Think He’s The One? Try This 5-step Test First

Podcast Introduction and Guest Credentials 0:00

In the inner voice. A heartfelt chat with Doctor Fujino. These men have a tendency, attention and ability to engage in what is called love bombing. They are able to sweep women off their feet often at the outset, and they're very critical of this. Very attentive. They may make all kinds of overtures in terms of gifts and the like. And especially for a woman who may perceive themselves as somewhat needy. This kind of attentive presences can be overwhelming. The people engaging in this love bombing often try to challenge the senior partner to making kind of quick decisions, both in terms of sexual encounters, in terms of financial or other kind.

Introducing a powerful new update from the fusion app, now with flexible subscription plans to fit your journey. Monthly, quarterly or yearly? Our new AI driven onboarding customizes your path to feeling better, faster, and enjoy a refreshed experience with stunning 3D interactive videos. Update now. Empower your inner voice with fusion. Download today. Welcome to The Inner Voice, a heartfelt chat podcast. I'm doctor for John Zane. I'm a psychotherapist and author and the founder of the International Awareness Integration Institute.

Today I will be talking to Doctor Donald May Campbell is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, the co-founder of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and he was voted one of the ten most influential psychotherapies of the 20th century in a survey of clinicians. Doctor May Campbell has served as the research director of the Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention in Miami, and has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Clinical Division of the American Psychological Association.

He's also been the honorary president of the Canadian Psychological Association. Doctor of mayhem Bomb has published exclusively including his book Treating Individuals with Addictive Disorders, and it was presented internationally and in all 50 states. His book Roadmap to Resilience is available for free online, and has been downloaded over 53,000 people in 139 countries. Today we will be talking about his latest book,

Opening Discussion on Relationship Red Flags 3:08

Choose Him Wisely. It's one of the conversations that I know as I speak with many of my clients, that they say they struggle. And one of the things that are usually a struggle for a lot of women is violence and, domestic violence and, any type of, suffering that they might have into a relationship, which after they did the assessment where they thought they did the assessment and they went into a relationship and after a while they looked at what their gut set before and they're like, what was I thinking?

So this book is so, so beneficial. In this book, you will get not only the signs and red alert signs, but also exactly how to assess and how to go by it. So I'm sure you will enjoy it as much as I have have. And I've always learned for, from doctor McMahon throughout these years. I've followed him for 30 years and it's amazing every time. So, please watch throughout. There's jewels of information throughout the whole show. Now be sure to subscribe to this podcast, my YouTube channel, and, share with me, what your questions are, what you like, what you don't like.

Go to my website for dancing.com or any of my social media. Go to fusion app and go through the whole journey of, the awareness integration, interventions, in 31 areas and meet mirror, which is your chat bot who is absolutely trained in the, awareness integration and share your thoughts with me any time. I'd love to hear from you. Now, without further ado, here is Doctor Donald. Can pop. Listen up if you want to promote your personal growth and self-awareness. I found the food on the app last month and I have been absolutely loving it.

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Prepare for a culturally integrated world. We're supported in parenting infants to adolescents using the latest evidence based scientific research on parenting. What are your copy on Amazon now? I am so honored and excited to be with Doctor Donald Megan Bond, welcome to the show. Thank you very once again for having me join you. I look forward for reaching your audience and thank you for your attendance and interests. I have followed you for, probably 25 years. I've walked through corridors of seminars with you and followed, and you have been a guest in my show multiple times.

And, it's always an honor. I always learn from you. I have every book that you've ever, written, and you are truly a jewel to to our, not only our field, but to our community. So I just want to thank you. Well, it's really nice. And, you know, I'm now, now 85 years of age, and you catch me at the tail end. In fact, this year, I've. I've had some more troubles and my heart stops for 14 minutes. So, I'm still active in many ways. So I welcome the opportunity to discuss your latest project, which is, Choose him safely.

This, project that I have been involved in for many years. I am a research director of the Melissa Institute. Violence prevention that we will get into later on in his presentation. Yes. Let me challenge let me challenge your audience right from the outset. Okay. Okay. Okay. So here goes, challenge you as well.

Love Bombing and Trusting Your Gut 7:54

Okay. I'm going to list a variety of talented, attractive women. And this is your job to tell me to tell your audience what exactly they all have in common. I have Tina Turner, Loretta Lynn, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, LaToya Jackson, and in my day, Doris Day. So what? What do you think all of these women have in common? They all have chosen men who are very violent toward them, and they are more chosen. They also hooked up with men who have engaged in psychological or physical abuse of them.

So here's the question. What is it that these women missed, right, in terms of their initial assessment of high risk and red flags that would have given them warnings that this may be a message that they should pass over or continue to look forward to someone else. So let me give you one other scenario that sort of got me involved in this work. Not only this research question I'm going to address. But I also have a home in Cape Cod. Okay. And for the last two summers I have lived there with my granddaughter, who is now in college.

Now, my granddaughter was the oyster constable at a town called Wellfleet. So she raised the oysters and monitored them and so forth. But beyond that, each Monday night she would listen to a TV program called The Bachelorette. Yes. No. The high end of, you know, this program, but this is the program with our woman chooses by asking men a series of questions which one she wishes to hook up with. While following each segment of that program, I would argue with my granddaughter that The Bachelorette asks the wrong questions.

In order to ascertain who is a safe and nontoxic male, when they could have a happy relationship with. So I had this collection of questions that I had shared with her, and in fact, I should note that in a previous podcast with another for folk like yourself at the end of the podcast to announce if any of the producers of The Bachelorette are listening, I am available for consultation right? I want the producers to still know that this offer is still on the table. So if anyone calls me, I'll let you know.

Okay, to complicate things further, after I had my heart condition, I was in a rehab center for three months. The rehab center had 100 cases of Covid, so I was sort of locked in my room. And during that period of time, those three months, I hooked up with a colleague named David Wexler, who is an expert in this area, and we ended up writing the book. So I never wasted any time there. In so I know that this is a topic that you have been involved in for some time. While permit me the have you shared with me and the audience your own involvement in this?

And then I'll get into my so I said plan that women should engage in in order to make a wise and smart and safe decision. I can tell you that I've been involved, personally and professionally. Professionally, I've helped a two agencies battered women alternative in Northern California and Haven Hills in Southern California, create, shelters and, as them and, transitional housing for the women who were being abused and were into domestic violence. And, I've been in the field of domestic violence for about 17 years, and I've had, experience with different cultures and how different cultures view domestic violence.

And, my mother, she was a very, very strong woman, a very famous, personality, a radio personality in Iran. And I can tell you for the last, like before, she passed away, 35 years of her life, she was in a, very abusive, physical, verbal, economical, abuse. And I personally have also been in two different short to while, abusive relationships where, you know, sometimes people think that women who are, not in career minded or, you know, they're not and they don't have their own economic independence fall into these games.

And that's not true. You have, you know, women from all cultures, from all socioeconomics,

Questioning, Observation, and Social Media Checks 14:02

that you, you, you experience this and sometimes, you know, experiences. And I know that in your book you've talked about different levels of how and intense the emotional connection appears to be at the beginning and the love bombing. And sometimes the person thinks that I've never experienced this type of love and attachment, and that's why they fall into this kind of. And I personally have the same fall into that kind of, trap, let's say an emotional trap of a bond. And then slowly but surely, you find yourself into that space.

So I want to give it back to you, because I know that in your book, choose him wisely. You have really, you know, put this down step by step, opened it up. So I really welcome this opportunity to have a dialog with you, given that personal experience. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to enumerate what's highlighted in the book. In terms of the various steps women might take prior to assessing the violence potential of prospective partners. And, I welcome your feedback on each one of these. Let's start off with the one that you already mentioned.

These men have a tendency, attention, and ability to engage in what is called love bombing. They are able to sweep women off their feet often at the outset, and they're very gratuitous, very attentive. They may make all kinds of overtures in terms of gifts and the like. And especially for a woman who may perceive themselves as somewhat needy, this kind of a kind of prizes is can be overwhelming. The people engaging in this love bombing often try to challenge the female partner to making kind of quick decisions, both in terms of sexual encounters in terms of financial or other kinds of activities.

Now, as I know in the book, this is choose him safely. But we can note that as I go through these red flags and warning signs, they apply in men choosing women, the research indicates that women can also be. Aggressive in these kinds of social encounters, let alone gay and lesbian couples also have a high incidence of intimate partner violence. This kind of love bombing often. Translates into the development of power and control procedures in and sense of a jealousy, isolation, and the like. In fact, psychological abuse often precedes physical abuse, and research indicates that psychological abuse often has more staying power with women than the physical abuse.

So the first kind of element that I want to just quickly comment on this is love bombing. The second that we highlight, and I'll invite your comments after this, is to invite women to trust that God, while we as psychologists are pretty good in developing various measures that get at the prediction of violence, one of the fascinating things is that aggressive behavior, especially in men, is relatively stable over time. In fact, the civility of aggressive behavior is comparable to the civility of your IQ.

So the best predictor of future behavior is obviously past behavior. So I'm going to talk about various ways in which women can help identify what are some of these developmental risk factors over and above any kind of predictive equation that we have come up with? I trust a woman's gut, the degree to which she may feel afraid or angry, that you may feel scared or anxious that she's walking on eggshells. She has to be constantly vigilant about her own behavior in the presence of this mate. All of those are warning signs.

So both in terms of love bombing and trusting your gut, do you have any kinds of experiences that make sense to you as well? It's interesting that, for myself and, also for the clients that I work with, you're absolutely right that we get it in our gut that there's something off, that there's, there's a threat, there's, but feeling, on safety and interestingly enough, we rationalize that or, we somehow try to, convince ourselves that it's okay, whether it's it's just me. I'm just making up stuff or, you know, they're really good.

And if I could just tap into their love part and the loving part, this other side, I'll make sure it just doesn't show up. You're anticipating where we're going, right? This is what I call mental calisthenics that women engage in. Yeah, I'll fix him. You know, the sex is better after violence. You know, if I don't have him, I'll have no one. These are the little white lies that women share with themselves and often with other women. This takes me up to the next category. That may surprise you. And that is the next best skill that a woman could have.

Is the art of questioning. Okay, if you know how to ask questions of the prospective partner, this mind elicit these kinds of high risk factors that are warning signs. Surprisingly, one of the key questions we have found useful is for women to ask a man about their tattoo. Wow. Say more. So you would say to someone, I know this can correct me if I'm wrong. What is that, a tattoo that I could see? You know, when I walk by, I saw a tattoo.

Jealousy, Behavioral Samples, and Cultural Factors 22:08

So I often wonder how people choose their tattoos. Could you share with me, just out of curiosity, how of all the tattoos in the store, you ended up choosing that one? Now, some tattoos that men have may be rather innocent. Okay, here's a picture of my grandmother. This is the guy I love in his what have you. But some of them may reflect more telling signs for example, we've discovered that if you go into a prison on the right, I have some prison. Inmates are dewdrops in the form of tattoos. Each teardrop is someone they've already killed, you know, or that this was a member of my gang members.

But this is when I had to deal with X, Y, and Z. It's not that the tattoo per se is a warning sign, but the opens up a discussion. You know, of what school we went to? What did you do? What activities? Who were your peers and the like. So therefore, we have found that these kinds of indicators can be a catalyst for discussions. There are other questions that we include in the book that you and a female can ask. At the same time. This is especially true with regard to dating online, eHarmony, and the like, you know, and you're going to meet someone and you've arranged we're going to meet in a Starbucks.

And the question is, you have a few minutes to see what is going to be a safe or not safe interaction. And it would be valuable if you came in well prepared for that kind of thing. I don't know if you've ever had any experience with this sort of questioning yourself. I do think that the questioning is very helpful, because it also shows the other person that you are, curious and that you are aware of these things. The other side of it is also that you're making a bomb, that even sometimes when you ask the question, the person, the men who are answering it, they tend to answer from their best side and not necessarily share the other side or up at the beginning.

I guess there's also based on the questions that you ask, there's also this concept of observation where you could sometimes I think we see that the person, gets angry or, attempts to control or create, you know, and create power over, you know, when we go to a restaurant and, they assert power over the server or other people or their friends or the way that they, they, they talk about others. So part of it, as I understand, is how to ask these questions. So you gain information. And the other side that I would like to add, and I know it's in your book, is how to start observing the other person's need necessarily for dominance or power or the way that they, handle this level of dominance.

And I think that also adds to, you know, this kind of like assessment that we do at the beginning. I, I totally agree, you know, and, here's a funny anecdote. Okay. So you were talking about a restaurant, a friend and my wife and I, had been victims of, had been a victim of domestic violence. Okay. And, three years have gone by, and she, she decided that you should start dating again. So she went online, and she met someone who she thought was rather attractive. And, she decided she was going to go to dinner with him.

And she knew that this was an area of mine. So she invited my wife and I to come along with her. Right? Yes. So there I am, sitting across the table from this guy. And I don't want this woman to be revictimized right. So I have in my head a complex charge of two by two of present and past risk and protective factors. Right. So as I'm having dinner with this guy, I'm filling in those four boxes because she's going to ask me my opinion. Now, I'm not very good at, you know, I'm a psychologist. We're not really good at predicting behavior.

Exactly. So on the way home, I say to my dear wife, what do you think? And she looks at me. She says, it's high risk. I say it's high risk. How could you be so certain? She says, trust me. I said, what do you do? What do you say that I need you to draw this conclusion? And she says to me, did you see the way he's. I mean, what do you mean? The way the he reads? Well, the entire time he chooses who speaks is the same time I say, this never has been any research on you. Eating patterns of high and low domestic violence. Men.

She says, trust me. So the bottom line is this. Is that every date that my children brought home, we fed them, So there's an end. There's an answer. Answer to your observation. Okay, so over and above the love bombing, you have also jail involved the art of questioning. You also have the power of questioning. The key question to ask how and what questions. Okay. Why? Questions are not very good. You want to get at people's cognitive processes. You want to see their emotions and how it all says in.

So how did you come to the decision to do X, Y, and Z? What led you to those who often valuable is another source of possible information that a woman can use, and that is social media. That is, you can go online, plug in the name of your prospective main and find out if they have a DUI. That is any kind of incidence of drunk driving. Now, if they have a clean bill of health, that's not a reassurance per se, but it's to have a DUI that's a high risk factor, because one of the major things that contributes to interpersonal violence is some form of alcoholism or substance abuse.

And that is clearly something you need to ascertain on your prospective partner. Not only that, in this day and age is possible that your partner also has on his or her cell phone the kind of information that would be instructive to you in making this kind of decision, you know, just is you are exchanging with him or her. You know what your social life is like, you know, so you took vacations, really went and did, you know, key. Yeah. Pictures of this. So the question is who did they go with? Okay.

What was the nature of the interaction. And you can use that also as a catalyst for discussion. So that becomes valuable resource closely related to social media is trust. That is you need to find someone you trust that is a relative or friend or what have you. And you invite that person to be a witness. Are the two of you interacting? This is where the mental calisthenics come into play because they may give you some feedback, but you don't think, is that accurate, that you have information about this prospective mate that they do not have?

So you dismiss, you reframe, you discard their feedback and say you don't know him the way I know him. This is where the white lies come into play. So you can sort to see that I am. As we do in the book, enumerate a variety of strategies. And yet there's one more that, comments on. But let me pause at this time and see if you have any additional observations. I remember, I was, friends with a woman, a very high standing physician, that she had fell in love with this, this man. And we went to a restaurant. Same thing.

They wanted me to have a, like a second opinion and an assessment. And it was interesting because throughout the whole night, he belittled her. He demeaned everything she said. And I recall that she went to the bathroom, and I started kind of like doing the same assessment, asking very, very like hard questions and sometimes harsh questions and asking, what was the purpose of her answering her or treating her that way? Well, that didn't go well at the end, obviously, because she he got very intimidated by my questions of him.

And when she came back from the bathroom, they kind of like cordially stayed for another ten minutes and they left. And she absolutely ended her relationship with me because she thought that this was rude and I shouldn't have done that. But it was interesting because like you just said, other people witness, the verbal abuse or the way that the two, you know, bodies are reacting or the way that someone negatively puts you down and the way that you possibly are just, not not registering or maybe your gut is registering, but you're pushing it away and not you're not looking at the present moment because you have another agenda.

You really want this person to be in your life and you know all the other parts work. The other side of what you had also said in the book, choose him wisely is the concept of jealousy, where a lot of people think, oh, you must love me if you are acting so jealous about, you know, not wanting to lose me. And jealousy has somehow been associated with care and love versus, you know, insecurities and dominance. Can you share a little bit about that? Well, one of the thing that's interesting is research by Daniel, Larry and others have indicated, and about 40% of the cases of high school dating is interpersonal violence.

So this pattern of behavior actually starts relatively early. And I think that, we can explore whether, in fact, our partner has had any prior relationships with anyone and how that turned out and what it is that contributed to the end of that relationship. Clearly, the the issue that you raised about jealousy is an important one. And we as human beings have the ability to cognitively reframe anything so we can view what apparently is jealousy, as their sense of caring for us is a desire to be with us, you know?

And if you were not jealous, I think jealousy per se is not problematic. It's one of becomes an extreme that that we should be particularly concerned about. There's one final category of interventions that I'm going to share, strategies that I'm going to share with you and welcome your reaction. So. In the course of an interaction with anyone in terms of the social discourse and what have you, there is likely to be some arena of disagreement, different agenda items and the like. Well, from our point of view, that provides you, the female, with a unique opportunity to turn that into a behavioral sample.

So, for example, if you persist that your gender, your opinion on something she holds, then you will then glean what are the reactions of significant others. Your perspective may and this is a warning sign of the behavioral sample you're going to get later on. So this is not an intentional plan on your part to cause any kind of in service of trouble, but rather this is a natural occasion for you to say, oh, this presents yet another opportunity for me to do to the observations. So let me just summarize what we've been saying so far and then glean your reactions.

Closing Remarks and Book Promotion 37:18

Those women whose names I mentioned at the outset, seniors themselves, are they a victim of love bombing? Am I being pressured to make decisions of our intimate relationship well beforehand on their financial kinds of implications for how I proceed with him? Does this love bombing evolve into some form of coercion, power, isolation, jealousy? And like? How do I know if that's the case? Can I trust my gut? Can I in some sense realize the degree to which this may become important? How can I look for warning signs?

Can I look for red flags? Can I develop the art of questioning? Can I ask how and what questions? Can I then explore the possibility that there's civility of aggressive behavior over the course of time? Can I ask about fire relationships? Activities in the light? In the book, we enumerate a number of other developmental risk factors that are highly predictable. In fact, it's really interesting. Then if you look at people who are mass shooters in these things, there's a high incidence among them, among individuals who engage in interpersonal violence with others.

So you could start to see the pattern of aggressive behavior that these guys evidence over and above that. Okay, I use social media beyond that, can I can I turn to trusted friends or relatives for their opinion? Can I become cognizant of my own little white lies I tell myself? And then I tell others, and then finally, can I take advantage? Of the degree to which there are natural disagreements and turn them into behavioral samples, there's one last thing that I think would be relevant to your population, and that is the incidence and meaning of domestic violence varies so much across cultures and the culture, the culture, this kind of behavior is taken as a norm, you know, and that's very scary because there's a concern that if I leave these kinds of relationships, first of all, women in the midst of leaving these relationships are most high risk of being victimized.

So they're staying in these roles. You make sense in terms of just safety. Another concern would be then if they leave, they are viewed by the community. Their cultural group is a failure as they're being somewhat responsible for this. So these cultural norms act as limitations and inhibit the exiting. Finally, I want your audience know that we do not view that all men are toxic. You know that there are good men out there. And then I wish everyone who's here, my voice a happy and healthy relationship.

And if you're already in such a relationship, you should be grateful and work to take advantage of it each day. Absolutely. I think part of what I, was hearing from you, from the cultural perspective, there's also the essence of entitlement that also gives the men, because of the cultural perspective, the entitlement that I can and I and I can get away with it. And it is the way that the norm. And I think part of it is that when men talk to each other, they show up as they are entitled to, speak a particular way or dominate a particular way.

And the women, even if they go to their friends or their mothers or their aunts or anyone, you know, they're usually what they see, they hear is, oh, that's just men. Don't worry about it. We all went through it and they teach, you know, they, they teach the next generation how to tolerate it, how to survive it versus how to stop it. And I think and then for the entitlement that goes through the culture for, you know, those specific cultures allows this level of dominance to keep going. And that has been a part of my hardest journey to work with the cultures that, you know, the, hierarchical or patriarchal system allows for a certain dominance.

You know, I've worked with Iranian women, Afghan women, Middle Eastern women, and, you see a lot of that where, as you said, first of all, it's hard to leave. Second of all, they all learn how to manage and and kind of, like, tolerate it inside. And then they the next generation takes the same thing. So the, you know, the, oldest boys, the oldest boys take on the same kind of ways of their father and the, you know, multi-generational trauma keeps continuing. Unfortunately, if there is no. And then when I remember doing a lot of different, television shows about domestic violence and doctor Make a mom, it was the funniest thing where, I would get threat calls after those, on my phone and those will get the least amount of views by, a lot of people in, my own culture, because this is almost like a bomb nobody wants to go around, is as if you don't know how to get out of it unless you were, believing that culture to, you know, and living in another culture or marrying another culture.

So you could still see how these multi-generational traumas, continue because of those perspectives. Really glad that you raised is, you know, a the cultural differences and the accompanying sense of entitlement and, moreover, the transformation of these attitudes and views from one generation to another. I, I must confess a great deal of respect. And admiration, for example, the women who are standing up to the obscene child abuse. It takes courage on the part of a woman to break free from these kinds of cultural expectations and social problems that they encounter in the effort to do this, and women can only do this in the help of other women.

So the MeToo movement has a great deal of. Contribution to play towards the reduction of interpersonal violence puts others the purpose of the book. Is to have women. Adopt these kinds of strategies before they make an initial decision, you know, and, I, I welcome you're sharing your, experiences in the course of this presentation. It clearly has enrich our dialog. I, I hope that, as a result of this, you do not get any more calls. You will only get a call from me in admiration of your, your efforts over the years.

And I wish you really well. Thank you. Everyone, please get this. Choose him wisely. How to Identify a Safe partner by doctor Don Macon. Bomb and doctor David Wessler. Back to me will be available on Amazon in October. Beautiful. Okay, one last thing. If you would, based in the book we actually signed the case of Gabby Petito. She was the person who was attentive and revictimized and actually killed by her mate. And they did a documentary. Most recently, we have been in touch with Gabby's parents and many of the kinds of risk factors that we enumerate Gabby had been exposed to.

So we're hopeful of their endorsing our book as yet another demonstration of the potential ways to avoid violence. Once again, thank you for having me. It is always a blessing to have you. Thank you so much for your generosity, always to give me your time. So I feel blessed. Take care of yourself and for everyone who's out there. Create an amazing life for yourself and everyone around you. And if you liked what we talked about, please share it with your friends and everyone that you know could really use this conversation.

And go to the podcast and the YouTube channel and, give us a comment and any questions that you have for the doctor make bomb. I'll be sure to share it with it. So have a wonderful time and I'll see you next week. Bye bye. Are you a psychotherapist looking to enhance your practice? The Awareness Integration Therapy developed by Doctor Fusion Zen, is a comprehensive guide to the principle and techniques of this powerful therapeutic approach. Join the growing community who have elevated their practice and expanded their skills by embracing awareness, integration, therapy and witnessing its life changing impact.

What do you copy on Amazon now?