Dr Katherine Bejanyan's slides from Interesting Talks

1. The Guide to Successful Dating &
Romantic Life in 2018
DR KATHRINE BEJANYAN

2. Dr. Kathrine Bejanyan
Dating and Relationship Consulting
 Psychology PhD
o Research Focus – Romantic
relationships cross-culturally
 Counselling Psychology MA
o Accredited member of the British
Association for Counselling and
Psychotherapy
o Licensed Marriage Family Therapist
(California,USA)
kathrinebejanyan.com

3. What We’re Going to be Covering
 The process of choosing a partner
 Is this “The One”?
 Love – it’s virtues and vices
 Your attraction and relationship history

4. Choosing the right long-term partner is a huge endeavour
with important consequences on your life outcomes
But
It is fully in your control

5. The Selection Process
 The how (not just who) of mate choice
 Who we chose is important but how we go about
choosing is also very significant to our relationship
outcomes
 How does abundant choice effect our mating
behaviour?

6. Abundant Choice
 “Paradox of Choice” – consumer behaviour
 While we like having more options when making a
decision, we are ultimately less satisfied with our choice
when we have a larger, as opposed to smaller, number of
options
 Too much choice overwhelms us and makes us unhappy.
- Barry Schwartz

7. 1) How would you go about making your
choice?
2) How much time would you need?
3) What would your mood be like?
4) What cues would you use to make your
decision?
5) How satisfied would you be with your
choice?
6) How would you feel if your choice had
most of what you wanted, but wasn’t
completely perfect?

8. Too much choice can:
1. Increase frustration at the complexity of the decision
2. Increase difficulty of assessing the differences between the
options
3. increase uncertainty about the choice
4. Less confidence at what constitutes the best option

9. Too much choice
 “You’re convinced that even though you did well, you
should have done better.” – Barry Schwartz
 With endless choices, the pleasure and excitement you
might feel at the prospect of more options is reduced or
cancelled out by the fear of making a wrong choice

10. Dating and choice?
 Technology has exponentially increased our mate
choices well beyond our processing capacity
 Match.com “Millions of possibilities”

12. Why we want choice
 The more options you have, the more likely you are to choose
someone that more closely matches your preferences
 It’s harder to choose from a larger choice of option but at least
you will make a better choice and are less likely to regret your
decision…right?
 Expect more satisfaction and enjoyment from your choice
Is this really the case?

13. More choices come with cognitive costs
 The decision making process depletes our cognitive resources
 Increases our attentional and memory load
 The brain acts like an circuit that’s been overloaded

14. Overloaded Circuit
 Primates neocortex have partially evolved to manage social
networks within the evolutionary environment
 Average human networks within the evolutionary environment
were around 150 people

15. Brain’s Strategy
 The greater number of options today are more difficult to manage
and process by our brains
 Limited cognitive capacity for processing

16. Brain’s Strategy
 We choose differently
 More likely to apply heuristic strategies - quick and easy cues to
make our decision
 Payne, J.W., Bettman, J.R., & Johnson, E.J. (1993). The adaptive decision maker. New York: Cambridge
University Press.

17. Heuristic Strategies
 Mental shortcuts which are efficient and simplify our thinking
process
 Focus us on a small aspect of a complex issue
 Focus on surface level, easily detectable qualities - what we see
is what we think we get
Occupation, activities, friends, pets

18. Study
 Women were asked to select the one man they would most like to
contact from a dating Website containing 4, 24, or 64 profiles: As
the number of options increased, participants self-reported lesser
use of a comprehensive choice strategy and greater use of
heuristic choice strategies (Lenton & Stewart, 2008).

19. When it comes to dating….
 Stretching your cognitive capacity too thinly tends to:
 Lead you to make quick judgments and assumptions about people
 Get you hung up on trivial details
 Distract you from the criteria that is most important about a person
and necessary for a long-term healthy relationship
 Indecisiveness - analysis paralysis
 “The more people you look at, the less likely you are to choose anybody,”
says Helen Fisher.

20.  Deeper, more significant criteria about the person are easily missed
 Broad, comprehensive evaluation of the person gives way to
narrow, one-dimensional criteria
 We choose an archetype (stereotype) of a person, not a real
person

21. Long versus short-term?
 Heuristic strategies work best when applying to short-term, casual
encounters versus choosing a long-term, significant relationship
partner

22. Additional challenges online
 Cognitively more demanding
 No face-to-face cues
 Facial expressions
 Gestures
 Voice

23. Relationship
What happens after we
make our choice?

24. Satisfaction with choice
 What if? Grass is greener
 Restlessness
 Commitment issues
 Less patience for the challenging times in a relationship

25. Satisfaction with choice
 Less happy with our choice
 More critical of our
partner
 What am I missing versus
what do I have?
 Less happy with ourselves for
our choice
 Did I put in enough effort,
time, energy?
 Did I make the right
decision?

26. What do I do?

27. Is there a perfect number to choose from?
 Having less choice forces you to look more carefully at the person.
You are less likely to dismiss them based on superficial, trivial
reasons.
 Go deeper instead of wider
 With a smaller number of people, you can apply your mental energy
to making sure your potential partners have the significant qualities
most important to you in a relationship

28. Be Clear
 Be clear about what you are looking for
 How many of you want an intelligent person, attractive, easy-
going, nice?

29. Be Clear
 When people have strong preferences and are presented with
many options, they are more likely to make a choice and be
satisfied with their decision
 Experience lower cognitive demand
 Increased satisfaction with choice
 Experience less regret
 Don’t be vague about about what you are looking for

30. Compatibility
 Who is right for us versus who stands out the most
 Look for someone that is compatible with you not just the one
who stands out the most

31. Attraction versus Long-Term Relationship
 Initial attraction versus long-term relationship
 Qualities that create initial attraction are not always those that
promote long-term relationship maintenance
 External attributes are over emphasised

32. The One

33. The One
 What are the qualities you’d like from a partner?
 What are the things you’d like from a relationship?
 What are the things you are willing to go without in a
relationship?
 What are you okay not getting from a partner?

34. The One
How will I know when I find “The One”?
“When you know, you’ll know”

35.  Generally means this person has:
 Made me feel amazing, incredible, fantastic
 Captured my attention and interest above all others
 Given me a sense of certainty (agitation or ambiguity has
stopped)
 Cleared my insecurities and relationship concerns
 Satisfied my needs and gave me a sense of fulfilment

36.  What happens when you don’t feel great?
 What happens when you have needs that can’t be or
won’t be fulfilled by your partner?
 What happens when the relationship becomes difficult and
feels like effort?

37. Is a relationship with the right person suppose to feel easy, while a
relationship with the wrong person hard?
 Soulmate Theory
 A belief that there is only one person or only a small handful of people in
the world with whom each person is right for and with whom you can have
a satisfying relationship

38.  The idea itself of a “soulmate” or “the one” is faulty
 It’s abstract
 Vague
 Built on emotion
 Perpetuated by our culture of romance and the “Happily Ever After
Myth”

39.  The nature of a relationship:
 A relationship is an evolution, a series of changes
 It’s not static – you and your partner will never stay the
same
 Over time as the relationship progresses an deepens,
expectations and behaviour start shifting and changing

40.  There is not one person that can give you all the things you
want for a lifetime
 Our partners are meant to challenge and help us grow
beyond our norms and comfort – not just make us happy

41.  Every person has issues and problems, which you will be also
taking on
 What are the problems you want to deal with in your
relationship? What are not?

42. Creating a Story Together
 It’s not about what someone can give us. We are creating a story
with this person, a joint vision for the future
 Is this someone I want to build my story with?
 Joint responsibilities?
 What are our dreams/hopes?
 What are our expectations for ourselves and each other?

43. Choose a partner
Choose a partner:
 Feel attraction towards
 Respect
 Feel safe with and can trust
 Who shares your core values
 Who shares your philosophy of life
 And whose sh*t you can put up with

44.  Never seek perfection! – With perfection comes a need
to never allow for each other to change and too high
expectations that will inevitably fail you
 Certainty is overrated
 Commitment is made to the relationship and there is
respect for the flow and evolution of the relationship

45. Romantic Love

46. Romantic Love
 Romantic love is an evolutionary necessity
 We are biologically wired to fall in love – it’s helped the survival of
the human race
 It’s goal:
 Foster strong emotional and social bonds between men and women
 Increase sexual desire and reproduction

47. The Brain in Love
 Overdose on a cocktail of hormones
 Dopamine, phenylethylamine (PEA), testosterone, estragon,
serotonin and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), oxytocin
 The result on your emotions and behaviour:
 Longing and desire for your partner
 Fanaticising
 Daydreaming
 Sexual attraction is heightened

48. Love Goggles
 You can feel an intense sense of connection and attachment to
the person
 Excitement and euphoria about your partner and life
 A deep sense of interdepedence is created between another
 A sense of certainty that this is “the one”

49. Love Goggles
 Being in love is a wonderful thing
 There are multiple psychological and physical health benefits,
helping us live longer, healthier and happier lives
 Overall increase in our quality of life
But there are also pitfalls….so how to avoid them

50. Love is Addictive
 Intense romantic love activates the striatum, the region of the brain
that is often referred to as the “pleasure centre.”
 One of the parts of the brain which is most heavily affected by
addictive drugs like cocaine and heroin
 Likely explains the strength of intense and obsessive behaviors
experienced by those in love

51.  Evolution doesn’t care about:
 how kind or caring they are
 how compatible you are with them
 what their character is like or what and values they hold

52. Love Goggles
 When you are in this state of love:
 You are blind to a person’s flaws
 You miss or minimise the red flags
 You overlook issues of incompatibility (i.e. opposites attract)

53. Compatibility
 Compatibility? But what about opposites attract?
 Research does not really back the claim that “opposites attract”
for a long-term successful relationship
 The more you and your partner see eye-to-eye, the easier it is to
negotiate a life together

54. Order of Events
 When you’re dating, order important
 Most people meet hang out develop feelings for one another,
have sex, get into a relationship and then figure out if they’re a
good match – Wrong Order
 Assess for compatibility – it’s not just about how much fun you’re
having together

55. Where to go? What to do?.... on a date
 What you are doing on your date can have an effect on how
much you like the person you’re with
 When you are experiencing new and exciting things, you are being
flooded with hormones (dopamine, norepinehrine, PEA)
 These similar hormones get released when you are in a state of
passionate love
 Don’t confuse circumstances with the person

56. When should you have sex?
 Oxytocin is released into the body during sex and orgasm
 Increased feelings of bonding and attachment to the person
 Clouds your judgement (forgetfulness) and lowers your fear
response
 Increases the desire for affection and touch

57. Making long-term decisions
 While you are under this state of bliss is not the right time to make
major decisions about your long term-commitment to one another

58. Addictive nature of love
 Some people may find themselves seeking the rush of romantic
love, never progressing to the deeper, longer-lasting stage of love
 You may also fall hard for someone, only to learn that their feelings
are not requited or that they are with someone else

59. Who are we attracted to and how
we “do” relationships

60. IF we are wired for love, what determines how or who we fall in
love with?
You can’t just make it work with anybody
Falling in love and the experience of love is a subjective
experience

61. Internal Working Model
 Who we are attracted to, how we relate to others and how we
give and receive love will depend on who we are
 Internal working models comprise how we think about ourselves
and experience relationships with others (Hazan 2004)
 It’s formed in our early childhood experiences
 attachment style

62. Internal Working Model
 Early childhood experiences shape our brain and create a
blueprint of our beliefs
 This blueprint holds beliefs about:
 who we are, what the world is like and what others mean to us and
 then seeks to confirm them as we go through life
 The brain is not collecting data and then analaysing it through an
objective lens, but through our lens

63. The present is seen through the lens of the past
What we have experienced in the past has given meaning and created
a framework to our experiences
Our reactions, attitudes and feelings to the here and now, to the current
experiences in our lives are not just based on objective events but instead
based on our internal working model and drawn from the past

64. You meet a guy/girl on a night out, you spend the evening
chatting and hanging out. He/she takes your number,
promising to call to arrange a date. It’s been a week and
you haven’t heard anything from yet
What is your interpretation of the situation?
Exercise

65.  Men/women are liars and game players
 He/she was only after one thing
 You can’t trust people to keep their word, they always let you down
 I must've said something wrong, done something wrong, why can’t I keep the
attention of a person I like
 He/she must've only pretended to like me (found someone else better, was
bored that night)
 He/she is just busy and hasn't gotten around to calling
 Something else must've come up
Exercise

66. Standards
 A healthy, symbiotic relationship between parent and child helps
acknowledge and validate the development of the self and
affirm that the world is a safe place
 When a child’s needs go unmet, as adults, to counteract the
distress they still feel inside:
1. Crave, highly dependent and obsessive on human contact
2. Become overly self-sufficient, little feelings or need for others

67. Working only in the present:
Denies of the effects of childhood experiences
Limits our understanding of the framework within which we operate
Limits the understanding of the systems we employ to cope with
present conflicts

68. Meaning is embedded in our earliest experiences and needs to be
decoded starting there
We need to be able to tease part our adult experiences and
understand them from there roots and original source

69. Our issues get formed within the context of relationships
(family), therefore they are reopened and
reexperienced within our adult relationships

70. Succeeding at Your Relationship:
The Core Principles of Creating a Loving
Relationship
Group seminar covering
• core self, childhood, past relationships, creating attraction
and desire in a relationship, future vision
For singles
Cost £295 (£250 until midnight Sunday)
24th
February in central London from 10-4pm
WORKSHOP

71. ONE TO ONE*
1 hr session Skype session
£65
Sign up by the end of next
week
Kathrinebejanyan.com

72. Questions?
kathrinebejanyan.com
kathrine@kathrinebejanyan.com