The Cheat Sheet:

• What are some of the core differences between men and women?
• Learn how men and women have shaped each other psychologically and biologically over the course of human evolution.
• What do women and men lie about?
• Why do men tend to be more ambitious than women?
• How does jealousy differ between women and men?
• And so much more…

Dr. Duana Welch, author of Love Factually: 10 Proven Steps from I Wish to I Do, has visited us before to talk about the science behind dating, why a healthy relationship is a source of life satisfaction that outweighs even career choice, how men are more emotional than women when it comes to relationships, why “love at first sight” isn’t a choice, and what attachment styles we fall into — along with ways to change them.

In episode 509 of The Art of Charm, Dr. Welch will delve deeper into the differences between men and women, how these differences have evolved over the course of human history, and how men and women can use this information to better their relationships and understand why they behave the way they do.

More About This Show

When it comes to the differences between men and women, why these differences came to be, and how these differences affect their interaction, there’s a lot of opinion being thrown around on the subject. What Dr. Duana Welch relies on, however, is science-backed data supporting the role of evolution in these differences. And, as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson famously said: “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”

“There’s a theory of evolution,” says Duana. “And whether or not people want to politically or socially or morally acknowledge it, evolution is a fact. There’s never been a single scientific line of inquiry that failed to side with evolution. Not one.”

So when Duana gets the occasional naysayer who doesn’t want to agree with her findings for whatever personal reasons they may have, she takes comfort in knowing she’s checked her facts and gotten the seal of approval from the gold standard scientists whose research her work depends upon.

What are her findings? Among them, that the co-evolution of men and women — the biological and psychological ways we have shaped each other over countless generations — isn’t unique. Plants and animals have developed similarly symbiotic relationships since life on Earth began. We can either take the somewhat pessimistic view that we’re nothing more than the products of processes that have been taking place over eons and we’re not that special, or we can take comfort in knowing we’re part of a winning lineage of survivors.

“There’s a big idea that I don’t think I’ve ever presented before,” says Duana. “Basically, women want two Ps (provision and protection) and men want two Fs (fertility and fidelity). The fact that we want these things has dramatically shaped what we offer one another and even how we lie about each other, and how we compete with people in our own sex. When we get ugly with each other, we do it in very predictable ways — all based on co-evolution.”

Ambition, for instance, is seen as a predominantly male trait. Duana points out how, in this presidential election cycle, the currently running male candidates are associated with ambition positively in various articles written about them. On the other hand, if you search for articles displaying the female candidate’s ambition in a positive light, you instead find a bias against it as an “unladylike” quality that is somehow unappealing.

But why?

“If you look at every society in the world…men are large and in charge,” says Duana. “And part of that is because women want them that way. Or at least they used to a long time ago and we are the inheritors of the psychology that worked 45,000 years ago.”

To survive and pass along the genes that eventually led to us, our ancestors had to come up with some pretty clever strategies to overcome the dangers of their world — a world that would be unrecognizable to those of us accustomed to the convenience of a Starbucks on every corner and a Target in every town. When a neighboring tribe could threaten to wipe you — and your contribution to the gene pool — out, a woman with an ambitious provider and protector would have a better chance of faring well and surviving than one who didn’t.

Duana admits the first time she was presented with the science backing up this claim, even she had a tough time coming to terms with it. “I was deeply, mortally offended,” she says. “because I’m a feminist. I have a PhD in psychology. I didn’t get that accidentally! Obviously, I have some ambition of my own and I just felt like…I am as good as any man that’s out there and I just think that…I didn’t want to be seen as different. But clearly there are differences. You look around the world and either there’s some huge shell game where women are just shut out of power, or women are gaining power by acquiring a man who is powerful — and that appears to be what’s happening even today, even among people who want to be liberated from that.”

Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm in its entirety to learn more about why we shouldn’t see the differences between women and men as disempowering, what men will trade for youth and beauty, why Duana wishes evolution had an off switch (and what could be gained from such a thing), what men and women lie about, and lots more.

THANKS, DR. DUANA WELCH!

Resources from this episode:

• Love Factually: 10 Proven Steps from I Wish to I Do by Duana Welch
• Love Logically (Episode 492)
• Science-Based Dating (Episode 459)
• Duana Welch’s website
• Duana Welch at Twitter

You’ll also like:

• The Art of Charm Bootcamps
• The Art of Charm Toolbox
• Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

The post Duana Welch | The Evolution of Love (Episode 509) appeared first on The Art of Charm.

The Cheat Sheet:

• What is the definition of confidence, and why are some of us more confident than others?
• Why is it that so many of us don’t love our bodies?
• Pinpoint your current body type and the options it gives you.
• Discover the clothes that flatter your figure and enhance your confidence versus ones that deplete it.
• Kimberly shares exercises for shedding old thought processes about body image and confidence and replacing them with newer, healthier ones.
• And so much more…

The Art of Charm began exclusively to help men excel at business, love, and life. Then we discovered an increasing audience of women who would tune in to the podcast and tell us how helpful we’ve been for them, commonly requesting that we might consider tailoring some episodes toward their needs.

In an effort to provide more balance to the show — and perhaps give our male audience the benefit of a woman’s perspective on this particular subject for a change — we’ve invited therapist and makeover expert Kimberly Seltzer back to talk about how our personal history shapes our confidence and how we can create and maintain a confident body image. She’ll also tell us about her How to Create Attraction Package, which is geared for women and men.

More About This Show

Can you say you’re happy with the type of body you’re inhabiting right now? People come in all heights, shapes, and sizes, but what makes people most attractive to potential partners is when they learn to love themselves — no matter what their body type happens to be. In episode 507 of The Art of Charm, Kimberly Seltzer tells us how we can cultivate a positive body image to become confident and secure in our own skin at any size.

The groundwork for how we view our own body image begins before age seven. “And women in particular,” says Kimberly, “it’s even harder. Because we get reinforced and socialized to look good. This is almost a mantra to our confidence. If you look good, then you’re going to be okay. And if you don’t and you feel like crap and you look like crap, you’re going to be crappy. And it’s really hard on women.”

Kimberly also points out how social media can exacerbate a negative self body image as women constantly use it to compare themselves to others. Because of this, Kimberly often gets her clients to go on social media fasts so they can better focus on themselves without the constant distraction of unfair comparisons.

“There’s Photoshop. There are great apps out there that make you look amazing. And nobody’s really posting bad things. Nobody posts a body part that they hate,” says Kimberly. “So we get this skewed image of what’s supposed to be beautiful and perfect and then we look at ourselves and we feel really bad about ourselves.”

So what is confidence? “I believe that confidence is experience,” says Kimberly. “And when somebody isn’t experienced in something, that’s when they’re not feeling confident. We’re confident in our jobs because we know them. When we first started, we weren’t so confident. So those of you who are not confident with your body image, I invite you to think about what messages you got growing up. What are you facing on a daily basis? What do you do for a living? What is your experience around shopping? So if you really get a baseline on where things are coming from, then it will help you in the future.”

As an adult, there’s not much you can do about how you were shaped as a child. But you can be aware of it and how it may have given you unrealistic feedback that affects you today. You can start to work against this negative programming and develop confidence in yourself by picking a part of yourself that you really like — not what others have told you, but what makes you feel good. “Women usually go to what they don’t like,” says Kimberly. Because of this, it might be a difficult exercise to begin — but stick with it. It’ll be worth it.

“There’s something really powerful about writing it out, saying it out loud, and really owning it,” says Kimberly. “Because that’s going to help me also determine what kind of clothes to wear, because the overall goal is to showcase the body parts that you really feel good about and de-emphasize the ones you don’t. And that’s going to help with your confidence.”

The Five Body Types

In determining your body type as a woman, understand that it’s not about weight distribution — it’s about bone structure. Grab a tape measure and get a reading on your shoulders, your waist, and your hips. Once you have these numbers, you can figure out which of the five body types pertains to you. You’re trying to achieve a balanced silhouette where your shoulders and hips are evenly distributed and your waist goes in one or two inches — that’s an hourglass figure. “Most women are not true hourglass figures,” says Kimberly, “so you need to learn how to achieve that symmetry.”

• Hourglass: As described above.
• Inverted Triangle: Shoulders are wider than the hips.
• Triangle: Shoulders are smaller than the hips.
• Rectangle (or Boyish Cut): Shoulders, hips, and waist are all the same.
• Diamond: “As women, when we get older and go through menopause — this is the only one that has to do with weight — we get a little soft in the middle,” says Kimberly. “This is the only body type that can kind of be combined with the others.”

If you go to Kimberly’s website, you can get a free body type booklet that will help you get these measurements, find out what clothes flatter your figure, and what clothes you should avoid.

Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm in its entirety to find out the three body types for men, the difference between style and fashion, how to test the clothes you buy before you leave the store, using the 8-track metaphor to change your story by re-writing it to create a new you, and lots more.

Ever wonder how you come across on a date? Do you want to learn the secrets to creating attraction? Here is your chance to get an honest feedback and teachings from an expert. During this laser 30-minute session, you’ll get a taste of how to be the best “you” when it comes to dating, mating, and connecting with the opposite sex. Kimberly will assess your dating image, body language, dating skills, and flirting techniques and answer the real questions around how the opposite sex sees you. Whatever your challenges, Kimberly will devise a plan to teach you the skills needed to keep the opposite sex infatuated and attracted to you. Among the many lessons you’ll learn:

• The Impression Connection and how to stand out as special, desirable, and available.
• The three “F” factors and how to use them to create real magnetism and attraction.
• How to walk into any environment and feel amazing and at ease (and stay that way).
• How to communicate with an impression of desirability.

THANKS, KIMBERLY SELTZER!

• Kimberly’s How to Create Attraction Package
• Top 5 Mistakes Women Make When Trying to Attract a Man (Episode 503)
• How to Set Boundaries (Episode 499)
• Flirting for Women (Episode 497)
• How to Find a Therapist (Bonus)
• Kimberly Seltzer’s website
• Kimberly Seltzer at Facebook
• The Great Love Debate
• Kimberly Seltzer at Twitter

You’ll also like:

• The Art of Charm Bootcamps
• The Art of Charm Toolbox
• Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

The post Kimberly Seltzer | Body Image and Confidence (Episode 507) appeared first on The Art of Charm.

The Cheat Sheet:

• Is it really true that “there are no good men out there?”
• Do you feel like the one who never gets approached or, if you do the approaching, you never get the response you’re looking for?
• Body language, first impressions, messaging, social confidence, and your image play a huge role in how you come across to potential romantic partners.
• With which of the five archetypes of women do you most strongly identify — and which mistakes are you most prone to make when trying to attract a man?
• What’s the secret weapon that will help you overcome the mistakes commonly made by your prevailing archetype?
• And so much more…

The Art of Charm began exclusively to help men excel at business, love, and life. Then we discovered an increasing audience of women who would tune in to the podcast and tell us how helpful we’ve been for them, commonly requesting that we might consider tailoring some episodes toward their needs.

In an effort to provide more balance to the show — and perhaps give our male audience the benefit of a woman’s perspective on this particular subject for a change — we’ve invited therapist and makeover expert Kimberly Seltzer back to talk about the top five mistakes women make when trying to attract a man. She’ll also tell us about her How to Create Attraction Package, which is geared for women and men.

More About This Show

“Dating is tough these days,” says therapist and dating expert Kimberly Seltzer. “Never before in history have there been so many people — especially over the age of 40 — dating. So we’re all kind of floundering.” And for the generation of millennials new to the world of romance, she says going on a date is more like hanging out than a special occasion. There are bound to be challenges for all involved when it’s hard to even agree on what constitutes a “date” these days.

As a therapist, Kimberly sees what women face on the front lines when it comes to attraction and using their feminine power. Because she coaches live in the field, she knows what works and what doesn’t. “I hear women complain all the time, ‘Why don’t guys ever approach me?’ or ‘I’ve done all of this work on myself in therapy and men still don’t respond,’ says Kimberly. “Body language, first impressions, messaging, social confidence, and your image play a huge role in how you are coming across. This is a common scenario that I hear my clients complain about and then go on to hypothesize that there are no decent men out there. The fact of the matter is each sex has a responsibility when it comes to approachability and attraction.”

To help women better understand how to interact with others in this uncertain dating environment, it helps to know these five archetypes of women, which resonates most strongly with the individual (keeping in mind that almost nobody fits 100% neatly into just one), and how to identify corresponding archetypes for others.

The Five Archetypes of Women

The Chief

There is a tendency here to exude some masculine energy and you may have a difficult time relinquishing control. You might be perceived as a little rough around the edges, initiate too much, and pay little attention to the softer feminine side of your image. Men often get the feeling you are running a board meeting and that you’ve got it, so there is very little room for a man to take care of you.

Typical Characteristics

• You sniff too early for reassurance that your growing intimate feelings are mutual or that a guy wants a relationship so you can control the situation.
• There is a tendency to argue or debate with men to prove that you are smart.
• You are very competitive.
• Most of your dating clothes consist of business suits, blazers, pants, and other garments you wear at work.
• Your body language and mannerisms are harsh, quick, tense, and fast-paced.
• You like to know way ahead of time where and when the date will take place. You may even plan where to meet him.

The Chief’s Secret Weapon

The key here is to get out of your head and be more in your body, let loose, and embrace your femininity. Allow a man to take care of you and do things for you.

Get a new wardrobe filled with dresses, skirts, lingerie and heels. With your new clothes, do cat walks in your high heels, flirt, smile, giggle, and be more spontaneous.

The List Lady

There is a Bugs Bunny list that scrolls out 10 feet long of all the qualities a suitable man must be. You are constantly checking off the list and in the end decide that no one can ever really fulfill your requirements, so therefore you hypothesize there are no good men out there. Because there is too much focus and emphasis on completing the checklist during a date, it becomes a Q&A interview rather than just being in the moment and having fun getting to know the person.

Typical Characteristics

• You conduct a date like an interview process rather than having fun and being light.
• There is a sense of urgency or desperation to find the right one — perhaps due to a current desire such as wanting kids or healing from a previous relationship.
• You are very target-specific in a social setting with whom you will talk and flirt. You will only show interest and pay attention to guys who have potential or you are attracted to.
• You say to your friends often, “there are no good men out there.” Or “these aren’t the kind of men I would date.”
• You will only dress in a sexy way for men who you are interested in.
• You expect a man to come up to you, and you feel you have no role in that.

The List Lady’s Secret Weapon

What is most important for you is to let go of the list, be in the moment, and use social situations to create opportunity no matter what the outcome may be.

Avoid asking a million questions of the man on a date and share personal stories instead. This allows a man to really see you, creates connection, and elicits more exciting conversation between the two of you. Letting a man know who you are and showing emotions and vulnerabilities will help you connect with him faster. The more you connect on an emotional level, the more someone will want to know you more.

The Nice Girl, But…

You are a great woman and you’re really nice, but…too nice! Men tend to put you in the friend zone due to bland or male-dominated conversations, your feelings of insecurity or low confidence, or lack of sex attraction.

Typical Characteristics

• You feel “funny” or embarrassed about flirting and turning up the sexual energy around men.
• Men usually want to be your friend and talk about other women with you.
• You tend to give men “high fives,” talk about sports, and discuss what is happening in the stock market.
• You are more comfortable dressing casually. A typical outfit might be loose jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt.
• You don’t see the point to “dressing up” for a date by wearing something you normally don’t put on such as a dress or heels. In fact, a common thought for you is, “If a man doesn’t like the way I look, then he’s not for me.”
• You rarely get to that second date.

The Nice Girl, But…’s Secret Weapon

You need to ramp up the sex appeal big time. Really pay attention to the sexual signals — or lack thereof — you are giving to the men. Flirting doesn’t mean you have to be Marilyn Monroe. Tease, be lighthearted, use your sense of humor, and share emotions — which is more about who you are.

Learn the mastery of flirting with your body and messages you give to men. Get sexy! Avoid getting placed in the friend zone by mastering the art of sexy conversation. Friends talk about the weather, sports, and politics, so steer clear of those topics. Instead, share things about yourself that reveal more of who you are as a woman. Also, don’t reveal your whole life story with a guy you’re interested in. Always leave him wanting more. Build mystery and excitement.

The Dame

You are a strong female knight wearing armor so thick that a man can’t even make a dent. You tend to have little to no body signals that you are available or open to talking to a man. Usually you enter into room with tunnel vision and have no awareness that men are interested you.

Typical Characteristics

• You tend to look at and talk to just your girlfriends in a public place or social setting.
• You would never make direct eye contact or smile at a man when out and about.
• There is stiffness to your body language, which tends to be closed off and reserved.
• You often look down and walk fast.
• If given a choice of sitting at the bar or a small table in the corner of a restaurant, you pick the small table.
• You have the belief that it’s not polite to talk with someone unless they initiate conversation. You feel that most people are busy and don’t want to be bothered.

The Dame’s Secret Weapon

It’s time to wake up, smell the roses, and slow down! It’s time to take off the armor you have been wearing and allow the attention and energy of others into your world.

You need to turn your cab light on and start sending smoke signals to men that you are available and open to talking. Smile, laugh, and make eye contact with men every time you walk into a room. It’s time to take off the blinders and take notice of who is looking at you.

The Narcissist Magnet

People often tell you that you are amazing, beautiful, and seem to have everything going for you. Your greatest talent is being a caregiver and an excellent listener. The tendency here is to put others’ needs before yours and consequently don’t demand self-respect. In fact, you mostly bend over backwards for the guy, accommodate his wishes and desires, and offer advice. Narcissists prey on women like you because you make them feel amazing and fill their ego. If this sounds like you, be sure to check out the entire show we devoted to this archetype: How to Set Boundaries (Episode 499).

Typical Characteristics

• You tend to put others’ needs before yours.
• It makes you frustrated and angry that you do a lot for other people but usually get nothing in return.
• You have difficulties setting boundaries. Even though you may be busy, you’ll drop what you are doing to accommodate someone else in need.
• You tend to give away your personal value by doing too much too soon, too fast.
• You usually offer advice and are supportive when talking to a man. You tend to come across as the therapist or mother in your interactions with men.
• Others see you as being really together and the type of person who can do it all.

The Narcissist Magnet’s Secret Weapon

Allow someone to take care of you for a change and accept being able to receive. You are a caretaker through and through, but be careful about putting others before you (which builds resentment and attracts the narcissist). Instead, let your guard down a little and show all that you are.

Look for reciprocity in your interactions with men. Narcissists are really good at being charming and telling stories and sharing what is great about them. When meeting your dates, observe if they are just as interested in you and your stories. Is there reciprocity in the conversation or is it just one-sided? What are you doing to reinforce that dynamic? Be careful not to just sit and listen to it all. Instead, try talking about your interests, express your feelings, and see if they listen or care.

Ever wonder how you come across on a date? Do you want to learn the secrets to creating attraction? Here is your chance to get an honest feedback and teachings from an expert. During this laser 30-minute session, you’ll get a taste of how to be the best “you” when it comes to dating, mating, and connecting with the opposite sex. Kimberly will assess your dating image, body language, dating skills, and flirting techniques and answer the real questions around how the opposite sex sees you. Whatever your challenges, Kimberly will devise a plan to teach you the skills needed to keep the opposite sex infatuated and attracted to you. Among the many lessons you’ll learn:

• The Impression Connection and how to stand out as special, desirable, and available.
• The three “F” factors and how to use them to create real magnetism and attraction.
• How to walk into any environment and feel amazing and at ease (and stay that way).
• How to communicate with an impression of desirability.

THANKS, KIMBERLY SELTZER!

Resources from this episode:

• Kimberly’s How to Create Attraction Package
• Kimberly Seltzer | How to Set Boundaries (Episode 499)
• Kimberly Seltzer | Flirting for Women (Episode 497)
• Kimberly Seltzer | How to Find a Therapist (Bonus)
• Kimberly Seltzer’s website
• Kimberly Seltzer at Facebook
• The Great Love Debate
• Kimberly Seltzer at Twitte

You’ll also like:

• The Art of Charm Bootcamps
• The Art of Charm Toolbox
• Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

The post Kimberly Seltzer | Top 5 Mistakes Women Make When Trying to Attract a Man (Episode 503) appeared first on The Art of Charm.

The Cheat Sheet:

• Women often fall into the role of the caretaker — but how can they avoid becoming overcaretakers who habitually attract jerks, narcissists, and man children?
• Understand what it takes to set boundaries and how this filters out the wrong type of partner.
• Learn how to crack the Narcissist Code from the minute you say “hello.”
• Get rid of old, harmful patterns of behavior with the Old Tape exercise.
• Discover what it takes for people to stop accusing you of being “too nice.”
• And so much more…

The Art of Charm began exclusively to help men excel at business, love, and life. Then we discovered an increasing audience of women who would tune in to the podcast and tell us how helpful we’ve been for them, commonly requesting that we might consider tailoring some episodes toward their needs.

In an effort to provide more balance to the show — and perhaps give our male audience the benefit of a woman’s perspective on this particular subject for a change — we’ve invited therapist and makeover expert Kimberly Seltzer back to talk about how women can set boundaries and crack the Narcissist Code when they come up against those kinds of guys on the scene. She’ll also tell us about her How to Create Attraction Package, which is geared for women and men.

More About This Show

While men certainly aren’t immune to falling for the wrong partners, therapist and dating expert Kimberly Seltzer calls the number of women who contact her about habitually attracting narcissists an “epidemic.” This seems to be the result of women in our culture being raised to become caretakers — and in many cases, overcaretakers.

“What happens is the women who take care of others — emphasis on other people’s feelings, thoughts, wishes — ahead of their own end up in these horrible situations with dating and relationships,” says Kimberly. “They do attract — and I see this over and over again — the narcissists or the man children.”

Like the so-called Nice Guy Syndrome, where a guy does nice things for someone he finds attractive in hopes she’ll reciprocate romantically, overcaretakers harbor a similarly covert contract in which unreturned gratitude from the person being cared for may spur anger from the overcaretaker, even though their expectations go largely unspoken.

Kimberly doesn’t see this as the tragedy it may seem on the surface, however. Being a caretaker isn’t really the problem — it’s the imbalance of giving and giving without return that causes resentment and miscommunication between an overcaretaker and her significant other (who might not actually be a narcissist or man child, but simply out of the loop as to what’s expected from them in the relationship).

In a relationship, Kimberly reminds us, each person is only in control of 50 percent of the equation. “All you can do is look at you and how you can change the results,” she says.

So when women come to Kimberly and tell her there are no good guys out there, she digs a little deeper and usually finds the women are unconsciously doing things that turn them into narcissist magnets — like overcaretaking and not setting boundaries.

“You really can, if you look for it, detect narcissists,” says Kimberly. “And once you start changing things, they actually won’t even like you!”

She relays a story about being out with a narcissist magnet friend of hers. A good-looking guy came in and struck up a conversation with her — wooing her and telling stories — but it was all about him. When he excused himself to use the men’s room, Kimberly’s friend said she found him attractive because he was charming and charismatic. Kimberly pointed out that she had only been an audience to his stories, but hadn’t actually shared anything of herself. So Kimberly challenged her friend to do just that: start talking about herself and gauge his reaction.

“Sure enough,” says Kimberly, “he comes back, and she starts telling him a little bit about herself and he’s looking all over the place, looking at his watch, he starts talking to the bartender — it was the typical narcissist behavior. And this was within five minutes I detected it and she didn’t, because she was so used to it.”

Four Tips for Detecting Narcissists

Set boundaries. When you declare your needs and your wants and you let him know what you like, what you dislike, and then see how he responds to you, you’re setting a precedent right there. “Does he respect that you’re cold when you’re out on a date and you’re sitting in a place where there’s a draft? Does he move for you, or does he just kind of ignore you?” asks Kimberly.

“But if you don’t say you’re cold and you just sit there and you just make sure that he’s comfortable, you’re already setting a precedent that his needs are greater than yours.”

Look for reciprocity. Narcissists are really good at being charming and telling stories. But as Kimberly related above, if their attention starts to wander as soon as you try to tell your story, then it’s safe to say you’re probably dealing with a narcissist.

Don’t give it all away. Don’t give away your personal value by doing too much too soon. The narcissist will eat it up. They’re looking for an audience. Kimberly, as a therapist, found herself in a relationship like this where she was always lending an ear to the stories he would tell rather than just relaxing and having fun on dates.

Test if the words get put in action. Does the person you’re attracted to mean what he says and says what he means? Narcissists love to talk a good game, but they don’t often follow through.

Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm to learn what to do if you think you’re a narcissist, what the difference is between a narcissist and a man child, three simple exercises for setting boundaries, non-confrontational ways to give feedback to a partner, using “I” statements over “you” statements, and lots more!

Ever wonder how you come across on a date? Do you want to learn the secrets to creating attraction? Here is your chance to get an honest feedback and teachings from an expert. During this laser 30-minute session, you’ll get a taste of how to be the best “you” when it comes to dating, mating, and connecting with the opposite sex. Kimberly will assess your dating image, body language, dating skills, and flirting techniques and answer the real questions around how the opposite sex sees you. Whatever your challenges, Kimberly will devise a plan to teach you the skills needed to keep the opposite sex infatuated and attracted to you. Among the many lessons you’ll learn:

• The Impression Connection and how to stand out as special, desirable, and available.
• The three “F” factors and how to use them to create real magnetism and attraction.
• How to walk into any environment and feel amazing and at ease (and stay that way).
• How to communicate with an impression of desirability.

Women and men can both benefit from Kimberly’s How to Create Attraction Package, so check it out here!

THANKS, KIMBERLY SELTZER!

Resources from this episode:

• Kimberly’s How to Create Attraction Package
• Kimberly Seltzer | Flirting for Women (Episode 497)
• Kimberly Seltzer | How to Find a Therapist (Bonus)
• The Great Love Debate

You’ll also like:

• The Art of Charm Bootcamps
• The Art of Charm Toolbox
• Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

The post Kimberly Seltzer | How to Set Boundaries (Episode 499) appeared first on The Art of Charm.

The Cheat Sheet:

• What is the definition of flirting — and how does it differ between women and men?
• Learn the top five excuses why women don’t flirt or use femininity in dating and in the work force.
• Discover three practical ways to flirt that will attract what you want.
• Use Kimberly’s magic formula for attraction (The Three Fs: have Fun, pay attention to Fashion, and tap into your Flirty femininity).
• Tune in to Kimberly’s Dating GPS.
• And so much more…

The Art of Charm began exclusively to help men excel at business, love, and life. Then we discovered an increasing audience of women who would tune in to the podcast and tell us how helpful we’ve been for them, commonly requesting that we might consider tailoring some episodes toward their needs.

In an effort to provide more balance to the show — and perhaps give our male audience the benefit of a woman’s perspective on this particular subject for a change — we’ve invited therapist and makeover expert Kimberly Seltzer back to talk about flirting for women. She’ll also tell us about her How to Create Attraction Package, which is geared for women and men.

Take the Art of Charm Challenge by clicking here, or text AOC to 38470. We’ll take you step by step to becoming better at making personal and professional connections, becoming a better networker, increasing your personal social capital and charisma. This is for both men and women!

More About This Show

Kimberly Seltzer is a makeover and confidence expert, therapist, and dating coach based in Los Angeles, and she works extensively here with us at The Art of Charm. She’s the co-host and lead love expert of traveling dating show The Great Love Debate, and she’ll soon be co-hosting a radio show called Full Disclosure with Jordan.

Since Jordan has never been a woman (as far as we know), we thought having Kimberly on hand to give us a woman’s point of view on flirting would be helpful for our female audience and eye-opening for our male audience — there should be something here for everyone.

There’s a long-standing perception on the dating circuit that men are supposed to make the first move in a romantic encounter, and women are meant to passively wait for the approach. And while there’s no real reason a woman so inclined can’t make the first move, some men may be turned off by such a role-reversal or — even in best-case scenarios — uncertain how to react.

“In the old days, the woman used to drop the hanky,” says Kimberly. “I always tell women that is kind of a sense that you should always have — giving men signals to come over. And I find that most of the time, men are just scared. They’re scared of rejection. They’re looking for some sort of smoke signal to come over and talk to you. And women have no idea how closed off they are with their body language and their messaging, the way they hang out with girls in a group and close off any kind of opportunity for men to approach. I think, overall, the roles are kind of merging where men are becoming more like women and women are becoming more like men, and so now we’re at a standoff.

“But at the end of the day, men still want women to be women, and women still want men to be men and approach. So that’s what I teach women: instead of taking the hanky, crumpling it up, and throwing it at them — that’s the aggression — it’s just dropping the hanky and giving a signal so that actually people are meeting each other.”

Like networking, the concept of flirting scares a lot of people. We all have our own preconception of what it means, but Kimberly lays out the dictionary definition of flirting for us: “to behave as though attracted to or trying to attract someone, but without serious intentions of an outcome.”

“If we all thought of flirting as just a playful gesture…without a serious intention of an outcome, it’s so much easier,” says Kimberly. “For me, it’s creating a magnetic energy. It’s getting people to just want to come talk to you…stop targeting a man to flirt with necessarily, but just with life create this energy where people want to get to know you.”

When Kimberly takes women into the field to try and get them to open up to flirtation, she finds there are these five common excuses that keep them from doing so:

1. “I’m not attracted to anyone.” Kimberly points out that, when you’re too target specific, you’re closing yourself off to many opportunities. Who’s to say an older gentleman you might strike up a conversation with doesn’t have an available son who would be an excellent match? She says women shouldn’t be afraid to talk to anyone and everyone — regardless of whether or not she finds them attractive.Taking the transactional aspect out of the equation opens up a wealth of opportunities that may not be visible at first glance.
2. “I don’t want to give off the wrong signals.” “Women fear that if they show an interest in a man, they’ll be falsely leading him on,” says Kimberly. “But again, if you look at the definition of flirting, it’s to behave as though you’re attracted or trying to attract something or someone without a serious intention. So there’s no wrong signals. [As] women, we have the choice of who to choose and who not to choose to move on. And we’re all in the dating game together. I’ve never met any man who went to the hospital because a woman said no to him!”
3. “I want him to like me for my intelligence, not as a sexual object.” This seems reasonable, but Kimberly points out that taking things too seriously and not embracing your femininity and being playful to a certain degree risks putting you in the friend zone. “You’re just like another dude having a conversation about business or sports.”You know you’re intelligent. And if you allow anything to develop beyond an initial, flirty encounter, he’ll shortly learn you’re intelligent, too.
4. “I’m not comfortable doing those things.” Everyone has their own flirting style that works for them — but like anything else, practice makes perfect. If you don’t experiment a little, you’ll never find out what your style is. Kimberly brings up the core group in Sex and the City and how each woman had her own technique. What worked for one wouldn’t necessarily work for another.If you go out on the town with your own group, you’ll probably find that humor might work for one of you, whereas subtle nonverbal cues from across the room might work for another. Your technique might even be a combination — but it’s up to you to hone it and make it your own.
5. “I just don’t know how.” “If you’ve been in a long relationship or you’ve never dated before — you never learned how [to flirt because] you didn’t have role models…it can be uncomfortable,” says Kimberly. “But if you think of it more as an experiment and just having fun and being playful, not putting too much pressure on yourself, you can learn.” Assembling a group of girlfriends (as mentioned in the last excuse) and observing what works (or doesn’t work) for them is one way to take the bulk of the pressure off of you.

Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm in its entirety to learn more about finding your own flirting technique, putting The Three Fs to work, how to find your way with Kimberly’s Dating GPS, and lots more.

Ever wonder how you come across on a date? Do you want to learn the secrets to creating attraction? Here is your chance to get an honest feedback and teachings from an expert. During this laser 30-minute session, you’ll get a taste of how to be the best “you” when it comes to dating, mating, and connecting with the opposite sex. Kimberly will assess your dating image, body language, dating skills, and flirting techniques and answer the real questions around how the opposite sex sees you. Whatever your challenges, Kimberly will devise a plan to teach you the skills needed to keep the opposite sex infatuated and attracted to you. Among the many lessons you’ll learn:

• The Impression Connection and how to stand out as special, desirable, and available.
• The three “F” factors and how to use them to create real magnetism and attraction.
• How to walk into any environment and feel amazing and at ease (and stay that way).
• How to communicate with an impression of desirability.

Women and men can both benefit from Kimberly’s How to Create Attraction Package, so check it out here!

THANKS, KIMBERLY SELTZER!

Resources from this episode:

• Kimberly’s How to Create Attraction Package
• Kimberly Seltzer | How to Find a Therapist (Previous appearance on AoC)
• The Great Love Debate

You’ll also like:

• The Art of Charm Bootcamps
• The Art of Charm Toolbox
• Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

The post Kimberly Seltzer | Flirting for Women (Episode 497) appeared first on The Art of Charm.

“Love at first sight isn’t a decision.” -Dr. Duana Welch

The Cheat Sheet:

• Is “love at first sight” a real thing? Science has the surprising answer.
• Women have shaped men psychologically over the course of evolutionary history.
• How do mating strategies differ between men and women?
• Learn the best predictors for whether your partner will cheat or be faithful.
• What (specifically) should you say to someone you need to break up with?
• And so much more…

Most men believe the cultural stereotypes that women are more emotional, and that women benefit more than men do in relationships. Knowing what male mating psychology is really like — how emotional men are, and what kinds of vulnerabilities and special challenges this creates for guys — can help men to make better choices in the thing science indicates really does make or break lifetime happiness: mate choice.

Dr. Duana Welch, author of Love Factually: 10 Proven Steps from I Wish to I Do rejoins us on episode 492 of The Art of Charm to dispel some prevailing relationship myths, help men understand the fact that they’re more emotional than women when in relationships, discover how women have shaped men’s psychobiology to make that happen, and use science to benefit men who are entering, exiting, and recovering from relationships. And if you missed Dr. Welch’s last visit, you should also check out episode 459!

More About This Show

The emotions generated by relationships — whether pursuing them, maintaining them, or disengaging and recovering from them — can be powerful enough to make us ignore and defy reason entirely. With this in mind, we begin to understand why the scientific approach to studying relationships, as practiced by Dr. Duana Welch — author of Love Factually: 10 Proven Steps from I Wish to I Do — is so important.

In evaluating what we think we know about human relationships against actual scientific data, we begin to unravel some long-standing stereotypes that have led to generations of misunderstandings and bogus problems coupled with faulty solutions. For instance, when a male-female couple breaks up, do you assume it’s the woman who takes it harder, or the man?

“I was surprised to conclude — along with other scientists — that men are more emotional than women,” says Duana. “Because the stereotype about men is so contrary to that. The stereotype is that men are more rational, more logical, more calculating in some ways, and the science actually goes directly against that.”

What about the notion of “love at first sight?” It must be some Hallmark-invented convenience designed to sell more cards and chocolates, right? As it turns out, love at first sight is supported by science. And lest you think we’re confusing love with lust, Duana has this to say:

“Scientists define passionate love as the yearning or longing for total union with another, and it’s an obsessive quality where you’re thinking about this person all the time. There’s actually a passionate love scale which has been validated and tested in numerous cultures and societies including our own and it shows very clearly that most of the things that people think of when they think of passionate love actually aren’t sexual.”

Also: this phenomenon more commonly happens in men.

Some other interesting, science-supported factoids Duana shares with us:

• In relationships, men tend to say “I love you” first.
• Men tend to fall in love faster and harder.
• At every stage, men are less likely to end a relationship. It’s common for men to stay in a miserable situation, sometimes for many years, until the woman finally ends things.

As we see in the animal kingdom, natural selection provides each individual of each new generation with its own adaptations to survive, ensuring they get passed along to the next batch born. Mating preferences play an obvious part in what gets passed along and what gets left behind, and Duana says this has held true for humans, too. Because of this, the psychology of men has changed as a direct result of what behavior is most appealing to potential mates.

“Women really value what I call the two Ps: Provision and protection,” she says. “And they can see your ability to provide and protect on a balance sheet…but what they can’t tell from the balance sheet and access to looking at your resources is whether you’re going to stick in and actually do it.

“50,000 years ago, when humans were living in hunter-gatherer tribes of maybe 120 people, all women were gamblers back then. They were gambling that if they had sex with a guy that he was going to stick around and provide for them because, unlike today where I have a PhD and I can support myself and if I got pregnant accidentally I would freak out, but it wouldn’t be the end of my life, in all likelihood, back then it really could be. So the women whose psychology got carried forward were the women who were picky. And they weren’t just picky about whether a man had resources — they were picky about whether he would share those resources.”

How did she know if he would share those resources? She looked for signs of commitment (which women are still using today) that often amount to signs of love — for instance, when he would say he loves her without being prompted.

“Because women have very strongly valued men for providing cues of commitment…this has, over millennia, shaped men to offer cues of commitment more and more rapidly,” says Duana.

Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm to learn why looking at peacocks made Charles Darwin sick to his stomach, how a lot of our mating psychology doesn’t make sense in the same context today as it would have 50,000 years ago, why a woman might be more choosy about a casual sex partner than she is about a husband, how some guys can’t stop women from throwing themselves at them (and why they would ever complain about such a problem), what the Sexy son hypothesis is, how men and women cheat differently, and lots more.

THANKS, DR. DUANA WELCH!

Resources from this episode:

• Love Factually by Duana Welch
• Duana Welch | Science-Based Dating (Episode 459) (Dr. Welch’s previous appearance on The Art of Charm)

You’ll also like:

• The Art of Charm Bootcamps
• The Art of Charm Toolbox
• Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

The post Duana Welch | Love Logically (Episode 492) appeared first on The Art of Charm.

The Cheat Sheet:

• There are five natural stages through which romantic relationships cycle: The Merge, Doubt and Denial, Disillusionment, Decision, and Wholehearted Love.
• Why does “falling in love” make us do crazy things?
• When your relationship winds up in an anxiety-fueled loop, how can you break out?
• What does Linda recommend for spicing up a perfunctory sex life?
• Understand these three components of good sex: desire, arousal, and orgasm.
• And so much more…

When you’re single, it’s easy to idealize being in a relationship as the solution to (or at least a distraction from) a lot of your problems. But if you’re in a relationship — especially one that’s lasted a few turns around the block — you know that relationships carry their own set of unique problems. As it turns out, these problems often carry their own set of unique solutions. Difficult times don’t always herald the end of a relationship. Sometimes they’re just part of a cycle.

In her book Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love, veteran couples therapist Linda Carroll presents a groundbreaking model of the five natural stages of romantic relationships — the Merge, Doubt and Denial, Disillusionment, Decision, and Wholehearted Love — and a guide for navigating through them toward lasting love. We talk about these stages, where they come from, and where they can take us in episode 480 of The Art of Charm.

More About This Show

If you were to ask many people who have been in a long-term relationship to name the stages such a relationship endures, some might come up with just two: The Honeymoon Phase and Reality. But Linda Carroll, couples therapist of 35 years and married for 30, was able to come up with five in her book Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love — these are the Merge, Doubt and Denial, Disillusionment, Decision, and Wholehearted Love.

Drawing from more than just her own life experiences, Linda says these stages have long been mapped out by psychology, history, drama, and biology — at least since Sumerians began scribbling love poems on clay tablets in cuneiform millennia ago, in any case (and probably quite a while before then).

The Merge

While not all cultures require this stage as a basis of marriage, all cultures do experience this stage — because it’s really just a part of human biology. This is “the stage where we meet somebody and our bodies react in a certain way,” Linda says. “The oldest poem that we have in the world comes from a cave 4,000 years ago, and it’s about love…the cultural story we have is that’s what love is. And as we learn more and more about the brain, we find out that that’s not love — that’s attraction. It’s that first biological connection that says yes. But it’s not even a basis for a relationship, sometimes. It’s mediated by brain chemistry and changes in the hormones and chemicals and it’s a very powerful chemical cocktail.”

When we’re overcome with longing and find it difficult to eat or sleep because of these feelings, it’s no accident — the chemical reactions of The Merge parallel what we experience in the throes of an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). But in this case, our infatuation is directed at a person rather than as a way of living. Even if our libidos generally tend toward the subdued side under normal circumstances, this is when our sex drives elevate. Or, as we learned from Disney’s Bambi, we’re twitterpated.

In other words, what we think of as love can make us go a little…crazy. We’re hooked by lust until the chemicals start to balance out to pre-Merge levels. Some of us are ready to abandon ship and move on to another relationship by this point — only to find that the chemical cocktail has diminishing returns. But others get hooked further by romance and even what becomes healthy attachment. How you’re hooked usually correlates with your age — or stage of life at which you perceive yourself.

Doubt and Denial (aka The Power Struggle)

The next stage is where the people in the relationship begin butting heads over their own insecurities. This is when we start to question whether or not our partner is “The One” who’s right for us.

“All of us have certain ways we’re vulnerable,” says Linda. “For most men, their primary vulnerability is feeling criticized or being seen as incompetent. [For most women, it’s] connection — feeling connected. Being in a relationship. So you have two different vulnerabilities. Imagine there’s a loop, and at the top of the loop, there’s a vulnerability toward feeling criticized, and a vulnerability toward disconnection.” When we find one of our vulnerabilities triggered, we react in one of three ways: we fight, we freeze, or we flee.

Let’s say a man and a woman are having dinner. The man is thinking about the work day and how he’s going to deal with his boss — who doesn’t like the way the man’s current project is going — which triggers his vulnerability of feeling criticized. He decides to flee — not physically, but emotionally. He picks up a book and starts to read it, ignoring the woman. The woman has a vulnerability toward disconnection, so that withdrawal is her trigger. She reacts by going into fight mode — which manifests in vocal criticism of the man’s reaction. He remains in flee mode, so she continues in fight mode, and each does their part in perpetuating this loop.

Breaking out of the Loop

So how do you get out of such an anxiety-fueled loop once you find you’re in one?

“One, you have to understand that it’s a loop and that no one’s wrong,” says Linda. “We’re just trying to each manage ourselves, so nobody’s bad here. And you have to have a language to talk about it — and people love the language of loops. She is saying to herself — if she has an awareness — ‘Wait a minute. He’s just reading a book. This isn’t against me.’ And he’s saying to himself — with his new awareness — ‘Wait a minute. She’s criticizing me because she’s anxious that I’m pulling away.’

“And they do something which I call a counterintuitive move. The intuitive move is to do what we’ve always done. But imagine that they’ve read my book and they’ve listened to this program…and they understand how this works. This is what’s different: He may pick up his book and look at her and say, ‘Sweetie, we’ve had a great night. I just want a little down time to read.’ That may be a little counterintuitive for him, but he’s telling her now, ‘I don’t not care about you; I’m just taking time out.’ Or she may say to him, ‘I know you need some space, and that’s great. I just want to say how about if we come back together in an hour?’ Or there’s some way that she then backs up. Her move that is intuitive is to go towards him, so her work is to learn to back off.”

So we disarm a loop by acknowledging potential triggers before they even go off, and come to a mutual understanding that differences in a relationship are inevitable because we all have different needs. We’re not our partners, and our partners aren’t us; in a way, we’re agreeing to disagree without malice or assignment of right and wrong.

“It’s the struggle and how we approach the struggle that really has a lot to do with who stays together and who doesn’t,” says Linda.

Disillusionment, Decision, Wholehearted Love, and Sex

In the stage of Disillusionment, all we see is what’s wrong in the relationship. This is also known as The Frozen Wall. We either break through that wall, work it out, and move on to Wholehearted Love, or we take it to the Decision stage.

In the stage of Decision, we face four possibilities:

1. Separate
2. Do nothing
3. Lead parallel lives
4. Rebuild the partnership

Ideally, when we’re with that elusive “The One” we want to spend the rest of our lives with, we’ll make it to the stage of Wholehearted Love. This is when you’re having sizzling, great sex — even when you’ve been together for 40 years. But for a lot of couples, sex is the stumbling block that breaks the deal before they can make it to this point.

“There used to be an old view in my field of marriage and family therapy,” says Linda, “that you had to work everything out to have good sex. But that’s not true! You’re never going to work everything out…if the sex life is feeling dying or dead or boring — perfunctory, once-a-week or whatever happens — it doesn’t mean you don’t love each other. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong. It means that you need to have a new adventure.”

When we think back to The Merge stage, the mutual desire for sex was a natural, spontaneous thing. By the time we make it to the later stages, the chemistry has cooled down a bit and we have to make a conscious effort — we have to work at it. In part of the greater understanding of one another, this is realizing that each person may have very different turn ons.

“There are two problems couples have with sex, most of all,” says Linda. “One is not talking about it in a way that isn’t blaming. To be able to talk about it. It’s a natural thing — it comes and it goes and it stops and it slows down — how do we get it going again? And the second is desire discrepancy, which is a huge problem.”

Simply put, desire discrepancy is when there’s a difference between the amount of sex you want and the amount of sex you’re actually getting. If even talking about sex is rough for the partners in a relationship, chances are pretty good that neither is getting as much as they want.

Like disarming the dreaded loops before they begin, we want to open a dialogue that is free of blame or anger — neither person is wrong if there’s a lack of sex in the relationship. This shouldn’t lead to a power struggle, but quite the opposite: we want to reaffirm that we’re there to meet each other’s needs.

When Linda talks about sex, she points out these three parts:

1. Desire
2. Arousal
3. Orgasm

“We are focused on desire and orgasm in this culture,” says Linda. “But the part that doesn’t get too much attention is arousal. Here’s something that is, I think, true for the majority of people — not everybody, because nothing’s true for everybody: you can have very low desire, and you can get aroused. But it’s not just through desire that you get aroused…if we depend on desire to get there, to get turned on, and we don’t have it, then we think we can’t get there. But there are all kinds of ways that we can get excited.”

And while we might think of sex as a young person’s game — and dismiss the need to worry about it in later years — studies have shown that not only are older couples still doing it, but many report that sex has actually gotten better in their golden years.

“It’s because you’re not so into performance,” says Linda. “Not everybody, of course, gets there, and a lot of people just let it go — and that’s really sad. At any age of life, you can have a dynamic sex life. You just have to come about it through different doorways.”

THANKS, LINDA CARROLL!

Resources from this episode:

• Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love by Linda Carroll
• Why Falling In Love Makes People Crazy by Linda Carroll (via mindbodygreen)
• Esther Perel on The Art of Charm (Episode 410)

You’ll Also Like:

• The Art of Charm Bootcamps
• The Art of Charm Toolbox
• Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

The post Linda Carroll | Love Cycles (Episode 480) appeared first on The Art of Charm.

The Cheat Sheet:

• Cultures that embrace sexuality have lower rates of teen pregnancy and STDs, and pornography-tolerant societies have lower rates of sex crimes.
• What constitutes healthy sex?
• Believe it or not, there’s no right (or wrong) way to have an erection.
• Is sex addiction a myth?
• The concept of gender “norms”: we’re doing it wrong.
• And so much more…

For its content matter, this episode of The Art of Charm is prudently — and perhaps prudishly — marked as NSFW (not safe for work) for the majority of our listeners. This is because, in the United States, sex is a topic that’s typically addressed in hushed whispers, behind closed doors, and in private. But even if you’re not an American, your own nation of origin probably isn’t completely devoid of its own share of hangups.

Here to talk about his new book, Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture, sex therapist Dr. Chris Donaghue seeks to help us shun the societal myths that bar us from dating well, feeling good about our desires, being comfortable in our gender roles, and enjoying healthy sex lives.

More About This Show

Do you know the difference between a sex therapist and a sexologist? Dr. Chris Donaghue can tell you, because he happens to be both.

“A sexologist is someone who has pretty much dedicated their entire career to focusing on the science of sex, the cultural anthropology of sex, the sociality of sex — it’s someone who studies sex,” says Chris.

But as a sex therapist, he’s also licensed to provide honest-to-goodness clinical therapy to those in need. In Chris’ case, he specializes in individual and couples sex and marital therapy, as well as sexual compulsivity, sexual anorexia, sexual dysfunctions, and non-traditional sexuality, identities, and relationships. He also runs healthy sexuality therapy groups. The “doctor” isn’t just some colorful honorific made up to add spice to his title, either; Chris has put in the hours to become a PhD, LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker), and CST (Certified Sex Therapist).

In a country like the United States, where sex is usually regarded as taboo, private, and somewhat dangerous in comparison to attitudes expressed by the more sexually liberal nations of Europe, Chris aims to normalize the way we talk about it and deal with it as a society. He believes — and has the statistics to support it — that the more open a society is about sex, the less it suffers the ills of misinformation and fear.

“In our sex-phobic culture where we teach abstinence-only sex education, we have higher rates of STDs, [and] higher rates of unwanted and teen pregnancy,” says Chris. “Cultures where they’re allowed to see it on television and allowed to talk about it, they learn how to talk about it because they talk about it, and they’re able to set boundaries and ask important questions and they have lower rates of all of that.”

“Cultures that are more comfortable and supportive of pornography have lower sex crimes, as well,” he adds. “Countries that are anti-porn have higher sex crimes, and it’s probably similar correlation/causation where, if you have outlets to sexuality and you understand how to speak and ask for what you want and you’re allowed to have it, you’re going to have a better relationship with it.”

So now that we’re talking about sex, let’s delve into the backbone of Chris’ work and try to answer some of the most common questions he gets and misconceptions he has to deal with.

What Is Healthy Sex?

While Chris admits that psychology has some universal definitions of what healthy sex is, he tries to consider it on a case-by-case basis. But here a couple of constants he will agree with:

1. Healthy sex is consensual. “It’s always the number one foundation,” says Chris.
2. Healthy sex is informed. “You understand what sex is going to mean,” says Chris, “what’s going to happen, and you’re willing to deal with the consequences of that.”

What’s a Better Model for Dating and Marriage?

“What most therapists and manuals and media — because media is a massive socializer for us — it’s telling me that you need to put yourself first, and you need to look out for yourself,” says Chris. “That’s awesome, but that’s anti-relationship. Relationship is actually about a fusion, and somewhat of a codependence with another person, and you actually want to think in opposite terms. And you want to think, ‘How is this impacting my partner and how is this impacting us?’ And we don’t do that.”

“If you’re going to be in a relationship, you can’t say ‘I’; you have to think in terms of ‘us’ and ‘we.’ That’s what comes in my office in my couples and sex therapy clients. Two people come in, and they’re only thinking about what they want and what they need, and there’s no relationship. I try to get them to a place where they’re thinking, ‘What does our relationship need?’ and ‘What about us?’ and kind of fuse them and push them together.

The Myth of Sexual Dysfunctions

“People talk about erectile dysfunctions,” says Chris, “and a lot of guys have anxiety. ‘Will I last? How long will I last? Will I be able to get hard, and will I be able to stay hard?’ And it completely changes what sex is even about. Why do we have sex?”

Some would say because it’s a biological urge. Others would say it’s fun and it feels good. Others would say it’s to develop and further intimate relationships.

“None of those inherently, consistently need your penis to be hard at all times. And yet we’ve moved away from what [some would say] is a pleasure model, a connection based model, we’ve moved away. Now we’re just thinking about performance. And it’s not about performance.”

“Bad sex is sex where people are only worried about performance. Good sex is [asking] ‘How did that feel? Did I feel connected? Did I get off?’ And so there’s no right way for your penis to operate, and I alleviate a lot of stress on guys when I tell them there’s no such thing as coming too soon, because there’s no right amount of time to wait until you come. There’s no healthy, right amount of time that you’re supposed to last. Everyone is different, and that’s okay.”

Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm in its entirety to learn more about the myth of sex addiction, problems with society’s gender norms and roles, dating authentically (and how this relates to those gender norms), and lots more.

THANKS, CHRIS DONAGHUE!

Resources from this episode:

Sex Outside the Lines by Chris Donaghue
The Art of Charm bootcamps

You’ll also like:

-The Art of Charm Toolbox
-Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

The post Chris Donaghue | Sex Outside the Lines (Episode 462) appeared first on The Art of Charm.

The Cheat Sheet:

• Learn the four Attachment Styles and what they say about you and your relationships: Secure, Anxious/Ambivalent, Avoidant/Dismissive, and Avoidant/Fearful.
  
• How can you change your attachment style if you want to, and why do some opposites get attracted even though they’re dead wrong for each other?
• You should be pessimistic about being single instead of being in a relationship because it’s probably going to kill you faster than being in a relationship.
• Married couples live with a much longer time-horizon than cohabiting couples.
• Science is about odds, not about certainty.
• And so much more…

Science shows that, much as we think career matters, it’s not nearly as great a source of life satisfaction as having a great partnership. Who you choose, whether you choose at all, and what type of relationship commitment level you choose…they all have great bearing on your happiness, and even on your success in life.

Science can show a pathway toward better relating that leads to better outcomes across the board, from better (and more) sex, to more money at your job. Is there anyone who doesn’t want all that? Dr. Duana Welch, author of Love Factually: 10 Proven Steps from I Wish to I Do, is here to talk to us about love and science on episode 459 of The Art of Charm.

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Dr. Duana Welch began her career as a social scientist by applying her research techniques to memory and aging. But as someone who confesses to being less than effective with dating in her early to mid-twenties, it took a difficult breakup to set her on her current course: applying those research techniques to romantic relationships.

“It finally occurred to me in the middle of a really awful breakup that maybe there were some social scientists who had studied this kind of stuff,” Duana says. “And in fact there were a lot of them that I’d never heard of because at the time, all this stuff was in scientific journal articles and I wasn’t in that field, so I wasn’t reading those journals. And it wasn’t being publicized at all. So I started amassing and accumulating these studies and applying them to my own life and seeing good results and ultimately, that culminated in my blog and my book.”

From her research that continues the work of social scientists like Cindy Hazan, Phillip Shaver, and Kim Bartholomew, Duana finds that we all exhibit a certain attachment style — a habitual way of behaving in a relationship with an intimate partner or with people we’re close to. There are four attachment styles; even if you think yours is a combination of two or more, just pick one you tend toward by answering in the way that seems most natural:

A) I find it relatively easy to get close to others. I am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don’t often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.

B) I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I worry that my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away.

C) I am uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely or to depend on them. I worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others.

D) I’m comfortable without close emotional relationships. It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient, and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.

Were you able to match one of the above attachment styles to yourself? Duana says that most of us wind up with a certain attachment style based on how we were cared for as infants and who we connected with during these early interactions — which usually defaults to our mothers, though exceptions aren’t uncommon.

“What’s interesting is most of us have the same attachment style our mother has,” says Duana. “So this, apparently, is passed down from generation to generation. It’s partially genetically mediated, and it’s partially caused by parenting styles; parenting styles can overcome the genetic component of it.”

So we all have attachment styles, and Duana says that 2/3rds of us retain the one we picked up as infants. But what do we do when we’re not satisfied with the attachment style we’ve been stuck with? The first step is identifying it, as we did above — and as Duana did as she was just beginning her research.

“What I found out was I had a very disappointing attachment style — at least it was very disappointing for me,” says Duana. “I was not an A.”

If you were able to identify with the A statement above, then — like about 70 percent of people — you have a Secure attachment style. This is what Duana realized she was striving for.

If you were able to identify with B, C, or D, then you likely possess one of the Non-secure attachment styles, which include their own variations that determine how your relationships tend to map out. They can predict not only how you’ll behave in a relationship, but how your partner in a relationship will react — or, as Duana says, “B, C, and D all sabotage their relationships; they just do it in different ways.”

Style B is the Anxious/Ambivalent style, which is what Duana discovered as hers during the original assessment. “Those of us Anxious people tend to really, really yearn for complete bonding and closeness with another person,” Duana says, “but we’re so worried that the other person is not into us or that the other person is going to abandon us, that ironically, some people with this style actually do the number one thing that social science indicates will get you abandoned: they find a backup partner. They have an affair.”

“That’s not really helpful or adaptive for them,” she continues. “I will say the vast majority of people with an Anxious style don’t have an affair; they don’t get a partner on the side, but they do tend to scare themselves needlessly and do what I call, ‘I’m going to push you away, because otherwise you’ll push me away — so I’m going to leave you before you can leave me.'”

Style C and D are both variations of a style called Avoidant — a confusing name Duana confesses she would have chosen differently if she’d been in charge. “Avoidant sounds like these people are not looking for a relationship — as if they’re literally avoiding it,” says Duana, “and that’s not what it means. Evolution pretty much all but got rid of the people who don’t want any level of relationship. Even if you look at studies on asexual people, they still want a relationship.”

“So Avoidants want a relationship — but they have it in a way that keeps everyone at arm’s length. So here’s this Secure person who is neither too hot [nor] too cold — just right. Like Goldilocks finding the soup. Then there’s the Anxious person who clings too tightly or may run away prematurely because they’re worried you won’t stick with them. And then there are the Avoidant people.”

(Incidentally, women are more likely to be Anxious; men are more likely to be Avoidant.)

Behavioral markers of an Avoidant might typically include getting up and leaving immediately after sex (even within marriage), avoiding emotional discussions, avoiding physical intimacy except for sexual intercourse, having sex in such a way that it’s very perfunctory and avoids eye contact. And then you have less typical cases.

“I knew a guy who was extremely Avoidant,” says Duana, “who did get married, but insisted on taking separate vacations from his mate and actually got a vasectomy without telling her.”

Style C people fall into the Avoidant/Fearful camp. “They fear other people needing them too much,” Duana says. “Yes, I want a relationship, but as soon as I detect that you’re needing me, it feels like ankle weights and I feel like running away. So I just hold you at arm’s length so I can control my fear.”

Style D people are Avoidant/Dismissive. “These folks tend to have a series of relationships where they don’t allow themselves to get emotionally invested almost at all because they really don’t value emotional closeness,” says Duana. “They value independence, and they see the two as mutually exclusive — which is fascinating to me because science shows that you wind up with such better outcomes if you can embrace interdependence, and you wind up with a lot worse outcomes in health and happiness and sex life and career progress in lots and lots of ways if you don’t manage to get and keep a stable relationship.”

Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm to find out why cultivating an attachment style that promotes interdependence plays a key role in positive mental as well as physical health, how science weighs in on the whole “opposites attract” maxim, why love gives many of us a reason for living (even if it doesn’t conquer all), what happens when different attachment styles mix, and — perhaps most important — how we can make the change from a B, C, or D attachment style to A.

THANKS, DR. DUANA WELCH!

Resources from this episode:

Love Factually by Duana Welch

You’ll also like:

• The Art of Charm Bootcamps
• The Art of Charm Toolbox
• Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

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The post Duana Welch | Science-Based Dating (Episode 459) appeared first on The Art of Charm.

“The cultural expectations for men have risen dramatically while the guidance for us has changed very little.” -Dan Griffin

The Cheat Sheet:

• Understand how the Man Rules are affecting your life — which ones are working for you and which ones are working against you.
• What’s the Relationship Dichotomy?
• The Sex Funnel’s not just another ride at the amusement park on the wrong side of the tracks.
• Shame and vulnerability: the yin and yang of connection?
• Learn how trauma affects men’s relationships.
• And so much more…

It doesn’t matter what spot on the map you call home, and it doesn’t matter what culture raised you; if you’re a man, you’ve likely been programmed to follow the Man Rules — a certain set of expectations that defines you as a “real” man: Don’t cry. Don’t ask for help. Don’t be weak. Don’t be vulnerable. Be a sexual Superman. Don’t worry too much about relationships. Don’t show emotion. Always win. Know all the answers.

In episode 430 of The Art of Charm, we talk to author, thought leader, speaker, and expert on masculinity and men’s relationships, Dan Griffin, about The Man Rules. He tells us how we can be engaged in what he calls a more conscious masculinity — a life that comes to terms with the Man Rules by understanding the part they play without letting them blindly dictate the course ahead.

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As a trained sociologist, Dan Griffin has talked to males between 16 and 60 all over the world and found the Man Rules to be consistent across geography and culture.

“Man Rules,” Dan tells us, “are really the messages that we internalize as little boys from various sources — from the media, from our parents, from the schoolyard — all about how to be men. But so much of it is not conscious to us and it just builds up, and part of why they’re called rules is because [they’re] some really clear expectations of how we’re supposed to show up as men.”

These days, Dan helps men navigate the impact of the Man Rules in their relationships to help them enjoy more fulfilling professional and personal lives. But this hasn’t always been the case. In college, he was first made aware of the Man Rules while attending a course on the sociology of women and, at the same time, dealing with his own addiction recovery. He calls this “a confluence of two significant forces” that changed his perspective about how conscious men could act contrary to their programming when the situation called for it.

Dan describes how, upon entering his first support group meeting, he was surprised by a man trying to give him a supportive, welcoming hug. “And then a half an hour into that meeting, this [other] guy is talking about fears that he’s having,” says Dan, “he’s afraid of losing his relationship. He’s being more real than I had heard any man being, and I began to notice something about how men were expressing themselves that was different and I just took a real interest in it. It became my Masters research, and then as I stayed in my own recovery process, I watched how that all unfolded for me.”

The Man Rules: Good or Bad?

When pressed to determine if the Man Rules are inherently bad or have the potential to be positive under the right circumstances, Dan says, “it’s not so much that the Man Rules are good or bad, it’s how conscious we are of them.” To be sure, there’s something to be said for Man Rules that urge us to be protective of others — it’s probably a big part of how they became hard-wired into our gender’s DNA over thousands of years. It’s when that urge oversteps its utility that problems arise.

“It’s an honorable process to be a protector,” says Dan, “but when being a protector means you’re also attempting to rule over people or you’re attempting to control people in ways that inhibit them, or when being strong means you can’t let anybody in or you can’t show a softer or weaker side — even if it’s going to destroy your relationship or your life in some other way — then that’s when it can become problematic.”

“What the Hell is Water?”

An analogy Dan likes to share shows how easy it is to miss the Man Rules (or the Woman Rules, for that matter) when you’re immersed in them.

“Two fish are at the bottom of the ocean hanging out and another fish swims up and says, ‘Hey guys, how’s the water?’ and swims off. The first fish look at each other and they say, ‘what the hell is water?'”

“People can easily name the Man Rules if I prompt them,” says Dan, “but when they begin to look at how deeply embedded they are in their lives — whether it’s the Man Rules or the Woman Rules — [they] begin to see how they play out on a regular basis.”

Being aware of the water, so to speak, makes it possible to leave it, but its immensity can be staggering when you try to wrap your mind around it. “When you first discover the water,” says Dan, “you think you’re in an aquarium; by the time you really immerse yourself in it, you realize you’re in the ocean.”

The Relationship Dichotomy and the Sex Funnel

Women, while programmed with their own Woman Rules, are just as caught up in the consequences of the Man Rules when they enter relationships with men. Just like men, they may not even be aware of these rules. And while the Man Rules often act counter to her interests, a woman might even reinforce and support them because, like the men in her life, she’s always been taught that such rules outline what a man is.

This doesn’t bode well for either party when the man is trying to do his part in nurturing a healthy relationship while simultaneously coping with his own Man Rules programming that tells him he’s less of a man for even caring.

He may genuinely want to become more intimate with his partner in the relationship, but the Man Rules wrap this intimacy and longing for connection up with sex and send it down what Dan calls the Sex Funnel. “You take all of your feelings of closeness, affection, attraction, any kind of want for connection, and we put it in that funnel,” says Dan. “We put it in the funnel and it comes out as sex, and it’s what keeps men from connecting with each other as authentically as we want to and it’s what keeps men from being as open with women as…they really want.”

A Massive Evolutionary Shift

As men, we “have a much greater idea of who we are than who we are not,” says Dan. “I’m not vulnerable. I’m not crying…I’m not this and I’m not that.”

As a result, we spend so much time constantly trying to prove ourselves by having as much sex as we can, or hoarding as much money as possible, or acquiring power, or whatever the Man Rules tell us will make us “real” men — and this wraps us up in negative identities. Nothing we can do will ever be enough. “So much of how we are taught to define ourselves is based on external factors,” says Dan.

Nature plays a large part in etching the Man Rules into men, but Dan believes we’re currently experiencing a massive evolutionary shift in our culture that’s challenging the way we deal with these embedded rules. “[50] years ago, we would’ve been really clear what our role was. we’d know exactly how we were supposed to show up as men,” Dan says, “today, the roles are a lot more confusing. A lot of the young men that I talk to [say] they’re confused; they want to show up a certain way that is more authentic to their relationship [and] more authentic to who they are.” More than ever, men are registering the change and asking how they can navigate these changing expectations today be ahead of them.

“There’s clearly a crisis of masculinity that’s happening,” says Dan, “but I see it as an incredible opportunity.”

Listen to episode 430 of The Art of Charm in its entirety to learn how Dan helps men (and women) become aware of ways the Man Rules are affecting their lives and take further steps to cope with them, and hear us exchange stories about how early experiences with our role models shaped who we are today.

Dan is giving The Art of Charm listeners a special 20% discount on his latest book, A Man’s Way Through Relationships. This is only good for the next month, so get on it quick!

THANKS, DAN GRIFFIN!

If you enjoyed this session with Dan Griffin, let him know by clicking on the link below and sending him a quick shout out on Twitter:

Click here to thank Dan Griffin on Twitter!

Resources from this episode:

A Man’s Way Through Relationships by Dan Griffin
A Man’s Way Through the Twelve Steps by Dan Griffin
The Art of Charm bootcamps

You’ll also like:

-The Art of Charm Toolbox
-Best of The Art of Charm Podcast

On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!

The post Dan Griffin | Man Rules (Episode 430) appeared first on The Art of Charm.