Sex Talks With Emma-Louise Boynton - How to find love with Paul Brunson, the world's no. 1 matchmaker

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Recognised as one of the “world’s most influential matchmakers” by the Matchmaking Institute and described as "much more than a matchmaker" by Oprah Winfrey, Paul Brunson is the person to whom you wish you could turn for advice on all things sex, love and dating. Lucky for us, while Paul has of late been busy flexing his relationship expertise as co-host of the latest season of Married at First Sight UK (he has previously co-hosted the UK's Celebs Go Dating and hosted 'Lovetown' on the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2012), he'll be ascending the Sex Talks stage this November to share his insights on dating in the digital age while offering us his best advice on how to find love through the application of relationship science. Yep, there's a science to it, let's find out how exactly it works. Paul is the author of It’s Complicated (But It Doesn’t Have to Be): A Modern Guide to Finding and Keeping Love and the founder of the matchmaking company, OneDegreeFromMe. Stuck in your search for love and want to ask Paul for his advice? Submit your sex, love or dating question via the order form when you purchase your ticket.

Hello and welcome to a live recording of the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. Sex Talks is dedicated to engendering more open and honest conversations around typically taboo topics, specifically sex, relationships and the future of intimacy. Today's episode has been recorded at the London Edition Hotel. If you'd like to attend a live event in the future, please do head on over to the Eventbrite link in the show notes as we have lots of exciting events coming up. Okay, I hope you enjoy the show.

Before we get started, I also want to tell you about this week's podcast sponsor, The Nude Society, aka the female-led sexual pleasure company on a mission to help you enjoy your body in whatever way it feels right for you. Now, you know I'm a big advocate for self-pleasure, because I really believe there is nothing more empowering than getting to know your own body. What feels good for you, what you like, and, of course, what you don't. The New Society is designed with two vibrators, as well as a water-based lobe that can help you do exactly that. I recently tried their Len Vibrator, which bends in half, so it can stimulate you both internally and externally at the same time. You love a bit of multitasking, don't we? Suffice to say, I really like this vibrator, and think you will too.

Get 15% off when you shop with the News Society using the code Sex Talks 15. Okay, I hope you enjoy the show. Evening, everyone! Well, first of all, how wonderful to see so many. smiling faces. Obviously, all for me. No, I joke. All for Paul, who is about to tell us, share the secrets with us as to how we can find love. I am so excited this conversation. So first, let me just quickly say another thank you rather than apology. Thank you for being so patient this evening. As most of you will know, we are usually in a different space. I think this one is

actually more gorgeous and a little more kind of festive vibes for us. this evening, but I really do appreciate your patience as we are running around to make it all work. So thank you, thank you, thank you. For anyone who hasn't sex talks before, my name is Emma Louise Boynton, and I am the host and the founder of sex talks. I set up sex talks because, well, I did sex therapy and found the experience transformative. It changed my relationship not just to sex, but to my body, it's changed my sense of self-confidence, everything. And I realized that the conversations I had in the sex therapy room were ones that we should all be having much more often. We should be having much more open, honest, and vulnerable conversations

around sex, around intimacy, around our relationships, rather than just, I think, the little tip bits of sometimes we get, you know, how to make your man come in the magazines, which, you know, helpful, but doesn't really necessarily go as deep as I know Paul would like us to go in these conversations. Excuse the pun. I like that topic now. That's a cool topic too. Don't worry. We will get to that evening. So without further ado, I couldn't ask for a more perfect guest to cap off what has been a wonderful year of sex talks with Paul Brunson, who's recognized as the world's most influential matchmaker.

Oh, I know. Although someone called Oprah Winfrey, if you've heard of her, describes Paul as much more than a matchmaker. Paul actually started out as an investment banker and then found the world of finance. Don't judge me. No judgment, okay? You were so captivated by the power of love and dating.

I believe you were hosting dinner parties early on, as you were, going out of the investment banking. They end up being matchmaking dinners called brown sugar, I believe. You have done your research on this. All right, quiz, why? This is major.

Why were the parties called brown sugar parties? I believe you'll find, Paul. They were called brown sugar parties. Because the drink of choice, Oh, my goodness. Making dinners was rum. Wow. That's how you know I'm in trouble tonight.

You are research, yes. Oh, yeah. There is not a podcast you've done that I have not listened to. Seriously, I've been in your world. That's why I'm sure I'm now going to find love. So this event was purely selfish, okay? But just quickly, we'll go through the introduction.

But Paul, now you may recognize Paul from your television as he's now the co-host of Married at First Sight, UK. Don't judge me. As well as celebs go dating. He's a contributor at Steph's Pat Lunch, I believe, and a couple of the shows, both in the UK and the US. He has also written a book. He wrote a book back in 2014.

It's complicated, but it doesn't have to be. Really? Sure. Sure. Didn't sell well. The next book, it's complicated. and it has to be. No, his next book,

Find Love, How to Navigate Modern Love written for me, just for me. It's actually out in February, and I have bought a whole ton, pre-ordered a whole ton of these books. So if you come to Sex Talks in February, you will be gifted one of Paul's books. So, yeah, nice.

Nice touch, huh? You know, and I will sign them for you. Oh. So, Paul, I think our notion of love, There are so many different forms of love. There's familial love, friendship love, romantic love. There's so many different types of love. But I think our notion of romantic love particularly

has, I think, been so conditioned and perhaps reduced by popular culture in a way. I'm looking really at rom-coms, even though I've kind of gone back to loving rom-coms a bit, because I'm in my romantic era. But we've been presented with quite a narrow version of what love should look like, which doesn't necessarily work for everyone, and I think can set expectations quite high

and leave many of us a bit disappointed. So, Paul, just to start us off, how do you define romantic love, and what does it mean to you? This is a big one. Oh, yeah, never go, it was going straight in. I mean, you said it, I mean, but this is going to be a crazy night, I can see.

So here's my take on it. And also here's the reason why I think that we have a, a challenge around this. I think that, you know, we get things in tweets, we get things in TikTok videos, we get things in blog posts, you know, a lot of journalists like to, you know, have the top three, you know, and that becomes a challenge when you're talking about something that is as dynamic, something that is as powerful as relationships and love. And that, by the way, is why I am here, why I appreciate this opportunity, because this is an opportunity for us to take a look at these topics and actually unpack them because they deserve to be unpacked.

And so for this particular question, you know, to me, there's three facets to love. First is friendship. Now, there's a gentleman by the name of Dr. Robin Dunbar. Does anyone know, or does anyone not know, raise your hand if you do not know Dr. Robin Dunbar. Okay, I'm going to be dropping books all night. Dr. Robin Dunbar, he's a British anthropologist. He is incredible. He's written many books.

One of his rules is called the Dunbar Rule, which essentially states that we have 150 people within our orbit. But he just wrote a book in 2021, which is one of my favorite books, and it's called Friends. And he defines a friend as someone that you would like to spend time with, and you make an effort to spend time with. I like to say a friend is if you know their mama's name. If you know their mama's name, that's a friend. friend, okay? If you don't know their mom's, that's not your friend, right? And so, first,

part of love is friendship. The second part is intimacy. Now, many people define intimacy in many different ways, but we all know Esther Perrault, right? And we all probably love Esther Perrault, right? Esther Perl basically says, okay, what intimacy is, is that is divulging your inner self, right? That's your inner passions. That's what you're scared of. That's what your dreams are. That's what your hopes are, but then she hits you with this, and this is the most important piece. When you divulge those inner feelings, those feelings are validated.

It's very important. We're in church right now. I can feel it. That was nice. It was a pause, and it was, mm. That's what the ministry says, pass the collection plate, past the collection plate, right? But that is the truth, and you know that, right?

You need the validation. The relationship is give and take. So you get the validation. So you have disclosure, validation. You have those two things. And then the last piece, the last piece to love, in my opinion. By the way, intimacy, it doesn't have to be physical, right? I think my grandfather had sex with my grandmother five times.

I hate saying this. This is terrible. It's being filmed. And they have five children. You know what I mean? Oh. But so it, but, but, but, but, but, but loved his wife. She loved him.

So it doesn't have to be physical. But the point, though, is that you have the intimacy. And then number three is that you have committed trust. To me, what committed trust means is that the person who's showing up for you today, who's validating you today, who is your friend today, who is your friend today, is going to be the same person that validates you and is your friend tomorrow. And guess what? They may lose their job tomorrow.

And still, with all of that emotional stress and turmoil, they still are going to show up and validate you, right? It's very important. We all go through ups and downs and stress in life, and you need to have someone who's going to be consistently them. So if you have committed trust, you have intimacy, and you have friendship, you have love. You're obviously now a matchmaker on Meredith First Sight

and it has been a wild season to say the least and this follows years. I mean, you've been matchmakers, we said, stretching all way back to 2009 beyond, so it's been many years. What is your, the criteria that you're looking for when you're looking to match people up? What are your, what are your kind of main metrics for success when you're looking to put two people together? Okay.

This is on Married at First Sight, though. I'm a first sight, though. Okay, yeah, yeah. We're using that as our example, but feel free to extrapolate. Okay, okay, okay. All right, so I'm just curious, who watches Married at First Sight in the... Okay, all right. All right, everyone, right, yeah.

Yeah, okay, all right, cool, cool. Okay, so what I will do is I'm going to give you the very specific detail of, how we do it. And I've never, ever, ever given nuanced detail to this. We'll love a scoop. So I will do this. Look at the camera came out on that one. And I will see if I get fired tomorrow, right? But I'm going to be careful, but I'm going to give utter detail, because this is a very popular question. So for Married at First Sight, it's a very, very popular show. We were just talking that right now Married at First Sight, literally this week, it is the number two. most downloaded or streamed show in all of the UK.

And I'm talking about including Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. The only thing beating us is Bodies, which is quite good. Yeah, it's really good, yeah. You know what is, you know what is so crazy about this? Is two nights ago, while MAPS was on, I was watching Bodies. Yeah, but that's the only thing being here. So it's an incredibly popular show. Now, it has been building in popularity.

So based on the popularity this year is who applies for next year. And we are casting for next year right now. So if you're interested, talk to me. Everyone's like, yeah. So now, last year's show is what drives the popularity for this year's show. So let's say that we have 10,000 people apply. Now, this is very controversial, but I think it's important for me to say it, because I'm going to be utterly truthful, is we also recruit people. So there are people who apply, and there are people that we recruit, and that's very similar to traditional matchmaking.

Most of the time when we're recruiting, it's because we have someone who we believe needs a partner that's not in our match pool, right? But that's the first step, is that you apply. When you apply, you fill out a long application. If Match.com back in the day when it started was known for having 150 questions. So think about that. Tinder, you just download, I mean, full disclosure, I've run research for Tinder, so I might be saying Tinder a lot, but you, you know, you go on and you're, you are immediately dating. Think about this, 150 questions is where a match started, but the reason why is because they wanted to fatigue you, and they wanted to see, will you get through all of those questions, to see how serious you are, right? This is a similar thing that we do with Married at first sight, is you have a long number of questions, you also have to watch a video, and over,

50% of people don't even complete that. Men, it's like 90%. They're like, what? I need to put my last name in this? This is crazy. I was like, are you serious? Like right now? Are you serious?

Yeah, like, we're just trifling. It's just terrible. But so, so you feel that? So we lose like half the people. Then after that, what ends up happening is we ask you to submit additional information. Lose another half of people. Then we get on a Zoom with you and we're talking to you, right? And we say, okay, can you like complete a sentence?

Like, you know, so that's very important. So then from there we lose more people. Then from there, we do the one test that loses the most people. And you know what that test is? Any guesses? It's not a lie detector. Not a person. Well, a personality test.

No. No, psychometric. It comes after this. Oh, my gosh. I got the whole room. SDI. Yes! Yes!

STI! Yes! Yes. And trust me, the whole room is lost on the SCI. It's like, really? It's like all the candidates gone. All the candidates gone, right?

Yeah, and you're not surprised by this. There is a new strain of gonorrhea going around that I have particularly nasty strains, so... Yeah, it's one of these where, like, so you've got that. So then after that, after that, we have psycho We're looking at everything. Attachment style. We're looking at everything. Narcissism, where you're on a scale, etc. And then from that we have like five people. And then we have to match those five people. Seriously, that is what happens. And that's the reason why it's so hard. And that's also the reason why I always say that I know that we get a lot of backlash on, why did you match so-and-so with so-and-so? Because I had 10 people to choose from. Right? And he was the only one with Alclimidia! Right.

So this becomes why it's so difficult. But we also have the highest success rate of any married at first sight franchise in the world. We do. We do. And I think the reason for that, and this gets to the heart of your question, is what are we looking for? There's lots of things that we're looking for. Some of the standard things, and I'll say, like, when you're matchmaking and what constitutes success in relationship, there's many things. but one is you look at behavioral traits that's very important so behavioral trait could be what we were

talking about earlier in terms of something called low neuroticism you were like what the hell low neuroticism I think is one of the most important traits you could find in a partner and that is just simply someone who is going to remain consistent in times of stress if you look at marriage rates marriage rates are fascinating to me because we know that marriage rate so i'm sorry divorce rates divorce rates are what everyone like one and two guess what i'm sorry i love you all but it's not one and two not in the uk it's about 35 percent yeah about 30 it's been going down in the u.k just over the last couple of years now 35 percent that's still a lot of people right but now if you take out the people who have been in a committed relationship for roughly two years before they got married.

So I'm saying take out the people who met you tonight, right, and say, let's get married tomorrow. Take out the people who have known each other for 10 years and they're like, damn, let's just do it. Take out those people. Just look at the people who met were in a relationship committed for two years and got married. What is their divorce rate? It is lower by almost half. So it is 20 to 22% is what the divorce rate is for people who have known each other in a committed way for two years.

So the question that I posed to you all is why? Why is that? They've tested each other in what way? They've tested each other. But most importantly, within a two-year period, all of us have gone through some type of storm. We have maybe lost a family member. we have maybe lost a job right and you have an opportunity to see how that person shows up when the stress hits them that was the moment I knew my wife was the one when my grandfather died and she dropped everything

to support me in that right so low neuroticism is very important that's low neuroticism that's one of the characteristics but so you have behavioral traits you also have what is considered to be contextual traits. And that's very important. Esther Perel talks a lot about this. She talks about how it is form over the content or context over the form. So you want to look at what does the village look like for that particular person. Have you heard of the phrase that divorce is contagious? You heard about this? Yeah. So what does that really mean? Divorce is contagious? What does that mean? Where you all may be blown away. is what is the what is the percent what is the how more likely are you to get divorced

if your friend is divorced a lot more likely how much more likely how much is a lot more 50 percent 50 percent oh really I do what my friend does okay 50 wow 50 percent is a big number but guess what it's too low 75 percent more likely that's Pew that's Pew research That is peer, that is peer-reviewed research. Think about this. You are 75% more likely to be divorced if your friend, if a close friend is divorced. And if your close friend is not divorced, but their friend is divorced, you are 33% more likely. 33% more likely.

So contextual is very important. One other stat that I'll throw out that I love is one of my best buddies. Her name is Dr. Terry Orbach, okay? She runs the longest-running longitudinal study on couples in the world. She started it in the 1980s. All right. Literally last week, she told me something that has not been published yet. All right.

This blew me away, all right? Blew me away. So when she looks at one of the largest drivers of separation and divorce, it is, and this is in heterosexual couples when the man does not have a close relationship with the wife's family. And the key is perception.

So if the wife believes that the husband doesn't have a close relationship, doesn't, you know, value her family, they are twice as likely to be divorced, twice as likely to be divorced. Now, we can unpack all the reasons why and all that, but my whole point to this point number two, and I know this is super long,

I'm sorry, but there is contextual things around this. And then last is there's environmental. So long story short is we look at a hell of a lot of things. But when I was matchmaking, when I was running my matchmaking agency with my wife, we tried to look at all of it, and we tried to mitigate for all of it. And I think that's the reason why we were successful,

is that finding a partner is very challenging, but keeping and sustaining a high-quality relationship is even more challenging. And if you can mitigate for some of these behaviors on the front end, you're more likely to have high satisfaction in the relationship. I love that. So prepare for the relationship that you want before you're in that relationship. The best time to work on your marriage is before you get married.

Paul, you've said before that oftentimes when people came to you as a matchmaker, you were really their last hope for finding love. They'd really kind of reached the end. They'd really feel like they'd run out of options in terms of meeting someone and finding love. What did you typically find were the barriers that people were facing in finding a partner, if that's what they were looking for? What kind of mistakes were people tending to make from what you saw? Oh, I mean, this is a big one.

I would say, I would even reframe it and say it wasn't necessarily mistakes. You know, trauma is the most significant factor in the choices that we make, period. Period. Dr. Gabor Mate, right? I think we all love him, right? The way that he frames trauma, I think, is really interesting because he talks about how trauma is an impact that happens to you. and as a result, you view the world differently. That's how powerful it is.

It's something that happens that reshapes how you view the world. And if you are viewing the world differently, it means that you are making different decisions. Like literally, you see the room as, it's dark right now, and I'm like, no, no, it's bright as hell in this room, right? You see it differently. And so trauma is significant. Now, we're all adults in this room.

what percentage of us, according to, you know, Dr. Gabor, what percentage of us have suffered trauma? Yeah, it's over half. It's over half of us. Over half of us. Now, what percentage of us have healed from that trauma? No. Almost zero percent.

So think about this. It's funny, but it's also sad when you think about the fact that over half of us are walking around traumatized. And we are making decisions traumatized. A very good friend of mine, Dr. Janie Lacey, is one of the top relationship trauma experts in the world. She's out of Florida, all right? She's incredible. She told me that it takes an average of two years to heal from relationship trauma. Two years to heal from it.

And you know what she suggests that you do within those two years? You make zero significant decisions about your life. think about that so i bring this up because when i talk about trauma trauma may not be what you think it is or you may get it from where you didn't realize you got it from for example have you heard of intergenerational trauma right is that a real thing hell yeah that's a real thing okay what happened to your great-grandfather what happened to my my great-great-grandfather what happened to my great-great-grandfather was enslaved on a plantation in Jamaica. He was enslaved on a plantation in Jamaica, my great-great-grandfather.

Does what happen to him? Has it shown up in how I view the world? Absolutely. Absolutely. There's all types of research around this. There's epigenetics now that shows how, literally, how our genetics have been changed as a result of the trauma. Think about that.

Think about that. So there's intergenerational trauma. You have relationship trauma, right? You think about, you know, I know you probably want to talk about attachment style, but you think about attachment, the first attachment that we had to our caregivers. A lot of us are walking around with anxious or avoidant or non-secure, should I say, attachment. And it's not because our parents didn't love us. I say it all the time.

My parents love me. They're in London right now, right? They came to visit. They love me. but did I come from a secure attachment? I don't know. I don't know. And the reason why I say I don't know is because my mother was first generation immigrant.

She was working her ass off, right? My father, first in his family to go to college, he was working his ass off. So I was bouncing around between what? Caregivers. So that's how I viewed love by the bouncing around. So the question is, is do I come from an end? anxious place? Maybe. Right? So there you have the attachment. Then you have another place of trauma that we oftentimes don't give enough credit and that is where we spend most of our

time and where is that? Work. At work with all of those dickheads. Right. And now I'm telling you work is a terrible place for trauma. For trauma to be born, trauma to be fed. It's a terrible place. But so Paul, if you have all these traumatized, somewhat broken people coming to your matchmaking door, typically unhealed. How do you stop people projecting that trauma and taking that baggage into their next relationship? How do you help people break through that biggest barrier to love? The first place is to say, okay, we're not ready for matchmaking right now. Really? So one of the things that we pioneered in our matchmaking agency is we would put a hold, a three to six month hold before we would even start matching. Because let's get down to the business of you first,

right? Because, you know, it's interesting, we all, not we all, but most of us want in a relationship, we want to have high satisfaction. But the number one, this is going to be in my book, by the way, this is a new research, the number one determinant to high satisfaction in a committed relationship is having high satisfaction before you enter that relationship. It's values are important, you know, interests are important, sexual attraction is important. All those things are important. But the number one, by far, is you having high satisfaction in yourself. So that's where we need to begin. And then we move into, okay, let's work on the matching. But that's where we begin. Time for a quick ad break to remind you of this week's podcast sponsor,

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Get 15% off when you shop with the News Society, using the code Sex Talks 15th, and include the link in the show notes. Okay, back to the show. Okay, so assume we've personally gone on a self-healing journey and we're semi-heeled up to a point, still working. Take us then to the optimal first date because you've said before that the way our dating culture, I think particularly in the UK, is sort of kind of broken and I sort of kind of agree. Where are we going wrong there and how can we do better when it comes to that first date with someone if we don't have the privilege to having a matchmaker on hand.

What do you do on your first date? Oh, actually. You know what? You're going to love this. I do actually go on long walks. You like that? I like that. Yes.

And I go for coffees. Yes. I like that. I don't get drunk. Yes. I like that. I know. I'm sticking all your back.

But no, I, that's because I had, well, I went through a bit of a period of realizing that I was wasting a lot of time on dates that I didn't really want to be on. And it was very distracting. I didn't want to get drunk and waste drinking on someone I didn't end up liking. I'd end up spending a lot of time with waste men. And I didn't want that. And so I reconfigured my way of dating and thought, you know what? I'd rather do something that's an activity that means I'm getting my steps in.

I have 10,000 to get every single day. And don't be fooled, I'm going to get those in. So I'd rather get my steps in. And actually be in an environment where we can have a slightly more free-flowing conversation. The first date I like. I like that. I like that. I like that. Yeah, I like that. And there's many reasons why I like that. I think a place that we are going wrong today on average is not defining precisely what our relationship goals are up front. This is a big problem that we had at Tinder. So at last year, what was introduced on Tinder was a new feature called relationship goals. And it's really interesting because when you look at, okay, so to go super nerdy again, like, you look at, if you look at the anthropology of relationships, there are two pieces to it. One is called short-term mating and the other is called long-term mating. This has been in place since the

beginning, this has been in place for 2.5 million years and this is in place with most, like most animals, right? Short-term and long-term. Now, are the goals different for short-term? Now, are the goals different for short-term versus long-term? Short-term is just sex. Short-term is just pleasure. Now, yes, the byproduct could be reproduction, and it often is. You know what I mean?

It was for me twice. But short-term mating is all about getting your rocks off tonight. That's all it is. Now, what percentage of the dating market do you think is in short-term versus long-term? The whole lot of people in short term, I think. There's a whole lot of people, right?

So what do you think? What do you think it is? 75%. What? 80. Yeah. So here's the thing. That research, that research, we don't know.

But what we do believe is that it's higher in short term, much higher. And it's in different demographic pockets. If you are older, what do you think it's going to be? Long term or short term? long term right more long term right now does it change based on socioeconomic does it change based on education does it change so all of these things change but long story short is there's two things now the problem or should i say the benefit of today is that most people are very or are more willing to be transparent so they're more willing to say you know what if that's what you're interested in

then that's cool right the key though And the problem that most of us have, I'm not saying you have this, but the problem is that we don't define our boundaries right out the gate because the person sitting across from us, they look good. No, they don't. No. That's the problem. Oh, that they don't look good.

No, not often enough. That's the number one. So this is good then. Whatever you need to do to better define your boundaries from the beginning, that is very, very important. This is what I'm after. This is what I'm looking for. You set the boundaries.

In matchmaking, what ends up happening is a lot of people say, oh, but I'm scared. Like, if I say that, they're going to go away. But no, no, you want them. You want them to do that. So setting boundaries, that's very important, right? The second thing is to realize this, is that values are seen through action, not through words.

They're seen through action. And just like over the two-year period you're seeing, you have to observe the actions. That's the key, is you're looking at the actions. And so oftentimes when I was doing date coaching back in the day, I would observe the actions. And so actions are very important. And when you say actions, do you mean over a long period of time,

how would you ascertain someone's values from a first date? Yeah, you know what you don't? You don't know. You know what you do on the first date? Honestly, there's only two things you can do in a first date. one is you could ask yourself, are you physically attracted to them? Like, really? Like, after they've talked to you, you know, you, really?

Because sometimes people get real unattractive when they open their mouth. You know what I mean? Yes. And it's not the halitosis. It's like, no, it's just the worst, you know? So that's one. The second is this, this is very important, is did they listen to you? Not did they hear you.

People of the butt. Shake their heads. No, they did not. Exactly, because there's a difference between hearing just the words, boom, hits the ear drum. I'm talking about, did they listen? Did the words actively come in and did they add value to the conversation?

Right? Answers no, right? It's no. So here's the thing. If you don't have someone who does one of those two things, you can't really have anything with them. But if you do, then you have chemistry. And just digging into that chemistry point a bit, often if I've come back from a kind of

so-so date, my flatmate will turn to me and say, if it's not a hell yes, it's a hell, no, don't go to a second date. Are they right? I would go back to the, is it a hell yeah on those two questions? Because, and the reason why I pin my colors, so to speak, on those two questions is because physical attraction, it's debated, but where it's not really debated in the science world is that it needs to start from a minimal place. So does attraction grow over time? Yes, it can. Does it typically wane in most relationships?

Yes, it does. So the point there is that you need to start somewhere. If you're not physically attracted to them, I think it's very hard to start that engine. You know what I mean? Unless you're like, say, asiosexual and you're just like, you know, you turn it on by something else. intelligence, whatever, you know, but most of us are turned on by the body, right? You know, so that's one. And the second is, if they're, think about this, if they're not listening to you on day

one, they're never going to listen to you. Like, they're never going to listen to you. So I think those are the two important questions. And so this idea of then the spark can be something that really it's down to understanding. Do you feel that initial sense of connection as opposed to that kind of lurk? Sometimes I think we think that we need this, this spark, this feeling of like, which I think actually sometimes can be just past experiences what you feel like love is and like fancy is meant to look like

and can be a bit misleading. Yeah, absolutely. I think the spark is like getting to people in trouble. It's like it's burning out homes. Like sparks are, yeah, not good. The key is, is remember, it's like your heart, we love the heart, but it's your brain doing the thinking. And so the question, I truly believe it's those two things.

Now, I co-wrote a study this year called The Future of Dating 2023. You were at the lunch. That's where I stalked to you. Yes, yes. And in that report, something that we found that was really interesting, is that what Gen Z in particular is reporting is first and foremost the desire to feel comfortable in front of that person from the beginning, right? So that's also, I think, a very important question is do you feel like,

and the reason why you want to feel comfortable, is because that gets you to that point, too, the intimacy, right? I know why I keep going over here when I go to those three points. It's like, I'm good to confirm this. But it's like, am I saying it right? Okay, yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, keep going.

It's like my manager, my manager over here. You do it good, Paul, you do it good. But so I think that you want to ask that about, you like, do you feel comfortable? But part of that, you know, feeling comfortable is do they listen? So it's really the listening and the physical attraction. Excellent. Okay.

I can kind of see where I'm, I can see a bit where I'm going wrong. So I've definitely got room for improvement there, setting boundaries for one of them. Let's talk then about the politics of desire, which is something I find perennially really fascinating. I don't know who here has read Amir Srinivassan. Got that. It's a book, The Right to Sex. Has anyone read that? It's a brilliant book in which she discusses the politics of desire and argues that sexual hierarchies

replicate other sorts of hierarchies, race, class, gender among them. people desire bodies that kind of prevailing ideologies designate as desirable and I found that really interesting to read because I think sometimes we can think that desire like who I fancy your type is just somehow innate oh I just fancy this type of person I just usually go for this type of guy or this type of woman but she said it's actually really important that we question and we unpack where our desire has come from

and how it has formed and not least interrogate the role that porn might have played in terms of what we find to become physically sexually desirable. Now, tell me, I know you were the first black, full-time matchmaker when you first started out, and you focused specifically on black women you felt were underserved in the dating kind of economy at that point. Can you tell us then a little bit more detail how you have seen intersectionalities like race, like class, gender affect the way we date? I mean, it's at the top of the list. And it's one of those things that we don't talk about.

We don't like to talk about. And quite honestly, I love the UK. The UK is going to, I became a resident this year. I love the UK. Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you. I love it.

I love it. I love South London in particular. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, you know. South London is where it's at. You know. I love it.

But... That's a big but. There's a big, old, like, very large butt, that when it comes to these topics around everything that you mentioned, including class, including accent, that there is heavy what I would call segregation, you know, here. There was a study that I was trying to do, I mentioned this to you, I was trying to do this about two years ago around what I consider to be accent discrimination in the UK. Like, it's a real thing. I'm on the show on maths. I can't remember her name. Is it?

No, Louise. The woman with the blonde hair, the works in finance. Oh, Peggy? No, not Peggy. Oh, my God. I even know the names. Who's on the show?

Come on, Paul. Who's on the show? Who's on the show? She goes out of Arthur. She goes out of Arthur. Laura. Well, she was very nonplussed by Arthur's accent early on. Yes.

She didn't like that he didn't know Chelsea and didn't have a posh accent. Yes. Yes. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. And I don't know why. Because, like, I went to a Chelsea football game. They don't even clap at the games.

Yeah, they don't clap. Yeah, it was really odd to me. I was like, what are we doing? But absolutely, right? Class, absolutely. So these are major issues. And the reason why I say there's issues is because we don't like to talk about it.

So I'll give an example. On these television shows, Marited Forsyte, on Slubs Go Dating, all the time, someone will say, Paul, you should have matched so-and-so with so-and-so. And I was like, well, they don't like black people. so that's the reason why you know do you really want me to tell you the truth like that's the reason why and what's what's what's so interesting to me is that we're not forthcoming with this and i do think

it's to your point is that we have to examine why now this is very generational because if you look at baby boomer if you look at gen x if you look at millennial we this pocket were very set in our ways in terms of what we want and you know what we want that group, we want someone like us with either a different or same-sex instrument. Like, that's what we want. But when it gets to Gen Z, Gen Z is the most open with regard to religion, with regard to ethnicity, also with regard to nationality, which I love, right? And so these are topics that I think we need more platforms to talk about.

Television I see here is not a place to talk about these topics. but I appreciate that we have the opportunity to bring it up tonight. And just going deeper into that, given that our desire who we fancy, our so-called type, which is something I find quite problematic anyway, because I keep going for one type of person and ain't working, so clearly it's time for change.

I have changed. But to what extent then can we, or how do we begin to change who we are attracted to and how we go about fancying them? Yeah, no, this is a great question. we are what we consume okay we're what we consume and what do we consume most content it's content the content's coming from shows like merited first sight content's coming from social content's coming from music contents coming from work but we become what we consume so the quick response is

consume differently like when you consume differently you become different i think one of the sexiest traits in a human being, one of the most compelling traits, one of the most important traits that relates to you having high satisfaction is a partner who is curious. Curiosity is incredibly important. Incredibly important. You need a curious partner. You need a, I'm telling you, you need a curious partner. Okay?

Your life is much better when you have a curious partner. And how do you get a curious partner? Well, you need to become curious. How do you become curious? Consume different content. And ask a shit ton of questions all day, every day. Something that comes up a lot in conversations around dating, particularly with me and my friends,

but I think we've talked about at Sex Sports a lot, is the language that we use when it comes to dating. The red flags, the green flags, the gaslighting, the love bombing. It feels like we have suddenly developed this whole new dictionary for discussing contemporary dating. And whilst it can be quite useful when you're feeling particularly jaded and you want to throw a lot of deleterious terminology

towards someone who you feel has wronged you, I don't know how productive this kind of language this kind of proliferation of dating vocab necessarily is. Now, you did a post the other day and we discussed this brief in our call in which you pointed out that you'd had a conversation with a psychologist, in which she'd noted that gaslighting, is it gaslighting? It was gaslighting had become one of the most overused and misused term when it comes to dating.

Why do you think it is a problem when we do wield out this kind of psychology speak, when we don't really know what it means? The number one reason is because it does an injustice to the victims of gaslighting. to the actual victims of narcissism, to the actual victims of, you know, my, I mean, my son, my, my oldest son, he turned 13 last week. And he came back home one day, and he was like, man, my teacher, coercive control.

I was like, do you mean control? No, no, no, no, coercive control. I'm being intimidated, I'm being subjugated, I'm being isolated, dad, this is, like, but he knows it. Now, I was like, I'm doing a good job, actually. This is really good. He knows how to define this thing, but he completely misused this thing, right? We do an injustice to those who are actually suffering from these atrocities that drive. drive trauma, right?

So that's the reason why we shouldn't do it. And I think sometimes it also creates unnecessary baggage and kind of trauma in situations that just ain't that deep. And I feel that sometimes, I know when I've discussed, you know, a date gone wrong with a friend, and I know that it's well-intentioned, but they will say, matter, oh, my God, he was absolutely love bombing you. And I was like, it's actually just being quite nice. And he just, the date just didn't go that well.

And I find, and I've particularly noticed, and this is something that I feel is this kind of overuse of this sort of kind of psychology language is directed in the main towards men, particularly in social media. And I think feeds in what we've seen now as this kind of popularization of the men are trash narrative that has become quite prominent on social media. And I'm very conscious whenever I discuss what I think about this, is my men are trash narrative, to say that I recognize the content. in which we are having this discussion is one in which the statistics around violence against women are terrible. Just in case anyone needs a bit of a refresh, two women are killed each week at the hands of their partner. That means that 50% of murdered women in the UK are killed by a partner or ex-partner compared to 3% of murdered men. And in South Africa, where the men are trash, hashtag first went viral, a woman is murdered every four hours.

So I would for a second minimise the extent to which patriarchy and misogyny have such a detrimental violent impact on women in our lives. However, I do think this popularisation of men are trash, they're all just completely used, this is kind of writing off of men, these kind generalisations that we see on social media with a real kind of lack of nuance. I don't know that this is a particularly helpful way of moving the conversation forward and of all collectively, men in particular, doing better. And I wonder from your perspective how you see this sort of men are trash narrative, the impact that it has on the way we date now. This is such an important topic.

And I like how you roll that out, right? Because you just proved you can have two truths coexist. Like those are two truths. With regard to the second, you know, what's happening to men, in particular young men, some additional stats that you may be familiar with but are incredibly scary to me. So there's Richard Reeves who has written a lot about this. He's British, but I think he works at the Brookings Institute in the States. And he does quite a bit of research on this.

And the first is this, is that 3 a.m. friends. Have you heard about the statistics around 3 a.m. friends? All right. So this is really interesting. This is the most enlightening to me. So if you look at women in the UK, on average, how many 3 a.m. friends do you believe you have? And a 3 a.m. is someone that you could call at 3 a.m. and they were there for you.

They will come over to you. They will spend however long it takes on the phone with you helping you to resolve your problems. On average, how many 3 a.m. friends do you have? How many do you have? Like, raise your hand if it is five or more. Oh, wow.

Those are all the extroverts. Raise your hand if it's three to five. Okay, it's probably most of the room. Raise your hand if it's one to three. All right. And let's be vulnerable. Raise your hand if it's zero. Okay.

So now it's interesting. No one raise your hand. at zero and you most people raise her hand at three right that's exactly what it is here in the UK for women three on average you know what it is for men zero zero and that's down it's was five went down at three it is currently at zero so what's happening is that you have many men operating from a place where they feel isolated they feel alone and in my opinion that's where men get very dangerous. And that's why you have those statistics that you mentioned previously, or not the only reason, but that is one of the reasons that's driving those statistics. And so what we need

is we need to have, one is we need to acknowledge that that exists. We need to have more conversation around that. We need to see how it's showing up in education, how it's showing up in professions. You know, in the therapy field in the United States, you know that 1% of therapy, under the age of 35, 1% of therapists are men. 1%. And that's going to go down to zero, right? And so this is a real issue. It's a real issue. And I know when you and I spoke, you said you were excited to talk about these things in a kind of deeper, more nuanced way, because we don't get the opportunity to have that.

And I think that's partly reflected in the fact that we don't have a more gender diverse representation of people discussing these things publicly. But acknowledging it is where problems, the first place that you need to attack a problem is the awareness of the problem. And so this is what we're doing now. And this is beautiful. And we need to continue to have these conversations. And I would encourage everyone to continue to have these conversations with your male friends, with your male counterparts, with your brothers, with your fathers, with your uncles. That's where it begins. And then it, you know, and then it trickles down. But we must have these conversations. These are critical. You know,

you talk about the importance of relationships. Sheryl Sandberg, when she wrote the book, Lean in, Yeah, I lean in. To me, it was one of the most profound books at the time. And in the book, she said that who you choose as a partner, she's talking to everyone, who you choose as a partner is the most important career decision that you can make. And then Warren Buffett, just a few years later, he followed up and said, who you choose as a partner is the most important decision that you can make in life. And I agree with that.

I think choosing the right partner means and studies, show this, it means you make more money, it means you live longer, it means that you're healthier, etc., etc. Choosing the wrong partner means you get less and less of everything. And so this is the reason why it's so important and why we all need to be talking about it. And so I'm going to ask a few more questions and then we are going to have a quick break and I'm going to hand round pens and papers so that we can do the anonymous Q&A. I know. That's my favorite bit. This is where we go into kind of quiz show energy. And that is my anonymous. Exactly. So you can ask whatever sex love a dating question behind the veil of anonymity.

So just a couple more questions, and then we will get to our Q&A. So, Paul, imagine now that you've gone on these dates. They've been successful. Woo-hoo. They're super curious. Yay! Did they look good? They lit a motherfucking hat.

All right, all right. We like, we like, we like. The chemistry is bubbling. And now we're entering into a relationship. And that's where most happily ever after stories end. Yeah, Meredith, that's it. the story's over. But that's as we know, that's why the true work really begins. And you said at the very beginning, we need to be building the skills to be in a relationship before we got

into the relationship. Tell us then a little bit more about those skills. What are the relationship skills that you think are particularly important for us to cultivate? Now, what's by far the number one thing that we need to work on, hands down? To me, it's the number one reason why we divorce, number one reason why we separate. We don't resolve conflict. We don't resolve conflict. There is an endless amount of research on this. I see it play out on married at first sight all the time. It's nothing but arguments.

And you know how I know if a couple is going to work? I know precisely is if they could resolve an argument. Now, you know, out of the Gottman Institute, John Gottman, he has what's called the four, what is it, four horsemen of the apocalypse, right? Now, he believes, and I have lots of friends who have gone through his clinicians, and he believes that with a 99% accuracy, he can predict whether or not a couple will divorce.

And it is about if he observes the couple show contempt to one another. Contempt is disrespect. Now think about this. The reason why that's so important, and what he does in his labs, it's fascinating, he looks at couples in six second increments. Six seconds. Six seconds.

And the reason why this is so important, this is what I used to do in couples counseling, is I would sit and just observe you. Okay. Then I'd reserve you. Okay. Okay. And what you're looking for are the nuances.

Remember, Esther Perrell, it's the context, not the content. So how do I know if you're disrespecting your partner? You could begin to see the behavior. Disrespect, contempt, number one. There's stonewalling. There's criticism. There's defensiveness. right? If you can't resolve an issue, a conflict with your partner, that is, that's terrible.

So that's number one, is begin to figure out how you can resolve conflict. And can I just ask you there, how do we argue well? Okay. The first, the first is this, is step outside of your house. Step outside of your house. The context, everything changes when you step outside of your house and you have a discussion outside of your house. Everything changes. Everything changes. Secondly, is remember what is active listening?

The most important concept and most effective intervention I've ever seen done on a couple is you allow your partner to address what the issue is and you repeat what you heard and in particular how it's making you feel. That's very important. Next is only argue about one topic at a time. Don't bring up the fact that he does. did something 20 years ago or he did something five years ago. Only talk about what is happening

in the moment. Next is remember your context. Never argue while you're hungry. Come on now. I'm serious. Never argue what you need to be fed before you get to an argument. This is very important. Never argue while you're tired. It never works, right? So you want to think about all these. So it's like all of the context. So I guess a quick answer would be if you think about the context and you manage the context, take it outside the house, make sure that you're fed, make sure that they're fed, make sure that they're fed, make sure that, you know, you feel good, they feel good. Are you at a place where you're calm down, right? Because it takes hour, you know, it takes on average, it takes on average four hours to calm down after you've been pissed off. Yeah.

Now, let me ask you, when someone upsets you tremendously, typically when do you start to resolve, when do you start to try to start resolving that? Immediately, right? I thought I had someone say never, and I was like, yeah. I mean, I can hold a grudge too. That's another issue. You want to resolve it.

But the question, but the point, though, is that if you are upset, if you were made to be upset, you need to give yourself some chill out time. Because otherwise, you are not going to reconcile it to the best of your ability. So context, you should be chill, you should be fed, you should be rested, right? And then I promise you,

you will have a better argument. Right. Must have full meal before shouting. Not shouting, don't raise voice. That's probably another one. Don't raise a voice. Well, you know what? There's cultural nuances to that.

Yeah, Jamaicans, we just go crazy. Okay. I had a very shouty father, so if someone raised their voice to me, I kind of bottle up and I'm like, Daddy issues, please back off. So it doesn't well, we've, Esther Prell has featured, as she should, throughout this interview, and she brought up in various answers.

Now, she says that if you fix the sex, you will fix the relationship. So the sex, the intimacy is actually oftentimes the key to being able to resolve many of the other issues that exist within the relationship more broadly. Now, when she wrote this, she was actually kind of countering what was kind of mainstream understanding that if you resolve other issues in the relationship through, for example, talking therapy, then the sex will just get better on its own. Do you agree with Esther Perel on that?

If we fix a sex, we fix a relationship? Yeah, I see what, yes. However, there is a big caveat to that. And that is that most of the issues that people have with sex are sexual dysfunction. so that's something that it's not necessarily it's a matter of like resolving that through a conversation right you know so that's that is that is literally over a third of issues around around sex right so so so you so there's that but then you can move to okay well what's the rest of it about well a lot of it is about communication and if yes if you're able to work through that then absolutely that is a litmus for what's happening in your in your relationship. That's why it does go back to communication. You know, ultimately it goes back to that, but then it also touches upon what is it that you want out of the relationship.

I think that's a big reason why we have so many challenges today. You know, like going back to my grandparents, my grandmother and my grandfather, right? So they're Jamaican. They were not in a relationship for high level of self, you know, well-being. That's not why they got married. And I'm sure a lot of your grandparents didn't get married because their partner was going to help them be self-evolved. You know what I mean? That's not why they got married. They got married because it was very practical. And if you look at

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, there's Eli Finkel is a great researcher around this. He looked at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. What's on the bottom? Food, basics, shelter. The basics, right? Food, safety, right? Shelter, right? The basics. If you look at Marriages, when.

The first one is 3,000 BC, right? You go, like, what were they about? Survival. Who you chose as a partner literally meant if you could survive next week. So it was, so the choice of a partner has always been important. It's always been important. And so, yeah, that's where it started. But then what's happened over time, what's happened over time is because we're no longer a collective society,

we're individualist, right? is that we now want what? We don't, we, come on now. Look, you guys are sipping wine in this fine hotel. You're not looking for shelter and basic safety. What do you want? Everything. Everything.

You want to be self-evolved. That's what you want. That's what we all want. We want to be self-evolved. We want to have a highest level of well-being. So who you choose as a partner today, it's different criteria than who you chose as a partner 10 years ago. 20 years ago, 30 years ago, right?

This is very important, and so you have to know precisely what it is that you want. And if you want to be self-evolved, right, then you need to be looking for specific things and different things. But are we putting too much pressure on our partner to give us far too much? I mean, talking about Esther Perel, you know, she talks a lot about this. You know, who we chose as partners back in the day, they delivered a sliver of what we needed. maybe they were a great partner to reproduce with and that was it we got our intellectual stimulation from the person down the street we had friendships with our family right there were it was a village

taking care of all of our needs but today we're in a different place and I'll tell you what the issue is do you know that 80% this is Eli Finkel research 80% of marriages today are have less satisfaction that they than they ever have so we're dealing with we're dealing with extremely low satisfaction on average but 20% of marriages have a higher satisfaction than ever before now why is the 20% have higher satisfaction because we have more tools today right we have more research right today and I think that's the reason why the top 20% so you know it's one of those where you have to act you have to define what it is And no, I don't think you can want too much.

You just had any of to find a partner who wants as much done. Thank you so much for listening to this live recording of the Sex Talks podcast. With me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. If you want to listen to Paul Brunson answering the audience's questions, which was brilliant, there is a part two of this podcast recording available on Spotify. Enjoy. Thank you. Thank you.