Why Dating Success is NOT All About Good Looks

Hey there everyone. Before we start the podcast, as you all know, there's a lot of bad dating and love advice out there and we want to put a stop to that. So if you're enjoying this podcast, you enjoy the content that we're putting out, please can you leave a review Wherever it is that you're listening to this podcast, it spreads a lot of love and it really helps get this message out there so we can help more women, just like you, attract the love that they truly deserve. Go ahead and leave that review and let's jump into the podcast. And I got some women who were very physically attractive, who were struggling so much with dating. And I got a lot of women who by definition will be less physically attractive, who by following our strategies were doing much better than the physically attractive women. And then, you know, cut scene 12 years from now, I'm just like, you know what we don't like, that's not even really a topic of conversation with what we do. It's just not because leading to long term success, it's not correlative at, at all. It's just not. Welcome to the Love Strategies podcast where we help successful women attract high value men, date with a strategy and improve their relationships. Now, whether you're single or dating or in a new relationship, we're here to help you dive into the male mind and provide raw insights found nowhere else, backed by science, psychology and our own personal experiences. Your hosts today are myself, Adam Lodolce, professional dating coach and founder of Love Strategies, and Dr. Gary Lewandowski, a relationship scientist, professor and our head relationship coach here at Love Strategies. Please share with a friend and enjoy. Gary, whenever someone becomes single, decides they want to find love, what is the first thing they decide to work on? What is it?

If I had to say the one, definitely how they look.

Definitely. I'm going, I'm going shopping. I'm getting my nails done, I'm getting my hair done, I'm going to look up the, get some better makeup, everything. Like our natural inclination is to focus on our physical looks. And I get that, like that is our natural impulse. But today what we're really going to be talking about is the limiting beliefs about physical attraction. And we have a lot of data on this. I mean we've worked, we've had a total of 44,000 clients here at Love Strategies. As a lot of data, we've had a lot of different types of women and different varying levels of physical attraction. For being frank and the, the common thread that we have seen for successful daters is not their physical looks. It's actually something very different. So we want to tackle this limiting belief today. For those of you who are getting very focused on that, especially in today's environment of social media, everything is focused on physicality and really hopefully build your confidence by the end of this.

Yeah. And I would say, you know, this is a human inclination. Right. When we are seeking connection, the first thing someone can know about us without knowing anything at all really about who we are as a person is what we look like. And so men do that. You know, I know guys when they get single, the first thing, I'm gonna hit the gym, going on, going on a diet, you know, paleo, here I come, cutting out alcohol. I'm going to the gym, I'm going to do my cold plunges, I'm going to do my sauna, I'm getting on a regimental. Like everybody does this because we think that physical attraction is the end all, be all of relationships and dating.

Right. Well, it's where you get the most instant feedback loop. Like you, you do get an instant feedback loop. If you, let's say, change all your clothes and, you know, you lose ten pounds immediately, you do get some, wow, okay, I'm getting a little bit more attention. Things are going a little bit better. But does that correlate with long term success in relationships? I would argue no, not necessarily. And I think you've. I know, I don't know if this is in your notes, but I know you've spoken about this before, about the research that shows that physical looks actually does not correlate with long term success. In fact, it might be have a negative correlation.

Right? Yeah. I mean, there's nothing that, you know, being prettier, being more handsome and that doesn't make you a better relationship partner in the long term. It might make you more desirable in the short term, but, but not necessarily in the long term. And so what I like about today's podcast, we're going to, we're going to do something just a little bit different where rather than just necessarily giving you a bunch of facts and figures and specific strategies, we're going to lead you through a limiting belief, one of the biggest limiting beliefs that we see our clients have, and just kind of show you how Adam and I, as two experts in relationships think about this. Because, you know, sometimes people say, oh, well, you know, you have to be really good at relationships. You know, all these facts and figures and all that kind of. And it's like, yeah, I do. But like the facts and Figures aren't actually what are most helpful. It's how you think about relationship problems that is actually the most beneficial. And so we're going to lead you through this idea of dating. Success is all about being attractive. Now, it's an easy thing to believe, and it's a thing, you know, it's a statement I think probably most people believe about dating. But one of the things that we know from psychology is people are not very good at knowing what they don't know. And in fact, the less you know about something, in this case dating, the easier it is for you to feel more confident in your beliefs. Right. So someone who doesn't know that much about dating, you say, oh, is dating primarily about physical attraction? They're like, yeah, I'm sure it absolutely is, definitely. But like, Adam and I both would tell you, because we know a lot about this is it's like, is it about physical. It's a little bit about physical attract. You can't deny that that's not part of it. But it's actually not as big of a issue as you might think. And so, you know, people, fans of psychology will know that this is the Dunning Krueger effect, which is essentially the opposite of imposter syndrome. Dunning Krueger. The less you know about something, the more confident you can be in your conclusions. And so the big problem that people have when they're super confident about things that are complex or thinking complex things like dating are simple, is you start blaming yourself. Like, why is this so hard? I don't understand. Like, is there something wrong with me? And I literally just last night had a client say, gary, like, why is this so hard? It's like, what is wrong with me that this is so hard? And it's like, I forget what her name is, but it's like, this is just hard. This is just complicated. And so as you learn that things are more difficult and you start seeing the nuance, but then you actually, as you learn even more, you cross over to, oh, my gosh, this isn't impossible. Oh, I see now. Now I can work at this problem strategically.

Yeah, well, it's like with the Dunning Kruger. It's like the. The less you know, the more quickly you are to make statements about yourself. So. Or men or anything. So, for example, you go on three dates. Your first three dates, ever since you've been divorced. None of them go well. And you say a simple explanation is, men don't want commitment nowadays, or, I'm not pretty enough, or it's Just these basic statements. And of course, the more that you learn and understand the nuance and the strategies and all the variables involved, suddenly you can actually start really solving for the real thing going on and not these superficial statements in these beliefs. So yeah, I love that. I think that's really powerful.

Yeah. And so, so let's dive in. Right? And so the seemingly simple truth right in, in air quotes, truth that people will often believe, this limiting belief is dating success is all about being good looking.

Right.

And so I just from, from the start with that statement, just the, the scientist to me is, has to just say is like what, what do you mean by success? Dating success is all about being good looking. And it really depends on what you mean by success. If you mean success as in just hooking up with somebody tonight or this weekend, good looking matters a lot more. Right. If that's what you're just looking for, like a casual fling, something like that, attractiveness matters much, much more. And so maybe you're right. But what I know and Adam can back me up on this is, you know, our clients, people listen to this podcast. It's not about hooking up, it's not about casual flings. What we're looking for and what success means to our listeners is long term, fulfilling, sustainable relationship with someone that I'm going to share my life with. That's success. Now when that's your measure of success, good looking becomes much less important. And in fact, good looking can actually work against you in many ways.

Yeah, absolutely. So I know you're gonna walk us through a four, like four quick reasons why this obvious statement isn't even that simple or true. And that could actually be wrong. Why don't you walk us through a couple of these?

Yeah. And so, you know, not only do we think it's as simple as being all about physical attractiveness, actually being more physio, physically attractive makes dating a lot more difficult. And so the first reason for that is this just general idea of needles and haystacks in that if you're super attractive and you're posting an online profile or even just walking around out in the world, you're going to get a lot more attention and you're going to get broad based attention, everybody. You're going to get tons of matches on the apps, lots of guys messaging you. And then by having all this noise, all this extra, all these extra people, it just makes it a lot harder to find the one person or the several people that you're most compatible with. Right?

Yeah. You'll get Decision fatigue. I mean, if you're getting a hundred messages a day, some people might call that a champagne problem. It's a good problem to have, but it's really a problem. I mean, that is something that a lot of our clients will deal with. And trying to weed out the right types of guys is, is very challenging. Or they call it the paradox of choice. The more options you have, the harder it is to make a decision. Like if someone's selling, think the famous psychological studies, like they're selling jelly at a stand. And if there's like 12 different flavors of jelly, no one buys the jelly because they're like, well, I don't know, do I want strawberry, do I want BlackBerry, do I want rhubarb, whatever, weird flavors. But just sell strawberry jam. And if you got just strawberry jam, you're like, ooh, that kind of looks good. I want that. So in some ways, having less options actually makes this easier rather than harder. Are you tired of committing your heart to a man who only just pulls away? Well, if so, we have a very special presentation that's available to our podcast listeners. It's at a special link. It's called he commits.com and it's going to walk you through the five secret strategies that make men commit. Head on over to he commits dot com. It's only available for a short period of time. I think you're going to like it a lot. All right, back to the podcast.

Right? And if you have all of these guys messaging you and giving you attention, dating supposed to be fun. And if you have all this extra attention, you know, what we hear from clients is it becomes like a part time job, right? You have to vet all these options. Are these guys legitimate? Is this person a scam? You know, your efficiency is, is way down and there's just opportunity costs in the sense that all the time you're spending trying to figure out which guy is legitimate, which guy isn't, which one's really a good match, which one isn't. It's all time taken away from actually spending time with potentially a guy who's, who's a great match. Which is, it's just to say, you know, the second thing that's going on here is that frankly, not all attention is good attention. Right? Some of those matches, many of those matches I would say are really just interested in you for your physical features. And this goes back to the definition of success. Are you looking for guys who only want to date you because of your physical features? And the answer to that almost invariably Is, no, that's not what a meaningful connection is about. It's not what you're looking for. And so that can be a really big problem too.

Yeah. Almost being like if you take it to the extreme and let's say you are one of, you're in the top 1% of attractiveness, it almost creates a disconnect to the other human being because it's so distracting. Right. Like, and look, being a top 1% good looking person, I think, you know, hey, it's great. Like, hey, if you, if you're there, fine. But I think with dating in particular, it really does not allow you for, to build emotional attraction on that first date because if you are going on a date and you might not have those qualities, people are going to be searching for the attributes within you that are attractive that, that are beautiful and rather than having them just chasing you into the bedroom. So I think it's actually a very interesting reframe for those of you who are finding yourself telling you telling are finding for those people. So I'm struggling. My words, for those people who are struggling and constantly telling themselves that their looks are what, what's getting in the way. This is a really, really powerful reframe to say. Well look, the guys that you are going out with are, are genuine actually about getting to know you on a deeper level. Yeah.

And it, it goes back to this simple thing is like we think it's true that attraction is what helps. That's the number one thing that helps. And actually what we're talking about already so far is it actually creates problems and problems that you're not thinking about. And so speaking of problems, one of the other big problems that the third thing is, you know who gets lied to a lot? Attractive people. Attractive people. Because particularly guys like the good guys, the bad guys. You know what the bad guys are good at telling you what you want to hear. Right. The wrong guy is really good at telling you what you want to hear just to get into the bedroom with you. Right. And so wrong guys, they're not dumb, but they are sneaky. And so if you're, if he's motivated by physical things, he's going to be more motivated to lie to you. And then, you know, that leads to things like lies, love bombing, empty promises. All things if you know, no one wants to deal with when they're dating.

Yeah, yeah. It really does create a number of different problems when you're at that level. And by the way, you know, on both sides there's good problems and there's bad problems. If you're really attractive, this. Hey, if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, this is really depressing because I'm really attractive, that's okay. We can solve for that maybe in a future podcast. For those of you who are struggling with this mindset of, you know, maybe I'm not attractive enough, hopefully this is really helping you and kind of rethinking these things a bit, because both have strengths, both have weaknesses.

Yeah. And I think, you know, we don't often. And this is the last one, we don't often recognize the set of assumptions that go along with someone being attractive. And frankly, there's just. There's a lot of negative stereotypes. And the research supports all of this, which is, you know, when you're attractive, people just don't think you're smart, people don't think you've earned your success, and people generally think you're more promiscuous sexually. And so if you're an accomplished, smart, intelligent, accomplished woman who's attractive, that's a huge problem, because guys are making assumptions based on your appearance that are completely not true. It's sexist, it's inappropriate. But this is, again, it's a problem that you don't necessarily think of. And so as much as, you know, the assumption is attraction solves a bunch of problems, it creates a bunch of other problems, too. And that's where understanding more about a topic and the nuances and all the factors that go into it is really important and helpful.

Yeah. Well, and I just want to, like, add a little caveat to what you're saying.

And I'm.

I'm wonder if you agree, but when you say attraction, we're talking physical attraction, because there's an entire underbelly to all of this that we're discussing, and that emotional attraction is a very different thing. And you can be less physically attractive and very good at building emotional attraction with men through your energy, through your vibe, through your personality, through your connection. So those are. I always separate those two things out. So everything we're talking about is physical attraction right now. Yeah.

Which actually really nicely sets up a couple pieces of research that I. I did want to share, which is one is some of my own research which shows exactly what you're just talking about, which is if you have a really good personality, it actually makes you appear more physically attractive. And so, you know, personality does go a long way. They. You can just. It's not. It's not working out. It's not anything physical. You Just by having a better personality, people perceive you as physically more appealing. There's another piece of research that shows when people are friends first, basically when they establish emotional intimacy first, those couples are less matched on physical attractiveness. So if you. It means one person's a little bit more physically attractive, one person's a little less physically attractive, which actually is a good thing because it shows that they're not basing their pairing on just physical features. So it's going deeper than that. And so that's actually, you know, when we talk about that relationship that's going to last 10, 20, 30 years, it's going to be about that emotional intimacy, not about the physical features.

Right.

And so that's important to match that way.

That's really interesting. I. I think back to one of my first serious relationships, and we were friends for a while before then, and physically, she actually just wasn't really my type, honestly, like, but we dated for a long time and it was awesome. Like, it was. It was the second best relationship to what I have with Jessica, honestly, and where I feel like I struck gold. But like, with. With her, I just. We were buddies first for a really long time, and then it grew into something. And. And I think that those can be incredibly, incredibly powerful relationships. And that's where you can really date out of your league in many ways, I think. Not to say that I was out of her league in any sense, but I'm saying for everyone listening, I. I certainly wasn't.

Well, it just goes to show, you know, what the best relationships are built on, and it's built on that emotional stuff. And so, you know, that. That just kind of underscores this whole thing about, you know, what a limiting belief it is to just believe it's all about physical attractiveness, because it's not. It's actually very little about physical attractiveness is. It's much more about that emotional connection. And so, you know, the one other thing I have on here that I just kind of want to talk about really very quickly because, you know, we don't want to spend too much time on this. It's just a couple of just simple strategies to make some of this a little bit easier. Right? And so we said one of the big problems that attractive people have is they just have too many matches, tons and tons of matches. And so this is true for everybody in the sense that when you're trying in your online dating profile, that kind of stuff, the fewer matchers matches you have, the better you want. Quality over quantity. You want to spend A lot of time disqualifying guys who frankly will never be compatible with. And so set up your profile in a way. And again, we don't have time to get into all the ways to do that, but you really want to set. And there's a way to do this, though, like set up your profile in a way that actually cuts down. It filters out a bunch of the guys who are never going to really have a chance.

Yeah, I mean, quality overrides quantity to a degree. I mean, if you're not getting any matches, that's a different story. We want to have. There's. There's a middle ground here for sure, but I, I totally agree with that. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's not helpful. You know, sometimes people are like, oh, my gosh, I put my profile up and I had 50 people message me in the first weekend. You're not being. Not filtering enough. Like, that's, that's a lot. And so, you know, like you said, there's a middle ground. And so it's another one of those assumptions. People assume more quantity is always good, and it just isn't. And so, you know, I, I guess I love. I like this topic and I like this because I think so often people think relationships are too simple and they're common sense. But I think when you kind of see how we think about something that seems on the surface, quite obvious. Oh, you know, dating success is about being physically attractive. When you actually know a little bit more about relationships, you see that things aren't as simple as they seem, and then it gives you a. A clearer path forward in terms of how to navigate the dating. Dating scene.

Yeah. And I feel like I realized this very quickly when I switched from working with men to women, because when I worked with men, I always had an intuition from my own, even personal experiences that physical attraction is not the. The magic bullet. You know, there are a lot of physically attractive men who actually don't do that, do very well with women. And there's a lot of unattractive men who can really chat up a woman and do really well. And so I always had that intuition with men. And I saw with my own eyes when I would coach men, and, you know, I used to be 45 pounds heavier than I am today, and I developed a lot of skills when it came to dating. And I was like, oh, that's actually not the X factor with women. Then I switched over to women about, God, 12 years ago @ this point, and I wasn't sure. I, you know, I just wasn't sure. Because I'm like, you know, men are very superficial. I kind of had a lot of these limiting beliefs myself. And then I realized as I brought in a lot of clients very quickly because we were getting like a lot of press at the time and, you know, Glamour did like a feature on us. It was crazy. And I got some women who were very physically attractive who were struggling so much with dating. And I got a lot of women who by definition will be less physically attractive, who by following our strategies, were doing much better than the physically attractive women. And then, you know, cut scene 12 years from now, I'm just like, you know what? We don't even like, that's not even really a topic of conversation with what we do. It's just not. Because leading to long term success, it's not correlative at all. It's just not. And it's pretty wild to see that. And so I'm so happy you brought this topic to the discussion today because I just think it's something that really holds so many women back from actually taking those first steps forward to finding love and doing it with confidence. Yeah.

And I totally agree. It's exactly what you just said, which is we actually don't spend that much time talking about this. But what we do talk about, which I think is, is the thing that's actually much more important is that feeling of. So it's not about physical attractiveness, it's about your feeling of feeling empowered, confident and comfortable. And that when you talk about what is actually attractive to men, it's those three things.

Yeah. And being able to look in the mirror and be like, I'm proud of myself. I look good. I feel good. Like, your perspective, the perspective you have towards yourself is the same perspective men will have towards you. I've gone out with a lot of women who I would say are on the physical attraction level, higher. And they have a lot of insecurities. I mean, they're like pointing out the smallest little things, like a mole on their leg and. And talking about how that's the worst thing in the world. I'm like, what are we talking about here? And then I, like, I, when I was dating, would go out with a woman who was maybe physically less attractive than in comparison, but would just have that swagger, look in the mirror and be like, you're amazing, you great. And she'd actually believe it and it would just like radiate through everything. And I found that massively attractive. So that's the area to work on. That's the thing to think about and realize that ultimately this is not the most important thing at all. It's really learning the right strategies, feeling empowered through the process, and hopefully you all got a lot out of this. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks, Gary. Appreciate it, man.

Thanks.

All right, so now we're at the end of the podcast, and hopefully you got a lot of really great information from this, this podcast. But as we know, information can only take you so far. It's time to take some action. So what I recommend you do now is head on over to loveapply.com it's going to walk you through a series of questions, and then you'll be able to book what we call a complimentary love strategy session. Yes, you've heard it. Someone on my team is going to get on a phone call with you, be able to understand your situation, what it is that you're struggling with in your love life, and create that strategy to help you attract that man, that relationship you truly deserve. So take that action. Go make it happen. We cannot wait to speak with you, love apply.com and yeah, let's help you create that love life you truly deserve. All right, speak soon. Bye. Bye.