Dr. Marcus C. Shepard reviews a new multi-country study reported by the Institute for Family Studies showing that couples who met in person report higher relationship satisfaction and stronger experiences of intimacy, passion, and commitment than couples who met online (https://ifstudies.org/blog/couples-around-the-world-who-met-in-real-life-are-happier-than-those-who-met-online).

The episode discusses possible reasons—such as shared contexts, transparency, and selection criteria—offers practical advice for using dating apps (including setting non-negotiables and timelines), and explores limitations of the research.

The episode closes with an Ask Dr. Shepard segment advising a student on how to repair a strained relationship with a professor: request a meeting during office hours, document the conversation by email, and keep a respectful paper trail if problems continue.

Dr. Marcus C. Shepard explains how verbal communication creates meaning—covering symbols, arbitrariness, abstraction, ambiguity, brute vs. institutional facts, and how language evaluates and organizes experience.

He outlines communication rules (regulative and constitutive), punctuation, totalizing, loaded language, and offers practical guidelines: use person-centered language, specify levels of abstraction, qualify generalizations, and own your feelings with I-statements.

In Ask Dr. Shepard, he advises a listener who feels excluded to have one-on-one conversations using I-language to clarify feelings and consider hosting or re-engaging to repair friendships.

In this episode Dr. Marcus C. Shepard explores nonverbal communication—what it includes, how it interacts with words, and types like kinesics, haptics, proxemics, paralanguage, and environmental cues—plus practical guidelines for monitoring and interpreting nonverbals to avoid miscommunication.

The episode closes with an Ask Dr. Shepard segment about ghosting, offering a respectful “pre-ghosting” message template and advice on how to respond (or not) when communication fades in dating.