What do you wish you had done differently in love? Armand DiMele maps five distinct love styles (storge, agape, mania, pragma, eros) to the specific regrets each one breeds, arguing that most romantic mistakes trace back to unresolved childhood needs playing out in adult relationships. Callers share their own love regrets live on air.
Six distinct love styles, from the game-playing ludic lover to the selfless agapic giver, frame a deep dive into manic love and its links to hypomania and bipolar disorder. Armand DiMele draws on callers’ personal experiences to show how most people blend several styles at once.
Serial romantic pursuit, whether in men or women, often masks a search for the missing same-sex parent. Armand DiMele works through narcissism, sexual addiction, and erotomania to argue that until men find their father and women find their mother, true love stays out of reach.
Neatness, noise, light sensitivity, refrigerator raids, toothbrushes: Armand DiMele walks through the unglamorous friction points that sink shared living arrangements. The argument is that couples rush into cohabitation on chemistry alone, then get blindsided by mismatched habits they never thought to discuss.
High-energy and low-energy people are drawn together because each supplies what the other lacks, but that same imbalance can doom the relationship over time. Armand DiMele traces the psychology and almost physics of this dynamic, from falling in love as an energy exchange to the depression that follows breakups.
Friendship dates, not romantic ones, are the real subject here. Armand DiMele argues that conversation replenishes serotonin and that most people are either chronic talkers or chronic listeners without realizing it. Callers explore communication gaps in new romantic relationships and the limits of self-awareness in social dynamics.
Why do we go blind when we fall for someone? Armand DiMele and Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW, break down lust, lovesickness, and limerence, the infatuation state coined by Dorothy Tenov, arguing that romantic blindness may be biologically wired and that mature love requires accepting people as they actually are.
What if the mysterious quality that makes a person or relationship feel just right is the psychological equivalent of umami? Armand DiMele maps the five taste sensations onto human personality types and romantic chemistry, arguing that savory wholeness, not sweetness or intensity alone, is what makes love and life satisfying.
Love is a biological event as much as an emotional one. Armand DiMele walks through the full arc of attraction, from the mental state you bring to a first meeting, to the pheromones and immune-system signals that drive desire, to the oxytocin and dopamine that sustain long-term bonds. Knowing the science, he argues, makes us more compassionate lovers.
Passion, technique, and emotional honesty are all part of good sex, argues Dr. Judy Kuriansky, a veteran sex therapist and protege of Masters and Johnson. She and Armand DiMele, joined by Stephanie D’Ambra, LCSW, debate Schnarch’s raw-desire model against Kuriansky’s view that intimacy is a skill built through practice, gestalt techniques, and her three A’s: acceptance, acknowledgment, and appreciation.
