The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

In the selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at Dr. Kenner.com and @amazon.com.

I don't actually date a whole lot lately. Why not? Well, when I'm with a boy I like, it's hard for me to say anything cool or witty or at all. I can usually make a few vowel sounds and then I have to go away. It's not that bad. No, it is. I think boys are more interested in a girl who can talk.

You want to go back into the dating world, or you're already in it, but you don't think your methods are working for you. You may be sitting at home, sitting on the couch and thinking, Why doesn't someone call me? Why is it another Friday night or another Saturday night? My buddies have dates, and I'm sitting home again watching TV and just feeling burnt out. How do you go about meeting someone? Where do you meet them? And you may have heard about cyber dating or other things, but we have an expert with us today. His name is Dr. Don Kiefer, and he's a clinical psychologist, and he is a department chair at the New England Institute of Technology and in the psychiatry department at Rhode Island Hospital. He has extensive experience as a corporate psychologist. He's had his own matchmaking service. He's one of those people that have a lot of things you can say about him. And he's also given workshops for professionals and for just people who want to know about it, becoming your own Dating Coach, how to learn the skills required to go out in the dating world armed instead of disarmed.

Welcome to the show, Dr. Don Kiefer. Thank you, so good to have you on. Now when I think back to my own dating years, which is probably about 35, 45 years ago now—wouldn't be 35 years ago, it put me quite young—but many years, decades ago, I dated a lot, and we didn't have cyber dating back then. You relied on friends of friends and meeting people and parties, and just you joined clubs at school, a French club, and you'd meet someone and go out, or you'd go to a football game. Now it's a whole different world out there for dating. If somebody's newly divorced, or if somebody's just a teenager, I get emails from teenagers saying, How do I find a partner? What advice would you give in terms of how and where to meet people?

You know, Ellen, whenever I give a workshop, I always like to start them off with an activity where I go around the room and I ask people, I go on the board, I say to them, tell me the mechanism with which or the circumstances under which you met your current or your most recent significant relationship. And it is so fascinating because inevitably, I get such a wide range of responses, and it is such a powerful demonstration of the fact that people forget that there are so many different ways.

Could you give me a little bit of a range of some of the types of answers that you get? I mean, it's everything from, you know, an office party, from my neighbor in my apartment complex, my college roommate introduced me to somebody, to going to a singles club, and it just goes on. Somebody recently, you know, I was sitting at the beach, and somebody came up to me. I mean, it's just all over the place. And I would say, like, in a group of, let's say 30 people, probably there are about, typically, I might have 20 different mechanisms that go up on the board, which is absolutely fascinating.

You know, I spoke, I went, come back to you in a second. I went into wait for my dermatologist. And one guy said, Well, I have to wait so long for my dermatologist. And another older man said, Well, you know, the last time I was at a dermatologist at a doctor's office, two people met here. They had to wait so long here, and they ended up married. Oh, is that wonderful. It's so encouraging, you know, to really appreciate that and understand that, you know, yeah.

So the range can be anywhere. It's not just cyber dating, it's not just video dating, it's not just sitting home waiting. I know you've underscored because I took one of your courses that you can't sit home and be passive, that you need to, you can't just expand. I always make people think about the fact that if you think that you're going to sit in your house or your apartment and have something come ring your doorbell like, hello, you know, I'm here for you, it's just ridiculous, you know. And so they'll either have that attitude or they'll bury themselves in work. You know, they'll either stay at their office a whole lot of time or stay in their apartment and not get out there. And I'm always pushing about the importance of getting out there.

Tell me a little about cyber dating.

Hey, I got to interrupt this, because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back. Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw? Here it is, the selfish path to romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it @amazon.com. Hmm, the selfish path to romance, that is interesting.

Tell me a little about cyber dating.

It's very controversial, and I have to say that I know a lot of people. In fact, several I just went to a lovely wedding of two psychologists who are friends of mine who met through cyber dating. It can be a wonderful, helpful, fruitful experience. And yes, it can also be disastrous.

Can you give us an example of disastrous?

Disastrous would be, for instance, of hooking up with somebody who is married. The reality is that there are people that do go online and they just lie about themselves. They're looking to have a quick affair or something like that. And so there definitely is the element of lying that goes on that you need to be watchful for.

Some more like a cheap thrill. Watch out for those types of people.

So people who could present well, right? But their pedigree, right?

But there are techniques to minimize that kind of risk. What would you recommend?

The first thing is, I really encourage people to not jump into the actual from the moment that they first make that connection to the actual potential first date. I encourage people to sort of drag that out a bit, to really do some degree of email communication over a period of, you know, a few weeks or so, and then move from that to maybe phone calls. Particularly, it's particularly helpful to keep the phone calls on a cell phone kind of thing, so that you can't figure out where people live right away. But you know, most people who are into a quickie affair will not have the tolerance for dragging it out like that.

Interesting. So you rule them out, screen them out.

Yes, another thing that happens with that is it's a wonderful way to get to know the person through their email communication, like how they express themselves, so they know how to spell what kind of emotional person they are or not, so that by the time you get to the first date, you have a lot more information than if you just kind of jumped into getting there after, like, hooking up.

And should they put pictures on the web or not?

You know, I do, actually, I do recommend that. I think that that's something else that happens a lot of the time is that people, I just encourage people to deal with the fact that is, that's a fact of life. You know that people do care about appearances, and why not just get that out on the table so that it's not going to be that awkward moment when you walk into, you know, a cafe or something and there's this like, oh my goodness, this is not my type at all. So it's definitely, I think it's really important to go ahead and do that. As uncomfortable as that might be for some people, you clearly—there's the statistics are—you have a much greater chance of getting quote hits, as they call it, in the cyber world on your profile, if, in fact, you have a posted picture.

And it's really important to use a real picture. I mean, that's another thing that people do. Sometimes lie with, sometimes they will post pictures that are 10 years old and that kind of thing, and they look thinner, right? Don't look as old.

Exactly, right, right. And you also mentioned that mostly men are on the internet.

It's very good news. You know what the good news is that all these women who complain all the time, so they go to single dances, and the ratio might be, you know, five women for every one male. But the good news is that cyber dating is a total reverse, that there's—most of the statistics are for most of the sites that there's. I think it's five to one the other way.

I think they're so much more computer savvy.

And they have more computer savvy. They like that. They like the shopping concept. They like the privacy of it. They like the price. There are all sorts of things that sort of fit more with the male personality more easily.

Right? So women really have their pick of the litter.

They do. And again, I think it's also the ratio is different, because I think there are a lot of women that are just other scared, and I think that, I think it's unfortunate because the ones that are, as I said, could do it appropriately, do it the right way, in a safe way, they often can reap a lot of rewards for it. There's a lot of good matches that happen through various services.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today, on Going on Dating.

You're welcome, dating. Thank you, Dr. Don Kiefer, who's a clinical psychologist, and he's in the psychiatry department at Rhode Island Hospital.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to Dr. Kenner.com and please listen to this ad.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path of Romance by Drs. Kenner and Locke.

Judy and Lance were planning a vacation, but disagreed over where to go. Lance wanted to go hiking. Judy wanted to go to a beach resort. Some ways in which they can compromise included: taking separate vacations, hiking one year, going to the beach the following year, spending half of the vacation hiking and half at a beach resort, or doing something else on which they both agree.

When you are open to brainstorming with your goal being a mutually satisfying solution, you have the freedom to be creative.

Tips for compromising successfully:

Stay solution-focused. Know what is negotiable and what is not, morally and personally. Know basic methods of compromise and brainstorm together to find solutions.

You can download chapter one for free at Dr. Kenner.com, and you can buy the book @amazon.com.