I Like You

Mini episode: Jessica Wells and her friend emerge from a post-breakup romantic purging process with a solid list of 25 ways to make your life touch-free. Show notes: Elah comes back from vacation to find a No Means No campaign sweeping her office.  Touching levels fall to all-time lows. We offer you a counter-list: 25 Ways to Obtain Touch – and what JP meant to say was “sex worker”.

You can’t go back in time… but what if you could?  What would you change to make it all turn out differently?  To make it turn out for the better?  This week we explore a relationship where time seemed to fold back on itself and offer a chance to change the course of history. by Eliza Evans Show Notes: Thanks to story contributor and guest, Brendan! Brendan Fitzgerald lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he works as news editor of C-VILLE Weekly newspaper. His favourite of the three Back to the Future movies, is the second one. Theme music by Drew Danburry, other music by [NOTE: Unfortunately our music provider was acquired by another company, and they no longer offer free mp3 downloads. Below are the tracks used in this week’s show.] This Will Destroy You “Quiet” Dragonette “Pick Up The Phone” Sean Hayes “Time” The Sadies “Anna Leigh”

Ever tried to change a partner?  The way they act? The way they talk? The way they have sex?  This week JP and Elah try to figure out if it can be done, and if so, how. Show Notes: Welcome new listeners!  We had a huge traffic spike this week and I can’t figure out why, where did you all come from? This week’s show is JP and Elah at their rawest and most lazily-edited – it’s practically live-to-tape! Who needs guests when you’ve got banter like this!? (we need guest ideas… desperately… send in your suggestions!) Music by Drew Danburry

JP and Elah interview Ryan about whether The Game actually works as a pick-up technique and Edmonton’s cowboy bars. Show notes: How do you “neg” someone (i.e. put them down to make them like you)?  Should you? Hear JP fall in love with mechanical bulls before your ears! Check out Ryan’s profile on OkCupid, and let us know how he could make it more super: http://www.okcupid.com/profile/awes-Eclipse Music by Drew Danburry and Gareth Auden-Hole

Mini-episode! What happens when a relationship ends, but the evidence won’t go away?  Sierra Bellows contemplates the tapes and letters that stuck around long after her intense high school romance was gone. Image courtesy of J E Smith.

Are you ready to take a super-sexy steamy sensual and slightly sleazy trip with us?  Join us as we talk to erotic podcaster Laura May of Laura May Diaries. Show Notes: Thanks to Laura May for being our awesome guest. Laura says her favourite chapters of her diary are 10,11 and 13. Music by Laura May, Gareth Auden-Hole and Drew Danburry. This week we recommend you sign up for a FREE trial of Audible.com and pick up a FREE copy of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren.  You can also choose any book from their library of over 75,000 by visiting audiblepodcast.com/ilikeyou

What influences the way you date? This week JP and Elah explore how friends, family pop-culture and porn have influenced their romantic lives. Show Notes: There’s plenty of evidence that people emulate what they learn at a young age: studies show children of divorce are 49% more likely to divorce and children who witness abuse are twice as likely to abuse their own partners [PDF]. Dan Savage’s column Savage Love is mentioned as a great source of information for curious young minds. This week’s AudiblePodcast.com/ilikeyou FREE audio book recommendation is Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking No guest this week, just us! Music by Drew Danburry

JP and I sometimes have trouble getting even one person to date us (each), so we were pretty fascinated with the idea of dating multiple people simultaneously. Luckily, we had Kasha to answer our questions about open relationships. Sample questions: What are the rules?  What are your limits? So your girlfriend got married – how does that affect your relationship? Can someone cheat in an open relationship? What makes some (but not most!) poly people so annoying? Are Elah and JP’s questions annoying? (possibly) If you want to learn more about open relationships, Kasha strongly recommends Opening Up by Tristan Taormino. And for a cautionary tale, Elah recommends Eclipse: Twilight Saga Book 3, a modern monogamy tragedy, which you can get as an audiobook here. Finally, since we weren’t able to squeeze in a lot of our Q&A, we may be bringing you a blog post from Kasha in the near future! In the meantime, you can follow her tweetings at twitter.com/pushygalor. This week’s music was provided by Abigail Clarke (piano pieces) and Drew Danburry.

This week we interview a 60-year old woman and a 6-year old boy to see what common ground they have when it comes to dating and relationships – if any. Show Notes: Thanks to guests Sebastien and Elah’s mom! Music provided by Drew Danburry and Abigail Clarke. Diehard fans, get the bonus footage. Action Items: Do you or your friends have great dating or relationship stories?  Email us and we’ll put you on the show! If you like what you hear, subscribe, then rate or review us in iTunes. Support us by visiting AudiblePodcast.com/ilikeyou to download David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day or your choice of 75,000 audio books absolutely FREE.

After some complaints (one) that being in relationships has ruined our credibility as show hosts, JP and I decided to dedicate a show to the destructive force that is love.  What we found in these stories was not so much love, as love’s evil doppelganger, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Show notes: JP’s girlfriend, Sondra, tells us how the l-word ruined an old relationship. Love ruins break-ups too! Sondra explains how lingering feelings made her ex cyber-stalk her. Elah’s step-father proposes an alternative to romantic love. He seems to have given this a disturbing amount of thought. Thanks to Abigail Clarke for music contributions and Drew Danburry for our theme song (vote to let us know what you think of it). Finally, Sondra has a podcast too!  It’s called How to Be Awesome. You can find it at awesomepodcast.com. (this episode features JP and Elah!)

On this week’s show we discuss the shame of admitting to having met your long-term partner online, as well as the trials and tribulations faced by any long-term relationship. Show Notes: Thanks to our awesome (and awesomely honest) guest Jared! Music provided by Drew Danburry For our foreign listeners: The “ROM” mentioned in the episode is the Royal Ontario Museum. Action Items: Want to be on a future show about speed-dating with the oportunity to participate in a FREE I Like You speed dating event?  Email us! Check out audiblepodcast.com/ilikeyou for a free audio book download of your choice.  JP and Elah Approved!

This week, we bring you confessions of a serial monogamist.  Liz explains how – despite her best intentions – she wound up in 10 years of non-stop long term relationships with four very different women.  At 29, she’s finally on her own, and she tells us whether single life is working out as planned. Warning to our more sensitive listeners: this episode is slightly more explicit than usual. Thank you to Drew Danburry and Sandra Taylor for musical contributions.

This week we talk about dealing with a racist date, being in love (or not) and how not seeking marriage and kids may be the path to love, marriage and kids. Show Notes: Thanks to our awesome guest Monica! Music generously provided by Drew Danburry Action Items: Would you like to talk to us about your dating experience on the show?  Email us! Support the show and help yourself to a FREE audio book download at audiblepodcast.com/ilikeyou.  Cancel your subscription within 14 days, pay nothing, keep your free book.  Audible is an Amazon.com company, so you know they’re legit.

It turns out the one piece of advice we ever gave about online dating was dead wrong.  This episode, we decided to let science do the advising and tell us everything we wanted to know about dating: What should your profile look like?  What kind of jokes do people find attractive?  Is it really so bad to post a web cam shot?  Are men really looking for hot bods and women looking for deep pockets? How does the pill affect your choice of lover? Luckily, researchers have studied these questions and we bring you their findings! Show note of shame: Most of these studies looked exclusively at straight people, but we do include non-hetero facts wherever we could find them. We finally dug up our references.  Here they are (you’ll need academic journal access to open some of these): OkCupid Trends Blog (always a treasure trove of entertaining data and commentary) busts profile picture myths, including our assumption that taking a picture of yourself looks pathetic. Online dating makes people picky. Speed dating makes us less picky. Read about it in the New York Times. Study of people’s preferences on Hot or Not discussed in the Globe and Mail. Oddly, it says that lesbians were the least superficial, which is a weird finding for a study of people’s photos preferences. One day we’ll look at the actual study and find out what that’s all about. Study of who people contact online.  They look at physical attractiveness, height, income, race, and more. (Hitsch, Hortacsu, and Ariely, 2006).  Check out the income-height and income-race trade-offs in the appendices. Study alleging that self-deprecating humour is super sexy if you’re a high status college kid (Greengross and Miller, 2008, in Evolutionary Psychology) .  But check out this graph.  Non-humour story wins, right?  Are we reading this wrong? The classic study of MHC genes and attraction by Wedekind et al, 1995, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.  Women smelled shirts worn by men for two days in a row, and seemed to prefer the smells of genetically dissimilar men.  Being on the pill changed who they preferred.  Note that since this study, there have been pretty mixed results on this subject (Havlicek and Roberts, 2009).  Also, we can’t seem to find that study of MHC preferences in non-straight people…  Only sketchy blogs mention it. Sorry about that. In speed dating, women normally stay put, and men rotate from one date to another. This study played around with the rotator/sitter roles, and found that sitting makes you pickier.  Neat!

This week is all about guys who like girls – Elah was permitted to stick around though since technically it’s her show too. Show Notes: Thanks to guests Mike and Josh! Music by Drew Danburry (he’s got a new album!), Sandra Taylor and Gareth Auden-Hole. How to be Awesome is a great new podcast by our friends Sondra and Kim. Apologies for the lateness of this episode!  We’ll likely switch to releasing them later in the week from now on since the Monday release is always a bit of a scramble. Action Items: Ladies: tell us about your experience asking out a fella – if you’ve never done that, do it today! [as Elah quite rightly points out in the comments, this action should have been directed toward “straight ladies”.  Gay ladies: don’t ask a fella out – nobody likes a tease.] Support the podcast and enjoy a free audio book by signing up for a free trial at AudiblePodcast.com/ilikeyou