This week on Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones and Dr. Duana Welch, author of Love Factually, explore why couples are waiting longer and longer to have children. Science is indicating that the changing landscape and evolution of communication could be the leading cause of later-in-life marriages, as well as couples ultimately waiting longer to become parents. Listen to the full episode to step into the mind of some of your patients today.
In this episode you’ll hear:
Why couples are waiting longer than ever to partner and reproduce.
Men and women have short term mating strategies that are exploited by "swipe to date" platforms.
Duana talk about the psychology behind human reproduction.
Duana talk about the evolutionary science behind the 'double standard'.
How Duana's book, Love Factually, and coaching services, provide a framework to navigate dating today.
Duana’s Information:
Free content and contacting Duana: http://lovefactually.co
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoveFactuallyAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/duanawelch
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lovefactuallybooks/
Transcript
[00:00:55] Griffin Jones: Today's guest is a little bit of a curve ball for the reproductive health business topics that we normally cover on the show. I've got Dr. Duana Welch with me, Dr. Duana Welch is a PhD psychologist who studies mating and dating behavior. She has a book called Love Factually. She first wrote it in 2015.
She's revised and updated it for our 2022 and beyond world, she has a website called lovefactually.co. She's been a professor at universities in Florida, California, Texas. She's been on PBS and PR Psychology Today. And the reason I wanted to bring her on to our show is because I think that it's an interesting way of exploring why some of your patients are coming to you for the needs that they have for fertility.
A little bit later on in life, we often just kind of chalk it off to career and that's one of the reasons, but you should know what it's fricking like out there, man, for people trying to partner or not. And so that's why I brought Dr. Welch Duana because I think it's a useful way to be able to.
Know, why your patients, some of them are, are coming to you at this age and why they didn't partner earlier on in life and come a decade earlier, or even a couple of years earlier. And in some cases it's just useful for knowing what's happening. So I hope you really find this interview with Dr. Duana Welch to be entertaining.
Enjoy.
Dr. Welch, Duana welcome to Inside Reproductive Health.
[00:02:33] Dr. Duana Welch: Thank you so much, Griffin. It's great to be here.
[00:02:36] Griffin Jones: I look forward to introducing you to the audience because and, and by the time I will have done the synopsis tour, I gave the angle for the folks. I think what you study is very relevant to parts of the reasons why many of these folks, patients are coming to them later in life.
And so there are different ways that will come into this angle throughout our convo. Today, I want to start with the book that you had written in the past that you've updated. I believe you've updated more than once. You've updated, reasonably called love factually. And so can you give us an intro to the book and then what had to be updated most recently.
[00:03:20] Dr. Duana Welch: Sure thanks so much. Well, here's the cover, as you can see it's and this is my first revision. So the first version of this book Love Factually 10 proven steps for my wish to, I do released in January of 2015. So here's seven years later as of February 20 22, we've got a fully revised and updated version.
And the reason is that everything I write is based on science rather than opinion, it's very conversational. So it's not a science tome. It's an advice book. It's a self-improvement book, self-help book, but it's based on science fully referenced in the back. So science did not stop furthering itself just because I finished a book, it went right on.
And so I found that when I was rereading the book about a year ago that I kept thinking, oh, I wish I'd said this differently. Or there are so many studies on this now that I know more about this concept now. So some of the things that we know a lot more about now than we did, then are things like.
How men and women think about the human mating ritual, which is what I call it. Most people in the street call it game playing or something we know a lot more about now is that human nature really hasn't changed all that much, but dating has changed a lot. And a lot of that is because of the ways we're using technology differently than how we did before.
So those are two of the big areas. And other thing is pandemic. This won't be our last pandemic and you can leverage pandemics to actually have better dating outcomes as opposed to worse, which I definitely did in my own life. So I thought I would put that, that in there as well, again, with a scientific basis.
[00:04:57] Griffin Jones: Well, let's start with the meeting rituals that, that men and women have and what needed to be updated about. Your book that you either didn't think about in that way, seven years ago, or you, you came across new literature. What, what was it with the mating rituals that you updated?
[00:05:18] Dr. Duana Welch: Yeah, so nothing about the basic heart, the basis software that we all come into the world with, none of that has really changed all that much.
Although interestingly, recent studies show that human evolution has begun accelerating about a hundred thousand years ago. It's been getting faster and faster and faster. So the idea that we just finished up a hundred thousand years ago, and nothing has really changed since then, that's not true, but we do have substantively the same mating psychology.
We had 45,000 years ago. The new issue comes about when we put ourselves in new contexts, our mating psychology is the same, but when it's thrown into a new context, one of the aspects of our meeting psychology is that it is very adaptable based on the context. So if you put people in an environment where it seems like there are thousands or even millions of potential mates, they behave much differently than if they're in an environment where they believe they're only one or two.
And for example, they'll treat prospective partners as much more disposable. Obviously, if they think that there are many, many, many potential mates and men and women alike do this, and that's a newer thing and it wasn't even always true that the internet created that idea really. That really got the ball rolling with swiping apps where you don't get much information other than what somebody looks like, maybe a few words you don't, you don't get to any of the deeper information that we know for sure.
Creates lasting, harmonious, happy marriages. You just get something surface. And when people are only given a finite amount of information, they make decisions based on that and not the information they don't have. Right. That's just logic. So if what you give people is here's how I look. That's how they make decisions.
And in the past, men made a lot of their decisions based on physical appeal, no matter what environment they were in, but women usually didn't unless they were looking for a hookup now because of swiping apps, men and women alike are doing that. So it's really kind of messed with our mating ritual and it's creating some outcomes that.
Maybe aren't making people so happy in the long-term they're working out maybe better in the short term.
[00:07:27] Griffin Jones: So I want to ask, I have a hypothesis that I want to run by you about women looking for appearances more than they had in meeting selection. I have a hypothesis, so I want to run it by you.
At some point, I made a little note so that I did, but I really want. Dig in to this part of the multitude of potential partners that people have to look for them, what that does to the overall courtship process or the partner selection process better said, I know you have a definition for, for courtship, but let me say partner selection process.
Because for those of you listening, if you haven't been single, since let's call it 2012, 2013, you have no idea what it's like out there. You have, it is a different world. I'm telling you it's a different world and I've been on both sides of it. I've been partnered in both sides and, and, and single on, on both sides of that era.
And I can say that it's different, but I think it's so important for the providers listening to know that this is part of the reason why people are calling. Into to fertility clinics later in life. But I said, why they're choosing to have children later in life among other reasons, but people aren't finding their mate at an average of their early twenties anymore or where their teens and what can you tell us about how these rituals have changed in the, like how long it takes for people to partner?
How else has it changed the partner selection process?
[00:09:01] Dr. Duana Welch: It's really interesting technology, has it shaping us, we're shaping it and it is shaping us. It is we're interacting. Our ancient brains are interacting with these new ways of doing things. And in many ways, they're hijacking.
Parts of our reward system in our brain. So for example, men have always loved to look at young, beautiful fertile women and online pornography makes it where that they can look at that all day, every day, if they want to. Whereas in ancient Japan, maybe they would encounter one or two women that looked like that ever.
And they probably wouldn't have encountered us, strength, no strings attached access because women have fathers and brothers and mothers, and you would have been in a group where kin would have exerted certain pressures on you. And so when you couple that, which of course porn's been around since long before 2011, but the, the advent of like porn.
And free porn. So anybody anytime can get lots and lots of access and anybody's anytime you usually choose to are men, women don't choose to do this so often because we value something else. When you pair that with swiping apps, what you get is the part of male psychology that is attuned to youth and beauty focuses so exclusively on that, that it takes men a while to realize that they're tired of a diet of candy, that they really want the full meal.
And another thing that happens is men really need dopamine in order to fall in love. And what happens when men get instantaneous sexual access is their dopamine levels. Don't seem to rise enough for them to fall in love. So a lot of things that work for getting people to fall in love and stay in love.
A lot of those things, aren't really a big part of modern day meeting. Most women are going to have sex with the guy on date one, two or three. Unless they're very conservatively religious and most men expect that now, and women are afraid not to give it. I was talking to a woman recently who said I don't really want to have sex then because it's basically sex with a stranger.
And I don't really like it, but I feel like if I don't have sex, then that the guy's going to find somebody who does, and this is happening across the spectrum of ages. And what happens is it makes it difficult for people to, especially men to realize that they want. Love and commitment. And then to do the things that would lead to that.
For example, looking at character and not just appearance or looking at values and not just whether you enjoy doing the same things, and I'm not just looking for somebody who looks great and address, but somebody who looks wonderful in her, PJ's at 10 at night when you just want to watch Bridgeton and then go to bed.
And so, things have they're different than they used to be. And when men have this perception that the world is full of tens and they can get one anytime they want. And that there's no end to the supply of potential mates, it's difficult for them to see their way back to the mating psychology.
That really results in deep connection. So you can pull a finding that later.
[00:12:09] Griffin Jones: And you talked about youth and beauty being one of the things that they're seeking and they're getting at a disproportionate scale than they ever would have gotten in the ancient world from the digital world. So if men are you, you mentioned in the book that youth and beauty are one of the things that men look for as signs of fertility in, in the book, what is it that women are looking for?
[00:12:33] Dr. Duana Welch: Women mainly look for provision and protection, but having the goods isn't enough provision it's, it's not just the ability to provide and protect. It's the willingness. So let's say that a man has a lot of money. I've actually seen this in my client practice. Let's say, man has a lot of money. And he uses that to gain access to women, but then it turns out that when he finds a woman, he wants to commit to, he doesn't want to actually provide.
He just wants to have an ongoing relationship with this woman without actually provisioning her without making her feel safe. Women don't tend to feel emotionally safe if they're not physically safe, they don't tend to feel physically safe unless you as a man offer commitment. So I'm not just going to offer to protect you today.
I'm going to offer to protect you for the rest of my life. And potentially even after my decease, I'll have a life insurance policy. I'll leave you a house. That kind of thing. Women don't tend to feel safe without that. So again, the modern meeting context is not really queuing the behaviors from most men that women or that women deeply connect with.
And a lot of women who say, oh yeah, I'm fine with casual sex. Some of them really. But research would indicate that three quarters of them, what they really mean. And again, they're not necessarily consciously aware of this, but what they mean at an implicit level is I'm going to give you sex in the hopes that this starts a relationship where you want to commit to me.
So women are looking for commitment that indicates that this provision and protection will be ongoing. They're looking for love, which is another indicator of that. And they're looking for generosity back to the guy who does it, he can provide, but he doesn't really want to. I had a client who she gave me permission to put her story in my books.
And so in the book, she's called Diane. That's not her real name, but she was proposed to, by a man who had lots of resources. And she had a couple of kids that were very young. And this guy asked her to get married and she called me and said I have some doubts and I don't know where they're coming in.
And I love him. I want to have a life with him, but there's just something in me that is resisting saying yes. And I said, anytime, you've got a gut feeling, you need to investigate that further because your intuition is a finally evolved mechanism. That's there to save you any, any problem that your ancestors had with survival and reproduction, probably your intuition has some inkling about protecting you on that dimension.
So I want you to ask him some questions. And one of the questions I want you to ask him is what would marriage look like in your ideal world? How do we deal with paying for health insurance. How do we deal with the mortgage? How do we deal with my job, your job? Those kinds of things. And so she asked him and it turned out that he just thought that he would just go on living like he was living and she could have the benefit of living in his home, but he wasn't going to provide health insurance.
Although his job gave him health insurance, it was not going to cost him that much more to provide it. And he had all the resources, it was a button off of his shirt, really for him to do for her and her children, but he didn't want to. And she turned him down. She eventually accepted a proposal from a man who had far, far less, but wanted to give it all to her.
And so after this, I started asking my students here's scenario A and here's scenario B, which woman do you think was why. The woman who chose the man who had a lot of resources, but would not give them the woman who chose the man who had few resources, but devoted them all. And I've never had a semester where students said, oh yeah, go for the guy with lots of money.
Who never shares it.
[00:16:21] Griffin Jones: Yeah. Evolutionarily. That makes sense too. You had a know there was one partner Genghis Khan, or it had everybody, but it probably wasn't a lot of security for all of the women that Genghis Khan reproduced with over the years. Right. But at least whoever was in spots tend to 458, probably didn't, but it makes sense that it's someone having a mate that was willing to procure resources and, and to, to share those resources, it seems like more of an evolutionary advantage.
[00:16:55] Dr. Duana Welch: Absolutely. And the thing about Mr Khan is that a lot of those women didn't have the choice, right? Rape was rampant. And a lot of those women wouldn't have had the choice, but among those who did have a choice moving it to a whole different era, there were Beatles babies. There were women who tried to have sex with one of the Beatles, for the purpose of getting pregnant.
Sometimes a woman will roll the dice for a man who she knows will not commit, will not provide, will not protect. She has the sense. And again, this is not conscious. Mating psychology is rarely conscious men don’t say say, Hm, her waist to hip ratio is 0.7. Therefore she is both fertile and fecund. And I shall tap that.
They don't say that they just know what they want. Women just know what they want. They want one of the Beatles, but they don't realize it's because a man who can distinguish himself to that degree probably has superior genes to cast forward. And her children have better chances of success in life, even if he doesn't offer provision of protection.
[00:17:56] Griffin Jones: And you talk in the book about the difference between long-term and short-term mating strategies. And I do want to dig into that. I just want to make sure that I have it correctly. So men are seeking fertility and fidelity is that that's their two big things and youth and beauty are signs of fertility.
And is that my rights so far?
[00:18:15] Dr. Duana Welch: Yeah, absolutely. It's not the only thing they're seeking, but if men were left only to their urge, that would be with them going..
[00:18:24] Griffin Jones: And women are seeking above, above other things, including other things, but above other things, provision and protection. Is that the right way of look recapping that?
[00:18:35] Dr. Duana Welch: Yes. Unless a woman is in short-term mating mode, in which case she's going to look for things like fame and, and extreme fortune. There's a study from 2013 by researcher and Carrie Getz, and she found that women in short-term mating mode look for a man who flashes a lot of cash right away.
And who's unusually good looking, but women in long-term meeting mode, they're looking for men, who's offering for the long-term. And of course, those of your listeners, they're dealing with people who are trying to have children and are having difficulty accomplishing that these are people presumably in long term meeting mode or people who've found their long-term partner.
And so these women are looking for provision and protection, for sure.
[00:19:17] Griffin Jones: So either they, some of them are coming later because it took them longer to find that long-term partner because of some of this, or some people have said either I am not finding a term partner or it's just not for me.
And, and they're coming to fertility specialists as single wound so that they can have their children. And so this is probably impacting them in some either they decided to, they just said, well, that's not for me, or it took a while. And so I want to talk about the, the short term, the differences in short-term mating and long-term mating for men and women, because I suspect that our digitally lives are pointing more towards the short term as they do, is it doesn't many things. And you say in the book that men's short term and long-term mating strategies run concurrently until they don't. Right. Whereas women's and short-term, and long-term mating strategies are different from the beginning.
Can you talk about that?
[00:20:22] Dr. Duana Welch: Sure. Well, one of the points is something I alluded to earlier, which is a lot of times when women claim to have a short-term strategy, their biology kind of hijacks that and turns it into a long-term strategy. It usually doesn't work. But for example, a scientist named Townshend found that women in short term, mate-ships, they were in a friends with benefits situation when he asked them is this partner right for you?
The women by and large said, no, that's why it's a friends with benefits thing. This is not my right long-term partner. And then when he asked them, so are you emotionally connected to this person? Is it difficult for you to maintain your emotional distance? 75% of women said, yes, I'm getting attached.
Even though I don't want to. Now a quarter of women, they were able to just walk away whistling a happy tune was fascinating about the study is the results were exactly opposite for men. Three quarters of men said I'm not having any problem at all. Maintaining my emotional distance one quarter of men.
What I'm getting attached, even though, probably not a good idea. So, the odds are in favor of women when they pursue a short-term strategy, having some kind of long-term angle, whether or not they're conscious of it when women pursue a purely short-term strategy. A lot of times it's because they don't have the ability to pursue a long term strategy.
For example, after wars, if most of the young men are deceased and they're just a handful of men left that they could procreate with, they'll make the compromise rather than having no children ever they'll make the compromise. And they'll be the other woman, they'll be the side piece, women who have no access to resources of any kind and their desperate poverty, they will choose prostitution or it'll be forced upon.
One way or the other, and it's not because women love prostitution. I always find it interesting that women are so denigrated as if they thought, what I'll do. I know I'll become a sex worker. There are women who do that, but it's really, really unusual. So one of the first things to acknowledge is that our current landscape is exploiting only certain aspects of mating psychology.
Yes. Women and men alike, both have short-term and long-term strategies. And whereas women's is usually long-term even when they say it's short term, men's really does split into long-term and short-term the vast majority of men want to get married. They want to have a full commitment. They want to have a family.
In fact, men who are divorced are even more likely to want these things than men, than women who've been through. So it's not like they say, oh, once and never again. I'm never getting married again. They normally see the advantage to full commitment. The problem happens when we extend and these are, these are my words, but they are based on studies that I'm thinking of right now, when we extend adolescents to a point where people can reach their thirties without needing to seriously contemplate settling down, then you wind up with a phenomenon where women are in this bind of trying to find someone to get to know well enough to make a reasonable choice, to have a child with and someone who will commit to them.
And if they keep having sex right up front. And if men keep doing that, a lot of times the emotional bond that they need in order for it to make sense to have children with this person, it doesn't form. So women are in this circumstance, like the women in war. Who am I going to pick? What am I going to do here?
And so a lot of them do turn to sperm banks. I think that is an increasing phenomenon. I certainly hear from women who ask me, is that something that I should do? I kind of feel like I should take care of motherhood on my own, and then look for a partner. Cause I'm running out of time. And guys don't like to be looked at like, you're my last best hope.
And then men, conversely, sometimes they don't realize until their fifties that they would really like to settle down. And the problem with that is women don't tend to trust men. Who've reached a certain age. Who've never gotten married. They will say to me, I'll never date a man who hasn't at least been married before.
I just won't. And so men have prime time also for committing, maybe not so much for a biological reason, but for the reason that they do pay a penalty actually for waiting quote unquote too long to make a marriage choice. I would say that the. The price for this seems. And I don't know if studies on this, this is my experience with 20 years of clients.
What I do is I help people find, commit to and thrive in healthy long-term relationships based on with the basis as science being for my advice rather than just my opinion. And so what I find is that once a guys had, I don't know, 40 to 45, it becomes a bigger challenge for a couple reasons. Number one, women think, well, gosh, he's so much older than I am.
I don't know if I want to spend that much time on the backend of my life with him being that much older than I am or I think he must just be a Playboy. Why has he never settled down before now? Or they'll think, maybe he doesn't have, there's something wrong with him.
He doesn't have the ability to make a commitment. It's not a Playboy. He just, there's something that that's just off here. So women don't tend to trust. But I do think that's one reason why fertility specialists see women and men past the traditional age reproduction probably on a an increasing basis is men.
Who've waited a long time. Now they their fertility declines as well. Of course, everybody in your audience will know that it's not sharp, like women's, but there is a decrease and then women who need their, in a time crunch. They have to find somebody if they're going to ever do this.
[00:26:05] Griffin Jones: And so there's a mating cost to men waiting too long to, to settle down to.
I kind of felt that way at age 34, like in the scene of the movie where the giant door is closing any rolls underneath that at the last moment, I kind of felt that way. So, okay, this is happening where people are wondering, well, I've gotten to this age, should I even partner? And what about you mentioned the Beatles baby phenomena as a short term meeting strategy for women.
So in the book you say that women will look for when they're truly in a short-term strategy, versus when they're in a long term strategy, they will look for different characteristics, right? That the type of man she might marry is not the same necessarily the profile of man that she would hookup with on a one night stand.
Can you talk about that?
[00:26:53] Dr. Duana Welch: Yeah. Women, the biggest predictor of whether a man can have extra pair of sexual relationships, what you and I would call a affair. The biggest predictor, whether man's going to do that is actually not whether he's happily married. It's whether he can, the biggest predictor of whether a man can get women, even after he's committed is how good-looking he is, how famous he is.
Is he rich, famous? And good-looking whoa, that guy is going to have a lot opportunities, cheat, especially if he has a ton of sexual experience already. And if he travels for work, those are cheating's five usual suspects. If it's, and a lot of times that guy is just one guy. Like there's a guy who has all of that.
And so a lot of times women kind of don't trust that they would love to have a short term fling with that guy, but they know that all the other women would love that as well. And at a gut level, they're a little worried about committing to a man like. I was recently watching a lecture by Dr. David Buss, who is one of the 50 most influential psychologists alive today.
And one of the most important thinkers and writers in evolutionary psychology specific to mate selection.
[00:28:09] Griffin Jones: The author of “Why Men Behave Badly” is I think his most recent book, or I dunno if it's most reason, but it's one of his books. So please, please go. I think I found him originally from you. I found a whole bunch of great people from you, but, but please go on about Dr.
Buss's work.
[00:28:27] Dr. Duana Welch: Yeah. Thanks. Yes, his, his big recent book is “Why Men Behave Badly”. His timeless classic is the evolution of desire. He's got a book called “The Murderer Next Door”, which is about a toxic jealousy and where it comes from an, our ancestral past. He also was the author of the first respected and widely used evolutionary psychology textbook, and it's in multiple languages all over the world today.
I think it's in its sixth or seventh edition now. So he's a huge thinker in this area. Not going to lie. One of the best moments of my life is when he endorsed my books. He is the author of “Why Men Behave Badly”.
That is indeed his most recent tome really it's all his books just make my jaw drop. They are so heavily science-based, he's done research in 37 different cultures and countries. The research continues right up until today. And one of the things that he finds and that he said in a recent lecture of his, that I attended, and which is covered also in the book, you mentioned women behave badly is that men will frequently it's not all about.
It's not all men that rape. It's not all men that are predatory. It's not all men that cheat. It's a few, but they really get around. And one of the biggest predictors of whether man is going to be one of these guys, is, is he extremely powerful and wealthy? He is very likely to do that. Now, women seek those guys out for short term liaisons.
It's not just that these men try to get sex it's that women offer them sex. So for example, I've worked with men who want to be faithful and are faithful, who they save my life, if I tell other men about it, they hate me because what happens to me on the daily is women come up and say, how about it really?
And truly it's a world that most men can never imagine, but some men inhabit that world and women usually don't want to marry those guys because they know that men inhabit this world. They know they're taking a big risk when they choose this man.
[00:30:29] Griffin Jones: Contrast that with men's short-term and long-term strategy, we tend to run concurrently, right?
Oh, she's attractive. She's nice to talk to. It's not like a different profile of other, other than one being a lot wider than the other, I suppose. But can you talk about what men's short-term mating strategies?
[00:30:49] Dr. Duana Welch: Oh, I certainly can't actually the distinction between women's long-term strategy and women's short-term strategy is actually pretty narrow women.
See somebody better looking and with more resources perhaps for the short term, but they. So they'll accept somebody who's maybe not as tall, maybe not as good looking, but it's committed as a provider and protector for the long term, but their standards are actually pretty high for short and long-term mating because a woman ancestrally was stuck with the results I.E. Kids for absolute ever, which might not be very long if she died or her family stoned her or whatever, it could cost her her life to make a short-term move.
So even when women are in short-term mode, they tend to be very cautious men on the other hand, and I'm going to quote Dr. Buss here. He says that their strategies are sometimes a bit smoley low when it comes to a short-term partner. Their standards for a long-term partner are just as high as women's are a man's standards for a wife are very high indeed, but a man's standard for a hookup can be a woman who's not conscious.
A woman who is a mentally challenged, who actually has a developmental deficits, a woman who does not have good social intelligence, a woman who maybe is not even all that attractive for short-term mating men standards are really, really low by and large. Now for longterm meeting, men standards tend to be, no, they want youth and beauty and they want somebody who shares their values and will raise children well, and we'll get along with their family and has good friends of her own and is mentally healthy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:32:26] Griffin Jones: You talk a little bit in the book about how one, if a man, a man can be pursuing a long-term, maybe this is what I'm thinking of. And please make the distinction is that a man will be, can be pursuing a long-term strategy, but then he can, he will abandon it for the short term strategy of if that's what he's pursuing a woman with all the features that you just described. But there's the opportunity for a short-term mating strategy to be executed more quickly. And so he'll abandon his long-term mating strategy for that is that one a fair characterization? If it isn't please correct me?
[00:32:58] Dr. Duana Welch: No, you're absolutely right. So, because men's long-term and short-term strategies tend to be operating at the same time. When women meet a man, if a woman is what a man is looking for, or very close to what he's looking for, if they have sex right away, a lot of men will not be able to emotionally connect.
So I've worked with men who have said to me, and this goes right along with the science I've worked with men. Who've said to me, Duana I really liked this woman and she's got everything I'm looking for. And. I was thinking about her for a long-term possibility. And now I just can't get interested.
And I don't understand why. And when I start asking questions, normally there's a profile. Normally it's the case where this guy has had pretty easy sexual act access to women in the past. So this is my hypothesis and it is not proven. I just want to tell you, I'm basing this on science, but I'm making a leap here.
Okay. My leap is that the more short-term partners a man has had, the more difficult it is for his dopamine levels to rise to a point of falling in love. The reason I say this is, I know for sure studies show that men who have immediate sex with a woman often do get emotionally bonded. If the man is a virgin has very low social status or has very few sexual partners in his past, very few.
This makes me think that the opposite is also true. And my work with clients has, has borne that out. What I tell these guys is, look, it's not like you set out to be a so-called cat. You actually had intentions toward this woman that were of the long-term variety, but what your mating psychology did is it shifted her from the Mrs right category to the miss right now category. And because this is not a conscious decision, you probably don't have a lot of control over shifting it back. So what I would recommend is either you go to a dating scenario with the same woman where you stop having sex with her, I've never seen a man take this advice, but.
But it is a possibility of something a man could do to try to put the toothpaste back in the tube. He could stop having sex with her, but continue courting her and see if his dopamine levels can start to ramp up to the point that he actually falls in love, or he can stop seeing her. And the next time he finds somebody that, and by the way, stop having sex with other women too.
You want to increase your motivation for really finding Mrs. Right? And the motivation is a lot more increased if you stay thirsty. My friends in the word of the commercial and the words of the commercial. So stop having sex with anybody, but you, and start looking for Mrs. Right? When you find somebody who you think is a possibility where you're attracted to her more than just for her appearance, you're attracted to her personality.
You think that she has what you're looking for in a long-term partner court her until you are deeply in love before you attempt to have an orgasm with her.
[00:36:00] Griffin Jones: So people are going to be asking, well, when are you going to talk about same sex couples, Griff? When are you gonna ask about transgender? I am going to ask about those things, but if I had my way, do I know this would be a five and a half hour podcast, because there's so much that I want to ask you.
And the reason I've been digging in on the short term and the differences between short-term and long-term mating strategies is because if the technology that we're using right now is causing us to, or is it empowering one over the other? It would explain for a delay in finding long-term partners.
And it would be that partly makes sense for why people are coming to see fertility specialists later in life. But I want to continue on this, this point that you just made of, of his dopamine might not be raising enough in the case of. If he's pursuing a short-term meeting strategy from porn or Tinder , or all the things that, that exist in society now that either didn't exist as much or didn't exist at all a few decades ago.
Then is it possible that it's part of a social construct? So I think when people think of that, they think of, oh, that's the old double standard is that he can sleep around and that women can't and I suspect that that double standard, that social contract arose from this primordial mating behavior.
But can you speak to that at all?
[00:37:31] Dr. Duana Welch: Sure. I hate the double standard. I mean I'm a feminist. I believe women should have all the same rights and opportunities that men have. And it's not the world we live in yet, but I do know where the double standard comes from. And I don't see it changing anytime soon.
One of the re one of the reasons for the double standard and quite possibly one of the reasons that men lose interest in she, who was easily obtained sexually is because of something called paternity assurance. Fertility specialists are a new phenomenon, especially well, in any scientific sense, there have always been people who claim that they could do this with your bed position but fertility specialists, those are new, right.
And for paternity tests are new, but our mating psychology comes from a time that is thousands and thousands of years before those phenomena. And therefore a mating psychology exists as if it acts like those phenomenon kind of don't exist. So men are biologically as well as psychologically primed to avoid making a long-term commitment to a woman who might put his genetic line at risk.
So for example, men have what I call super sperm. They have sperm. There's a little bit, there's some controversy about the first thing I'm going to say none about the subsequent things. I'm going to say. There's some controversy about whether there are sperm that exists for the only purpose of strangling other men's sperm.
And those firms would definitely not exist if sperm competition never happened. If women were always faithful, if women never gave it up for somebody else. Okay. So maybe those farm exists, maybe they don't, some studies find it.
[00:39:13] Griffin Jones: So the andrologist listening. There's a hypothesis for your next abstract.
There's for the next study that you're going to do. Maybe there's some andrologist that's studied that. So we're listening. Okay. So there's potential controversy with 0.1. What are the subsequent points?
[00:39:28] Dr. Duana Welch: Well, men have they have larger testes than any other mammal per body size. I mean, the reason for that is you don't see that.
For example, with gorillas, gorillas have no mate competition at all. They have a harem there. They, all, the Silverback is the only male with access to those females. They have phenomenally low sperm counts. They have very short penises because they don't have to please a female they've got access regardless of what she feels about it.
Human males are not in that position. They compete against other males. And when they're off providing and protecting, their woman could be with somebody else voluntarily or otherwise. And men can't control the or otherwise portion of it. There, there can be a war where men use rape as a, as a threat against men, which they do still today a lot. You can't control that, but what you can control is she likely to put my genetic line at risk physiologically. One of the ways men protect against that is by having a higher ejaculate, higher sperm count per ejaculate than any of the other primates and mammals. And their testessize per body sizes, enormous.
They also have something in their semen that this blew me away. The first time I heard this, I thought semen was sperm. I thought, why did we not use those terms interchangeably? Well, because as probably everybody listening to this knows, but I didn't know because this isn't my field. Most of what's in semen is not sperm
most of it is stuff like sugar, like a sack lunch that the sperm carry along with them. So they can have a snack while they make their way to the egg. ost. And, but there's a whole lot of other stuff too. There's dopamine and there's oxytocin. There's this cocktail of chemicals that are easily absorbed through vaginal walls that create a woman's attachment to a man. Gordon Gallup Jr.did research a few years ago that showed that if couples aren't using condoms and they're having sex at least once a week, if a man is ejaculating into the woman that he's with, the jacket has so many mood boosting properties that it's as effective for most women as an antidepressant. So what's happening is that's yet another physiological mechanism that men have to keep.
Women from putting their genetic line at risk. She feels good when she's with me, she's not going to stray. So most people find this, you know, oh, oh, I get, just have to tell you one more Griffin. Cause this one really freaks me out. So if you separate men and women for two weeks and other men and women are together for those two weeks and the men and women are together and in a committed relationship, you just say, have sex the way you normally would.
And the men and women who are apart they're apart for two weeks and you say, you can masturbate as you normally would. Then at the end of two weeks, you have these couples, you say, okay, we want you to have sex on day 14. So however much you've had sex with your partner in the interim, we want you to have sex on day 14 men, who've been with their partners the whole time, have a much lower sperm count per ejaculate than men who have been without their partners the whole time, even if they masturbated the same amount that these other guys had sex with a woman that.
In other words, something freaky is happening where a non-conscious process recognizes. Oh, she could have been with somebody else. I will pump up the volume. Literally there will be more sperm in my jacket than if I had been with her the entire time.
[00:43:17] Griffin Jones: So there's so much evolutionary behavior and genetic responses to protect the genetic line of the mail.
That perhaps the reason for the reason for the double standard is because I've heard you say before, and this is an on this podcast. We have to put an asterix of, not anymore with donor oocytes sites, but that, but of course, prehistorically that the woman knew whose baby it was no matter how many men she slept with it was hers.
Exactly. And so up until assisted reproductive technology with donor gametes, which is only decades old. That's always been the case.
[00:43:58] Dr. Duana Welch: Always.
And so there is a double standard. You can, you can count on it that any time our bodies have protected us from, from somebody sleeping around to such a huge screaming, I just gave you just the tip of the iceberg on the data there, right?
Men's bodies do a lot to make sure that they do not put their own genetic line at risk by choosing the wrong long-term partner. They do a lot. Now you can, you can guarantee empty it. They have emotional mechanisms for the same thing. And one of those emotional mechanisms is they just don't trust women who sleep with them right away not to do it.
The same thing with other men, they just don't. When women say I've never done this before. Men do not believe that. Even if it's true, when women say you're different, you're special to me, men don't buy it. Even if it's true. I work with women all the time who say, I really felt like this guy was so special and that's why I had sex with him quickly because I know that other women will do it if I don't.
And that's the only reason I did it now, he's not into me anymore. And I feel terrible about it. And he doesn't believe me. And he's not into me at a, you know, I don't love this, but I know where it comes from. It's not fair, but it is the way it is.
[00:45:08] Griffin Jones: So why do we suspect that men are not pursuing long-term mating strategies?
Well, if, if that is the case, why do we suspect that on the Tinders? Is that just because that's, what's available on, the Tinders and the Bumbles and all of the places to, swipe, right. It's like, well, I don't believe that. Or my, not me consciously, but my subconscious, all of my evolutionary biology is telling me that this is not a good fit for protecting my genetic lineage.
And therefore, I'm just going to pursue short term mating. Is that, is that what we suspect is happening?
[00:45:51] Dr. Duana Welch: Yeah. I mean, that's a big question with a lot of answers. It's not going to be either or it's going to be a both and kind of scenario. So Phil, Zimbardo pointed to research. I'm going to say about 15 years ago that showed that the average 14 year old was watching about 14 video clips of pornography every day, every 14 year old boy girls were not doing this boys were, and he was able to correlate that with boys desire for commitment in the future versus prior generations of boys had felt. And what he found was that boys did not have the same objectives with regard to marriage and commitment that they had had in prior generations, based on the sheer amount of, men have short-term and long-term mating strategies happening at the, at the same time.
But if the messaging they're getting every day, 14 times a day says short-term is better. What do you think is going to have the greater influence? So part of what's going on is there's always been pornography. I mean, you can go to Pompei and you can see it on the walls. There's always been porn, but it's never been so accessible.
And Tinder has really accelerated that the perception and. The actual reality is that men can get on Tinder today. And many of them can get a sexual partner tonight and never see her again. So again, men have a short term and longterm program, but when you have sex with a lot of different people in the short-term program, the short-term program is what gets activated more and more and more.
And I think this is why, so the average age of marriage at the time of the American revolution, do you have any guests of what the average age of marriage was for men and women?
[00:47:27] Griffin Jones: I'm going to guess for men, it was 20 and for women, it was 17 at the American revolution.
[00:47:35] Dr. Duana Welch: So I'm impressed.
I'm impressed because most people actually guess way longer than that. So the average age for women was 22.
[00:47:44] Griffin Jones: Okay. So I was young. All right. So I guess I have no idea when, because all I'm thinking is like, grandparents' age. And so I'm extrapolating a trend that may have not continued that far.
Okay. But so 22 for women.
[00:47:56] Dr. Duana Welch: 22 for woman at the time of the American Revolution. Yeah. And women were needed at home to help take care of the younger kids. It wasn't a boon to get all your 13 year olds and 17 year olds, married off. Well, men needed to have some resources. So they were usually considerably older than.
So they would often be more like 24, 25 ish.
[00:48:17] Griffin Jones: Is that similar to what it was around world War II? Did it just not? was it stable at that for centuries was?
[00:48:24] Dr. Duana Welch: It was stable for a long time. And then an interesting thing happened. I'm glad you brought up World War II. We tend to have this idea that probably because of our grandparents, who grandparents, great grandparents who married or found their person in World War II, that people married in their teens at the time of World War II was the only decade where we have records, which we've had records since the American Revolution where mainstream Americans married under the age of 20, the average age for women at that time was 19.
And for men, it was just about 20 to 22. Since that time we didn't just go back to where it was at the time of the Revolution. We went way beyond that. We went to, now the average a generation ago, the average had increased to, I think, 27 for men and 24, 25 for women. And now it's in the thirties.
And again, why are you seeing more people who need help with fertility? Because the average person does not understand how sharply women's fertility declines and how quickly that. They don't understand that the time horizon is in fact not, it's not normative for women to easily get pregnant.
[00:49:32] Griffin Jones: And the people that understand it are listening to this show. No, no one understands, like we were never told about that. , I mean, well, of course we're to some like very peripheral level, but in terms of like, I hear so many of my peers that are like, oh yeah, like I'll think about having kids, like when I'm like 30, 35, it's like, that's the end of the natural biological window.
And I think people really consider that.
[00:50:00] Dr. Duana Welch: They don't even, I'm a developmental psychologist. And even when I would tell my students that, they would give me this stink-eye as if I made this up and I was harshing their vibe, don't shoot the messenger. I have nothing to do with these data other than reporting them.
So yeah, I know that everyone listening to this gets it right now there's this perception because men's, long-term, long-term mating. Psychology is not being prime very often. And because their short-term mating psychology is being continually primed, especially by swiping apps. And so is women's women are now doing something that they didn't used to do.
They're making decisions almost purely based on looks for a first meeting part of that is something I said earlier, that when you give people only one piece of information, they go buy the only piece of information they have, which is looks, but part of it is Tinder has also created the impression among women that there's an endless pool of potential mates.
It's done the same for them. And it's not just young women either. Here about here from work with women who are in their forties, fifties, and later who I have to have the talk where I have to say, please stop valuing appearance above these other lasting enduring qualities that make for a happy relationship.
Appearance matters only in so far as you match, it's called the matching phenomenon. People are happier if they physically match their person, but it's not just physical it's it's in terms of a lot of other things like their values and how they want to spend at least some of their free time.
And, and whether they like this other person, not just love them. Do they like this other person as a human being? So there's a lot that goes into it. And again, we're seeing a relatively new phenomenon here that I find really distressing, which is men and women are both selecting on swiping apps.
They're both select selecting for people who are 10% better looking than they themselves. In other words, they're not selecting for a match. So, what happens to men who consistently select for better looking women than themselves.
[00:52:10] Griffin Jones: They get cheated, on dumped. I don't know what happens.
[00:52:14] Dr. Duana Welch: That's exactly what happens. Yeah. What happens to women who do that?
[00:52:20] Griffin Jones: Same.
[00:52:22] Dr. Duana Welch: They get played and ignored. So maybe the guy has sex with themonce, but they don't get a relationship out of it. They're not with the guy long enough to get cheated on and dumped So it's, it's really, it's, I long for the Halcyon days when, match and okay.
Cupid and E-Harmony werethe three big places you could go and you had a lot of information. People wrote paragraph after paragraph about what they were looking for. And there was all this information about what their value system was because people at that time research showed that people who met those ways were slightly happier than people who met any other way.
And the reason was they had enough information to make a good decision before they ever met in person. Now, the opposite is true unless you stick with those three sites.
[00:53:05] Griffin Jones: So I does that also, so that explains the reluctance to match or matching first and foremost on someone's physical appearance.
But what does that mean for once someone is matched? It seems to me that, the actual getting to the date part takes more than take takes forever, or very often doesn't happen relative to the number of matches that occur. I don't have data just seems that that's what everybody talks about.
That was my experience. Do we have any data or information or trends on that of like, okay. Yeah. People have, they've been perhaps they're mismatching or they're matching first on physical appearance, but then like, why isn't this moving beyond that?
[00:53:53] Dr. Duana Welch: So two phenomenon first of all, I don't really know the answer.
I'm going to make a guess. I'm always going to tell you what I'm guessing. I'm guessing based on what I do know about human mating psychology, but I don't know of a study that speaks specifically your question. I'm guessing that right now there's this kind of bifurcated. Reality where the men who are looking for a long-term partner who are on a meaningful site to try to accomplish that are having a fairly difficult time, attracting someone unless they're already very good looking.
And I'm having, even for the first date, I am also hypothesizing that men who have a modicum of good looks, especially if they're also tall, are having no difficulty getting, it's not even a date, just sex why don't we just Netflix and chill. They never take anybody to. So I'm guessing it's kind of, bi-modal distributed that way, that people at the men at the top of the looks well and height, demographics, they're not having that hard a time.
And the other guys are, I certainly see this in my practice. And I talk about, Hey, here's how you succeed. If the odds are against you and here's how you succeed. If the odds are for you, because keep in mind the guys who the odds are in their favor, where women will just give it up on the first date, the odds still aren't in their favor.
The men who hire me want to get married. If women are having sex with you all the time, the first time that's not actually helping you get married from what I've already said, otherwise these guys would never hire me. They have access to endless amounts of sex that would never hire me if that was all it took.
And they do a lot of them hire me. So, I don't know how long it's taking. I do know that there are some strategies that men and women alike can use to make sure that they attract worthwhile partners, not just partners who look good and where they can keep it from becoming a pen pal situation.
Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to just endlessly text message except for players. And guys would self-esteem that or women with self-esteem that so low that they're afraid to actually ever meet anybody in person, but that's not most people, most people ultimately want a genuine connection and you don't get it over text and you don't get it usually on a swiping app.
[00:56:13] Griffin Jones: So what are some of those strategies that, that people can use? And also you say most people don't want that. And I agree with you, although my hypothesis is, as the generations are younger and they get less comfortable with any kind of in-person or eye contact type of contact that, that anything starts to see or anything above whatever their baseline is.
And if their baseline is being in their phone by themselves all the time seems invasive. So it you'd say our DNA hasn't changed in the last 200 years, but but our technology has, and so if I were courting someone 150 years ago, I might go knock on their door and in my suit with my flowers and, and say, hi, I'm Griffin.
But if I did that 50 years ago, like in the seventies, people be like, what the heck is wrong with that weirdo? And certainly if I did it today, it'd be like somebody, somebody get that gut. Somebody send that to prison, if that was the first move and so what would have been I remember in 2008 called.
A young woman on a foot that was like, that was like, cool. Like that meant you were, you weren't afraid you were, you were going to call and it was bold and it was gentlemanly. And then in 2013 it was like, what the hell is a phone call? And so I can envision a generation where even texts seem invasive.
And so I'm really interested in these strategies. And how do you layer them? How do you make them gradual? I guess if, if that is the result that people are so distant from it from a starting point.
[00:57:51] Dr. Duana Welch: Keep in mind, I have an entire book about this, so we won't get to all of it. But to, to go to your point about, about texting and about the way that, again, our evolved psychology is interacting in brand new environments and it's, it's having to try to adjust to those environments.
I don't know which way things are going to go. And I'll tell you why the generation that is just now coming of age, live through a pandemic as did all the other generations still living, but they came of age during that pandemic. I didn't, I'm 53. All my ways of being were jelled. By that time I met my partner during the pandemic.
I did it intentionally because I knew that I had a very easy way to keep everybody at arms length for as long as I wanted win-win. So I had what I call a tipping point. One of the ways is created tipping point where you get rid of people who just want to play the field. And the only people left on the field are the ones who are serious.
And one tipping point is not going to get close in six feet until it looks like we're going to find. Okay. I don't know if today's young people because they have been in a scenario where they couldn't get physically close to anyone, whether that is now so prized, that they are willing to get out of their comfort zone and interact with the world more and more, or whether that has become so depressing that fear of public places, fear of other human beings, fear of contact has been exacerbated, or whether both of these things are true, whether it's by bi-modal with some people going one direction and some people going the other direction, I suspect that's what's really happening and people will find a way because lonely. They will ultimately find a way. I do know that pandemic increased people's desire to have a committed relationship. I do know that the trend toward being casual declined during the pandemic. I don't know how long that decline will last in the face of the technology we've been discussing.
And the trend that's been happening for more than a generation now towards short term mating programs. But one of the things that people can do is they can use a phone call and not a text. And you are absolutely right. Phone calls have been seen as bizarre and overstepping for quite some time now, but here's the deal.
What are the things we know in business is you don't even necessarily have to have a better product in order to succeed. You just have to have a different product in order to succeed. And this is also true in the world of mating. You don't necessarily have to have a better way of doing things in order to succeed, to succeed.
Although it helps a different way can also be just as helpful. So for men who are men are still in the pursuer role by and large, even now, men are the ones who reach out first. They're the ones who make the plan. They're the ones who kind of are the engine behind any actual courtship and not just hooking up, but they're also usually the engine between her surrounding cooking up men are therefore in a really good position to differentiate themselves from all the other guys out there.
By saying when they are meeting somebody, whether in person or more likely virtually, Hey, I'm really enjoying talking with you. I know that it's so 1999, but I would really like to talk to you on the phone and get to know you better. That way. I find that it's a much better way to get to know somebody than a text messaging.
It's a good differentiator. It helps men, especially who aren't, maybe the guy that women would look at an automatically choose I'm the guy who has a lot going for him, who everybody tells him, he's such a great guy, but maybe he's not super tall. Maybe he's not extremely handsome or really wealthy.
Those guys are really helped by standing out from the crowd and offering women. What women's mating psychology still wants today. Long-term commitment, provision and protection over the long haul players, love, texts. They can send the same text message to every woman in their digital address in their digital address book, they can, they can search to their whole contact list.
If they've got a special contact list, that's just women who are single. They can literally send it to all of them. And I watched the Tinder swindler. Some of them do, they can, there are guys who swipe right there. There are actually apps that help men swipe right on, out on everyone. Who's in their given area, in the hopes that any of these other people will swipe right on them.
That's how low the bar is for short-term mating. So when a man actually makes a phone call, here are things that he's doing that show women the seriousness of his purpose. He's making a plan. You don't just call a woman on the spur of the moment anymore. You have to make a plan to call her, right. People don't answer their phone.
The second thing is you have to think of stuff to say. It shows your social intelligence. You get to display that on a phone call. You get to move through your social anxiety. Again, love requires bravery and most people ultimately want love. It requires bravery. Women are still looking for a hero. They're still looking for someone who's brave.
They're still looking for someone who devotes himself to her and not to everybody else. And so this shows that, and it, it keeps the pursuit going, much as men enjoy having sex right out the gate. They love pursuing a woman who they have at have to work for men. Love it. Watch how little boys.
When little boys play, they play at being the concrete hero of the world. They don't just play violence for the sake of violence, unless they're a little sociopaths, they play at liberating Ukraine or whatever it is they play at saving the world. Boys are not violent. They're heroic. They love to be the hero.
So when they do it this way, they get to start something heroic. Make plans, ask a woman out a whole week in advance. What? There's a lot of women who will disappear. Good. Those women do not have the goods to make it for the long haul. If they think you're a freak for asking about a whole weekend in advance.
Let me tell you the women who are serious in their purpose, they love it. When you ask them a whole lot out a whole week in advance, it shows that you're different from the other guys
[01:04:31] Griffin Jones: So I think I could spend an entire, yeah, this is why you have a book and it's called “Love Factually”, and we're gonna link to it.
And its in the show notes it's and everybody should pick it. You should pick it up to know what's going on with your patients, but you should also know it. Pick it up to know what's going on with your friends and relatives who are single. And if that's you, it will change your life. This book, I want to ask about same sex couples, because the part of the reason why I haven't up to this point is because there is a lot of overlap between what women who are attracted to women want and what men who are attracted to men want as men attracted to women and women attracted to men.
But there are some differences, and can you talk a little bit about that?
[01:05:09] Dr. Duana Welch: Sure. Weather and I'm going to talk about transgender to whatever gender orientation a person has evidence is mounting that their brain structure mimics their gender orientation. So people who've grown up thinking I'm a guy who don't have the external genitals of guys.
If you look at their brain scan, the brain has guy and they value the things very often that that guys value gay men are men. They value youth and beauty men. It's, it's easier for me to talk about men's preferences than a women's and we'll get white to why in just a second men value youth and beauty.
Even if this guy is choosing other guys and therefore they're not choosing fertility necessarily, they're not choosing someone that they can procreate with unless they adopt or have a surrogate or something like that. And if you, if you don't believe me, look at the only groups of people who are not afraid of losing their looks straight men, and a lot of lesbian.
People who want to appeal to women, usually aren't that afraid of losing their looks. People who want to appeal to men usually are I'm 53 and you're not, I'm still trying to look. I think I would age past that, but I'm still making an effort why? Well, this is why. Okay. So women, it's a little more complicated because there are women who self identify as them lesbians.
And there are women who self identify as Butch. And you can even look at third-party ratings where you ask people, do you think this person is lesbian or straight? And do you think this person is Butch or femme? And people will identify these strangers the same way that the stranger self-identify fem lesbians are identified by others as.
Butch lesbians are identified by others. Who've never met them as Bush. And what's fascinating is they're mating. Psychology tends to go along with these self and other generated designations so that women who are identified as femme tend to have a more stereotypically feminine mating psychology, where they want a partner, they want a woman, but they want a female partner who's going to provide and protect.
And who is going to do that on an ongoing basis. Women who self identify or are other identified as Butch lesbians tend to have a more masculine mating psychology. For example, they're much more likely to enjoy watching pornography and to do that reliably and routinely. And to, if you ask them how many sexual partners would you like over the course of your lifetime to give a number that's in keeping with what a straight man would say.
So given that the tips that I've been giving, if you are. Femme and lesbian, you can pretty much use your mating psychology as a guide toward Butch lesbians. And by the way, it's funny. I often get feedback from people saying, well, I know women where it's two fems or together, or two Butch women who were together.
Well, what, that's not the way to bet you may know that, but that's why we have science and not just story. The trend is that fem women tend to wind up with Butch women and that gay men tend to trade either. They're both young and hot, or one of them has a lot more resources. And the other one has a lot more youth than beauty.
[01:08:32] Griffin Jones: I asked this because I think part of this has to do with like the, the discussion around this behavior has to do with the reason why people are pairing later. And and perhaps they do it at the peril of this episode is going to be launching at the same time. As I had an REI talk about third party family building, and he talked about how you, we don't just want to have LGBTQ plus friendly fertility treatment.
That's just a tack on. And I think people could say, you just tack that on at the end, you spent the entire 90, you spent 65 minutes talking about heteronormative relationships and then you just tack this on it at, at the end. And maybe that's because this is my show and I'm super interested in this.
And I have a guest on that. I just grill and I wish I could talk for five and a half hours. I'm not paying attention to time. And then the other part is. That I don't know. It's not immediately obvious where we say, okay, this is like, this is not the norm or we shouldn't be talking as though there's a default because I think you've painted the picture of so much science that that's out there that this isn't just something that we just learned.
We are 7 million years away from being chimps were 200,000 years away from being the, the last species that homo-sapiens broke away from. And so this is something so deeply embedded at us, but then it gets mixed with all of the ways that different societies and cultures can manifest it and come up with rigid rules that exclude people.
And it's not obvious to me where. Where it's like, okay, this is a default that we need to consider because if we don't, then we're not able to do the dance that every mammal has or every virtually every animal has. And we're not able to participate in that meeting ritual.
But if we been too far the other way, then we're excluding people where we're trying to apply to broadly general patterns. And so can, can you speak to that about about that in terms of how transgender people meet or may turn and participate if they really don't identify as any of, even the groups that you've talked about?
[01:10:53] Dr. Duana Welch: I cannot, because I don't know of a single study on it. The thing is that that recognition of transgender people as legit people. Sadly lacking, we're lagging behind as a world in this. And I we're going to catch up, I hope and believe. But when we talk about this being a heteronormative field, it is the vast majority of studies that have ever been done are heteronormative.
That said to the extent that we have data, it shows that however people identify their mating psychology will map onto the psychology that the gender that they feel most aligned to. And if they feel like they're not really aligned with either one, then who knows, maybe they can just set themselves free to for whoever they're into see if you can make it work out. I can't give a lot of concrete advice because. I'm so far out of my depth there, I don't have studies to go on when we, when we go that far. And that's my whole thing is basing anything I say on data, rather than simply my opinion. I will say that there's a gay matchmaker who makes all of her clients read my books and then sign a contract saying they're going to do what I said because gay men can, it's very clear who the gatekeepers are in sex it's women.
And if there's no women, then there's no gatekeepers and guys tend to have sex instantly. And therefore often not to form a deep and lasting emotional bond. And so she has, she realized after reading my books, Hey, my clients are saying they want to fall in love and they keep having hookups and they never fall in love, no matter how appropriate the match that I make for them.
And so she's had a lot better success. Since her male clients waited to fall in love before they started having sex. So what I'm saying is the evidence that we have points to the mating ritual is the same based on who you're looking for and who you are regardless of your orientation.
[01:13:03] Griffin Jones: They're just really well.
She has given us so much to think about with regard to why our patients might be coming later in life of what they're doing when they're partnering, how our patients are, are partnering and what that means in terms of how they express themselves. How would you like to conclude to our audience?
[01:13:23] Dr. Duana Welch: Well, I don't want to conclude the way that if you are listening to this and you are in your forties or beyond that, there's no hope for you.
I fear I may have given that false impression. The reason that I work with people who are having difficulties is because we overcome those different the odds of a woman, my age, finding a suitable romantic partner and making a permanent commitment are one in our 15 and a hundred. And yet I did it.
How did I do it? Well, I did it by using the science that I teach other people. That's how I did it. So there are ways to overcome this, no matter what obstacles you or your clients face. There are ways around them, at least where relationships are concerned. I can't speak to the fertility side.
That's that's on you, the listeners, but I can't speak to the emotional side. And the second thing I'd like to say is I answer all my emails. I see clients all over the world. So if you want to send someone my way they can reach out to me at lovefactually.co. And there's a spot to email me and ask about coaching.
And there's a lot of free content and links to my books.
[01:14:24] Griffin Jones: Absolutely recommended. I recommend your coaching. I recommend your books. I recommend checking out. lovefactually.co, Dr. Duana Welch. Thank you so much for coming on Inside Productive Health.
[01:14:36]Dr. Duana Welch: Thank you. It was delightful to be here.