The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and @amazon.com

Oh, Dad, I have a proposal for you. Seems there's a woman in Roz's building that'd like to go out with you. Roz says that she's got a wonderful personality. I guess that means I'm the pretty one.

Do you dare go on a blind date? Your parents fix you up, or a friend fixes you up, or just a stranger fixes you up, or you meet someone on the internet and you don't know the person. What is it like to go on a blind date? What are you up against if you're in the dating world?

With me today is Dr. Don Kiefer. He's a clinical psychologist in the psychiatry department at Rhode Island Hospital. He's also a department chair at the New England Institute of Technology, and he's had his own matchmaking service—which is fabulous for a psychologist—and he's given workshops on becoming your own dating coach. Welcome Dr. Don Kiefer.

Thank you. So good to have you on the show again. When I think about blind dates—I went on many when I was dating—and tell me a little bit about them. What difficulties do you run into, or what have you heard from your matchmaking services or your own personal experience?

Well, I have a personal bias in favor of blind dates. It's one of my favorite mechanisms, and partly because it's how I met my wife. And I've been married now for 19 years. And what happened was—I talk a lot in the workshops about the importance of expanding your social network—that is, when you're at a point where you want to meet somebody, you want to look around for ways of doing that. And I was at a point in my life where I decided I needed to do that.

And so I sort of was killing a few birds with one stone. I wanted to reduce my expenses because I wanted to invest some money in the business. And I just decided that I was going to move into a group house, and I figured that this would be a good way not only of reducing my expenses but of meeting some new people.

And that's exactly what happened. I was only there for a few weeks, and one of my roommates had a girlfriend who was looking to date, and she had met me, and she thought that I might be good for her girlfriend. And one thing led to another, and I went out, and pretty much the rest is history. So, obviously, it gives me a special place in my heart for blind dates.

But just in general, I think that it's a wonderful mechanism. And one of the main reasons is that you're starting off with a degree of credibility in terms of the source of the match, because typically, you're going to be fixed up with people who like you, who know you to some degree, and who know the other person. And they’re not somebody that’s out—in the case of, for instance, a dating service—who has an agenda of making the match so they can take some money from you. There's no objective like that. These are people that want to have other people connect. So that’s one of the nice things about—

—about friends set you up or family members set you up.

Exactly.

Not going to set you up with a rotten person.

Oh, because they know that you're going to tell them about it, for sure.

Exactly, exactly.

So it's really—from that point of view—I think it's a nice way to start. One of the things I can caution people, though—if you're up for it—what I tell people is you need to let your network of friends and relatives know. You need to let them know that you are more than happy to be fixed up, because if you don't say anything, some people would be embarrassed or hesitant to approach you about it. They might think that you're giving them a message like, "I pity you," or "You should be dating," or that kind of thing.

So if I'm interested in blind dating, I really encourage people—I tell people to go out and just say to people, "By the way—no big deal—I'm up for doing some dating right now. So if you run into anybody, let me know. I'd be happy to go out with them."

And I will get callers who will call the show or send me letters, emails that say, "My friend—what does she think I am? Pathetic? I haven’t dated in three months and now she wants to fix me up? She thinks I’m pathetic?"

Exactly.

"And now—what am I? A loser?"

Right?

And that is the interpretation there, and it’s not at all. It has nothing to do with being a loser. It has to do with facing the reality of where we are in society. It is very different from, you know, 50 years ago where people used to hang out on the porch steps and lazily hang out in the summer, walking along, and everybody knew everybody, and everybody stayed in the same town for 15, 20 years, etc., etc., where there were chances for connections to happen.

It's not that way anymore. People are switching jobs and moving every two or three or four years. It's a different world.

Yeah. So that's great. I met my husband on a blind date.

You did?

Yeah. I had broken up with a boyfriend—he had broken up with me. It's wonderful that after so many years—decades—you don't remember who broke up with whom, even though it feels so poignant at the time. And my mother was desperate. She was afraid she’d have me on her hands for a long time, so she called all her friends and networked—instead of me doing the networking, which would have been great. It’s like, “Ah, Ellen’s available. Please find her someone so she’s not here with me.”

And she's loving. She set me up on several dates. And when I met my husband, I wanted to marry him the first night.

Wow.

And we got married within nine months. So I loved blind dates. My husband loved them. He went on many blind dates because he felt like you came in on an equal platform. It wasn’t one person chasing the other, and it was more of a feeling like, well, you're both evaluating each other—but in a nice way.

Yeah. Now there's an alternative, by the way, that some people should think about—

Hey, I’ve got to interrupt this because we’ve got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that’s it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen will be back.

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There’s an alternative, by the way, that some people should think about. Like, if they don’t like the idea of being one-on-one with this, you know, with this fix-up—that they feel like there’s too much pressure. I call it the mock blind date that you can propose to your friends.

If somebody approaches you and says, “You know, I have someone you might like,” you could say to them, “I really don’t want to just sit across the table doing this interview thing,” which is how some people, unfortunately, look at the first date. It doesn’t have to be looked at that way, but that’s how some people see it.

So I say to them, “Just suggest that they have a small gathering and invite the other person there,” so that it’s not so obvious, and it just becomes sort of a—whether it be a picnic or a cocktail party—and then it can happen more naturally.

And what do you want to get to on the blind date? Again, you said the first date is always to get to the second date. But the second date—what's the key? What's the essence that you want to get to in terms of using that time?

Well, first of all, I often tell people that the second date should really be very different from the first date. It should be in a different setting. It should not be like—you know, first dates are typically sitting at a table over a cup of coffee or something like that. I think the second date should be more active.

Maybe if the first one was at nighttime, do it in the daytime. Maybe informal clothing—just things to loosen things up. The main point of the date is not this heavy-duty interview, but it’s really just to kind of spend some time with the person.

So, going on a picnic, or going to the beach, museum—

Not a movie, because—

You know, movies—like, you know—depressing. Well, if the movie is bad or you’re not talking for like two hours, right? It is nice that at the end you get to talk about your respective feelings about the movie, but that might go kind of flat after a while. So I dissuade movies as a second date.

But something active—going to a fair, a county fair, going for a drive—something where you can maybe walk around. Being physically active relaxes people.

So just experiencing that other person—what it would be like to be with that person—rather than a detailed interview.

Yeah, and just see how the conversation flows. People will just naturally—unless they’re super guarded—they’ll little by little start revealing things. And, you know, things that are important to you, you want to probe more quickly than others, basically.

And you just gotta play it by ear. You don’t want to come on too strong on the second date, that’s for sure, because the people are going, “Oh my god, what is going on here? It’s an inquisition!”

You want to ask yourself—I know we’re winding down on time—but the essence is: What is it I want to know about this person? And you don’t have to give yourself a whole laundry list—just one or two questions.

Right.

And then you spend the whole afternoon finding that out.

Yes, exactly.

Well, thank you so much for joining us. This is Dr. Don Kiefer. Thank you for being here, Don, again.

You're very welcome. Bye.

Bye-bye.

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

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance: The Serious Romance Guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke.

Sometimes gender is the source of conflict between partners. In general, women want intimate emotional relationships and are often socially skilled, whereas men are preoccupied with proving their strengths and competence, including in sex. They want to get things done without unnecessary talk. Women sometimes have trouble understanding why men seem to be oblivious to emotional issues, and men sometimes are confused when women get upset instead of just going along or solving problems. In these respects, each feels invisible to the other. When they argue, they are on different wavelengths.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com and you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance at Amazon.com