4 Risky Relationship Myths with Dr. Gary Lewandowski

“4 Risky Relationship Myths with Dr. Gary Lewandowski”

a lightly edited Girl Boner Radio episode transcript

August (narration):

So Gary met his wife one day during the summer before his senior year of college.

Dr. Lewandowski:

I was waking up at the time, and I heard, you know, this ruckus, literally, on my ceiling.

August (narration):

Given the crashing and banging around, Gary figured someone was moving in and having a really tough time. So he decided to offer to help out on his way to the gym. As he stepped outside, he spotted a woman entering the building.

Dr. Lewandowski:

And I say, “Hey, you know, you moving in?” And she said, yeah, you know. “Do you need any help?” Because I’m figuring, you know, like, I’m going to the gym, anyway. I could just skip the gym. Go, you know, move some furniture like no big deal. 

She’s like, “Oh, no, no, no. We have it.” You know, with all like, you know, the independence and things that, you know, she’s so wonderful at now. I was like, “Oh, okay.” She lived upstairs and didn’t really see her. My roommates and I would talk about the hot girl that lived upstairs and, you know, just kind of joke around… 

August (narration):

A couple of weeks later, it turned out that they were in a class together, a psychology internship class. And once a week, they would carpool with other students to a church where, down in the basement, they learned counseling skills. And Gary soon realized that he wanted to spend more time with this strong woman who’d caught his eye. 

Dr. Lewandowski:

We would get out of class at 9 pm, and I’d say, “Hey, you know, we’re going out to a party. Do you want to go?” And she’d say “no.” Week after a week, I would ask her and like trying to make conversation, and all this stuff and it was always, “no, no.”  Okay, it wasn’t flat out asking her to go on a date or anything. I was just like, “Hey,” you know? “No, no.”

Then, finally, by the end of the semester, we had this end of semester project where we had to present with somebody else about our placement. And so it was a signup sheet. And so you could sign up wherever you wanted. And so I did what, you know, any crafty guy would do. I kind of scanned the sheet, I saw her name and I made sure I signed up to be in her group. 

And then during that week, or so, leading up to the final exam period when we had to do this presentation, I played as dumb as I could possibly play to make sure I constantly needed her help. And so I would need help with notes. I would need help with “what’s this assignment about?” 

One thing led to another, and then we finally kind of arranged like, “you want to like go out?” She’s like, “sure.” So it’s like this really sweet date,  with a walk around campus… We went back to her place and had hot chocolate and we ended up talking for I don’t know how many hours it was, until like three o’clock in the morning. And that night, I was supposed to be studying for the GREs that I had the next day. So, you know, forsaking my academic future, I spent hours and hours talking to my future wife. God, it is the best decision I ever made. 

August (narration):

From there, the pair started dating. As Gary explained in his book, they had only been dating about six months when he left for grad school and she stayed to finish her undergrad studies. They spent a year dating from a distance. Meanwhile, Gary was learning all about relationships from an academic standpoint. 

Dr. Lewandowski:

And so, you know, I’m learning all these findings on what great relationships are like, and, you know, you start getting into like that medical student syndrome where it’s like, oh, my gosh. I have an itch here. This could be—I can have this problem, I can have this problem, this problem. You know, having a lot of questions. 

August (narration): 

One thing I really appreciate about Dr. Lewandowski is that he speaks not only with authority about relationship factors and findings, from an expert’s point of view, but he’s open about related challenges that most everyone experiences, including himself.

Dr. Lewandowski:

We made it… She ended up getting into grad school where I was at. We moved in together. And that sounds wonderful and it is wonderful in a lot of ways, but it’s like, all of a sudden now we’re living together. We’re both poor. We’re both students. We’re both stressed out. It was tough. You have all those developing relationship times that were really, really tough.

August (narration):

People often say things to Gary like, “Oh, you study relationships. That certainly must help your relationship.” And in some ways it must have, he said, because he and his wife have been happily together for 20 years now. 

Dr. Lewandowski:

People always think oh, like, you know, you must bring up like, “Well, this research study says this,” and it’s like, I’ve learned a long time ago not to do that. But what it does help me know is what to worry about, what not to worry about. And I’ve really learned to focus more on the positives. 

August (narration):

And when it comes to healthy, romantic relationships, Gary said, he’s learned that many people are harder on the relationships than they need to be.

Dr. Lewandowski:

Not early on. Early on, everyone’s like honeymoon stages in your life. You actually go the other way; you’re way too easy on your relationship. But then over time like life gets in the way and when life gets in the way, it’s—uh—it can be tough. 

August (narration): 

One reason we may go hard on a pretty great relationship, or one that’s evolving into something great, involves unrealistic standards. Which brings us to today’s first myth: 

That seeking that one perfect soulmate is a fabulous idea.

Dr. Lewandowski:

It’s something I call the perfection trap. And people, we’re very romantic. And I don’t think people really fully appreciate just how romantic we are, particularly Americans, right? When I say we, I’m speaking of Americans. We have this pedestal version of love that when we find “the one,”…it’s going to be so obvious. And not only is it going to be obvious, it’s going to be easy. And we’re just going to mesh and it’s going to be magical. And it’s going to be all these great things. 

[a few bars of romantic music]

We get tricked by this because early on in relationships, it almost is always like that, right? You know your first week, month or so, you know, like that early period of relationships, it is like that. And so you kind of can live that honeymoon, you can live that fantasy, but then reality kind of gets in the way. And so we know from research that the people that believe that love is about a perfect union, they have less satisfying relationships because they’re constantly disappointed.

So when that soulmate of yours shows themselves to be the normal human being that they inevitably are, what the hell’s going on? Are you my soulmate or not? You know, this isn’t the deal we thought we had. You’re setting yourself up for failure in a lot of ways. And, you know, we know soulmates, as much as it sounds romantic and all those things, people that believe in that, their relationships just aren’t as stable.You know, you’re going to be revealed to be the normal, typical, imperfect human that you are. 

This romantic notion of perfection, it almost gives you this weird permission slip to go out and demand perfection from your partner. And when you sit down with your relationship, it’s almost like, “No, no, no. I’m not gonna settle. I have high standards. So, I’m looking for the best.” 

August (narration): 

Gary told me that in research, there’s a name for these folks: maximizers. Maximizers, he said, are people who perpetually demand the best—so much so that they are always seeking out the next best thing and don’t fully appreciate—and often lose—any valuable, nourishing relationships they have in the meantime.

Dr. Lewandowski :

And what we know is the opposite of a maximizer is a satisficer. And a satisficer is this idea that once I meet my predetermined level of quality, I’m going to be content. I’m going to pick my goal, I’m going to meet that goal, and I’m just going to appreciate and have gratitude for the attainment of what I had already set out to do. 

August (narration):

Gary said that while that may seem like a cold way of looking at relationships, being more of a satisficer means you’ll actually get to enjoy your relationships. And of course, the goal isn’t to have low standards or settle for a relationship that’s not healthy or safe, or for someone who you like and seems great on paper, but you don’t have great chemistry or potential with.

Dr. Lewandowski:

You don’t want to be the satisficer that has such extremely low expectations you’re going to be satisfied with anything. 

When I was an undergrad in psychology, I had this psych professor who said, “You know, if you want to be happy, it’s really simple. Just have really low expectations and you will be happy.” And that’s true. Sadly, that is true. But it’s an awful way to live, right? 

And so, like, if you’re a satisficer that’s just going to be kind of satisfied with the bare minimum and you’re just going to be content, then you’re probably underselling yourself. 

August (narration):

I asked Dr. Lewandowski what he thinks of a common message we hear: that you must be complete and “healed” and really “love yourself” in order to be loved, something I probably said or believed at some point. I now think it has a lot more nuance. Love can be healing after all, and growth and healing can be life long. Which brings us to another myth he debunked: 

That you have to be 100% “ready” in order to be loved or start a relationship.

Dr. Lewandowski:

I think, you know, at the worst case scenario, that there are times in your life when you’re better off figuring out who you are before you start figuring out yourself in the context of someone else, right? But I also think, generally, once you’ve met a certain threshold, you can really convince yourself that you’re never ready. If you wait to be ready for things. Honestly, I’ve never been ready for anything, right. When I met my wife and we got married, was I ready to get married? No, but it worked. Was I ready to have a kid? No, I wasn’t ready to be a dad—I honestly really wasn’t ready—but it worked out. 

And so I think in the context of relationship you may not be ready, fully ready, but if your partner, as they should, helps you to become a better person—like your incomplete self, imperfect and unsure, and their incomplete self, imperfect and unsure—together, you can help each other figure each other out.

[a few bars of romantic music]

August (narration):

Dr. Lewandowski explores a few myths about sex in Stronger Than You Think. One, the title of Chapter 5, is this: “If We’re Not Having a Lot of Sex, We’re Not in Love.” It reminded me of a listener question I received a while back from a woman who said that she and her husband had very satisfying sex about once a month. And while they both seemed very happy with that, she was grappling with shame, given that she’d heard that sex once or less per month is considered pretty  “sexless” by some folks.

There really is no “normal” for sex frequency, or useful reason to compare ourselves and our sex lives to those of others. But, that comparison is really easy to do.

Dr. Lewandowski:

We don’t really know what’s going on in other people’s bedrooms or kitchens or wherever else they’re having sex. Like we don’t know how much other people are doing it. And so we tend to just assume that maybe we’re not doing it enough, right? And so, you know, that person that’s doing it once a month, the most important thing you said was that they had a happy and fulfilled relationship. 

August (narration):

Research on the topic of sex frequency can be a bit difficult, given that it’s usually based fully on self-reporting and not everyone’s great at estimating how much sex they’re actually having. How we define sex makes a difference, too. Many young people think they’re [quote unquote] “virgins,” for example, because they’ve only engaged in oral sex or fingering. But Gary pointed out that there are some research findings that show general trends.

Dr. Lewandowski:

It’s something like, you know, by the time you’re 40, you’re having half as much sex as you were when you were 25. You know, it goes down like 3% or so every year. It’s to be expected. 

And sex, it’s important—don’t get me wrong—but it’s not nearly as important as people think. It’s not as, it shouldn’t be as central to your relationship. So asking if you’re having enough sex is probably the wrong question entirely, because we know sexual frequency doesn’t actually relate to relationship satisfaction. 

August (narration):

I feel like that bears repeating: “sexual frequency doesn’t actually relate to relationship satisfaction.” 

Let’s consider that our next myth:

That how often you have sex determines how satisfying your relationship is.

Dr. Lewandowski:

Lots of studies show this, over and over and over again, that you measure someone having sex five times a week to someone who’s having once a week or having once a month, those numbers, right, your your sexual stats, so to speak, are not actually dictating how happy you are in your relationship. And it goes both ways. It’s not the people that are happier are having more sex. Get this—it’s the opposite. People are more likely to have sex in the relationship when the relationship’s not going well. 

And, you know, a lot of times people that feel like they’re not having enough sex will do—I’m sure you’ve heard of these things or maybe we talked about them—like sex challenges. Like we’re going do a sex challenge. We’re going to do a seven day sex challenge, right? Have sex every single day for seven days or, you know, for the more ambitious or energetic, a 30 days sex challenge, right?

And they kind of fall into the same myth where it’s like, oh, the more sex you have, the better relationship you’re going to have.. Someone actually did that study—where they brought couples in, they flipped a coin basically and said, “You guys just keep doing what you’ve been doing. You guys are basically in the sex challenge condition. You’re going to have a lot more sex.” And it turned out, after they followed them, by the end, the sex challenge people were doing worse. They enjoyed sex less. Their moods were worse… It didn’t really help them. You’re doing it for the wrong reasons. There’s all kinds of things that go into it. It’s not like…once is good, five times is better. That’s not really how it worked. 

Physical intimacy of any kind is important. And really what the research shows is it’s not the number that matters. It’s quality, not quantity. Lots of people in a study of older adults. And really what they found was the key element for sexual satisfaction was an extensive sexual repertoire, which sounds really fancy, right? But it really just means the more tricks you have up your sleeve, the better your sexual satisfaction is going to be. So that one time a month person that you referred to, once really, really amazing, better than every day super mediocre. 

August (narration):

That ties in so well with last week’s episode and what Dr. Megan and I explored about sexual novelty—so definitely check that out, if you haven’t. Sex toys, trying different positions or sex in a new place, sharing fantasies, showering together, listening to erotica… These types of activities tend to make way for deeply satisfying sex and strong emotional intimacy. And yes, there’s research a ton of anecdotal evidence to support that.

Another myth I asked Gary about is another chapter title from his book:

“If We Break Up, I’ll Be Broken.”

We may feel broken after a break up, and some are down right traumatic. At the same time, we may end up growing a great deal in spite of or even because of one.

Dr. Lewandowski:

We always think of breakup as this horrible experience. And it is, in some ways. We tend to too easily categorize things into good things or bad things, and break up, like lots of things, is both. And so we spend way too much time focusing on the bad things. And there’s a real downside to this, because it makes us think that all breakups are going to be bad. 

August (narration):

Dr. Lewandowski told me about one of his all-time favorite studies. Researchers asked a bunch of people who were in a relationship how they would feel if the relationship ended: how bad would it be?

Dr. Lewandowski:

And people said, “Oh my god, it’s going to be horrible. It’s going to be bad. I’m going to be devastated. Just the worst experience.” 

August (narration): 

Then the researchers did what relationship scientists would do, Gary said: they tracked them over a period of time, waiting for them to break up.

Dr. Lewandowski:

They waited for those people to break up and they said, “Hey, how do you feel?” And they didn’t feel great, right? But they didn’t feel nearly as bad as they thought they were going to. 

And that’s important because if your relationship doesn’t make you a better person, ending it might. Everybody deserves a great relationship. You know, great relationships seldom fail, but the bad ones do, as they should and as you should want them to. Because if they do, you now have the ability to find something better. 

So that if we’re in a relationship, and you’re not actually helping contribute to my sense of self and you’re not helping me grow and become a better person, it’s addition by subtraction when we break up because relationships should do that. 

Relationships should help you develop and grow, become a better person. And your partner should be like one of your number one people for that. So if your partner is not helping you grow and become a better person, like I said, it’s addition by subtraction, because now I can get rid of you, and find that great relationship I deserve to help me become better. 

August: 

I asked Gary about the signs of personal growth he’s seen because of his own relationship.

Dr. Lewandowski:

My wife, she’s a social worker, is one of the kindest, most caring people I know. And it’s definitely something that I’ve learned from her. I grew up in a very blue collar [area]…I was one of the first people in my entire family to go to college. And growing up, I had this ‘me first’ [mentality]—I’m worried about me. And through knowing her, I’ve gained a better perspective and completely have flipped around, in fact [to see that] caring about other people is everything. It is everything… If you’re going out in the world and you’re not trying to help other people live a better life, you’re completely doing it wrong. 

I was much more selfish, self-centered, you know, “I’m going for the top”… More self-ambitious, probably in a way. I sound like horrible, but you know, it’s fair. My wife has definitely made me a better person. 

August (narration):

Dr. Lewandowski’s book is full of tips and practices for improving a healthy, primary relationship. I asked him for one piece of advice he would want you all to go away with.

Dr. Lewandowski:

If there’s one thing you want to do to make your relationship better is spend more time focusing on what goes well. And that is easy to say, but hard to do because we tend to take the good for granted. We’re similar to our partners and that helps us be compatible but we don’t appreciate that. We notice the times where there’s friction and we’re different, so much so that we’ll convince ourselves that opposites attract, which isn’t true. 

Our partner is a great source of comfort. They’re someone that we can be close to. There’s just so much friendship and caring and kindness between two partners that work so well that a lot of times we’re too busy or the shiny objects of the conflict and the problems that we have distract us that we just, we don’t think about our relationships nearly as much as we should. So..part of this advice would be to spend a little bit more time thinking about your relationship and especially focusing on what’s going right instead of what’s going wrong.

August (narration):

To learn more about Dr. Gary Lewandowski’s work, follow him on Twitter, @LewandowskiPhD, and check out his website, garylewandowski.com. Purchase his book, Stronger Than You Think, most anywhere books are sold!

Stream the full Girl Boner Radio episode, including a listener segment, up above or on your favorite podcast app! In that segment, Dr. Megan and I shared thoughts on moving on after a breakup. To support the show and get fun extras, join me on Patreon!