“Visualizing your vulnerability”…oh yay.

This week, Van Epp hosted a lecture addressing the golden question: Why do we fall in love with jerks? Bwog is a little frantic to find some answers. Luckily, newly-initated Bwogger Maryam Badran attended the event, and reports back on what we’re (apparently) missing.

I went to “Learn to Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind” with the desperate hope that attending could provide answers to my pressing questions: Could it be possible for me to spend this Valentine’s day doing something other than crying into a box of chocolates alongside texts from my ex? Could I actually learn, in an hour and a half, how to stop pursuing jerks?

Van Epp, President/Founder of Love Thinks and author of How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk, started out by explaining how and why he wrote his book. After 25 years of counseling individuals in confusing and relationships in a private clinic, he was inspired. Fueled by these poor idiots, he decided to work on writing “a road map for singles that they could use to help navigate through the fog of relationships”. But what he realized was that so many relationship guides often detailed abstract words and concepts: trust, commitment, whatever. What he felt was missing was how to actually select a partner. So, he answered this question in his book, a sort of procedural guidebook for the frustrated spinsters out there. According to Van Epp, it comes down to this one basic idea: “The reality is some people are jerks”. Citing a study that stated 70% of today’s college students scored higher on narcissism and lower on empathy than 30 years ago, he concludes, “it’s hard to find somebody that is a relatively healthy person to date nowadays”. But it’s not impossible. We have more freedom in our romantic relationships than any other generation in history—but with great power comes great responsibility, and we’re throwing that away by choosing jerks. It comes down to us, and only us, to choose the normal person over the one that takes gym selfies.

Van Epp went on to explain that there are five connections that must be considered in forming a successful relationship: knowing, trusting, relying, committing, and touching. He believes that evaluating your relationship through these factors can allow for a visualization of your vulnerability. From there, you can decide if the pairing is right for you. In choosing a perfect partner, he argued that there are five basic characteristics to look for, which he created a mnemonic for: FACES. He revealed Family background and Attitudes and Actions of Conscience as the first two, but refused to explain the rest, convincing us that to uncover the true secrets of love, we’d have to buy the book. Cheap tricks aside, what Van Epp was saying actually made sense.

All these things, he finally emphasized, must be accompanied by really knowing the person. Until then, you’re in a relationship with the “Facebook version” of them. He suggests a 90-day probation period, firmly asserting that the real person starts emerging somewhere between the second and third month.

But don’t rush: Van Epp explains that to get to know somebody so you can trust them, there are 3 T’s: Talk, togetherness (in a diversity of settings, not always with the same people and places), and time. The core characteristic in labeling someone as a jerk is their ability to alter their behavior. If they can’t do that, he insists that we should move on from them ASAP. Additionally, he does remind us that there’s a trend showing that the longer you wait to have sex, the more successful the relationship.

Offering a cheesy few final words, Van Epp reminded us that the “choices we make in our relationships today will become the patterns for our relationships tomorrow”, and that it isn’t about living for the moment, but living for the experience you’ll have in your future. He encouraged us to repeat aloud, whenever possible: “my head and my heart should work together”. Armed with his advice, I’m hoping I’ll delete the number of the random hookup, and maybe, just maybe, next Valentine’s Day, I won’t be attracted by the title of this talk.