Adulting - #42 Why Do We Fall In Love? with Laura Mucha

Episode Date: September 28, 2019

This week I speak to the author of 'Love Factually', Laura Mucha, about why, how and when we fall in love. We discuss the difference between lust and love, what attachment theory is and so much more! I hope you enjoy - please do rate review and subscribe.Oenone Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fandu Casino Daily Jackpots. Guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Daily Jackpots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded. Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Restrictions apply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly. Hi, poddlers. How are you doing? This week, I speak to Laura Mucha, who is the author of Love Factually, the science of how and why we fall in love. And I ask her just that, why do we fall in love? I really hope you enjoy this. It's a pretty good one. See you. Bye.

Hi, guys, and welcome to Adulting. This week, I'm joined by Laura Mucha. Hi. Hi. So Laura, would you like to tell everyone who you are what you do? Yeah um my name is Laura Mucha I was a lawyer and then I was hit by a car and I was 29 and I decided to change career and I decided to finish the book that I'd been working on for a long time and it's now taken 10 years and it was published earlier this year and it's called Love Factually and for that I interviewed hundreds of strangers across every continent about love and then I researched what came up in the interviews and I also write for children. So when you started

writing this book you were still a lawyer? Yes. So was it going to be a book at that point in time was it like a passion project? It was going to be a book. And I remember my ex-boyfriend at the time, now my husband. Oh, lovely. Who is quite discerning with his positive feedback. You know, if he gives you positive feedback, you know that it really is good. And I remember seeing him on one of our rare meetups and telling him that I'd had this idea about this book. And he was like, I think that's a really good idea.

I think you should do it. And hearing that from a couple of very trusted people really helped me commit. And so basically, one of the reasons I did law was to kind of justify traveling around the world while trying to like look vaguely responsible. And so I did an enormous amount of travel and would just approach strangers every time I did. And at the beginning, it was quite easy to do. But then it became anytime I went anywhere, I almost couldn't relax until I had attacked a stranger. It's that classic thing of when you find something you enjoy and then you turn it into work, it suddenly becomes like this overarching goal that you can't escape. But that's one of my favorite things about the book because it is so heavily based on stories and opinions and real life it's not just statistics

and facts and numbers the bulk of it is you chatting to strangers yeah about love I think that when I was a lawyer I had an avoidant attachment style which I'm sure we'll come on to which basically means I didn't really connect with my emotions. And I was also a lawyer. So I was kind of trained at being really rational and logical. And so back then, the kind of research stuff really appealed to me. I wanted numbers. I wanted evidence. You know, loads of people have opinions, but what's the evidence behind it? But what I have realized as I went through all my health misery and have kind of moved from avoidance to security I hope which will make sense when I talk about it later is basically that it's all very well having numbers but I

think for things to really land with people really big important things sometimes you need to hear stories emotional lived experiences and you know I can tell you that up to 72% of men and up to 70% of women, depending on the study, cheat. And that's shocking. But what is just as important, I think, is to hear from people who have cheated and have been cheated on and really live that. So this lady that I interviewed in Ibiza, whose husband had cheated on her in her whole life, throughout their lives. And then this is culminated in a three and a half year affair it's it's very different you hear her decision making you know should she leave him like in her 80s should she leave this guy or not you know and it's very easy I think to kind of hear a stat like that and and have snap judgments but then

to hear the nuances and feel the emotional pain that people go through so anyway that's why I did it I tried to combine both but it was a really really really really really painful difficult thing to do to try and mix the two I can imagine but it's something you you look at quite a lot as well throughout the book because you say how for instance people will when ask a question give a certain answer that they think is what they think whatever but actually the the real facts or like what they're actually doing whether that's who they're attracted to or what they look for is very different from what they're saying so I think that's why sometimes we have such a shocked um view of like those statistics but I can't believe that many people cheat but if you actually looked into your life and looked your friends around you like how many of your friends

have actually cheated and or you would know those facts to be true but for some reason I think because we can compartmentalize stories in a different way from numbers we see it as a really jarring thing so it is really interesting to just suppose those two things throughout the book I think and also sometimes people aren't that honest yes to the people in their lives so many many of the people I interviewed would say things like for example a Portuguese lady I mean the whole book isn't just about infidelity but this lady I interviewed in Portugal whose husband had cheated on her simultaneously with four people for seven years talked to me about this in tears and told me at the end of the interview that she hadn't no it was

in the middle of the interview when she broke into tears and was trying to explain that she was like I'm sorry I haven't spoken about this in eight years um and I think that there was a lot of people don't people don't want to talk about things that they think they'll be judged negatively for and and that that spans almost everything in relationships you know whether that's because you have cheated or you have gone for someone that people don't approve of or you've stayed together with your partner when they've cheated, when everyone thinks you should break up or whether you break up with everyone all the time.

Yeah, there's a lot of shame surrounding relationships and also so many different incentives as to why we get in them and why we stay in them. And I think that's what's another really interesting thing to read because we all have a really complicated way of I mean I think I've had my fair share of relationships I'm such a serial monogamist it's horrendous and it's really interesting to think that like for me especially when I was younger like a breakup was so heartbreaking not just because I was losing that relationship but because oh that's another failed relationship and relationships aren't supposed to fail yet we know that how impossible is it you're going to meet the person that you would like to spend the rest of your life with, whether or not that's even the right thing to do, the first time you go out with someone.

But it's kind of instilled in us that a relationship not working out is a failure. When actually, sometimes I think someone takes you from A to B and that's fine. It doesn't have to be that forever love. Yeah, well, also particularly, particularly I would I'm such a granny about this I have such boring advice but one of those pieces of advice is if we look at all marriages in 1976 uh in England and Wales and they just looked at women don't ask why I'm sure there was a clever statistical reason um the women who married when they were under 20 were 53% likely to divorce within 30 years. But if they delayed it until their early 30s, it was 23%, I think. And then

if they delayed it till their 40s, it was 7%. And so you see this drop a dramatic drop and so the idea that the first person that you ever date should be the person that you are with forever is not helpful and also statistically you're more likely to be in an abusive relationship in your teens or when you're young and so thinking that you have to be with that person forever is a really dangerous idea and also I'm a very very very very firm believer that it's not about finding someone it's also about you looking through whatever dark swirly stuff you need to look through and people have different dark swirly stuff different amounts different types um to enable you to put the work in that is required because it is work and sometimes you're just not going to do that when you're 19.

Totally. And you just reminded me of a bit that you said, like when you talk about the dark, swirly bits of mother or not, it's like, oh my God, that boom love that you talk about. But there's a bit where you say how people who are really secure in themselves, people might meet them and get on really well with them, but they'll be like, there's just no spark or no chemistry. And I was so guilty of that because I would look for passionate love,

which would mean screaming matches in the street at uni and like these huge fights, which were to me like showing love because it was so fire, like in the movies when it's all chaos. And actually as I get older, you realize that it's not about that. It's about safety and security and all the like things that you talk about in the book. But it was really interesting how actually the people that we should be more drawn to who are probably more healthy for us will be like quite boring actually which is just so problematic yeah thank you I also loved your facial expressions that's exactly what they can be yeah and I got my sections most of the vast majority of the book was checked by various academics and it had to be loads of different ones because there's so many different topics and I got this brilliant attachment expert to look over my attachment section and one of them one of the points that we discussed was this whole idea that secure people can be a bit unexciting because if you okay wait I can I pause and give the summary so um I've been mentioning attachment theory.

Attachment theory is one of the most researched areas of psychology. And the basic premise is that we're all very different when it comes to relationships. So this is largely based on our upbringing, but it can be changed later in life. So your later romantic relationships can change the way you relate in relationships as can bereavement parents divorce parents mental health parents physical health problems abuse later on trauma but mostly it's kind of an upbringing thing and the idea is that if you're bringing me up and you are loving and kind and consistent and when I'm upset and stressed you are comforting then I understand that love is safe essentially that people will love me and that when I am sad I can go to someone

and they will comfort me and that love is a good thing and then I will apply that very very subconsciously to all my relationships but if I don't get that from you or if I do and something changes it later on then I will understand that love isn't as safe as others think it is so if i think if i fall into the first camp and i think love is safe then i have a secure attachment style and that is true of 58 of the population based on a review of more than 200 studies with more than 10 500 people across the world um and they basically find intimacy and commitment really easy uh relationships are no biggie and they are less likely to have mental health problems. And there are just so many benefits to secure attachment.

But the other option is to have an insecure attachment style. There are two main ones. There's another one which I won't go into because it's a bit more complicated. One is avoidant attachment, which is what I had, which is basically an idealization of independence a disconnection from emotions a tendency to break up with people or avoid relationships in the first place um a kind of you can come across as arrogant or unforgiving or picky um and that arrogance is partly because if you're the only person you're prepared to rely on you need to think you're

amazing and so what you can sometimes do or often do is project your insecurities or vulnerabilities onto others uh they need space when they're stressed out avoidant people need space and when i say avoidant you're it's not like you are avoidant or not you're somewhere on a scale so highly avoidant people need loads of space and then there's anxious attachment which is um basically the other side of it so So there's 23% avoidant, 19% anxious, and people with a very anxious attachment style need to be close. So when they're stressed out, as you can imagine, avoidant and anxious in a couple, avoidance want space, but then anxious want closeness, and that can mean withdraw, chase, withdraw, chase. So those pairings aren't

always that happy. People with an anxious attachment style, instead of not connecting to their emotions, are hyper-connected to them. So they are very, very sensitive to threats, not just in the relationship but otherwise as well. And they're not very good at calming themselves down. They find the easiest way to calm themselves down is to be close to their partner. And that means that they can be perceived as needy and clingy um they can find it much easier to be in relationships much more likely to stay in relationships that maybe aren't that great uh much more likely to jump into relationship and think it's going to be the best thing ever um and if they don't get the closeness that they want they can go into protest behavior which is

something psychologists call it which basically means um being angry and frustrated and saying things like well i don't want to be with you anyway or you want to call me i don't want to call you you know um and i think that that's obviously a really quick summary i mean it wasn't that quick but like no it was comparatively yeah um and people who have an insecure attachment style would ideally date someone who has a secure attachment style. Because the theory is that if you date someone with a secure attachment style, let's say I have an anxious attachment style and you are secure. I might be like, where are you? Where are you? I need you.

I need you. And you're like, I'm here. And then I'll go, oh, right. Okay. Yeah. And then I'll go, where are you? I need you. I need you.

And you'll be like, I'm here. Oh, okay. Okay, fine. And over time time i'll just learn that you're here and i won't need to feel stressed out as much and i become more secure and so the idea is you should date someone secure but the problem is that dating someone secure will feel quite safe whereas what you might find exciting is wondering whether your partner's there or not you know because that's then you then you're like, where are they?

Where are they? And you might think that that's love when actually it might just be a hyperactivation of your attachment system. Well, the anxious attachment thing for me is something that I'd definitely been in a previous relationship and it made me, I remember when I first read it, I had to do like lots of thought experimenting

because that relationship was quite emotionally abusive. So I don't know if, what I couldn't figure out was was I anxiously attached to them because there was a lot of like gaslighting kind of behavior which made me then overact or was I like that anyway and then their actions it was that constant ping pong thing of like pulling away and then do you know what I mean like that and it was weird reading it from that side because I guess I'd probably unselfawarely it was nothing you wrote about in the book had read all of their actions to be what had caused my behavior but actually it could have been that in any other relationship they weren't what I deemed to be emotionally abusive with someone else if the

other person wasn't anxious attached you see what I mean I think yeah yeah that makes perfect sense um a lot of research on abuse suggests that well there was one particular study that I really like where I think 40% of women and 35% of men in the UK said that they had experienced partner violence in a same-sex relationship but what I loved about that study is that those people filled out a questionnaire and to begin with and then they went on to be interviewed and in in that questionnaire, many of them would say, no, no abuse here, no abuse in my life. And then in the interview, they would describe things that were clearly abusive. And so I think that the vast majority of people are very slow to see abuse as abuse, particularly

emotional abuse. So I think if you thought it was emotional abuse then I would probably trust you on that yeah um well I mean that was after I didn't know at the time but yeah yeah uh also I think your attachment style can be changed by your relationships and particularly by abusive relationships and I mean I haven't thankfully been in an abusive relationship, but I can imagine if you have someone who's gaslighting you or basically trying to make you feel like you're going mad or that bullying is your fault or threatening and humiliating and controlling, that that would impact the way you perceive everything yeah you know totally so I I but if you're wondering about whether you were um anxiously attached before well the ideal would have been for you to you know go and have an attachment interview for one and a half hours before with like a trained uh interviewer but we could probably like delve into your earlier relationships and try and explore that. Like, did you have a pattern of dating avoidant people? Do you remember generally being kind of a bit needy and clingy?

You know, like you could ask your friends. Yeah, it's true. I think because that was my like one of my more adult relationships. So the relationship I had before that I would have been at school. So you don't really have much scope to be anxious or needy or whatever like in your. But you could be um you could be but then so then the other option is to look at your relationship with your parents yeah that's true I don't know if you want to do it on your podcast well this this other interesting I was reading because my but I got on really well with my parents it's an interesting dynamic I'm really really close to my mum but what I was

thinking is my parents couldn't have done anything more than they did for us bringing us up. But at the same time, I 100% can imagine going to a therapist and them telling me why. Do you know what I mean? And so this is another thing that I thought was really interesting to kind of thought experiment was as you read the book, I think some people could feel quite triggered to think, why am I not the secure person? But actually, I would imagine I'll bring up children and it'd be very hard to make sure that they, if I have children, that they are secure

because any number of things can happen in your life which will make an environment more hostile than is. Yeah. So it's annoying because there's really small kind of like

petri dish of things you need to make a secure child. I'm assuming, I mean, I don't know, was there a statistic on how many people are secure? There wasn't that. 58%. So it's quite a lot. Yeah. So maybe I'm just a bit mean, I don't know. Was there a statistic on how many people are secure? There wasn't that. 58%.

So it's quite a lot. Yeah. So maybe I'm just a bit fucked up. So also I had a chat with this attachment theorist, attachment researcher, about the language that I was using. And we were saying, we were debating between the word destructive and unhelpful for insecure attachment. And I was like, but I think insecure attachment can be destructive like when I was avoidant I would literally destroy

relationships it was destructive but her point was that you kind of want to be a bit more compassionate to yourself and she's right and there's a lot of evidence well no not evidence a lot of arguments and by people saying that insecure attachment is it was helpful like we have evolved for some people to have insecure attachment if there was for example an attack of killer monsters uh if i was if i were to be very highly avoidant i'd be like like, no worries, no problem. This is how we escape. But only plan the escape once I thought there was actually a threat.

But I wouldn't think there was a threat because I don't think anything is threatening because I think I can do everything and I don't connect to my emotions. Whereas if you were anxious, you would say, attack a killer monsters. We should probably do something. And so actually that you're being hypersensitive to threats is really useful when there is a threat and my disconnecting is really useful when we need to get a plan to escape that's really because it's kind of making i'm a bit of a hypochondriac and my boyfriend hates going to the doctors and i always think yeah it might be bad but actually if i get something i'm like catching it early whereas you will not know that you're dying and that's very stressful and obviously both of them aren't

that helpful it's better to be a bit more pragmatic but that's I guess kind of what you're saying that there's and also I do think it's that spectrum thing of um sorry I just once I was thinking about it you know when you're saying about how god if they're not there and they're there I was totally like that and now I was thinking about the other day I used to be so stressed if someone like didn't message me back straight away and now I'm just so chill and it must either be I think it's in this relationship that's healed me or I think I did a lot of work after a relationship and went into that self-introspective yes thing but also if you're stressed when someone doesn't message you it depends where you are in that

relationship right if you're in the early stages of obsessional, so another thing I talk about is that there are different types of love, which I don't think people recognize enough. And it annoys me because the word love is used to describe everything and many things which aren't love, including lust. So basically, you have lust, early love, and then the longer-term friendship love that makes relationships last. In lust and early love love everything about your body and brain is designed to make you obsessed with that person i mean it's literally like taking coca amphetamines in the way that the brain operates the same part of the brain is engaged that has driven driven or drove drove i should know that um drove rats to opt for starvation

um so it's really powerful and that and And you see serotonin levels similar to that seen in people with OCD. So it's really obsessive. And so in that stage, I think it's normal that you would think, why haven't they replied? Yeah, that's true. That's not a sign that you have an anxious attachment style or had an anxious attachment style. That is just your body doing what it is designed to do

to get us to survive as a species but maybe later on down the line when all of that excitement has chilled out if you're still wondering why then maybe you're veering into anxious you remind me now that um that beginning with that lust and the early love that's exactly what you're sold up and like packaged and sold up when you're a teenager so you think you're going to fall in love someone and you're still going to be snogging their face off well into your 70s. That's what I thought. And I remember when you do first get into that relationship

and honeymoon periods, whatever that is, can last for a really, really long time. So when it suddenly stops, you're like, oh, I hate them. Why do I, what's going on? And actually it's just that those hormones and things are wearing off. You do talk about whether or not, I can't remember if you conclude this but you talk about whether or not um is there a reason for the certain time span of the yeah yeah mythical honeymoon period did you yeah so some argue that this early love thing is there to make you hang around just long enough

to bring the children up but I don't really buy that because first of all we don't really know how long it lasts depending on what you're measuring you come up with different times um but let's say it's two years which I think it can be shorter and longer depending um I don't think children are very independent at two so if that was its purpose it should stick around a whole lot longer um but then i mean yeah i don't i don't buy that personally so i remember reading have you read homo sapiens i'm assuming yes we have so i feel like in that he says that um was it in that well basically i think before we because we were on all fours this is a really long window way of getting

so before when we used to give birth when we were on on our fours, our gestation period was longer. So when we gave birth, our babies were more developed than they are now. So they can't really do much when they pop out now. So I think maybe if that was the evolution, we think back then two would have been, they would have been a bit more crawly or walky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know.

But then we stood up and then our pelvises got smaller and we had to give birth. We have to give birth when they're useless, basically. And it's still fucking painful. So that's just rude. It could have at least evolved a bit better so that it doesn't hurt so much i agree where's that um but anyway well yeah different types of love that's a really interesting because then yeah so the sexy version is the lusty heart pounding can't breathe butterfly feeling and then i think if i'd read your book when i was 17 i would have been

like no she's wrong I'm sorry I'm not having companionative love that sounds horrible because it doesn't sound it is the thing of um oh can you tell us like the seven words is it seven words for love oh god I don't know if I'll remember them what the greek one yeah because this is really interesting so oh god will I remember there's eros philia so eros is kind of romantic philia is friendship basically um pragma which is sort of longer term oh god i can't i should know this uh like pragmatic love i may have made that up um so i've done three then there's agape which is sort of unconditional, general loving love. For ludus, which is playful love between, that you might see between early lovers or siblings. I find that early lovers or siblings is a bit weird.

That is weird. And then two more, and I can't remember. Storche, I think that's how you say it. I can't remember what that one is. And then there's one more. There's seven. But there's so many times like that when the English language fails more than so we have so many words but for really useless things yeah i know and then like other countries have amazing words like in german they have like a really like

i want to fuck you or something they have like one word for that yeah which is great is it just i don't know i always see things to this where they're like they can explain language better and it is weird because we have so many words we just use the same ones and often not very well. Yeah. Well, I interviewed this guy who had a really excellent beard and the deepest voice I've ever heard in my life. And he was Swiss German. And I interviewed him in Switzerland. And he was telling me, I don't know if I'm going to say this right.

Ich liebe dich. Oh, yes. I love you. But ich habe dich gern. God knows if I said that right, means I like you. And so you'll use ich hadig an for quite a long time. And to move to, and it doesn't mean just like I like you. It means I like you with the potential of something more maybe. Right.

And then ich liebe dich is, okay, that's it, I full on love you. And he was like, you know what? You don't say ich liebe dich is okay that's it i full-on love you and he was like you know what you don't say ich liebe dich until it's quite a commitment to say that so you you stick with the first one for quite a while we don't have that you know no i have people saying you know oh it's been two months and so and so hasn't said they love me and i'm like well i personally think that's very wise but i was thinking about this other day it weird how I can't, I don't know if we always do this, but me and my boyfriend started going out before we'd said I love you. And I was like, oh, is that weird, actually,

that you commit to someone before you know that you love? Because it's interesting, isn't it, like why we decide. I remember getting so excited about saying I love you to my first boyfriend. I was like buzzing about it. I was like, I can't freaking wait. And it is weird. It must be the chemicals because you do suddenly just go oh I'm gonna say it and you it wants to come out of your mouth without you even I remember trying not to say it so many times and it it must just be

that we don't know what else to do with all these feelings yeah and it is it's like an automatic response it's not conscious really is it no I'm working on a book about love for teenagers and it's going to be illustrated. And I was trying to think of a, it's not going to come across that funny now that I've said this. You should never say this is going to be funny. I was trying to think of a funny illustration to communicate this problem. And so I was like, well, maybe you have an illustration of two people and one says, I love you. And the other's like, thanks, that's really nice.

What kind of love are we talking here? Because basically people say, I love you. What do they? What do they mean? Like, I fall in love. What does that mean? And I don't know whether I'm a pedant, or that it was law that taught me to be really pedantic, or born like it. But I think there's so much ambiguity about it. And it's annoying. So, you know, two months in, you love someone, how you know you can you can perhaps accurately say that you have early romantic love for that person I do not think you can accurately say I know that we share long-term friendship and values yes that our attachment systems are compatible that you are categorically not abusive and not just being really charming as many abusers are at the start you know I believe that we will have a really we share you know we are compatible you have my best interests at heart

you know you are prepared to be vulnerable enough to commit and be intimate you have the same sort of commitment ideas I have that you can do that in the first two months when you're basically on coke and you have projected onto this person everything that you've ever could possibly imagine would be great so that is one of the funny it's so true then as that like honeymoon period starts to go away you suddenly think why did i not think that was annoying that's so annoying like how could you and that what it's so fascinating isn't it what so that protectiveness then so what was the reason i can protectiveness, what was the reason? I can't remember now.

What was the reason behind why we fall in love? Oh, so the idea is we have lust to reproduce. And we fall in early love to stick around long enough to bring the kids up. For the baby. Evolutionary psychologists do not, as far as I'm aware, have an explanation for how this relates to people who aren't straight right and that's a problem i have a lot with evolutionary psychology generally um but yeah that's the purpose of it but the problem is when you say

fall in love i think sometimes people fall in lust and think it's falling in love you know totally and so and i think lust and love are quite ambiguous because I think I also think there are different types of lust and this is something philosophers talk about so Immanuel Kant is like lust is gross you're using people that's really weird don't do it whereas Thomas Hobbes thinks no lust can be meaningful you know you can care about the other person and want to pleasure them and derive enjoyment from pleasuring them and that means that that type of lust is meaningful and that can feel like love you know I think there's a lot of um linguistic ambiguity definitely but I also think if you're talking about these things in a vacuum it's fine so you're like this is this love and this is this but then you put it out into

the wide world because I do hate it when people try to use I know I did a bit earlier but when they use like evolutionary reasoning for anything and you're like fine but we live in a capitalist socially ideologically completely different world than than we did when we were evolving from apes so what I find really interesting is as well as all the hormonal and all the psychological things on the flip side of that in the the kind of societally imposed version, what's to say that we haven't even had any of those chemical synapse reactions? And some people haven't even felt that at all, but they've been conditioned to believe that what they've entered into

is in fact love when actually there's not even any benefit to it because there's so much outside of it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. there's not even any benefit to it because it's there's so much outside of it yeah yeah yeah and and something something I find very interesting is the idea that you grow so okay there's a thing called the intergenerational transmission of divorce so people whose parents divorce are more likely to divorce themselves it doesn't mean they will divorce it just means they're more likely so why does that happen, right? We don't know. All you can do is get the numbers and then hypothesize, essentially.

And one hypothesis is, well, if your parents divorced, then you haven't learned the pro-relationship skills that would help you not divorce, right? So like arguing well or sharing chores or whatever. But another one is that you come to believe that divorce is okay as an option. And so therefore your commitment is less of a commitment in the first place. But I think, and there's the same point about attachment. So if your parents have an insecure attachment style style you are very likely to have an insecure attachment style but but why is that and it's it's a bit sticky because you have all of the external um stuff going on like you were saying like capitalism like the decline

of community because now there's way more pressure on relationships there is a point i'm just going really long way around no no i love that so there's you know you used to uh used to have a whole village basically uh who would provide you with emotional support a sense of safety but also keep you in the relationship because there'd be stigma associated with leaving but no one lives in villages anymore and we're way more mobile there was a higher amount of religion and now people don't believe in religion as much so they've kind of almost passed that on to love you know love is now basically capable of human transcendence and it can fix everything like god used to or whatever so there's all these bigger picture things but there's also the smaller

picture stuff like your parents and so the very long-winded conclusion or point that I was trying to get to, geez, is that sometimes I think if your parents had an unhappy or unhealthy relationship, that either with themselves or with you, that can be very, very deep down what feels like home to you. And so that when you go to look for love, it's all very well talking about definitions and stuff and I do think that that's helpful but sometimes it's this deep dark swirly stuff that is driving you and being with someone who is securely attached and capable of intimacy and commitment won't feel like home and actually that's that can be more difficult to be actually in a relationship where someone does care and wants to be with you and is happy to see your slightly less attractive sides and still be there yeah and to support you when things go wrong um can be far more threatening

than to to replicate what feels like home even if that feeling like home is really not very good or healthy I totally agree with that I think that especially but my parents used to argue quite a lot so when my boyfriend I remember when we first started going out he didn't want to I would wait for him to tell me off things and he's like oh and I that would almost feel more uncomfortable than someone getting annoyed at me because that's what you're used to and it is really true it can be almost more affronting and actually make you feel really uncertain because it is on it's like new terrain yeah how do I navigate this I don't really know when people have it's great but it is it is it can be really hard to learn um another thing I

think it's interesting about the divorcing I think I was on a panel um talk about something I don't know what we're talking about but one of the things they said was that it's divorce rates are higher but it's because people are it's actually better because it means more women especially have more freedom to escape unhappy or abusive marriages and people aren't trapped into archaic versions of you know matrimony where the woman stays at home and things so divorce and legislation around love is really interesting because how does that impact even the timeline of thinking like I've been with my boyfriend two years 25 so maybe if we stay together in four years probably get and get and like that

without knowing subconsciously like so we'll get married at 30 and then you have this like idea in your head of what potentially might happen how does that obscure your natural reaction to them because if you're then suddenly tying it into this newfangled timeline going back to your panel point I think there are obviously some mega benefits of women being able to walk away when relationships are horrific and in the past and it's still in some countries where divorce is not okay or divorce can happen but basically costs everything to the women and not much the man um then people stay in really horrific relationships. Or they hate each other and live completely separate emotional lives. Or, you know, it's not great.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't divorce. Yes. But to the extent that divorce is increasingly seen as a viable slash easy option to the extent that you remove barriers to commitment the easier it is to leave your commitments the weaker those commitments are and so there's like this whole psychology and philosophy of commitment which I went into and in the book and I love because obviously as an avoidant, I was a commitment phobe. I was like, how does this commitment thing work? And the theory is that you have personal commitment, which is I want to be here because this is fun.

And then practical commitment, which is I kind of want to be here because I can't leave because we have a house. And that sofa I really like and we share. And who would get it if we broke up? And what about the dog? And also I've invested a lot. We've got loads of shared friends, well, what happened to them? You know, and also, when I look outside, you know, I've invested in this. And also, when I look at the other options, whether that's being single or with someone else, it's not that great, you know? So, commitment isn't just a simple thing yeah right and divorce and how easy it is impacts this practical commitment and so the i and and a lot of philosophers believe that your

beliefs around commitment impact the kind of commitments you make so if you think that you're getting married but i had a guy come on to me and he was like, I had a boyfriend at the time. And I was like, right, okay, yeah, I've got a boyfriend. And he's like, yeah, well, look, you know, his mum had remarried for the fifth time. And he said, my view of marriage is if it doesn't work out, I'll just get married again. And I remember thinking that time, and this was before I'd started really delving into the book. If that your view how does that impact your commitment is that different to someone who thinks I am gonna marry forever you know how does that impact like the very minutiae of uh this is a bit tricky now we have kids I'm really tired we're not having much sex uh we

aren't having much fun actually because we're not sleeping more than two hours in a go yeah and there's just dirty clothes and nappies vom everywhere then maybe you're more likely to leave if you don't if you think that there's no value yeah yeah exactly um but but commitment is linked to the dark swirly stuff um and linked to much bigger things and so i think that yes it's a good thing that women can walk away but there are also downsides to the weakening of commitment but then i guess that comes brings to the point of like what's the sorry and men yeah yeah because men get an abusive relationship yeah yeah and just things just don't work out and you should be able to leave.

But then by that virtue or that kind of recognition of commitment, we are kind of saying that marriage is the ultimate means of achieving commitment or that without marriage... Yes and no. There are different types. So you could go for a civil partnership or, you know, I interviewed this brilliant person who was more committed to her partner and they weren't married than someone I interviewed who so she was like one

of the most committed people I've ever met and this other person I would have guessed that she and her partner weren't securely attached like it oozed from their pores not scientific assessment and then the other person I interviewed um who proposed in a rainstorm ironically uh said that he didn't know if it would last for life he was a realist so you have one person who's definitely now married who says he doesn't know if it will last for life he's a realist and then you have someone who hasn't married but is determined that this is it forever like which is the bigger commitment you know so I think there's the practical side of it but it's also the beliefs what do you believe but one um marriage isn't you know I don't think everyone needs to get married but I do think that everyone needs to well my dream would be for everyone to really reflect on what commitment

they personally want you know and looking into the dark swirly stuff and really thinking about it because often when two people make a commitment it might not be the same you know yeah um and also very interestingly there was research that found that um people who live together before getting married are more likely to divorce. Really? Yeah. And I was so surprised by this that I went into a research rabbit hole to try and understand it. Basically, the idea is that you have, like, deciding to marry someone is quite a big thing. You're like, okay, I'm going to marry you.

This is big. Do I like you? Do we get on? Do we share values? Whereas there's a lower bar to moving in with someone people might move in because it's expensive to live separately or because they don't like carrying knickers and a toothbrush in their handbag so you move in with someone and then you buy a sofa and you buy a dog and then you know before you know it's been like a few years

all your mates are actually going out now so it's not like you've got that many single people to go and get lashed with. And so you're like, okay, well, just get married then, you know? And that is a different decision to the whole, okay, shall we get married? It's more of a we may. Guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do.

Daily Jackpots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded.

Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Restrictions apply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com please play responsibly as well uh that's so do you know what's so funny my boyfriend and i were actually talking about this the other day just not about us but just generally and he was saying how he he was basically saying the same thing he was like i actually think moving in together is a is more of a big deal than getting married i don't know if that's what you're saying but it was interesting so i was saying the same thing i am lucky that i am not in a position where i have I think moving in together is more of a big deal than getting married. I don't know if that's what you're saying, but it was interesting. So I was saying the same thing.

I am lucky that I am not in a position where I have to move in with my boyfriend because of financial reasons, which I'm very grateful for because I've noticed that that is a trend, especially nowadays. You have to move in. And I, not being an avoidant, just being someone who does that in my own space. Because I was reading this and I was like, I always say that, but I don't think it's my attachment style. I think I just do like my own space. If they can be separate, I don't know. I was doing a lot of interrogation.

So I do love living with him. And I think all the time, thank God I do, because I'm not ready to move in with him. But I do understand that if I didn't have that financial ability or just the situations that we're in right now, I potentially would move him through. And then you would, as I was saying, you just follow this ladder of things. And how conscious you are of doing that, I don't know.

But he was just saying that I actually just think that, yeah, I don't know. Because I think marriage is bigger. But then what would you think? That kind of is different from what you're saying. Well, so I moved in with my now husband before getting married. Had you done the research before? No, I actually didn't know that piece of research. Okay, that's good.

I found that out retrospectively. I was like, oh, no. And, well, I can tell you from an avoidant, listening to my attachment perspective, which was the bigger commitment, and it was marriage. Because I found moving in stressful, but I thought we can just not live together, that's okay. But there was a marriage thing.

So he proposed in Australia in Byron Bay this really beautiful hotel like in the middle of nowhere but he actually didn't propose it there he made me walk to this beach that was covered in jellyfish it was a bit gross but so surrounded by this gross jellyfish he was like do you want to marry me and I had such a physical reaction of stress to that there was no like joy it was no it's not like what you would imagine in the films right and thankfully I'd got to know my avoidant attachment system quite well by this point and I was like oh hello avoidant attachment system and basically for me in my body it feels a bit like yeah and like tense and that's how I felt and I really struggled to say

yes and then I did eventually say yes and he was like yay and I really struggled to say yes and then I did eventually say yes and he was like yay and I was like oh my god and then we went back to the room and he was like we should call our families and the idea of calling our families was horrific to me anyway we called our families they were really overjoyed I was still ah and then uh I was able to say I'm really sorry this isn't what you would like, I imagine, from a proposal. This is my avoidant attachment system flaring up. And it did so for two weeks. I mean, it chilled out, but it was pretty hyperactivated.

And then it was fine. And I love him. And we've been married for years. And we have a child. And I want to be with him forever. But I just had to get through that and I think that you know I don't I'm not saying that's going to be the same for everyone but I do think that with attachment stuff it can be very in your body and in your body is a good way of um for me at least listening to it because your head is you

know your head is my head would have said, no, I want to marry you. Whereas my body was just going, ah! It wasn't saying no or yes, it was just going,

ah! just reacting. Ah! I think one of the biggest problems is, especially because of bloody films and stuff, is that you don't see

people acting in these different ways. Every proposal is like, oh my God, beautiful, perfect hairs and like amazing they don't look at the ring.

I definitely would look at the ring. I'd be like, let's see what we've got and then I say and I'm joking but you know it's just like so it's so fake but the problem is that when you then do have these weird reactions things I can't even think now but I know that I've had reactions before you're like I am so abnormal why am I reacting like this because you don't know where that's coming from if you knew like you said you can deal with it think about it whereas otherwise you get the double whammy of oh my god why don't I be sick of being proposed to I'm a psycho but also not knowing where it's come from and I do think that mainstream media and the stories that we get told of love yeah or whatever

the kind of love it is drive me up the wall it's just so monotone me up the wall but also thank god that I had been doing everything I'd done like both for the book but also personally like digging into what the hell was going on there because I could easily have walked away and I'm he is amazing I'm so thankful honestly I think what are you doing right to me I have a nightmare and I think that there I think that there could be a lot of shame, you know. And for a while, I couldn't admit to that. And now I have to, like, I have to admit to that. You know, the whole point I've written this book and I'm doing more on love

is because I think that we're not having helpful conversations about it. We need to change the way we think about it. And so I have to say it was really awkward when he proposed because it was really stressful. But, like, you that we were friends and you hadn't read this book and that, you know, we met like in school and I was sitting down in your bedroom and you were like, so what's up? And I was like, well, my boyfriend proposed and my body basically convulsed. And I felt so stressed out for two weeks that I almost can't look at him you'd probably say I don't think you should marry him definitely yeah and and and

and I would probably only admit that to you and absolutely no one else because it's so shameful yeah you know the idea that I've been fed that most of us been fed is that we should say yes and also go with this idea of gut instinct and you'll know when you know your gut is often wrong if you're anxious or avoidant and i mean this is just attachment to it there's a whole other world of gut stuff like your gut can be wrong your gut can be very very very unhelpful when it comes to relationships so trusting your gut is a glib unhelpful phrase that annoys me also trusting your friends now you said that thinking about all the advice that we get from one of my like we'll be all there and all us like no

no i think yes what i think is that you should and actually we're probably one projecting i honestly i'm the best agony you can ever get I really put my work in I try to be really objective I think this is not coming from my point because I would do this but for you and actually it's probably bullshit but it is interesting how we all have these very prescriptive ideas of love I'll talk to one of my girlfriends got a relationship and I think oh god well I wouldn't want to be like that and then I think actually she probably looks at my relationship and thinks that looks fucking boring or whatever they think and I think that knowing that love can be very different because I completely agree that feeling of also it's it's scary to watch other people be

in relationships which you think are unhelpful but to that person it might that might be the right thing that they need like yeah well also so one thing I think is missed often is that the way that you are let I'm going to use attachment theory again because it's just an easy shorthand way of describing this but there are a million variables if you are in a relationship and you're not sure whether to break up and I'm avoidant I will say you should break up whereas if you're in a relationship you're not sure whether to break up I'm anxious I'll say oh you should stick together. Are you sure? Because maybe, maybe it's something else, you know? So true. And if your partner doesn't message you and you're talking to me and I'm your friend and I am, I keep saying if I'm your friend. Can we be friends?

Yeah, I know. I was going to say a hypothetical bit. Yeah, you can be. If you want, thanks. I'll send a formal friend request later. Thank you. So you say to me, what do you think? He hasn't messaged and I'm avoidant. I'll be like, don't worry about it, thanks. I'll send a formal friend request later. Thank you. So you say to me, what do you think? He has a message and I'm avoidant.

I'll be like, don't worry about it, mate. You know, like, anyway, let's go on and talk about something else. Whereas if I'm anxious, I might be more inclined to say, oh, maybe he is cheating. I did notice the other day that he scratched his eyebrow and therefore, you know. So I think that the way that your friends respond is very dependent on not only their attachment style but like everything they believe totally and you project things although with the cheating thing none of us have ever been wrong every time you think cheating's happening it's always happening always predicted i can always smell it in the air i spoke to the the lady that I interviewed in Ibiza,

who was in her 80s, and she was talking about, I said, what would you advise to someone who thinks their partner is cheating? And she said, if it's a boyfriend, assuming it's a heterosexual relationship, it might be LGBTQ+, so boyfriend, girlfriend. If they are cheating, then you should say,'m not happy with that and i'm gonna walk away but if you would like to change and not do it ever again then i will consider staying but i'm not

going to tolerate this but she said if it was a husband then i'd think very carefully because i think it'd be really hard push to find a relationship without its indiscretions and actually she's right and I genuinely spent days and days and days looking into research at the British Library because that is a controversial statement but it's true. I found that really hard to read that bit and also you did another bit about the levels of infidelity so for me if you text else, I'd break up with you. I'm just like, no, that's breaking my trust. But then I think I was trying to thought play this too. If we'd been married for a while and you wanted to have an affair and you told me,

I think I'd potentially be like, well, if you want to sleep with someone else and I know about it, I think for me it would always be the lying that would kill me. I actually don't. But then I also asked my boyfriend about this I said she's got a husband he's had for three years and she knew and all stuff and he was like well you can't say you have no idea what her life's like and I was like fine because I was like I'd obviously just leave he's like she's probably got kids she's got this like there's so much infrastructure around that's very different being 25 and in a relationship where you don't live together and have no joint belongings but also you're really hot and you're really young and so you could go out and find lots of other people that's true but she's now in her 80s and she doesn't want to go dating I said like why

are you in this you know did you consider leaving I said and I tried to do it in the most unjudgmental way possible because I don't know what her life is. And she said, well, I don't want to be lonely. Yeah. And I'm not saying that's a valid or invalid reason. Unvalid? Invalid. I'm not saying that's an invalid reason but i think that decisions are very different like if you have children for example let's say so infidelity is an umbrella term right infidelity covers a snog on a night out a one-night stand after your parent has died a protracted seven-year affair with your best mate, and a secret child, right? These are all just infidelity. If you have three children, and you're married to someone who is otherwise a really excellent partner, and they have a clean track record all the time, and then they snog someone, do you walk away? Because you're not just thinking about you now,

there's kids involved. Yeah, that's true. true and i looked in this isn't in the book and maybe it should be but i looked at it afterwards there was this fabulous study of all a lot of marital therapists across the u.s i think all of them were messaged and some of them took part uh about whether they thought people should admit to their infidelity and only 45 percent said they thought they should if the infidelity was over with only 45 percent and so I think this idea that you know you should always admit is something that is controversial and also their opinion changed depending whether there were children involved you know as you're saying that i just realized what mine what i'm thinking about it is the shame and i think it's the indignity or how it would feel to me to know that my partner had done

something behind my back and other people knew i wonder if that's where my issue would come i almost wonder if they went and snogged someone and I never found out. Don't think I'd mind, which is weird. Whereas if I found text messages four years later that they'd had one night, I think that would blow my world apart. But would that be more narcissism or like a problem about my self-worth? Do you know what I mean? It's interesting what would catalyze, like make you stressed.

Because I do think sometimes maybe it's best not to say because as you say when you read stories about infidelity or even in programs where people have affairs when you know the person and you know their storyline you can often be like well I kind of get it like I feel sorry for you I found myself feeling sorry for white straight cis men having affairs in tv programs I'm not happy about it I'm like why do I like him this is horrible this is not what I want to do. But it's always more complicated than that. Yeah. And I think, and like, I'm in no way saying if your partner cheats on you, you should just suck it up. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is I don't think it's black and white. And yes, there'll be shame probably probably but there's shame about everything you know really we create shame about everything

you want to create shame about and part of that is you know if that happens and there's shame point them at the stats in the infidelity chapter go read that my friends um your partner's probably cheated on you multiple times so let's be a bit less judgmental of others. Yeah, that is true. I was just thinking about one thing we haven't covered. I don't know if you talk about this in the Faircom webinar. We've been talking about love, being in love, being in relationships. What about the flip side of that, which a lot of women,

especially in my age up to mid-30s, tend to be more stressed about, which is not being in love and that scrambled to find this ever growing, evergreen beauty of love, which as we've discussed is always much more complicated than it is in the movies. When you were writing this book, did you find that, I know you talk about the things that people look for in a relationship and whether or not that's kindness or friendship and kindness, I agree, should always kind of be near the top, but how much are people just endlessly searching for love in and of itself do you think that's one of the fundamentals that humans want yeah and it's something that comes up a lot in heterosexual and lgbtq plus research that even though there's a lot of divorce and well divorce has increased

on the whole internationally over the past 40 years although it's sort of tailed off and marriage on the whole has decreased although obviously there's country variations um there is a pretty robust tendency for everyone to want lifelong love although there are some people some studies of single people around the world that suggest that those single people don't want to be in a relationship. You know, in Japan, for example, it's such a problem that they're calling it celibacy syndrome because they're just not getting in relationships, not reproducing, and they're just going to have a demographic time bomb. I think in some, there was a UK study and a US study where single people were asked why they were single and I love that some of the reasons are like I like not being nagged I like spending my money as I would like to I feel a sense of achievement about coping on my own and another thing that I thought was very interesting was the idea that people from across the world like a

single mum from France to a single lady in Colombia, was like, you know what? People think that I should be in a relationship, but you know what? This is a Colombian lady speaking, I love her. She's like, is society going to pay for a psychologist when my relationship breaks up? Is society going to pay for me to bring up the children

when the relationship falls apart? I don't think so. And the single parent French lady said you know what there's still this idea that you should find someone and be married in your 30s it's like a 1950s idea and it's still there and then there was some research um because when we talk about culture media it's so nebulous and I like evidence and I found this piece I really liked which was that sociologists looked over rom-coms, I can't remember the details,

a certain number that made a certain amount or whatever, and basically they found that single people were generally represented as being really miserable. Well, there was an amazing article the other day that said that single women, I can't remember the exact thing now, but basically were more happy than married women at the same age or something.

Yes, no, that was flawed. That article quoted a guy who misquoted who were more happy than married women at the same age or something. Yes, no, that was flawed. That article quoted a guy who misquoted public US survey data. And thankfully, it was public US survey data, so he could be called up on it. That misunderstanding was based on the fact that he understood a description. And I can't remember what the exact wording was. It was something something like that's so sad because it was me and all my friends sorry mate even though I'm in a relationship I'm like single women are so much better no no he's

retracted it and the reprints of the book are being corrected um yeah it's basically there's a statement um in the study that said something like partner not present and he thought that it meant that the partner had left the room so he thought that unmarried women when their partner had left the room said oh you know I'm really unhappy when actually when their partner came back in the room they were really happy but that's not what it meant it meant they're not present because they are separated so they're actually not in a relationship they are in the fresh painful just broken up phase right and so that's why they're unhappy not because their partner has just walked out of the room oh okay because it wasn't it wasn't people weren't that's not how the the research was conducted anyway so no i'm afraid to say that on the whole research from around the world has found that people who are in long-term

relationships generally it's generally married versus single research because marriage is very easy to measure because people have to register it that married people are happier than single people and i'm not saying that everyone should therefore go and get married because that research is flawed because marriage being married and being single is like just so many different things are covered in that. Being in a really miserable, abusive relationship, that's married. You know, being recently bereaved and devastated at the loss of your partner in five decades, that's single. Or being single because you're like two years into being free from someone who really eroded your self-esteem and you are delighted not to be with them and you are really happy or being single when you're in your 20s and young and hot versus single because your partner has just cheated and

left you for the person with your three children and you're single you know single is a big thing it covers everything like so much stuff and then um married you know so when we're just going oh married people are happier than single people it's you know it's a bit naive yeah exactly but it is really good for you basically I think I mean not I think that everything says it's good for you to make commitments people are happier and healthier in long-term relationships unless they're really really dysfunctional basically there's literally so many things I want to ask you about and i can't even remember what fits we haven't said one of the things um that i literally found so funny but also heartbreaking just because it's just so fucking annoying uh is the bit about how men will always want to date someone that's younger than them and then the older they get the younger they get so basically

they're always trying to date someone that's around 25 to 30 so when they're like 25 they'll date a 25 year old when they're 40 they will also date a 25 year old unfortunately it's younger than 25 but the weird thing is if you put this in reverse and I spoke to someone about this before but I now even as a 25 year old wouldn't go near a 19 year old boy I would be like that is awful he could be my I would feel like I was mothering him I'd probably be really patronizing we wouldn't get on at all like how so that age gap I can't do and that's not even that much I don't like I was mothering him. I'd probably be really patronising. We wouldn't get on at all. Like how, so that age gap I can't do. And that's not even that much. I don't, I just, it's so weird to me.

I know. And I also find it a bit depressing. But I try and comfort myself. Like thinking. That was looking at online dating data. Oh yeah. Admittedly, like thousands and thousands of people. And it wasn't what is painful is it wasn't an experiment.

Right. This was the co-founder of OkCupid, Christian Roder, looking at actual data, actual people actually using online dating. So that's suboptimal uh but I like to think that yes that age thing is a factor when you're swiping and there's a kind of commodification of people but then if you're talking about like friends of friends then maybe knowing someone might you would hope supersede the young thing. But it is definitely, I think, a bit depressing. How does online dating impinge our ability to have, find, or improve love? It's an interesting one. I think it does both. It's a route to market, so you meet more people. It's particularly important, I think, for LGBTQq plus because one study i mean obviously the studies funded by online dating companies find a higher

rate than this but a more neutral study found that 22 of couples met online so that's the third after three friends of friends and in public places like bars or restaurants um although i know loads of people that'd be terrible at picking up in public place. Anyway, so online dating, very helpful. But for LGBTQ plus, it's 60% meet online. And that's because you get, it's a thin market, right? That's what economists would call it. Um, that said, so you, you get more choices, more options. However, it might encourage you to filter for things that you might not want to filter for. Like, oh, I want someone who is this height. Does that matter? Does it?

You know, I want someone who hikes. Does that really matter? And then not provide you with the filters for things like, I would like someone kind. Do you know what I mean? And also that I would always find that I'd always be shocked by who I fancied. Because if you'd asked me to write down who I fancied on a piece of paper, it would be a very, that would probably look a bit like my boyfriend, to be fair,

but personality-wise, I would fancy, and I think, why do I fancy him? Especially as a teenager, you're not supposed to fancy what is it that I find attractive. And they're just,

well, one, pheromones, or just people just, you just get on with people. And as you say, if you're like ticking off all these extra bits of people that you think you're going to want,

I think we just don't know what we want a lot of the time. And I do think it's a lot more chemical than you realize when you're really attracted to someone, you meet them. Yes, I think it is chemical. And I also think there is that kind of deep down what feels like home stuff. So, you know, I think there's stuff that is very difficult to analyze and break down like this is a really weird example but I interviewed someone in their 80s he was called Noel and I stopped him on the beachfront with his wife who had severe dementia and there was something about him and it's the only time it's happened

in my life and poor Noel doesn't know this, so if he listens to this. Hi, Noel. He'll hear. Hi, Noel. There was something that reminded him of my grandfather who brought me up, who was one of my parent figures and who died when I was young. And there was something about it that was just, it was so, like, lovely to be with him. It was amazing.

And I have interviewed people, people like one woman who lost two and that's never happened to me before it's not like I meet loads of people and think oh you're like a dead person I once loved I still love um one woman who uh who married one man who died then married another man who died for the first six months or so stalked someone full-on stalked because he reminded her of her dead husband you know my god I think there are some things that you can't really pin down yeah and then there are things you can pin down I want someone with money yeah I want someone with big muscles and then there's other stuff that is that we are all susceptible to, like, alcohol makes people feel more attractive. Who knew?

And rock music, for example. And having an adequate temperature in the room. So I think there are lots of different things going on. And then, you know, there's the very individual stuff. You know, I'm anxious, you're avoidant. You activate my attachment system, and that's exciting for me I also remember reading it was in Sarah Pascoe's book animals have you read that no but I've been recommended oh it's really good what is it the the autobiography of the female anatomy or something

and there's a bit in there which talks about I think you probably talk about this as well but like the pheromone stuff where you sweat and if you'd like someone to sweat do you talk about that yeah so pheromones i have been chatting to tristram wyatt dr tristram wyatt at oxford because i try and chat about all this stuff with everyone so i'm not getting it wrong pheromones has was there was loads of evidence behind it but now it's been discredited joking however personal scent there is still some research because when i started out with this i genuinely was trying like when he was a bit sally, to see if I liked it. I was like, this is going to be full.

I was so cautious to get into this relationship. I was like, I'm not fucking doing it. I'm not going out and so on. And I just thought, that's an extra layer of, is he the one? Smells quite nice. And that's good. Well, what I find weird about that is that like so many people plaster themselves with perfume. Oh, I know.

And my beloved husband uses a spray deodorant occasionally. Although when he does, I literally scream. Oh, no, that like so many people plaster themselves with perfume oh I know and my beloved husband uses a spray deodorant occasionally although when he does I literally scream oh no they're so bad and they stink and that is genuinely repulsive to me like it really offends my nose uh which by the way isn't a Shakespearean insult offends my nose is it yeah I'm gonna start using that I know uh I'm just not like I'm really a fan with shakespeare i just wrote a poem about shakespeare's insults and i know there's some really good ones like your bum is the best thing about you why oh i like that's quite nowadays people will be like oh thanks yeah yeah exactly exactly that's really funny it's not i'm offended um so oh what was i saying um pheromones disproved smells oh deodorant oh deodorant yeah and I

find it really offends my nose I agree it's really repulsive but when he doesn't use it I'm like oh hello husband yeah smells nice yeah and also this is so funny this amazing fit it's not really related but you know when you were little I forgot we did this it's so true you go around the playground and smell jumpers until you worked out which one was yours I did not play that that sounds like a good game it wasn't a. It was you took off your jumper to play and then you'd have to go and find your jumper. And the way you would know whose jumper it was was how it smelled.

Do you have name tags? No, I don't know if it didn't have a name. But how would we know? I don't know my smell now. Probably because I'm an adult and I put fake smells on. Well, I know because now that I am a writer, I sometimes work in my pyjamas until I go for a swim. And then by the time I go for a swim, I stink.

And I'm like, oh, I know how I smell. Too much. Okay, the last thing. No, I love it. The last thing I want to ask you, going back to picking up people in bars, is how are you so good at picking up people for your book? Because you just interview and people just want to tell you things. Have you always been like that? Was that remotely difficult? Because how many people do you interview? Somewhere between want to tell you things have you always been like that was that remotely difficult because how many people do you interview somewhere between three to four hundred

wow um i stopped counting i feel like i one day should count that up but i don't know um i got 66 straight yeses and then my 67 was a no it was two men in a sushi restaurant and i went on the pavement and cried uh and thought the whole project was pointless. What did you say to them? Did you go, did you have equipment with you? Yeah, so basically I would always say something along the lines of this. And it felt increasingly valid as I went on because at the beginning, obviously, I was like, can I interview? Because I've only interviewed one other person for a book that I have no book deal for.

Whereas, you know, further down the line, it felt way more valid. But I think that's kind of partly something about the creative thing process do you know what I mean you have to kind of just believe that you're doing it and do it you know instead of think oh god I don't I don't um so I go up to people in like airports hospital buses parks planes ships I mean anywhere that you could ask someone interrupt someone restaurant and cafes um people having cigarette breaks from work you know everything and I would say I met people hiking I mean really everywhere um and I would say so if I hadn't spoken to them before because obviously if I'd been hiking with them or met them hiking and you know I would know them a little bit but if I met them cold then I which is most of the people I would say

I'm really sorry to bother you um I just wanted to ask I'm writing a book where I interview strangers around every across every continent of the world about love because I don't think we have honest enough conversations about it and I think we're getting it wrong and I would love to interview you it would be totally anonymous and we could change any specifics and if you say something you don't want to include you tell me and we cut it um and it can be as long or as short as you would like but I think that people could really benefit from your experience and people generally I mean almost everyone said yes and have they have you contacted them have they got the book yeah so some people some people didn't give me their details like a guy that i

interviewed in american airport who i so visually remember this it's like rows of empty seats and he was just staring looking out of a window with you know like the blinding white light and the planes taking off and he was just sitting there I mean there must have been like hundreds of seats around it was just him and I went up to him and I thought this is very unlikely and I said hi and I asked him and he said sure and then I interviewed him and it was a very reserved interview and it he was very quiet and slow with his delivery of speech and then it transpired at the end he was saying you know you can lose love but love is unlimited don't give up on love don't close yourself off to it is what he said and I said so have you lost love and he went yes I lost my first wife to cancer and then he talked a little

bit about it and that he'd found love again and that that was it feels like a different lifetime and this is another lifetime and he'll probably have more lifetimes and it was really it felt really um generous it felt like he was not someone that would normally say yeah and so I thanked him and I said would you like me to your contact details just to send you a copy of the book or let you know and he went no thanks and that's it so I can't tell him that's so sweet it's almost like he did that because he thought it might help someone else who'd lost love that's really lovely exactly and I think it does I think it I think that you know the people because I have a chapter about bereavement and I think the people in there were so generous and like Morris a 95 year old poet says because I was

doing this at the same time that my grandma who had brought me up had just died and it was horrific and I wrote I basically wrote genuinely wrote that chapter in tears and I was kept thinking this is good it's gonna make it a better chapter and I met Morris and he was one of the last interviews I did um and I said how do you cope with the grief with the tears in my eyes feeling like this raw chasm of grief feeling really like ah and he said well now I'm actually thankful for it because it confirms that everything that I believe was valuable about our relationship even the difficult bits was true and I was like okay I'm definitely not there but hopefully I will be and it's hope it provides me with hope and I think it's really important to

provide hope right because I'm basically saying hi guys you'll love people and they'll die divorce is really likely you have dark swirly stuff um but what I'm but what i want to always say is that there's hope and there is hope there's so much evidence that there is hope everywhere in every area of it you know infidelity there's hope you know dark swirly stuff there's hope there's always hope you just i think that the hope partly depends on all of us being more honest about it but also being prepared to look at the difficult stuff because although it's difficult to look at the difficult stuff and sometimes people definitely need support in looking at the difficult stuff um looking at the difficult stuff can lead to better things yeah and I always think that that thing of getting to know yourself I always used to talk about this

really now me kind of like in a really not knowing what I was saying a few years ago on Instagram and stuff and then I actually did self introspection and I was like oh no this is actually very very helpful if you know who you are it really improves your relationships and helps someone else understand and I didn't really realise the weight of what I was saying and actually once you get that down if everyone was a bit more in touch with

what they need and what they want and who they are it's not being selfish it's actually it's the best thing it's that putting your oxygen mask on first thing yeah which is really good but my worry is that that is not what is being fed to us no my worry is that it is all about just finding the right person yeah or trying to be as perfect or whatever everyone else expects of you and it's not about looking inward and I think a lot of the answers lie well looking inward and looking but you know for some people those who've had a really great life with secure attachment coming out of their nostrils happily married you're great looking inward is going to be, but it's going to be more important maybe for someone who has experienced trauma.

And I think also it's, even if it's coming from you or you do things, it's all so cyclical. So like if you've been through trauma, it's not your parents might have treated you really badly but they've probably went through something so that it's it is almost more helpful to not put a blame on anything but just try and stop the cycle yeah because it's not necessarily that someone's evil or someone's bad or they the likelihood is they've treated like that because that's all they knew yeah exactly if if there is such a thing as intergenerational transmission of divorce or people are more likely to have an insecure touch with stuff their parents did then not always but sometimes or maybe even a lot of the time people will have will be the way they are because of things that happen to them and but there were always choices right like you know if your parents if you have an abusive parent and they are still

abusive then you can look at them compassionately and think okay here are some reasons why you are the way you are but you could still also change that do you know what i mean you can you can have compassion while also one to one making them responsible for their actions but yeah oh amazing do i feel like we've literally touched for hours um is there anything else that you particularly wanted to cover i can't think if there's anything okay i know uh my concluding thoughts i hope it's good enough would be um that the way that you see behave and feel in relationships can say more about you than the other person and that is completely diametrically opposed to what i think we're taught which is that it's all about the other person yeah okay great that said some people are abusive and it doesn't matter what you

do they're not going to magically generally on the whole researchers found that abusive people continue to abuse you know if they say it's a one-off it's highly unlikely so on the whole in that scenario no so you have to basically I think look at yourself but also choose wisely so you have to go into it with the tools of knowing who you are and then you'll hopefully be able to spot things discrepancies soon yeah and when I when you say knowing who you are I think that that is like a lifelong journey and i think also who you are will change but i think that that knowing what you think is important you know because also there was the research that i talk about that people um become more similar over time in long-term relationships and so you know who you choose will really change who you are if you choose someone really mean that

will change you you know fine they might have muscles or money or whatever it is that is perhaps less important but you know I think sometimes people can be driven to look for things for example money out of a I mean obviously everyone needs enough money to live and poverty is not what I'm talking about. But beyond that point, money can be like a sense of security, you know, whereas actually what will give you security is not someone having loads of cash, but someone being emotionally available and intimate and committed. Yeah, totally. And also that thing about you becoming more like the person is very true. And I think especially when I was younger, I was drawn to always want to date someone who would be like a drinker and a smoker. And actually as I'm older, my boyfriend loves getting up really early and really likes exercising all the time, which I like doing too. But now I like it even more because we do it all the time together. And actually that's really attractive and sweet and lovely.

And he likes making PowerPoints. That hasn't translated yet, but I'm sure at some point I will get the skills in the next, be very good at those, and spreadsheets. I get a lot of spreadsheets into my email inbox. Does he send you spreadsheets? Got one for the fringe. Oh, my God. I love that.

And it will just be all numbered and dates and times. He is a keeper. Indeed. Again, not quite there yet with me, but looking for those habits which you might not. It's a nice way of like bringing together two things do you know what I mean yeah it's good to look for the things you might not have realized to look for before because actually that's really sweet yeah and also on the whole he exercises and it makes you exercise more Aristotle says I love Aristotle

that basically uh it's easier to do things like be a good person when there's someone with you who wants to do that too. Yeah. And so, you know, dating someone who really wants to be a good person and is working on themselves and is open to constructive criticism and being better or whatever, is going to be much easier to evolve and be a good person than someone who isn't prepared to even ask the question in the first place. Yeah, so so if people want to find you oh yeah uh i'm on social media at lauramooker.com no that's my website i'm on social media at lauramooker which is m-u-c-o-k yeah and i have a website lauramooker.com and on the website oh maybe i should give it to you you might want to use it um on my website if you click on the book, oh, maybe I should give it to you. You might want to use it. On my website, if you click on the book, Love, Fatchley,

underneath is an audio sample of the interviews. It's like a three-minute sample, which might be interesting or not. And can we pre-order your paperback now? No, not yet. So I just make that up? No, I don't think, I don't know if you can. You can buy the hardback, but the paperback will be cheaper. I think it's coming out in January, the paperback.

I think you can pre-order it on Amazon. Can you? I think so. No. I might have just made that up. Oh, yeah, please pre-order it. That would be amazing. Yeah, because it's cheaper and it's got a really funky cover.

I can't believe you know that and I don't. That's terrible. I should definitely know that. I've done my research. What can I say? I'll laugh if I'm wrong. It'll be really funny. You'll get home like, you've just made that up yeah yeah so I'm excited about that because um

I think with the hardback please we were like okay this is a book about love we're gonna you know make it white cover and now they're like okay we're gonna make it yellow we're gonna have multi-colors it's very funny it's very funny the publishing process and like the marketing people going off and coming up with their ideas of i actually have one last question did you have love factory from the beginning because that is just the best name i know isn't it no that was my editor's idea oh really jim martin what were you gonna call it oh you know i didn't so it i getting it published was such a pain in the ass and i had loads of rejections and one of the publishers so the way it works is you pitch an idea and they take it to an acquisitions meeting where loads of people sit around a table and debate whether they want to

take it on and in one of these the publisher came back and said we don't think it should have love in the title so for a long time it was called human connection but i wondered if that sounded a little bit like you know connection was a bit like a you know an electrical thing um and then i went to bloomsbury jim martin who's amazing and wears hawaiian shirts uh and those are they called garlands like the four like he wears those yeah stop and he's got a stuffed duck in his office he's amazing and he said love factually it's perfect and then everyone

was very excited I just can't believe they wouldn't put love in the title that's the most British thing I've ever heard we can't talk about it I know

well they thought that men wouldn't read it if it had men if it had love in the title but I get a lot of messages

from men on social media and email saying thank you for writing i can imagine women have a much more easily accessible not much more have much more access to these conversations among peers whereas men probably might not ask their friends do you think my relationship is xyz this but it's great no and also the men that i interviewed no it's true the men i interviewed i interviewed No, it's true. The men I interviewed, I interviewed this guy in Wales who basically talked about when he went through a really traumatic breakup. None of his mates talked about it. And the one that did approach him was basically,

he now discovers, I think, an alcoholic and said, let's go and get smashed. And he got so smashed that he basically collapsed. And that was it. That was his friendship support, you know. And that's all he got so smashed that he, like, he basically collapsed. And that was it. That was his friendship support, you know. And that's all he got. And so I think that you're, I mean, I haven't, I'm not aware of, like, large scale data about this. But I think you're right.

I think that's one place where we've benefited from the patriarchy is we have really good toilet chat. Not scatological. I mean, like like in women's bathrooms yeah you could walk into a woman's bathroom after a breakup and be consoled by everyone in the bathroom even if you'd never met yeah and that is really where we've won yeah so and also I tried to write the book in a way that would appeal to men and women and everyone it wasn't meant to be you know fluffy it was meant to be this is what I'm saying and here's the evidence do you have any other products or anything that anyone can follow you

on or find you on yes uh lauramooker.com is my website m-u-c-h-a like much with an a on the end amazing and that's why everyone says laura muccha when they first meet me uh and at lauramooker is social media and i have some really interesting stuff coming up um some i can't tell you about i can't tell you the details but i will at some point have a book an illustrated book about love for teenagers and young people and also um an audio series with audible on attachment theory. And I also write loads for children and I have poems. I love poems. Thanks so much for listening, guys.

Bye. We'll be right back. to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded. Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Research and supply.

See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly.