JM Kearns
Book Club Discussion

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

I have to tell you that I did not read Why Mr. Right Can't Find You, but I was blown away by this book. I am assuming that you have your PhD in Psychology or maybe even Family Psych. What made you decide on this path both career-wise and "self-help" authoring?

Actually, my PhD is in philosophy, and when I was a graduate student my main topics were human perception and logic. I think my philosophy training taught me how to see through phony arguments and myths, and it also helped me understand how different people can see the same person in totally different ways – the relativity of our perceptions. That led me to the crucial importance of compatibility in a good relationship. Don't look for the "perfect" partner, look for the one who is really your type, physically and mentally. And don't worry about what "all men" (or all women) want; concentrate on the ones who are looking for you.

I've always loved analyzing things, and the philosophy degree gave me the tools to do that well. Especially why some relationships go right and others go so wrong. I reached a point in my life around 2000 when all this came together. I was a phone counselor at Nashville's Crisis Center and a lot of that consisted of providing an ear for lonely, sad people who called in. Meanwhile my own life was at a crossroads: I had taken years to get over a major relationship and had reflected deeply on what makes couples fail. I was ready to try again and had new ideas about how to find the right partner. Then my first book hatched: Why Mr Right Can't Find You. As soon as I started writing it, I realized I had hit a motherlode.

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

Better Love Next Time is such an insightful book. How were you able to break down the failed relationship and uncover what really went wrong?

When I looked at failed relationships – including my own – I found that somewhere in a person's past there is usually a tragic mismatch, a love that went wrong because the two people just weren't suited to each other. The problem is, if you don't figure that out, you carry the past into your next relationship, and it's like you're in a weird love triangle, consisting of you, your new lover, and the distorted ghost of your former lover. So the new person doesn't have a chance. As I say in this book, you are trapped in an endless state of "rebound."

I saw that exact pattern in my own past: I realized that I had blown a really good chance with a possible soulmate because I was still carrying wounds and fears from an earlier debacle. Eventually I sorted it out, and found a way to heal, and that allowed me to get into a better place with a new person, who I'm still with. It was that whole process that I wanted to explain in this new book. Better Love Next Time is about coming back from heartbreak.

Though the light-bulb moment came from my own journey, I have observed many couples, and the same patterns keep cropping up, and the same solutions are needed. I tell a lot of stories to illustrate the book, and only a few of them are based on my own adventures!

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

"Incompatibility, if not understood, reads as personal inadequacy." The feeling of personal inadequacy and loss of identity could be difficult to get over, especially if you are young and in a failing relationship. As a young adult, a person may be just finding out who they are so what are some of the steps that you would recommend to someone struggling through this?

You're right, we don't start out on life's path knowing all about ourselves. But the good news is, failed relationships are a sort of Rosetta Stone that can help us decode our own identity, can help us learn who we are and who we want to be with.

When you fall hard for the wrong person and it fails, especially if they dump you, you can come away with all sorts of "false lessons" about yourself that can haunt you for years. That's because we make a wrong inference: we think, "If I didn't please that person, then there's something wrong with me." This can apply in many areas. For example:

• if you were sexually incompatible with that person, you may feel as if you are a "bad lover"
• if your mind didn't strike sparks with them, you may feel boring or nerdy or stupid
• if they didn't appreciate you, you may feel unattractive.

But each conclusion is false. With the right person, you can be sexy, fascinating, and darn good-looking! So my advice, which I explain in detail in the book, is to think through the different ways in which you weren't compatible, and exonerate yourself of the false charges. Also, look for these signs of a mismatch. Did your best self mysteriously resurface after the breakup, so you felt as if you were getting back in touch with your real dreams, hopes and enthusiasms? Did your connections with your family and friends experience a resurgence? These are signs that your partner wasn't well chosen – that he had a smothering effect on the real you.

A rule of thumb that I like to offer is this: when you're getting involved with a new person, ask yourself, "Would I want this person as a friend if we didn't have a sexual thing going?"

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

You first tell the story of Taylor who found a "match" on eHarmony that led to grief for her. Then you encourage readers to try online mating to find grounded love. Can you come up with a short list of things potential mates should be aware of when dating online? Isn't it easier for people to lie in their profiles than in person?

The thing about the Taylor in my story is that she was driven by an agenda. She felt it was time to be married and was determined to make that happen. As I explain in the book, love isn't as involuntary as we often make it out to be. We can induce it when we want to enough. In my story, Taylor doesn't even seek to know the guy she found online, because that might interfere with her romantic dream!

My advice is remember that the online world is a way of finding prospects, not a place to fall in love. Online dating sites make it much easier to find potential partners – and that's a very good thing for single people – but you still have to do the work of getting to know someone, and that is best done in person.

• When you only know someone online, there’s a tendency to project your fantasies onto them and get ahead of yourself emotionally. Don’t do it; wait till you meet in person and see if there is any chemistry.
• The good news about meeting online is that, as one guy I interviewed said, it’s a way of “getting to know someone from the inside out.” Because you’re not yet distracted by each other’s physical presence, you can actually be more objective about who this person is and how much you really have in common with them.
• You can also select for the things you want in a person. Use search parameters to find people who meet your criteria in areas like age, body type, income, drinking and smoking preferences, politics, religion, and others. Encourage prospects to talk about these things and look for a genuine meeting of the minds.
• By the way, if a man comes on way too strong before he’s even met you, move on; he’s the wrong guy.
• As soon as you’re sure both parties are interested, meet in person, for a coffee, not a romantic dinner. Don’t treat that first meeting as a test of yourself – ease the pressure by thinking of it as a chance to check out how the two of you fit.
• Finally, don’t be in a hurry. Be ready to meet lots of people before you find the right one.

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

I am sure that you have heard your share of success stories from people who have read your books. Can you share your favorite one?

There is nothing quite like getting an email out of the blue from a person you don't know, who has been touched by your book. My favorite story might be a woman who read my book at a time when she was very discouraged about relationships – she had had a long series of train wrecks – and my book made her realize that she had been trying to change herself to suit these men. They didn't really like her the way she was, and they didn't want the same things she did in a relationship. After reading my words she suddenly felt empowered, and decided she was just fine, in fact she was fabulous, the way she was. She started looking for a guy who "got" her. She found him and they are still going strong.

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns

Can you tell us what you are working on next?

I have a couple of projects I'm working on. One is a book about the possibility of monogamy – how the internet has made true love easier to find and easier to squander. In today's world of online dating, email, Facebook, IMing, texting, and twittering, there are so many temptations that you can get addicted to shopping for romance, so when you find someone great, you don't stop looking around. Our dating culture hasn't caught up with technology. We need a new definition of what it means to be exclusive, what the new boundaries are. I think it's a gift people can give each other, to ratchet down the distractions so something real can grow. I'm also working on several fiction ideas, so my plate is pretty full.

Book Club Discussion: JM Kearns