In Life and Love
An expert addresses romance and the medical career.
The New Physician December 2009
by Monya De, M.D. Volume 58, Number 9
Dr. Alex Benzer is a Los Angeles-based clinical hypno-therapist, author and speaker specializing in dating and romance. TNP’s Dr. Monya De caught up with Benzer during promotional events for his new book for single women, The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Embracing Your Inner Goddess & Finding the Fulfillment You Deserve.
The two discussed the pressures of medicine, the value of strong interpersonal relationships—and opportunities in the digital age.
Tell us about your hypnotic self.
I studied neuroscience in college, then I went to the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine.
I was going to do an M.D./Ph.D., but decided against the Ph.D. The interest in hypnotherapy all started out in med school. There was a class in clinical hypnotherapy. I decided to go just to heckle it! But just listening to the guy hypnotizing my friends, I tranced out and was in no heckling shape whatsoever. Subsequently, I stu-died hypnotherapy and neurolinguistic programming in Boston and Seattle.
I worked in startups in Boston for a while and consulted for McKinsey & Company, which made me realize that corporate America probably wasn’t for me. So I started a hypnotherapy practice of my own, and subsequently wrote the books.
When did you know you wouldn’t do a residency?
I knew in my second week of third year. My mom was crestfallen and heartbroken. She said, “That’s the day my life ended.” Dad, on the other hand, was remarkably cool with it. I was more of a scientist in any case, and being a physician was not my calling.
Had I continued, I probably would have been a psychiatrist. My current career is an extension of that, born out of interests in the mind, hypnotherapy and helping people.
How did you become interested in Eastern philosophy?
Well, I was raised in Iran, and starting in elementary school, you memorize the poems from the Sufi mystics, and their words just permeate your consciousness. Then my interest in Eastern wisdom started 15 years ago, just before med school, with a slim volume entitled The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. Then I got a copy of the Tao Te Ching, which I carry in my backpack to this day. I’ve read it hundreds of times by now.
I realized that it was about bringing spirituality down to earth. How do these seemingly esoteric concepts apply to making you and your life better right now? In my work, I like to do that for science as well—making it useful and applicable to your life today. I think of myself as a “practicalizer.”
Tell us about your first dating book. How did you conceive and market it?
At one point, I was the premed adviser at Harvard. Part of my job was to sit with the students and have dinner with them once in a while. The students talked about their dating lives, and how dating was pretty much non-existent on the Harvard campus.
I realized that I had been one of those students. Heck, my first kiss was at age 19. I thought, “I don’t want these kids to suffer like me.” So I had my first seminar, with 20 people attending, in 2002 on the Harvard campus.
That first book is called The Tao of Dating: The Thinking Man’s Enlightened Guide to Success With Women. It’s doing really well since being released online in September ’05.
Released online?
Electronic publishing seemed like the best way to do it. You can actually have a robust business that way, and people can get their books immediately after they order them, instead of waiting a week for delivery.
The reach that you have online with Internet marketing is pretty powerful. The people who are interested in what you have to say will find you. One effective way to market is to provide free content for your audience, like mini-seminars, and then post it to your blog or YouTube.
How about your latest book?
Well, I have so many female friends from Harvard who are single. And I was visiting friends on the East Coast, hearing these stories of loneliness and pain—divorces, women supporting deadbeat boyfriends who abuse them. What’s going on here? I thought. And I realized that this was actually a widespread problem.
Seeing it in the lives of my friends made it really personal to me, which is what compelled me to complete the book, which took two-and-a-half years instead of the three months it took to write the version for men.
The book is a convergence of Eastern wisdom and Western science. There’s concepts from Taoism, Budd-hism, Hinduism and yoga; then you have all this stuff from science. I’ve incorporated papers in neuroscience and various books. I found that science and Eastern wisdom often converged upon the same truths, which is rather gratifying.
Also, I have been receiving letters from the 15,000 men on my e-mail list. They have been sharing their thoughts with me for years. I incorporated this database of men’s preferences into the book, too.
I decided to publish this one in book form, since people like the idea of a physical book they can carry around. Now there are new means of short-run publishing, which were too expensive in 2005.
Do you miss medicine?
Not really—I don’t believe I was built for medicine. My plan was to become an academic all along.
You’ve had an unorthodox life path. What advice do you have for medical students who might be doubting the traditional medical career path?
Read biographies of people you admire. Few of them followed a linear path. Having a nontraditional career is hard, but so is medicine. You may think that you are trading on certainty, but that’s not the case. The world is changing at a pace never seen before. There are going to be jobs no one can even imagine today. It’s amaz-ing: There’s technology, the Web, new business opportunities. So think of the opportunity cost. What else could you be doing right now, instead of medicine?
Medicine isn’t really for everybody; there are a million bad reasons to go into it. If you don’t absolutely love to work with sick people, you should be doing something else. Training takes the 12 best years of your life. Litigation, liability, health risks, sleep deprivation—these are enormous sacrifices.
If you’re already past your second year, I’d say finish up and do something else. If you are not done with your second year, and you have a more exciting opportunity, go do that. If you’re after prestige or money, there are much better—and easier—ways of getting there than through medicine.
The Tao speaks of the wisdom of uncertainty. There is no certainty; you just have to swim with the changing world. See where it takes you. I heard that a 22-year-old entering the work force today has an average of 14 job changes by the time she’s 40.
Nowadays it’s almost expected that you do unusual things and follow a nonlinear career path. If you’re wondering what you should be doing, Po Bronson’s What Should I Do With My Life? may be a good resource.
general romance
Now the good stuff: We need some serious dating tips.
Here’s a secret: Men really appreciate it when women take initiative, whether about going out, activities, sex, or just starting the conversation. See, feminine energy or yin is normally associated with rest and receptivity. But if you look at the yin-yang symbol, there is a bit of the complementary energy in each area. That little extra bit enhances the native energy. So a little bit of yang—more directive energy and initiative—really amplifies a woman’s feminine appeal. Guys really dig that.
Also, if you show genuine appreciation of a guy, he won’t ever be able to get enough of you. He will not leave you alone.
As for guys—you need to lean back and let the woman chase you a little bit. That’s the bit of yin in your yang. It increases your attractiveness. Don’t overdo the chasing.
As for things not to do: ladies—men can’t stand neediness and flakiness. I polled 10,000 of them, and those were their top two pet peeves.
Women sometimes make poor choices when it comes to guys. She might meet a guy who doesn’t treat her well and isn’t a good candidate for her fulfillment. But she goes out with him, or stays with him just to avoid loneliness. No! Sometimes you’re a lot better off alone, especially when the guy’s a loser.
So for women, I emphasize embracing the inner goddess. You are complete unto yourself. When you start from self-sufficiency, you are more likely to find the guy you want. And you feel great anyway!
romance & medicine
What advice do you have for medical students and young doctors who want to date more or find and keep a boyfriend or girlfriend?
Make people a priority! When you’re in medicine, it’s very difficult to set time aside for your intimate relation-ships—you’d rather not deal with it. There’s no time to attend to that part of your life. There’s residency, then you have to build a practice. It’s sad that these aspects of living end up only half fulfilled.
So make it a priority to make deep connections with people. Realize that this can be a source of replenish-ment, as important as the water you drink, the air you breathe and the exercise that keeps you energized. Realize the abundance of the universe—there are so many opportunities for loving! As soon as you practice loving and being open, great companions kind of come out of the woodwork. So smile more—he or she could be anywhere.
Is it OK to date at the hospital?
You date where you spend your time, and doctors spend time at work. It’s where people get to know each oth-er in a casual, nonthreatening context. You have longitudinal contact, so you get to know them really well. The worst that can happen is that the person says no. If you phrase your approach as kind and complimentary, people will be flattered. So I’d say by all means, if you’re really into someone, give it a try.
On the flip side, I would discourage doctors from dating doctors. They don’t have free time, and they are usually too stressed out to be able to support one another. As one of my teachers once said, in relationships you have flowers and gardeners. One gardener and one flower can work. Two gardeners can work. Two flowers do not work. So the track record of marriages between doctors is not promising.
Do your recommendations work?
Yes. People who read my work realize there is a way to be the architect of your own fulfillment. It’s just a matter of knowing certain principles and applying them to your life. The great news is that you can have agency and make things happen, versus just waiting for luck to come your way. That’s the essence of empowerment, and that’s what I am conveying.
Dr. Monya De is a physician-journalist based in Los Angeles. More information on Dr. Alex Benzer’s work and books can be found at taoofdating.com.