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Hey, everyone, welcome back to you on purpose, and I know it's not Valentine's Day quite yet, but I'm excited. I love love. I love talking about love, thinking about love, figuring out love, observing love, reflecting on love. And I love answering your relationship questions and giving you insights and information that I hope will be helpful in finding, keeping and loving the special person in your life.

So how do we do that? And what's most important to us in our partner? The dating site Zoosk surveyed roughly 6000 people and asked them what they most like to talk about in their first conversation with someone new. The number one answer, hobbies and interests in a study on marriage conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2017, 64 percent of married couples said that having interests we share with our partner is critical for a marriage to be successful. If you were to make a list of what you were looking for in a partner, what would you include?

Probably interest in hobbies, certain aspects of the way they look. Maybe you'd want them to be funny or generous and maybe their career or family minded.

But what about their brain? What brain type are you most interested in? Way, brain time? What does that even mean?

Right. Today, we're going to get into some of the science behind what not only attracts us to others, but what actually makes relationship successful in the long term. And according to one scientists, an amazing amount of it adds up to what's in our brains today. We're talking about the four types of people you might date, brain types. That is along with the brain science of how to make love lost. So here's a question for you. Do we come with our personalities fully formed?

Is who we are encoded in our genes or is it a result of our surroundings? You may know this as the nature nurture question, which influences us most according to common research today. The answer is both. In fact, the split might be close to 50/50, with about half of our characteristics shaped in some way by our genes and about half influenced by life experiences. What does that matter when it comes to dating? Well, as anthropologists, dating expert and best selling author Helen Fisher says, we inherit much of the fabric of our mind.

And that means that while some situations will change and shape us throughout life, some of who we are is just who we are. It's unlikely to shift when it comes to picking the person who might be the best long term mate for us. Understanding their brain type and some of those more inherent characteristics that come with it can give us big clues as to whether our attraction may be just fleeting or whether our love can go the distance first. Let's get into what personality is in the first place.

As Fisher puts it, our personality is made up of a combination of our character and our temperament. Character is influenced by experiences by what our parents and other close family members were like by the community we grew up in and the cultural values and behavior that surrounded us and so on. And then there's our temperament. When parents say they could see their kids personalities from almost the day they were born or in some cases even how they acted in the womb, they're referring to their temperament.

These tendencies are that part of our biology that we inherited and that shapes the patterns of how we think, feel and behave. And yet, with all we know about personalities and biology, it's incredibly hard to predict who will fall in love and what relationships will be successful. As I say this, my wife is lying on me and now you just had Halah. She's lying on me for the next ten seconds. Go for it, Jenna. No, you're not there in the next part yet.

Here are some things, according to extensive research, that scientists relatively fairly sure of when it comes to love. Generally speaking, we tend to fall in love with people from a similar socioeconomic background. We usually fall in love with people who are about as intelligent and well-educated as we are. We tend to be attracted to people with similar political views and values.

And here's an interesting one. We often fall for someone who lives or works near us, and we usually fall in love with people who are in love with us. That doesn't mean that if someone falls in love with you, you automatically love them back. We know that's not true. It means that if someone expresses loving feelings towards us, we're more likely to feel the same way about them than if they hadn't expressed any feelings of love or attraction for us.

But how about the idea that opposites attract? Do you believe that or do you believe that birds of a feather flock together? The answer is both. Psychologist Marcel Zentner, who reviewed 470 studies on personalities and marriage, concluded that the answer is essentially a draw. Zentner concluded how two personalities may be best combined in a relationship remains at present an unresolved issue. Thank you so much. We needed to know that. And yet scientists have identified that specific genes interact to shape our behavior and that biological traits and related behaviors tend to express themselves in clusters.

Let me make sense of all of that. For example, if your genes gear you towards taking a more traditional conservative approach to life, there's a high likelihood that you will also have a number of other personality traits, including being loyal and cautious and being someone who likes to follow schedules. That's right. You may have inherited your punctuality. Helen Fisher says that over decades of work, she began to see distinct patterns linking people's biological temperament with who they were attracted to.

She theorized that the chemical patterns in our brains influence our romantic relationships who were attracted to how we get along in relationships and our likelihood for long term romantic success to test her theory. She and her team took brain scans of study participants and matched them to a questionnaire Fisher devised to identify each brain type. The result consistently showed that people with different brain types not only a distinct personality clusters, but also tended to have distinct patterns of attraction to one another.

Fishes for brain types are based on four dominant chemical systems in our brain the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen systems. Now, as Fisher says, there are other chemicals that play a role in who we are and who and how we love. But these are the primary ones that can be reliably linked to a personality, characteristics and behavior before we get into describing each system and their personality characteristics. Let's take a little quiz that can help to indicate which brain type you have.

So go ahead, get out your notebook and a pen or screenshot there so that you can come back to it later. Now, each statement in this mini quiz has four possible responses. I'll read the statement and you will choose whether you are strongly disagree, disagree, agree or strongly agree. So those are your four options for every question I asked. Do you strongly disagree, disagree, agree or strongly agree?

So question number one, I find unpredictable situations exhilarating. Do you strongly disagree, disagree, agree or strongly agree? Question number two, I have a very wide range of interests. Again, do you strongly disagree, disagree, agree or strongly agree? Question number three, I am more enthusiastic than most people. Question number four, for me, routine's keep life orderly and relaxing.

Question number five, I enjoy planning way ahead. Question number six, people who know me would say I have traditional values. Question number seven, I like to figure out how things work.

Question number eight, I enjoy when conversations become competitive. Question number nine, I'm more analytical and logical than most people. Question number 10, I tend to know my friends deepest needs and feelings. OK, to my left, question number 11, I could change my mind easily.

And question number 12, after watching a movie, I can still feel emotionally impacted by hours later. So here's how you tally your scores, give yourselves zero points for each answer of strongly disagree. Give yourself one point for each disagree. Give yourself two points for each. Agree and give yourself three points for each. Strongly agree. So any time you strongly disagree, give yourself zero points. Every time you wrote disagree, give yourself one point. Every time you wrote agree, give yourself two points.

And every time you put strongly agree, give yourself three points. Now you're going to have four separate totals. First, add up your totals for statements one to three. The total of just those three, that's your first total and that's your score for the dopamine system. So add up the scores for statements. One, two, three. The total of just those three. That's your score for the dopamine system. Now add up your totals for statements four to six.

That's your score for the serotonin system. I know you're regretting not getting a pen and paper right now, so make sure you take a screenshot and come back to this. Add up your totals for statements seven to nine, that's your score for the testosterone system and add up your totals for statements 10 to 12. That's your score for the estrogen system. Now, these questions are adapted from Helen Fisher's actual personality test, but they're just a sampling of the test for the full assessment and a deeper analysis of how you balance out among the four brain types.

You can go to the anatomy of love dotcom, right? That's the anatomy of love dotcom. That's Helen Fisher's website. And you can find her full brain based personality test, their. Now, here's the part you've been waiting for. What does this mean? How does this affect you? The first green type is those who are more dominant in their dopamine system physical's. These people, explorers, explorers, tend to seek novelty. They like new people, experiences and situations.

They're willing to take risks and a more spontaneous they tend to have higher energy and more curiosity than other types, and they tend to be creative, optimistic and have a lot of enthusiasm and mental flexibility. The second type is those who are more dominant in their serotonin system physicals. These people, builders, they tend to be calm and conventional, the persistent, loyal and orderly. They usually follow rules and they tend to be really good at building and managing social networks.

The third type is those are dominant in their testosterone system.

Fisher calls these people directors. Let's hit a pause for a moment.

When it comes to testosterone and estrogen, it's easy to get these brain types confused with gender because most of us link estrogen with women and testosterone for men. The reality is that we all have all four of these chemicals in our brains, along with many others. Whether you have an estrogen or testosterone, dominant brain type may not link at all with your gender. And I'll talk a bit more about that in a moment. OK, back to directors. Those were the dominant testosterone system.

Directors tend to be direct, focused and analytical. They often keep their feelings to themselves and usually are strategic thinkers. They tend to be competitive and enjoy debate. And usually they're really good at understanding structure, like how complex machines work. And the last brain type is those are dominant in their estrogen system physical's these people negotiators. While directors key into details, negotiators tend to see the big picture. Fisher says they are often able to connect with a wide variety of facts and information and think contextually or holistically what equals calls web thinking.

Negotiators are imaginative, have great verbal skills and are good at reading people and interpersonal dynamics. They tend to be agreeable to express their emotions and are nurturing and sympathetic. Now, if you are thinking but I would point in each brain type, I scored equally in two or more types or I sound like a few of those. That's normal. Again, we all have all of these chemicals in our brains. So to an extent we all express each of the four types.

It's just that we tend to have one dominant type. We also can have a subtype or a secondary type. But if you want to dive into that level of detail again, you can go to Helen Fisher website. So interestingly, when it comes to who are most likely to be attracted to explorers, tend to go for other explorers and builders tend to go for other builders. However, directors tend to fall for negotiators and negotiators for four directors. This is why I said earlier that the idea that opposites attract and the idea that we stick with people that are like us are both true.

And it could depend on your brain type. Let's come back for a moment and zoom in on this dynamic between directors and negotiators, the dominant testosterone and estrogen brain types. Recently, I've been doing a lot of thinking and reading about the balance of masculine and feminine energies in relationships. Now, again, this isn't linked to gender, but it's more about the energies and relationships, the traits you express. I'm a man, obviously, and yet I also have many characteristics associated with more feminine energy.

I'm in sync with my emotions. I'm a hopeless romantic. I like to nurture close personal relationships and I'm more of a web thinker. And yet I also tend to be good at creating structure, thinking strategically and some of the other characteristics we classically think of as masculine. What I often tell people is that it doesn't matter how much masculine and feminine energy each of you has, and it doesn't matter. Your gender will matters to the success of a relationship is that you make space to understand and balance these energies within your relationship.

I find it so interesting that these masculine and feminine energies so closely correlate to the reasons that we just spoke about. Listen to our Fisher describes some of this ebb and flow between the director and the negotiator as she says these types may enrich each other biologically. When the assertive director challenges the more passive negotiator, the director may trigger the release of testosterone in the negotiator, thereby making the negotiator more assertive, too. And when the more affectionate negotiators strokes and hugs the director, this physical contact may trigger the release of oxytocin and estrogen in the competitive director, perhaps making the director more trusting, intuitive, compassionate and nurturing.

Reflecting on what I've seen anecdotally in my and other relationships and reading the signs of brain chemistry, I believe that it may be the fluctuating levels of testosterone and estrogen in our brains that influence some of the flow and fluctuation of masculine and feminine energies we feel and express in our relationships.

And it's never a bad time for a mental health check in. Like so many others, I started the New Year searching for a bit more peace and less stress in my life. So far, 2021 hasn't made that the easiest, but something that always helps me if the world feels overwhelming is talking to someone on purposelessness. Know just how highly I recommend. Better help. Better Help is a highly effective and easy to use. Online counselling service to help.

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That's a.m. dot com forward slash purpose. Sign up for your free trial today at an O and dot com forward slash purpose. OK, back to brain types, so we've established that directors tend to be attracted to negotiators and vice versa. And yet builders often end up with builders and explorers often hunt for other explorers. Why is that the case? Fisher says builders might seek out other builders because of their shared traditional values. That certainly bears out in my experience.

I have a friend who dated what she'd call bad boys in college when it came time to choose the one she went for, a guy who was loyal, reliable and family oriented. And they're still together today, and I'm certain they both score high on the building scale. I also knew a couple who were in a bill to explore a relationship. They lasted about five years before breaking up. And when they did, the builder said she had finally just grown exhausted by the explorer's constant need to go, go, go on weekends.

She wanted to nest and cuddle and look at real estate. He wanted to go rock climbing and hiking. Now, another couple might have been able to make this work. After all, we can take turns and mix it up like going hiking on Saturday and staying in and watching movies on Sunday. But for this couple, each was so deeply dominant in their explore and go to brains that both got tired of compromising and couldn't make this work. Explorers can be drawn to other explorers because they want someone to go adventuring with.

They like someone who like them, likes to experience the pleasures of life. They look for someone who can keep up with them and who wants to go to art galleries and shows, to concerts and festivals to learn axe throwing and glassblowing and to travel the world and eat exotic foods together. So does that mean if you're a builder or an explorer, you have to find someone like you or that if you're a director, you have to find a negotiator?

Here's the good news or perhaps the frustrating news. We really can fall for and develop a lasting relationship with any of these forebrain types, no matter what type we are. And that's because in addition to being heavily influenced by these brain chemicals, we're also heavily influenced by our experiences. There's also something called the love map that Fisher talks about. Your love map includes all of the other things that influence who you're attracted to. For example, you might gravitate towards someone who reminds you of your mother or your father or you may decidedly not want to.

Someone who reminds you of your mother or father were influenced by who we grew up with, our teachers, our friends, the values in the community we grew up in, and so many other factors that while it's possible to narrow down who you're likely to be attracted to, it's really difficult to predict who will actually fall in love with. And officials should know because she's also the chief scientist for Match.com. She says there's no bad match among these brain types.

Each type of partnership simply has different strengths and weaknesses and a different combination of traits. So if we're single, how do we use this information about brain tribes to increase our odds of finding our perfect May 1st? We can use it to understand ourselves and what's most important to us in a partner, along with how we can attract that person. And if we're already in a long term relationship, understanding are in our partners. Brain types can help us understand one another better.

Here's what each brain type tends to need and how they tend to act in relationships, along with some tips that can help each type find the one explore is engage in a style of love that is playful.

Tend to seek a partner is entertaining or exciting.

Adventure and freedom are key elements of their ideal relationship. They tend to have trouble talking about their deep feelings, though, and they may use their exuberant personality and humor to deflect questions or lines of conversation that feel too emotional. If you're an explorer, your tendency to be impulsive and get involved with someone new very quickly may interfere with your chances of developing a lasting relationship.

Instead, slow down. Give the relationship a chance to develop before you go big or go home.

Explorers are also inclined to make grand gestures and should think twice before giving extravagant presents or making big promises right after they've started dating someone to the Explorer. That could be no big deal. But to the person you're dating, it could be a signal, a serious commitment. Also, explorers can be quick to write off people who seem to traditional. And yet if that builder has a bit of an explorer streak in them, they could provide the perfect parents and balance to create stability and a family.

So be willing to look past your first impression and give the other person time to show you who they are. The builder's lifestyle is more pragmatic and grounded in compatibility. They may describe seeking a person who makes sense for them to be with a builder, needs someone who is stable and who wants to be part of a team with them. If you're a builder, you want to be courted. You are the most likely to want those traditional behaviours, like opening the door for someone and being punctual or for the person you're dating to bring you flowers or candy or other little gifts.

And builders tend to avoid drama. That's probably one of the reasons they tend not to go for explorers. Builders need loyalty and stability in a partner, yet a builder's practical sensibilities can keep them from being adventurous. You don't have to pretend you're an explorer, but it's healthy to try new things now and again. Also, you appreciate being on time and sticking to plans, but inevitably life happens. Learning to be a bit more flexible and go with the flow and plan shift can keep you from coming across as rigid, built as a super social, which is great.

But you might want to avoid introducing your new love interest to all of your friends and your family on the first date. It can be a bit overwhelming. On the other side of things. Builders can be extremely modest, almost to a fault. If you're interested in someone, don't be afraid to share your accomplishments with them. You can be open without bragging. For a director's love can look more like deep friendship and mutual respect. Directors tend not to be big into displays of emotions and want a partner they find intellectually stimulating.

They tend to be analytical in how they approach dating and can seek out the nurturing and emotional qualities of a negotiator in their formulation. One plus one equals two. Together, they and the negotiator make a complete set. It's simple math. A director brings the logic and structure and the negotiator. The empathy and nurturing directors tend to evaluate people they're dating pretty quickly. You may want to avoid planning your future on the second day. Try to resist the urge to cut to the chase and instead slow down and allow the relationship to bloom.

Try and enjoy the romance. Also, your love of debate might give you the impression that your combative, a spirited back and forth might feel fun to you, but to them, in my readers, if you're too dominant in a conversation, try and key into your empathy and just listen for a while without feeling the need to comment on or offer a counterpoint to whatever your date says. Also, you might need to engage some extra effort in expressing your emotions, since that probably doesn't come naturally to you.

Negotiators are into more of the style of love that is nurturing and giving them then to want a deep spiritual connection with their partner and are looking for a soulmate. Because negotiators tend to be so flexible and accommodating, they can be attractive to all brain types. But it also means they may put their own needs in the backseat in favor of caring for others. Negotiators are tender and they take love seriously. They are the type most likely to take a break from dating after they've been disappointed or had their heart broken.

And that can happen frequently because they tend to dive into relationships with their whole hearts when dating negotiators tend to see all the possible future outcomes of a potential relationship. And then I can actually keep them from experiencing and enjoying what's happening right now. Try and stay present with who's in front of you and what they're actually doing and saying right now, negotiators are extremely perceptive, but this can backfire if you're trying to read into every gesture at the person across the table.

So those are some tips for each. Brain time to find lasting love and just to underscore, every brain type is awesome. We all have little things, some big things we tend to trip up on, and that's fine. It's normal. It's part of our unique nature. No one is realistic, is seeking perfection in themselves or others. But once you've found that big love, how do you make it last? Here are three strategies to stimulate those brain centers for happy long term relationships.

Firstly, we want to stimulate the dopamine center, which feeds our feelings of romantic love and engagement with our partner. To do that, you're going to do something you may have heard me talk about before. You're going to try new things together and do it on a regular basis. It's great if you want to take a trip to Paris or to the Caribbean if you've never been before. But these don't have to be grand gestures. They can be simple things.

Rearrange the furniture together. Listen to a new album together. I have a friend who during the pandemic took a staycation with his wife and mix it up. They hiked to neutral together every day of the week. Again, it doesn't have to be something big, though it can. Second, we want to feed our serotonin system. Serotonin balances, dopamine. When we have too much dopamine, we can start to feel agitated and unsatisfied. And serotonin helps keep that in check.

You can think of serotonin as the contentment chemical because it supports deep attachment. The way we can feed our serotonin center is through physical contact, as Helen Fisher puts it, stay in touch with one another. This isn't just about sex. Think about linking arms when you walk, cuddling on the couch, reaching across the supper table to hold your partner's hand and look in their eyes while you listen to them talk. And the third and final one that I want to share with you is take more time to fall in love again with the same person every month, take an opportunity to learn something new about them, take an opportunity to see them as a new person because they're changing your changing.

How's that for a way to end our Valentine's Day episode? I hope you found today's episode useful and insightful. And I hope you've learned something new that will help you find and nurture an amazing and fulfilling romantic relationship. Share this episode with someone you love or maybe you would like to get to know better this Valentine's Day. And as always, please drop a note in the comments and let me know what resonated and what you connected with. I'd love to hear from you.

Hey, guys, this is Jay again, just a few more quick things before you leave. I know we try to focus on the good every day, and I want to make that easier for you. Would you like to get a short email from me every week that gives you an extra dose of positivity? Weekly Wisdom is my newsletter. Write down whatever's on my mind that I think may uplift your week. Basically little bits of goodness that are going to improve your well-being.

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This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions, our executive producer from Dust lt is Michelle Usif. Our senior producer is Julianna Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the dust like development and operations coordinator.