April 21, 2025 • 17 mins
Dr. Wendy is talking to Dr. Paul Eastwick of Love Factually about what rom-coms got right and what they didn't. It's all on KFIAM-640!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty, live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Now,
I'm about to fangirl again. You know, I do this
every once in a while. I get somebody on the
show who I'm actually a big fan of. And this
week's guest is doctor Paul Eastwick. He's a professor at
UC Davis. But get this, he runs a lab where
(00:23):
he does research on all my favorite subjects, attraction relationships.
But also he's cool because he's co hosting the podcast
Love Factually, of.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Course, available on the iHeartRadio app. Hi, doctor Paul, how
are you hi?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Very goodness, Thanks someone for having me on today.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You didn't know that I would be fangirling on you
on live radio.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yeah right right, Okay, I'm ready. I'll see if I
can live up to this.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Okay, So what I want to talk about we don't
have a whole lot of time. But what I like
to talk about is your mate evaluation theory. But before
we do that, I need to know this story behind
Love Factually. It is such a brilliant title for your podcast.
What is the podcast Love Factually?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yes? So the basic idea behind the podcast is along
with my longtime collaborator and now co host, Eli Finkle,
we take the science of close relationships as we have
understood it and internalized it over the years, and what
we do is we talk about how various rom coms
and romantic films reflect what we know in the science,
(01:34):
either what the films are getting right or what they're
kind of mangling.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, I'm going to tell you that I have always
said what they get wrong pretty much one hundred percent
of them is that they.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
End at the beginning of a relationship.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That is is a fantastic point. There's so many of
those films that classically do that right. You get what
you're doing. You're seeing what amounts to something like the
first ten percent of the relationship, and that's part is
supposed to make it feel good and like send you
home feeling happy. And look, sometimes they depict that early
(02:13):
ten percent. Well, but we got to acknowledge that there's
a lot left to come when the movies ends, when
the couple gets together.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Right and they get past their limerins and move into
intellectual commitment kind of love.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah. Yeah, Now, we've covered plenty of movies that do
cover the whole art, and it's actually kind of tough
if we want to give the movies a break, it's
tough to go from beginning all the way to the end. Right,
are there anything? Lala Land is one that does it
really well. Yeah, I mean right there the notebook, come
on the notework, Yeah, right right, that is one of
(02:50):
the view that goes from the beginning to end. Really
the end the spoiler alert, yeah, really the end literally
the notebook. Yeah, but they're out there, and we like
to give you know, you know, accolades to those movies
that pull it off.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So, moving from the podcast onto some of your research.
One of your most famous studies has to do with
something called mate evaluation theory, and it basically talks about
how people analyze, evaluate, make selection for potential mates.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And and I read the.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Whole study today because what I do is I turn
it into language everyone can understand. And now I'm going
to have you correct me if I say it wrong.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Okay, Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
There are basically five ways that people evaluate a mate. Right, first,
you talk about something called shared evolved mechanisms and cultural scripts.
Is this David Buss's evolutionary stuff? I'm hearing that women
like men who are tall, and men like men who
are fertile and round himpt waste.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, really it is. It is definitely meant to encompass that. Right.
So anything that's like agreed upon whether the reason for
agreement is there something evolved in the mind that this
is appealing to who we are as a species on average,
or because I don't know, we've decided in this culture
(04:24):
that you know, it's appealing if you can like make
really great TikTok videos like actually, right, but this is attractive.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I mean, I will say I'm a woman of a
certain age, and I've watched female body shape change over
the years, and in the nineteen eighties it was the
advent of the boob job, and it was very exciting
to suddenly see breasts on everybody. And now it's all
about but right, Yeah, So that's one example of a
cultural script.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
All right, Moving on number two.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Individual differences that affect how a perceiver. That's somebody who's
attracted somebody views all potential mates. So is this like
somebody's deal breaker list, Like this is my checklist, these
are things I'm looking for.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I would think of this one as like this is
like people's own personality. So some people are happy people,
and honestly, they're going to be happy in whatever relationship
you put them in, and some people not so much,
and they're going to be kind of miserable in whatever
relationship you put them in. So that's that's this component.
It's kind of like just your lens that you take
(05:31):
to the whole world and it doesn't matter who you're with.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Interesting because my new husband, Julio, he is a giggly
Dominican and he's the happiest person.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Then I'm met his whole family in Dominican Republic and
they all giggle. I was like, wow, it's a cultural thing.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
This is cool.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yep, And they happy with anybody, even me. There you
go and like, look, don't feel bad. It's a really
good good thing to be to have a little bit
of some rose colored glasses as you view the boys.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Oh yes, I have to reel him back in all
the time. Is his optimism is a little too high?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Okay, moving out of the third one.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Individual differences that affect how a perceiver views some targets
depending on the target's features.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So let me take a crack at this. Yep, So
would this be correct?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Maybe somebody with an anxious attachment style might look at
a partner's emotional passion and intensity as being really attractive.
But if that person looking is avoidant, they might feel smothered.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
That's a great example. Yeah, I mean this also would
encompass the deal breaker list you mentioned earlier, the idea
that I, like, I can't stand people who you know,
like going to fancy seven course meal restaurants, Like I
just can't be with somebody like that, Like that is,
you know, too high falutin for me. If you have
(07:05):
that kind of deal breaker, that's this third one that
you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
No, yourself, do not invite Paul to dinner out, Okay, gotcha?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
All right.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
My guest is University of California, Davis Professor, doctor Paul Eastwick.
He is also a researcher in attraction, relationships, interpersonal love, sex,
the whole shabang. He has the numbers and the data
on it. Okay, doctor Paul. Your mate evaluation theory, how
people evaluate mates to be a potential mate. You say,
(07:38):
narratives about idiosyncratic reactions to one particular target. Now, I
just got to admonish you on that is some psychobabble there. Okay,
I had to think about that for a minute.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Okay, what we do?
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So I would say this is like I think this
is the exciting part because this is does this mean
that if you have the sense that there's great meaning
to this relationship to you in particular, I don't know,
like there's something about this person that makes you go, oh,
it's meant to be.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It feels magical.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yes. And it's also about the things that you construct
along the way. And this is the one that I
think is if you ask the average person what is
important in your relationship, they're gonna ultimately gravitate towards these
kinds of things. The special rituals we have, the pet
(08:33):
names we have for each other, the customs that we built,
the values that we've created over time, and this stuff
is huge.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
So this is as a couple creating, or what an
individual creates in their life and then says, wow, this
person fits that.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
It is really supposed to be what you are creating.
I'll say like this, well, you're creating them in a
context with this particular person. And the real idea with
this one is the idea that like, I can't just
take somebody else who like looks a lot like your
partner and substitute them in. Like, the point is that
this person was there along the way for the creation
(09:12):
of these things, Like you have memories with this person,
and that's that's what it's really about.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And I always say relationships are a living thing. They're
like growing a gardener together. And having been prior to
meeting my now husband, I was a single mom for
twenty years with two little girls, and I did not
want to risk exposing my kids to a poor romantic
choice that I might make. But I knew that if
(09:38):
I kept studying this stuff, by the time they got
of age and old enough, I would find a person.
But there is something now that I'm in a secure
attachment where I really.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Feel like there's a living thing.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Like we're co thinkers, we're cod emotional you know. He
does half the thinking, you know, and I do half
the intellectual work. I mean, a great example, here's a simple,
simple example, and I'm sure many couples do this. One
of us will be working on an email and we
will read it aloud to the other person. It might
be an important and he will add more business language
(10:13):
or analytic language to mine, and I will add more
emotional language to yep.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So we become get a couple of emojis in there
at an exclamation point exactly, and.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Now we're a team. We're thinking like one brain exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yeah, yeah, right, And it's this thing that people build
together that you know, what we try to point out
in this paper is we all kind of intuitively get
that this that's really important, and we as researchers are
actually not great at capturing it. And that's for a
bunch of methodological reasons that aren't especially fascinating. But the
(10:50):
bottom line is what we think the lion's share of
compatibility is how well you create a culture to your
relationship and hip well, we actually just haven't. You know,
there's a lot out there about that that still needs
to be explored and understood, and just so.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
That people understand what you just said, one of the
problems with doing relationship research is a lot of it
is self reporting. You can't like put people in MRI
machines and just say, oh, there's love, although some attachment
researchers are doing.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
That right right.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Okay, so let's go to what made evaluation theory can
teach us about dating. Now that we know these points, what,
how does that help us make better decisions?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Well, I think where it can really help people is
to recognize that there's some amount of curiosity that is
important when it comes to being in a relationship with somebody.
It's curiosity about how did we get to this point
and are the patterns we set up early in our
relationship still serving us well? You know, one of the
(11:58):
challenges that often happen is that, you know, couples do
things because they work right, and they keep those things
going because they were affected at one time. But it
can be very easy for one or both couple members
to lose track of what their needs are as they
change over time, and to realize that the patterns they've
set up might actually now be getting in the way,
(12:20):
might easily even be stifling one of them. And so,
you know, I'm a big believer that you know that
many couples can make it work, but it does require
some amount of curiosity about what the other person is
experiencing and how did we get here? Do we need
(12:41):
to mix things up or not right?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I call it rewriting the relationship contract from time to time.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And also when it comes to choosing a mate, looking
at some of these cultural scripts is a good idea
for us to become aware of them and realize how
they could be limiting us.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yes, I mean, I'm a big believer in the idea
that actually the narratives that you co create with somebody
really begin from the first moment. Like a lot of times,
what we think we're trying to do is assess things
like how how good are you know this person's traits?
Are they attractive, are they intelligent? Are they funny? But
(13:20):
what we're really doing is trying to figure out are
they funny with me? Right? Do they seem smart with me?
Do they make me feel smart? Like it's relational from
the very first few minutes. I mean, we even see
this if you look at you know, first impression research,
and we've collected a lot of data on first impressions.
(13:42):
But what people are trying to do is just find
something where they both have a little bit of knowledge
in common and they can kind of try to start
scaffolding something together, something that they have in common, something
that they can sort of bond over a little bit,
and then you sort of build up from there. So
you know, everything is a construction, and it really happens
(14:04):
from the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So when I met my husband during COVID, during quarantine
and lockdown, my rule was they had to meet me
on a windy pier wearing a mask. Okay, And if
they couldn't do that, then if they want to protect
my health's not going to happen. And then when we
sat down, for I only do coffee days, so it
was only twenty minutes they got.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
You got to leave them wanting more, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And then I said, when we sat down, I said, look,
you know, we could sit here and brag about the
masks were off at this point because we were more
than six feet apart and the wind was going. Yeah,
And I said, we could sit here and brag about
how great we are and how datable we are. But
could we begin actually by each of us telling a
story of why we think we're completely undateable.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Oh that's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
He said, Okay, you'll go first, and he had a
much much more tragic story than I did. But it
developed intimacy from the get go.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yep, right, yep, it was that's great. Yeah, it's spot
on I love to plug art Aaron, and you know
the grade thirty six questions. Oh, yes, study love. Yeah,
I mean right exactly. But really, what you're doing in
that sixty and ninety minute period is you are getting
comfortable and then talking about things that are interesting and
(15:22):
deep and meaningful. And people can do this in short
periods of time.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Oh yeah, And within ten minutes of our coffee coming,
both of us had our eyes welling up with tears
over our stories.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, and dealing with.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
The shame of having to tell the story too, right, yeah, So,
and so I wanted to ask you one more question
before time is so tight in radio.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
The last question has to do when it comes to
this study with these sort of these models we have
in our heads for what we're talking specifically heter rich
sexual relationship. Here, for my example, an opposite gender parents
role is in our model of love. So, for instance,
(16:07):
with my husband, we will be out shopping somewhere and
he'll be in the next aisle over and he will
clear his throat and one hundred percent it is my dad.
Everything about the sound, the tone, everything, And I almost
get startled when I hear it. Did I unconsciously choose
him partly because of that.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Oh, I don't know. I mean, there is a little
bit of work showing that, yeah, that people can be
unconsciously primed with images of parents, and you know, they
feel a little bit more safe. And so maybe if
that you know, is coming from somebody of your you know,
preferred age and gender, that you just find yourself a
little bit more attractive with that person for that reason.
(16:48):
But this stuff is going to be really really subtle.
These oh yeah, any unconscious effects are going to be
very very small on the whole. But it's possible that
you know, things like what you mentioned there, sort of
the way that he clears his throughout her might be
a small thing that carried over from those unconscious leaning.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Which might have been important to me and my trauma
is that my parents both died of cancer in the
same year when I was young, and so interesting enough,
his mother, who's eighty six years old, I love.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So I got a dad and a mom back with
this marriage.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, I'm quite sure. Paul.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It is a delight to have you on the Doctor
Wendywall Show here on KFI. We are going to have
your co host Eli Finkel next week, I believe, so
we'll make sure that we cover love factually as much
as we can. Thanks so much for being with us.
My guest is doctor Paul Eastwick, a professor at the
University of California Davis. You've been listening to the Dr
Wendywall Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere
(17:53):
on the iHeartRadio app Newsroom
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty, live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Now,
I'm about to fangirl again. You know, I do this
every once in a while. I get somebody on the
show who I'm actually a big fan of. And this
week's guest is doctor Paul Eastwick. He's a professor at
UC Davis. But get this, he runs a lab where
(00:23):
he does research on all my favorite subjects, attraction relationships.
But also he's cool because he's co hosting the podcast
Love Factually, of.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Course, available on the iHeartRadio app. Hi, doctor Paul, how
are you hi?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Very goodness, Thanks someone for having me on today.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You didn't know that I would be fangirling on you
on live radio.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yeah right right, Okay, I'm ready. I'll see if I
can live up to this.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Okay, So what I want to talk about we don't
have a whole lot of time. But what I like
to talk about is your mate evaluation theory. But before
we do that, I need to know this story behind
Love Factually. It is such a brilliant title for your podcast.
What is the podcast Love Factually?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yes? So the basic idea behind the podcast is along
with my longtime collaborator and now co host, Eli Finkle,
we take the science of close relationships as we have
understood it and internalized it over the years, and what
we do is we talk about how various rom coms
and romantic films reflect what we know in the science,
(01:34):
either what the films are getting right or what they're
kind of mangling.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, I'm going to tell you that I have always
said what they get wrong pretty much one hundred percent
of them is that they.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
End at the beginning of a relationship.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That is is a fantastic point. There's so many of
those films that classically do that right. You get what
you're doing. You're seeing what amounts to something like the
first ten percent of the relationship, and that's part is
supposed to make it feel good and like send you
home feeling happy. And look, sometimes they depict that early
(02:13):
ten percent. Well, but we got to acknowledge that there's
a lot left to come when the movies ends, when
the couple gets together.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Right and they get past their limerins and move into
intellectual commitment kind of love.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah. Yeah, Now, we've covered plenty of movies that do
cover the whole art, and it's actually kind of tough
if we want to give the movies a break, it's
tough to go from beginning all the way to the end. Right,
are there anything? Lala Land is one that does it
really well. Yeah, I mean right there the notebook, come
on the notework, Yeah, right right, that is one of
(02:50):
the view that goes from the beginning to end. Really
the end the spoiler alert, yeah, really the end literally
the notebook. Yeah, but they're out there, and we like
to give you know, you know, accolades to those movies
that pull it off.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So, moving from the podcast onto some of your research.
One of your most famous studies has to do with
something called mate evaluation theory, and it basically talks about
how people analyze, evaluate, make selection for potential mates.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And and I read the.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Whole study today because what I do is I turn
it into language everyone can understand. And now I'm going
to have you correct me if I say it wrong.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Okay, Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
There are basically five ways that people evaluate a mate. Right, first,
you talk about something called shared evolved mechanisms and cultural scripts.
Is this David Buss's evolutionary stuff? I'm hearing that women
like men who are tall, and men like men who
are fertile and round himpt waste.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, really it is. It is definitely meant to encompass that. Right.
So anything that's like agreed upon whether the reason for
agreement is there something evolved in the mind that this
is appealing to who we are as a species on average,
or because I don't know, we've decided in this culture
(04:24):
that you know, it's appealing if you can like make
really great TikTok videos like actually, right, but this is attractive.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I mean, I will say I'm a woman of a
certain age, and I've watched female body shape change over
the years, and in the nineteen eighties it was the
advent of the boob job, and it was very exciting
to suddenly see breasts on everybody. And now it's all
about but right, Yeah, So that's one example of a
cultural script.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
All right, Moving on number two.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Individual differences that affect how a perceiver. That's somebody who's
attracted somebody views all potential mates. So is this like
somebody's deal breaker list, Like this is my checklist, these
are things I'm looking for.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I would think of this one as like this is
like people's own personality. So some people are happy people,
and honestly, they're going to be happy in whatever relationship
you put them in, and some people not so much,
and they're going to be kind of miserable in whatever
relationship you put them in. So that's that's this component.
It's kind of like just your lens that you take
(05:31):
to the whole world and it doesn't matter who you're with.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Interesting because my new husband, Julio, he is a giggly
Dominican and he's the happiest person.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Then I'm met his whole family in Dominican Republic and
they all giggle. I was like, wow, it's a cultural thing.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
This is cool.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yep, And they happy with anybody, even me. There you
go and like, look, don't feel bad. It's a really
good good thing to be to have a little bit
of some rose colored glasses as you view the boys.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Oh yes, I have to reel him back in all
the time. Is his optimism is a little too high?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Okay, moving out of the third one.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Individual differences that affect how a perceiver views some targets
depending on the target's features.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So let me take a crack at this. Yep, So
would this be correct?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Maybe somebody with an anxious attachment style might look at
a partner's emotional passion and intensity as being really attractive.
But if that person looking is avoidant, they might feel smothered.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
That's a great example. Yeah, I mean this also would
encompass the deal breaker list you mentioned earlier, the idea
that I, like, I can't stand people who you know,
like going to fancy seven course meal restaurants, Like I
just can't be with somebody like that, Like that is,
you know, too high falutin for me. If you have
(07:05):
that kind of deal breaker, that's this third one that
you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
No, yourself, do not invite Paul to dinner out, Okay, gotcha?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
All right.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
My guest is University of California, Davis Professor, doctor Paul Eastwick.
He is also a researcher in attraction, relationships, interpersonal love, sex,
the whole shabang. He has the numbers and the data
on it. Okay, doctor Paul. Your mate evaluation theory, how
people evaluate mates to be a potential mate. You say,
(07:38):
narratives about idiosyncratic reactions to one particular target. Now, I
just got to admonish you on that is some psychobabble there. Okay,
I had to think about that for a minute.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Okay, what we do?
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So I would say this is like I think this
is the exciting part because this is does this mean
that if you have the sense that there's great meaning
to this relationship to you in particular, I don't know,
like there's something about this person that makes you go, oh,
it's meant to be.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It feels magical.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yes. And it's also about the things that you construct
along the way. And this is the one that I
think is if you ask the average person what is
important in your relationship, they're gonna ultimately gravitate towards these
kinds of things. The special rituals we have, the pet
(08:33):
names we have for each other, the customs that we built,
the values that we've created over time, and this stuff
is huge.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
So this is as a couple creating, or what an
individual creates in their life and then says, wow, this
person fits that.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
It is really supposed to be what you are creating.
I'll say like this, well, you're creating them in a
context with this particular person. And the real idea with
this one is the idea that like, I can't just
take somebody else who like looks a lot like your
partner and substitute them in. Like, the point is that
this person was there along the way for the creation
(09:12):
of these things, Like you have memories with this person,
and that's that's what it's really about.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And I always say relationships are a living thing. They're
like growing a gardener together. And having been prior to
meeting my now husband, I was a single mom for
twenty years with two little girls, and I did not
want to risk exposing my kids to a poor romantic
choice that I might make. But I knew that if
(09:38):
I kept studying this stuff, by the time they got
of age and old enough, I would find a person.
But there is something now that I'm in a secure
attachment where I really.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Feel like there's a living thing.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Like we're co thinkers, we're cod emotional you know. He
does half the thinking, you know, and I do half
the intellectual work. I mean, a great example, here's a simple,
simple example, and I'm sure many couples do this. One
of us will be working on an email and we
will read it aloud to the other person. It might
be an important and he will add more business language
(10:13):
or analytic language to mine, and I will add more
emotional language to yep.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So we become get a couple of emojis in there
at an exclamation point exactly, and.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Now we're a team. We're thinking like one brain exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yeah, yeah, right, And it's this thing that people build
together that you know, what we try to point out
in this paper is we all kind of intuitively get
that this that's really important, and we as researchers are
actually not great at capturing it. And that's for a
bunch of methodological reasons that aren't especially fascinating. But the
(10:50):
bottom line is what we think the lion's share of
compatibility is how well you create a culture to your
relationship and hip well, we actually just haven't. You know,
there's a lot out there about that that still needs
to be explored and understood, and just so.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
That people understand what you just said, one of the
problems with doing relationship research is a lot of it
is self reporting. You can't like put people in MRI
machines and just say, oh, there's love, although some attachment
researchers are doing.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
That right right.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Okay, so let's go to what made evaluation theory can
teach us about dating. Now that we know these points, what,
how does that help us make better decisions?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Well, I think where it can really help people is
to recognize that there's some amount of curiosity that is
important when it comes to being in a relationship with somebody.
It's curiosity about how did we get to this point
and are the patterns we set up early in our
relationship still serving us well? You know, one of the
(11:58):
challenges that often happen is that, you know, couples do
things because they work right, and they keep those things
going because they were affected at one time. But it
can be very easy for one or both couple members
to lose track of what their needs are as they
change over time, and to realize that the patterns they've
set up might actually now be getting in the way,
(12:20):
might easily even be stifling one of them. And so,
you know, I'm a big believer that you know that
many couples can make it work, but it does require
some amount of curiosity about what the other person is
experiencing and how did we get here? Do we need
(12:41):
to mix things up or not right?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I call it rewriting the relationship contract from time to time.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And also when it comes to choosing a mate, looking
at some of these cultural scripts is a good idea
for us to become aware of them and realize how
they could be limiting us.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yes, I mean, I'm a big believer in the idea
that actually the narratives that you co create with somebody
really begin from the first moment. Like a lot of times,
what we think we're trying to do is assess things
like how how good are you know this person's traits?
Are they attractive, are they intelligent? Are they funny? But
(13:20):
what we're really doing is trying to figure out are
they funny with me? Right? Do they seem smart with me?
Do they make me feel smart? Like it's relational from
the very first few minutes. I mean, we even see
this if you look at you know, first impression research,
and we've collected a lot of data on first impressions.
(13:42):
But what people are trying to do is just find
something where they both have a little bit of knowledge
in common and they can kind of try to start
scaffolding something together, something that they have in common, something
that they can sort of bond over a little bit,
and then you sort of build up from there. So
you know, everything is a construction, and it really happens
(14:04):
from the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So when I met my husband during COVID, during quarantine
and lockdown, my rule was they had to meet me
on a windy pier wearing a mask. Okay, And if
they couldn't do that, then if they want to protect
my health's not going to happen. And then when we
sat down, for I only do coffee days, so it
was only twenty minutes they got.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
You got to leave them wanting more, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And then I said, when we sat down, I said, look,
you know, we could sit here and brag about the
masks were off at this point because we were more
than six feet apart and the wind was going. Yeah,
And I said, we could sit here and brag about
how great we are and how datable we are. But
could we begin actually by each of us telling a
story of why we think we're completely undateable.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Oh that's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
He said, Okay, you'll go first, and he had a
much much more tragic story than I did. But it
developed intimacy from the get go.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yep, right, yep, it was that's great. Yeah, it's spot
on I love to plug art Aaron, and you know
the grade thirty six questions. Oh, yes, study love. Yeah,
I mean right exactly. But really, what you're doing in
that sixty and ninety minute period is you are getting
comfortable and then talking about things that are interesting and
(15:22):
deep and meaningful. And people can do this in short
periods of time.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Oh yeah, And within ten minutes of our coffee coming,
both of us had our eyes welling up with tears
over our stories.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, and dealing with.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
The shame of having to tell the story too, right, yeah, So,
and so I wanted to ask you one more question
before time is so tight in radio.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
The last question has to do when it comes to
this study with these sort of these models we have
in our heads for what we're talking specifically heter rich
sexual relationship. Here, for my example, an opposite gender parents
role is in our model of love. So, for instance,
(16:07):
with my husband, we will be out shopping somewhere and
he'll be in the next aisle over and he will
clear his throat and one hundred percent it is my dad.
Everything about the sound, the tone, everything, And I almost
get startled when I hear it. Did I unconsciously choose
him partly because of that.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Oh, I don't know. I mean, there is a little
bit of work showing that, yeah, that people can be
unconsciously primed with images of parents, and you know, they
feel a little bit more safe. And so maybe if
that you know, is coming from somebody of your you know,
preferred age and gender, that you just find yourself a
little bit more attractive with that person for that reason.
(16:48):
But this stuff is going to be really really subtle.
These oh yeah, any unconscious effects are going to be
very very small on the whole. But it's possible that
you know, things like what you mentioned there, sort of
the way that he clears his throughout her might be
a small thing that carried over from those unconscious leaning.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Which might have been important to me and my trauma
is that my parents both died of cancer in the
same year when I was young, and so interesting enough,
his mother, who's eighty six years old, I love.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So I got a dad and a mom back with
this marriage.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, I'm quite sure. Paul.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It is a delight to have you on the Doctor
Wendywall Show here on KFI. We are going to have
your co host Eli Finkel next week, I believe, so
we'll make sure that we cover love factually as much
as we can. Thanks so much for being with us.
My guest is doctor Paul Eastwick, a professor at the
University of California Davis. You've been listening to the Dr
Wendywall Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere
(17:53):
on the iHeartRadio app Newsroom
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