F*ck Love: One Shrink's Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship

by Bennett, MD, Michael

  Living with the beauty obsessed or with your own beauty obsession doesn’t mean that you can’t love and enjoy your family and work and share other values. Even if you may have to accept the burdens of living with those obsessions, you never have to believe that the opposite of enjoying beauty is succumbing to ugliness; it’s learning to keep your beauty-related feelings contained while working hard to develop the interests, values, and relationships that make life truly beautiful.

  Hopefully, marriage will provide you with much more than the opportunity to be a beautiful couple, and if so, you will have strong weapons to keep beauty from controlling or interfering with your lives, or ruining your investment in your life together.

  Did You Know . . . Truth, or Bullshit?

  We examine widely accepted beliefs about relationships to determine whether they’re true (or not so much). The phrase in question:

  “There’s someone for everyone.”

  The notion that everybody has a soul mate—the one perfect person somewhere on the globe who will make life complete—is harmless in theory, and certainly profitable as the basis for holiday-themed Hallmark “movie events.” If taken seriously, however, the belief that you can find the right mate if you just search hard enough can set you up for intense disappointment. Not surprisingly, we believe that finding someone is a gift, not a given, and the search for such a person should be taken seriously . . .

  . . . unless, of course, you’ve got questionable hygiene or mental health and are generally the kind of person any sane, bathed person would cross the street to avoid.

  One thing Dr. Bennett learned working in mental hospitals is that the crazier, dirtier, or more feral the patient, the more likely that patient is to have a spouse. A patient who was as psychotic as he was morbidly obese was accompanied by a doting wife, and the woman sent to the loony bin for drinking from public toilets had a devoted husband (and, to the amazement of everyone on the floor, a very white set of teeth). My father’s less or not crazy patients—the ones he saw in private practice, outside the mouse-filled walls of the public hospital—were far more likely to be single (and showered and more likely to be considered appealing mates).

  It became a joking catchphrase for my father and his coworkers—such as when the patient with a full mustache was being visited by her husband (also with a full mustache)—to smile and say in unison, “There’s someone for everyone!” It’s almost heartwarming, until you realize how grim it is.

  If you believe you’ve found your soul mate, there’s no reason to believe it’s just because you’re in dire need of psychiatric help or a really hot bath. But if you’re looking for that perfect someone, the best way to find him or her is to have the least perfect brain and body odor.

  —SB

  VERDICT: TOTAL BULLSHIT (UNLESS YOU’RE BONKERS AND/OR DISGUSTING)

  Beauty may be skin-deep, but our appreciation of it is deep-wired into our brains, and thus, whether we like it or not, into our values. Whether you want it, have it, or had it, beware its effect on your choices and the feelings that drive them. Those feelings are not linked to your will or good intentions, and when they aren’t pushing you to do and say stupid things, often with the wrong people, they’re causing hurt, frustration, and obsession. That’s why you need to be prepared to recognize your response to beauty, including your own appearance, so that you can ignore it without blaming yourself for its selfishness or irrationality. Indeed, being sensitive to attractiveness and still being able to make good choices about people is a beautiful achievement.

  What to Look For

  What to Achieve/What Not to Be Fooled By

  Mutual attraction

  . . . based on still liking each other despite a deep acceptance of your ugly moments—yours and your partner’s—rather than a love of how good you look together.

  Mutual respect

  . . . because you appreciate how much you and/or your partner have accomplished in spite of how you look, good or bad, rather than because of it.

  Shared effort

  . . . put into accomplishing things that realize your goals but may cause wrinkles, rather than trading beauty and clothing tips and enhancing each other’s appearances while avoiding real challenges.

  Common interests

  . . . in what you do with family and friends, rather than in high fashion, skin-care products, and the least amount of calories one can survive on in a day.

  Common goals

  . . . such as making enough money to take care of the kids and cover major disasters, not to fund shopping sprees and full-body tucks.

  Ten Questions to Which the Answer Is Always No

  1. If he’s not texting, emailing, calling, or responding to me with anything but stony silence, is there any good reason for me not to take that as a sign he’s not interested?

  2. Follow-up question: Is it reasonable to assume that a cute girl who doesn’t respond is no longer a worthy crush but a vicious cuntzilla whom I should stop reaching out to for dates and start overwhelming with threatening, angry communiqués?

  3. If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then the way to a woman’s heart is through the screen of her phone, especially through a close-up picture of your weenus, right?

  4. Is it a good idea, a great idea, or the best idea to get this neck tattoo?

  5. Isn’t it always noble to stand up to people who’ve really hurt you, especially if you use the one weapon they’re vulnerable to—an honest explanation of what you think about them and how they make you feel, a.k.a. the truth?

  6. As an adult, can I still use the “he/she started it” excuse I learned as a kid if I punch a guy who hit me first, or run a car off the road after it cut me off, or slap a girl who won’t stop making fun of my poster of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson?

  7. Is it valid to break up with someone using just the emojis of a broken heart, a crying cat, and a beeper?

  8. If I want to tell someone something honest yet downright mean, will prefacing my statement with “Don’t take this the wrong way” negate all the probable hurt I’ll cause?

  9. So I don’t really need to go to 12-step meetings and join the cult of NA if my ability to recently quit heroin cold turkey clearly proves that I do control my addiction and a higher power can suck my dick?

  10. Will I, a human male, be more attractive if I grow my hair and wear it in a ponytail?

  Chapter 3

  F*ck Chemistry

  In the realm of relationship terminology, “chemistry” initially seems like a misnomer. What do mutual interest and attraction have to do with the high school science class with the most bong-able equipment? Then again, given how interpersonal chemistry can be as combustible, toxic, and quick to evaporate as anything you bubbled in a test tube when you were a teenager, the term begins to make sense.

  Unlike actual chemistry, however, interpersonal chemistry isn’t easily explained in a textbook, or even in this book; nobody knows exactly why certain people are drawn to each other or stay together when they’re the human equivalents of chlorine and ammonia. We just believe that, without interpersonal chemistry, a relationship can’t exist.

  Just because chemistry is necessary, however—it’s hard to spend lots of time with someone you are blah about—it’s no reason to stay in a toxic relationship. Even if you’re good at mixing chemicals and getting solutions to change colors, don’t assume that chemistry can be changed or influenced by talk, love, a new haircut, a relaxing weekend together at a cat-themed B and B, or therapy.

  In reality, chemistry, both scientific and interpersonal, is essential, dangerous, and made up of elements that can’t be changed; it’s something we can’t ignore or do without. But in relationships, we have little control of it, and in love, as in the development of OxyContin, it often has nothing to do with what’s good for us.

  It’s normal to try to control interpersonal chemistry for maximum results; we want to hit it off with people we’re attracted to, who turn out to be good peop
le whom we can get along with and count on forever. What chemistry often does, however, is draw us to the wrong people, stir up our darker selves, and stop us from thinking rationally. We desperately want to believe we can control it—we sometimes pay shrinks for the same reasons we used to buy love potions—and we never want to accept the obvious signs that we can’t.

  Once you accept that chemistry is what it is, it’s not hard to understand where it wants to take you and whether you are getting closer to the kind of relationship and future that you value. That’s why you need rules and procedures—not to control the chemistry of a relationship, but to assess its power and remember where you want to go, regardless of where the powerful feelings of interpersonal chemistry are pushing you.

  No matter the context, chemistry requires caution; before mixing anything, put on your safety goggles, guard your heart, and hope to do just well enough for that passing grade.

  The Good Things You Want Good Chemistry to Deliver

  • A spark so eternal, you could get a job at Arlington National Cemetery.

  • A mutual attraction so strong, you’ll always want to bone each other, even when you’re so old that most of your bones’ joints have been replaced.

  • A makeover for your personality’s least attractive and undesirable attributes.

  • A blossoming of your verbal creativity that previous relationships have left dormant.

  • A mountain of mutual respect that makes nagging and arguing inconceivable.

  Profile of the Master Chemist

  Here is a list of traits associated with the person who triggers rapid, intense chemistry:

  • Physical attributes: A posture, facial expression, and depth of shirt neckline that magically combine to unlock the desire center of your brain. He also has dry hands (because he’ll be touching you as much as he can get away with) and the lingering and intense eye contact of a beagle puppy.

  • Common occupations: Those that depend on rapid emotional connection, e.g., sales, politics, public relations, exotic dancing. Acting and playing music are also popular occupations of master sparkers, which is to say, being unemployed.

  • What attracts you first: The earliness and ease with which he shares confidences, the intensity of his attraction to you and response to your every word and sneeze, the buzz of said intense connection.

  • Early red flags: His attention is intense but he’s as distractible as an infant, he avoids talking about prior relationships because they all ended with police intervention but says it’s because he can’t think about anyone but you, he refers to himself as a “hopeless romantic” in the same breath that he refers to his desire to attach his abusive ex’s balls to his key ring, he says many smart, flattering things but they all sound strangely familiar or rehearsed or taken from the mind of Shonda Rhimes.

  Seeking Chemistry

  Since you can do nothing to change a person’s character once you’re committed to him, even if it’s just through a lease or Netflix subscription, your initial selection is critical. Chemistry will try to control your choice, so knowing what creates a spark and then fans the flames is essential to understanding how to improve your odds of finding a good partner and avoiding predictable heartache.

  Here are three examples:

  • I know it’s a cliché, but I’m always attracted to damaged bad boys, and it never ends well. I just click with them so quickly, before I even realize how broken they are or that I’m fucking up again, and by the time I do realize it, I’m already in major trouble, like we’re on the cusp of matching tattoos or we’ve already signed a lease (on an apartment he’ll never pay his share of the rent for). My goal is to break the habit and find a way to be attracted to guys who won’t ruin my life.

  • I’m what they call a permanent resident of “the friend zone”—I’m good at getting close to girls but never getting past friendship. It doesn’t make me hate women or anything, just frustrated with myself because I don’t know what I’m doing wrong to get stuck in the same position over and over. My goal is to make it clear to the women I’m interested in that I want more than just being friends.

  • I love the rush of meeting and connecting with interesting, attractive women, but things get boring after I catch them and they’re clearly attached to me. I don’t like to lie or hurt their feelings, but when the relationship stops being exciting, then the spark seems to disappear and I get restless. My goal is to find someone who makes me feel different or to stop being such a restless person.

  Oh, to be one of the lucky few who have good chemistry with those they attract and are attracted to until they attract someone meant for them (in a film, this is usually a journalist or an architect). Then they go off and buy each other perfect gifts, support each other completely in their careers, and have simultaneous orgasms, so simpatico are they.

  The unlucky masses are the people for whom films with that plot are made—those who can’t stop dating men who aren’t architects but aspiring line cooks, or whose crushes often go unrequited, or who are only attending the movie to be rewarded with marital sex.

  Unfortunately, we often feel the strongest, sparkiest chemistry with wild people who don’t behave well, can’t do their share of the work, and require lots of maintenance. People fall into relationship traps for many reasons, but knowing them won’t necessarily help you get free or get over the habit of doing it again and again.

  Therapists tell us we have the best chemistry with the worst people because troubled types channel the wild side we don’t dare express ourselves or remind us of dear dad before he entered rehab. Magazines tell us (women) it’s because we hate ourselves (and that we’re so fat and our nails are so busted that we’re probably right). Darwin says it’s because we inherited weird behavioral genes that surfaced in that creepy uncle who chain-smoked and had a tattoo on his hand. Explanations, however, don’t change chemistry, and seeking them holds out false hope that someday you’ll feel different and your bad relationship impulses will be gone. Try talking to friends or a therapist about your dead-end attractions if you think it will change them, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t. Instead, accept your helplessness and look for new ways of managing feelings that aren’t going to change.

  Assess the damage done by your relationship blunders and list what you want in life that requires a better partner. Then get coaching from friends or a therapist, spot the situations that lower your resistance to bad choices (e.g., barhopping around Christmas, going stag to weddings, Thursdays), and prepare for a period of disciplined, painful self-frustration. Even when you can’t change strong destructive chemistry, you can change your behavior. You just need a good reason and lots of determination.

  If, instead, your problem is weak chemistry and you find it hard to strike sparks with anyone you’re interested in, make sure it’s not for lack of a fashion sense, tact, or deodorant. Often, all you need is a good hairdresser, a kind sibling, or a close female friend (that you don’t secretly long for) who can give you some honest advice about what not to say to, wear in front of, or smell like around prospective dates when you’re nervous.

  Otherwise, you may have to accept that, like the person above, you just don’t have good dating chemistry, and there’s no point in criticizing yourself or seeking explanations in the hope that they will release your inner sex magnet. Rather, widen your date search while making it clear that you’d like a relationship, not a buddy—searching online or via apps establishes that from the jump—and don’t let yourself get bogged down with chums. The usual answer to bad dating chemistry, when simple change isn’t possible, is opening yourself up to a wider sample and refining your selection so as to avoid wasting time.

  Relationship restlessness is another trait that interferes with any lasting bond; it may turn you into an excellent pickup artist, but also a partner-dropping asshole. Again, searching for understanding and blaming your need for sexual reassurance or mistrust of your mother may be interesting, but it won’t make the thrill of
the hunt any less alluring.

  You may not be ready to curb your restlessness until you’re old enough to find little meaning in seduction, or until your usual hunting-party pals are either settling down or drying out. You won’t find the strength to change unless you can find a greater value in partnership and family than you do in romance and the special attention you get from a lover. If you do decide to change, then you’ve got well-tested methods (see above) that can help you. Sticking to these methods won’t make you happy in the short run, and your restlessness may well fuel a small power plant if you keep your dating behavior under control. If you do, however, you can find a stable partnership and the satisfactions that go with it.

  Yes, sometimes dating chemistry can be improved by a change in wardrobe, a good diction coach, or a strong blow to the head. More often, however, it requires you to remember where you want to be in ten years, to accept the defective dating equipment that God gave you, and to work harder at either finding the right person or controlling the wrong impulse. You may never find your eternal, exciting match, but you’ll stop finding yourself in the same emotional mess.

  Quiz: Chemistry for Beginners—How Selective Is Your Sparking?

  1. When you think you’re into someone, your most tried-and-true flirting technique is to:

  A: Ask her how much she liked Avengers: Age of Ultron, whether she likes Joss Whedon’s Marvel print or film stuff more, and how she felt about the lack of continuity between Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye comics and the Hawkeye from the film. If her answers aren’t “Kinda,” “Neither” (she prefers his Dark Horse output), and “That was bullshit,” then she clearly isn’t the one.

  B: Put my best foot forward, laugh readily, answer questions with questions, and try not to make that phlegmy noise in my throat that happens during allergy season that my mother says I should get checked out by a doctor already.