The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

Transcript

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 about, probably about 35?45 years ago, I dated a lot, and we didn't have cyber dating back then. You relied on friends of friends and meeting people at parties, and you?d join 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, and 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 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 said, ?I was sitting at the beach, and somebody came up to me.? I mean, it's just all over the place. In a group of, let's say, 30 people, typically I might have 20 different mechanisms that go up on the board.

Which is absolutely fascinating. Yeah, you know, I spoke? I went? I've come back to you in a second. I went to 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 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 someone come ring your doorbell, like, ?Hello, you know, I'm here for you,? it's just ridiculous. And so they'll either have that attitude, or they'll bury themselves in work. 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 gotta interrupt this, because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds. That's it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen 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. Out. Where's that ad I saw here? Here it is. The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at SelfishRomance.com and buy it at 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, 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, and then?

Well, disastrous would be, for instance, 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 an element of lying that goes on that you need to be watchful for.

So more like a cheap thrill. Watch out for those type of people. So people who could present well, 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 potential first date from the moment that they first make that connection. I encourage people to sort of drag that out a bit, to really do some degree of email communication over a period of a few weeks or so, and then move from that to maybe phone calls. It's particularly helpful to keep the phone calls on a cell phone type of thing. 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? how they express themselves, do they know how to spell, what kind of emotional person are they or not. So that by the time you get to the first date, you have a lot more information than if you just jumped into getting there after looking them up.

And should they put pictures on the web or not?

You know, I do, actually. I do recommend that. I think that something else that happens a lot of the time is that people? I just encourage people to deal with the fact 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 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, really important to go ahead and do that, as uncomfortable as that might be for some people. Clearly the statistics are, you have a much greater chance of getting ?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. Sometimes they will post pictures that are 10 years old and that kind of thing.

And 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, the good news is that all these women who complain all the time, or they go to singles dances, and the ratio might be five women for every one male. But the good news is that cyber dating is a total reverse. Most of the statistics are for most of the sites. I think it?s five to one the other way.

So it's just men are more computer savvy, and they?

They?re more computer savvy. They like the shopping concept. They like the privacy of it. They like the price. There are all sorts of things that it sort of fits more with the male personality more easily.

Right?

So women really have their pick of the litter.

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

Well, thank you so much for joining us today on going on dating and 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 DrKenner.com and please listen to this ad.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner.

Another skill necessary for effective communication between romantic partners is speaking assertively. Let's say that Paul and Sarah are discussing an upcoming holiday, and Sarah assumes they will spend it with her dysfunctional family. Paul, however, prefers a private getaway for the two of them in the Bahamas or even going to a restaurant by themselves for a cozy holiday dinner. One wrong approach Paul might use is to talk aggressively. He might say, ?Why the heck do we have to spend the day with those jerks? You always feel you need to please your family. I'm not wasting my time with your crazy family. I don't care what you do.? This aggressive approach is referred to as finger-pointing language, or ?you language,? since the essence of it is an attack on the character of the listener.

You can download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com