The Art of Manliness - #584： How to Avoid Falling in Love With the Wrong Person

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast why do people

00:00:11.340 sometimes fall in love with someone who is all kinds of wrong for them their friends and family

00:00:15.400 see lots of red flags about their partner but they themselves miss these warnings entirely

00:00:19.300 sometimes to catastrophic consequences my guest today argues that these kinds of errors in

00:00:23.840 relational decision making happen when someone lets his heart rule without also heating his head

00:00:28.160 his name is john van epp he's a counselor and the author of the book how to avoid falling in love 0.97

00:00:32.000 with a jerk we begin our conversation discussing what society's default template for creating a 0.94

00:00:35.920 successful relationship looks like and how it leads people astray john then defines what makes a jerk a 1.00

00:00:41.100 jerk and the signs you're dating jerk he then explains why it is that people so often miss 0.96

00:00:45.440 these signs by using a model of how attachment develops in a relationship and i think this 0.52

00:00:49.420 model is super useful in understanding relational dynamics and you don't want to miss it we then

00:00:53.440 discuss why men need to do a better job in helping pace relationships instead of only letting women 0.99

00:00:57.840 set the tempo and we enter conversation discussing the things you need to know about a person that

00:01:01.460 you're forming a relationship with including the relationship skills family life and values

00:01:05.560 before you escalate your commitment to them after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:09.660 aom.is love things all right john van epp welcome to the show it's very exciting thank you so much

00:01:27.480 for having me so you are a counselor and you've written a book called how to avoid falling in

00:01:32.760 love with a jerk old proof way to follow your heart without losing your mind so this book how to avoid 0.99

00:01:38.400 falling in love with a jerk it's based on a marriage program or a premarital program you developed called 1.00

00:01:42.760 pick what is pick and what issues are you trying to address in this program yeah so way back in the mid 0.99

00:01:50.760 90s i developed the concepts kind of worked it through and put it in a certification course where

00:01:58.000 people could get certified to actually go out get our workbooks get this training and facilitate it in

00:02:05.620 their own respective locations so that was kind of my multiplying my efforts so it's not me doing all

00:02:12.060 the work and it really took off we started to have singles organizations the military grabbed it

00:02:19.260 as we headed into the 2000s social agencies community initiatives that had federal and state grant

00:02:27.260 money and by the time we reached the end of of 2000s and hit 2010 11 we had over a million people

00:02:34.060 having gone through the program being taught by all these certified instructors and in the middle of

00:02:40.640 that mcgraw hill published the book so the content of the book and then the course itself has a lot of

00:02:47.420 overlap and with the pick program is this for people like couples who are thinking about getting

00:02:52.640 married or about to get married or even people who marriage isn't on the radar yet but it's a plan

00:02:57.760 later on in life well sure so i i think if if somebody is in a serious relationship i think this would be

00:03:04.660 really great material for them to go through but i really to be honest it was designed to go what i call

00:03:12.120 upstream i i wanted to reach pre-relational people people that were just maybe had been in a relationship

00:03:21.000 or young people even or divorced people that came out of relationship and they were just kind of saying

00:03:29.000 hey we need a better template of what to get to know about somebody and how to build a healthy relationship

00:03:36.200 because the template we've used or the template we've learned just isn't really effective or it's

00:03:41.880 not worked and so that was really my target audience and and it's been that way we've had

00:03:48.260 over a hundred thousand kids in public schools go through the pick program with with you know

00:03:53.940 instructors coming into the school systems and teaching it and that's been pretty cool so it's pretty

00:03:57.920 far upstream and then you know we've worked a lot with adult singles of all ages so i think that

00:04:06.180 that's really the primary place where i'd really like to see your listeners say hey let's look into

00:04:13.860 this even more you know i'm not interested in a serious relationship right now okay good you are the

00:04:19.640 very person that i want to look into this material and think about it and take it because now is the best

00:04:25.860 time pre-relationally well i think it's interesting you you you're teaching this stuff to high school

00:04:31.580 students because this is like important stuff like your your marriage your relationships like one of

00:04:36.560 the biggest things and have the biggest impact on your life yet we don't really talk we don't talk

00:04:42.160 we don't teach kids like what they should look for in a partner so you mentioned we have a template

00:04:45.520 that we kind of fall back to because we don't get this sort of intentional instruction what does that

00:04:50.120 template look like and why isn't it not effective yeah so the the template that people fall

00:04:55.580 back on is usually what i consider to be several different unanalyzed beliefs that tend to drive

00:05:06.180 the the culture at large one is intuition i'll know when i know you know when i'm when i'm in with

00:05:14.080 somebody it's kind of the click factor as soon as things click with me and this person and i just know

00:05:20.660 when i know i nobody needs to teach me anything i i just kind of figure it out and i know it

00:05:26.340 intuitively the second and that doesn't work there are some people that perhaps do have that innate

00:05:35.300 ability but the vast majority of people don't have that good of of judgment or or you might say they

00:05:44.200 haven't been trained to have their intuition function at such a high level of really knowing

00:05:51.520 and being able to predict long-term relationship potential of an individual that they have some

00:05:57.440 kind of chemistry or attraction to a second i would say template that's used is the belief that

00:06:04.340 relationships that are healthy or good or it's kind of a dichotomy it's either healthy or unhealthy

00:06:11.360 good or bad you know functional or dysfunctional and they have this dichotomy and they believe

00:06:16.460 that if it's on the positive side of the dichotomy they're good they're healthy they're functioning

00:06:21.740 then a relationship just runs itself you know if i have to work at it that must mean something's

00:06:28.660 wrong with it and that concept anybody that has ever had a long-term relationship a friendship even

00:06:35.700 knows that unless you have some kind of concerted effort ongoing energy investment into the

00:06:44.460 relationship the relationship tends to start deflating and so but still we we believe this we

00:06:51.940 believe it more about a romantic relationship than any other i'll just know when i know the click factor

00:06:57.600 it's in my intuition and if it's really good it just kind of does its own thing it just goes at its

00:07:04.460 own pace and it runs itself and i don't have to have any kind of training information involvement

00:07:11.440 and you know it's kind of like asking people when do you feel is the right time to have sex a lot of

00:07:17.940 people just say well you know i'll just kind of know when i know and when it feels right and it's that

00:07:22.640 intuition and you know the relationship will just kind of go there when it's the right time to go there

00:07:29.000 as if the relationship is this thing outside of myself and the other person and i don't have any

00:07:37.040 involvement in pacing how this relationship develops those two things i found were extremely detrimental

00:07:43.920 and they left lots of burned crashed relationships in people's histories and actually then all of those

00:07:55.480 those hardship experiences get brought into the next relationship and complicate things even more so

00:08:02.020 we kind of came up with a different way of getting to know somebody and building a relationship and

00:08:09.600 actually being more informed and intentional and we found it to be way more successful of all ages by the

00:08:16.940 way so you mentioned that intuition can result in people if they're not lucky they might luck out but 0.91

00:08:22.960 typically they don't just rely on intuition lead to you to end up falling for a jerk so for definitions 0.97

00:08:29.440 how do you define a jerk what makes a jerk a jerk in a marriage or relationship well i i would let i think 0.99

00:08:36.780 the starting point brad is all of us at one time or another act like jerks right can you admit that as 0.99

00:08:43.260 well yes okay well you didn't elaborate on it you know we probably everybody would like to hear a story 0.96

00:08:49.920 too from you but we'll we'll go on i'm sure they would let you off the hook but i'll say for myself 0.79

00:08:54.040 you know i've made very jerk decisions over the i'm i'm in my 60s now and so been married for 40 years

00:09:02.020 and in my relationship with my kids my wife i mean we all make mistakes and errors so the word is not

00:09:09.460 trying to say first of all that you got to find a person that is perfect the second thing i would say

00:09:16.060 about what the word is not saying these are kind of disclaimers is that the word is not saying that 0.77

00:09:21.880 the word that the jerks are a particular gender we'll call it we we all gender neutral no matter what 0.97

00:09:29.440 you are or how you define yourself as a human being everybody can act like a jerk but i would say there is a 0.99

00:09:38.820 marked difference between acting like a jerk and what we will say is being a jerk so a couple things 0.99

00:09:47.600 first i'll just say some simple signs of jerkiness is lack of clear insight into how their behavior is 0.99

00:10:00.720 impacting other people that they're in a relationship with that makes people a little jerky

00:10:05.960 they can some people have that insight but they don't have any real care about how they're you

00:10:13.120 know they're like wow you know you made somebody really feel bad well that's their problem they you

00:10:17.900 know i'm not responsible for their feelings so there's either lack of insight or care about how

00:10:24.280 my words or my actions impact others i think a second kind of sign or warning flashing signal that

00:10:35.580 this person could be a bit jerky is if they're really lacking woefully lacking some relationship

00:10:43.800 skills like the skill of empathy or the skill of apology how to admit their you know their faults and

00:10:54.040 to talk things through woefully lacking communication or how to handle conflicts and so there's these warning

00:11:01.780 signals but i i would say we could probably spend this entire time making a list of all of the things 0.96

00:11:08.840 that people can do that would be you know throw them in a category of acting like a jerk but the bottom line 0.99

00:11:17.440 of being a jerk is they have a persistent resistance to addressing and actually changing whatever gets put on the 0.97

00:11:30.400 table is bothering others so in other words when you're in a relationship with somebody one of the key 0.99

00:11:39.840 areas to kind of look for it's a it's more i call it a global characteristic of a person is do they have the

00:11:48.820 change factor do they have the ability to have insight into themselves see something that kind of keeps repeating

00:11:58.560 as a pattern and bothering you and when it gets put on the table and you talk about it they actually

00:12:04.580 take it to heart they take responsibility and they do something to make a change that sounds simple

00:12:09.920 but there are a lot of people in relationships that are unwilling to address issues that a person's put on

00:12:18.920 the table or maybe multiple people put on the table that hey this is something about you that offends

00:12:24.160 others bothers others i really like to try to change this well and they have a defense resistance

00:12:31.080 to that so i would just start with a very kind of simple definition of the difference between acting 0.95

00:12:37.080 like a jerk versus being a jerk is whether a person has the change factor they have a willingness 0.97

00:12:42.940 to be open and receptive to something about themselves that that needs to be addressed and change and they put 0.98

00:12:50.720 in some concerted effort to do it well and the problem you highlight in the book is that people don't 0.98

00:12:56.420 typically realize they're in a relationship with a jerk someone who's you know has jerkiness qualities 0.91

00:13:01.740 till months in a year in and by then they're so entwining the relationship that it's like hard to get out 0.97

00:13:07.660 and you're like man how did i get into this like how did i miss this when i was first started dating

00:13:11.780 this person i um call it the head and the heart need to work together and accelerated bonds so when

00:13:20.660 you get into a relationship there's something that is attracting you there's it could be a kind of a

00:13:27.040 sexual chemistry you could be really attracted to the person if it's got some romantic aspect to it

00:13:33.160 then you would expect that there's some kind of a of attraction and hopefully it's mutual attraction

00:13:37.920 and that is like a magnet pulling you toward each other but then there are bonds major bonds that

00:13:46.640 i say exist in every relationship whether it's romantic or not that i put together in a tool that

00:13:55.340 we call the relationship attachment model it's it's this kind of graphic that's going to date me if i

00:14:00.920 call it a graphic equalizer but if it's if you think of a soundboard with sliders that go up and down

00:14:06.000 it is depicted these bonds that occur in all of our relationships are depicted as a slider and they

00:14:15.280 can have a very low level and they can move up to a very high level and what i say is there's somewhat

00:14:22.300 of a progression people don't realize which bonding you know factor which which aspect of the relationship

00:14:29.200 is going up is going up really high but they get into a relationship and some of those areas of

00:14:35.420 connection in the relationship what i call these bonds some of them go up super fast almost superficially

00:14:43.380 and they don't fully know the person so the the no is actually the first of the five sliders how

00:14:50.940 much i know this person or they know me and that might be actually very low but their trust or their

00:14:57.820 reliance or even their touch in terms of just attraction and so forth or even getting involved

00:15:04.000 sexually those things can go up super fast create premature feelings of bond and closeness why why are

00:15:13.300 they premature well they're premature because my my bond is greater than what i truly know about this 0.97

00:15:21.700 person so i don't know if they're a jerk or not a jerk i don't know what the patterns are of how 0.82

00:15:28.000 this person is going to act i know how they've treated me i know what we've experienced together 0.97

00:15:32.800 in the in the six weeks we've been seeing each other and now we're sleeping together and i'm kind

00:15:39.040 of like dropping my friends and i'm spending the bulk of my time so another slider in in this model i

00:15:45.100 developed is called rely how much i depend on this person or how much i've kind of put into

00:15:50.540 a sense of them depending on me or me depending on them how we're meeting each other's needs so

00:15:57.340 we're a lot of my needs are now all getting funneled into this relationship with this person of six weeks

00:16:04.820 and if you go to my trust which is another level that is like all the way up because i everything's

00:16:11.980 been good so far for six weeks everything's been good but my no is locked into actually time and you

00:16:22.500 can't get to know the patterns of a person until there's been enough time for certain things to

00:16:28.240 surface and then a pattern by definition is something that keeps repeating so there has to be

00:16:35.700 additional time beyond its surfacing for something to actually repeat well six weeks a lot of

00:16:41.940 times is not enough time for even somebody in a relationship to get mad at you so you don't

00:16:46.700 even know how they're going to treat you if they're mad at you so here you are sleeping with them

00:16:51.260 channeling a lot of your needs and the reliance and your belief in them your trust belief is way up

00:16:57.100 and yet your no is really low and that is the norm for how many many people today are building

00:17:05.680 relationships and it really is a recipe it's a it's a potential recipe for catastrophe because as

00:17:14.380 your no goes up a little more and you're around the corner of what we call the 90-day probation period

00:17:19.660 right when things are really starting to surface that didn't surface in the beginning and maybe some

00:17:26.720 things are starting to repeat so you're starting to see a few patterns all of a sudden you hit this

00:17:31.880 three-month mark this 90 day and all of a sudden you'd be like i thought i knew this person but i'm

00:17:37.380 really wondering do i really know them and people are shocked as if they thought they fully knew them

00:17:45.060 but their their knowing wasn't high on that level it was their trust it was their rely and dependence and

00:17:53.480 in meeting each other's needs and it was their touch was super high so i can explain that model a little

00:17:59.700 more in in kind of a more organized way but just answering your question why do people get involved 0.99

00:18:07.600 all of a sudden realize i thought i knew this person they seemed great but now they look like a jerk 0.98

00:18:13.800 it's because our definition of a jerk was they're not acting like a jerk 24 7 it's that there is a 0.99

00:18:23.500 repeating pattern that doesn't surface typically in the beginning of a relationship but over time 0.98

00:18:32.420 begins a surface and when addressed does not change and starts to have major defenses on it changing so

00:18:41.520 accelerated relationships are the norm they've been the norm for a long long time you know i i was

00:18:49.340 growing up in the 70s and accelerated relationships were happening when i was in high school back in

00:18:56.940 the 70s and so all over those decades ever since accelerated relationships have just become more and

00:19:04.180 more the norm but i think that they are a very unwise way in a very risky way that we do relationships and

00:19:12.760 we need to talk about guys for a minute so i'll let you keep asking questions but i do want to

00:19:18.340 kind of speak directly to guys as stepping up being pacemakers of relationships rather than

00:19:24.900 saying guys will just do whatever women let them do well yeah so i mean let's talk about sort of

00:19:29.740 summarize this relationship attachment model because i thought it was a very useful tool for people so

00:19:34.260 the idea is because there's these five sliders which you call bonding areas and the first one is no

00:19:39.500 then you said trust rely commit and touch and the way you talk about in the book is that in a relationship

00:19:46.340 you you have to go through these in a progression right you you can't go too fast like you said

00:19:51.140 you can't accelerate to touch before you get to know the person because that's just going to lead to

00:19:55.880 disaster or commit like there's a lot of people who end up living moving in with somebody but they don't

00:20:00.940 really know that and they find out the person has lots of debt and they're like oh my gosh

00:20:03.820 i didn't know you or like you've been in jail i did not know you've been in jail

00:20:07.420 and like and and so that's why you want to make sure you know and i think the big takeaway i got

00:20:12.720 from that is that you never want to go for further in one bonding area than you have gone in the

00:20:17.640 previous so like you never want to go say if you're still in the no period of a relationship

00:20:23.220 you don't want to over commit or over rely or over trust before you get to know that person better

00:20:30.140 that's a very very perfect description of it so if people are kind of imaginative they can imagine

00:20:38.700 in their mind this image of five sliders going up and down and what you just said is no starting from

00:20:46.200 the left it would be no and then trust and then rely and then commit and then touch and exactly what

00:20:54.060 you said they they're representative of a piece of the whole of what a relationship is a relationship

00:21:01.260 is the interaction of these five areas how much i know somebody what my know how it interacts with

00:21:08.420 how i trust them how that interacts with how they meet my needs or i meet their needs and how we rely

00:21:13.640 and these things are like two-way streets so you can get a little more complicated with the model and

00:21:17.940 say it's not just how i know them but how i have let them get to know me or how they trust me and i

00:21:25.660 trust them so they they do have a little more complications we start thinking of them as two-way

00:21:31.680 streets but they they are pieces of the whole and when you think of a brand new relationship

00:21:40.240 any relationship there's just an intuitive wisdom to not let a level go higher or faster or develop

00:21:50.620 in a greater way than any of the levels to the left so you're right if the no is kind of low

00:21:59.920 then i shouldn't have my trust go significantly higher than what i know somebody if i'm trusting

00:22:07.680 somebody way beyond what i know them it definitely puts me at risk but even if my no is up a little

00:22:17.020 bit if my trust isn't fully developed and i step into like you said uh moving in with them that makes

00:22:23.700 my commitment really high we have lots of interesting research literally i i don't know if if everyone

00:22:30.880 knows this but there have been over a thousand research studies on moving in together outside

00:22:37.400 of marriage these are i'm talking about in academic journals they don't have any particular

00:22:43.100 you know religious they're almost always out of university settings but and then there are because

00:22:50.440 there's so many research studies that have been done there have been what they call um meta studies which

00:22:57.940 then take you know all of the research that was done from like 1980 to 2015 and let's take all of the

00:23:07.360 research and group it you know on cohabitation in unmarried relationships so unmarried people moving

00:23:14.960 in together let's take all of that research for those last 15 or 20 years whatever whatever the

00:23:20.520 meta studies looking at basically a summary of it confirms this logic this intuitive logic of my model

00:23:29.940 that the people that move in together are forming a reliance way higher than their trust typically

00:23:36.580 and way higher than what they know somebody so the no trust rely commit touch progression their rely is

00:23:43.460 really high their touch is really high their commitment is kind of skewed they they don't want

00:23:49.980 to go to a full commitment of marriage which truly is historically the greatest commitment it is it is

00:24:00.460 you know we are going to commit together to be together as a union for life that's been the historic

00:24:06.600 definition of what marriage is so it is the highest and they're not ready for that but their rely is

00:24:12.540 really high their commitment is is a little bit crooked you might say and mid-range their touch is all the

00:24:18.780 way to the top their trust is mid-range because they're not quite sure if they can believe everything

00:24:24.780 good about this person but they have enough to move in together and their no even though they might say

00:24:29.760 their no is really high there's a ton of things that they don't know about each other what all the

00:24:35.380 research in the meta-analysis as well as most of the individual studies you can't really find any good

00:24:44.200 research that says this approach of moving in and then eventually getting married is producing better

00:24:52.380 marriages but there is a lot of research that says the breakup rates are significantly higher than the

00:25:01.680 breakup rates in marriage and you might be like well that's good so they move in together they realize

00:25:06.320 it's not going to work out and they break up but we also find the after effects of those breakups

00:25:12.700 can be more similar to the after effects of divorce than ever realized and so people are thinking this

00:25:22.660 is like a no fault no risk approach to checking out a relationship and they move in and their hearts are

00:25:28.740 bonded and they're living together and their rely is really high and and maybe they see problems and

00:25:35.500 because their reliance is so high and and they bought a house together they're living together and

00:25:41.280 they both put money out and bought a house now their dependence their co interdependency has just moved

00:25:49.080 significantly up or they bought a dog together even that or in the millennial generation which is what

00:25:55.920 maybe 22 23 years old to 38 years old now having a having a kid when you're not married in that

00:26:03.980 generation is now over 50 percent it's 55 percent and just a quick stat they looked at these moms that 1.00

00:26:12.640 are having kids when they're not married and they asked them how many of you are going to eventually marry

00:26:21.060 the father of your child well it was around 70 percent said yeah you know we're going to marry the father

00:26:27.820 of our child they did a five-year follow-up with these millennial moms and only 16 percent five years 1.00

00:26:36.460 later had married the dads and over 50 it was actually 65 plus percent had moved on to another guy

00:26:45.440 so just think how complicated life is becoming so i i i am elaborating on what you said but there is an

00:26:55.720 intuitive logic that says as you get to know somebody and we can talk brett about what does it mean to get

00:27:02.780 to know somebody what are the key areas but as you get to know somebody let the ceiling of how much you

00:27:09.100 truly know them let that set the ceiling of your trust and as you are getting to know them and

00:27:17.660 you know checking out your trust based on that we call it the three t's by the way you got to talk

00:27:26.460 so that's good to get to know them and build trust but second t is you've got to be together in various

00:27:33.380 situations and moods and you know kind of states of life you know when they're stressed or when they're

00:27:40.300 angry or when they're we already said when they're mad at you this togetherness and diverse moods and

00:27:46.860 settings takes the third t it takes a lot of time so if you let your know set the ceiling for your

00:27:55.820 trust and how you know and believe in them as that's getting tested out you keep pulling back your

00:28:02.800 reliance to to keep a little bit of a balanced life not overly investing the same with your

00:28:09.840 commitment and if you pace it that way and then you do everything you can to hold your physical

00:28:16.580 involvement with them in check i i know everybody's like man just you gotta you gotta jump in the sack and

00:28:24.580 check things out right away but all research from biological to to psychological and social finds

00:28:33.680 that jumping in the sack with somebody even in a hookup creates chemicals in the brain that prompt a

00:28:42.920 sense of connection and bond and so we're creating bonds that don't match the other kind of areas of the

00:28:53.500 relationship and this skewed kind of like sense of i'm bonded to them i can't stop thinking about them

00:29:02.180 i'm spending my time with them but this other area is not fully developed like how much i know them

00:29:08.020 whether i can fully trust them these areas are not fully developed whether they really will meet my

00:29:14.760 needs in responsible ways or whether whether they will be kind of more self self-running and self-focused

00:29:22.100 and and i and i didn't realize that for the first few months doing a relationship with the logic of

00:29:28.780 the relationship attachment model that kind of intuitive logic don't let a level go higher than

00:29:34.320 the previous to the left that has saved a ton of people heartache and decisions and help them to kind of

00:29:42.980 use it as i call it a relationship gps system to help them navigate their relationship you know in a way that

00:29:50.780 is wise and safe and actually very rewarding we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our

00:29:56.600 sponsors and now back to the show so earlier you mentioned you want to talk about guys being kind of

00:30:05.180 taking taking charge and being a part of this pacing of it so talk to that why what role does a guy have

00:30:10.300 in a relationship in pacing the relationship yeah this is uh i mean this has been so i had a counseling

00:30:16.920 practice if i back up in northern ohio for 25 years and it was a it was something that just bothered me

00:30:26.940 so much and then after you know designing programs so we have a lot of programs now i don't have a

00:30:33.460 private practice anymore but we have a lot of programs that have been trying to do more preventative

00:30:39.300 than remedial work obviously a counseling practice does a lot of remedial work trying to fix something

00:30:44.080 that broke and like now i want to just help people try to avoid things breaking down by making better

00:30:51.400 decisions on the front end one of the things that always just kind of got me was this sense that

00:31:00.500 respecting what a woman wants and what she's willing to to do in our relationship

00:31:08.220 is the role of the man he is just to be thoughtful and respectful and not pressure her in any kind of

00:31:17.560 way and if he does that then that is enough to be you know an outstanding you know art of manliness guy

00:31:25.260 okay and and i'm like okay that is all good but that's not good enough the man should

00:31:34.000 he he he should be selective about who he's getting involved with he should have some criteria of what

00:31:40.800 he wants from a female and what he doesn't like in a female and he should definitely have some kind of 1.00

00:31:50.000 a value system about how to intentionally pace the acceleration of the relationship and if she is like

00:31:59.380 on the third time they're hanging out together she's like hey why don't you come up to my apartment

00:32:04.880 he he's like are you sure is that okay with you that's great with me that permission that she is

00:32:12.580 giving doesn't remove the responsibility he has of saying hey i'm pacing this relationship and i'm

00:32:21.820 going to tell her you know i think this is kind of early to be jumping in together and you know you know

00:32:27.860 i'd like to man i'm attracted to you i find it's an exciting conversation to even talk about this but

00:32:34.980 you know i'm going to hold back because i really think that if we do this relationship differently

00:32:40.160 we might be able to to either develop a really great relationship and see where it's going and

00:32:46.440 and that's going to be a totally it's just going to be a totally different landscape if we do this

00:32:51.460 relationship a little differently and i'd love to talk about why that's important to me

00:32:55.460 i just found even parents didn't teach their boys that this is a responsibility of a young man or an

00:33:07.320 older man a middle-aged man it doesn't matter this is a responsibility of the man in the relationship

00:33:12.720 not just the woman and so forever it seems like women were the gatekeepers of any kind of sexual 0.96

00:33:21.880 involvement and they were it went beyond that they were actually not just the gatekeepers but the

00:33:28.100 relationship managers this is a big problem in marriage a lot of wives want their husbands to join 0.99

00:33:37.600 with them and be relationship managers hey why don't you plan a date why don't you think about

00:33:41.320 something that'd be fun to do why don't you look at what we need in our relationship why don't you come

00:33:45.140 to me and say we got to improve our communication why am i always the one doing all this

00:33:49.500 well it goes all the way back to how boys are raised and boys are raised to not be relationship

00:33:56.380 managers and to not be the gatekeepers of the physical sexual area of a relationship and so i say

00:34:04.300 we've got to up the kind of the responsibility and the the empowerment of men in relationships men should

00:34:12.160 be much more engaged and they should be much more kind of positive about taking this on like hey this

00:34:20.260 is a this is a good thing i want to have some involvement when my wife and i dated back at the

00:34:27.360 end of the 70s we met in college and we dated in college before we got married for a couple years and

00:34:32.560 and you know i'm i'm thankful looking back i was very much a relationship manager

00:34:39.260 meaning what do i mean by that i i was thinking about hey what is going on in our relationship

00:34:45.500 where are we what are things we need to talk about i would bring up topics i would prompt things

00:34:51.040 it was a mutual you know we both did it but i can remember even as a 19 20 year old being very engaged

00:34:59.560 in that way and i definitely was thoughtful and we talked about what we were going to do in our

00:35:05.540 physical relationship and what boundaries where you're going to set and not do and that that helped

00:35:10.780 us to establish kind of a best friend relationship that has been foundational now for like i said over

00:35:18.200 40 years so i i just think that it's a it there's no way to get around that and if we help men develop

00:35:28.120 that sense of role in relationships it empowers men and gives them way more sense of thoughtfulness

00:35:37.420 and involvement than i think a lot of times they've had in the past and women will appreciate it too

00:35:42.380 i i think so and and what i would say if i mean if a guy's doing this well so we're not talking about

00:35:49.660 control freaks so just to put a couple disclaimers out there we're not talking about control freaks we're

00:35:54.220 not talking about interrogation we're not talking about talking about authoritarian approaches none

00:36:00.040 of those things i'm talking about i'm talking about just upping their involvement and being thoughtful

00:36:05.680 about the relationship and actually engaging in the relationship on a regular basis from the very

00:36:11.420 beginning all the way on into long-term committed relationships and absolutely the the partner will

00:36:18.180 be very very appreciative of it and if if not then that that guy ought to really step back and think about

00:36:26.380 what does this say about this partner that doesn't like me getting involved and taking some charge of

00:36:33.160 this whole arena of you know what we do together what we talk about and what our physical relationship

00:36:40.440 is like what what why is she like this you know what does that mean about her because i i would say 0.99

00:36:45.720 that's a red flag so yeah that idea that you know happy wife happy life that no that's not good it's

00:36:52.040 probably gonna lead to a lot of heartache and just not having a good time happy what well if that if that

00:37:00.540 is interpreted to be happy wife happy life so all that means is i can be totally passive if that's the

00:37:11.160 interpretation then i agree that that's not a good but if happy wife means hey if i do if i engage if

00:37:18.020 i've involved if i'm helping to pace the relationship if i'm managing it in in a mutual way if i'm thinking

00:37:24.800 about what she needs as well as what i need and we're putting those things on the table and i'm and

00:37:30.060 i'm an initiator not just a responder and if i am doing those things i would say you're going to have a

00:37:37.020 much happier wife and a happier life as well because those are the things if you read all the

00:37:42.720 books they'll all be saying the same thing guys need to step into that kind of involvement and i'm

00:37:51.240 just putting it upstream at the very beginning of a relationship guys need to be stepping in and they

00:37:57.300 need to be told this is a good thing for you to do so let's talk about uh kind of delve deep into the

00:38:03.180 the no factor because in the book you spend a lot of time in this no area of bonding because i think

00:38:09.340 it's hard in the in the the dating arena today oftentimes people are dating complete strangers

00:38:15.080 like they meet at college they're from you know their potential partners from detroit they're from

00:38:20.300 california it used to be like way back in the 19th century like you grew up in the same hometown

00:38:25.400 families knew each other generations like you you knew the person not so anymore so what does it

00:38:31.320 mean to to know somebody in a relationship yeah you're so you're so right i i came across this

00:38:36.940 book written right on the edge of the 1950s so it was kind of coming out of the 40s which was if you

00:38:42.040 think back to history that's you know world war ii and we came out of the depression and all those

00:38:46.760 things and it was also the era where we had not quite yet stepped into the 1950s of suburbs right

00:38:55.260 people lived in the cities and anyway it's a it was the by burgess the leading sociologist of that

00:39:03.980 time period and it was a book on called i think love marriage and courtship it was a great little

00:39:09.600 book i found and i came across this study that in the 70 percentile remember exactly if it's 73 or 74

00:39:17.540 but of the people in a study in the city of philadelphia people that got married married somebody

00:39:24.240 that they had lived within six blocks of so 70 we'll say that we'll go up at the 75 so three out

00:39:32.100 of four people were marrying somebody that was in their neighborhood and you're absolutely right that

00:39:36.540 is not really what's going on in this day and age people are meeting online and building long you know

00:39:44.580 long distance relationships on a very very regular basis and meeting in different settings where

00:39:51.580 they have come from you know backgrounds that are very diverse and the diversity is great i love

00:40:00.240 diversity but understand diversity makes figuring out compatibility much more complicated it's not

00:40:09.200 that relationships have become simpler they become more complicated and yet the relationship information

00:40:16.180 for what we're talking about being upstream has i think really been depleted so you know the people

00:40:25.340 guiding the process and friends and relatives and family you know it's just kind of all dropped off

00:40:31.860 and people are marrying much later so they're more independent and on their own and they almost become

00:40:38.720 dependent on you know like assessments online like i'll take e-harmony and then i'll do this

00:40:46.060 assessment and it will start helping me connect with people and and okay so this is this is where

00:40:52.340 wisdom is found is in some kind of an online assessment and i i like things like that but i think we need to

00:41:00.720 go way way beyond that so empowering singles with key target areas to explore and talk about in their

00:41:09.720 relationship these are the most important areas to get to know and we want you to understand them to have some

00:41:17.900 in-depth kind of information about them because you are the one running your relationship not some online

00:41:25.440 assessment you're the one that is ultimately making decisions not some algorithm and so we want you to be

00:41:33.800 empowered with this so you can go into it this really came out of brett when i was in my private practice in the

00:41:41.260 mid-90s i was also teaching marriage and family coursework and graduate school and i came across some research

00:41:47.460 that had to do with characteristics of people before marriage and how they predict some kind of outcome

00:41:58.240 after marriage so they some of them were individual characteristics some of them were kind of relationship

00:42:04.900 characteristics but they were things basically that you could get to know about somebody before

00:42:10.660 marriage that predicted how that person seemed to function after marriage and what the outcomes would

00:42:16.960 be and i thought i wonder how many research studies have been conducted on something about a person

00:42:24.520 you know like unmarried characteristics that predict marriage outcomes so i set myself and that's really

00:42:32.960 how this book came about i set myself on the journey of collecting all of the research i could find

00:42:40.600 that was about that and i found hundreds of research studies that nobody had ever organized or cataloged and i

00:42:49.520 began to put them in categories and found that there were really five key areas that covered the the vast

00:42:58.140 majority almost all of this research and so i put them in a little acronym and they became five core chapters of

00:43:07.620 my book so and they are also in the the pick program and we have an online version so people can they don't have

00:43:16.080 to go to a live class i could just jump online we call it head meets heart and it goes through the same

00:43:21.080 areas goes through that relationship attachment model we've talked about goes more in depth into those

00:43:26.000 five areas and then it goes very in depth into the five key areas to get to know about somebody that

00:43:32.420 we're talking about right now and what are those five key areas just as a summary okay so i'll put them

00:43:39.440 in the order of the book so they're a little different order in in the programs but in the book

00:43:45.660 they they they start with kind of what i thought would be the logic like you meet somebody and you

00:43:53.160 and you and you start hanging out together you know we we use the word dating as we've been talking but

00:43:59.080 i don't know who who uses that word anymore relationships have become so undefined which is like a whole

00:44:04.880 another topic but when i go on college campuses now and everything they they say if if somebody is

00:44:11.680 dating they don't call it dating more they call talking so what do you guys do and we're talking

00:44:15.840 so that's what it is so i just tried to be like okay what would be the logical progression of these

00:44:22.160 five areas and they're not you know it's not cut in stone and they're not like finish one and go to

00:44:27.540 the other but usually the first thing that you begin to see is what i call compatibility potential

00:44:32.540 so you see like you're talking to somebody and are we it's that click factor that i mentioned

00:44:39.540 earlier it's that sense of chemistry it's some commonality and so i define three major areas

00:44:47.580 of compatibility that i think go a lot deeper than just that initial but i think that's kind of it you

00:44:53.840 know do we do we feel a little bit compatible with this person and then the second major area

00:45:01.220 is relationship skills and so you kind of figure that out you know how does the person talk how does

00:45:08.960 the person handle themselves with me how do they interact with me in terms of their skill level

00:45:14.960 if you think of a relationship skill if we wanted to find that just think in relationships there are

00:45:22.840 activities that we do we talk we share open up that's all parts of talking we plan things to do together so there's

00:45:34.960 activities whether it's recreation whether it's a project whether it's work we support each other we make

00:45:43.840 make priorities we meet each other's needs that takes a lot we can figure out what the person needs

00:45:51.560 i call being a connoisseur of another person you know how how much am i an expert on what this other

00:45:57.020 person needs right so these are activities the proficiency of how good you are at a particular

00:46:04.040 activity is your skill level so skills are not some separate category of the activities that make up

00:46:12.940 what we do in relationships skills are just the measure of proficiency that we have at doing that so

00:46:20.340 how good am i at talking and listening would start to fall into what we call a communication skill

00:46:26.300 so obviously you start hanging with somebody you not only initially see this first category

00:46:33.500 they said it's how are we clicking what's our compatibility what's our chemistry but then you also

00:46:39.580 are doing activities together and you start to see how good they are at these particular activities

00:46:46.420 those two things by the way are not enough to really tell you what this person is like

00:46:52.880 there are important areas but there are other areas that don't surface so quickly and the third one

00:47:02.980 is what i called a relationship scripts how a person treats everybody else like what forget about how

00:47:13.580 they treat you think about how they treat a co-worker or an authority figure or uh you know their family

00:47:20.620 or extended family or or how they treated an ex or how they broke up with that ex or how they talk about

00:47:26.880 people you know a lot of times how they're treating me doesn't really match how they treat some other

00:47:34.540 significant people in their life even maybe a stranger or somebody that is you know a waiter or waitress you

00:47:42.260 know a service person sometimes how they treat these other people in other arenas is starkly different

00:47:51.320 than how they treat me but i like how they treat me but you know so that's their business but

00:47:58.380 a lot of times those scripts over time start to get turned into the relationship and they start

00:48:07.240 surfacing in the relationship so they they're not a good friend they don't like pay a lot of attention

00:48:13.440 to a person that they're quote friends with or maybe certain family members they kind of tune them out

00:48:19.060 they don't look very conscientious toward those people and and they never like pursue like shouldn't

00:48:25.080 you call your brother or yeah whatever or your friend you know your friend always reaches out to

00:48:30.600 you but you never really reach out to them and you see this kind of passivity and how they treat others

00:48:37.000 but that they're so involved with me and they're constantly with me and they're constantly talking to me

00:48:42.360 and we've been together now two and a half months and man i don't even pay attention to

00:48:47.240 their relationship scripts with others huge red flag because it's really likely that as you round

00:48:57.820 the corner from three months into maybe 13 months passing your first year all of a sudden or maybe

00:49:05.100 even second year you start to see some of those relationship scripts are starting to become normative

00:49:11.140 in how they relate to me and that was i could see it in the first couple months of our relationship

00:49:18.680 but i i minimized it because i didn't think it had any significance compatibility their actual skill

00:49:27.260 level of relationship activities and things that they do the scripts of how they treat others their

00:49:34.660 relationship patterns with others that's number three now we start to get into the really deep

00:49:40.140 stuff what they learned the fourth one is what they learned and have taken out of their family

00:49:46.580 upbringing this is not easy to get to know in the beginning of a relationship because usually if we

00:49:54.280 hear anything about family we just hear some easygoing stories about families but you have to look

00:50:01.180 really hard family upbringing whether it was adopted family about you know biological parent family a single

00:50:09.280 parent family whether it whether it was an institutional a foster family or or they group home whatever

00:50:17.920 everybody grew up and during those you know 18 years whatever period of time you want to say

00:50:26.200 they were growing up they were in they were experiencing and internalizing things from those family dynamics

00:50:35.240 from how the family related how they were treated and they become some of the strongest predictors of what

00:50:41.560 they're going to then take out and you know re-establish in the families they establish or the relationships

00:50:49.260 that they establish in their adulthood so the the fourth area is what i would say what they

00:50:55.960 learned and took out of their family it's not always what happened but it's what they took out

00:51:01.680 and the final one which is extremely important and i haven't found anybody to talk about it but me

00:51:09.520 and that's the conscience people have a conscience it's it's the dynamic value system that operates in

00:51:20.140 them but there is there's a relationship conscience there is a sense of of not just right and wrong but

00:51:27.720 empathy is prompted by the conscience the conscience is like that internal voice that monitors you as you

00:51:36.280 are living life it tells you stop slow down don't do that if um i'll just mention a show you know a lot of

00:51:46.040 people at when seinfeld was on and now they watch all the reruns but going to some of the writer not

00:51:53.500 just jerry seinfeld but then larry david and then the larry david show well if you if you want to see

00:51:59.580 someone that depicts what good old sigmund freud called a swiss cheese conscience i think larry david is

00:52:08.840 like the perfect example where sometimes he's super conscientious and then other times he's like so

00:52:13.780 in your space he's so inappropriate with somebody but we all laugh at it but you know if you like

00:52:20.640 the show if you don't like the show please don't be offended but you know there's a lot of humor there

00:52:25.060 but he is showing kind of that that conscience that some things stick some things just go right through

00:52:33.620 and he seems so uninsightful unempathetic and so forth this doesn't always reveal itself right away

00:52:42.740 these five areas how you and i click together the key areas of our compatibility how skilled you are

00:52:51.340 in some of the most important areas of relationship activities like communication problem solving

00:52:57.780 conflict empathy apologies things like that the third is is how do you treat other people because

00:53:05.500 that's such a strong predictor of how you act in relationships in general and it's probably going

00:53:12.560 to come into our relationship and then let's get deeper into our family stuff what did you take out

00:53:18.060 of your family and then finally deep inside of you what is the maturity and the functioning of that

00:53:26.400 conscience that is such a strong influence on how you live your life and then how you're going to

00:53:33.600 ultimately relate to me in a relationship and this like you said it takes talking it takes being

00:53:38.860 together and it takes time a lot of time a lot more time than you think it's going to take

00:53:43.240 it does and if i put those five areas back into that relationship attachment model going from left to

00:53:51.640 right is no and then as a drop down box just think about these five areas what am i getting to know

00:53:58.700 about compatibility what am i getting to know about skills what am i getting to know about

00:54:03.360 their relationship scripts what am i getting to know on a deeper level about their family and what

00:54:07.980 they took out of it and how those experiences have shaped them and what am i getting to ultimately know

00:54:13.020 about their character and conscience and this this inner side and as i get to know those key areas

00:54:19.340 which definitely take time you can't sit down with somebody and pull out a you know 101 questions

00:54:26.740 and say while we're while we're waiting for uh dinner to come i thought i would just kind of

00:54:31.940 you know ask some questions here that came from this uh podcast that was really interesting on how to 0.97

00:54:37.620 avoid getting involved with a jerk now i'm not saying you're a jerk but let's let's go through these 0.96

00:54:41.840 questions i have 20 for each of five categories so you can't do that at that point larry david would do 0.99

00:54:47.700 that larry david would do that of course but but if you know these areas and in my book i do have

00:54:54.060 about 20 25 questions for each of these five areas so over 100 questions if you know the question if

00:54:58.880 you know the target areas and the questions then as time goes on and it feels comfortable

00:55:04.600 these things can just become part of the fabric of how you're talking together and as your no

00:55:10.800 slowly goes up it tells you how you can trust and believe in them and it tells you how much you can

00:55:18.720 look to them and depend on them and these three actually all interact how they meet my needs how

00:55:24.860 i trust them how they come through for me what they share what we talk about and as they interact

00:55:30.960 they inform how invested i should become in my commitment and where i should set some boundaries

00:55:37.660 in our physical relationship to touch well john we've talked about a lot right now but there's so

00:55:44.180 much more we could talk about i think we got to have you back on the show to discuss this more but

00:55:48.520 in the meantime where can people go to learn more about the book and your work oh that'd be great well

00:55:53.440 first of all i would love to come back on anytime just let me know i'd be i'd be glad to and um we have

00:55:59.040 some free things and then we have some things that can be purchased and so let me just start with

00:56:03.640 the book so i mean they can just jump on amazon and and find the book that way that's no problem 0.99

00:56:09.080 again it's published by mcgraw hill and it's called how to avoid falling in love with a jerk 0.96

00:56:15.180 but if they also go to my love thinks like love l-o-v-e thinks t-h-i-n-k-s not stinks but and it's my 0.97

00:56:25.900 you know my love thinks because we say love should think it shouldn't not just be intuitive the head and

00:56:31.900 the heart should work together so if they go to my love things they can get a lot of free resources we

00:56:38.120 have a whole library of free resources and we have a blog that's free that is always giving

00:56:42.300 information there is also we have online courses and right there from my love things they can click

00:56:48.980 online courses and if they use the code art of man a-r-t-o-f-m-a-n art of man they can get a 20

00:56:59.800 discount on any of our online courses and the online course that goes with the content we've been

00:57:06.020 talking about it's called head needs heart so it's about the head and heart working together

00:57:11.220 obviously and then finally dr morgan cutlip who happens to be my daughter we work closely together

00:57:17.300 she's very involved in all this she has an instagram my love thinks where she puts out daily relationship

00:57:24.680 tips she also does the blog that i mentioned on my love things but if you go to add my love things

00:57:29.760 on instagram you can sign in and get these you know free resources just from her kind of daily

00:57:37.020 tips and they're and they really are good i think they're helpful she kind of goes through the

00:57:41.300 spectrum of singles on into committed relationships and marriage well fantastic well john van epp thanks

00:57:46.800 for your time it's been a pleasure it's been great talking to you my guest is john van epp he's the 0.69

00:57:51.600 author of the book how to avoid falling in love with the jerk it's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:57:55.780 everywhere you can find out more information about his work at his website love thinks.com not 0.96

00:58:00.160 love stinks.com love thinks.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash love thinks where you

00:58:05.800 find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of

00:58:17.220 the aom podcast check out our website at art of manless.com where you can find our podcast archives

00:58:21.460 as well as thousands of articles we've written over the years a lot of things about relationships on there

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00:58:57.140 to the aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - February 12, 2020

#584： How to Avoid Falling in Love With the Wrong Person

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