Dr. Wendy Walsh and Rachel go deep.
Wendy has clear advice for Rachel about love that she needs to hear. (Might help you as well...)
This is Rachel Go's Rogue. Welcome back to another episode of Rachel Goes Rogue. I'm your host, Rachel Savannah Lovis, and today we're continuing to dive into the dating pool. I'm so excited to continue on this journey back to dating. So after having my last dating expert join me, Jake is awesome, but I think it's important to have different experts come on to get different points of view because I guess that's the smartest way to go about it, getting different advice from different points of view and then figuring out what works best for me. So as we dive into these dating topics, I recommend that you do the same, take what you like and leave the rest. And that's why I'm so excited to have today's guest join me as I continue to navigate this dating world. I'm bringing in doctor Wendy Walsh. She's known as America's relationship expert. Doctor Wendy Walsh is an award winning television journalist, a radio host and podcaster, the author of three books on relationships and thousands of print and digital articles. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology and has been a host of her own radio show, The Doctor Wendy Walsh Show since twenty fifteen. She's also a former Emmy nominated host of The Doctors as well as former host of Extra and named the Time Magazine Person of the Year in twenty seventeen. Thank you so much for joining me, Doctor Wendy Walsh. I'm really happy to have you here to talk about dating.
Thank you, it's my favorite topic.
Let's start at the beginning. Since you have a background in psychology, why is it that some women are more drawn to men they know are bad for them?
Well, it all has there's two pieces. Actually, one is attachment style. So women who have had suffered some kind of abuse in their childhood, whether that abuse was emotional, physical, or sexual, which makes up more than one third of all women, by the way, and usually that abuse came at the hand from the hand of someone they loved, and so their model for love psychologists might call it the internal working model for love is mixed up with pain and longing, so that's familiar to them. And I always say love isn't about finding happiness, it's about finding the familiar. So the only thing we can do is change our model for love and learn to accept and tolerate kindness.
So that's one thing.
The other thing is women like to unquote date up. They were all so brought up through the patriarchy they and through Cinderella stories, and we are at a time in our history where they're actually more working women than working men. In America right now, we have seen in the last twenty years the feminization of college campuses. Women are making great strides getting ahead in education and income, but they still want a guy who's more educated or a little older, who makes more money. And that is a dwindling supply of men. So with the you know, I hate the word alpha male because it's not true. But let's just say the high value male mate. He's going to He has so much choice right now because all the women are vying for them. So he doesn't have to work very hard, and he doesn't have to treat women very well at all. He just has to you know, I used to say that the price of sex. So we live in a high supply sexual economy where the sex is in high supply and the price is very In nineteen fifty, the price of sex was six years of courtship and a wedding ceremony in the nineteen eighties, it was three expensive dates. Today the price of sex is the barrel bottom price of one well worded text, and sometimes it's.
Just you wip okay. So what do you make of this? Is there like a solution to this problem?
Or I've written about this in all three of my books and so and I'm working a third book right now called blue Chip Sex, Having the right kind of sex at the right time with the right person. You see, women hold all the cards in a relationship before sex happens, and they lose all the cards right after sex happens. So delaying the onset of a sexual relationship while you're doing some assessment is important. And I want to be really clear. This is not making him wait, This is not manipulating him so he'll love me more. This is you go on, dude, I'm going to protect my eggs, my bloodstream in my heart until you pass my test. It's about doing the choosing. It's about putting women in the power position, in the driver's seat in their relationships.
So how long would you recommend to wait to help that?
So that's always the big question.
It's not about how many days or weeks or months. Although I don't think you can have trust with somebody after one date. It is about when you can really trust somebody with your body.
You see. Sex is still it's a basic biological.
Reality that women hate to think about, but it's basic evolution. Sex is a much higher risk copy for women than it is for men. Right, So if men have a bad sexual experience, it's a quasi bad day. If women have a bad sexual experience, it might involve falling in love with a loser because our bodies emit so much oxytocin and bond us with bad people. It might involve getting an SDI. Because of our unique biology, we're much more likely to get an STI.
And it might.
Involve coming down with an eighteen eighteen year case of parenthood. Right, So, for women, sex is nothing to be trifled with. There are no strings attached for women. I mean, we're trying to make the changes birth control and protection and all those things to make it safer, but it's still not completely safe for women.
I wanted to go back to the first thing that you were saying about attachment styles, and I know that you are an expert in attachment styles, So if you could like run down really quick for us or for those who don't know what attachment styles are, the different types and the type that you would ideally want in a relationship or want for yourself.
Sure, so I want to remind everybody I'm not a clinician, I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor, and I teach developmental psychology. I teach how our attachment style is formed early in life and what the outcome is in our adult romantic life. Now as an individual woman, I also healed my own attachment injuries through years of therapy and have a very secure relationship now. But I began this journey studying psychology to solve my own dating problems. Literally, so I know it from textbook and I know it from inside. So basically, in the first three years of life, and some people would say even in the first twelve months before we are verbal, so we can't store memories as stories and narratives.
Our brain triples in size in the first year.
And it starts to form ideas about what's right and normal in life, and what feels good and what doesn't. And so this is where if there is neglect or abuse that the child starts to think, well, this is normal.
I guess this is what love is.
Right.
So there are different ways that attachment can play out, and I hate to put people into very specific categories because the truth is we may attach differently to different people depending on what they ignite in us. But they're generally you could say that, you know, some people have more anxiety around attachment. They have an anxious attachment style. They have easily fears of abandonment. They count the time between each texts, they count the words in each text.
They are looking vigilantly.
Searching for signs of abandonment. They're scrolling through their partners social media wondering. They're trying to get his passwords, trying to look for the dms, et cetera. These are now I used pronouns. They're a female with male.
But a male can have.
An anxious attachment of style. And that's the dude that becomes a stalker. That's the dude said, no, i'll pick you up at work. No, I don't like your talking to that guy at work. No, I don't want you dress like that when we're going out, Right, that's his fear of abandonment, right, This controlling thing that he tries to do to control his mate.
Now. The cool the fascinating thing about attachment.
Style is that we're mostly unaware of it, and we go out in life thinking what we're feeling is normal. And so what we need in order to ignite that fami ill your anxiety is we need somebody who has an avoidant attachment style. When I say need, I mean need. And so we will find people who fear emotional intimacy. Oh, they may like physical intimacy, but they bolt pretty quickly afterwards. So they have trouble talking about feelings. They have little insight into their own feelings. They are very uncomfortable when you express your feelings. They have become masters at being dismissive, changing the subject, or indeed putting people down for having feelings. You know, when they call people needy, they're too needy. There's no such thing as needy. Everybody has their own needs that are valid for them, right, And so what ends up happening is there's this dance that can go on sometimes for years and decades, where the anxious person is feeling unfulfilled, the avoidant person is feeling smothered, and this is a diad that can change. Now, your question, what should we be looking for well. Americans who have a secure attachment style are probably married to their college sweetheart and they're not on dating apps.
Okay.
They tend to be people who can both give care and receive care comfortably. Remember some people can do one or the other, but it's hard for both. They can take turns leaning on each other's shoulders. They can express their feelings in a non confrontational angry way. Hey, you know kind of bothered me when you did that. I was wondering what was going on with you?
And you know, they just.
Have normal conversations instead of what are you doing, you know, and blaming the other person or trying to control the other person.
They live.
It's not that they don't have conflict. In fact, research on long term securely attached couples shows that they actually have far more conflict than the other groups, partly because they deal with little border skirmishes all the time. They don't have the big, knockdown, blow them out fights. But the other ones avoid conflict because they're so afraid of the breakup that could come from it, So they wait till everything builds and then it's a huge thing. So how do you tell if somebody has a secure attachment style, Well, they respond to your texts and your needs. They don't run away, they're not dismissive, they're not overly trying to smother you.
They're just kind of there.
Like they might say something like, hey, I'll be happy to pick you up, but if you feel more comfortable bringing your own car, I understand. See they're trying to figure out what you like, and so I'll pick you up, but I control already.
Yeah, I would think that someone who has a healthy relationship with their parents would be a green flag because typically that would I would think support a more secure attachment style in somebody relationship wise, Yes and no.
In fact, my first book was called the boyfriend Test, How do we evaluate his potential before you lose your heart? And the question I did it like a Glamour magazine quiz the whole book, And the question with the biggest amount of points is what kind of relationship does he have with his mother? And what you're looking for is a relationship that's not too close and not too distant. If he tells you on his first few dates that he and his mother have a falling out and he really doesn't like his mother and.
He has problems. That's a big red flag if he also says I love my mom. I had the greatest mom.
Oh my god, it's so good. I go to their place on Sundays, I did my laundry. Sometimes my mom is so wonderful. You're like, dude, do you need a wife or you're just looking for a mistress, because it sounds like you already have a wife. It's your mom, right, so we're looking for that. A healthy answer would be, you know, my parents did the best they had they could with the tools they had. There were some rough moments growing up, but we kind of got through it, and I feel like we come to this place now as adults where we have a fairly good relationship.
That's a healthy way to describe.
Your family, Okay, And then I wanted to ask you personally. I've had a hard time pinpointing if I have a avoidant attachment style or an anxious attachment style, because typically, like growing up, I've been more of an anxious person. But I tend to attract men who like to have control and are very anxious about who I'm going out with and need to know all the details. It seems like they fall more in that anxious attachment style, so then therefore it would make me more of an avoidant. And also, growing up, I had a harder time expressing my emotions and identifying my emotions, and I would just kind of like avoid tough conversations. So I think knowing that, I think I have maybe more of an avoidant attachment style.
Well, it is a scale, and it also gets ignited in certain ways with certain people. This is a question for you and your therapist to worry out. I can tell you from my experience when I hear you talking that it reminds me a lot of me when I was young, And I call it. It's called an anxious ambivalent attachment style.
Anxious ambivalent is the come closer, come closer.
I need you, Oh oh, not that close, So they're come forward, go away people. And an example from my early life would be I'd be always anxious for the bad boys to call me back, and then they wouldn't and I'd be filled with anxiety.
So I'd fill the gap with a nice guy.
But if the nice guy actually gave me too much attention, I would act very dismissive and avoidant to push him away. It was like this in between space that felt okay for me.
Yeah, interesting, Okay, thank you for that insight.
You're welcome, But something for you and your therapist to talk about, for sure, because at the end of the day, all therapy is, and all any kind of analysis should be, is for us to have awareness of our feeling and the behaviors that come as a result of the feelings. And once we are aware of what's motivating things, that alone can bring such relief and it can help us so easily change our behavior.
Yeah, awareness is Keith. That's like the first step to any type of change is being aware of your attachment style, of your patterns. Is it common for women to have dating patterns and date the same kinds of people even after learning they aren't the best for them.
Yeah.
So my favorite metaphor for the stages of growth, I don't know if you've heard this one before, is imagine that bad boy is a hole in the road and you're walking down the.
Street and you don't see the hole and you fall in over and over again.
And then you go to therapy, you learn about your attachment style, and now you're like, I'm not going to go out with bad boys anymore. And so you walk down the street again, and this time you see the hole and you recognize it, and.
You still fall in.
Stage three is you walk down that street, you hit a wall of I am done with this. You see this bad boy in the early stages, he's showing you all the behaviors that this is going down a path that you have seen before, and so this time you very carefully step around the hole. But stage four is you take a different street. And there are so many people who have a secure attachment style who are not in the radar of somebody who has attachment juries. And as soon as they're able to literally make a different choice, all of a sudden, all these people come into the radar who didn't even know these nice people were there before.
Yeah, I think maybe the part for people that are refusing to take a different path is unknown and like not knowing if there is anything.
Oh, change scary. Change is scary.
So how does one break these patterns?
Well, you definitely should do it hand in hand with the licensed therapist, as I did. That's important and the reason why the Internet talks so much about red flags is they want people to pay attention to behaviors little tiny things that happen very early on. I always say before you hit, because once you're in bed with the person, it's too late.
You can't see.
Your brain is now being assaulted by a cocktail of neuro hormones that are making you feel lust and love, so you can't even.
See the red flags anymore.
And in fact, there's lots of research to show that early stages of love is filled with delusions. It's the best drug we have. It's a really great drug until you hit the withdrawal apart and you go cold turkey. So those early stage behaviors should be paid attention to in a very big way. Now, I want to be careful when I say this, because there are other people who are avoidant, who use the tiny little flaws and a normal.
Human as I'm not going about that again. I'm not seeing them again. Look at that one thing they did. These are not the people i'm talking too. The women i'm talking.
To tend to be women who have an anxious attachment style and ignore the red flags and proceed on love's racecourse and crash. And I'm here to say that watching for that hole and carefully walking around it may be as simple as So here's an example. This has happened to me, and I remember it being part of my growth, meeting somebody and thinking they were hot and getting into bed with them, and everything's great for a few weeks, and then you start to feel that little weaning. He's not texting quite so much, you're doing more of the communication, maybe you're even making the plans. You're starting to feel it, you know that feeling where guys are just kind of weaning you off. Well, in the old days, the old Wendy would have tried to make him love me, offer him more sex, show up with better underwear, be craze for him, show him that I am like the ones.
Ignore, just bring it back to where it was at the beginning.
But this time I called the dude up and I said, hey, I noticed a change in our rhythm. It feels a little bit like I'm investing more in this than you are. Can you help me understand what's going on? And dude said, oh, yeah, kind of noticed that too.
I don't know whatever.
And I said, okay, well, if you don't know, think goodbye, darling. I said, what would admit it? I say goodbye darling, And that is walking away Now. It doesn't mean you won't feel lost in grief. And I did shed a few tears in the shower. Justify a blue fine, But you gotta walk away. When someone started to wean you, they're sending you a message. Don't get all anxious and think I am going to beat out all the other girls. I am going to be the perfect girl. I'll make him come back around. There's nothing you can do. No amount of pilates classes, no amount of cute notes sent on cute cards, no amount of you know, getting waxed in places you never thought you would are gonna help. Okay, it's not gonna work. If he's weaning you, he's weaning you, and move on. He's not the guy for you.
Good advice, excellent advice. Yeah, And it's hard. It's hard to cut it off because like you have this whole ca of who this person is in your mind and you want it to be a certain way, and you want love, and.
It's all being in love with potential instead of reality. You can't fall in love with potential. You have to fall in love with what is he doing? What's he actually doing today this week? And the craziest thing is some people will tell a partner flat out, you know, I'm really not looking for a long term relationship or a commitment. I don't see myself getting married anytime soon. And the anxious person pushes right through that, and I'm like, they just told you, and you're still going to keep pursuing this even though that's not what you want. Well, they'll fall from me. They just saying that, you know, yeah.
Yeah, okay.
What are your thoughts on dating apps? I'm curious about this one.
Dating apps are the new nightclub without alcohol, which is wonderful. Dating apps shouldn't be called dating apps. They should be called meeting apps. They're just a place to meet someone. Dating apps should feel no different than in the olden days. If you're at a nightclub and a dude walks by and says hi, you either look at him, don't look at him, say hi back, or don't turn your back whatever. That's all the dating apps that moment, and from there it's about relationship skills. It doesn't matter where you meet somebody. It's all about relationship skills and love can be learned. So here's the biggest problem with dating apps. They create a paradox of choice. I want to remind you what our brains are wired for. Our brains in our anthropological past, an average human, in the course of their entire life spain never laid eyes on more than about one hundred and fifty other humans. Today, you got a thousand people every day who thumbs away. You're running into them in urban centers, on subways and nightclubs on dating apps. What the brain does when it's presented with too much choice is it has trouble making a choice, and when it does make a choice, it doesn't value that choice very much. So dating apps are biohacking your brain to make you stay addicted to the app instead of finding a relationship. And the way you undo that biohack is you use it in a way so that you will not create paradox of choice. And my prescription is very simple. Never match with more than two people at once. Only have two people in your message box, message with them back and forth until one of them shows you a red flag you don't like, and get rid of them. Now if you have not been on the phone, I'm totally fine with ghosting, because again, the dating app is just somebody walking by in a nightclub going, hey, what's up?
And you don't have to respond. It's a nightclub.
You can look at your girlfriends and ignore them, right, So that's all that is. Now, if you've been on a phone with him, which I do suggest you get on the phone after three texts, then you owe them a nice of the ghosting text. My ghosting text was, Hey, it was great talking to you. You know, have fun at your cousin's wedding next week. You know, I don't think romance is in the cards for us, but I'd love to keep you in mind for a girlfriend sometime. I probably sent that to one hundred guys. Nobody wrote back, bitch. They wrote back, thank you.
That's so nice of you. Just be classy anyway, Then.
You got the one left, that one you go on one coffee date with, and then you decide whether to send them the ghost text, And then you go on match with two others.
And this way you're only choosing between one or two.
You don't have twenty people in your boxes confusing your brain and making you hard to make a choice.
Yes, okay, that's good advice, because I was also going to ask you like dating more than one person at a time. I feel like there's a lot of advice out there that it's important to be actually date more than one person. Otherwise you could potentially just fall in love with one person without experiencing what else could be out there.
That's the voice of paradox of choice talking. Paradox of choice says, oh my god, there's a bigger, better deal. Maybe this isn't quite the lie when you know there's more choice.
It depends where your goal is.
If your goal is to have And by the way, I'm not like some traditionalist who's talking like I'm from the nineteen fifties. You want a bunch of short term relationships and so promps in the hay and use protection.
Go for a girlfriend. You can own your own orgasm. I don't care.
But if you are looking for a long term, committed relationship that may involve even reproduction. There's a very clear set of female mating strategies, and most of those brides out there you see in bridle magazines and in the bridal columns have used those strategies. And the strategies are this, these girls probably don't sleep with more than one person at once, and they do an assessment before they start sleeping with the then they try out the relationship and decide if they want to commit or not. You know, there's this really interesting research about choice making, and it is this, when we finally do make a choice to commit to anything, then we really value that choice. Not if we have twenty other choices, but if we have this one and we've committed to because you said, oh, you're.
Falling in love without thinking about all the others. That's called love.
That's what you're supposed to do, not think about the others, just focus on that and fall in love.
Right. So you know, an example would be.
You bought a Tesla and you're so excited about it, and there's a piece of you that's maybe like, you know, I could have got another kind of car. There's so many electric cars on the market. But you want to convince yourself and made the best choice in the world. So what do you do. You run around and tell all your friends how much you love that Tesla and how much it is the greatest car in the whole world, and you are so invested in it and it's a part of your identity. Now, the same thing happens when you choose a lover.
Once you see, here's a cool thing about love.
If you believe you're in a happy relationship, and you tell everybody you're in your happy relationship, you.
Will be in a happy relationship. Life is a self fulfilling prophecy. So my answer to that is, yeah, all in love with one person, date one person, tell everybody they're great.
Now, if you're feeling pain and you're not happy in the relationship, then get out.
What is your stance on long distance relationships?
Less about my stance and more about the research.
So the research shows that it's very attractive to people with an avoidant detachment style, obviously, And the other big problem with long distance relationships is that it's a series of little honeymoons. So long distance relationships don't have to endure the day to day bumps of just the stressors of traffic and spilled coffees and late for things and where's my guy and why didn't you show up at this and whatever, because there are scheduled weekends where it's all just a honeymoon and wrong. So it's they're not pure reality. Now, there's some other recent research on long distance relationships I just came across that I thought was so fabulous that long distance relationships can be as close and meaningful as real world relationships if there's one important thing at it, and it is emotional intimacy. So if you're talking and face and facetiming better than talking of foresight and sound better. If you're facetiming with your lover every day and you're talking honestly about your feelings, even if you had a bad day, if you can still lean on their shoulder and talk about it, then your relationship will still grow because you have the intimacy. A lot of long distance people are afraid to do that because they don't want to create rupture because it will screw up the next honeymoon that's coming, So they don't test the relationship for emotional closeness for the little things that happened during the week.
I think it's also interesting that you say, like it's attractive to an avoidant attachment style per se.
Oh yeah, they don't have to show up for the day to day emotional stuff.
What is a good alternative for people who don't love dating apps to.
Meet somebody everythingwhere in the world.
If you are in the mating marketplace, then every time you leave your door, look like you're looking for a date. That means hair and makeup and wardrobe. Okay, because this is a job. I say this to men and women and everybody. If you're slumping around town with your hair and the nod on your head, or dudes, if you're in a bunch of baggy sweats, who are.
You marketing to?
Once you are set up to market yourself, start catching people's eyes. When you're pumping gas, look to the person pumping in the gar next door. When you're at the Tesla superchargers, when you're in the grocery store, listen ladies in the vegetable aisle and high heels. Guys come and ask them dumb questions. Excuse you can ask you a question like how do you cook this chicken? You buy the roast water over there?
But whatever.
So you want to be open, smile and catch people's eyes. You see getting people to ask you out. I don't think women should ask out men, but women should issue invitations.
And invitations.
Is all about the smile and the body language and the hair flip. And you should do that in every place of your life, except be careful with the workplace.
Good advice there.
Oh, and I also want to say there's new research so I'm also an ambassador for datingadvice dot com, major website, and they just did a survey of where people are mostly meeting now because dating apps have been going down. LinkedIn, because LinkedIn can be a business contact or a date.
Nobody knows.
You could offer to meet with somebody in your industry just to talk about certain things, and then you can decide on your coffee date whether you want to turn this a little bit personal. And there's no HR department in LinkedIn. Those sexual harassment lawsuits.
Interesting, it's very interesting. Okay. How quickly do you think you should be exclusive?
Okay?
Drives me crazy when people write to me and say, so, my boyfriend is my friend then and we've been going out a month, and I'm like, he's.
Not your boyfriend after what month? Okay?
And if he says he is, somebody's done an anxious attachment there. It takes time to do some assessment. In my book The Boyfriend Test, I suggest that everybody needs a minimum of a ninety day probation period. It should be at least three months, and you know that's when you're starting to come out of your cocoon and introduce each other to friends and see how they walk.
In the real world.
Right, so around ninety days is usually the time. I also do not believe that anybody should consider moving in together until they've been together a year, Until you've gone through four seasons and all those holidays, you should not be thinking of sharing.
Elise back to the dating apps. Has the dating atmosphere now created more anxious attachment styles?
Well, the dating atmosphere doesn't create attachment style. It's created in early life. And what's created more attachment injuries is modern American capitalism. You see, before the nineteen sixties or seventies, most families lived together. Often they were multi generational families. We were more rural and agriculture Like you lived in a smaller place where you knew everybody in town. All the mates were vetted for you by family members, and you felt a sense of place and a village around you. Now, because modern capitalism needed employees and they needed mobile employees, they tour workers from those families of origin and from those villages, and they sent them to big cities. And there with the big cities, so these parents dragged around kids in the same way, kids lost contact with cousins and grandparents, and they had a sense of You know, we put so much emphasis on individuality in America. Being independent an individual is not necessarily healthy. We're supposed to be connected to others, and so people grow to think I'm not here for a long time. You know, I myself, I would say that some of my attachment injuries had to do with the fact that my dad was military and we moved constantly. By the time I graduated high school, I had gone to ten different schools. So my attitude is it, I'm here for a short time, don't want to get too close, don't know how long it's going to be right. It is the mobility needed for modern American capitalism that has been causing breakups of intergenerational families, been causing divorces as one partner goes somewhere else for a better job and kids are being dragged through this.
That's the problem.
Okay, how many dates does it take to know if this person is right? You?
Typically it's not number of dates, its degree of intimacy. You know, I love that New York Times column thirty six questions to fall in love. If you've ever done those thirty six questions with somebody, there's an app now for it. They had a psychologist make a series of questions, thirty six of them, and if you do them on a date with a partner, it probably not first date thing because it gets pretty intimate. This psychologist tried it out on a couple and he ended the thirty six questions with another proven in all kinds of research way to fall in love, which is to simply stare into each other's eyes for four minutes.
Four minutes.
It's like the eyes are the window to the soul. So this couple he tried it out on, did it, and they were married within six months. Most people who get through the thirty six questions honestly do report feelings of love at the end of it, because the questions evoke intimacy. They're not all down and dirty. It takes a while till you get into childhood trauma and fears and whatever. It starts like wait and looking for commonality, but then it gets into questions about we like it might be a first date. And you're halfway through the questions and one of the questions is, what are three things you can say that probably both of us are feeling right now, so it might be well cold in the room, we're both cold or mad at that waiter or something. You're creating commonality right in the brain. And so it is not about how many dates. It's how intimate, emotionally intimate, you can get. And the research is clear the people who stay together the longest may not have the best sex life, may not be wired financially or matched financially or educationally, but they should have emotional intimacy. It is the glue. You know, years and years ago, you're too young to remember this. When Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee were married, you know, some handyman stole a video of them having sex and it was released and went around the world. She went to court and sued them and never got the rights back. It's a tragedy. She talks about it in her documentary on Netflix, and it's just beautiful way.
She talks about it.
I was less interested in the porn on the video and more interested to see their intimacy. They called each other baby, can there be be? Oh, you're so cute, And in their intimate moments, I saw the connection they had. Of course, they had two children together. They were together for a long time, and that's what intimacy is.
Interesting. I haven't heard it that way. When it comes to dating apps, what do you think makes a strong dating profile?
Lots of research out of the Kinsey Institute says this. Okay, So the biggest problem with dating apps, well, a couple of problems. I mentioned paradox of choice. The other problem is most people with the healthy attachment style married the college sweethearts. They're problem not on the dating apps. So you have a disproportionate amount of people who have attachment injuries or disorganization. Doesn't mean they can't heal and aren't working on them. I mean, you're not looking for a perfect person. You're looking for somebody who's aware and doing the work right. But the other thing is you have people looking for a short term relationship and people looking for a long term relationship in the same dating pool. And the best way to get a short term relationship is to pretend you're looking for a long term relationship. Right, So people will say, oh, yeah, I'm looking for religions haven't met the right person. By the way, it's not about the right person. It's about relationship skills and being the right learning how to be the right person. So what dating approfoss The most important thing for women is to not signal that you want a short term relationship. So if your pictures are overly sexy, dudes like, I'm going to say whatever need to to get that body all right, so you don't have to eat just by showing up with estrogen. And there are men when men are looking, I will tell you this. When men go on a first date, one hundred percent of them they are thinking in the back of their head, am I going to meet my wife tonight? Or am I going to get laid? They're one or the other to them. So women think if I lead with sex, he'll like me. Yeah, he will for a short time, but the guy's looking for a long time commit long term commitment. When they see overly sexy girls, they think, yes, she's given it to everybody that's not my wife.
Now.
It don't have to be a prude, but being overly sexy, thinking you need to compete with all those sexy women is not a good idea. There's research to show that when women smile in a picture, they get in their primary picture, they get more swipe rights and so luduk the.
Smile works better. There's research to show that when you wear red. You're getting more swipe rights just wearing red. For men too, wearing a red shirt, they get more swipe rights.
Things that don't work is a laundry list of things you're looking for.
I'm looking for a man who's this. You know, the guy reads it and he's like, well, you're looking for a resume. I don't know if I fit right.
And when men say that about women, we're like, don't be so judgy.
Whatever.
What you want to do is.
Tell a short, cute story about yourself that shows your personality and a little bit about your life. For instance, I was helping a woman with a profile a while ago. And by the way, there is somebody for everybody at every age, across the whole lifespan.
And this woman happened to be seventy.
She happened to have a beach house, and she wrote a little thing. I helped to write a little thing about My favorite Saturday is getting up early and lining up all the surfboards and wetsuits for the grandkids, and then making pancakes shape like animals. And the other part of the great Saturday is sending them home by three pm so I can clean my house and have a great evening with an adult.
And like, it's a little story and it tells about life.
It says I got grandkids, I'm connected to family, I love them, I have a beach house. I you know all these things, and all that is a short little story that tells a lot about your life instead of the laundry lists. And please people, do not do not do not list brands. I have seen dating profiles that people think they're cute. They just list brands. I love Gucci and Tesla and I blah blah blah. I'm like, can you be more commercial? O?
My goodness, Okay, And.
The other thing is so in my dating profile, my main picture was me with a headset on a microphone at my I have a radio show right in the radio studio, and I was wearing a sweatshirt that said I'm not for everybody.
And that made me a little hard to get because.
It went my fiance, now fiance, we're getting married next month. Saw He was like, Oh, she may not be for everybody, but she's for me.
Right.
You want to be unique to one person. You don't want to attract thousands of people. You want to drag one perfect person, So be unique to them what that.
What that picture said is ooh, she does radio. She got a big mouth.
She's a big mouth woman, and she knows her words. She's not for everybody. She'll walk away ooh. And most of them went, ooh, bitch, I don't want to deal with that. Except the guy who loves strong, big mouthed women.
Compatible. Yes, I love it. Oh my gosh. Okay, Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I feel like we've kind of went through it all and got more clarity. And thank you so much for providing those statistics.
It's all research and data laced with real life stories.
It's been special.
Thank you, thank you, and good luck to you in the mating marketplace.
Don't worry.
It's a bit of an endurance test, but your biggest value is the word no.
Okay. So I feel like what was a lot. It was a lot of information. It was a lot of data and research, which I love because it's like, these studies are showing what is working the most in these situations, so it's really good to have that knowledge. It's interesting having doctor Wendy Walsh come on in comparison to coach Jake, the last relationship Coach that came on. I feel like Coach Jake had more of like a men's perspective, whereas Wendy was more of a woman's perspective, and I think there's things to take away from both of them. I think I'll definitely be implementing what Wendy was talking about, like every time you step out of the house, to look presentable and to like have a smile on your face and just look like you are someone who is welcoming, because I think dating apps is definitely something that I'm down to try, but I think meeting someone organically is a great way to go to and I don't want to completely shut that out as an option. Taking from both dating experts that we've had on this podcast now, like keeping it light and polite and not getting too deep and heavy too quickly is something that I can see myself implementing into this new dating experience because I think that will help to avoid like a trauma bond or like you know, pushing somebody away who like thinks that that's too much, just like all the trauma dumping and stuff like that. Like, I'm very aware of the situation that I'm in and I'm I would like to present that like this is the situation and matter of fact about it, because let's be honest, like I do have some baggage now, but I don't think going too deep into that is necessary. I want this person to get to know me as me, so yeah, I'll definitely be taking what feels good from both of these experts that I've had on so far and implementing into my new dating experiences. Thank you so much for listening to Rachel Goes Rogue. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok for exclusive video content at Rachel gos Rogue Podcast