Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on I Heart Radio. I'm into studies about

relationships. I know they don't give the whole picture but they so often give interesting insight into

what's really going on between people.

Somebody posted a frontiers in psychology study.

It was looking at why large numbers of people in Western societies are

single. And they had some interesting notes like women are a little more likely

to say that they're too picky 82% of women versus 68% of men.

Both men and women say they're afraid of commitment at about 55%.

Both are in the high 80s, in the want to be free to do whatever they want.

Men want to be free to, quote, flirt around slightly more than women,

27% versus 18%. But then what was really interesting to me is that

both sexes overwhelmingly say that they're not good at flirting. 91% of

women and 86% of men said that. And again I think it's interesting that more women,

91% of women versus 86% of men say that. I thought that was kind of funny, but they're, you know, both pretty high up there. And I think it's a real problem. Flirting is signaling interest, and one of the best ways to signal interest is to ask people questions about themselves and then listen for the answer.

There's more to flirting of course, but you know there's banter and there's making people feel good about themselves but I think the

overall issue is that a lot of people just don't know how to have conversations anymore at all.

It's hard to ignore that the generations that are struggling with

things like flirting, the ones who are perpetually single, the ones who aren't

getting married, the ones who aren't having kids, are the same generations

that have had the internet their entire lives.

I talk a lot about living your life offline and I admit that I do a lot of my socializing online.

I've made close friends online. I really do get the concept

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