Jul 10
1m 21s
I’ve been told by a mentor tonight that I haven’t been clear about one of the things I offer people, probably the crown jewel of my life.
The best version of it is not digital in my view. It’s in 16 lengthy, paperback books:
The entire work (5000+ web articles) is available as a footnoted, research study-referenced, cross-linked Wiki as Romantipedia.com, free to paid members of any of our Substacks automatically, and you can get a preview of how the site works, here:
A great deal of individuals have told me what you also see in the social media headlines about how frustrating dating apps are, or how many people are traumatized by divorce, how men vote red and women vote blue (which I’ve been talking about in the media for 20 years.) How there seems to be no answer to finding happiness in love or happiness in general (which always has roots in having love in your life.)
“Matchmakers” have been around since the beginning of time, but there has never been a science to it. You had to rely on the intuitive skills and experience of the matchmaker if you lucked out, and that’s only if you lived in a time of history and a culture that supported their work.
Guess what? Western culture today does not at all support their work, and there still is no one scientific theory explaining how to find and keep love “soup to nuts,” meeting someone new, and leading to a solid marriage (not divorcing, no way, never an option.)
Gottman is the master of marriage, especially “on the rocks.” Evolutionary psychology has not figured out a unified theory (of itself) or practical applications that can be taught to and applied to people (or accepted by everyone as valid.)
There are attachment theory specialists and trauma experts, while the new emerging body of knowledge on “narcissistic abuse” and how to spot and avoid narcissists in your romantic life hold crucial new knowledge about what to AVOID.
But nobody tells you what the answer is to do it RIGHT—to find happiness through love and romance—the Holy Grail of psychology.
Because we now know through the Harvard Study that the key to human happiness is “having a high number of friendships,” and the synonym for “friendship” is “love.”
And where the highest form of love is in romantic love.
Forces are at work that seek to kill love between two people. So it is no surprise that almost all that you find in academic or clinical work is centered on the mood and healing of the individual, that most of what you find about relationships is how to avoid abusive people (not to find kind people). All of this is because they don’t know what to tell you about how to find good people who are a match for you in love (as the matchmakers through all time only intuitively and experientially knew how to do if you were lucky enough to find a gifted one, in the right culture that supported doing so.)
I’ve been 30 years in psychiatry practice, and while I don’t have David Buss’s cellphone number, I’ve studied extensively about how evolutionary psychology applies to human courtship, specifically in only the first of three stages or phases: sexual attraction. This was solidified for me 20 years ago by directly studying— in person, and examining with a scientific eye—the dating coaches of the world. Some of them were teaching some things that had some scientific merit and could be aligned with psychoanalytic principles. Others had bunk to offer, that sunk their entire enterprises.
The second and third phases of courtship are also common sense, and were readily available in the traditional clinical education available to me and all my medical colleagues for decades: emotional attraction (friendship, as in boyfriend/girlfriend), and intellectual attraction (which is partnership and commitment, hopefully for life, which the works of John Gottman partially address, but don’t take into account the former phases and steps, and the unavoidable existence of masculine and feminine instincts well-known to both the evolutionary psychologists and to Jungian Psychologists that long-predate them in the evolution of theory on this matter (pun intended.)
Because my traditional psychoanalytic training informed me on how to understand the 2nd and 3rd phases, I believe I have decoded human courtship in my own unique way (many can develop their own way, but mine now covers first meeting in the “meet-cute” all the way through marriage or unfortunately divorce and rebirth.)
The whole system can be tunneled down into, in depth, and using literary examples from the Ancient Greek myths, through Shakespeare, and into modern cinema to illustrate human behaviors that parallel the science principles referenced to hundreds of research studies.
However, it can be simplified into just three phases, each comprising three steps, to master courtship and find love that lasts a lifetime.
It is available in a wiki online to anyone who becomes a paid member of any of our substacks at:
https://romantipedia.com
…and also in my favorite version, which is a set of 16 soft or hardcover books (the softcover are the best since they are 5×8 in and fit in a small backpack or purse, here on amazon, as the Romantic Dynamics series:
The entire work (5000+ web articles) is available as a footnoted, research study-referenced, cross-linked Wiki as Romantipedia.com, free to paid members of any of our Substacks automatically, and you can get a preview of how the site works, here: