Blog - Dr. Ali "Victor" Binazir, Happiness Engineer

Tenth Anniversary Post #1: What Do Women Want?

In 2005, I left my corporate job at the elite management consulting firm McMisery & Company to write books and dispense advice to receptive individuals instead of soulless corporations. Ten years later, the market for dubious advice continues to grow, and I manage to still put bread on the table by sneaking in some sensible stuff amidst the din out there.

Now, after reading thousands of your letters and meeting with hundreds of you in person, I can’t help but notice certain big trends about how humans relate to each other. And I’m feeling like writing a few articles about these trends. For the past six years, I’ve been mostly writing for women, so today, I’m going to talk about that perennial conundrum: what women want.

Thus far, I’ve come up with 5 Big Observations. Today, I’ll list them all, but only talk about the first one, lest this article turn into an epic novel. And I also have two pieces of good news for you at the end, so stay tuned. Here are the Five Big Observations:

Of all the people in the world, sometimes those least concerned about what women want seem to be women themselves.
Sometimes it’s okay not to be sure about what you want.
Having a good sense of your own boundaries, norms, and permissions is much better than total cluelessness.
What you really want is much simpler than you think, and pretty much the same as what everyone else wants.
There’s basically only one question everyone asks me when it comes to love and relationships: “Am I lovable? Am I enough?”

So, let’s open up the first can of worms: (more…)

“How Will I Ever Trust a Man Again?” + A Good Day for America

First of all, a massive congratulations to all Americans today for the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to legalize same-sex marriage in all fifty states. Such a breakthrough would have been unthinkable even twenty years ago.

Unfortunately, discrimination against homosexuals has been around for much longer than that. Fortunately, as Martin Luther King Jr put it so eloquently, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” In the past hundred years, we’ve gotten the vote for women and racial minorities, improved access to higher education for women and minorities, reduced violence significantly (The Better Angels of Our Nature: How Violence Has Decreased Over Time is a fantastic read on this), criminalized torture, stopped burning witches at the stake, nearly eradicated slavery, and seen democracy progressively displace hereditary tyranny all over the world.

Although I’d like to think that, “Geez, isn’t this the way things should have been all along?,” the fact is that for nearly all of human history, people have been pretty nasty to each other. So it is with a joyous heart that I say halleluuuujah, it’s about time, and I for one will not take this for granted. There will always be meanies, but the good guys eventually win. San Francisco’s already lit up in rainbow colors all over the place, but with this announcement, the whole town’s going to go certified bonkers.

In the meantime, we’ve had some interesting letters in the past week. Let’s see what the e-mailman brung: (more…)

How the Psychologist Found Love + Beta Testers Wanted for New Course + Birthday

This last week was my birthday. I received a hundred or so messages from readers like you via my Facebook profile (to which I’d be delighted to add you should you wish to witness my miscellaneous ramblings), and another few hundred messages, texts and phone calls from friends and family. If you were one of them — thanks so much! By the end of the week, I was brimming with gratitude & joy from all of your kindness and support. This one below was one of the most heart-warming of all, and it wasn’t even sent for my birthday:

“Hi Dr. Binazir! I don’t have a question, just a testimonial for your book (and I’ll add one on Amazon, too)! I read it about a year and a half ago after some unfortunate online dating experiences (I admit, you were right).

I’m a psychologist, but at times even the principles of therapy you provide for others just don’t sink in with regard to yourself. Your book really helped me with that, and I was able to let go of my desperate search for a partner. I think the things that helped the most were starting to attend a guided meditation practice, and using much of that time to focus on the principle of abundance. I really began to see my life as complete, and also kept my eyes and heart open.

Almost the instant I reached and maintained a state of acceptance and peace, my friend happened to (more…)

Matthieu Ricard on Altruism and Loving-Kindness (audio)

Last week, I saw Matthieu Ricard give a talk about his new book Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change You and the World (hardcover, ebook and audiobook) in an event hosted by Soren Gordhamer and Wisdom 2.0. Ricard is an interesting fellow. After finishing his doctorate in molecular genetics in 1972 in the lab of Nobel-winning legend François Jacob, he promptly took off for a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the mountains of Nepal, where he has resided since. Subsequent to participating in a pioneering study by Richie Davidson from the University of Wisconsin on the effects of meditation on brain physiology, the media dubbed him “the happiest man in the world.”

You know this is a man grounded in reality because he is quick to refute that label not out of modesty but from the simple fact that all of his fellow monks would do (and have done) equally well on measurements of their brain activity that could result in such a label. My inclination is to think that if you’ve put in the 50,000 hours of meditation that Ricard has, your brain is bound to manifest some unusual phenomena.

Ricard is an exceptionally lucid and engaging speaker, even in English, which is not his native tongue. In fact, he’s so engaging that I hardly took any notes. Here is some of what he mentioned in his talk:

Happiness is not the constant seeking of pleasurable experiences. That can turn out to be quite exhausting.
One definition of happiness: not excluding anyone from your heart.
Constantly making the world about you — why did this happen to me, why are people mean to me, why am I so unlucky — you create the phenomenon of “the world arising as enemy.”
If you find meditation boring, it’s not the fault of the meditation.
The word “meditation” itself has little meaning. It’s a bit like saying “training” — what kind of training? Weightlifting? Running? Tennis?
In the same way that you can’t expect to play the harpsichord expertly without practice, you can’t expect to be an expert at compassion, altruism, mindfulness, gratitude without practice either.
Mindfulness by itself is not enough. You could have a mindful sniper or psychopath. You must add the caring component to it.

At the request of the moderator, Ricard led us through a 4-part compassion meditation.

First, you project loving-kindness to several people in sequence, from easy-to-love to very difficult.
Then, you wish for a reduction of their suffering. This is the compassion component.
Rejoice in the existence of all the other people also wishing for the reduction of suffering and taking an active part in it.
Make impartial your projection of compassion and loving-kindness to all sentient beings, without preference or special allocation.

I have adapted that into this 12min audio, which you can listen to here. The clinical effects of loving-kindness meditation on positive affect and psychological health are well-documented. Besides, it feels good. If you do not have a meditation practice yet, you may wish to consider trying this for starters.

You may download the audio here.

Ricard is currently touring the US to promote Altruism. He will make two stops in New York City next week — check his event calendar here. I urge you to go see him if you have the opportunity.

“If he loves me so much, why won’t he move for me”: On expectations, blindspots and self-inflicted misery

Ladies — At first glance, this email exchange I had with your fellow reader Karin seems to be about long-distance relationships — a dead horse that in the past I have beaten so thoroughly as to pulverize, nay, vaporize it. So how does this corpse seem to resurrect itself from the very air, and keep coming back?

Well, that’s easy. For tens of thousands of years, humans used to live and die within a 10-mile radius of where they were born. So you basically hung out with the boy or girl next door, because, well, he/she was next door. Usually in the same tribe, even.

But once you create means of transportation that take you to the opposite end of the planet in half a day, then the fast-acting mechanism of limerence — also known as that lovin’ feeling — could get activated somewhere very far away from home. For both parties. Add to that the exoticism of being in a novel place and the stress of being a stranger, and you have the optimal brain chemical cocktail to make you fall for someone exceptionally non-local.

Further add to that the Western Romantic Ideal — i.e. “this temporary state of massively impaired judgment called being in love means I must destroy everything in my path to give in to it” — and that’s when the trouble begins. Here’s the exchange, mostly unedited and as it occurred: (more…)

Video Mailbag #2: Self-Sabotage 101

Sometimes I get a letter from you ladies so rich with nuance, implication and dysfunction that I realize it would take me hours to write a response covering everything I want to say.

That’s when I resort to this newfangled technology called “video”, and bang out a response in 10min instead of 10hrs. This means now you also get to stare at my mug to get your answer, so hey, enjoy :)

Two news items first: I’m putting the finishing touches on a digital version of “Project Irresistible”, the 6-week teleclass that I’ve been running periodically to bring the principles of The Tao of Dating into your life and behavior. ‘Cause, let’s face it, if we actually learned everything we read in books, we’d all be hyper-successful super-geniuses by now with perfect lives, right?

Well, it don’t work that way. One thing I learned in med school was that route of administration matters. So a well-designed course, with audio and written material and exercises, can make a big difference. More about it on Monday.

Second, thanks for all your feedback on the Tao of Dating Cover Redesign Contest. Your votes so far have been very helpful, but even more so — your comments! Such aesthetes in our midst, but of course. Your taste matters, because lord knows I ain’t going to be reading this book — you ladies are. So chime in, cast your vote, and expound on your thinking here.

Now let’s set the scene for this letter: our heroine, whom we shall call Gilda, gets together with this guy who was going through a divorce. Except that he gets back together with his wife, leaving Gilda high and dry. But then, he separates from his wife again, and comes crawling back to Gilda. They get together again, and — you guessed it — dude goes back to his wife, leaving Gilda a very sad camper. Except that now he’s finalized the divorce, and guess who he just called? Ay crud. So Gilda asks me: “What should I do, Doc?” Well, what do you think ladies? And before you get all judgey on her — you’d never think like this yourself, right? Here we go:

Mailbag: On Leaving Toxic Relationships

Last week, I received a rash of letters about bad relationships. Like, really, really bad relationships. I feel like these kinds of relationships are a little bit like cockroaches: for every one that you see, there are 70 that you don’t. Which makes me dread how many more of you must be in these kinds of relationships without telling me — or anyone else. Speak up! First, let’s get to this first letter here. After responding to all of the “I’m Stuck with Toxic Boy and Don’t Know What to Do” letters personally, I felt this one was representative of the batch:

Dr Ali, I have been dating a man for the past 9 years on and off. He is 44 years old, divorced and still lives with his mother. He hangs out with his loser friends to smoke weed and drink alcohol. He hardly spends time with me when I confront him about the lack of time. All he tells me is that I complain about it too much and that I need to respect him and give him loyalty.

His comments make me resent him, so on and off, I block him from my phone. What I heard from an ex is that the times we are not together he was sleeping around and dating other women. In our last break up, he started dating another woman a week after breaking up with me. A month later, he proposed to her and moved in with that woman. He never did anything like that with me.

What bothers me is that he is trying to get back with me while he is still engaged to the other chick. I still love him but I feel disgusted and used. How do I let go of a loser who gave me crumbs of time?

Resentfully, Bree

Oh my. The only thing that’s missing here is “He also just recently got out of jail for a few felony charges and tends to beat me with a baseball bat for sport. And wants me to join his cult.” I mean, we all have different limits of tolerance, but it seems as if (more…)

Are you asking too much of a boyfriend?

Ladies – Before we go into today’s letter, I have a favor to ask you. I’m re-doing the cover of The Tao of Dating, and I’d love to know which ones you like best! Click here to go to the contest and let your opinion be known: http://99designs.com/book-cover-design/vote-usgf92

With that out of the way, here’s a great email exchange I had recently about relationship expectations and being in touch with your own needs and emotions. Where does jealousy come from? Why and when do we feel someone isn’t good enough? How do we get in the way of our own loving?

Dear Dr. Ali,

I’m in a very challenging situation and you’re the only person I completely agree with when it comes to relationships so I would really appreciate your help.

I have recently started dating an amazing man. We get along really well, our conversations flow effortlessly, we have insane chemistry, and he makes me extraordinarily happy.

There is, however, one catch. He has two kids from his previous marriage. He only sees them once or twice a week and spends enough time with me. As much as I am happy with him, this fact is always bothering me in the back of my mind and I can’t get over it.

I keep thinking “what if I had met him earlier when he was childless?” And this is just driving me crazy. I don’t know what to do. He is so amazing and I think I can never find someone like him again, on the other hand, I think the fact that he has kids is always going to bother me. I know I sound like a horrible person but I just can’t help it!

What do you think I should do? Giovanna from Harvard

Dear Giovanna –

Sounds like you’ve got a good thing going! Some background info would be useful: your age, his age, do you have/want kids, what kind of work you do, are you angling for marriage, etc.

So I don’t know the full story here, but one thing is for sure: (more…)

FOR MEN: The Central Tenet of Dating Success With Women – A post ten years in the making

GENTLEMEN – This post has been a long time in the making. In the past few years that I’ve been mostly writing for women, I have also been compiling notes for a revision of The Tao of Dating: The Thinking Man’s Enlightened Guide to Success With Women. I wrote the book in 2005, so not only has the science of human mating and relating moved forward, but my thinking has evolved, too.

This evolution has partially been in the direction of a Zen maxim from Shunryu Suzuki: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” And then there is the famous quote attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

So what I’d like to do in this short article is to attempt the ultimate in simplicity: to boil down all of the science and anecdotal information on how to succeed romantically with women to one main principle. Can it be done? I’ll let you be the judge.

Here’s the big idea: (more…)

Video Mailbag #1: On younger men, sleeping with him too soon, and too much fabulousness

I asked, and you ladies responded: I am now officially getting more letters than humanly possible to respond to via stylus and parchment, quill and papyrus, and hell, even finger and keyboard. More efficient means of transmitting data need to be invented.

Oh wait — what’s this you say? Video? I can just record my mug as I say stuff? And upload it for free for the world to see? I love the 20th century!

Today, I’m addressing three letters: one on whether sleeping too soon with a guy kills his interest; whether or not to date a younger man just for fun; and whether a woman should diminish her fabulousness to make her more approachable to men who just can’t handle it.

Here’s the video:

Please like, share, comment, and disseminate worldwide ’cause I want to be as big as Bieber when I grow up. Just kidding! I have no intention of growing up.

Love, Dr Ali