because women like i said
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we've been trained for years and we're doing the best we can but men need to get some of that training
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themselves not just for our sake but for their own so let's so the rest of the book you delve into
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different attributes that we think make for a good relationship or a great partner and we've
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kind of talking about a little bit but individuals who seem magnetic you're just drawn to them you
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said there's this personality that just just draws you to them it's this idea of charisma and you guys
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say yeah charisma is overrated how is it that that charisma can get in the way of a good relationship
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any examples from your experience michael with patients that where they fell for a charismatic
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person or they themselves are very charismatic and it caused some heartache in the end well i i think
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you're right i mean each of these qualities can be very attractive but they each carry their own
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dangers if you're very charismatic and attract a lot of people you really have more trouble figuring out
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who really likes you for yourself it's a kind of personality beauty so you have to be better at
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and sifting through things to see what relationships really are right for you because you know when
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you're really popular everybody wants to talk to you on the other hand if if you're attracted to
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somebody charismatic you have to find out whether in spite of the charge and the pleasure you get from
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talking to them whether they're caught up in it so much like the social world that after a while you get
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you get lost in uh you know as soon as you stop being a novelty do they really really uh like you and
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have a good reason to build a life with you or do they like socializing or or politicizing things so
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much that after a while your your novelty wears off you have to be careful with that and reading a little
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bit about charismatic people or reading a novel can kind of alert you to the dangers and help you
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keep your eyes open until you're more confident that the relationship is bigger and deeper than
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just a matter of mutual attraction when i was reading this i mean as i was reading your book the
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thing that came to mind is like man you know who would like this book i think jane austen would really
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dig this book because like i've read her novels and her novels seem to be like
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yeah love with your heart but also love with your head like it's okay to have some passion but like
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you also got to be careful for the mr darcy's out there and kind of not not be uh carried away by
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their by your sort of that visceral reaction you have to people yeah she's my patron uh saint i say
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you know her villains are guys who are very good at communicating and getting close quickly and
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suddenly our heroine finds she's able to open up and be very sympathetic with somebody she's
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she's never known before and only later does she find out that he's uh taken money that he didn't
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have or that he betrayed somebody uh it happens again and again and especially for women in that age
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when they didn't have any resources of their own they weren't allowed to inherit these are women
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where it's a survival issue if they slip with a guy their their lives are over so in a certain way
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it's a these are life and death dramas uh they aren't just you know drawing room chatting and then
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the people that were solid would often be guys who were less communicative less easy to talk to
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somewhat tongue-tied harder to get to know but then when you got to know them you got information
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that they were always reliable that they would put themselves out for you that once they cared
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about you they didn't get distracted very easily so yes i think she really set the boundaries and the
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themes that that we need to pay attention to today and she also i'm realizing uh is it bingley
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in pride and prejudice the guy who runs off with her younger sister uh the red flag of guys that talk
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about people who've wronged them uh people that are women too anyone who talks about ex-friends or you
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know being betrayed that's usually a huge red flag that this person uh betrays other people a lot that
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they are you know to use the clinical term and explanation from our first book uh well the censored version
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an a-hole because a-holes tend to get into fights with people because they feel like that person has
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done them wrong because they feel like they're incapable of doing wrong an a-hole is the world's
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perfect victim they're the only righteous person on earth so if someone uh very quickly in a boundaryless
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way starts talking about well this person uh wronged me and you know but really it turns out that you
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tried to run off with their younger sister as well yeah it's probably prejudice they're all one swirl of
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you know pbs miniseries in my head but that that is an austin era red flag that exists to this day
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but she was teaching us all an important lesson there's a character in pride and prejudice elizabeth
00:26:10.600
bennett's uh best friend who is a little old and doesn't have any money and is you know fair you know
00:26:18.760
only fair looking and she really wants to have a family so she accepts a proposal from a rather
00:26:27.420
socially awkward and somewhat repulsive minister who's a reliable guy and you know he'll make a
00:26:36.560
living and uh he won't mess around and he'll be helpful around the house but he certainly isn't a
00:26:43.640
terribly attractive person and elizabeth says to her old friend she said how could you lower yourself
00:26:51.020
to to marry that creep and her friend um very correctly says to her look you've got better
00:26:59.840
prospects this is the best compromise i can make and i do it willingly and proudly she's a sort of
00:27:07.720
minor character but she's really at the moral center of jane austen's universe yeah that's i mean
00:27:14.100
that's some great stuff so yeah if you guys haven't read jane austen i even recommend guys read jane austen
00:27:18.600
because there's a lot you can learn from that 18th century female writer let's talk about some of the
00:27:23.060
other characteristics that often get overrated in relationships and one of them you talk about is
00:27:28.340
communication which is crazy because all like most of the the books about relationship out there about
00:27:34.120
how to communicate better you know the mars versus venus thing that's why marriage therapists exist so
00:27:40.420
people couples can learn how to communicate better but you all say that's it's all for not pretty much
00:27:46.900
why do you think communication is overrated in a relationship well certainly in a lot of cases
00:27:51.900
women are looking for verbal communication but there are you know there are a lot of guys out there
00:27:58.740
that don't necessarily communicate what they feel verbally but through their actions so you know
00:28:06.720
you might be dating a guy who is kind of silent at the dinner table at night but he does do all the
00:28:12.860
dishes and he then shovels the snow out of the driveway and later make sure that you know the kitchen is
00:28:20.080
cleaned up and the garbage is taken out and to me or what you know my father would recommend after
00:28:25.760
seeing couples or women that come in and complain about this it's what's really more important you
00:28:31.000
know and there it's not like you can't get chat elsewhere we always say you know get a cat or go get a
00:28:37.780
haircut hang out with your girlfriends there are lots of people that will want to talk about those
00:28:42.000
sorts of things but if you're dating someone who shows good character and caring through what they do
00:28:48.420
even and not through the conversation that they have that that's worthwhile that that's worth keeping an eye
00:28:54.980
out just being able to communicate um through conversation isn't really all that important
00:29:01.640
if the communication is coming through in other ways also you know one of my favorite jokes i wish i could
00:29:07.500
take credit for but that is my dad's and i'm i might have even said it before i will probably have it as
00:29:13.220
my epitaph because it's just it's so funny to me um because it's a fart joke which is sort of my
00:29:19.220
raison d'etre but that a lot of people when they go into um marriage counseling that they're going
00:29:25.860
with for a referee um not so much to resolve issues but to declare a winner but they also feel like they
00:29:33.040
need to communicate and vent and what my father said is that the venting of you know marital disputes
00:29:39.440
in therapy is often like the venting of intestinal gas it gives you a moment of catharsis but then poisons
00:29:46.180
the air for you and everyone around you for an indetermined period of time uh you know there
00:29:51.280
are some things that you should not communicate because they will only lead to more conflict or
00:29:56.040
they will create lingering resentment that does not go away so if somebody can communicate positive
00:30:02.640
feelings through positive actions or if you learn to withhold certain communication because you know
00:30:08.540
it's not going to have any positive result and will in fact have a lot of negative result
00:30:12.900
verbal communication or communicating feelings etc is not a good thing um it's important to know what
00:30:19.580
to communicate and when or how to communicate it best but not to just communicate period the sort of
00:30:25.500
value on communication uh in any form is not a positive in a marriage long term that that's why we
00:30:34.480
get into as much as it would be nice if you could solve all your problems by bedtime and feel better
00:30:41.340
when you go to sleep that there are a lot of problems you can't solve by bedtime um there are some
00:30:47.780
differences that are never going to get solved and so sometimes if you want um to do your best by your
00:30:55.160
marriage you have to uh take your anger or your hurt and just do your best and try to and try to get to
00:31:02.260
sleep and the next morning either you're going to decide it's just not something it's worth talking about
00:31:09.420
or you're going to figure out a better way to talk about it than you would have when you were
00:31:13.400
feeling tired and hurt that marital communication is as much as nice as it is to be spontaneous
00:31:21.620
it's such an important partnership it really makes sense to be careful about what you say
00:31:28.080
yeah i mean we put it as the we always thought the expression was don't go to bed angry
00:31:32.820
one um interviewer we spoke to from texas said that there they say don't let the sun set on your
00:31:41.460
anger and we explained that maybe sometimes it's better to have that happen than let it rise on
00:31:47.660
your infinite regret so i want to write our song all right so another thing that people are often told
00:31:56.860
to look for when they're doing this relationship sleuthing to see if someone's right for them is to look at
00:32:02.620
their family life you know look if they have a good relationship with their family if their their
00:32:07.360
parents have a good strong relationship because the idea is well if they grew up in a positive family
00:32:13.360
life and they grew up with parents that put a good example of what a good marriage should look like
00:32:18.760
well then that's going to carry over to my relationship with that person but you guys argue that's not
00:32:24.400
necessarily the case why is that well we're always looking at the potential uh higher risk that goes with
00:32:30.480
that because they're with every benefit in medicine you know with every benefit of any treatment there's
00:32:36.240
also a risk and in this case it often has to do with boundaries that if you've got a really nice
00:32:42.620
family and you're very close to them are you good at um pushing away from them and creating your own
00:32:49.900
family with your own partner and uh knowing when not to get together with or not to listen to or
00:32:57.380
respond to your own family because you're starting your own and your partnership is is more important
00:33:04.500
so that uh sometimes people who are attracted by somebody who is very close to their family
00:33:10.280
find out later on he's too close to his family he can't say no to them he can't shut the door on them
00:33:16.940
he can't keep uh talking and telling them everything and sharing too much and uh creating that boundary is
00:33:24.480
very important so closeness is very attractive and warmth is very attractive but boundaries are
00:33:30.760
really essential when you're when you're starting up a relationship and they're also essential not just
00:33:37.360
if you have a very close family but if you have very crazy parents i just i talked to uh new york
00:33:45.780
magazine's blog about relationships where i mentioned that my my father's mother my grandma was and i said
00:33:53.660
the clinical term was insane now she's been dead for 20 years so her feelings would not be hurt by
00:33:58.680
that but my dad managed to keep her crazy uh from impacting our family negatively uh by creating those
00:34:07.380
boundaries by telling her when she would show up for a weekend visit uh with enough giant suitcases for
00:34:14.960
a two-week visit that it was not going to become a two-week visit that he was very happy that she was
00:34:21.120
coming to see us and uh really appreciated her company but you know because of our work in school
00:34:26.600
schedules it was a trip that was going to end on monday morning as discussed and that that is an easy
00:34:32.200
thing to do with your parents and it's generally not easy to have a crazy parent overall um as my father
00:34:38.480
has explained to me through stories of his childhood many times uh but your your spouse and your kids did not
00:34:44.740
sign up for that you know this you created this family and they they have to come first so it's it's
00:34:50.200
not an easy skill to acquire but it's a necessary one a not impossible one if you do come from a nutty
00:34:56.520
family and you are trying to create a not nutty family but it could go the other way too like the
00:35:02.300
your potential partner might have fantastic parents and you're like wow what a great family i want to be
00:35:09.100
part of this family but like the actual your partner like they're actually crazy like they like
00:35:13.840
the the fruit the apple fell far from the tree yes so that can that that actually can lead you astray
00:35:21.740
yeah it's you know there are plenty of examples of people who married someone because their parents
00:35:26.880
are so loving but they're not a great parent themselves you know uh and you could try and explain
00:35:32.640
that in a shrinky way in terms of the parenting had x and y effect um and i you know i write fart jokes
00:35:40.920
i won't even bother to try the important thing is to just not get blinded to actually look at your
00:35:46.320
your partner's track record not just at their parents track record um you know because that's
00:35:52.320
that's what every chapter is about it's looking at these traits beyond the superficial assumption that
00:35:57.760
they're all good traits that a good family is always good or sense of humor is always good
00:36:02.520
um because yes definitely someone who comes from an excellent family a sane family can be not so
00:36:09.460
excellent or sane themselves uh when therapy was sort of getting going therapists would put a great
00:36:16.340
deal of weight on how you could create trust confidence and reliability in your kids by being good parents
00:36:25.700
and the reverse was that if you saw good parents you'd assume that the kids would be pretty good
00:36:31.460
but i think what you see over time in your own life is that some really good parents sometimes have
00:36:38.240
some very very difficult kids and some very difficult parents have some really good kids and the only
00:36:45.160
explanation is the genetics is kind of a lottery so that you got to be very careful not to make
00:36:53.700
assumptions which is exactly what you're saying so another thing that leads people astray
00:36:58.280
are looks beauty handsomeness etc so i mean i think we all understand like what are the potential
00:37:05.580
downsides of being in a relationship based purely on physical attraction i mean that's like jane austen
00:37:09.980
stuff right there um you end up i think i forgot which book it was like the dot the dad of one of the
00:37:16.940
heroines like married his wife because she was beautiful and charismatic and then 30 years later he despises
00:37:24.840
her um but i mean what are the downsides of being attractive yourself um you know you for whatever
00:37:32.920
reason genetics has blessed you with physical attraction attractiveness what are the potential
00:37:37.660
downsides of that a lot of it is you have to be really tough about sizing people up because so many
00:37:46.960
people want to be with you and uh want to be nice to you you have to know what you want in life so you can
00:37:56.920
pursue it if you're a nice person and you're sensitive you may have trouble being tough enough you may
00:38:05.740
think so much about their feelings and not wanting to cause them pain that you wind up spending too much
00:38:13.680
time and mental effort reacting to all these people who really uh are not going to turn out to be your
00:38:20.800
friends or significant relations and in the meantime you're not making any progress in finding a person
00:38:29.060
who really would be good for you or just going on with your other pursuit so i think the gift of beauty
00:38:35.640
is a curse unless you also have develop a certain technique of your own for centering yourself
00:38:42.600
and and being tough about rejecting relationships that you just don't want yeah and also for
00:38:50.220
certainly for women um if you are you know beautiful or you just have certain physical attributes you know
00:38:59.480
you have the legs or the butt or the boobs that men are attracted to uh you'll get attention but a lot of it
00:39:06.960
is really creepy it's not the kind of attention that you want you know or you're attracting the
00:39:12.640
kind of guys that are kind of yucky or you know just seem only interested in you because of and that
00:39:18.540
can also be really frustrating and really burn you out because you know my dad telling me once about a
00:39:24.020
patient who i think did something their job was somehow appearance-based and they were complaining
00:39:30.460
about relationships and of course my reaction was oh boohoo oh too pretty when but no it was this
00:39:36.460
constant barrage of attention from creeps and then dating guys and figuring out pretty quickly oh i'm
00:39:43.020
just an accessory to him you know he doesn't really care about knowing me he's i'm just here to impress
00:39:47.620
his friends like he i've been i was manipulated i mean i can understand now yes that that is legitimate i'm
00:39:54.460
and pretty people have hard lives too it's enough that they saw a tree i mean what do you do if you
00:40:02.080
like you you know you think okay i didn't i got the i didn't i didn't win the genetic lottery
00:40:07.500
not that attractive um and a lot of people they get they lose hope about that like i'm never going
00:40:13.460
to be able to find a relationship because i'm not handsome not good looking uh what do you say to
00:40:19.400
those folks first of all you really try to become as independent as you can i mean whether you're
00:40:25.660
good looking or not there's no guarantee you're going to find somebody particularly if you're a
00:40:29.780
woman there are always seem to be more women who are interested in and capable of close relationships
00:40:35.780
than there are men so i think women are always caught a little bit in a musical chairs game and if
00:40:41.640
they focus too much on whether they can find somebody or not they're making a big deal out of
00:40:47.820
something they fundamentally don't control you try to build up your own life and become as aware as
00:40:53.520
you can of the kind of person you need and then it comes down once your self-esteem doesn't entirely
00:41:01.240
depend on it on uh what you were saying earlier on being a very good headhunter not wasting your time
00:41:09.840
not making the kind of compromise that would tie you up with somebody so that you're not free
00:41:14.800
if somebody really good comes along being really selective and then whether you find somebody or not
00:41:21.780
appreciating what a good job you're doing when you're independent and you're selective and you're
00:41:27.500
protecting yourself from those compromises that would be a disaster you're doing a very very good job
00:41:34.360
and that's all you can do in life the rest is not up to you well we also have this thing in the book
00:41:39.300
where we talk about the falsity of the phrase there's someone for everyone and and part of it
00:41:45.800
is based on the fact that when my parents both worked in the public mental hospital uh there's
00:41:51.080
someone for everyone was a joking catchphrase which they would use when a patient came in who was
00:41:56.740
extra crazy or usually extra physically gross in terms of they hadn't showered or their crazy was
00:42:03.460
manifest in their uh love of eating whatever was in public toilets i mean really yucky stuff and
00:42:09.340
those people were always married always whereupon everyone on the floor would go there's someone for
00:42:15.480
everyone uh so usually when you really start thinking you know oh i'm too unattractive like i'm so
00:42:21.180
unattractive i'm not gonna find anyone that's that's just negative thinking period i mean you might
00:42:25.960
have done a sort of realistic assessment and said yeah i i way more than average or i don't have
00:42:33.020
the nose of my dreams but if you're really thinking you know oh well i'm too not good looking enough to
00:42:39.640
find anyone trust me if you were really yucky if you were really crazy you would have no trouble
00:42:45.700
finding someone it's it has nothing to do with your looks 99 of the time or your or your breath or any of
00:42:52.720
that stuff it's really not within your control uh and it's it it's not that simple so don't beat
00:42:59.780
yourself up for appearance or even you know any number of factors in terms of why you're going to
00:43:05.920
be alone because if you really don't want to be alone just start acting like a lunatic um go to
00:43:11.420
the public mental hospital i promise you you will find someone within 24 hours but it's a pretty high
00:43:16.380
price to pay your sanity better to hold on to that and also i mean it seems just to focus on
00:43:22.360
finding someone who displays these characteristics that you talk about in the book you'll eventually find
00:43:28.620
they might take a while but you you'll you might you you may find them so so far we've been talking
00:43:32.460
about uh potential long-term relationships what about people who are already in a relationship
00:43:37.140
who are already in a marriage any advice for them where you know they they're married five years later
00:43:43.140
they realize that their spouse uh displays some of these the downsides of these things we've been
00:43:49.680
talking about like they realize okay i was attracted to this person's charisma and now i find it
00:43:55.100
kind of grading any advice for them like do they just keep plugging along and just focus on the
00:44:00.640
positive and uh downplay the the negative aspects well one thing we always talk about whether it's
00:44:06.780
you know confronting your own shortcomings or the shortcomings of a relationship or in a job or
00:44:11.640
anything is doing a sort of honest assessment you know someone might have a really annoying habit
00:44:17.860
but uh look at their qualities overall are there positive contributions uh do they outnumber the
00:44:25.400
negative uh aspects of their personality or even what they bring to a marriage if they are always
00:44:33.380
charming people but you don't have reason to believe that they are you know unfaithful and that
00:44:42.000
they're not driven to please other people to the point where they aren't fulfilling their duties as
00:44:47.040
a husband or a father that they're still spending time with the kids that they're still keeping on
00:44:51.880
top of their family obligations then yeah it is worth sort of just plugging along and finding ways to
00:44:58.060
focus less on it and other things that you can do so you aren't so uh so that you're more distracted
00:45:04.480
if somebody if you know you find that the opposite is true then that's not a quality you can put up with
00:45:10.620
if someone is so charming that they are always fooling around and they are never home and they're
00:45:16.700
you know possibly putting you at risk of any number of venereal diseases yeah that's a deal breaker um
00:45:22.980
but sometimes those qualities are outweighed by positive contributions and positive qualities and
00:45:28.380
it's it's worth thinking very seriously about that and not just letting your annoyed feelings and your
00:45:34.460
you know your general disappointment get in the way of or you know draw you away from a relationship
00:45:41.380
that is more positive than negative sort of after five or ten years you've got a lot of
00:45:46.180
money tied up in things you own together maybe you've got kids there's so many reasons to to assess
00:45:53.180
rather than to get into the negative feelings you have when they really irritate you or hurt your
00:45:59.160
feelings so that doing a kind of independent assessment where you're looking at it in terms of your values
00:46:04.720
and how your partnership advances those values trying to think about it from your own point of
00:46:10.400
view is just very important a way of fighting that tendency of getting into the negative feelings that
00:46:17.000
you get when you're hurt or angry and then if you think the relationship is worthwhile anyway
00:46:22.240
there are positive ways to discuss differences to see whether you can reduce them or negotiate them
00:46:30.600
and again they're very business-like methods they rely on talking calmly and positively rather than
00:46:37.600
saying frankly i hate this and i you know i wonder what you mean by it uh where you're trying to say
00:46:43.580
more things like look i i like this about our relationship you do this well you do that well
00:46:49.480
but this one area really makes you less effective and hurts both of us and i wonder if you could get
00:46:56.880
more of a handle on it that when you get yourself in that frame of mind you you still can't change
00:47:01.900
people but you've got a better crack at knowing what you value about the relationship and being
00:47:08.880
somewhat more persuasive i mean one in talking about how marriage used to be or pairing off it used to be
00:47:16.120
seen in a more practical and pragmatic way it wasn't just a matter of survival but it's also that if you
00:47:22.320
were from the same small town or you have the same religious background that there's a good chance
00:47:26.280
you share the sort of the same values and outlook on life and if the reason we put that emphasis
00:47:31.540
on looking at someone's values is because if you run into conflicts like this or in other areas
00:47:37.940
then usually you'll have the same goals you know if someone values family and they're
00:47:44.520
distracted from their uh their family duties then if you point that out to them in a business-like way
00:47:52.320
then they will want to get back on track because they care about that as much as you do even if
00:47:57.500
they're screwing up so that's what like it's it keeps these arguments from being impersonal or keeps
00:48:03.580
them from being muddled because you don't share those goals or you don't see things the same way
00:48:08.500
if you fundamentally share a goal as in terms of the family that you want based on the kind of people
00:48:15.800
you want to be having these discussions is a lot less fraught and they're you know it's not it doesn't
00:48:22.600
have to be as personal and angry right you need to remind them about the uh the corporate mission
00:48:26.640
statement exactly exactly susan let's read our mission statement again um have some flow charts
00:48:35.580
yeah there's flow charts and everything a logo well michael sir this has been a great conversation
00:48:42.820
where can people learn more about the book uh well we have our website which we we usually we do
00:48:48.960
answer uh when people write in with cases but because we've been so busy promoting and writing books
00:48:53.460
we've been a little slack but we hire a millennial who knows how to do social media too so our website
00:48:59.740
is um fxckfeelings.com um but we're on facebook i think instagram and tumblr under some
00:49:07.340
and many iterations of that it's all connected through the website though so we're all over the
00:49:13.100
the interwebs fantastic well sarah and michael bennett thank you so much for your time it's been
00:49:17.460
a pleasure my guests today were michael and sarah bennett they're the author of the book f love
00:49:21.980
it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about
00:49:25.920
their work at fxckfeelings.com fxckfeelings.com you also find our show notes at aom.is
00:49:34.540
slash f love where you can find the links to resources where you can delve deeper into this
00:49:37.900
topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and
00:49:48.220
advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this
00:49:52.620
show and have gotten something out of it i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes
00:49:56.180
or stitcher that helps us out a lot you need the word out about the show so thank you for your
00:49:59.340
reviews as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay