How To Find Your “Happily Ever After” - Ty Tashiro

I hear that I've got you on to creatine and protein powders. Life changing. I I gotta say I listened to an episode of yours about a year ago. Yep. With Peter Atia and um the two of you got me on creatin, got me on protein powder. And I have never I mean it's the best shape I've been in in decades. So I appreciate Yeah. Yeah. I'm not the same level you guys are at, but uh for my modest uh goals, it's it's been it's been really tremendous. So, I appreciate that. Think about how many better relationship outcomes are downstream from you being a bit more jacked over the last 12 months from me and Peter talking [ __ ] about how good creatine and protein powders are. The world is interconnected, Tai, everything is this big sort of mess. Look, dude, I uh I I hope that you've had your creatine this morning because I I've fallen in love with your work. Dr. Shannon Curry a couple of weeks ago introduced me to you and uh I I think your stuff's so great. You know, that this real evidence-based sciencebacked look at relationships, attachment, love, what it is, what predicts effectiveness, red flags, green flags. So, I want to I want to do a real full run through today. Great. Looking forward to it. Awesome. Okay. Uh happily ever after. How come it's so hard to find? Oh, this is a this is a long story. It gets a little depressing. I promise people I'll uh have a better story as we go along here. But um you know the two things people really want when they sit down and think about it is they want a relationship that's happy. I think that's the more obvious thing. But they can forget that hey, we also want something that's going to be stable and last. You don't want to have something that flames out after 2 or 3 years. And so, um, happily ever after actually is a phrase that captures that well. And if you look at the data on that, happily ever after is really elusive for modern love. So, I think a lot of people are familiar with the divorce statistics, but let me break that down with a little bit more detail. So, the divorce rate for first marriages is somewhere between 41 and 43%. So, that's obviously pretty high. Uh you would think maybe in a second marriage your divorce risk goes down because you learned a couple things. Actually not the case. It goes up 10% for second. Yeah. Goes up 15% uh for third marriages. So if you kind of average all these numbers together, the divorce risk is about is about 50%. Now also part of that is the happy part. So some couples stay together but they're really unhappy, chronically unhappy. And if you use the most modest estimate possible, you know, that's that's going to be about 8% of 8 to 10% of couples. So now we're up to 63%. Uh so, you know, or 60%, I'm sorry. So happily ever after, yes, is is really hard to find. And I think it's harder than ever in the modern dating environment that we have. Okay, that's a very depressing way to begin a conversation about love. Um, yeah, look, it it seems to me that I'd be interested to get your thoughts on this, too. Um, as fun as reading Sex at Dawn was, I don't think it's accurate. It seems to me that humans are sort of serially monogous or monogamousish, something like that, working on between two to 7 year cycles with partners, getting infants to the stage where they're able to remotely fend for themselves. What's your perspective sort of uh anthropologically here? Yeah, I think that's about right. It gets confusing with some of this evolutionary psychology theory because it could be true. For example, right, let let's say that we're not designed to be as monogous as we are in modern society. But we have all these social constraints. We have financial commitments attached to marriage. We have kids attached to it who are dependent on their parents for longer than ever maybe in human history. And you know any reasonable person then uh who has some degree of willpower is going to be able to fight some of these tendencies or biological pushes to kind of craft the life that they want. Now, I think the value of something like sex at dawn is to say, "Hey, maybe I have some of these base urges and when I feel those pop up, I know what those are, but now let's develop a plan to deal with that so I don't burn down the rest of my life." Dude, the best story around this, David Bus wrote uh the evolution of desire and he was telling me this story. This guy reached out to him and said, "I wanted to thank you because your book saved my marriage." David said, "Oh, it's interesting. What happened?" He said, "Well, you know, I've been happily married to my wife for a decade or so, and everything's really great, and I I I do love her, but I found myself getting attracted to other women. You know, I'd see an attracted woman walk down the street, and I think, "Wow, she's hot." And I thought that that was an indication that there was something wrong with me or wrong with the relationship or wrong with my partner or there was an incompatibility. And I read your book and I found out that men especially have a reward circuit in the brain when we look at anything remotely sexual. A pair of rocks that kind of look like boobs to us. Like I'm in. Um so son of a [ __ ] I'm in. Um and I realized that oh no, this isn't some early indication that there's a problem in my relationship. This is just a pretty effective, pretty old bit of my biology. Just making sure that I'm sort of keeping a weather eye on what the surroundings look like. Says marriage with the wife has continued to tick along perfectly fine. I don't feel guilty. I don't feel ashamed about this. I feel like that's that's similar to what you're talking about. I think that's awesome. Yeah. You know, it's I think just having these desires, having these reflexive, you know, maybe a turn of the head or something like that, it's it's totally natural. The question is is you know can you be honest with yourself about that first of all so you have the insight the awareness and then two do you have a contingency plan so that you're not the whims of your desire and so one of the really interesting things for example about couples who are really satisfied and who stay committed and are are resistant to divorce is that they actively we use this esoteric term derogate. So, so they actively disparage attractive alternative options so other people they could hook up with. And so, like if you have them look on a computer screen, for example, and a a hot woman pops up on the computer screen, men will reflexively avert their eyes for a second to try to not look at it. Now, they'll look back eventually because because they're guys, but they have this kind of protective mechanism to say, I can't just, you know, passively work with this. I need to actively try to manage my desires so that I can have a happy relationship. I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Um it's like the insight um it's far easier to avoid temptation than to resist it. And uh Brad Wilcox in his book Get Married, he talks about uh there are certain like high-risk environments that you can find yourself in if you're in a relationship. you know, if you really want to be faithful to your partner, you could say, "Well, you should love them so much that it shouldn't matter if you're in a nightclub drunk at 2:30 in the morning." And you go, "Yeah, yeah, I mean, maybe it shouldn't." But in the same way as I don't ever intend on becoming a heroin addict, but if I just left loads of heroin needles around the house and one evening I was bored, I'm like, you know, I might shoot up. Who knows? Yeah. So, uh, yeah. Um, avoiding temptation rather than resisting it. sort of environment design in that way. I guess like this relational environment design too, which is, hey, look, I'm just not going to give myself the chance to become enthralled because I understand how um fast acting the lust system can be and it just sort of kicks into high gear and and you don't really know. So, yeah, I I very much think um designing your lifestyle and uh thinking carefully about what you expose yourself to is probably a pretty a pretty smart uh idea. Yeah, I think you're so right about that, Chris. One of the phrases I hear so often from people who have cheated on their partner, now they're like, "Whoops, I shouldn't have done that." Um is they use the phrase, "So, next thing I know, as if it's this total surprise that they're drunk at the nightclub and now they're making out with somebody." Yep. And you know, one of the things you'll do is you just backtrack with them to this whole host of bad decisions that eventually led to them right being in that moment where they made out with someone or or something else that they shouldn't have. Why do people have a difficulty in envisioning their romantic future? Uh well kind we're not very good with the future in general, right? Um when we think something good's going to happen, we have this affective forecasting problem is what they call it. So we we think that something good is going to be much better than it's actually going to be emotionally. And then if there's something aversive coming up, we think it's actually going to be much worse uh than it really is. And then we get to the experience and sometimes we're disappointed like for the positive thing. I call it the prom effect where you think the prom is going to be this amazing night and all magical. Most people will tell you their problem is a little bit disappointing, right? And that's because they made it out to be this thing it wasn't going to be. You know, same thing with negative events. A lot of times if you just, for example, get into your email and do the thing, right? For me personally, I'm like, "This isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be." So, the same thing applies to relationships where sometimes we put unreasonable emotional expectations on what a relationship will provide us. And by the same token, if there's something hard to do in a relationship, let's say talk about a tough topic or bring up something uncomfortable, we tend to catastrophize that. and think it's going to be much worse than it's really going to be. And so both of these errors in either direction can cause problems with us accurately envisioning the future. I suppose when you layer on top the hormonal neurochemical cocktail of being in passionate love as well, uh that accurate prediction of anything pretty much goes out the window. Well, now yeah, now that's that state that that phase however long it lasts. Now that's a total neurological disaster. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, I now I'm not a neuroscience expert, but I know enough to, you know, make make sense of these things. I remember reading when I first read those studies about these people in passionate love and are thinking about their partner. I mean, if you look at the things that are activated, not activated, the kind of the takeaway is you're not making costbenefit analyses and you're have the reason is you're having a really hard time seeing cost at all. Those areas are actually deactivated. So, it's harder to see cost. Um, it's all benefit based. And of course, when we've been, you know, in that phase, when we're in passionate love, yeah, we're totally irrational and we make uh anything the partner does seems cute or quirky. Of course, if you fast forward two or three years, some of those cute, quirky things become super annoying, wildly irritating. I just love the way that she like slurps her tea and then that's the sound that makes you want to tear your own eardrums out only only a couple of years later. That's right. That's right. So, you know, sometimes I can get quiet. I'm I'm pretty introverted. And so, maybe a woman early in a relationship might think it's mysterious or something like that. It becomes much less mysterious when I'm not having an active conversation when we're supposed to be really engaged with something. So, yeah, you know, it can happen to all of us, but uh there's all kinds of mistakes we make and passionate love is. That being said, Chris, I think, you know, sometimes people are like, "Well, so so maybe I should try to hold it together a little bit more when I'm like, no way." You know, what what feels as good as passionate love? Would you ever feel that way emotionally um you know, physically? Uh when are you just that euphoric about anything in life? And almost never, right? And so I I think it's this really great thing that people should just enjoy. But one of the things I like to do then is say, "Let's put some guard rails up ahead of time before you're in that state so you can enjoy it and you know that you're not going to make bad decisions about getting a dog together or something when you're in passionate love that now traps you in a situation that's not good in the long run." I mean, this is exactly the same as what I just said. It's easier to avoid bad temptations than it is to resist them. So I think uh you should be careful who you let yourself fall in love with. you should see um you know I mean even maybe from one week of spending time I have a a friend that went and spent I think 10 days this sort of you know a whirlwind romance spent 10 days with this woman and then at the end both of them are and they're happily married now and it's sweet but you know you think god 10 days 10 day you're you're telling me that I can go from totally relatively rational functioning human who can do costbenefit analyses who can observe red flags who can plan their future who can prior pitize themselves, make their needs known to useless blob of like serotoninless, dopaminefueled sex hunger with one person with and and here's the here's the [ __ ] wild thing. With no ability to perceive other mating options, that's the other thing that passionate love does which I don't think many people realize. And again it's a huge uh price cost risk maybe that people go through which is you are essentially unable to see other viable mating options which means you will stay in a relationship which is mistreating you which is not good for you. um you will be more scared of leaving one which is unsatisfactory no matter how short of a period of time it is because just the way that your mating mind works you have shut off other mating options and that's real functional if you're about to make babies but it's not so functional if your relationship sucks so you're you you you're right it's not just costbenefit analysis it's also you're unable to observe the market right you're not having to you're not having to force yourself to avert your eyes your eyes are never straining you're just locked on to your partner that's right yeah to totally immersed totally really absorbed in the experience and all of our psychology and all of our physiology is pushing us in that direction. It's really remarkable, right? If if if you think about it, um I I say it's kind of like when you have to when you have to pee, there's nothing else you can think about except I have to pee. I mean, oddly enough, being a passionate love can be a little bit of the same. Blinders on and just totally focused on on one thing. And if it's good and it's healthy, gosh, that's a beautiful thing, right? But if it's, let's say, with a narcissist or a psychopath and they're getting their claws into you, well, you're not in this position to make good, reasonable choices, you know, now now it's not so now it's not so great anymore. But, uh, but on this on this point though, on this passionate love point, if you do have these guard rails up ahead of time for yourself and you find someone and you're just gosh, you're really into it and you're just absorbed in that experience, just enjoy it. It's great. It doesn't last for forever. And uh sometimes people ask, "So, hey Ty, why can't I stay in that heart pounding, butterfly in the stomach, passionate love feeling for forever?" And you I tell him because you would die. You know that that pounding heart is high blood pressure. And those, you know, butterflies are burning a hole in your would burn a hole in your stomach. you know, burn ulcer in there uh from all the cortisol and everything else they're they're leaving off. So, you know, if you're just in passionate love for a year or two, don't don't worry about it. But if you stay that way, it's too high of a state of arousal for any human to maintain. Just do a little bit more of a primer for the people listening. Passionate love system, companionate love system, transition between the two, um how how people feel, how they interpret and misinterpret that kind of journey. Yeah. you know, so so passionate love is uh it's pretty heavily lust driven. So, you know, you're very sexually interested in a person, you're just starting to get things kicked off uh sexually or physically with that person. So, yeah, it's really kind of heavy on the left side of the equation. Now, when you get to know the person better and you get into a more stable phase of the relationship, now you start to see this companion at love emerge, which is more of just like the we enjoy hanging out with each other. Like, we're we're we're really good friends. I actually just enjoy who this person is beyond the physical aspects. And now you have the two components in place, you know, being in love. So you can love somebody, you can love your dog, you can love candy, you know, you could love a partner to a certain extent, but when you say you're in love, the use of that preposition, it's a it's a eitheror thing. You don't say like I'm kind of in love with somebody. It's an either or thing. And researchers have found there's actually only two components necessary for the in love and it's do you have that companion love, that liking, right, for them. The second part is is do you have the lust or the kind of passionate side of things? you have those two ingredients, um, you know, it's pretty likely that you'll that you'll fall in love with the person. And if you then frack that over time, as you could imagine, the companion at love, that's got to be your rock, right? That's got to be in like athletic terms, that's like playing good defense. You can always rely on that happening. You can always rely on putting effort into that and that showing up. um the passionate love will still be there and it'll come stronger at certain times, but it's much more there's much more turbulence with passionate love and the lust side of things. So, you want to really invest in someone who you can fall in companion love with primarily, right? You also want the physical component as well. But, uh I I would I would put the companion before the less part of it. That's interesting. What would you how would you distinguish between lust driving traits and companion driving traits or lust positive traits and companion positive traits? Yeah, the lust one's pretty easy. So, you know, um hotness will will really just that could probably take you the entire way with with the lust part of it. So, is someone physically attractive? Uh there could be other components to that. So researchers have found, for example, that um with women when they're at peak fertility in their menstrual cycle, they're actually sensitive to men's scent to their smell. And so, you know, women in peak fertility uh like the body odor of men who tend to have symmetrical bodies and symmetrical faces, which is often times more attractive and kind of a outward sign of physical fitness or physical health. Um so all these physical things kind of fall on the on the left side of things. You can also put in that category for you know women choosing men a certain degree of social dominance or leadership capability can be very hot as well. You know they like they like the power or they like the you know there's a reason why lead singers and quarterbacks tend to do pretty well. Uh kind of showing that leadership you know showing that dominance at the start at least. uh women times often can find that lust lustworthy. Now a companion to love is going to sound totally boring by comparison but you know these are things like stability. Uh is the person a kind you know person? Do they have good values and those sorts of things and of course those things are important for a long-term relationship and important for liking the person and trusting a person. Um but they're a lot less flashy than the components for loss. Have you ever looked at any research around uh the passionate love phase? What actually causes the uh degradation of that or what causes that to transition into companionate love? I'm wondering whether um somebody that was in an intermittent long-distance relationship perhaps um that might extend out because it's an amount of time um or or something similar. Maybe maybe uh contact is more intermittent than you might think. So the familiarity as well also doesn't proceed as quickly. I'm trying to work out what the mechanism is, the ticking clock that occurs that transitions you from passionate to companion at love and uh whether there are certain ways that people can speedrun through uh that. Not not that you necessarily would want to um or ways that people could extend. Not that you would necessarily want to do that either, but I'm I'm just intrigued. I you know I wish I had a good answer for you that was hey we're totally positive how to make this happen but one thing I'll say that might be helpful here is that there's a tremendous amount of variability with how long it takes people to transition out of passionate love. Actually much more than I would have expected. So some people transition out of passionate love after just a couple months. Other people will keep it going for a year or two. Uh there's some just outliers though who will keep it going for years on end. Uh once in a while anecdotally I'll meet some of these couples have been married for you know decade two decades and they're all over each other. I'm like you know get a room kind of situation and I'm like wow that's really that's really amazing that that's really great and you know who knows what why that's the case. I think some place where psychology hasn't gotten yet with the research on passionate love is exactly to your question. So why is it the case some people transition out more quickly? Why do some people sustain it for longer? One thing I will say that seems to be one of the most promising variables is what we would call expansion of the self. So, you know, you have your own traits and characteristics that are unique to you. And even though your partner might have some similarities with you, they're of course going to have very unique personality traits and, you know, interests and all kinds of things, life experiences. One of the things that happens in couples that maintain a higher degree of passionate love is they're super curious about the things that are different in their partner and they want to learn about it and they want to try to expand their own self. So their own interests and personality to try to emulate uh some of those qualities as well. And so what you can imagine is you don't have just two people who are fixed circles like coming together. You have two people expanding, right? Who they are, expanding their possibilities into each other. And so they grow individually, but then they also grow together as a couple. So for couples that have been together for a long time, that's one of the best pieces of advice I could give is one, be really interested in your differences, even though they annoy you sometimes. Um, number two, get some things together as a couple where it's new to both of you and you can both grow, you know, within learning about this thing and make it something of your own. Yeah. I I wonder why I wonder why people who take on some more of their their partner's interests and and stay curious, I wonder why that helps to extend. I mean, it's it's very good uh uh for keeping relationship longevity because it makes you become sort of more attuned with your partner. You're almost speaking the same language in one way. Um how do you know if you're in love with somebody as opposed to just liking them or lusting after them? You know, one of the weird things, Chris, is people just know. Like, I know it's a really unsatisfying answer epistemologically, but um yeah, that that's kind of the case. They're just you ask married couples, this always cracks me up when I hear a single person ask a happily married couple, so how'd you know that, you know, this was the right person for you? And they always give the same answer, which is you just know, which is totally unhelpful, you know, to the person who's single. But um yeah, it is this kind of cliff-like phenomenon, this dichomous thing where people just switch into it and they're like, you know what, I'm in love with this person. and they might withhold that for a little bit so they don't look bonkers. But um yeah, people just it's one of those weird things in life where we just know it. It's strange that you don't get to choose who you fall in love with and you kind of don't get to choose necessarily who you fall out of love with. I suppose you can do things that are predictive. Again, you cannot expose yourself to uh people that you don't think you should fall in love with. cannot expose yourself to situations uh and you can um cut off at the knees issues which will cause you in future to fall out of love. But the actual act of it happening it's like being convinced that 2 plus 2 equals 4. It's like I I I can't unconvince you of that fact unless I unconvince you of that fact. And I kind of it's it's not your choice to be convinced or unconvinced of something. And I I I kind of get the sense that love is a little bit like that. It is. Yeah. And gosh, it's really inconvenient sometimes right on both ends. uh there. But I I I like what you said about when it comes to falling in love though, uh yeah, you can try to avoid folks that maybe you know are bad for you that you tend to tend to go for. Um on on that same note though, you can also say, "Hey, there are qualities and people that I really do enjoy and that I really value, but sometimes for whatever reason, I don't place emphasis on those when I'm choosing partners." So yeah, you want to over select from these pools of people who have these qualities that you know are really good for you that you don't naturally gravitate towards. But by the same token, yeah, let's avoid people who you know are bad for you, but for whatever reason, you just have a weak spot for the for those folks. Why do we like the things that we like in partners? How are we socialized into wanting the things that we do or inheriting the wants that we have? H yeah there's there's some universality about that actually. So like David Bus for example has done some really nice cross-cultural studies where he looks like what do people want in a mate and there is some commonality there for long-term partners you know we want someone with who's kind you know we want someone who's loyal and can be committed all these things that that would make sense with short-term mating partners. Uh we we tend to not prioritize those things. we go for the hotness or the excitements and that's fine as well if that's if that's your goal and you're clear about it. I think where we get tripped up sometimes is we want something that's long term, but we get tempted by the things that are good for the short term, right? So, we go for the hot exciting person. And as we've talked about, it's really easy now if you fall into passionate love with this person to all of a sudden be in a rut. and next thing you know, you're spending a ton of time together. You've moved in together. You got a dog together and it's like 2 years down the road and you're like, gosh, I I don't think I'm actually happy with this person. Uh, and it seems like a blur that you got to that point. But of course, there were all kinds of decisions that led you up to that situation. Yeah, it it really is. I wonder how many relationships, marriages, families even were born out of somebody falling backward into a lustful relationship and before they knew it, they woke up with two kids and a dog and a marriage and a ring on their finger. Yeah. And uh yeah, they they never intended to. And yeah, at at no point did it feel right to back out. you know, it felt good and then it felt okay and then it didn't feel so good, but it was kind of more committed and you were in really deep and then stuff just kept progressing and uh yeah. Do you know what the Abene paradox is? You familiar with this? Uh please tell me. I I don't think I do. Uh it's a really cool idea. So, Abene paradox um it's a a situation where a group makes a decision that's contrary to the desires of the group's members because each member assumes that the other members approve of it. So, it kind of explains how uh a number of accurate individuals can become idiots when they get together. So, think kind of Emperor's New Clothes. Um, an acquaintance invites you to his wedding despite not wanting you there because he thinks that you want to attend and you attend despite not wanting to because you think that he wants you there. Yeah. Um, or at a business meeting someone suggests an idea that he thinks that the others will like recruiting some spicy influencer as the face of the brand and each other member has misgivings but assumes that the others will consider them bigoted if they don't agree. So, everyone approved the idea despite nobody liking it. And I wonder how many abalene marriages we've got where both partners have kind of fallen backward into this thing. No one really ever thought about it. You Yeah, sure. The passionate love phase was great and before you know it, you're Yeah. You're in your 40s with a couple of kids and you you didn't actually ask for this. Sure. I think a ton, you know, end up that way. So there's the okay, we just thought each other were hot, then, you know, we kind of got together for that reason. Next thing we know, we're married with kids. I think that happens. But you bring up a good a really good point there, which is this broader broader societal context where people think, well, there's just certain things I'm supposed to do in life by a certain age. And they almost have this checklist-like mentality. Well, I I want to meet the person I'm going to marry by 25. You'll be married by 27. I want to have kids by, you know, 29. And I respect that. That hasn't been my path. For example, I I respect that people no mind. Yeah. have that aspiration. But I think sometimes people can be so rigid about wanting to check off those boxes. I think you and I have probably both seen this with friends where you just think to yourself, they're just plugging in somebody, dude, that's good enough, right? So they can kind of check off the box. So I was at my best friend's wedding a couple of weeks ago. Uh gave a a very successful best man speech as well, I think. Um which made made him suitably uncomfortable. And uh I was walking around outside and it's the classic thing. I imagine that bridesmaids get this as well. You know, if you're a groomsman or a best man or whatever, one of the best men, uh the rest of the wedding once all of the fawning has been done over the couple is spent scrutinizing your dating life. And you know, they're so Chris, when you know, when are we going to meet? You know, you really need to. I'm like, okay. And uh I mentioned I I said look I really am uh I'm glad that I did the things that I did in my life to get myself to this point. But I also feel you know I feel yeah I'm I'm ready I'm ready to settle down. I'm ready to become a dad. I'm excited for the prospect of starting a family and being a little bit less selfish and uh living for something more than just my own uh vapid needs for validation from the world. And um they one of the parents gave me a [ __ ] awesome piece of advice. This is going to be seared into my mind for the rest of my life. So thank you. Shout out uh Zach's mom. Um she said make sure that you fall in love with the person, not the institution. And I think what she means by that is you want to get married to the person because you want to get married to the person, not because you want to get married. Yes. And uh that's exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. such such sage advice. So, uh, always listen to the mother-in-law. Always listen. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great piece of advice. And but, you know, like like you said, there there's a lot of pressure out there. So, you can imagine, right? Uh, you you sound like very secure with where you're at and when where you've been. But if someone's more susceptible to those societal pressures, yeah, it's it's it can certainly be tough. So I understand how people um you know can maybe make some sub-optimal decisions because of those pressures but uh of course the best thing to do is you know wait for the right person and and not the checking off the box for the institution and then be able to say the sentence you'll just when you know you'll just know and be a total black box of advice that's useless to everybody else and drive drive the singles crazy. Correct. Uh okay. What should you look for in a partner if you want to improve the odds of finding enduring love? So, uh I so I used to teach a course uh for undergraduates on the psychology of romantic relationships. And and I I loved I love that class. I love my students. And one of the things we would do is I'd say take out a piece of paper. I guess they still had paper at this time. And I said, "Write down all the things you want in your ideal partner. pretend I'm like your fairy godfather and I can grant these wishes to you. And so they would they'd always ask for more time. They'd write down about 20 to 25 things on their paper that they wanted in their ideal partner. And I think that's great. You know, you should you should dream big and then say, "Does anybody want to volunteer their list so I can read it in front of the class?" And great. You know, a lot of a lot of students would volunteer the list. And so I'd go through and I'd read in the order that they had put them the traits. So there was 200 students in this class. I'd have everyone raise their hands and I'd say, "Okay, uh, this person wants someone who's tall." So just by thought experiment, let's say everyone's a guy in here, right? So I said, "If you're a guy who's under six feet, put your hand down." Now, you'll lose out of a hundred people, you'll lose 80 people with that because only 20% of men in the US are six foot or taller. And then she might say something like, "I want someone who's who's wealthy." And I say, "So, what does that what does that mean to you?" Maybe she says, "I want someone who makes at least $150,000 a year." To her, that's what that means. Well, you know, of the remaining 20 guys, you're going to be down to about five now, right? Mhm. Whatever trait is your third wish, you will end up I I guarantee I've done this now dozens if not hundreds of times, whatever your third wish is will take you down to one person out of a hundred or will take you to a fraction of a person, which is actually much more much more likely. So, you know, when we say what what's what's the things to choose in a partner, I think the first place we want to start with is we we need to really prioritize and be laser focused on the things that are most important to us before we generate our list of 20 to 25 things. Less the answer, what traits should you look for in a partner is less. Fewer fewer traits. Fewer. Uh, you know, I I the way I like to phrase that is I say make the list of your dreams. So, you could make your 20 trait list, let's say. Um, but what nobody does, or I haven't met anybody yet. What nobody does is rank order those traits then. So, what's number one, what's number two, what's number three, so on and so forth. And then let's the top three traits that you want in a partner. I tell people, write that out, print it out and put it on your mirror or put it on the back of your phone or put it someplace where you'll just always see it because you need to have that really salient in your mind that these are the things you're actually looking for. And one of the beautiful things though about psychology is if you take that time to just do that simple task and you remind yourself fairly consistently right about what you want, your selective attention will now direct you towards those things that you want without you even having to think about it. And it'll direct your behaviors towards choosing people like that. And so it's this thing that doesn't take that long but has a really high return on investment for that time. So yeah, I I tell people imagine you have a fairy godmother. Fairy godmother can give you three wishes for your ideal partner. What are those things that you want? And so one of the things I did in this I wrote a book about this. And so I kind of started out the first third talking about hey you get three wishes and here's why. In the middle part I was interested in so how do people usually spend their three wishes? Because in a good fairy tale, people always squander, right, their wishes on things that that aren't good. And now we have these really great studies um where we can actually watch what people do in things like speed dating or with online dating. And let me explain why this is important. So if you ask people, if a researcher asks bunch of people, hey, what do you want in your ideal partner? They'll say what they think is socially desirable. So they'll say, "I want someone who's kind. I want someone with good character." You know, all these things. Now, if you watch what people actually do in speed dating or online dating, those aren't the things at the top of their list. You know, those aren't their three wishes. They go, two of those three wishes will go to looks and the money. So, for men, it's looks first, socioeconomic status second. For women, socioeconomic status first. Yeah. And you know, so two of your three wishes now, you know, now you're just down to one. So two of your three wishes go to looks and money. Yeah. Now I wanted to be open-minded about it. So I said, "Well, maybe that's okay." You know, maybe it's 20 years down the road and you wake up next to your partner and you say, "I am just so glad that they're hot, you know, and 20 years later that makes me so happy in my marriage." And you know, so there's data about that as well. And you know what you find is that for physical attractiveness the return on investment for that is not good. You know it's around zero. Early on in a relationship it's it's actually decent and even early in marriage it can be somewhat beneficial for marital satisfaction but uh it quickly fades away. Yeah. When you say when you say return on investment you mean uh how predictive is this of marital satisfaction? That's right. That's right. So how how much return am I getting from your hotness on my marital satisfaction? Y uh if you look at money uh same same kind of thing. You don't want to be stressed about money. So you don't want to be you know below the poverty line for example or or close to the poverty line. But once you get to like a middle class income uh now there's a diminishing return on income for your long-term happiness and stability. So it doesn't really matter that much. You know, I like to tell people, look, if if you have a partner who makes $80,000, there's really no difference between the $80,000 and the $800,000 uh dollar partner. You have nicer things for sure, but when it comes to your marital satisfaction and stability, really not that much of a gain at all. So, those those two things that we usually spend our wishes on, you know, really don't get us what we want. Let's just interject. Isn't it interesting that uh men still signal off socioeconomic status for women? Oh, for sure. Yeah. In so many ways, right? And uh you know, your your watch or your quiet luxury, is that what they call it? Uh hoodie or whatever it might be, right? And you're just saying, "Hey, I'm doing pretty well." You know, over here in New York, you'll see these guys obnoxiously reading books on the subway or something, and they're not really reading. They're just signaling to people, hey, like I'm I'm the I'm you know, it's it's just when you ask a guy um how bothered are you about what your wife earns, how bothered are you about maybe maybe they would say education level, but I think what you're looking at with education level is sort of a proxy for intellectual capacity, curiosity, stuff like that. And yeah, sure, we can't judge those things immediately. So, we use rough human metrics and from that we sort of infer what what this person is. Oh, oh my god, they've got a they've got a masters. They did a double they did a double a double major and blah blah blah blah blah, right? Um, but yeah, you just I think a lot of guys I I would be interested to know whether men are very um not ashamed but are more likely to hide their desire for socioeconomic status in a woman than women would be for men. because women for men it's cliche and there's a fear of being a gold digger but men for women there isn't even an archetype for that. Uh so I just I just think that's a an interesting asymmetry. It it you know it really is and as much of things have changed over the past couple decades. Um one finding that remains stubborn as this is that if the woman outears the man in a marriage it's related to less marital satisfaction and even divorce risk. So, I'm not saying that that's the way things should be, but um you know, if you look at it there, yeah, there still is this social role stereotype. Yeah. Look, I mean, we we I had Brad Wilcox on the show yesterday. He said that um if a woman loses her job, there is no change in uh the predictive power for divorce. If a man loses his job, 33% increase in divorce. Uh if a woman if a man wins the lottery, uh no change in likelihood of divorce. If a woman wins the lottery, it goes up by a hu I think this was Norway or Finland or something like that, Hungary maybe where that study came out of. Um, look, in in some ways you could say that uh many women for a long time were um financial prisoners of their partners and um you know that uh liberating them by a big windfall in one form or another. But the bottom line is that women seem to be sensitive to resources in a way that men aren't. And that to anybody that's ever studied mating is the least shocking finding that we could say. And yet, uh, if the wrong person got a hold of that particular segment of the podcast, um, entire swaths of Reddit would have a a [ __ ] meltdown. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Exactly. I mean, you know, it's just kind of like one of the things I say about relationship research is it's really easy to kill the messenger sometimes, right? Ah, that's so good. I love that. As I, you know, if I'm giving a a talk somewhere, I'm like, look, don't don't send the mob after me here. Yeah. I'm just saying this is uh so yeah, there there's certain ways that that things are and we can decide what we want to do with those things, but but you know, a lot of things remain stubborn findings that that stick around. Okay, so we've got those two at the top that are typical and interchangeable for men and women. Um, what else on the traits we want that we probably shouldn't want before we get into the traits that we should want. So, I I just read a really interesting study actually a couple days ago. And there's this series of three personality traits they call the dark triad. So, it's psychopathy, um, kind of being antisocial, machavelianism, you're really manipulative for your own self-game, and narcissism, right? Excessive self-love and vanity, and a lot of selfishness goes along with that as well. So, you don't want these traits in in a partner. Obviously, they don't make for a happy relationship. Uh, one of the things that they looked at was dark triad traits are oddly attractive, uh, more attractive than they should be, right? Given that we rationally know, hey, being in a relationship with a narcissist is going to lead to me being in tears and a fetal position in the corner, right? We know that intellectually, but why do we feel a draw towards narcissists, for example, or or people high in psychopathy for that matter? And there's there's a couple things here. So, one one thing that they found in the study was that maybe it's dependent on age. And so, they found for women, you know, women who are older do not want a narcissist. They don't want someone high in psychopathy. But the young women, they were actually more attracted to the dark triad traits. And uh one of the reasons for that is that those dark triad traits, as bad as they are in a long-term relationship, like they're pretty good for getting what you want in a short-term situation. So, uh psychopathy, for example, like you have really low impulse control. You're willing to cheat to get, you know, to win to get what you want. Uh you tend to be aggressive. Like if you were in a threatening situation, those would actually be really great traits to have. If you were uh trading in really volatile and competitive financial markets, I wouldn't mind if my trader actually had some high psychopathy traits. Those would actually be adaptive. So that's one of the reason why early in a relationship, right, those things can be attractive to us. The other curious thing about that that I find interesting is that people high in psychopathy, it's pretty reliable are better in bed. So the sexual satisfaction is is higher. little funny. Yeah. But, you know, they're low impulse control. They're kind of aggressive. You know, they have these traits that could manifest as, you know, really exciting sex. And so, it is it is more satisfying sex now. And that's fine, and I'm not going to judge that. But now, if you're in a companion love relationship with this person, you're married to this person, now you have to deal with this low impulse control and this aggressiveness and this cheating and all this other stuff. And, uh, it's not going to be so much fun. anymore, right? So, avoid the psychopath, Machavelian, narcissist as best you can. As best you can. Once again though, it's one of these things where it's easier said than done. And so, it's it's it's important to understand that you might have a draw towards these things that there's something actually kind of like dangerous and exciting about those types of people. And even early on in a relationship, it can be really fun actually uh dating someone high in psychopathy or like someone who's narcissistic because they're manipulating you. You're getting a lot of attention, right? And they're telling you all these wonderful things and that can that can feel good. But uh yeah, so it people really have to be self-aware about it and then they have to say, "Hey, I'm gonna be on on the lookout for these things because there's going to be like a siren's call to uh to gravitate towards some of these traits." Okay. What are some better traits that we should want? Yes. So there are there are much better decisions to make. So one of the things that's happened over you know the past decade or so is that a lot of these research studies they did in the 80s and 90s have matured. So what they did in these studies is they got people before they were married and they assessed them on all kinds of psychological characteristics. So like attachment style, personality, you know all intelligence, all sorts of things. And then they could track them over the course of 10 or 20 years into the point where they got engaged and they got married and you know maybe got divorced or or stayed together. And these studies are a gold mine for seeing which traits actually matter and predicting long-term satisfaction and stability. And you know let's take personality as one one example of how you can how you can use this. So there's the big five personality traits. So be extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. And these are kind of broad brush strokes of who somebody is. Now, if you put those five variables in a predictive model and you say, "So, which of those five traits predicts long-term satisfaction and stability, if at all, you find really consistent findings, which is that neuroticism, probably no surprise here, right? People who are moody, prone to anger, kind of negative and pessimistic, uh they're less satisfied in a relationship, their partner's less satisfied in a relationship, and they're higher risk for divorce. And if I had to say there's one trait that people should wish for, you know, wish for somebody who's not high in neuroticism, especially uncontrolled neuroticism. Uh it's it's just predictive of so many not great things. Okay. Just briefly on that, how can people tell if someone is what what what is the sort of behavior of somebody that is high in neuroticism? Yeah. Um you kind of feel like you're walking walking on eggshells all the time with after a while, right? So people can mask it for a little bit, but after a while you just feel yourself being tense all the time and you're picking up on some of that vibe, some of that neurotic vibe that they have. And maybe because they've been angry or explosive with you in the past, like you're like, "Oh, we don't want to upset them or anything like that." Um, there's this overreactivity in them. You know, I always sometimes friends, you have to be a pretty good friend of mine, but sometimes friends will ask me to meet their partner and uh give them my evaluation. You know, I try not to do this that that often, but if I really love someone, I'll I'll do it. And one of the things I'll do is I'll put that person under a certain degree of duress. So, I'm like a really I'm like a pretty nice guy on average, you know, but I might get a little adversarial with that person or I I might push them on something. And one of the things I'm looking for is how do they respond to that stress? Do they respond in an even keeled reasonable patient kind of way or do they get reactive and angry and worked up and uh that's, you know, that's one thing that people can look at. Oddly enough, I still love the litmus test. of looking at how does the person treat the weight staff at a restaurant and I know that's a good common sense thing that people use. I would encourage them to continue to use it, but yeah, you know, maybe your table's not ready, maybe the service isn't great. It can that person hold it together or do you start to see the cracks of their neuroticism? Yeah. Okay. So, uh again, avoid neuroticism. Avoid neuroticism. Now one caveat there is look I have some friends who are super neurotic you know but they have the maturity and you know the consideration of other people to have worked on it a lot so they know that about themselves and they've worked really hard you know either on their own or in therapy to make sure that it's not a problem consistently for other people. So that's one caveat I' I'd put on the neuroticism people. There's also a degree of depth, right, that you can have from that that people are able to see uh and empathize in ways, especially if it's been sort of alchemized neuroticism. Uh yeah, there's an additional level of depth which which could maybe even be useful. For sure. For sure. You know, let's say a partner is prone to being depressed, for example. Um it doesn't make them a bad person. Um, but do they have a sense of, hey, I want to take a sense of responsibility for this and I want to do the things I can to, you know, live with that as best as I can. Uh, you know, then you're probably going to be all right. But if it's this just uncontrolled neuroticism, going to bring nothing but pain probably in the long run. So that that's that's one wish. Um, you know, a second wish is agreeableness. So people who are empathic and kind and generous. And I think that might sound like common sense to folks, but let's remember it doesn't make the top three when you watch what people actually do when they're choosing a partner. Number two, I think like being a nice guy, for example, in our culture gets a really bad rap. So, if people are bringing their partner out to meet their friends for the first time, kind of the initial public offering of the partner, right, to the friend group, and the partner goes to the bathroom for a little bit after we've all chatted, and they say, "Hey, so what do you think of my new partner?" And you say, "Oh, they're nice." That person would kind of feel insulted, right? Like, what? That that's it. It's actually one of the best things that you could say about an evaluation of a partner. As unsexy and unspectacular as it is, you know, people who are high in agreeableness are going to be more trusting of you. And what that means in a romantic relationship is they're going to trust that they can give freely and generously to the relationship and to you because they think that you will give that back in in the long run. And so what happens is when you have that trust, both people give more to the relationship, not worrying about some zero sum kind of game. Uh they're more empathic, they're more interested in being empathic, so they can try to understand who you are and how they can support you. Um they're they're kind, you know, there's just all kinds of great things. They're better in bed. So agreeableness associated with better sex and long-term relationships because they're interested in your sexual satisfaction, not just their own. So choosing someone high in agreeableness, wish number two. The third wish for if we're talking about personality would be someone who is not too high in sensation seeking. So people who are high in sensation seeking are always looking for their next thrill, right? Uh we kind of stereotypically maybe think of ex x ex games type people who want to jump out of a plane or jump off a cliff or something like that. And uh people high in sensation seeking are great to date at the start because they're really fun. They're really spontaneous. They're high in what we would call absorption. So they really get into the things that they love. And so that means that they're really really into you and really enthusiastic about you. And that all feels wonderful and and fun. But um high sensation seekers also get bored more easily. They're more prone to risky behaviors like uh substance abuse uh or infidelity uh or other things, right, that aren't good for a long-term relationship. And so high sensation seeking as fun as it is, as sexy as it is at the start, is one of those things you don't want too much of it because person ends up getting bored with you and then they'll end up doing something to not just end a relationship but usually blow up the relationship in spectacular fashion. What would be the presentation of somebody who's high in sensation seeking? Uh I I mean for me I I use the phrase for those folks. I'll be like they are so fun. Like I'll be like they are so fun and they're so random and they're so spontaneous and like I love that in friends. Actually a lot of my friends are high sensation seekers. But um you know you want to have a sense of is this person really high in sensation seeking and do they have no once again do they have no control over that or self-awareness about that. So, you know, my friends who are high sensation seekers, they're not going to be reckless about it. Like, they have a they have a a good idea about it and are going to try to control it somewhat. Let me give you an example. Uh, so I'm I'm really high in sensation seeking. When I take personality tests, it's like, good lord, that's really it's really up there. And when I did that in graduate school, I I kind of looked back on things and all of a sudden a lot of things made sense. So when when I was a teenager, um I thought to myself, I could never do cocaine. I had this like really strong thought about this, you know, it was kind of random. And I don't judge, you know, I don't have like a big moral problem with it. It's just I thought I am I'm too sensation seeking to be able to handle that in any kind of way that would be okay. Uh I've never had a TV in my life. Like I just can't I can't modulate how much I watch TV for example. So I just don't even have it at all. So uh those would be some examples of some small things. Maybe the other one's not so small but those would be some small things I've done to just try to have some self-awareness about how impulsive I can be and then try to craft an environment. So like, hey, let's make it good for me, but also if there's somebody else in my life, let's not make it so my impulsiveness leads to bad consequences for them as well. Fascinating. Okay. And just uh broadening out from personality. Um I mean, personality is an awful lot. What else should we be looking for in terms of green flags and red flags, traitwise, behavior- wise, values-wise, life history, life future, etc.? Yeah. Yeah, you know, one of the fortunate things is there's such a wealth of relationship research now that, you know, we have this whole we have dozens of things now that we can look at that are predictive of long-term satisfaction and stability. And so, let me give you an example of another area. There's um attachment, which I think probably a lot of people are familiar with to a certain extent. So, attachment is how secure you you feel in your relationship with your caregivers. you know, first of all, and then second of all, people who are like really close friends or romantic partners in adulthood. And so people can be securely attached where they trust that they can rely on other people. They feel secure about who they are and in their relationship with others. There's people who are avoidance. And these folks are emotionally distant. They don't want to get too close to people. They always feel like they're kind of aloof. And um that's one of the insecure attachments. Of course, the other insecure attachment is anxious avoidant. And you know, these folks are anxious that the person's going to leave them. Um they also tend to be kind of pushpull people in relationships where they can be clingy, alternating with being angry at you for things that seem kind of random. And that's obviously no fun in a relationship as as well. One of the ways I like to describe attachment actually is how they measure it in infancy. So for infants, they have this thing called the strange situation. And woman Mary Ainsworth devised this really clever methodology. So, what you have is you have a mom with a let's say like a one-year-old, two-year-old, let's say let's say a 2-year-old, uh, and the they have a child on their lap and in that room in this laboratory are a bunch of toys scattered around at measured distances from the middle where the mother and child are at. A light will go off, the mother leaves the room in in a plan kind of way. And what happens with most of the kids is they start to cry, right? Which is kind of predictable. They're in a strange place. Their mom's gone. That's not that interesting. What is interesting is what happens when the mom comes back. So after a couple minutes, the mom comes back into the room, sits down in the chair. Securely attached kids will come to their mom, you know, get on the lap and will be comforted relatively quickly. What's interesting then is once they're calmed emotionally, which doesn't take that long, they'll get off their mom's lap and they'll start to explore the room. And so they'll go out and get some toys there nearby and they'll look back at their mom and say, "Hey, isn't this isn't this kind of a cool thing?" Or they might bring it to their mom and they'll do this thing where they start going further and further out into the room, exploring further and further away and not needing to look at their mom to make sure that she's there. It's because they're secure and they can trust that she'll be there for them. Now, kids who are anxiously attached when their mom comes back into the room, it they're not comforted by her presence and so they continue to cry in a really intense kind of way. They'll get on her lap and they'll cling at first, like cling in this really needy looking kind of way, but that'll alternate then with like pushing away and sometimes even hitting the parent. So they're pissed that the mom left the room, but they're also clingy and can't trust that she'll stay there. So, right, you get this pushpull kind of thing. They're less likely to get off the mom's lap and actually explore the room. Uh because they can't trust that their mom's going to be there. And if they do go explore, they don't explore as far as the securely attached kid. the avoidantly attached kid. These these uh these kids could care less that the mom has come back into the room. So, you know, maybe they didn't cry in the first place. Uh they'll stop crying when the mom does come back, but they're kind of, if you could hear what they're saying in their mind, it's like, "Screw you for leaving. I don't care about you." M and the other interesting thing about the avoidant kids is they will go very far out into the room and get the toys that are really far out there. So they'll explore a lot, but it's because they kind of don't care if the caregiver is there. They've just reached this like, "Hey, I can't trust you, so I don't care." uh mentality. You can imagine if this was the interaction pattern hundreds and thousands of times during infancy and during childhood how kind of concretized that would become right in a child's relational relational style. And so like at the University of Minnesota for example, they have this really cool study where they got kids when they were actually in the third trimester still in their mom's bellies there. And they've now tracked those kids for like 30 or 40 years. And they've been able to look at did their early attachment behaviors with their with their mom, their secure, anxious or avoidant behaviors predict how they would interact with their romantic partners like 30 years later. And they found, you know, these really robust correlations between if you were a secure infant, you tended to be pretty even in how you manage conflict and emotions with your partner. If you were an anxious kid, you tended to be engaging in that pushpull, clingy, lashing out kind of behavior. Some people, some of your listeners might have experienced that in a romantic relationship. And you know, kids who were avoidant, yeah, tended to have that kind of stonewalling, withdrawing interactional style. That's not great in a in a relationship. So that's that's another thing, Chris. You know, people can look at someone's attachment style once again, knowing that it's relatively stable over time and uh it is, you know, pretty strongly predictive of long-term marital satisfaction and marital stability. What do you say to the anxious or avoidant people? They go, "All right, okay. I'll just be celibate then. Will I Ty? I'm a lost cause." Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, one of the good things for folks to know is twothirds of people are securely attached. So, that's that's, you know, good news. The second thing is this is there's this guy Glenn Royceman and Chris Brily and they they've done some of these longitudinal studies as well. And one of the questions they've had is can people become what they call earn secures? So if you were anxiously attached or buoyantly attached in infancy for example, can you become securely attached as you get older? And the good news is yes, that can happen. It's not the majority of them, but there's a subset of folks if they, you know, work hard at it and get the right people in their lives, then yeah, they can become actually earn secures in in adulthood. Now, if you're the person choosing a partner, this is one of the mistakes folks make sometimes is let's say someone's dating uh dating someone who is anxious ambivalent in their attachment style and they're really pretty soundly anxious ambivalent. One of the things that a lot of us do, even the best of us, is we're overly optimistic about what's going to happen with that person in the long run. So, we'll say, "Oh, I'm sure they'll change." Right? Or even worse, we'll say, "I will change." you know, this person's attachment style, and that's not a good bet to make. So, I would say if someone's insecurely attached, hey, no judgment. That's okay. But, you know, learn about it and then do the work you need to do to try to mitigate some of the negative things and move towards a more secure attachment style. If you're dating someone who's insecurely attached, it's not necessarily the end of the world, but you know, they're not going to change anytime soon if they change at all. And if you're in a dating situation, I would certainly call that a red a red flag. Wow. Okay. Is this why the in-laws matter in your opinion? That's right. Yeah. So I think people intuitively do this and there's like there's a good kind of lay wisdom to that is they want to look at they want to meet the parents and they want to say they're kind of looking at how good is the relationship between the parents and the person that they're dating. I don't know that they're always aware of why they're interested in the quality of that relationship, but part of it is they're actually implicitly looking at these attachment things. Like if there's a solid relationship there, they think they can transfer that to maybe this person will also have a solid relationship with me in the long run. And I think, you know, the evidence kind of points toward, yeah, there there is some good evidence for that. Now, conversely, if someone has a conflictual relationship with their parents, it doesn't guarantee that they're going to have a bad relationship with you, but it is a risk factor. So, it's just once again, people want to be careful when they see these red flags. They're not necessarily deal breakers on their own, but as these things start to accumulate, that's when it becomes that's when it becomes a problem. What about uh life history, stuff like that? sort of what the the breadcrumbs of how somebody has spent their time up until this point when you've got to know them. Yeah. Uh super important. You know, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So, yeah, you want to pay attention to that. I think it's one of the reasons why we ask our partners, uh, hey, can you tell me about your relationship history a little bit? people are getting this kind of ethnographic right observation of like so how did your other things go because am I going to suffer the same fate it's it's not a bad it's not a bad idea to to do that you know so one of the things I would distinguish between is sometimes people have freely chosen to make bad decisions right repeatedly you know other times people have been dealt bad hands by life and I think that's a different kind of thing and um I guess for me personally Like although I'm interested in like like bad decisions for example, what I'm more interested in is so what's the what's the story after that? So if you made a bad decision kind of almost like a job interview, so what did you do then about that bad decision or that bad place that you got to and you're looking for does this person have insight about their bad decision? And then two, did they develop some coping skills or strategies? For one, not only how to fix it, but two, how to avoid making that same mistake in the future. And while it sounds like common sense that people would do that, I think very few people do. It's more common that people keep making the same mistakes with little insight rather than, you know, being the kinds of people who are self-aware and change. What about uh similarity in personality? uh should you be trying to find someone who's similar to you in that regard? Yeah, it's it's a good question and such a good question in fact that researchers have devoted a tremendous amount of time and money to investigating this. And if you actually look a lot of the dating apps, they're based on matching on things like personality. The match group actually it's it's in the name, right? And there's this intuitive appeal to this idea that yeah, if I match someone on personality, we're going to have a happier and and better relationship. But what they find in these studies and there's been some meta analyses of tens of thousands of couples where they've looked at does match predict long-term satisfaction and stability. It really doesn't, you know, so matching actually doesn't matter that much when it comes to personality. You can be extroverted, your partner could be introverted. Can that create some problems sometimes? Yep, probably. But does it really matter that much in the long run? You know, it it it doesn't. What matters with personality, and I I really like to drive this home for folks, what matters with personality is not whether you match your partner. What matters is which partner has the worst traits in the relationship. So, uh if one of the partners is low in agreeableness, high sensation seeking and high neuroticism, for example, the other part partner has a perfectly healthy personality. What's going to predict in that is not the healthy partner's personality, it's going to be the personality of the partner who has the worst traits. So my old adviser, one of my old adviserss in graduate school, Ellen Bashide, had this great saying that applies to so many relationship situations and uh she was uh she was at the end of her career when when I knew her and um she'd say this resigned voice, you know what the problem with relationships is, time? It takes two people to make it work and only one person to make it not work. Wow. And that is so, you know, that that is so true. So, yeah, people don't need to spend a lot of time thinking about matching up personality. You know, think about what's the quality of the traits that each partner has. And that's the more important thing. You know, one thing I might add to that real quick if I if I might is that with our hypothetical bad trait partner we just talked about with high neuroticism, low agreeableness, high sensation seeking, that's when you really have a problem. So sometimes people will ask me, they'll say, "Hey, you know, Ty, I'm kind of high in neuroticism. Does this mean I'm doomed to have bad relationships?" And I I love that question. And what I say to these folks is the fact that you're asking me that question in the first place gives me a tremendous amount of hope for your relationship future, right? Because one, they're self-aware about it. Two, they want to do something about it. And three, they're concerned about how is that going to affect somebody else. So they already have the mindset, right, to be on a path to handle that well. It's all of these things are are incremental risk factors. So just being neurotic all on its own is not damning for your relationship future. But now you're neurotic and you're low in agreeableness. That's actually someone who's like a psychopath or has antisocial personality disorder. You're high in neuroticism, low in agreeableness, high in sensation seeking. Now you've got like a sociopath on your hands. Right? So it's as you stack these bad traits or these risk factors, that's when you have the real problems. Conversely, I'll say and just as importantly, as you stack great traits in a relationship, it also has that same multiplicative effect where it's more than the sum of the parts. So, if you get someone who's kind, who's emotionally stable, you know, who is really committed to the relationship, oh my gosh, you know, two things. One, they're probably always going to be that way. And two, like it's going to have a multiplicative effect for us. It's it's just going to give you so many good things, more than you could ever imagine. It's interesting that we don't rise to the level of the best partner, we fall to the level of the worst partner, best and worst. Uh most optimal, most sub-optimal perhaps. Uh you mentioned emotional stability there. Uh David Bus must text me once a month reminding me about the importance of emotional stability. Um I I'd love to get your take on it because I know what his is, but uh how does that fit into what we've maybe spoken about already? How does it slightly differ? How would you how does it present? Yeah. So emotional stability is the term that's the flip side of neuroticism. Okay. So it's very similar to to what we've been to what we've been talking about. I think in the context of romantic relationships, one of the interesting things that's just come out over the past couple years is that it's it's not so much what we would call low activation emotions. So things like depression, uh, for example, it's like a it's a negative emotion, but like the way you feel that in your body, it's not like your heart's racing or like you're red in the face or anything like that. It's just actually an absence of energy, right? What seems to be particularly destructive in romantic relationships are these high activation negative emotions. So, rage and anger and those things where you really get hot in the face and your heart rate really, you know, gets up there. Those seem to be the more destructive um parts of neuroticism or, you know, conversely a lack of emotional stability. David's got this lovely idea around emotional stability. He says after some um emotional perturbation of some kind, some dysregulating event, how long does it take a person to get back to baseline? Uh you know, if you are late for a flight, is that the rest of the holiday or are they over it by the time that you arrive at the hotel type thing? Yeah. And uh yeah, I think that's a a lovely, you know, because all of this stuff whenever I think about it, I think it's it's so fascinating. It's so interesting uh sort of in the abstract, but when it comes to functionally what what does this look like? How can you tell that you know unless you're going to get somebody to go and do a hexico test or a a big five or something? Um, how are you going to how you going to judge this? You know, so I think I think that's very important. Um, another question, why do you think it is that people are drawn to relationships that are very tough that from the outside look turbulent, difficult, challenging? Uh the classic I can fix him meme. Uh what have you come to believe about that? Yeah. Uh can I go in reverse there? So you're not going to fix anybody to tell folks out there. Uh it's a common belief. People almost seem to have it as sport or hobby, right? Like I'm going to fix go fix people. Uh it almost just never such low odds that that ever ends up ends up working out. But why? Uh because people are people are stable, you know. Uh there's these really beautiful studies of personality where they track people for 40 or 50 years from the time they're in their teen teenage years to the time that they're retired. And if you were neurotic when you were highly neurotic when you were a teenager, you're like the grumpy person at the retirement home. You know, it's just like a stable kind of thing. You know, also if you were the sweetheart, really nice, always helping people out kind of person in high school, you're doing the same thing. Do you reckon that's the same for socioexuality? If you were the girl that was sleeping around a load in high school, you're still the girl that's sleeping around a load in the retirement home. Well, you know, that is a concern actually with older adults right now. So, there's this um STD STD concerns. One of the places it's most acute in public health is among older adults. Yeah. Which is amazing. So yeah, people don't change because traits are, you know, traits are stable and folks might see these articles every now and then that that you can change your personality and that is true to an extent but the number of people who will change their personality like like the rough way to put that is about 20 to 25% of people like for example who are neurotic will turn themselves into not neurotic people anymore. The remaining 75 to 80% will show stability over time. And the reason I like to put things that way is if you're in a position of choosing a partner, you know, this is a bet really, right? And you're saying, "Okay, so I have this person who's high in neuroticism. Do I think that's going to change?" 80 75% chance. Yeah. Going to be exactly the same way for the rest of my life. 25% chance they change. That's not a bet I would probably want to make, you know. Yeah. It's interesting when you think about sort of what people are doing when they first find a partner. They kind of it I get the sense and you may tell me that uh my belief in personal growth and malleability is misguided and must be subdued. But um you're trying to find somebody that is as close to the bullseye of what it is that you're looking for uh whilst making the decision rationally before you get into passionate love using evidence. based insights from somebody as educated as yourself trying to find somebody that's close to the bullseye but also has I would guess as strong of a capacity to grow to work on themselves to be able to update their beliefs uh the way that they operate as possible. Um, and it seems like those two variables, um, how close are you? Where's the starting point and, uh, how capable are they of of running and maneuvering toward something that is, uh, more healthy? Yeah. Yeah, I know. Exactly. So, you're kind of identifying this trait that sits outside of personality a little bit, right? Which is this this interest and this this persistence to grow as as a person. And I think you're gosh that's if people want to put something in their top three that would be another great trait to to put in their top three like capacity for growth. Yeah. It's capacity for growth and and that dogged commitment to it because it's one thing you and I probably both know people who have some bright idea every other month about oh I'm totally going to change myself in this way. Yeah. Usually has the word radical in front of it. You know Yeah. I'm engage in radical self-disclosure or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Radical honesty, radical painting. Yeah. And I'm always like, uh, I, you know, what I'm more interested in is, I mean, that's cool and that's part of it. It is a necessary first step, but but then how many people now have the dog of determination to actually make that happen because it's so hard, right, over the course of really years to you know turn that huge ship around and make it so that you have this better range in your personality. You've got to be dead ass committed if you are going to actually do anything. I mean, yeah, you're right. I think the way to look at it is these forces personality whe whether it's infant upbringing uh genetic predisposition time place confluence nature nurture whether it you know whatever it is whether it's personality whether it's attachment style whether it's values whether it's ideological belief whether it's all of that stuff um it is no matter which of those you're playing with it is a marathon to try and get that to be nudged. And uh you know that's where you know the 20% sits right for the most part. Uh these are probably I imagine there's not many people that fluke themselves into lowering the neuroticism. It's probably you know the people that listen to podcasts like this one you know the the the uh insecure overachieving personal growth maximizers uh who are are really sort of trying to better themselves within the world. They're thinking very carefully. They're very reflective. Um, you know, they they they're really trying to work on themselves. But that's a terrifying minority of most people. That's that's that's so true. You know, so maybe for some of your listeners who, you know, maybe are really into fitness, for example, if you think about I'm always annoyed like January 2nd in the gym when you can't get on anything, right? This overrun with all the cuisines taken. That's right. That's right. and all these New Year's resolution people. Um, I mean this the same exact mindset and outcomes could apply to something like personality like okay someone could have this really bright idea like they want to get fit or they want to change their neuroticism but who's going to be there even in March you know who's going to be there much less in December and you know as your listeners know who are really committed to fitness it's not even a year right it's a course of numerous years and being really disciplined and constantly evolving and learning about new things in nutrition and technique and other things that actually lead to a meaningful change in their body composition and their and their fitness and their health. Same thing with your mental health and your psychological health. It's that degree of commitment and obsessiveness. Uh right, to to make some sort of long-lasting change. Okay. So, I can fix him. Probably not, darling. Uh why else are people drawn to relationships that are tough, turbulent, challenging, stuff like that? Yeah. Uh it gets it gets sloppy research wise to try to investigate this. It's I think it's a great question. It'll be one of the enduring questions we have to long after I'm gone, I'm sure. Um but as you can imagine, it's a little tough to to investigate. The best hypothesis uh I've I've run across is the recreation hypothesis. So um what personality researchers have been interested in this kind of curious thing that people choose suboptimal situations for a lot of things, right? Not just dating for example. And a lot of times what they find is they choose these sub-optimal situations for the for themselves because it gives them a chance to repair something or to fix something that they weren't able to repair or fix in the past. And of course this becomes very obvious in romantic relationships. If someone has something in their family of origin, for example, where let's say it's the stereotype like I never got love from my dad uh kind of thing, which happens more than it should probably, right? Um yeah, that's really frustrating. Yeah, that's really hard on on folks. Um but now to seek out partners who aren't going to be committed to you, who aren't going to pay attention to you or or be interested in you You know, I understand why why folks do that, but like it's going to be the same outcome probably, which is heartbreak and and and disappointment. So, I think for folks who, you know, choose a lot of bad partners kind of one after the other, as much as I'm not a Freudian and like, so tell me about your tell me about your mother, tell me about your father, kind of thing. Um, this is one area where I think it can be really productive. and you say, "Hey, what what were the frustrated urges I had growing up that just sadly never got met and you know will never probably get met by one person and now right same kind of methodology now how can I set myself up to avoid the temptation of drawing those kinds of people so I can try to fix it?" Why? So, is it us trying to salvage, close a loop, fix a sort of uh a childhood wound? Is that is that what's going on? Yep. It's the same thing as if there was a chalkboard and you were able to read 80% of the sentence and like some part was erased. It would really bug you that you can't figure out what the last part of the sentence is and you keep guessing trying to you know we have this need for completion in our minds just in general as humans and it's particularly powerful for something like being loved by a parent for example. And so, yeah, we're just trying to close that loop. But the problem is is that if we're choosing that same kind of person who's not loving, who's not attention-giving, it's going to end up the same. It's going to end up the same exact way. What are some of the uh common manifestations of of of how that would present itself? And then what about if somebody finds the opposite of that and why why are they less attracted to those two? Yeah. I I think one of the things I always I always like to do is ask friends like if you have really honest we always have a couple honest friends who will deliver just like crushing truths to us if we if we ask them to. Yep. So useful in romantic relationships, right? Cuz after they get to know your partner a bit, now they've known you probably as you've dated a few people and you know, imagine you ask this uh this truthful friend of yours, "What do you think is the bad kind of what's the bad kind of partner I choose?" Right? What does that look like? What characteristics and traits do they have? I bet that friend of yours could tell you exactly and very eloquently who that person is. and they'll probably have a level of insight, right, and depth about that that I, for example, as the, you know, I I I just wouldn't know. And so, I think that's one thing that people can do. And usually when people hear it, they're like, it's one of those insight moments where you can just see it washing over them and they're like, "Ah, yeah, darn it." You know, that's exactly what I'm doing now. You got a shot at uh at trying to break the cycle. But getting that insight, it's amazing to me, Chris, how hard that is to get it in this in this regard. Why is it that we're not drawn? So, I understand we have this sense for completion. Uh we go back to the absent parent surrogate now in a partner who doesn't show us love in the way that we wanted or what whatever other compensatory mechanism we have. Why is it that the opposite of that, somebody who does show us love, why is it that we're not drawn to the thing that salves the wound as opposed to reopens it? Yeah. Uh gosh. So, let's let's take a different kind of example here, right? Let's say you had a an abusive home environment. And sometimes, you know, then you'll see these folks now go date abusers one after another in adulthood. And if you're on the outside, you think to yourself rationally, why would you why would you do that? You know, why would you not run the opposite direction uh from that? And I I think one there's a social psychology theory that's really interesting called self-verification theory. And at the heart of it, self-ver self-verification theory poses this hypothesis that we'd rather be consistent than right. And what they found across a series of studies is there's all kinds of cases where we'd rather just do the things that are consistent with how we see ourselves rather than doing the thing that's right. So if I see myself as someone who's unworthy and I see myself as someone who's victimized I subconsciously I will just think that's the way I need to be treated. That's the way I deserve to be treated. Even though if you asked me right rationally is that is that a good idea? that same idea obviously no no way that that's that's a good idea but people because we're so often on autopilot you know we'd rather be consistent than right that's fascinating I I don't know whether so I understand consistent than right it almost seems like consistent than happy or we would rather pro because it's we're proving ourselves right I am the sort of person who is inherently unlovable I am the sort of person who uh people eventually are going to believe if they get to see the real me. Um if I uh expose myself to somebody too much, then they're going to use that against me or they're going to find me totally um disgusting or unspeakable or shameful or whatever. uh therefore I'm going to do things which engender that to happen so that I am I have this continuous sense of self because yeah we would rather have our inner fears proven correct than we would a novel sense of happiness that threatens our own sense of selfidentity. Yeah. Exa exactly right. So you know in some of these studies they'll get depressives for example in the lab and they'll give them the opportunity to get positive feedback or negative feedback and the depressives will go for the negative. Wow. Even though the positive feedback is is just as accurate or more useful or whatever. Um yeah you know and it's scary right going back to our what we were talking about earlier. I mean, while I think it's venerable and it's desirable to be someone who's oriented towards personal growth and always wanting to get better, you know, it's hard. And it especially gets hard when as we get closer to who we want to be rather than who we've been. M there is that point where you're like man this is starting to get this is actually starting to get a little bit scary for me on some level you know and I feel unmooded. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. It's just totally unfamiliar and all these coping skills and ways of knowing the world that I grew up with. Um I can't latch on to that world view anymore. And now I got to make the leap to you know even if it's more adaptive and helpful it it's it's still a scary kind of thing. And I think that's why you see so many people relapse back into an old way of being just when they're on the precipice, right, of transforming themselves into a into a new way of being. Have you got any idea with that? I'm sure that there's probably no, it's a very amorphous question, but how long somebody needs to sit in a new self-image, worldview, set of personality traits to for that to be who they are as opposed to the old version of them? Are they more likely to relapse into the newer version or the older? Have you got any idea about longer is better, I would imagine? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Exactly. So I think you know what they'll do is it's usually across the course of years. So they'll say hey so for this two-year time span how is the person's conscientiousness for example now for this two-year time span did it change and did it stay consistent over those two years now let's look at the next two-year block did it change so yeah that's that's how long we're talking about but I think for the for us as individuals as we're thinking about this data you know one way to think about that process of going from okay I was disorganized and kind of a mess, you know, a dumpster fire person for most of my life. Now I'm becoming more conscientious and and put together, for example. That point from A to B, it's realistically what it is is it's advances like maybe three steps forward, two steps back kind of thing, right? And so you'll make advances and you'll slip up. You'll make advances and you'll slip up. But when things go the right direction, what happens is it, you know, eventually turns into, hey, four steps forward, only two steps back, right? Five steps. And uh that's why it's so hard, though, because for a lot of people when they have those two steps back, they just kind of give up and they're like, well, what's what what's the use? But I think that's one of the real distinguishing things about people who actually make a change in their life is that they handle those setbacks with a certain degree of, you know, centeredness and equinimity and they say, "Hey, this is disappointing and this is frustrating, but it doesn't mean that I'm a failure and I'm going to just get back on my horse and give it a try again." Because that's how growth actually happens for for anybody. Timing and randomness play a pretty big role in love. Uh, you know, I I I saw her across the room and if only I'd not left with my friend who wanted to get a taxi, I wouldn't for for that, you know, one call to not Irish goodbye it, I decided to be there and we met and so on and so forth. Uh, is it is there such a thing as optimizing serendipity when it comes to luck in love? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm a big believer big believer in that. And you're right. there are these kind of lucky moments you're like I can't believe right that that's the way this thing played out. There was uh my aunt is a real interesting character. She's she's great. But um there was this nursery we always went to growing up. It was huge. And this guy owned like a bunch of nurseries actually. I think he was had done very well for himself and he was a super nice guy. And um we went to that nursery one time with my aunt. I think I was in college at this point and she got really emotional afterwards and I was like, "Hey, what's you know what's what's going on?" She's like, "So, we dated in college?" I like, "No, no way. You know, you dated the nursery guy." She said, "Yeah, yeah, he was super kind. Uh, such a great guy." And she had, you know, broken it off cuz they were graduating and that whole familiar story. Well, what had happened that day at the nursery is he had come up to her and he said, "Why did you never respond to my letter?" And she said, "What what what letter are you talking about?" And he said, "After we broke up that summer, I wrote you a letter and I told you how much I loved you and how much I wanted to be with you and I begged you to come, you know, come back." And she would have and she never got the letter. Oh, must have got lost in the mail. USPS postal service. So, uh yeah, luck can play a huge role in things for better, for for worse. But to your question, um yes, people can improve their luck just like they can in a lot of other things. It's actually one of my favorite areas of psychological research is like, yeah, people are lucky sometimes, but there are consistently certain people who are luckier than others. And as you look at their how they live their lives, they just put themselves in more optimal situations more, you know, more often. So, for example, in the context of dating, I was talking to a female friend of mine here maybe about three years ago, and she was just having a tough time with the online dating and finding a guy she was going to match with. And so, I said, "Well, what what do you want? What are your three wishes?" And um she had one one is she wants someone who was physically fit which is fine. Um she wants someone who is motivated and she wanted someone I can't remember what the what the third I can't remember what the third one was but um I said let's just take those first two wishes. You want someone who's motivated. You want someone who's physically fit. I said you know what are you doing for physical fitness? She was going to a yoga studio with a bunch of other women. And so I said, you know, probably not a lot of So I said, "How about this? Uh, can you do Equinox?" She said, "Yeah." I'm like, "I heard the Equinox in the Lower East Side is just loaded with dudes. Just a bunch of sausage fest sausage fest down there." I said, "Not for me, but I think that would be great for you." So, you know, she did it and she got a membership and she was in the wait room, you know, three or four times a week and she had an abundance of suitors, no, you know, no, no time at all. And not only abundance of people, uh, but people she had met in real life, you know, face to face and also people who she had a lot more in common with and was interested in than the people she had been meeting online. Now, were all these guys great? No. you know, some of them had liabilities or whatever, but it was a lot better, right, than if she had just kept doing her her normal life. So, my point here is this is, you know, you can make your luck in romantic relationships. And a lot of times it does it's not that sophisticated. It's just like, who are the people I want and where are those people hanging out? That's step one for making yourself more lucky. I mean, me and David Buzz have talked about this so much. That's the single best bit of advice that I can I mean, look, I'm I'm also I'm 37 and unmarried. So, what who the [ __ ] what the [ __ ] do I know? But, um I abstractly I can tell you exactly what you should be doing. Uh do as I say. Uh something something. Um you need to inhabit places that have people like the person you want to date in, right? Like that's a that obviously you're just pre it's pre-selection. you know, you you you have a set of filters when you go to online dating. It's crazy that we're having to use online dating as the example for this and this is how you take the app out of the app and you put it into the real world. Um, and you you're really into physical fitness like you're really not into um someone that gets up super early and and is going out endurance running. It's like, well, a run club is probably not the place to find someone or, you know, you're not really into going out partying all the time. It's like, why are you in the nightclub at 2:00 in the morning? That's not your vibe. Yeah. Um, so yes, uh, that's a that's a phenomenal first one. What next? Yeah. I think the second thing to do then is we don't always behave. I think we sell ourselves short sometimes in how we present to other people, you know, and I think this happens for women more often than it does for for men. And um one of the things you know you'll find with women is they will sometimes minimize themselves in dating situations as to not all women but you know it happens more than maybe we would like. They try to minimize themselves so they don't appear threatening to a guy which is a real thing out there in the in the dating market. Um and then they get these guys who are just kind of not at the same level that they are at in their level of badassness. Right? And a lot of times with friends like this, I'll say, "Well, you know, how are let's talk about how you're presenting yourself and how are you coming into these interactions." A lot of times what you find out is they're minimizing themselves. And it's like, no, you have to be unapologetic about who you are and what you want. And that doesn't mean being a jerk. It just means I'm going to be totally confident in who I am. And I understand that certain people will reject me for that. And maybe more people will reject me than if I had been some more vanilla middle of the road kind of person. But the long-term payoff for that is tremendous, right? Because now you're that's a blessing actually because now you're actually filtering out people who you don't want. So if it's a woman who's minimizing yourself, it's like, hey, you be your badass self. And if some guy gets scared of that, good. Like now you you find out after the first or second date, you don't find out two or three months from now. The alternative is that you have to spend the remainder of your relationship editing yourself. Yes. Yeah. What some people do. Some people spend their whole life editing themselves. I think that happened particularly with older generations, right? But um or you you know and then bad as well. Well, you've drawn somebody who's not actually the person, not actually the person you are. And the the person who would have fallen in love with the person that you are walked by you because you weren't being the person that you are. You were being this other version of you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. Exactly. I mean, one place to give you a really physical concrete example of this. Sometimes you'll see this with women who are tall and you'll you'll actually see them physically like hunching over um in these kind of at the at the bar or dating situations or whatever. And I just think to myself like just just as easy as it is for me to say from the outside. I guess it would be manplaining if I said something about it, but I'm just like yeah just just be you. And uh there are that maybe some guys will be intimidated by that. that hey for the guys who aren't intimidated by that that's actually a really good civ to get the kind of guy that you actually that you actually want. Yeah. So uh inhabit places that have people like the partner that you're looking for in be unapologetically yourself. Uh that being said, you also do need to match that with a degree of ability to grow because being unapologetically yourself like maybe you're a chronic fartter like being unapologetically yourself. You know, we we have to have a degree of decorum here. We have to understand there are sort of objectively worse and better ways to exist within a relationship and adjusting. It's like I I'm a farter and I've always been a farter and if you don't love me as a farter, then that's you that's your problem that you need to get over. All right, dude. All right. Yeah. No, no, no. Exactly. Yeah, you know, I think sometimes too the way that that's a great point, Chris, because sometimes that manifests where people, you know, let's say for example, they're they can be mean and like it's going to be my mean self. I'm like, that's not what I that's not what I'm saying. Yeah. Uh it's like, don't embrace your inner [ __ ] No, no, no. You know, but someone could say, for example, at some point, maybe a few dates on, uh, when you're self-disclosing, being more vulnerable, you could say, "Yeah, sometimes sometimes I can have this mean streak, and I don't like that about myself if I'm being honest about things, and uh, look, here here's some ways manifest in the past, but here's what I'm doing about it." You know, now you're being genuine and you're being transparent about who you are, which is I I think a good thing, but you're also just not saying like, hey, you gota deal with my farts and my meanness and all this stuff and be unapologetic in that kind of way. Anything else on serendipity? Uh, I think those would probably be the big, you know, probably be the two biggest things I would recommend for people. But, uh, yeah, make make your own make your own luck. That's it's so hard to find somebody who you hit it off with, right? Yeah. Um, and there's so many people, I don't know, this has been my experience just even personally where there's so many people I've met who on paper it's like, yeah, this person I should be a good match, but for whatever reason, it's just not in real life. And so, since it is hard to find that, let's say one in a 100red or one in 500 person, whoever that is, um, you do need to create more opportunities, numbers game, right? Yeah. Yeah. just expand it and uh to find the person that you actually need. It's interesting this uh battle that we have between the sort of bottom up heart, how I feel, uh spark uh love, lust, liking, uh and top down what it is that I know about what's good for me, uh avoiding the wounds in the past. And I think this tension between cognition and intuition is uh very prevalent when it comes to relationships. Yeah. That head heart, right? Doing a tugof-war with each other. And the heart usually wins that a lot of times, especially when we're teenagers in our 20s. And and that's that's okay. That's just part of it's just part of growing up, right? But um but that's why I like to tell people, hey, in between your relationships, so after you've gotten over the misery of the heartbreak of something ending, yeah, uh take some time to be reflective. Uh get your priorities, your wishes in in order, and then let's get that solidified in in in some kind of way. So now when you do fall in love, you're in that passionate love, the pounding heart, butterflies in the stomach. You can just you can just enjoy it as opposed to seeing it as warning signs. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Because especially with people who have been stung a bunch of times and I I understand this, but if you've been hurt a bunch of times, it's almost now like like you're expect the good thing the good feelings have been paired with a bad thing where you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I think if you've used your reasoning and your intelligence to the best of your ability before you've gotten into a relationship, you know, that gives you now this confidence and this trust to say, "Hey, it's right here on this sheet of paper uh that I've laminated and made concrete. Um, I know I can trust that." And uh now you can just be uh an emotional and free person in the relationship. Yeah. Alander Barton's got this interesting insight where he talks about people uh people sometimes change but rarely in a relationship and never when we ask. And I I think he's sort of pointing at the fact that uh heartbreak is really one of the only catalysts that cause most people to to make changes. And it sort of goes back to the I can fix him meme uh of maybe he can fix him, but he's probably going to fix him after you break up, right? Which is killer, right? You always uh sometimes see the guy who's in a healthier relationship, not perfect, but healthier relationship two or three girlfriends down the line. Then the old girlfriend's like, I did that work right to make him to make him somewhat better. I fixed him. Yeah. It's uh one of the one of the most ruthless things that I ever heard a friend say about a a girl that he actually didn't get into a relationship with. He was going to and he sort of bailed out and he said he said said she'll be amazing after a divorce. Uh was his insight. He was like she's someone needs to step in and refine this rough rock into a diamond and there's a lot of raw materials there. But he's like, "I'm not doing it." So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good. You know, it's a good choice. It's it's a hard one, though, right? Because when um when our heart's telling us one thing, we're just kind of wired to think like the heart's got to be the heart's got to be right in our society. Watch me dance. Watch me dance through this minefield. I'm not going to trip any of the trip wires. I've got it. That's right. I'm going to float float over it all. Yeah. Good stats, nerd researcher man. Don't apply to me. I'm the main character in my life. Go [ __ ] yourself. Uh, Ty, you're amazing, mate. You're this I I that literally could keep going for hours and hours. I want to bring you back. I've already said to the guys to bring you back in July. Let's We haven't even touched on within a relationship, developing values, the sort of habits, behaviors, all that sort of stuff. There's so much more. But, uh, Chris, hey, I I appreciate all that and I I really enjoy talking to you and I I I love the work, um, that you're doing on your on your podcast, like in this world where everything's like 30 seconds or whatever, you know. Um, I I I actually just honestly do think it's of great value to go in-depth with folks and and ask hard questions and and wrestle with things. So, um, I I think very well of you as well. Heck yeah. Well, yeah. For anyone that wanted 30 seconds, they've got uh like 1 hour 50 minutes more. 50 minute 51 minutes 30 seconds more than they anticipated. Uh where should people go? They want to check out the stuff that you do. Uh they could go to titasurro.com. Uh which has again I'm kind of everywhere. I'm not great on social media. I'm on Instagram, I guess. But uh but yeah, titasurro.com. That should have everything that people need. Heck yeah. Ty, until we speak again later this summer. I appreciate you, mate. Sounds good. Thanks for having me. Congratulations. You made it to the end of the episode. And if you want more, well, why don't you press right here? Keep one.