Why Dating Is So Damn Awkward

Explicit content warning

04/28/17 • 33 min

Does dating suck because you’re awkward, or are you awkward because it’s a date? Ty Tashiro, psychologist and author of Awkward: The Science of Why We’re Socially Awkward and Why That’s Awesome, explains why steeling yourself and weathering the first five minutes of awkwardness is usually worth it. “Don’t be a wallflower,” he says, meaning it literally: research shows that location is a powerful predictor of social success. But what if our love lives need awkwardness? Host Maureen O’Connor wonders if awkwardness, coded differently, is the very definition of romance. Call 646-494-3590 with cringeworthy meet-cutes and awkward sex stories.

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Previous Episode

How to Be Married

Jo Piazza was working as a travel editor when she met a man, married him— and spent the next year traveling to dozens of countries together, asking how marriage works in each place. She visits Sex Lives to revisit what she learned from women in Chile, Israel, Tanzania, India, France, Denmark, and beyond— and why, after discovering that she had a genetic mutation associated with muscular dystrophy, she climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with her husband. (And competed in a rare Finnish sport called "wife-carrying.") Piazza's book, "How to be Married: What I Learned from Real Women on Five Continents About Surviving My First (Really Hard) Year of Marriage," is in bookstores now. With Maureen O'Connor. Call 646-494-3590 with your thoughts.

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Next Episode

All the Feels About Gay Weddings

Gay marriage has moved to the mainstream, but has wedding culture followed? What parts of wedding culture are worth keeping, anyway? Sex Lives assembles a panel of gay writers to discuss their personal experiences navigating the sexual politics and social minefields of getting hitched. Bon Appetit's Kurt Soller recalls debating which boyfriend should propose. Vocativ's Ben Reininga wonders whether his proposal was just a DTR. And Curve Magazine's Marcie Bianco explains why she cut to the chase and eloped— and why she announced it on Facebook before calling her mother. With Maureen O'Connor. Call 646-494-3590 to weigh in.

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