Welcome to the show!

In this episode, I’m interviewing someone who’s work changed the trajectory of my life.

By the time I was thirty years old, I had been through several serious, long-term relationships, had my heart broken more than once, and apparently didn’t know how to pick the right partner for me.

After reading one of Dr. John Van Epp’s books, I found myself in a relationship with the woman who would become my wife (a great wife), and I don’t think the timing is a coincidence.

In one of my most downloaded episodes (Episode 16), I discussed the foundation of Dr. Van Epp’s work with one of his course instructors. It’s called The Relationship Attachment Model, and it’s a simple model for navigating relationships, based on vast amounts of relationship research and meta studies Dr. Van Epp has conducted.

One day, as I was looking at my podcast stats, I thought, ‘I wonder if I could get Dr. Van Epp himself to be on the show to elaborate on his model.’ So I contacted him, and I was able to get not just him, but his daughter and teaching partner as well, Dr. Morgan Cutlip, to both be on the show to enlighten us further, and help impress upon you what I have found so helpful.

This episode marks the beginning of a mini-series centered around healthy romantic relationships at every stage – dating, pre-marriage, and married.

We’ll start today with navigating relationships in the dating phase, particularly what to do to make sure you don’t end up with someone who’s not good for you. Then in the next couple episodes, we’ll have the same guests back on to discuss pre-marriage, and marriage relationships.

So get ready, here’s my first interview with Drs. John Van Epp and Morgan Cutlip.

Interview on Choosing The Right Romantic Partner with Drs. John Van Epp and Morgan Cutlip

Brian: Hey, Dr. John and Dr. Morgan, welcome to the show. It’s so nice to have you with us today.

Dr. Morgan: It’s so great to be here.

Dr. John: Yeah, we’re very excited and thank you for putting us on (the show).

Brian: It is my pleasure. I’ve mentioned to you before that I read one of your books years ago and it had a major impact on me. I can’t believe we’re talking here on my show today. I didn’t even have this show when I first read your book. This is kind of like a mini dream come true for me so I’m super excited about it.

Dr. John: That’s wonderful. Thank you for reading, following, and being such a good advocate of it. You’re kind of a living proof that if we do relationships intentionally with some kind of a plan, they actually do turn out different – better.

Brian: Absolutely. I want to get into all the details about how that happens. We’re going to be doing a full miniseries – for those of you who didn’t catch that in the intro – get ready to hear Dr. John and Dr. Morgan several more times after this episode.

Question: Why don’t we start off with the first question which is going to introduce the body of work that you’ve helped bring to the table here over the years? The first question is – can you provide a one to two minute overview of what you call the RAM (Relationship Attachment Model) just to remind our listeners who haven’t heard episode sixteen yet?

Dr. John: Absolutely. The Relationship Attachment Model was a visual model of the major bonds that make up relationships. I designed the model actually way back when I was doing my PhD work in the nineteen eighty’s – that seems like long before some were born of your listeners – but during that time, I just found people don’t know how to visualize or know what is actually going on in their relationship.

A relationship, as you know, Brian, will be a connection between you and a person. So the question that I try to answer with the model is, ‘What are the specific connections?’

I came up with five that actually captured the bulk of major connections in relationship theory and research: how you know somebody, how you trust them, how you then rely on them, how committed you are with them, and how you physically engage; your levels of touch.

Just to tell you those real quickly, know, trust, rely, commit, and touch, are major bonds and they fluctuate. The RAM looks like, you might say, an old equalizer – if anybody remembers those graphic equalizers – or a soundboard that has sliders that go up and down, ‘How high am I in my level of know, trust, reliance, commitment, and touch?’

Brian: Great. Thank you for that introduction, Dr. John. Let’s move into the topic of this episode which is – for people who are in a relationship where they’re not really committed yet, not engaged, not married, they’re just really exploring to find the best partner for them.

Question: How has dating changed overtime and how does that impact the success of long-term romantic relationships in your opinion?

Dr. Morgan: I think one major change is that we’ve lost a lot of the norms around dating. When you lose the norms of what’s right, what’s expected, and what’s wrong, you lose a lot of definition in relationships and how they should function. I think that because of this, it’s become really confusing to navigate the dating world, I mean, sometimes we don’t even call it dating anymore. So, when you lose this definition and the norms, you just don’t know what to expect in relationships. And I think there’s become almost like this passive acceptance in relationships of just, ‘It is what it is, we are what we are, things will work out if they’re supposed to,’ and that’s become really difficult to navigate.

Dr. John: Yeah, also you’re talking to a father-daughter team here so we come from two different generations. Even over my lifetime, I dated way different than my father did. And then Morgan’s generation, being a millennial generation, dated even differently than my generation to some extent.

I think one of the themes of what has happened is lower levels of commitment and faster or accelerated relationships. Some aspects actually go a lot faster, commitment goes slower, and people’s individuality; wanting to just kind of carve it out for themselves however they want to do it, it’s their right in their own individual process. That rise in individuality has changed the whole landscape.

I think we should also add technology; devices, apps, and everything from the web-based programs to Tinder and things that go right on your phone. All of these things have really heightened, like Morgan said, a kind of confusion of norms. All of this freedom and independence is wonderful, but I think there is somewhat of a wide-spread confusion of exactly how we do it in a way that is really going to be successful.

Brian: Yeah, that’s the million-dollar question I think everybody wants to know, ‘How do I do it, be successful, and frankly not end up with somebody that’s not right for me?’ because that’s the habit that happens with a lot of folks who follow my platform. It’s going to be interesting to see what you advise us to do as we enter a brand new relationship here, so thanks for that nice introduction.

Question: In one of your programs you mentioned something called The Big Lie. I wonder if you can tell us what that is. It’s a big lie about how we develop that we need to keep in mind when we’re dating. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Dr. John: Absolutely. In the past we called it ‘love is blind.’ In a way, ‘love is blind’ means that it doesn’t see certain things; there’s somewhat of a deception to those strong feelings of connection and love for another person, and you’re not always having some kind of clarity in what you’re looking at.

The ‘big lie’ is just saying that if you add to that the reluctance that there is today to explore some key areas of people’s backgrounds. We tend to start believing that a person exists only in the moment and they have no track record; they have no past. That was the ‘big lie’. Love already does that, it gives you ‘tunnel vision’. But then on top of it, I think that with all of this individuality there’s a real big push to only see somebody in the moment, and yet in a long-term relationship we begin to realize that people are the sum of many experiences in their past, particularly their family upbringingand some of their past relationship track record. Yet those things many times are minimized in a relationship. We kind of take on this big lie that you are what exactly you present, I call it ‘the Facebook representation,’ what I see right there in front of me is the sum of who you are and that is a big lie. We need to go a lot deeper in getting to know people.

Questions: Why don’t we unpack that a little bit because I agree, I’ve gotten into relationships where I didn’t really get to know the person like I really needed to and I ended up having some heartache for it.

Why do you suppose it’s so important?

And frankly, how do you do it to get to know the person’s family, the partner that you’re talking to, how they’ve adapted to life when we’re determining whether they’re dateable or not? How do we use this information to our benefit?

Dr. Morgan: I think one thing that we have to do is we have to ask a lot of questions. I think that part of the big lie is we just pay attention to,‘How are they treating me in the moment? What am I seeing right in front of me?’ but when you’re taking into account somebody’s past, their family background, who they’ve dated – you really need to ask some of those questions that puts you in a place that can sometimes feel a little bit uncomfortable. We have to push throu