The Wellness Scoop - Who, Why and How We Love

Episode Date: June 25, 2019

Does love at first sight exist? What’s the difference between love and lust? What do we look for in a partner? How does our upbringing influence our relationships? Why do people cheat? Love is a complex topic and one that we have a lot of questions on, so this week we’re breaking these common questions down, looking at idealisations versus reality; attachment theory and how to identify where you sit on this scale and how that might play out in our relationships; whether constructs like advertising, porn and Disney movies create a sense of unrealistic expectations; how often we’re really having sex and likewise how often we’re all being unfaithful; polygamy, swinging and why we’re so judgemental and so much more. Laura Mucha has spent ten years studying the above before writing the brilliant book Love Factually, and today she’s sharing an honest insight into a topic that affects us all. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hi, and welcome to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills, and my husband and business partner, Matthew Mills. Hi, everyone. So today we're talking about love. So it feels as though there are some common questions we all have around this. You know, what is love? Does love at first sight exist? What should we be looking for in a partner? How does our upbringing influence our relationships? What's the difference between love and lust? When do you walk away? Why do people cheat? And there's the kind of questions that we want to frame today's episode. So welcome, Laura, and thank you so much for coming on today.

So Laura has spent the last 10 years interviewing people all around the world about their relationships. You've really spoken to the widest possible selection of people. And I guess my first question is, is there anything that we all seem to be universally looking for? I know you mentioned a study, which had looked at 10,000 people, and they ranked 13 characteristics in order of preference, you know, what comes out of the top and the bottom? What are we kind of starting with? So that particular study is called the International Mate Selection Project. And I always love the way that researchers find really we kind of starting with so that particular study is called the international mate selection project and i always love the way that researchers find really unromantic ways to describe it like we're selecting a mate when asked uh what they would find most important in a mate people around the

world and that's 37 countries said that they ranked kindness and understanding as most important. And I think that is just so uplifting. Yeah, it is. Gives me so much faith in humanity. And that was followed by intelligence, exciting personality and health. And what came at the bottom of the pile was religious and political compatibility. So I guess before we kind of get further into what you learned over the last 10 years I'd really like to start with attachment theory and it felt to me as though the concept of the attachment theory kind of underpinned this entire conversation about love and relationships and also helped to answer a lot of those questions that I'm sure people listening will have and those kind of

universal questions of you know why do people cheat why do I behave like this in a relationship it was really interesting reading about those four categories secure anxious avoidant and unresolved so it would be awesome to understand kind of where does the theory come from you know what do what do those four groupings mean and how do we know where we and also potentially any partner that we have sit on that? I love that you've asked that question. I think attachment theory is so important and so game changing that I think it should be taught in schools. I think everyone ever should be forced to learn it. I don't know how to make that happen, but it's on my mission. So attachment theory's

founder was Sir John Bowlby, who basically came up with the premise that when we're born we are evolutionarily programmed to find someone to attach to in order to survive and you can see how that makes sense because you know when you're born you're pretty useless so if a voracious tiger were to come along you would really need someone else's help to survive so the basic premise is that we all need to attach to others so then you attach to whoever is your parent or guardian growing up and they may or may not provide you with a secure consistent sensitive environment one of the premises of the theory is that we're all very individual in the way that we experience relationships so it's not like one way fits all and one way of experiencing relationships is a secure attachment

style which is true of 58% of the population based on a review of more than 200 studies around the world and that basically means that relationships come pretty easily to you intimacy is pretty straightforward you're not freaked out by commitment you realistic, you're communicative, you are less likely to have mental health problems. There are enormous benefits to secure attachment. And then there are the insecure types. And they, as you mentioned, are anxious, avoidant and unresolved. So avoidant is true of about 23% of the population. And it essentially involves an idealization of independence and a sense of suffocation in relationships and a tendency to project their own vulnerabilities onto others because if you are only prepared to rely on yourself you want to see yourself as invulnerable so people with a highly

avoidant attachment style because you're somewhere on a scale someone who is highly avoidant attachment style, because you're somewhere on a scale, someone who is highly avoidant won't really connect with their emotions, including their vulnerabilities. So they can also come across as arrogant or unforgiving. And do they struggle to form a relationship because they struggle to open up and allow that sense of vulnerability that I guess is actually quite essential for intimacy? Yeah, exactly exactly or they might form them so a pattern I noticed in the people I interviewed was they would form them, idealize their partner, think that their partner was the best thing ever and then there would be a trigger so for one person it was the phrase I love you their partner would say I love you and they would break up or they would move in quickly feel suffocated walk away you know like whatever it was there was a pattern a certain period of time

whatever it was so idealization thinking that this person was perfect but they can't because no human can be and then a breakup and a complete withdrawal and they had a habit of breaking up with people so you will often with people who are highly avoidant either they don't ever really date people or they tend to be the person breaking up with others so the other style is anxious attachment which is true of 19 of the population and it's basically the opposite so instead of wanting independence you want to be close all the time and when you're stressed out you want to be held or you want to feel close whether that's a phone call or a touch or whatever it is you get your sense of safety from being with someone and that can be experienced as needy or clingy and when people with a highly anxious attachment style don't get that they can go into what psychologists call protest behavior

which might sound a bit like well I didn't want to speak to you anyway or oh this is how you're going to treat me well I don't want to be with you so it can be a bit difficult to know whether you're coming or going because you have someone really wanting to be close and they're not wanting to be near you at all so a lot of people that I spoke to so for example Grace from the Philippines dated someone who was avoidant and for the first period they were like essentially saying, we're going to get married, we're going to be together forever. You know, I haven't met the right person.

You're the right person. I've been a commitment phobe because I hadn't met the right person. You are the right person. And then did the classic avoidant thing. And are the people within the 58% typically attracted to each other and the people within the 42% typically attracted to each other? Or do they actually tend to mix a lot question um so secure people are generally attracted to each other and avoidant and anxious people often end up in relationships together which as you can imagine

isn't brilliant because you have someone who wants space and someone who wants to be close and so you get this withdraw chase withdraw chase withdraw, chase, you know? And they kind of perpetuate each other's insecurities. So they can be quite long-lasting, those relationships, but not very happy. What is the positive thing about all this research? If you get someone with an insecure attachment style to be with someone who is secure,

as long as they don't find a way to break up with that person, over time they can become secure themselves. You can do it on on your own too but it kind of rubs off essentially so is it typically something that would have then been nurtured through childhood that you can kind of nurture out rather than something that you're just naturally born with it is mostly from childhood but the later experiences can change it so you could be in the most loving relationship with your parents or guardians or whoever and then if one of them dies abruptly when you're young or let's say you have a really great secure life until you're in your 20s and then you date someone who is horribly abusive trauma and your long-term relationships and seeing a therapist can impact your attachment

style. They're quite stable, but they can change. Okay. So I guess going on from that, one of the topics that came up a lot throughout the book was infidelity in all different kind of shapes and forms. And I guess it'd be interesting to hear what you found the kind of lessons in infidelity were. I found one of the things that struck me most was the variation in numbers in the studies that you noted throughout the book but then also the parallels you drew to drugs actually and that sense of a high from the danger of possibly kind of getting caught, in the sense, I guess, of living on the edge. So can you tell us a little bit more? I think it's a really important point. One of my mega thoughts about infidelity is that

the evidence would suggest it happens quite a lot, but the evidence also suggests that most people hate it. You know, hate, it really riles people. So there's this ludicrous hypocrisy I guess or paradox or whatever you want to call it so in one US study 88% of people said that infidelity was totally unacceptable but yet research studies have found up to 70% of women and 72% of men have cheated and that is a high number and it's a range it's an extraordinary range because it depends on how you define it and how you ask the people and who you're asking

so one study found that 30 percent of people initially admitted and then after six months of intensive therapy a further 30 percent confessed so whatever the number I became obsessed at the beginning with trying to pin the numbers down and I mean I really spent weeks in the British Library combing over research. And then eventually I concluded, you know, it doesn't matter because we're never really going to know because people don't want to be honest about it because they're going to get judged, probably. But also they don't want to be found out because infidelity has pretty high costs and is one of the leading causes of relationship breakup or divorce

i think back to your point about drugs what often happens and not always in infidelity is a comparison between lust or very early love and the later love that i call companionate love which is more akin to friendship they're just totally different and they how do you define love and how do you how do you define lust so lust there are different definitions of it but i kind of like what the philosophers have to say about it so manuel kant thinks that it's dirty and and terrible and uses people as a means rather than ends whereas thomas hobbes is like no hey it can be reciprocal you know we can lust for each other other and care for each other of our own sake and care about pleasing each other.

So it doesn't have to be objectifying in any way. It can be meaningful, but then that can be... And it can also be part of the journey towards love. Yeah, they're very closely intertwined, I think. So I think it's very difficult to tell early love and lust apart because they're so closely related. Lust essentially is our way of staying alive, our kind of drive to reproduce. And it can be constant, it can come and go, it can be directed to one person, it can be directed to multiple people. Whereas early love

is, it often involves a lot of lust, and both lust and early love kind of fade over time. And this early love can involve a lot of idealization. So not necessarily seeing the person that you're with for who they really are, but kind of bolstering them with lots of fantasies. And it's kind of mutual bolstering. So you're both kind of seeing each other as the best thing ever. But also the person may not be giving you the complete impression of themselves as well because you're probably trying to still make that absolute best impression yeah exactly exactly so it's quite hard to get real intimacy at that point

because everyone's still trying to impress and everyone's still kind of trying to pretend that they're not messy so this later love companionate love is much calmer it doesn't engage dopamine which is what we see in drug taking it's it's just much more like friendship essentially and that doesn't mean that there's no attraction it's just a different kind of attraction it's just calmer it's not god I've got to rip your pants off with my teeth right now you know it's like I could probably wait till we get home to probably use my hands not my teeth you know and I think that that is based on that's and that's much more to do I think with commitment whereas at the early stages commitment doesn't necessarily

come into it so can you actually have love at first sight for me I know it was you know I've grown up in incredibly close family and I really like the sense straight away that I could tell that Ella had very similar values to me and the values that I had grown up with within my family so that immediately created a deeper connection and understanding and comfort immediately so I think that was the thing that kind of sped me up through the stages where I think if you meet someone who maybe you really fancy them but there was something about their personality you're kind of questioning I think that's where you typically kind of hang out and last maybe for a bit for a bit longer so if we had been friends at the time I would have said look in our separate individual conversations I'd say I'm really pleased for you but I would just advise

delaying the decision to get married because you're currently high on dopamine and I don't know what will happen when it chills out yeah you know and I'm sure it'll be great and I love you both and I think you're amazing but imagine if you committed and you bought dog and then it was a disaster so that would be my kind of reasonable rational advice and I think that when I was writing the book I was trying to think of almost what was a good policy decision right and the problem that I had was that for every person that I interviewed who fell in love at first sight and got it right which wasn't you know a few yeah I interviewed people who fell in love at first sight and got it right, which was, you know, a few, I interviewed people who fell in love at first sight

and got it really, really wrong. And my problem is, I don't know how to tell the difference between the people who got it right and the people who got it wrong. And that's what I mean by, were we just really lucky? Because as you said,

I think there were some obvious values that we shared, but we didn't know each other you know not really but the fact that to the captain crelly's mandolin quote the famous one of love is a temporary madness it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides and when it subsides you have to make a decision you have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that is inconceivable that you should ever apart yeah i think that sums it up nicely yeah it's beautiful that yeah you both mentioned the word values and i think that's really important because i i think that values are one of the most important things in deciding whether to stay with someone or not but often people focus on other things like attraction or

that kind of magical connection which can be partly explained by a whole host of crazy things that are way more to do with environment or biology and i think if you can get a sense of that early on then that's the most important thing i guess that's what i realized you know i dated a lot before and i and then when i met ella and you meet someone there is just a complete different sense of calm around it because you don't feel like you're there trying to impress the person you're just utterly being yourself and they happen to really like you the way you are that you don't feel like you have to kind of fill in those other gaps and maybe someone else hadn't quite liked so much and I think that was what immediately for both of us created that sense and so I think it was there was a kind of there was a

big excitement in it but there's also a sense of real calm in it straight away as well and I think it was, there was a kind of, there was a big excitement in it, but there was also a sense of real calm in it straight away as well. And I think that was actually the thing that got us, that we were most excited about. Will you tell us a bit more about how it works in the brain, you know, this sense of dopamine that we're looking for, that's both in the kind of early stages of lust or love or love at first sight, or just kind of the initial magic when you meet someone and the excitement but also that taps then into why we potentially look for that again and that can potentially trigger the infidelity yes so what happens when you lust slash fall in love slash have early love and I say that because some of the research is a bit unhelpful because they don't define what they're looking at so they'll get some people in a brain scanner and go are you in love and they'll go yeah and then you

don't really know what you're measuring because people use the phrase enough to mean different things but i take it to mean early stage love including lust so that kind of early stage was was examined and when they were shown photographs of the person they'd recently fallen in love with part of the brain that was highly activated was the reward system. Now the reward system is widely known to be the part that's engaged if you take cocaine or amphetamines, for example. To give you a sense of how powerful the brain's reward system is, when rats had their brains electrically stimulated they were then given an option of having some food or pressing a lever to get a buzz in their brain in the brain's reward system and rats opted for starvation

because they just wanted to keep stimulating the brain's reward system with one rat pressing the lever 7,500 times in 12 hours so what you're having really is an animal choosing essentially death because pleasure is so great they literally weren't eating and that's what we're dealing with right and I interviewed this lady in Frankfurt who had dated only married men in her 20s and 30s and she said don't give me drugs give me a married man and actually there is some truth to that statement because it is like taking drugs and it's easy to man. And actually, there is some truth to that statement, because it is like taking drugs. And it's easy to get addicted to that because it is a high. So it's easy to want to get that high over and over again. And you can. Yeah. But the problem is that there can

be some collateral damage in that, you know, the people that you keep breaking up with might be left broken hearted. But also also it depends what you want if what you really want is a long-term relationship that's committed then you you're gonna have to relinquish the never-ending dopamine highs i was gonna say so then do you kind of lose that dopamine hit as you transition into the more kind of companionship sense of love even if you still have a sense of you know kind of physical attraction between you still having kind of a sexual elementary relationship but it's not as you said that like I need to take all your clothes off in the next 10 seconds or I'll combust situation

is it that at that point you actually start losing that kind of intense sense of a dopamine reaction the general consensus is that that early stage love involves dopamine highs whereas the later stage involves more karma neurochemistry and the research suggests so there was a massive study that asked people across the u.s to anonymously disclose lots of information including how often they had sex in the last month and without knowing they were asking partners at the same address and they discovered that essentially frequency of sex in the last month declined steadily over time but then some people wouldn't answer so they would just leave the box blank right but they could figure out what the

answer was by looking at what their partner had said and their partner had generally given a very low amount when people decided to not answer which suggests that there's this stigma or expectation that everyone should be having sex all the time when maybe they're not but also the idea that you know you have loads of dopamine at start dopamine chills out oh sorry but you've got a really happy friendship bye is it overlooks the fact that there is stuff that you can do to improve the amount of lust that you have. It's essentially like having a growth mindset, but in the context of relationships and lust. So research suggests if you do new and exciting things, for example, or you meet, you have intimate conversations with other couples, or you try to pleasure your partner

without looking for any immediate reward for yourself then these and other things can give lust a kick up the bum basically so it's not like you're doomed forever it's just that it might not come as easily and they've they've run some really slightly gritty experiments where they've like attached things to people's genitalia to measure how aroused they get when watching pornographic films essentially and they found that even in the context of someone just watching the same porn movie on repeat, people become less aroused over time. We find novelty arousing. And by definition, when you're with someone in the long term, they lose some of their novelty.

But then the argument is, people are really complicated, right? Like, I'm pretty sure that every single human could still have novelty for the rest of their lives. Do you know what I mean? With the same person. But I guess you have to then work a little bit harder for it. Yes, exactly. As human beings, we're a bit lazy. So, well, I think.

So I've got two questions on the back of that, actually. The first one's about expectations. I think we have such high expectations from life and life is challenging and unfair and unpredictable at moments and therefore doesn't always meet our expectations we're not great at replacing expectation with appreciation and I can't help I know you've got a whole chapter dedicated to that and I thought it's really interesting because it does feel like again you know is it and I know there's a lot of conversations around the media and things like that you know things like porn and the accessibility of things like porn and the intensity of some porn these days but not not just porn but just you know also Disney movies on the opposite end of the scale and the kind of sense of

sort of love and almost which is what I I was sceptical of prior to our relationship, of some things like that, that we have these kind of completely and utterly unrealistic expectations of our relationships, of the people that we're with, and that they're almost doomed to fail as a result. Did you find that was something you came up against a lot? Yeah, and also I think it was something that I had as well so I used to have a way way more avoidant attachment style and I think

I have earned security so I really empathize with insecure attachment and when I was at the height of avoidance I definitely had unrealistic expectations and I think for me I used it and I think people who are avoidant can use it as a way of perpetuating and justifying their avoidance. Because if you believe that there is absolute perfection, you are justified in breaking up with people or finding them not good enough. But I do think it goes beyond insecure attachment. And I think it's relevant to everyone.

So I interviewed someone called Terry, who is from Phoenix, Arizona, in an airport doorway. And she said that she'd just written a paper on how Disney is messing up women basically because boys grow up with porn expecting a threesome and girls grow up with Disney expecting a prince to save their day and those hopes and expectations are totally misaligned and I think that that is so interesting really interesting point so I like concrete evidence right and it's really hard to get concrete evidence on something as woolly as culture or media but one of the very few pieces of chunky evidence I could find was a review by sociologists of all general audience films so films for family

and kids that had grossed more than 100 million dollars between 1990 and 2005 and they found that 75 percent had love as a primary or secondary plot only 10 percent didn't and those are kind of all sort of disney-esque films right they are largely disney films and of those the vast majority basically put love as transformative of those two people so and a bit magical and a bit ludicrous so let's say I'm a mermaid I have learned to walk at exactly the time that we fall in love or we're falling in love on a magical carpet ride that's great and we only have to look at each other we don't even speak the same language but we're in love and there's nothing about how it's really tiring when you have a child or how you know 30 years down the line you

might have to try and figure out how you're gonna you know zhuzh up your sex life or whatever there's nothing about that getting together is the climax and that is the aim and there's nothing about the realities of love or the idea that love might be a skill or might involve hard work those films portray love as it's just about finding the right person. You essentially don't really have that much to do break up more likely to think that getting with someone else is the answer and also they found that the couple's expectations weren't related so let's say you and I are in a relationship and I have totally unrealistic expectations and you have really realistic expectations and you're amazing and frankly I'm lucky to be with you I'm talking to Ella in case anyone is right I am lucky to be with you Ella but I don't realize that because I think that I can get impossible perfection right essentially it doesn't matter

what you do you could be the best version of yourself or any human being possible and you won't be good enough for me and that's no one ever will because no one ever will be and also research again limited only following people in their 20s over an eight month period and really what you want to do is follow people of all ages for like 40 years but they found that expectations were quite consistent over time so people break up they get in new relationships and their expectations remain the same yeah I find it absolutely fascinating because I, as you said, it's almost like when people get married, there's so much focus on a wedding, but a wedding is like a nice dress

and drinks with your friends and it's great. And then actually like you go into marriage and you've got to deal with things together. And you've, as we said, like life's unpredictable, life's difficult. It's like showing up for that person every single day and being able to support them. And that's not easy.

It's given us so much and I'm so grateful for the depth of it. But, you know, it is a very selfless and kind of challenging thing at points. And I think that, again, is something we don't talk about because, you know, it's quite personal because you're probably dealing with personal issues

and it's not very glamorous. And so what are the three kind of main warning signs you should maybe look for in a relationship maybe the start of the relationship maybe as the relationship really kind of gets going that would typically prove that or show that a relationship over time probably isn't going to be a happy one this brilliantly comes back to the point that I wanted to make earlier when you were talking about love at first sight. So I interviewed this guy called Simon Blackburn, who's a professor of philosophy at Cambridge and wrote a brilliant textbook about lust. And we were having this debate about whether you can know at the time whether what you're experiencing is lust or love, how will you know if it lasts? And he said he said you know what I think you just won't know

until time passes and until you really get to know each other and only then will you know and it's only something you can know with hindsight essentially so I would love to provide some easy answers and there are some but time may be one of the key factors. That said, I think that if you have an insecure attachment style, so let's imagine you, Matt, are highly anxious, and you are needy and clingy, and you want to be close. And that's something that you need to calm yourself down. And I am avoidant, and Ella is secure. And we are the two people available at this dinner party and you're like hey these two are very interesting you should go for Ella because if you go for me then we're gonna have the chase withdraw chase withdraw pattern now how do you know if I'm avoidant

well there are some warning signs have I broken up with everyone I've ever dated have I got a relationship history of never ever being with anyone do I seem arrogant in any way you know am I reluctant to admit any failings or flaws you know because that is something that is quite a classic avoidant thing whereas if you're trying to say if it's the other way around and you're avoidant and I'm anxious then anxious telltale signs might be being very sensitive to threat very sensitive to threat so very jealous yeah or just any threat you know like danger they're kind of smoke you look to me that's me i'm always looking for safety i am passing no judgment matt always laughs he's like ella's the most like safety first person so yeah like being very um there's a risk here uh we need to be mindful of that someone who's

highly avoidant wouldn't think of that the highly avoidant person wouldn't even notice there was a a risk and a lot of um evolutionary psychologists argue that that that's a benefit to insecure attachment styles because if it was just all secure people and avoidant people then we might not detect any risks and we might all be dead do you know what i mean so whereas if it was just all secure people and avoidant people then we might not detect any risks and we might all be dead do you know what i mean so whereas if it was just anxious and secure then you'd you'd detect the threat but what you need is an avoidant highly avoidant person to come along disconnect from their emotions be highly practical and get you out of the problem yeah so those are some warning signs you need to basically team up with someone who's secure yes and honestly like doing

completely transparent like that's our relationship a hundred percent like I am mrs safety first and I had a real fear of vulnerability I had a real fear of kind of completely being open with someone I think from just from my own experiences, I was so scared of getting myself into a situation like that, that I felt like it was better to kind of avoid. And because you are so secure and, you know, your parents had the most amazingly secure marriage that I've ever been lucky enough to see, you have that innate sense of security. And it has been interesting, like since the four and a half years that we've been together, I think my attachment style has completely and utterly changed to, although I do still love safety in every capacity, you know, actually being very secure. And it's interesting to reflect on that. So I've got to ask a question.

I wanted to ask this question. Swinging and polygamy. We're going all around the houses today um this is actually something I find fascinating so I don't know if you guys haven't seen the Louis Theroux documentary on polygamy just watch it it's so interesting but it it struck me when you were saying about people kind of looking for ways to kind of shush up their sex life or that dopamine hit. Swinging is a huge trend now. And is that what's driving it? And aren't something like 46% of countries in the world accepting of polygamy? Yeah. I mean, so I love that statistic. Thank you. So I didn't, I don't know if swinging is a trend

because I don't have numbers over time to notice to see whether they're increasing or not and just how many people swing is hard to get numbers on it looks like it's about one to four percent it doesn't have to be sex it can be watching it can be kissing or whatever but also the really key point is that you do it as a couple and you do it in a kind of social environment it's almost kind of quite structured a lot of swingers say that you know they go to these things with their partner and it really spruces up their sex life but others say it makes them incredibly jealous and some people have stopped swinging because they were getting emotionally involved with the people that they

were swinging with and one of their rules was not to get emotionally involved it's really easy I think to be in a monogamous relationship and think do you know what I think sleeping with other people is the answer and yes that might have some benefits but it will also have disadvantages everything has ups and downs so don't romanticize it yeah so I was our last topic I'd actually love to talk about stigmas around kind of sex and relationships in general and and things like polygamy having multiple partners exploring your sexuality and it I do find it really interesting that sex is so normal it's such a big part of the world we live in and yet it's something we're so uncomfortable talking about expressing and and what was your learning of of the stigma how much were people kind of afraid of expressing themselves fully for fear of judgment why are so many people so judgmental of non-monogamous practices including swinging one particular online porn site had

something like 85 million visits a day 85 million visits a day so it's okay to look at people having sex on a screen where you know it's not really that realistic and it's a bit fetishized and a general consensus among teens that see this agree that it's kind of man dominates woman when it's heterosexual porn but yeah it's not okay to look at people having sex in real life I think that's an interesting question really interesting question and in a US study 21% of the population had tried non-monogamy so whether that's open relationships swinging polyamory or gay non-monogamy so that's 21% that is one in five that is a lot and then on top of that you have the people who are really monogamous who are having extramarital affairs or sex or kissing which is up to 72 percent

of people and then as you said you have 46 percent of countries in the world who accept marrying more than one person so like why are we acting as though it doesn't happen? Yeah, it's just this, I just find it really interesting. And one of the things that I found really important in my project was to try and not be judgmental, because I think if you bring judgment to any conversation, you don't get an authentic, genuine, honest, helpful, exploratory, curious conversation. And I think one of the reasons that strangers were happy to open up to me was that they knew that I wasn't being judgmental and I wasn't going to kind of try and take advantage of them. What was the thing that surprised you most throughout the 10 years of the study? I think in the contents of judgment, there were some that I found particularly surprising, like, for example, for example oh wow infidelity happens more than I realized and oh look it does happen in happy relationships actually you know and people can stay together and have a better relationship after infidelity I think there are things that I was and many people are judgmental about I think many people

assume that infidelity only happens in unhappy relationships one of the things that I love is that in attachment research and non-monogamy research intelligence um gender sort of there is a slight gender difference in non-monogamy but on the whole and money and race don't really come into it so it's really easy for people to think oh people who are different to me do these things but no, there's no one type of person that does this. It's something that we all share, you know, men and women can be avoidant, you know, or people who have loads of money and people have no money can try non-monogamy, you know, I really think I started the process thinking it was all about finding the right person. And I have come to the end of this process thinking, no.

I mean, obviously, you want to find someone who is good. And I think there are a selection of people that you could date. I don't think it's one person. But I think that we have a huge amount of personal responsibility when it comes to our own relationships. I think relationships and love is hard work. It's a skill and how much work you have to put into it depends on your own attachment style or whatever your expectations whatever it is whatever subconscious dark swirly stuff that you are bringing to the table I really see love in a

completely different way and I feel like I'm not the only person who saw it in the wrong way or sees it in the wrong way I feel like it's quite a common thing it's a common misconception because everything that we are surrounded by idealizes romantic magical love you know from perfume adverts to car adverts to watch adverts you know everything from music lyrics to films you know everything misrepresents love and encourages an unhelpful view of it but love is actually in the end love is actually quite mundane and love is love is just actually just wanting to be with a person on a Friday night in pajamas lying in bed yeah actually again it comes back to those car adverts those car adverts,

those perfume adverts. The fundamental underpinning of them is when you fall in love, you will be happy. Your life will be transformed. It's like the magic carpet in Aladdin. That's not true. Your happiness comes from you. The other person can bolster it.

They can support it. They can hold your hand when you're at your low points. You've got to find it in yourself first and foremost. If you were going to leave our listeners today with kind of five take-homes, what are they? I think the first point is the way you feel about relationships might say more about yourself than the person that you're with and that it's worth exploring that

in order to try and have the best relationships possible and that might involve what kind of attachment style do you have what kind of attachment style does your partner have what are your expectations like you know I think there are things you can do to bolster any relationship and actually ironically there's not that much research on this because a lot of stuff focuses on divorce or conflict but I think you've talked a lot about gratitude and appreciation and I do think that gratitude appreciation forgiveness kindness and trying not to be judgmental are really important you know so if your partner comes to you and says let's try swinging then you know try and not be

judgmental about that try and be curious about it wouldn't it be nice if everyone had more honest conversations which I guess is linked to the judgment point I think that love is a skill that requires quite a lot of hard work and isn't actually that romantic you know companionate love the kind of love that makes romantic relationships last and I would really like to try and change the way that people see love somehow it's not easy given it's so misrepresented everywhere that's only four points can I stick with four yeah four is perfect four is perfect amazing Laura thank you so so so much for coming on today honestly it's such an interesting thing and it's so nice to have a space to be able to actually like have these honest conversations as well

we'll be back again next week talking about happiness which leads on quite well from today's episode about finding that internal source of happiness so have a beautiful week everyone thank you so much for listening and if you do have time to rate us review us share us with your friends it makes the world of difference and we so appreciate it thanks everyone You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn