John Van Epp talks trust, commitment in successful relationships

John Van Epp said that trust, physical intimacy, reliance, knowing a person well and commitment are all categories that can ultimately determine the success of a relationship in a talk on Thursday.

“I think, in your lifetime right now, it’s actually more difficult to find somebody who has their act together, who seems to have a maturity and a quality about them… than it was 30 years ago; that seems crazy in my mind,” he said.

Van Epp, author of “How To Avoid Falling In Love With A Jerk,” has spoken across campuses nation-wide and his work has been featured in TIME, Psychology Today and other publications. Van Epp’s Relationship Attachment Model, or R.A.M., stresses these qualities in a relationship.

Van Epp took comments from the audience on qualities that can be found in an undesirable partner, known as a jerk or "jerkette," such as selfishness, passive-aggressiveness, impatience and “phone-aholics.” According to Van Epp's definition, this kind of person has a core characteristic: a persistent resistance to change.

However, he said, by using R.A.M., people can get a proper assessment of their relationships and work to fix any lacking qualities; these qualities, even when studied individually, all have bonding elements that joins two people together. He added the systemcan also be used to predict the success of a marriage, and explained that two of the five aspects of a successful relationship would be “Know” and “Trust.”

In the “Know” category, Van Epp noted that knowing someone’s family background in order to analyze how they handle emotions and give and receive love can be a determinant in how people act in future romantic relationships. He also said that how someone acts on their conscience, or how successful they are in managing and regulating themselves, can speak volumes to their impulse control.

He used psychologist Walter Mischel’s marshmallow experiment to illustrate this to the audience, and showed a video on young children participating in the experiment. An adult would leave the child alone in a room with a marshmallow and, if they waited a few minutes for the adult to return to the room, they could get two marshmallows. The catch was that the children could not eat the first marshmallow. The results from the experiment showed a variety of ranges in maturity and control that the children would have for the rest of their lives, and these qualities also play an important part in their handling of romantic relationships in the future, he noted.

Van Epp said that "Trust" can be definedas the feeling of confidence that one gets from assumptions about another person, but not what is known.

“I find that, today, relationships tend to get built backwards… trust develops way faster in relationships today than what people take to get to know [a person],” he said.

He noted that relationships must undergo an incubation period of about three months before people begin to reveal who they really are, rather than what they portray themselves as.

Van Epp also briefly explained the category of “Touch,” which includes intimacy. He added that when “Touch” is reserved for more advanced and long-term stages of a relationship, other qualities of a relationship are consequently strengthened.

“As you develop a relationship, what you emphasize for the first year [or] two years in that relationship and what you build on, have permanent, lasting impact for the majority of people. That’s the trend,” he said.

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He added that holding off on sexual involvement can improve the overall qualities of a relationship.

“You begin to build relationships that actually benefit you and your own life, you find that you grow from them," he said.

Even if a relationship doesn’t work out, it is possible to walk away from it feeling like it has made a positive change in one's life, he noted.

"These are relationships that are not the norm of how people date today,” Van Epp said.

The lecture, titled, “Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind,” was open to the public and took place on Thursday in McCosh 10. The event was sponsored by the Anscombe Society.