266 - The Worst Relationship Advice
Antiquated advice
Quite a lot of dating advice is either irrelevant when applied to modern relationships, or outright harmful. We don’t intend to discredit or bash traditional values or anything—just some harmful societal expectations that don’t necessarily apply anymore. Everything else changes with the times; why not dating advice?
What’s outdated?
Here are a few of the biggest outdated tips that we found, with help from an article in Best Life and a book called The Rules:
Let the man make the first move. Not everyone’s relationship will involve a man, not to mention this teaches women to be more passive instead of actively engaging in what they want.
You’ll find “the one,” they’re out there. This is problematic from a polyamorous perspective, of course, but even for those who aren’t non-monogamous, entering each relationship with the goal of finding “the one” can often backfire.
Play hard to get. There are serious communication issues with playing hard to get, and in a society where consent isn’t always prioritized, this too can backfire or be harmful.
Never go to bed angry. Absolutely go to bed angry if you need to HALT! Returning to a topic that caused upset when you’ve got a clearer head, aren’t under the influence of anything, and aren’t tired or hungry or sick is much better than trying to work everything out immediately.
You can change your partner. This just largely isn’t true. And even if it were, it does not fall on you to change your partner for the better. Partners are not therapists.
Opposites attract. This one is a common saying, but we’ve also found that it’s not always true. Sometimes, sure, but more often, you’re going to want someone you can at least relate to a little.
Jealousy means they love you. This is a big one, especially within the non-monogamous community. Jealousy is a normal feeling to feel, but it does not mean love. Unless your they are actively working to manage jealousy, it can be a big red flag.
Kids can fix a relationship. Absolutely not. Avoid making huge life decisions (such as having kids, opening a relationship, etc.) when you’re in a time of turmoil.
No more than casual kissing on the first date (no sex on the first date) if you really like them. Generally speaking, it shouldn’t make a difference how far you go with someone on the first date, whether you really like them or not. By all means, don’t feel like you must have sex with someone on the first date, but it shouldn’t be an indicator of the potential length of your relationship with them.
Relationships just aren’t the same as they were twenty, thirty, fifty years ago. Without adapting to meet new criteria, we can’t have fulfilling connections with the people we love.
Give the full episode a listen to hear some statistics on relationships and marriage, as well as some expansion on these outdated relationship tips.
Image credit to Disabled And Here.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're going to be talking about some of the worst relationship and dating advice ever. What we're actually doing is we're talking about some of this mainstream old antiquated relationship advice as well as some research and statistics about that. Because, many of us got our relationship advice from our parents or other probably, unqualified sources when we were growing up like our peers. While some relationship advice has changed drastically, a lot of it's still the same crap that it's been for decades if not longer.
Today, we're going to be talking about some of the ways that dating has changed, the way that the advice needs to change to go with that as well as some stits and stats which we always love to cover in some recent relationship research from experts in the field.
Dedeker: I do love that it feels like we've come full circle. Our very, very, very, very, very first episode at Multiamory was a debunking. It wasn't relationship advice but it was debunking polyamory myths. Now I feel like we're back on the debunking train.
Emily: Yes, we did it in your best friends from random like kitchen or it wasn't a kitchen.
Jase: In his dining room.
Emily: It was in the dining room on that glass table.
Jase: It was so echoey.
Dedeker: Echoey.
Emily: Now here we are again. It was so bad. It was so echoey.
Jase: All crowding around one microphone.
Dedeker: Writing all our notes on a piece of paper and just sharing that around. The dog was running in and out. What's changed since then? Very little, surprisingly.
Jase: Except for now-
Dedeker: There are not cats and dogs barking and the others.
Jase: Right. We're all in different cities right now recording it with technology and interactive Google Docs that we edit on the fly while we're recording. I think a lot's changed.
Dedeker: Yes. People actually listen to us now.
Jase: That's true.
Emily: That is trench as well. Perfect.
Emily: Yes. Okay gang. I have to give the disclaimer. Our goal in this episode is not to piss all over more traditional ideas of love and family or marriage or traditional relationships or things like that but rather we think it's important to show how the goals of relationships have changed over time and our approaches to relationships have changed over time. Maybe arguably for the better. Also, talk about how the old advice that many of us were given, that many of us have grown up with. Many of us were socialized with, it's not necessarily the best advice for modern relationships. Again, most romantic advice that was probably written pre 2012 I'm going to say.
Emily:
Dedeker: No. I was just saying anything that was written pre 2012 was primarily written for heteronormative couples, so bear that in mind as we go through this.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. When I was researching and looking at this episode, it prompted me to think about myself growing up. Because I grew up in a fairly nontraditional setting which was my mom and dad and an affair. He was married and she was not. I have never grown up knowing my mom being married, although she was married a long, long time before I ever came into the picture. I guess I was curious as the two of you when you were growing up, did you feel like-- Was it a dream of yours or were you hoping that eventually you'd get married and have kids and have a, "normal relationship" when you were growing up? What did that look like to you? When did you think you were going to get married, et cetera?
Jase: I definitely grew up with that normative idea that essentially, not like the goal of my life I would say but just one of those things that's definitely a goal and that I was definitely going to have was to be married and to have kids. Was to be a father. That was very much-- I don't know. I guess something that I put a lot of value into. It is still actually something that I value a lot. I value parents a lot. I think parents are amazing and doing something incredibly difficult and especially in this country, doing it without a lot of support. I still think that's amazing but my mind has changed about whether I'm going to be one of those. No, it's definitely had a pretty hetero normative-- a mononormative-
Emily: View point of things?
Jase: -view of what my life would look like.
Emily: What about you Dedeker?
Dedeker: I was raised in the church, so definitely extremely heteronormative, extremely mononormative. I don't know. When I was young, I didn't really terribly have a ton of ambition for my life outside of-- I had certain little dreams that I would have here and there and things that I wanted to do. I do know that the church set me up to really feel like getting married is the accomplishment. Having a traditional relationship.
Emily: Yes. I think that's the one-
Dedeker: Yes. That's the accomplishment. That's the thing to look forward to and maybe you'll have a career, maybe you won't. I think I was very much told that you'll be equally satisfied whether you're pursuing a career or whether you're just a stay at home mom. As long as you find a good man who makes money and is good to you and is a man of God, also very important. Then you'll be okay not having a career. I really believed that. I truly, truly did. It's nice.
Emily: The truth is Dedeker, you will never be satisfied.
Dedeker: It's true. I'm not even satisfied with a career.
Emily: No. I'm kidding. That was the Hamilton reference for all of you out there.
Dedeker: Honestly, I think to me as far as your question of when I thought that I might get married or might have this normal relationship, I was also raised in purity culture. Evangelical purity culture, which very much encouraged complete abstinence before marriage and also even encouraged no dating before marriage, which is nuts. Also encouraged-
Jase: Yes. I kissed dating goodbye too.
Dedeker: Exactly. Also encouraged things more like biblical courtship became a hot buzz word back then and this idea-
Emily: It's a hot thing now too again. Right?
Jase: It was. Now it's digital courtship.
Dedeker: The time of digital courtship in the time of coronavirus.
Emily: Correct. That's what I'm saying. I know.
Dedeker: We always come full circle once again. No. Literally, you're not going to even date anyone or get into any relationship with anyone until you're ready to get married, which is just
Emily: How does that work? That's so fascinating to me.
Dedeker: That's a very circuitous way of me saying, I was pretty sure I was going to get married as soon as I could after 18. Because, that's what a lot of-
Emily: Wow. That did not happen.
Dedeker: That's what a lot of evangelical kids do. Because, you're just taught your whole purpose in this is if you're going to date someone, you better be ready to marry them and then you get so horny not being able to have sex and you think, "Clearly, it must be ordained. We're doing everything right. We're doing the whole biblical courtship thing in not having sex. We've been told that if we don't have sex and wait until marriage, then God's going to bless our relationship".
Jase: Yes then we'll be happy.
Dedeker: Trust me, I know a billion friends from my childhood who got married at 20, 21, 19, and then they all become my clients.
Emily: Oh boy. I love that.
Jase: As far as when, I definitely assumed I guess during college and was always like even from-
Emily: You were engaged in college, right? Or just afterwards?
Jase: I got engaged the summer that I graduated. I got engaged and didn't end up getting married. It's 23 when I got engaged. Looking back I'm like, "That's too young for anyone to know who they are and what they would want for that long. To me, that was very much a normal age to do it. The fact that I hadn't married someone that I dated in high school, I was already maybe behind the time possibly. If you don't have anyone to give you that perspective especially when all of our protagonists and historical figures and characters in books and everyone's getting married then and is portrayed as if they could really know what their life's goal or mission is at that age too, you have no frame of reference. You're like, "Yes, of course".
Emily: I guess when I was growing up, I did have a long-term high school sweetheart, but he was pretty abusive ultimately and so, that did not work out. There was a point in my life where I thought that I would marry him and that would just be the thing. Even though it did not happen at all. I think even though also I was not religious at all growing up, I still had a lot of the same values instilled like not to have sex before marriage to a degree or at least like, you're bad if you do thing. Yes, probably you'll get married and have kids. That is sort of checking a box or the thing that people strive to do in their lives. Even though I did not grow up evangelical, that still was very much a thing in my life too.
Jase: Yes, that it's not really-- I think a lot of people blame it on Christianity or religion, but I think it's so much more apart of our culture than that. I think Emily actually you've been someone in my life who's really shown that to me in everything. With the struggles that we've had with our families when coming out is polyamorous or non-monogamous, or other things that you've told me about. Growing up completely atheist was just like, "Yes, this isn't actually as different as you would think." It's not like, "She doesn't have all the baggage that I have." It's like, "No, we still had it just like in different words."
Emily: Yes, I don't have like the biblical baggage, but I do have a lot of other baggage that comes with just like growing up in our society in general, which I think is some of what we're going to talk about today. Along those lines, let's talk about this very interesting match.com study. Can you take it away Jase.
Jase: Yes. First of, we're going to preface this by saying this is a study that is done by match.com back in like 2015, 2016. Well, 2016 is the article that we got a lot of these from, but the study was actually going on before that I think. Anyway, around that time, middle of the tens. match.com, pretty traditional dating site, very heteronormative, very much focused on finding the one, finding people who are looking for a long lasting relationship, that's who they market to. That's what their whole thing is. They did a study with 2,000 of their users who asked questions like, "In your relationship, when did you become Facebook official?"
Or, "When did you meet your first partner?" Or things like that. We just wanted to share some of the findings from that and now we're going to discuss them. First one here is that-- I hate the wording of this, but the average woman-
Emily: Yes, the-- Whoever that might be.
Jase: The average woman finds her life partner at the age of 25.
Emily: So young still.
Jase: It is very young. While for men, they're more likely to find their soulmate at 28. With half of people finding "the one" in their 20's.
Dedeker: Yes. Now we can agree that this is a little bit nausea-inducing. However, when I was 25 in the relationship that I was in at 25, I was pretty convinced, "This is my life partner, and I wanted this person to be my life partner." Of course, if you'd ask me. Especially, if I'd gone on to marry that person if you'd ask me, I'll be like, "Yes, I was 25."
Emily: I guess when I was 25, I was with you, Jase.
Jase: I win. . I got you right in the right window there.
Dedeker: Now, that it's interesting because ironically, maybe you are soulmates because, even though there's no romantic relationship, it's like he still entangled you in this whole business partner scheme. This whole business partner podcast co-host scheme.
Emily: That's so funny. That is fascinating, but I-- you kind of were with me in a very big changing point in my life I think for a lot of things, including a lot of these ideals. What were some other things that this study found?
Jase: We'll talk about this more later. The next one here is that most people waited five months to say, "I love you for the first time," which to me that seems slow. I feel like everyone in my relationship, it's been well before five months. That's interesting.
Dedeker: I think my personal average is usually about four months.
Jase: I think mine's usually three.
Emily: Mine's like a month. I think the most recent, the relationship that went out, that was a month. I think before that, it was definitely longer.
Dedeker: I hold out.
Emily: Do you?
Dedeker: Yes. I put some strict standards on myself that before I can say I love you to someone, I need to see them have a bad moment and see how they deal with it before I feel comfortable declaring my love.
Emily: Wish I had done that with our ex-mutual partner, Dedeker. Here we are. That all happened.
Jase: Then as far as updating their relationship status on Facebook was also five months, and then six months until they were given their own drawer at their partner's home. That's interesting how-- It seems like the I love you and Facebook official comes very shortly before that own drawer.
Dedeker: Yes, that's funny. The drawer is now a milestone. It's on the relationship escalator.
Emily: Maybe we should add that to the relationship escalator when we're talking about it. When did you get your own drawer.
Jase: The drawer thing is funny though. For me, it's different now because I don't really have a permanent place of my own, but when I did, for me I was like, "You've come over more than three times. Here, I'm going to make a space for you to leave stuff if you want to." Not everyone takes me up on it.
Emily: That's six months?
Jase: I was just like, "Yes, sure. Why not?"
Dedeker: If someone's only come over to your house three times, do you give them a whole drawer? How much space do you give them?
Jase: I don't know. I guess it depended. I also had a lot of closet space in that place.
Emily: Yes, I don't have that much space.
Jase: Here's a space for you to keep like a change of clothes or two so that if you spontaneously spend the night, you have stuff here. That was more the idea.
Dedeker: Maybe that's a good benchmark for all our poly saturated folks out there. If you're running out of drawer space, that's a signal. You got to slow down.
Jase: You got to slow down, yes.
Dedeker: Maybe you're bad at evaluating your own emotional capacity, but let your drawers do the talking.
Jase: I like that.
Dedeker: That's going to be the t-shirt. Let your drawers do the talking, and it makes sense on multiple levels. I'm going to goon. 34% of respondents in this study said that they would wait a week or two before holding hands with someone. Okay, I get that. 31% saying that they would kiss their date immediately if things are going well. I'm assuming that's on a first date.
Emily: It takes longer to hold hands than it does to kiss. Like that's more intimate somehow.
Dedeker: Yes, but we've been setup culturally to think that the first kiss is the gateway to all of the intimacy.
Emily: Everything?
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: I think we need to be careful about reading this statistic here though because I think these might be part of the same question where it's like, how fast are you willing to move? That 31% said they would kiss on the first date essentially, and 34% said they'd wait a week or two before holding hands. I think these are the two extremes on the spectrum. My guess would be that these aren't the same 30% saying, "I would kiss immediately, but definitely wouldn't hold their hand for two weeks."
Dedeker: I don't know. In my personal experience-- Again. like I'm saying, because we've really been setup by culture and media and movies and stuff like that where it's like the kiss is the thing that then opens up all the other intimacy. Think about it, it's like in your favorite romcom, so you don't see our characters holding hands first or like cuddling before they kiss. It's like we've been setup so that the kiss is the turning point. Yes, totally make sense that I would kiss someone first, but I wouldn't go for their hand on a first date. Honestly, times that people on first dates have gone for my hand on a first date.
Emily: You're like, "Wow."
Dedeker: Yes. My initial reaction has been like, "Wow, we haven't kissed yet. We were going to kiss. What does this mean? I don't know." Then my hand is like dripping with sweat and it's awful.
Emily: I'm sorry to hear that.
Dedeker: Okay, I'm going to keep moving along because I don't want to talk about that anymore. 27% said that they would wait between one or two weeks to sleep with their partner for the first time, and 23% said that they would wait up to a month.
Emily: That seems like a long time to me. I don't know about the two of you. Yes, maybe a week depending. I'm not going to do that with just anyone, but yes, generally, in the past, if I really do like someone and want to see them again multiple times, then yes. We do that.
Jase: I can think of someone that I dated not too long ago where I think it did probably take us a month or so to kiss, but that was on our second date. We just didn't schedule very well.
Emily: This is sleep with your partner though.
Jase: This was sleep with? I thought we're still on kissing.
Dedeker: No, we've moved on Jase.
Jase: Well, we never slept together, so infinity time.
Emily: Infinity time. What about you Dedeker? Do you think that a month is a long time?
Dedeker: You know what when I was in like the pendulum swing. The opposite direction from purity culture and when I was realizing like, "All this is toxic. This is ridiculous. Why do we punish women sexuality and guilt people into not sleeping on a first date and stuff like that." I would've been like, "A month? That's way too long. What are people thinking? That's ridiculous." Honestly now, especially the past few years, my dating approach has slowed down so much that honestly I may as well be Jane Austen at this point. Where I'm just like, "Yes, we're just going to sit and I'm going to stitch on my sampler. We're going to talk about the weather." Especially right now where it's like I'm probably not going to physically see you for another eight months or whatever. I'm like, "Let's just really take it slow, walk through the countryside, enjoy the Heath, like some poetry, cook some chicken pot pie. That's my approach these days.
Jase: I don't know what the heath is either.
Dedeker: What's a Heath?
Jase: A heath, it's very genos in the end. It is an area of open uncultivated land, especially in Britain with characteristic vegetation of Heather, gorse and coarse grasses. Literally every single film that you've seen that's a film adaptation of Emma or whatever the heck.
Emily: Prejudice is running through the fields, the kids.
Dedeker: I don't think it strolls through the Heath and stuff like that.
Jase: That's the heath, okay.
Emily: I love it. That's amazing. All right. The first argument normally takes place around the six month Mark, so six months, that's a lot of different things. You got your drawers space. I love you's and you got your-
Jase: Yes, you just got added on Facebook.
Emily: You also get an argument exactly.
Dedeker: Six months that's also the early end of the range of when NRE chemicals start wearing off.
Emily: That's true, maybe that's why. Also around six months, people tend to introduce partners to their parents for the first time.
Dedeker: That's a real make it or break it kind of time.
Emily: I guess so. Then finally, here's this one. 33% of people will have their first conversation about the future within one year and engagements typically happen after two years and then weddings take place after three and kids after four just.
Dedeker: Boom, boom, boom.
Jase: Really one year after another.
Emily: I was interested to see what these statistics tell us. What this study tells people out there in the world at large. Did you two get any particular feelings from hearing these studies?
Dedeker: Something that I want to point out is just reminding people that this was from 2015, 2016 but this is not from like the nineties or anything like that. It's clearly our idea of traditional relationships and finding the one or finding soulmates and stuff like that is still going strong and people are riding up that escalator, still going strong, which is again, to remind people, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is funny to think about how, I know the three of us live in this little bubble wall where everyone's in weird nontraditional revolutionary relationships. Yet, traditional relationships are still taking the cake in many regards.
Jase: The thing that we've talked about before way back when on this show and comes up every now and then is this idea of, how do you measure success of a relationship. It's a really challenging thing to determine, especially if you're just having one half of a relationship fill out a questionnaire giving you some information as opposed to someone like the Gottman Institute who does these much more longitudinal studies.
We'll talk about it a little later. Who will like really bring a couple in and observe the way they interact with each other rather than just what they say they do when they're with each other. With a lot of this stuff like that, like this very first one we talked about of the average woman finds her life partner at the age of 25 and men find their soulmate at 28. What I want to know is, how old were they when you asked them this question? If you asked them again 10, 20 years later, do they still think that was the age?
Emily: Or did they divorce?
Jase: Exactly, which we're also-
Dedeker: Yes, when they're on their second marriage, are they going to say the same thing?
Jase: I would bet you that most people would not, or at least half of people would not. I think that would change these statistics significantly if you were to ask people these questions later in life.
Dedeker: Now, to be fair, we are finding that because people are marrying later, that is lowering the divorce rate for our generation, for millennials. I know we look at 25, 28 and we're like, gosh that's young but the generation before us, it was 23, 25 and researchers think that that would make sense. Like, if we're free getting married even that young combined with the sexual revolution and feminism and shifts in how our culture operates, that then that would make sense that by the time you're on marriage number three, you're like no, that definitely wasn't my life partner and my soulmate. Maybe it'll be different for our generation.
Emily: I hope so because I still think the prevalent theme out there is that youth and being young and desirable are all linked and I even had this real asshole of a partner once upon a time telling me that he believes that women's worth went down as they aged just because they offer less to men and they're less desirable.
Dedeker: Were you dating the entire patriarchy?
Emily: Possibly, yes. I was like-
Jase: His name was Patriarchy though.
Emily: I dated this person from 19 to 21 on and off and hope you're doing well, Mr. Outthere but it was Mr. Patriarchy but I remember being struck by that even at the time, even though for whatever reason, I continued to date him. It's thinking about that, about like how well once you hit 30 or whatever, you're totally all used up and stuff and if you haven't found your soulmate by then, then nobody's going to want to be with you. I just turned 32 and I do not agree with that in any sense. Even if I were single, I don't think that, I couldn't find somebody to love me out there. I do think that a lot of people feel that way and that it is very challenging for them to not be with someone when they're in their thirties or forties or fifties.
Dedeker: Have we told you about the Christmas cake thing in Japan?
Emily: You've told me about Christmas cakes.
Dedeker: Christmas cake is a thing in Japan. Not quite like fruitcakes we have our Christmas time, it's just like a Christmasy themed cake. There's a saying in Japan that a woman past the age of 25 is like a Christmas cake after December 25th in that no one wants it anymore. I will say from what I've seen, things are changing in Japan also as far as people getting married later and women getting married later and things like that. That's still very much a thing, there's still those holdovers still clinging onto us I feel.
Emily: Well, and kids and stuff especially too, which I get into a little bit more later on in this episode. Just the fact that we are so told so much by everybody that you will use up your ability to have a kid the older that you get. If you're going to do it, then you need to do it when you're young and vital and it just gets harder and blah, blah, blah. All of those things, it's a tough pill to swallow I think for many people.
Dedeker: Those were all statistics that from what I'm guessing, it sounds like these are people self-reporting. Are y'all getting that same sense?
Jase: It was a questionnaire, that's not even just hearsay. It was a questionnaire that was sent to their users.
Emily: They're not going around shoving microphones in people's faces on their first day. When did you get your soulmate?
Dedeker: We're going to look on the opposite side of the research that the Gottman Institute has done not based on self-reporting, but literally based on observation. We've talked about the Gottman Institute before, they do really, really rigorous research on relationships even to the point of literally having couples live in a studio apartment that they have rigged up with a bunch of cameras and microphones and taking their blood, taking their urine at every couple of hours and stuff like that. Coding their facial expressions, writing down literally everything they say to each other, is like really, really codify and research what is going on with these couples.
Emily: What does blood and urine have to do with that.
Jase: They're hormone levels.
Dedeker: They're looking at cortisol levels, hormone levels. They go really, really thorough with this stuff. They also do a lot of recording people in therapy and codifying facial expressions and heart rate and breath rate and oxygen levels and all kinds of stuff. They get all sciency-sciency with relationships. Specifically we're talking about their research on when and why relationships fail because I think we also have lot of questionable relationship advice and platitudes out there about why relationships might fail or might fall apart. Based on their research, they found that the average couple waits six years before they will seek help for marital problems.
Jase: I'm assuming meaning they've had problems for six years before seeking help or is that just six years from getting married. Now, I'm not sure which one that is.
Emily: This was literally what it said. I'm assuming from getting married.
Jase: They're coming on the seven year itch and they're like, okay, let's do some therapy now.
Dedeker: They find that 67% of couples experience a precipitous drop in marriage satisfaction in the first three years of a child's life. That makes sense. There's a lot of factors that contribute to that. Of course, one of them being that it's becoming increasingly harder and harder to raise children, especially in America with very little social support. The first three years is hard. That's when your child needs the most care. They do find that marital satisfaction deeps in the first three years, stays pretty low and then starts to gradually climb up again as soon as they-
Emily: They get the heck out of the house.
Dedeker: Yes, basically. As soon as the youngest child turns 18, then marriage satisfaction starts creeping back in. They also found in their research that stable relationships have a one to five negative to positive interaction ratio. I'm going to clarify that a little bit. It's one to five during conflict. As in healthy relationships, when the people are having an argument or are in some conflict, they have five positive interactions for every single negative interaction that they have. To extrapolate this out to periods where they're not in conflict, it's actually one to 20. Stable relations-
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: So, 20 positive interactions to one negative one.
Dedeker: Yes. Outside of conflict. Yes. By contrast, unstable relationships have a point eight to one positive to negative interactions.
Emily: It's a slightly positive interaction?
Dedeker: Just for every negative interaction, they have 80% of a positive interaction.
Jase: Right. Even worse than that. They're not even having a wonderful positive interaction in between each negative.
Emily: Exactly. There you go.
Dedeker: This is something we have talked about in past relationships, that this ratio is really important because even if you have a 50-50 ratio of half the time it feels good and half the time it's really bad. It's like, no, that's just bad. I know that often when you're stuck in a bad relationship or in some kind of toxic communication dynamic with a partner that you really want to look at the good side and it's like well, half the time or even two-thirds of the time, they're good to me and then a third of the time is really, really crappy. It's like, no, that's still not good. That's still not a stable relationship.
Jase: I also did just look this up about that six years thing. It's six years of being unhappy before seeking help.
Dedeker: Okay, it is that.
Jase: Six years of being unhappy.
Dedeker: That's a long time.
Jase: That's not even just six years from getting married. We're well into this thing and suffering a lot before finally getting some help.
Dedeker: I would like to hope that that's changing. I would like to hope that as we continue to destigmatize getting therapy and getting counseling, but that that's changing, that people are not waiting quite so long .
Emily: As the counselor.
Dedeker: - I get help. Yeah, Counselor.
Emily: Then another one of the Gottman Institute's findings is that half of all marriages end in the first seven years. That probably goes along with the waiting to seek help for marital problems. That half of all marriages. That's a lot. Not going to waiting that long.
Jase: Did then go back to the match calm thing where they're saying 25 and 28 is when they meet the one or the soulmate or whatever-
Emily: Yes, by the time you're my age, it's over.
Jase: Right, exactly. It's like by the time you're in your mid-30s even, you might have a different answer to that question. Unless you really have internalized this idea that there is just one person for you and then I think a lot of people could end up feeling like, "I had my chance and I messed it up and now I'll never find it again." Which is really shitty that we teach people that, that we could give people that idea about it. Really sucks.
Emily: Finally, there was additional research that I looked up that said that the average age for a couple going through their first divorce is 30 years old and that 60% of divorces include, or sorry, involve spouses who are between the ages of 25 and 39. That's probably someone going through their first divorce, will do it between the ages of 25 and 39. What do all these statistics tell us? That all of this stuff beforehand was bullshit.
Dedeker: I don't know. Maybe. I don't know.
Jase: We've talked about some of these statistics before and something that I always come away from it really marveling at is on the one hand, we're taught this very magical idea of what love and relationships looks like, where there's the one that God would find you a mate perhaps or just that fate would or that you're meant to be together. There's a lot of you complete me. There's a lot of stuff we say to each other or that we're taught to think that's very magical about how wonderful it all is.and yet, at the same time, I feel like most of us get raised with these very, very low standards for how good a relationship not only can be but should be that in order for it to last, it has to be this good with the 20 to one thing, right?
Of like, you need to be having-- You should, you deserve to and it's actually possible to find a relationship where you're having 20 positive interactions to one negative one, not just during that first year, but long term. That even when you're fighting, still having more positive than negative interactions even during that. That, for me is the thing that I never-- I was never raised to think that that was a standard you could have, that that would be reasonable. It's like you have this fairytale idea where you never fight and then you have the reality and all the sitcoms if you're fighting all the time, and it's like the truth is somewhere in the middle here and we don't get that. There's this weird dichotomy of like, we're taught this magical idea but then also not taught that it's possible to have an actually happy, stable relationship.
Dedeker: Looking at these statistics, it just makes me think that it's really important to internalize, just get help sooner rather than later. I definitely feel that way about people who are first tackling non-traditional relationships or opening up their relationship or something like that. It's like get support sooner than you think that you do. That support doesn't have to be intensive therapy or intensive couples counseling or whatever. It can be reading a book, it can be listening to a podcast like ours, it can be joining a community where you're able to get support or things like that.
I think that like with relationships in general, whether it's monogamous or not monogamous, it's like get some help and support sooner than you think that you do. Don't wait six years of being unhappy before finally getting help.
Emily: Again, I hope that those things are changing now that we are kind of moving into a time period of different relationship styles coming out and being prevalent and being heard and being thought of as being okay. Hopefully, those things will change.
Jase: Exactly. It's so much easier to fix something that's difficult when you do it right away. It's like if someone does something that bothers you and you talk about it right away, that's much easier to resolve than six years of learning to resent them and hate them for it. Then even if they're trying to fix it, you won't receive it because you've just so entrenched yourself in hating them for it or being angry at them or resenting them for it.
We're going to go on to talk about some very commonplace relationship advice that exists out there and why it's terrible but before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some of our sponsors and ways that you can help keep these resources available for everybody for free as a podcast by going to our sponsors and supporting us on Patreon.
Dedeker: All right, we've gotten in the stits and stats, we've gotten the science, we've gotten the questionnaires, we've gotten the research. Let's talk about-
Jase: We've got the tools. We've got the talent.
Dedeker: Yes. We can rebuild him. Let's talk. about-
Emily: What are we talking about?
Jase: We're just mashing together a whole lot of things.
Dedeker: We're just roofing. We're jamming. We're having a good time.
Emily: Jimin and gaming.
Dedeker: Let's talk about some of the more, let's say, antiquated relationship advice that's out there. Now, I'll be honest, when I first looked through this list, my knee-jerk reaction is to be like, "Oh, does anyone still believe this anymore? How awful."
Emily: I think some people.
Dedeker: No. Then literally every single one of this list, I was like, I know someone who still thinks this.
Emily: Exactly.
Dedeker: All right. Some of this list is a mix. Some of it's from an article from, Best Life, that was called 50 Relationship Tips That Are Actually Terrible and some are from a book from 1995 called The Rules. We're going to talk about that more in our bonus content.
Jase: Let's start talking about some of these rules and discuss them a little bit because, like Dedeker said, knowing people who at least one of these still believes and I think even looking at ourselves, there might still be remnants of this even if on the surface we think, "Oh, come on," but that we've still, because it's all this stuff that's been internalized into us since we were kids, that it's a little harder to deprogram at all. Let start at number one that we pulled out here, which is let the man make the first move. First of all, what is gender? Am I right?
Emily: Yes, for sure.
Jase: Problem number one. Do you to still find this though to be a thing because I feel like even if we say like, "Whatever," I still feel like for myself, and most people that I know, there still is an element of this play that women feel weird about being the initiator and that men feel weird if they're not or feel like they have to. Even with people who you would think wouldn't be so concerned about this, I still feel it. I'm aware that this is one that's still internalized in me.
Emily: I am often the initiator and have been in recent relationships. The one that I'm in now, I was definitely the initiator so I don't know. To me, I'm like, "Eh," but absolutely, I think a lot of people out there do believe like if you are a guy, then you should be the one doing the move-making first.
Dedeker: I don't know. I've seen this play out a number of different ways. I still think this is very much alive and well in our culture. First of all, being that I've mostly seen a surprising amount of men being uncomfortable when women make the first move, again, I know heteronormative and what is gender and all that stuff. I know from my personal experience, I've definitely seen that, of some dudes just really not knowing how to deal with it, like it's that ingrained.
Mostly, I've seen what it seems to be like the leftover effect of this in-- Literally, I'm in a Facebook group that's for bisexual poly women who don't know how to flirt with women because we've all been socialized that men are the ones who drive flirting. I see that all the time.
Jase: I've heard that a lot.
Dedeker: Yes, all the time. I see that as just like a total natural result of us all thinking that men are the ones who make the first move. If you're someone who has dated men and then are now trying to date women, that then everyone's just like confused and we just sit around staring at each other and no one makes the move.
Jase: I also feel like the number one thing I wish that I could teach men when it comes to approaching women or asking women out and stuff like that is I want to say like, take a break for a few years and just date other men because it will open your eyes to what that's like being on the receiving end of someone who feels like it's their job to kind of force their courtship on you.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: I wish that were like a training course that men could go through.
Dedeker: Jase, if you can package it and market it and find a way to sell it, if anyone could, it's you, Jase.
Emily: There you go.
Jase: Well, we'll see. Let's move on to the second one, all right? That's the thing about the one, that you'll find the one that they're out there. I don't know how much more we need to go into this one, but-
Emily: It's not necessarily our cup of tea, especially when people are divorcing after seven years and having two or different spouses in their lifetimes or more.
Jase: What I wish we could replace this with is that thing I was saying before about could we just replace it with, "It's possible to have a relationship where you were treated well and respected and you have 20 positive interactions to every negative one." Teach them that that's possible instead of teaching them this idea of the one, because that's not helpful. Even if you did believe in soulmates and the one, if you don't have the tools or have those standards, you're not going to have a good relationship with him anyway. It's like lose-lose, I guess.
Emily: What's another one?
Jase: Next one I have here on the list is play hard to get.
Emily: I still hear this all the time and whenever I do hear it, I just say to the person like, "Why? Why do you want to do that?" Truly, make your intentions known, in my opinion, just within reason, I suppose but generally, it's like if you like someone and if you think that they like you back, just fricking talk to the person, have an honest conversation with them. What is so hard about that?
Dedeker: Okay, yes, but I think that this idea of play hard to get has evolved and has more-
Emily: Into what?
Dedeker: -into be chill.
Jase: Be chill? Tell me more.
Dedeker: No, I'm serious. This is a huge thing. I think this pressure that a lot of people put on themselves, I think most often, it's women putting this pressure on themselves. I think it goes across your board of like when you're starting to get to know someone and you like them, it's like you got to be chill. You can't scare them off.
Jase: I see.
Dedeker: You can't expect to reopen all their time. You got to wait a couple hours before responding to their texts. Don't respond to their texts right away. This idea of be chill, I think it's a slightly different flavor from play hard to get, but I think with the same results or with the same pressure put on the person. Does that make sense?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Well, what's interesting about it though is that when you were talking about that and I hear something like, "Don't expect to immediately monopolize all of someone's time," I'm like, "Yes, that sounds good, that's something we say on this show," but when it's packaged in the, like, artificially do that or artificially wait to respond to a text or something, then I'm like, "Yes, now, that's weird." It's almost like, I don't know.
On the one hand, I want to be like, "Yes, fake it till you make it," but on the other hand, I want to be like, "No, do the work for yourself so that that's honestly where you're coming from," so that then, the things that you do really express to them about your feelings can be genuine and not coming from a place of other programming that's taught you to be very needy or codependent or something. I don't know. I feel like we could do a whole episode probably on that one.
Emily: I'm just be chill-
Jase: Playing hard to get or being chill.
Emily: -or what is this? What does this mean?
Jase: Here's the title. Be chill with Multiamory. What do you think?
Dedeker: I like it. Let's do it, put it on the list.
Emily: Be chill and Netflix with Multiamory.
Jase:
Emily: There's this other layer to it of-- And again, well, this will go into our full episode where we explore this whole thing, but there is this other layer of we're so used to there being just this harsh binary between either, "You're my soulmate and we're going to get married," or, "You're just a casual hookup that like, there's no space for any actual feelings in there and the in-between and hence, why it's like if I'm casually dating someone, I cannot show any feeling whatsoever." I think that's part of the whole be chill culture also. I cannot indicate that I like them, I can't really compliment them.
I can't really give any tenderness or affection because they're going to think that I'm trying to rope them into marrying me or whatever. I think that this whole play hard to get, be chill thing is part of that as well. Let's keep rolling along. The next one is to never go to bed angry. I definitely heard that one a lot. I also heard the joke version of it, which is like don't go to bed angry, stay up and fight .
Emily: Exactly, that's what I mean.
Jase: That's what it is.
Emily: That's what it is. Generally, to me, you need to get away from the situation and sometimes, that means go to bed, wake up the next day and have a clearer, calm mind about it.
Jase: Now, it also is like the exact opposite of halt. It's like rather than stopping when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, it's like, "No, you can't go to sleep, you got to power through this," which isn't going to serve anything.
Emily: Stay up forever.
Jase: I heard a related piece of advice. In college, one of my girlfriends got this advice from her parents, which was, "Never played backgammon with each other before going to bed," because it led to them getting very competitive with each other. It's almost like don't do stuff that could cause a fight right before bed. I'm like, "Okay, all right, that's maybe a more constructive way."
Dedeker: You know what? Having been only recently taught how to play backgammon, I had to agree with that.
Jase:
Emily: Don't do it. Don't play it before bed.
Dedeker: Not before bed. Okay, moving along to the next one, opposites attract, heard that a billion times. I feel like I hear a lot of arguments for or against this. What do you all think?
Emily: I think opposites can attract, but it definitely is nice when you have someone who has a lot of the same interests as you do. If you're completely just diametrically opposed about everything, I can't imagine what Kellyanne Conway and her husband have to deal with on a daily basis because one is a Trump staffer and the other fricking hates him, so what is that?
Dedeker: Let’s not conjure up the specter of that relationship.
Emily: I'm just, "Jeez, Emily. What is happening there? What is going on?"
Jase: Well, I think that's an interesting thing though because I think it's possible to have different views on even something like politics or maybe even religion. I think that's a harder one, but it definitely happens, where people have two different religions. I think it's possible. I think the problem with this one is the idea that you are opposites rather than it's okay to have different opinions from each other. My grandparents, one always voted Democrat, the other always voted Republican, and it was sort of their joke that their votes amounted to nothing because they just canceled each other out all the time.
It's like, sure, that's true and yet, they actually did have a lot of similarities in their outlook and the way that they went about their lives and what was important to them and things like that. It almost makes this opposites attract thing makes me think about something we've talked about before about the idea that when people think like, "We're opposites attract because my partner is an extrovert and I'm an introvert," that really, it's just because from your point of view, they might seem like they're an extrovert even though really in the grand scheme of things, you're both introverts or vice versa.
You're both extroverts and you think one of you is actually an introvert because you're comparing to each other rather than to the whole world. I think this one's mostly not true.
Dedeker: I would agree that I do think opposites attract. I think it's quite possible to be attracted and really drawn to someone who's very much the opposite with you and can seem like kind of some sexy, fun, wild adventure.
Jase:
Dedeker: I don't think that opposites necessarily attach well to each other.
Jase: Like the opposite of magnets.
Dedeker: Yes. What's the opposite of a magnet?
Emily: Science, bitch.
Jase: The opposite of a magnet? Tape. No, I don't know.
Dedeker: No.
Emily: I don't think that's what you were going for.
Dedeker: No. Well, you failed my SAT, Jase.
Jase: The opposites are to magnets as likenesses are to Velcro. No, that doesn't work either.
Dedeker: Jeez.
Jase: I got it. That bondage tape that always sticks to itself-
Emily: Okay, fine. I hope you do that one.
Jase: -or like cling wrap or something.
Emily: I'll give you that one.
Dedeker: I'll give you half points for that.
Emily: Only half points, I love it.
Dedeker: Okay. Moving along, this is a classic one. Signs of jealousy means that they love you and care about you.
Emily: We've talked about that a lot on this podcast over the years.
Dedeker: Okay. I'm going to drop in a controversial opinion because I think that feeling jealousy and feeling maybe an attachment crisis or feeling scared when your partner's flirting with someone else or maybe wanting to go on a date with someone else or maybe floating the idea of an open relationship with you or things like that, I think feeling that is an indicator that like, "Hey, the stakes are high for you if you do care." I think acting in a jealous way and acting on that jealousy is not a way to indicate love. That's my take. What do you all think?
Jase: It's good.
Emily: No, I like that. I think that if you do have intense jealousy, generally, it's not going to be an attractive thing for your partner in whatever fashion the two of you are choosing to live your lives, whether it be monogamous or polyamorous or anything in between. I have heard a lot of friends of mine, a lot of people who have come up to me over the years say like, "I'm really in love with my girlfriend, I'm really in love with my boyfriend," or whomever, but they are so jealous. "It's really, really hard to deal with that because I'm not going to do anything with them. I'm kind of the, like, spicy, have fun with my friends type guy and blah, blah, blah," and it's just very unattractive to have a jealous partner.
Jase: He seems to have been a spicy, have fun with my friends kind of guy. It's just a funny sentiment.
Emily: Spicy, fun with my friends kind of guy.
Dedeker: Jase is making fun of your dating profile now.
Jase: Yes, I just put that right up there.
Emily: I love it.
Jase: I was just going to say it makes me think of the Clint Black song. The chorus is that love isn't someplace that we fall, it's something that we do. I almost feel like you could take that idea and apply it to jealousy here, where like Dedeker said, feelings of jealousy could be a good indicator to yourself that this is important to you, but doing jealousy is not a way of doing love. Acting jealous and doing the jealous things is not a way to love your partner and it's not a way to show them love.
Emily: Doing the jealous.
Dedeker: Don't do the jealous.
Jase: Don't do the jealous.
Emily: Don't you do that jealous.
Dedeker: You can quote us on that.
Jase:
Emily: I love it. All right. The next one is going to be, the kids can fix a relationship.
Dedeker: This is another one where it's very easy to roll your eyes at and be like, surely, everyone knows that kids don't fix a relationship, until I was literally in a relationship with someone who thought that.
Emily: Really?
Dedeker: Literally. Yes.
Emily: I didn't know that you've dated people who have kids.
Dedeker: No, not that they had kids, but wanted to have kids. No, really. I was in a relationship with someone and there were a lot of problems with this person and this relationship as it was, but there was a time where I was expressing to him like, "Wow." There's a lot of pain and a lot of hurt in our relationship and it feels hard to repair it. I just wish that there was something that we could do that could just clear the slate, I wish that we could start over in some way and forgive each other, stuff like that. He literally was like, "We could have a kid." He was straight up, like, "Yes, having a-
Emily: That just like completely negates everything that came before it.
Dedeker: -and I think what he said that, I did laugh out loud, I was like, "Yes, that's a good joke. That's good." He was like, "No, seriously. Having a baby would probably help. It would help reset." I was just like-
Emily: You're like, "It would not."
Dedeker: -literally, it blew my mind.
Jase: I feel like we have some other versions of this that exist too, which is moving in together or moving to a new place with each other. I think those two kind of fall into this similar category of, "There's a problem and our idea for fixing it is to get ourselves into more of a situation that makes it harder to actually address the problem because we're adding some other stress on top of it." It's very prevalent, that thing of like, "It's difficult, but it'll probably be easier if we live together."
Dedeker: Getting married or opening up your relationship or adding a third or any number of dramatic things.
Jase: I would say any big change.
Emily: Any outside thing, yes. Remember, everyone out there, just changing your relationship in a dramatic way does not necessarily mean that it's going to fix it, whether it be a kid or whatever else. Okay, this one, I was laughing at because it came from the rules, the book that we will be talking about a little bit later on the bonus episode for all of you patrons out there, but in the rules, that said that, "To do no more than casual kissing on the first day and no casual sex if you really like someone." I don't know what casual kissing
is.
Dedeker: Emily, can you-- I just want to say-- What would be your best guess, like with casual kissing?
Emily: Like a styled kiss?
Dedeker: Like a styled hug? Like the stylized version of a kiss?
Emily: Yes, exactly. Just like a one-armed hug, exactly. It's like a one-armed kiss, whatever that means to you, a casual kiss.
Dedeker: Maybe that's like the European style kissing. Maybe no tongue.
Emily: No tongue?
Dedeker: Yes, maybe they mean no tongue.
Jase: What if it's kissing but not holding hands? That's a casual kiss.
Emily: There you go. You can't do both and no other part of your body can touch, just the mouth. You cannot be embracing.
Jase: Right.
Emily: I don't know. Anyways, we're all laughing at this, but no casual sex, I guess, until later if you really like someone. Again, casual sex is casual sex, whatever, but it's an interesting modifier.
Jase: It's funny though because I could see you posing the same question about sex, of like, what makes a kiss casual and what makes sex casual? I think that's an interesting thing to think about. The thing I want to bring up about the sex one or the kissing, I guess, but I feel like in my life, it's come up more around sex that I've heard people say like, "Well, I actually like this person so I'm going to wait a little while to have sex with them."
Emily: It's like, "Why? Just go for it."
Jase: Well, there's this tough thing because statistically speaking, most new relationships or people that you date probably aren't going to work out. Just statistically, you're going to date a few people before you find a relationship that lasts a while, however long that is. It's very easy for someone to then, in retrospect, blame themselves for having done this thing too early, for having had sex too early. It's like a really easy one to find confirmation for and to have your confirmation bias show that to you.
What I've found, trying to be aware of that and really thinking about that and looking back at at all my relationships, I have had some where we have had sex on the first date and some where we've waited, where we've known each other for several months or even years before having sex. When I actually look at it, I'm like, there's not a correlation between which one has turned into long-term loving relationships that even lasted after the romantic relationship ended versus ones that didn't. There's not a correlation there. It doesn't have to do with sex or not.
Emily: I completely agree with you.
Jase: From my experience, at least.
Emily: With all of this, we just want to remind everyone that rules to relationships do not necessarily apply to you. They may or they may not. It's really very valuable to take relationship advice with a grain of salt wherever it comes from and whomever it comes from, even from us, just because people's personal biases are going to be attached to it. You need any relationship advice that you're getting to be tailored and designed to you and to the type of relationship that you're in.
That's one of the reasons why we, on this podcast, throw a lot of things at you all out there because we also are just sort of picking and choosing the things that we like and choosing to give it to you or choosing to use it and implement it in our own relationships. We hope that you will do that out there as well or even with some of this old antiquated relationship advice. If it works for you, great. If it doesn't, then take some other advice.
Jase: With all of that, still remember our main rule which is don't sign anything in the first year and it's okay to break up. You're not a bad person.
Emily: Absolutely.