Habits and Hustle - Episode 103: Logan Ury – Director of Relationship Science at Hinge, Dating Coach & Behavioral Scientist

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Logan Ury is the Director of Relationship Science at Hinge, Dating Coach & Behavioral Scientist. Logan breaks down her dating coaching and what can be found in her new book “How to Not Die Alone”. Explaining her 3 Tendencies in daters and expertly putting into words the struggles many of us have, especially since everything went to apps, and especially through the pandemic. Offering advice and guidance for new daters, to long time daters, to people going through a divorce, and more. Maybe you’re happily dating or married and don’t see anything in this at all, but that might not always be the case. And for the rest of us, if things just haven’t been working or you find the whole “dating thing” frustrating or even scary, this is the person to listen to. Why wouldn’t you take dating advice from the Director of Relationship Science at Hinge? Youtube Link to This Episode Logan’s Website Logan’s Book ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Habens in Hustle, Crescent. Even though I'm an old married hag, I have to tell you, I found your book to be super fun and it's interesting because what I loved about it is that you can actually apply it to relationships across the board, right? Like why don't you pick, right? So hold on, let me just introduce you, okay? So your name is, I have Logan Yuri. Is that how you were talking?

Yeah. Logan Yuri, okay, so who's a behavior scientist on the podcast today? And she wrote the book, Had a Not Die Alone, which I love the title too. And like I was saying, you know, even if you're not single and you're just kind of somebody who's just a person in the world in dealing with other human beings through work, whatever else, it's very, very practical. Like your book was, I love how you broke things down into tendencies and what, you know, attachment theory. I just love, I really did. I loved your book.

Thank you so much. I'm really happy here. You say that. And yes, I think it was super important to me that it be practical. I think there are a lot of good books out there about the theories of love and how love works and all these things. And like, I just wanted to give people what I give people in a coaching session, which is like, this is what your problem is, do this, it'll get better. Absolutely, and that's what I liked it, but it was very matter-of-fact.

And, you know, like I said, I'm an old Mary Hagg, but I have a lot of friends who are actually single, and, you know, or they're getting divorced or divorced and back out in the single world. And it's like a very, I find it very interesting. I think, I knew touch upon this a lot, like how social media, like how people compare and despair, which we'll get into, which I think is so true. I'm so happy that I'm not somebody dating in today's time because it's, you know, you

could just keep on swiping and, you know, nobody, like you forget about you could have you could have swiped 30 great people and yet your brains like instant gratification you can you forget because you're on to the next on to the next, you know So yeah, let's just go right into it So your behavior scientist tell us a little bit about your background what what you do, and how science, what you did was you applied the behavior science and the science behind dating relationships, all that. Yeah, so my background's in behavioral science, which is the study of how we make decisions.

And I studied psychology in college. I also had a secondary in women and gender and sexuality. So I've sort of always been interested in the psychology of how our brains work and how we make decisions. And then also sort of how it applies to dating and relationships. And so my exciting job out of college was running this behavioral science team at Google.

And so that meant taking academic research about how people make decisions and applying it within Google to Google Marketing, Google Products, Google Employees, and I really love that and I worked with one of my academic heroes, Dan Rielli. But at the same time, I was single and the dating apps had just started and I was struggling and people around me were struggling too. And so I just thought how can I take what I do for work,

which is help people make better decisions, help people get out of their own way? How can I apply that to data and relationships? So that's what I've been doing in a couple different capacities. As a dating coach, really doing hands-on coaching with people one on one or with couples saying, I'm identifying this pattern.

This is your dating blind spot. This is what you should do proactively to overcome it. Then I do it through the book, which applies behavioral science to dating and relationships. And then now I've been working for the last year as the director of relationship science at the dating app hinge. And so I'm actually doing it on a really broad scale, helping millions of people figure out what are the people doing who are able to find success on a dating app And how can we teach you how to do that as well? So that's really the thing that I'm most proud of is that I had these two passions

psychology and decision making theory and then dating and relationships or what's called relationship science and I've been able to marry the two and Approach this topic that you know there are a lot of books about love and dating but approach this topic that, you know, there are a lot of books about love and dating, but approach this topic in a new and scientific way. Yeah, and you did a great job of it. So, um, at Google then, so you would, you just talked about that. You have, you have talks at Google, modern romance. Wait, so can you talk about that a little bit?

What did you exactly do with this background at Google? Yeah, so when I was at Google, I realized that there was things, this thing called Talks at Google, and it was basically a platform where you could invite people in to interview them. And I was like, oh, this is amazing. I could use this to meet my heroes. So I called emailed Ira Glass,

who is and was one of my heroes. And I just said, I see you're gonna be in California for the speaking event. Would you wanna come and do a Talks at Google with me? And he said, yes, and're going to be in California for the speaking event. Would you want to come and do a talk to Google with me? And he said, yes. And I got to spend the day with him. And it was truly a peak life moment. And so I did a couple more of those with some podcasters, Roman Mars, Gretchen Rubin, who

you probably know I had her on. Gretchen Rubin is incredible. I spent a day with her. She actually encouraged me to write the book that's about to come out. And basically I was like, oh, I have this platform and I can use it to bring in experts in the field. So I started Toxic Google Modern Romance and I was able to bring in people like Esther Perrell, Dan Savage, Jocsi Easton, who's really well known for writing the ethical slot, a book about polyamory. It was so cool because I could take a platform I had, this toxic Google interview series,

make my own series about dating and relationships. And it really had an impact on people, a thousand people at Google joined the email list within a day. And I think I talked about this in the book. Somebody came up to me at Burning Man, and was like, I watched your talk with Dossie East and about polyamory. And I didn't know that that was available to me at Burning Man, it was like, I watched your talk with Dossie East and about polyamory, and I didn't know that that was available to me.

And like this changed the way that I see my marriage. This is what kept my marriage together. And it was a moment of understanding within myself that I was doing something that mattered and that I was putting something out there that people didn't have access to otherwise. And there was something beautiful about taking this very corporate official title of Google,

this company that's well-respected, applying it to this area that doesn't necessarily get a lot of scientific inquiry or even let's say respect. And by marrying the two, it made it safer for sort of these like Google nerds and then other people watching on YouTube to actually engage in this topic in a serious way.

No, you just, to your point, you just hit it right there. I mean, I think that's what that was interesting for me to have, to speak with you, right? Was that it was a science behind it and you married it beautifully, right? Because, you're right, to your point, I don't think that like in, if we're just talking about dating, relationships, even if it's not, it seems a little bit like light

and fluffy, right? Totally. But when you bring in the whole idea behind like why you do what you do, the psychology and behavior that like why you pick the people you pick and what does that mean and how do you change it and like all those other things that we're gonna self-regulateulate. I really like I said like this was kind of like a practical to me. Very like a psychological book on how human nature is but done in a very like fun practical way.

So thank you. You're welcome. So let's get into something here. You break things down to three dating tendencies, right? And you even have a quiz that people can take, right, where they can kind of find what tendency they are and why it's important you talk about is that it helps you kind of see, you know, get away from your old. Well, you tell us, but blind spots and you tell us why it's important and what the three tendencies are. Yeah.

So I think one of my superpowers is pattern recognition. And what was happening was I had lots of different clients who came from different cultural backgrounds, gender identity, different orientations, but I just kept seeing the same patterns over and over again. And these were what I call the three dating tendencies,

which are a set of blind spots. So each tendency has blind spots that are a pattern of behavior or thinking that are holding them back from finding love, but the important part is they can identify it on their own, right? So if they could, they wouldn't need to come to me. So what I did was I organized it into this framework called the three dating tendencies and what they all have in common is unrealistic expectations.

So the first one is the romanticizer, and this person has unrealistic expectations of relationships. So this is someone who expects Prince Charming or Princess Ariel. They think that love is effortless. That love is going to find them, that putting effort into a relationship means that it's not working because if it were your soulmate,

it would be effortless. And so they have this very particular view, what's called the soulmate mindset. And they think that they know exactly the package the person's going to come in. And they know that love is going to find them. The next one is called the maximizer. And they have unrealistic expectations of their partner. So many of my dating coaching clients fit into this category. And these are people who say, I'm pretty happy, but could I be 5% happier? And they feel like life

is something that can be researched. You go to wire cutter and you find the best espresso machine, why wouldn't you date everyone you could and figure out the exact perfect person. And their view of relationships is that it's all about the choosing. You have to choose the perfect person. And their view of relationships is that it's all about the choosing. You have to choose the perfect person and you need to be 100% certain before you walk down the aisle with someone. The third type is called the hesitator and these people have unrealistic expectations of themselves. So these are the people who say, all day when I lose 10 pounds, all day when I have more money in the bank, all day when I get that promotion. I'll date when I move and why would I date before them? And they think that one day they'll wake up

and feel ready to date and they only want to put themselves out there when they feel like they are their best selves, but they're underestimating two things. One is that by dating you figure out who you want to be with. And two, by dating you get better at dating. It's like stand-up comedy. You can't do stand-up comedy without an audience, and it can't be dating without going on a date. You actually need to be investing time in those skills because someone out there just like you is going on a date and figuring that out.

And by waiting until you're, quote unquote, 100% ready, you're missing out on the chance to learn how to do that. You know what, but how do people like, you know, like some of my friends, I have this one of my best, best friends. He's like a great, I say he's a great catch, right? Like and, and he has a great catch. He's a doctor. He's very successful. He's great looking. Um, and yet, and he, and he's also self-aware, right? Like, so even, I guess my question is even when you are self-aware, you know why you do what you do, or you know what tendency you are,

but yet you still can't help yourself, but keep on going through the same patterns. Like you said, you're all about pattern recognition. So what if you're someone who can recognize your pattern, right, and know what you're doing, but yet that's not enough to kind of change the behavior. Yeah, so that's why behavioral science is so interesting because a lot of people think

that if you just give people information that that's not that that's enough. And we know from behavioral science that that's not true. So a famous example is in New York, they added the calorie counts to a lot of menus. And so you would walk into Dunkin' Donuts and see the calorie counts, but that didn't. And so you would walk into Dunkin' Donuts and see the calorie counts. But that didn't change people's behavior. Because once you have decided to walk into a Dunkin' Donuts, you are cleaning the Dunkin' Donuts. You're not going to be like, wow, turns out there's a lot of calories in the Dunkin'

Donuts. And so this is what we call the Intention Action Gap. You can have all the information and you can have all the intention, but it doesn't actually get you to the action. And so what's so cool about behavioral science is that it's a set of tools that actually help you overcome that intention action gap. So for example, when I go into the hesitate or tendency and how to overcome it, I say deadlines are really powerful, especially short deadlines. And there's an example in the book where these researchers were looking at people who were given a gift card to a bakery.

And some were given a gift card to a bakery that you could redeem within three weeks, and some you could redeem within two months. And you would think, okay, two months, more time to redeem it from the bakery, I bet more people redeemed it when they got that. But what actually happens is that when it's two months, you say, oh, I can do it whenever and you put it off. When it's three weeks, you say, oh, this is going to expire soon. I'll actually prioritize it, put a time on my calendar and do it.

And so deadlines, especially short deadlines, help people achieve their goals. And so if you say, I'm a hesitator, I've been putting off dating, but it's the beginning of 2021 and I want to make this happen. You actually need to put a deadline on your calendar. And I like three weeks as a deadline. Within three weeks, I'm going to download the apps, get some new photos, get an account, a bill of buddy

who knows that I'm serious about dating, create an identity around a data. And that's what I like about the book. It takes the research and what works. It applies it to dating and it helps you overcome that intention action gap. Yeah, because I think that's really what that becomes a very, that's becomes a part that's very difficult, especially if someone is like well aware and they're, they're an intelligent person and they've been, you know, kind of hitting that wall. And to what you were just

saying, you know, you also talk about this in the book, the whole idea of reversible decisions, versus irreversible decisions. It's the same thing. We think, I do this all the time. Like, I always have, like, I buy, buyers remorse. I like to go to stores where I know I can return something, just because it makes me feel like,

just in case I don't want it, right? And you're saying, like you talk about, we're less committed to the choices that we think that we can actually like change, right? So that's, so sometimes, right? So let's talk about that, because people who know that they're kind of stuck in the situation, it's how to talk with the research.

Yeah. You know, I'm glad you brought this up. This is one of my favorite pieces of research from the book. I'm working on an article specifically just on this topic. And we can talk about a couple things like this, but this is something where I've discovered the research including the book and it's changed how I live. So it's already something that I am embodying in my daily life,

even though I'm married and I'm not dating, it's applicable in a lot of ways. So the research is from Dan Gilbert, who's a professor at Harvard, who's just such an interesting person, he wrote this book, Sumbling on Happiness, such an interesting guy. And basically what he and- That's a good book too, by the way. I like that book. Definitely recommend Sumbling on Happiness and a few of the ideas throughout the book are

influenced by his research. So he and his colleagues at Harvard had a few weekends in which students were invited to participate in a photography workshop. And in some of the weekends, students took photos, and at the end of the weekend, they said, we're going to have an exhibition in London. You can choose one of the photos to send to London,

and you have to make the decision now. You can't change your mind. In the other scenarios, different students on a different weekend were told, choose a photo now, but we're gonna call you in a few days and if you wanna change your photo, you can. And so what they measured, did students actually change their photos in the second condition

and how satisfied were they with the photos they chose? And what they found was that actually not a lot of people changed their minds, but the people in that second condition who could change their minds were less happy with their selection. And so the question becomes why. And the point is that when you have to make a choice, you commit to it. Your brain goes into rationalization mode and it starts quieting all the reasons why you shouldn't do it and it starts reinforcing all the reasons why you should do it. And you just, you convince yourself, you made the right decision.

It's a very beautiful and powerful thing your brain does. It rationalizes your choices. But when you can reverse your decision, you spend all that time saying, should I have picked this photo? Should I have picked that photo? Was my instant correct? What will the London audience like?

Or in your situation, should I return the coat? Should I keep the coat? Do I already have a code like this? Can I borrow my friend's code that's in order to this, right? And you have those pro cons in your head and you're not going into rationalization. It's harder to feel satisfied about your decision. So the first lesson there is that we want reversible decisions.

We want to reply maybe to the event. We want to be able to return the code. We want to be able to change our. We want to be able to return the code. We want to be able to change our mind about the photographs. And that's even true. In this study with Dan Gilbert they said, would you prefer to be able to change your photo or not? And people said yes, even though the results were that people who could change their minds were less satisfied. And so we're wrong about what makes us happy. We think we want reversible decisions. Irreversible decisions make us happier. And in the book, how I apply this is don't talk to your ex. You think you

want to keep your options open, you think you want to keep this person orbiting around you. But if you actually shut the door, you will rationalize that choice, you will move on and you will create space for somebody else to enter your life. I love that rational, that whole thing about rationalizing, because that is so true, right? Like when you're stuck with something, you're like, well, you know, this is a better choice for me anyway.

You know, I had to do it because of this, and that's because of that. You know, but then what happens with people who are married, right? And like, you know, they're not sure if they're, you know, they're happy, but they're not so happy, and they rationally, you can trick your brain both ways, right? And when you have a commitment,

you can also do the opposite, right? Where is that coming to play? Yeah, that is true. And I think that that's, I haven't done exact research into that, but I think it might be that maybe you're just farther removed from the decision. So maybe your brain isn't actively convincing you of that, but that's why in the book I talk about this idea of a relationship contract.

And people often have like a really visceral to the reaction to that. Like why are you applying legalese to love and like what's a relationship contract. But like, first thing I would say is it's not a legal contract. It's just really a concept. And the idea is that if we're really going to be married to somebody for 40, 50, 60 years, and we're changing all the time, the relationship needs to adapt and change with us. And so the idea is the relationship contract is that you put down some information about what matters to you, what you want to work on,

your sex life, your finances, whatever's important to you. And then you say, in one or two or three years, we're going to revisit this and see how we're doing. And what I like about that is not only does it make those conversations more explicit, it also means that you're constantly choosing the other person. And so perhaps we could hypothesize that by making it more of a choice each time, you are saying to yourself, do I want to be here? You say yes, and then you are recommitting

to the person in that rationalization instinct will kick in again. And I think this happens with any kind of success, right? Professional success, personal success. There has to be some kind of structure and guideline to you achieving those goals, right? So I saw that you wrote that, and I agree with that because you need,

otherwise it becomes like willy-nilly, you know, why should you be only focusing, like why do you have all these, because we talk about, you know, a lot of success habits on this podcast, obviously. And people have a very specific way, they do things like a routine, a structure, in order to be on point,

to be the most productive. Why wouldn't that not apply to your personal life, right? To be as on point, to be as productive, to be as your best version of yourself, right? Like it makes sense to do it. 100% and I think about this a lot, like there's this concept work works. Like there's a lot of things about capitalism and the corporate structure that work. And some of it is having managers, having check-ins, having performance reviews,

and having structure. And so I 100% think that we should take the best of that corporate world and apply it to relationships. The one thing I would say, though, for people listening, is that I have a chapter called, this is a date, not a job interview. And so we should be taking the best of habit formation and goal, goal orientation and things like

that, but also don't make your dating life too corporate. When you're going on a date, don't treat it like a job interview, don't treat it like an interrogation. I like to say play, don't play games. I think we really do need to make dates more fun, rather than saying, I am interviewing you for the role of the husband. And do you meet my job requirements for this role? Well, the problem, like, okay, I agree with you. But how about the whole thing though, about, you're right, people become much more,

it becomes like a job interview or like you're kind of like having to interview the person. It takes up the fun of it, right? But how about the fact that coupled with that is what's happening just in today's time. Like we said, I said the beginning of this podcast was social media, right? You compare and despair.

Like how does anyone find any relationship at this, you know, at this juncture, right? Now with a pandemic, you know, it's a whole other story, right? Because you're not going out. But again, it's like what the information we know, we know that we compare ourselves to other people. That's like human nature, social media. We know that what you see, the grass isn't always greener. How do we overcome A, the grass is always greener, method? How do we kind of overcome, a, the grass is always greener, you know,

method all, like that whole concept, and kind of like, kind of get over the whole social media problem. That's comparison. Am I allowed to curse on your podcast? Yes, you may. Depends on what you're saying, but yeah. So, Peral, who you probably familiar with, and made me a captivity, she talked about how we used to live in villages, and there wasn't very good sound proofing, and there were couples all around you, and you could hear every fight and every fuck. And you just understood that relation

could have these different dynamics. And then compare it to now where not only are we isolated in these little concrete boxes, where it's just you alone, or you and your partner, but the only part of a relationship that you're seeing is the extremely curated slice of life that somebody posts on Instagram. And so even if intellectually you understand, oh, I only post flattering pictures of myself, I don't post pictures of myself up late at night saying, you know, what am I gonna do with myself and what's going on?

It's really hard when you're scrolling through Instagram and you see all these couples and it feels like everyone else has found someone or maybe the stage where all of your friends are having kids and you haven't found a partner yet and it's so hard not to look at that and say, oh, that person has what I want and I don't have it. And so the first step is just understanding,

like Instagram is not reality. And spending a lot of time on there, comparing and despairing, doesn't serve you. And so that might, you know, what might help you is just unblock, you know, blocking people whose profiles make you feel bad about yourself spending less time on there. And I think just intellectually understanding that

what people are portraying on social media is who they want you to think they are versus who they are and I forget the exact research but I think they saw something that was like couples who start posting a lot of pictures on Facebook are more likely to break up than couples who don't and that it's actually a sign of trying to portray something other than reality. And so this kind of goes back to the intention action gap. It's you might you might know that this is true about social media. It doesn't mean you do anything about it, but the doing something about it is the things like blocking people that don't make you feel good spending less time on there and actually spending time with real couples and seeing from your friends who are in relationships,

what are the good parts, what are the bad parts, what are you struggling with? And if you are someone who's married, then be more vulnerable. Share with your friends, hey, my husband has this trait that I find really stressful and this is what I'm going through. And by actually sharing the hard parts about relationships with your

single friends, you help them know that when they get into a relationship and they experience that, that's inevitable and that's normal, that's not a sign of failure. No, no, I know. I feel like we always want when we don't have, right? Like the people who are single want to be married, the people who are married want to be single, right? I mean, that's just, again, I find that to be very much human nature, right? We just want what we can't have. I mean, I'm talking more about the grass is always greener, like you could be married still, and you know, I could be like, oh, that, it's in anything. This, like I said, these, all these, these are all overarching concepts that can apply to anything,

right? Like that person looks like they're more successful than I am. That person looks at their skinnier than I am. That person looks like they're happier because they are skinnier than I am. Like we put so many different, like, right? Like we just create our own stories of what we see and we have like, you know, we know like 6% of the pie. But how does people get, how do we get over the grass is always greener? Like I guess this is a question again to people who are over the grass is always greener. Like I guess this is a question again to people who are already self-aware, who are already intelligent, who know their behavior is flawed,

and yet they can't stop themselves. And I don't mean to make you repeat yourself from what you said. But the whole, and just like the grass is green, the whole thing like, the whole grass is greener on the other side. My mother would always say, the grass grass is greener on the other side. My mother would always say the grass is always greener until you see their water bill, right? Like, you never really know what's happening.

But it's the truth. I mean, how, and I think this is what stops a lot of people from meeting their mate a lot of times, right? Because you could be in a good relationship to start seeing somebody and then you, you know, you kind of like sabotage it because you go back on you and you swipe Again left and you that person looks prettier or or better, you know better suited we talk a little bit about that and then Also go into how we overvalue Certain traits and how we undervalue certain traits for long-term success?

Absolutely. Yeah. So one of the things that I talk about the book is how the way that dating apps are designed can actually really confuse us. And so one of the ways that that happens is when you have so many choices, you experience the paradox of choice and that's the idea that we think we want choice, right? We just talked about the reversal decisions, but actually too many choices makes us doubt our decisions and sometimes experience decision paralysis in which we make no decision at all. I know that now it's this paralysis, right? We talked about that a lot. 100% yes.

And it's so true and it's so true in our culture in a way that like our brains are just not designed to choose among thousands of people. That is just not how dating or marriage has worked until you know literally the last decade. So another thing that happens with dating apps is that people are reduced to two dimensional objects. And so there used to be something called relationship-ing, which is the process of finding a partner. And now people are experiencing relation-shopping. You look for a partner like you look for a purchase.

And so when you look for a purchase, you think, okay, I'm gonna break this person down into specs. What college did they go to? What did they study? How much money did they make? How tall are they? Do we have mutual friends? And the thing is humans are not what we call searchable goods.

Things like a microphone, Bluetooth headset, you know, a camera, they can't be broken down into specs. They're what we call experiential goods. You have to actually experience them to see if you like them, like wine or a movie. You might love a movie and I don't like it, and that's because it's an experience good. It's not objectively one way,

it's how do I like it versus how do you like it. Another thing that I talk about is something called the Monet effect, which is that when you have a blurry photo of someone that's literally a photo and metaphorically, you don't have the full picture, your brain fills in the gaps to make it more positive than it is in reality.

So you match with somebody on the app and you start thinking, oh my God, this is my perfect girl. She's amazing, we have all these things in common, we're gonna go skiing together and you create this fantasy in your head. And then you meet the person and they are great, but they are different from what you thought they would be.

They don't match the fantasy that you created. And because of that, you reject them because they aren't this picture of who you thought they were. And so I say you know you go to the bathroom, you do the wipe and swipe, you know you're swiping on Tinder as you're going to the bathroom and say oh the next person looks perfect and it's it's a trick. This is the grass is always greener part. You think the next person's going to be perfect as opposed to the rational thing which which is so far, I've been on a lot of dates. None of these people are perfect.

And no one's perfect. Even Prince Charming has morning breath. And instead of overcoming that and saying, no one's perfect, I just need to choose someone and commit and put the effort in and make it work. Instead, you're always seeking that perfect person. And truly in my dating coaching, that is probably the most common problem, is that people come and they think it's all about choosing the perfect person as opposed to finding a person

that they can make life work with, and then investing in that relationship to make it great. Keep coming back, you got plenty of space. Oof, not how you would have done that. You like working with people you can rely on, like USAA, who has helped guide the military community for the past 100 years. USAA, get a quote today.

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I think you're so, you are, you really are, yeah. This is great. I feel like though, peep, especially guys, I know a lot of, I live in LA and in LA, especially, where do you live, by the way? I live in Oakland, in California. Okay, okay. So LA, New York, whatever.

I find it's like a man, it's a man's world, right? Like, girls are getting younger and younger as a guy's are getting older and older, right? And I know a lot of women who are just amazing girls, right, and they're just single because also, like, the guys, if the guy is a good looking and successful, he wants a girl who's like, like, you know, like 17, 18 years old, barely legal.

And even though those guys are miserable when they go out with those girls, because I hear it all the time and they know that what they're doing and it's a full thing over and over again, the guys are going to be single until at least 97, never meeting anybody, but dating all these randoms. Again, it's like, you keep on, it's like beating your head against a wall, you know what you're doing. And it's very, very difficult to kind of stop that behavior.

Is there like ways you can, you can, are there like tips or not, not tips or tricks, but like actual, I don't know, tools or like exercises people can do to break their bad habits of what they're doing. Absolutely. And yes, what they're doing. Absolutely. And yes, what you're talking about, I see in my coaching practice on both sides. I have the women who are coming and saying, I'm in my late 30s.

I feel like I'm being filtered out. All the guys have a filter of, I don't want to see anyone over 35 and they just suddenly feel like their prospects are low. And then I also have those guys with a little bit of Peter Pan syndrome who are like, well, the people who have a lot of Peter Pan syndrome who are like, well, the people I'm attracted to are the ones who are 21. So I'm gonna go out with them.

And they kind of aren't able to see the fact that those relationships keep not working. And like they're getting older, as you said, and 21 year olds are saying the same age. Yes, we're getting younger. And by the way, those guys, if they're like, and 21 year olds are saying the same age. Just, we're getting younger. And by the way, those guys, if they're like, and I'm talking about people, I'm talking about people who have self-awareness.

I'm not talking about these like, you know, vapid guys who are just dating younger. I mean, I want that, as it's where I want to get into this part also, but like, you know, attraction, like the physical attraction part, like, we can't help who we, and I, we can't help who we're attracted to. But these people like that phase, right? So they go out with these guys, these girls or whatever,

and then, you know, within a week or two, they're bored anyway. So they're not, they're not any happier with the young girl if they just went out to person who is much more, they're, they're equal who they can have things in common with and have like a proper relationship. So sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. I don't know if you have a part about this because I have a particular identity. Yeah, I'm things in common with and have a proper relationship. So sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. No, no, no, I'm not about this

because I am a child. I'm completely in agreement with you. And I feel like the fact you and I know people on both sides, right, the women who are being left behind because they're being aged out. And then the men who don't understand that, like, they are playing the role of mentor and that that's actually not satisfying.

You want a partner, not a mentee. Yeah, I totally am frustrated by the same concept. So what might be helpful for people to hear about is this, it's called a line of mathematical inquiry. It's kind of a decision making riddle called the secretary problem. And so this is the idea of, imagine that you're hiring a secretary

and you have 100 candidates. And the trick is you have to interview them one at a time and you have to decide after each one if you're going to say yes or no. So if you get to number 99 and you realize number 16 was the best, you can't go back. And so what makes it challenging is, well, you don't wanna choose to early because you might not know what's out there

but you don't wanna choose too late because it might be that all the good ones have gone away. And so when you apply this mathematical theory to it, the correct answer is 30s after 37% of people. So after you've seen 37% of the candidates, you look back and say who was the single best candidate from the first 37% this person then becomes your meaningful benchmark. And then you say, I'm going to hire the next person who is as good or better than that meaningful benchmark. And what's important about this is it helps you understand that you need to see some of what's out there, but not all of what's out there in order to make a decision. And so

in this book, algorithms to live by, they apply the secretary problem to dating and they say, you probably don't know the total number of people you'll date, but you might think about the number of years that you'll date. And they say, let's say you're going to date from 18 to 40, then by the age of 26, you should have dated 37% of the people you're going to date. So after 26, look back and say, who's my meaningful benchmark? Who's the best person I've dated so far, and then invest and try to be with the next person who's as good or better than your benchmark?

And that's totally different from how people are approaching dating. They're thinking about dating as like, turn over every stone, right? This is the maximizer I have to do my research. But if you think, most of us are probably past 26, we've dated a lot of people. We've probably dated someone who would be a perfectly good partner. And now I just have to find someone as good as that benchmark and invest in them. That

actually really flips the script about needing to turn over all stones to saying, I need to find someone that I'm going to make it work with and invest in them. And kind of my final thought on this is that there's this obsession with making the objective best decision. What matters so much more is how you feel about your decision. So it's so much more important to say, I made a decision, I feel good about my standards and I'm going to invest to make it work versus that could I be 5% happier with somebody else is the grass greener with my old college girlfriend? Forget about your college girlfriend.

Find someone who makes you as happy as her, invest in it, and the beauty of relationships is there up to you. You can make them as good as you want to. It's not just who you choose. It's the effort you choose to put in. More from our guests, but first a few words from our sponsor. So after the crazy year we've all been through, saving money should be at the top of everybody's resolution list.

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I mean, that's really like how we, that's how you feel, like when you talk about who were attracted to why our tendencies to go there, can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure, yeah, am I going from edge into the research? Would you like it? No, I,

where? Certainly. This is why I wanted to have you on. Like, if you didn't have all this research, I honestly, it wouldn't be that interesting for me. Like, when I like it about it, like, I love to understand like why we do what we do and how we can kind of like go in there and maybe tweak it just a little bit, a percent or two just to be better, you know?

And like I said, you're like so much of the stuff that you have and what you talk about, you can you back it up so well with like real science and and and great examples that it's easy for me to wrap my, not easy for me to wrap my head around, but it's like, it makes it meaningful. There's like meat to the bone. It's a versus just like, you know, this airy fairy, you know, yeah, you know, just like this is why I think this is why I think this is so that's great info for people who are not even trying to find a, you know, a day, a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a husband or a wife, but it can apply to so many other relationships in your life.

Thank you. Yeah. So I'm happy to go into it. And, you know, just sometimes people like to see like the work behind the work and when I was writing the book I kept inserting the attachment theory chapter and my editor kept taking it out because she was like Somebody can read the book attached, you know, there's a bunch of other books about there And I was like this is just so important to me and this changed my life this changed my sister's life This changed other people's lives that if I'm really giving someone the book that I think will help them with dating, I have to include attachment theory. And so I'm kind of prepping with saying like this shift and this knowledge has helped so many people break about habit. So the basics of this is that it comes from developmental psychology from this person named

John Bulby. And what he did was he was investigating the attachment between mothers and babies. And so how his study and this other woman who came after him, how the study worked is, they would bring mothers and babies into a lab and they would set the baby down and have the baby play and the mother would leave the room and they would see what happened. So in one scenario, the mother leaves the room, the baby starts crying, the mother walks in, picks up the baby, and the baby is still upset and still crying. And these are what we called anxiously attached. In another scenario,

the mother walks out, the baby cries, the mom walks in, picks up the baby, and the baby is soothed and calms down. And this is called securely attached. And the third one is the mom walks out, the baby doesn't cry, pretends not to notice, but we know from different measures within the baby that the baby is very stressed and upset. And the mom comes back in and the baby ignores the mother. And this is what's called avoid and attached. And so they looked at this over time and they found that these styles of attachment can actually play out in your romantic, adult relationships.

And so how it works is that those people, those anxiously attached babies, they're constantly worried about being abandoned. And so these are the people who say, text me as soon as you land, why didn't I hear from you when you were at the concert? They always want to be in touch. They're always afraid of being left alone.

They get into relationships quickly because they're afraid of being alone. And when somebody upsets them, they do what's called protest behavior. They text a million times and they ignore the person. They just constantly want to be in touch and have this anxiety about being alone. The avoid and attach people, their fear

is that somebody's going to smother them. And so they constantly want to create space. You're too on top of me. I need to break up with you because I need to focus more on work. And they're constantly pushing back. And then securely attach people. They're sort of the heroes. They are comfortable with intimacy, but they also are comfortable with space.

So they want to be close to you, but they can also have the alone time. And so 50% of the population is securely attached. But many of these people are not the people you find in the dating apps because they're already in relationships. So what you have is this anxiously attached person who is constantly coming after you, and this avoidantly attached person who thinks that relationships are somebody smothering them and they date each other and it's called the anxious, avoidant loop, right? Why do I always have to chase guys?

Why are they never interested in me and the guy, why when I always date people, are they always smothering me and it's because they're dating each other. And so truly, one of the best pieces of advice I can give people is know what your attachment style is. I have the quiz on my website. You can also read the book attached. Figure out what your style is. Figure out how to overcome it and date a secure person. And for me, when I started dating my now husband,

I am anxiously attached. I had that whole anxious avoidant loop. And one time I was walking down the street and I was mad at him and I sent him a bunch of angry texts. why do you do this? Why do you do that? And I knew we were going to get into a fight because that's how my pattern worked. And he responded and said, sounds like this is something we should discuss in person.

And this just blew my mind because he just totally de-escalated the situation. I think it has to do with the fact that his mom is a therapist, he's a great communicator, but it was my first time dating somebody securely attached and it just totally blew my mind. And now we're married because I needed to be with a secure person in order to get over those really bad, anxiously attached habits. And honestly, the amount of time that I spend in that anxious zone is so much smaller now. And it gives me so much more space to enjoy life and think and produce things like a book. And truly, if you are in this anxious, avoidant loop, I so encourage you to find a secure partner. Now that can, first of all, you just set you just sounded up so beautifully.

No, you did. First of all, I think it's interesting how what you just said in these, especially when it comes to the apps and who's on those apps, right? Because the securely attached people, there's, there's, they're 50% of us or, you know, of them or whatever. Yeah. But they're not really available because they're already in relationship. So then you get stuck kind of with like the people who are on either side of the pendulum,

right? The avoidance people and the anxiety people who then of course find each other. So how are we supposed to power people supposed to find? Because now it's a foreign object concept for me, right? Because I'd never been on an app in my life. You know, even when there were apps for popular, I was meeting people just through day to day life. And now that's not even an option. I mean, for pandemic or not pandemic,

people of all ages are using these apps. And you work at Hinge for crying out loud. I mean, this is what you do. Like, there's not many opportunities for a lot of people, depending on what the work they're in to meet people, let alone meeting a securely attached. What are people to do? You can't create them. Yeah, so there's a couple different things. One way. Yeah, so what is that 50% of the population is securely attached, but not 50% of the people in the apps, but that doesn't mean there's nobody

on the apps who's securely attached. It's few, it's few and far between. It is. So, one part is just understanding, like, you know, you talked about your friends who are getting divorced. That's actually like a great way to find someone and ask people out there are like the divorced moms, the divorced dad, somebody who's securely attached, got into that relationship quickly.

It didn't work out in our own home. It's called the out in an hour. It's called the trickion, basically. It goes away until someone becomes available. Yeah, wait for the marriage churn. There you go. So I don't want people listening to say, oh, there's nobody on the abs who secure. But really, the trick here is to understand your pattern. So for me, being anxiously attached,

my pattern was needing always to be in touch and then protest behavior when I wasn't in touch. And so things that you can learn how to do if you're anxiously attached are understanding how to self-regulate. So if you feel like you're being triggered, maybe call a friend instead of your partner. If you feel like you're like,

I just don't understand, like he's on a trip, but it takes 15 seconds to text me, like just learning how to calm yourself down in any capacity, especially relationships, is a super healthy thing. So saying like, I know I'm wired this way, but let me try to overcome it. And for the people who are avoidin' attached,

they're often getting out of relationships. And to say, I'm not gonna do that, because if I keep doing this over and over, I'll never wind up with someone. And so I'm actually gonna go outside my comfort zone and commit to someone. But you can also see what are the qualities of the securely attached person.

And this is probably the critical thing, is that if somebody's giving you these bullshit answers like, oh, I'll be there, but then they don't show up. Or if somebody's not the person you wanna be dating, but they always seem to be making dates with you, those are not the people you want to be with. You want to be with the person who is comfortable with intimacy, tells you their feelings, but is also comfortable with space and has independence and isn't smothering you.

And you really want to look for those qualities of a secure person because that's going to give your relationships such a better chance of being successful. Yeah. And then, so how do people self-regulate? I think that, you know, it sounds great and wonderful, but that's why men are there, right? Because people cannot self-regulate, right? It's very difficult to quiet your emotions

until like, you know, the whole, what you just call it, you say like managing disruptive impulses and emotions, right? Like, there's a lot of women I know and men I guess when you're wired a certain way, again, this takes certain exercises to do to be able to self-regulate, right? So they don't have to take their medication because I wasn't even joking. Like that's why people are on anxiety medication, especially now, is because they are not wires that way, right?

Yeah. And I don't mean to make this sound easy. I don't think this is easy at all. If you actually look at the research, changing your own attachment style is really hard. It comes from the nature part of how you're wired. It comes from the nurture part of your relationships with the caretakers growing up.

Honestly, this is deeply ingrained in people and that's why they struggle with it so much. But just understanding, oh, I tend to go after people who aren't interested in me. My version of love is that love feels like the chase. And so when I go after someone and they pull away, that makes me really excited. And that's chemistry. And that's my definition of love. And then if you can actually reframe that and say, no, that makes me really excited. And that's chemistry and that's my definition of love. And then if you can actually reframe that and say,

no, that's an avoidant person. I've been here a million times. A person is not interested in me. I'm addicted to the chase, forget it. I don't want to make somebody a priority who makes me an option. I am going to choose to end the chapter at this person and start a new chapter with someone else

who's secure and shows up for me. And so that's really the work. I think self-regulating is super hard. I understand why a lot of people are anxious, especially during the pandemic. And so if you can actually get better at choosing someone who brings out a secure side of you, instead of trying to be secure yourself, that's maybe a more realistic outcome. Absolutely. And also just, I think recognizing what your trigger is, that recognition to know that you're

like, okay, now I'm like behaving this way. It's me, not them. You can save your relationship probably. I would imagine. Right. I have a friend whose husband is traveling right now and she just set the expectation with him. She's like, I know you're far away. I know you're in a really different time zone.

I know you're busy. I want to talk at least every 24 hours. That's what I want to hear from you. And so for her, she has a recognition that when he's traveled and that didn't happen, it triggered this anxious attachment. And so she's saying, my expectation is this. I think it's reasonable. Can you try to reach that?

And so that's just a tiny little trick, but it's basically saying like, know that you're sensitive to certain triggers and then create an environment, create that expectation with your partner so that they can meet it. And then you never get into that red zone of flooding with emotions, being a person you don't want to be, right? Like when I told that story about walking down the street, sending those angry texts, like, I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be in that state of mind.

And the more that you can find a partner that keeps you out of the red zone and truly brings out the best side of you, like that's the person that you should commit to. Attention, Kroger Shoppers. Did you know there's a world of innovative services and patient care right in store? It's where an award-winning pharmacy and nationally recognized care come together.

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Where is that in this whole picture? I mean, with all this knowledge, and like I was like going on about the science about behind it and the algorithms and all that other stuff, and human nature, also what human nature is, like you can't help who you're attracted to, right? Like, we talk about where that is in all this,

the sphere of owning and chemistry. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, there's a couple different directions I can take that in. And so, one of them is there's a really interesting study about who are we attracted to and thinking about smells and pheromones. And so, they do this study where they have men wear the same t-shirt for a few different days in a row and sleep in the t-shirt and sweat in the t-shirt and then they give different women each six t-shirts and say which one are you most attracted to which smells the best to you and what they found was that

you are most attracted to the person who is the most genetically different from you and so this has an evolutionary background which is in order to create offspring who have a robust genetic makeup, it pays off to have your genes mesh with someone else's genes who are really different to you. And so that's just interesting to hear that it's, there's a genetic reason why we are attracted to some people or not. And I was dating a guy about 10 years ago, super smart, like scientific genius guy. And he broke up with me because he said,

I just don't like your pheromones. It's just not working for me. And I really liked him and it was really sad, but looking back, I was like, he was kind of onto something. Like, he was just identifying the fact that like, my smell wasn't doing it for him and that there is scientific research behind this. However, and this is a big caveat,

one of my favorite chapters in the book is called Fuck the Spark. And it's kind of a bold title, but it's last year I gave a speech to a bunch of venture capitalists and by the end everybody was chanting Fuck the Spark and I was like, there is something to this. And basically many of my coaching clients,

I've also done matchmaking, they go on these dates and they say, oh, she was great, we had a good time, but I just didn't feel the spark. And so the spark is this word that we all use. It could also be what you called chemistry, where it's like, I met them and I didn't feel this instant paying of excitement. The world didn't stop.

I wasn't immediately interested in them. And so there's this false premise that you need the spark to have a great relationship. And in the book, I bust a few myths around the spark. And so one of them is, if you don't feel the spark, then the relationship is doomed. That's not true. The spark can grow over time.

And that's why people who work together or live in the same neighborhood often end up together, because attraction grows through something called the mere exposure effect. When you see someone, the more attracted you are to them. The second myth is that if you feel the spark, then it's a great thing. That's also not true. Some people are very sparky. They're hot, they're narcissistic, they're charming, they give everyone the spark.

And so you think it's a thing between you, but it's actually just that person gives the spark. And so you think it's a thing between you, but it's actually just that person gives the spark. And then the third one is, if you feel the spark, then the relationship is meant to be, and that's not true. Lots of couples who felt the spark are divorced. Your how we met, your meet cute doesn't really matter. It's like 0.01% of the duration of your relationship. And don't stay with someone because you had a cute, romantic, how we met story. And so instead of optimizing for the spark and rejecting people with whom you don't have the spark, my recommendation is to go for the slow burn.

And that's that person that diamond in the rough who the more you spend time with them, the more you love them. I mean, I bet that you have people on your team, people you've worked with who are exactly like this. We're like, they're just not the most charming, but you're like, damn, like, they always follow through on what they say they will,

they make you feel good, they show up. It's like, I feel like my husband is a slow burn, and it's so lucky to be with a slow burn, because the more time you spend with them, the more you appreciate them, versus those super sparky people, where the more time you spend with them, the more you appreciate them versus those super sparky people, where the more time you spend with them, the more you're like, you're kind of full of it.

And like a lot of what you're doing is a performance. And like, just find that quality person that's the slow burn and fath the spark. Right. No, that's a great explanation. So those people that you just had to kind of full of it, the hot and narcissistic, is that kind of those burn out pretty quickly, right? Like that's kind of like, it's like super sparky and then it kind of just kind of falls flat, right? But you're saying, this is what you're saying something

earlier about the genetic part, right? But then how does that explain why, if you, if we're most attracted to people, a lot of times who are the most opposite of our genetics, why is it that people who are Jewish or with the Jewish people, people who are Indian or with Indian people? Like, we tend to kind of a lot of times also end up with people who are the most similar, like genetically to us, right? Or that we have the most kind of like, genetically, heredity, like the religious background, cultural background, which makes us more similar.

So it's not kind of like, you know, counting on to it. Yeah, yeah, no, I totally see your point. And I should say as a caveat that I'm not an expert in the science of attraction, that is a whole other field, but I can tell you a few kind of relevant pieces of data. So there was a paper that came out a few years ago from Morons or from the University of Chicago and some data scientists at Hinge, and it was exploring

our people. It's basically, you know, there's these two concepts, opposite-satract and birds of a feather flock together, which went through. And they found that basically birds of a feather flock together, right? People are very attracted to people who are similar to them. And this was true, like across all of the dimensions that they looked at. And they looked at like the big five personality traits, so things like how neurotic you are, how open you are, how extroverted you are. And the only exception was extroverts sometimes end up with introverts because introverts,

it's with two introverts, they may not be like enough, and action to actually get together. But so basically yes, people are attracted to someone who's similar to them. And remember that all of this is, that there's a lot of different factors, right? So you have the factor of the pheromones, a scientific piece in which someone's smell is attracted to.

But you also have huge societal and cultural things, right? So I'm doing, I went to Jewish day school, I was told that you marry someone Jewish. And that was just something that was put into my mind, yeah, same with you, from the time that you're little. And okay, so now I'm in seventh grade and I'm going through puberty and who are the people I'm attracted to? I'm attracted to the 30 Jewish men in my club, and that's

who I develop a crush on. And then who am I attracted to for the rest of my life, right? Like short Jewish, right? And so there's this whole, like it's not just one thing. There's the pharomone piece and the genetic to similarity piece, but there's also when you were going through puberty, who was your first crush? Were you Commended by your parents when you pursued the Jewish guy over the not Jewish guy? Is it easier to be with someone who knows the prayers on Hanukkah? Yes, and so there's all these factors, right? There is the genetic piece. There's cultural piece. there's the ease of being with someone with the same type of family, same type of humor, all of that stuff. And that's what makes relationship so hard

is that you have a lot of factors at play and now you have all these choices and you have to navigate this world on your own, a decision that used to be decided by a matchmaker, your family, your community. Now it's all on you. Yeah, no, it's 100%. I think that's 100% true, right? I mean, this societal factor, the cultural factor, I think is so heavy, it can supersede any other piece of that pie, you know what I mean? And then let's talk a little bit

about the overvalued undervalued of qualities, right? We tend to, it was interesting. We tend to overvalued, I'm surprised at this, we tend to overvalued undervalued of qualities, right? We tend to, it was interesting. We tend to overvalued, I'm surprised at this. We tend to overvalue weather because I moved here from Canada, right? And people, you know, you would think that I would, people would be coming here to be so much happier, but when they did the testing

and they did the case study, people who lived in Michigan versus people who lived in California, there was no happy as barometer was not any different. And there's other, I mean, that's just not, that has to do with relationships per say, but it does talk about how we tend to over and under value traits. And we think are going to make a difference in our happiness. Yeah, I can talk to all of that. So as I mentioned before, I do some matchmaking. And so when that happens with matchmaking or dating coaching, somebody comes to me and says, like, I know talk to all of that. So as I mentioned before I do some matchmaking and so when that happens with matchmaking or dating coaching

Somebody comes to me and says like I know exactly what I want. I want these traits and so often they are very superficial things so there must be over six feet tall must-make six-figure income must have You know must love camping must be a lumber lumber sexual who wears plaid shirts, right? And they're all these really white and a lumber sexual. Have you heard of that lumber sexual? This was big like a few years ago.

It's like the kind of guy with like the scruffy beard who could, you know, fix your fence and wears plaid shirts and kind of, yeah, like a furry cute guy. But anyway, the point is that a lot of you remember that actually, yeah, I do. I wanna do traits that people go after are not what matters and are not at all correlated with long-term relationship success. And so there's a few reasons why.

So one is that looks fade and lost fades. And a lot of sexual attraction is novelty. There's a study that my husband loves to cite to me, which is that if you put a rat in the cage and you put a male rat and a female rat, they'll have sex for a certain amount of time and then the male rat will get over it. If you put a male rat in the cage

and keep putting a new female rat in, the male rat will keep having sex with the new rat until it literally dies of exhaustion. Really? Yes, and this is about the fact that people so much of sexual attraction is novelty and just having someone new to have sex with. And so I forget if I took this out of the book or not, but it's like whenever you see a hot person,

there's a person who's sick of having sex with them. Yeah, that's like an old, like that's what the joke I think was, like, you know, someone even someone's sick of having sex with like Cindy Crawford or whatever it was like before. You know, I mean, like, or like there's always someone, that exactly, but it's the truth, right? Because everything gets, everything's novel for a certain amount of time. And then it becomes, it becomes like your day to day. That happens with me, that happened with me too a lot of times

in my life, right? Like, you know, you're with this like, whatever you're with and then like after a while, you're like, well, okay, it becomes normal. And these are, this goes back to some of the themes we've been talking about, right? Like we're wrong about what will make us happy long term and we confuse the change from one thing to another with how it will always feel. So one thing that people do is they confuse falling in love with being in love. Falling in love is a very discreet emotion in which things are really overwhelming. You can't stop thinking about the person. It's very physiological, but when you've been with someone for a while, it's not the same. And so people get trapped where they're like, I used to feel this way, but now I don't.

And so I should find the next person that I can fall in love with as opposed to understanding that being in love is going to be different. And that's what's called the transition rule. And it's some of the famous research on this is about winning the lottery. So you say to someone, how would it feel to win the lottery? How would your life change? And they think about all the ways, oh, I would go on this vacation and I buy my mother a house and I would be a totally different person.

I'd be so much happier. But yes, winning the lottery creates a spike in happiness, but then you adapt to your surroundings. And it's not that transition of not a lottery winner to a lottery winner, eventually you adapt. And so that's really important. Even if the person's really hot, you're going to get used to how they adapt. And so that's really important. Even if the person's really hot, you're going to get used to how they look. And so looks are overrated.

Another thing is money. And there's lots of research that it's less about how much money you have. And it's about how much money the people around you have. And the same thing applies. You adapt to the amount of money you have. I don't think most rich people are walking around saying, I'm so lucky that I can afford

to take this Uber instead of taking a bus, right? They're just used to taking Uber's whenever they want. And so this is just a general rule to think about. A couple of the other ones that people overestimate having similar personalities. I had a lot of clients who say, I'm so extroverted. I'm the life of the party, my girlfriend's shy and she likes to go to bed early. Should I just find someone who will stay out till 1 a.m. with me? And I'm like, dude, you are so much. Two of you in a relationship would be way too much.

She is perfect for you. She creates this beautiful home that you come home to. She grounds you. She balances you out. Like it's incorrect that similar personalities is related to long-term relationship success. And then another one is shared hobbies. You don't have to both love wine as long as you give the other person's space to have their hobby. And so, sometimes people say, you know, I love this person, I feel great around them, but

we just don't have enough in common. Well, maybe stop prioritizing how much you have in common. And so that's the category of superficial stuff that people think matters more than it does. The next category of what matters more than people think it does are things like emotional stability, kindness, loyalty, the ability to make hard decisions together, a growth mindset, and finally, what really has become the most important one to me, what side of you that person brings out. Because a relationship is what emerges when two people are together, and that's who you'll be in life when you're with that

person, so choose someone who brings out the best side of you. No, I mean, yeah, I really like that. The thing is, like, some of this stuff is like, I thought it was pretty common sense, but maybe common sense isn't so common, right? Like, you wanna be with someone who's kind and loyal, but I guess at the end of the day, you know, where it may be programmed to go to the other stuff, like the looks and like,

you're to your point, like, when you talk to, when I talk to a single person, a girl, what a girl wants though, and what a guy's looking for, guys want a girl who's visually appealing, and girls want a guy who's like, you know, financially successful, right? Because it makes it feel stable.

And, you know, they say that is, you know, $75,000, there's no difference in happiness. And I've read this so many times, you talk about this too, but, you know, like, as long as your basic needs are met and you're making a certain minimum in terms of money, there's no difference in happiness in terms of financial. But yet, a lot of women would want to have a, they think that what they need and what they actually, what they want and what they need are so, so different, like a guy in different ways. Yeah, and honestly, I totally agree with what you said where it's like on the service level,

you're like, yeah, obviously loyalty and kindness matter, but just through my time working with people, that's just not what they look for. And they let people get away with so much bad stuff. They go on a date, you know, this woman that I was working with, she went in a date with a guy, he insulted the recipe she made, he made fun of the posters on her wall,

he criticized her career decisions. And then she's like, well, I really admire his career. So I want to go out with him again. And it's like in that moment, she's only looking at his resume on paper and not focusing on what side of her he brings out. And the fact that he's kind of a jerk and not kind, people just get distracted by things.

So maybe like they know intellectually to look for kind is loyalty. But they're being led astray by these other surface level things that they think really matter. Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's great. I like I said your book was amazing. I really liked it and I recommend it. It's called How to Not Die Alone. I love it.

Before I let you go, let's talk about hinge. This is just about, I'm just curious, right? There's so many apps. There's a hinge. There's Tinder. There's, well, those are the two I feel like everyone's using. What kind of metrics are there? Like how many people actually, do you have any metrics on like on anything in terms of the app stuff? Like we talked a lot about the apps here, but how many people actually end up in real relationships? How much is a hookup? Is it like what, I'm just curious.

I mean, I would be asking you this on or off to this podcast. I'm not sure. No, I'll tell you about it. And I do not want this to seem like some sort of hinge ad, but basically, I mean, honestly, I'm just asking because like, yeah, I'll switch to a printer on I do not want this to seem like some sort of hinge at but basically I mean honestly I'm just asking because like yay Enter on hinge and they're on Tinder now they're on they're on raya. I mean, what's the difference? In all of these his different hinges hinges slogan is designed to be deleted and when I was researching the book I met with the CEO of hinge and I was like I don't believe this

How could you try to get people off the app the The whole point of an app is growing your user base. That's how you make money. I don't believe in design to be deleted. And he was like, no. As soon as we became the relationship app, the app for people looking again into serious things designed to be deleted, our user base exploded. Because even if people join the app,

find someone and go off of it. If they tell five of their friends I met on hinge, then people actually join hinge. So that's one of the reasons that I work there is that I actually do believe that hinge is really focused on getting people into relationships. And so I've never been in a meeting at hinge where anyone says, what's time spent on app?

How do we get people on the app more? It's really not about like gamifying it, the way it might be with other apps. And so, some of them hold on, hold on, isn't it like Tinder? Don't you two swipes also? There is no swiping. You can't help me. Yeah, so basically, Hinge's whole thing is that it's for intentional daters. It's for people who have made be graduated from another app and are ready to actually find someone. I was talking to a friend the other day who got out

of a breakup and she's like, I got out of the breakup. I joined the app field to see other people, you know, just kind of have casual hookups. And then when I was ready to actually date, I joined HAND, which is like exactly what we want to hear. And some of the things that differentiate it are there's like a profile that requires you to fill out a lot of things, 25% of people who sign up for HANDs drop out during the sign up flow because it's actually takes a long time. You have to either like a particular thing on someone's profile or send them a comment,

so you're like engaging with who they are. And it's basically, it's trying to be like more work to filter out the people who aren't interested in that. I think the coolest stats they can share with you are around dating during the pandemic. So there's been a 9% increase in dates from 2019 to 2020, which is super surprising. You would think people were taking the year off from dating. And a lot of those are virtual dates.

So you've probably heard this, but there's been an explosion in virtual dating before the pandemic. Almost no one had been on a virtual date. Now, a majority of people have tried it. Some of these dates are lasting for hours. People are going really deep. And so what happened is a lot of single people

spent the first few months of the pandemic alone being like, to quote my book title, I don't wanna die alone, having to die alone. And they were like, I was making dating not a priority or I was just like having sex with random people and not actually figuring out if I liked them. And that time alone helped them be more self-reflective and figure out who they are and what they want.

And now we're seeing people show up in a different way. So ghosting is actually down 27%. And so there's really been some cool silver linings to dating in the pandemic, which is that people are being more intentional, more empathetic, and actually just focusing more on making dating a priority. Also, wouldn't you say that because we are in a pandemic, there's not, you don't have as many options or you don't want to be

doing it as much. So therefore, what's the first, I wonder what the percentage is going to be, Once this whole thing is lifted, how many breakups that will be or how it's going to go back to how it used to be. Now, again, I keep on saying my friend, I'm going to get in big trouble after this episode. They're like, don't talk about me. But they're staying with people that they met all the way through the apps, because it's not easy right now to date.

So it's like a bird in the hand, I guess, is better than not, right? I'm just curious, we'll have an afterwards, this is just me, me, rambling right now. No, no, I'm totally with you, right? So, okay, there's gonna be people who say, I'll be with anyone so that I'm not alone, they'll get into a relationship,

and when they can date again, those people might break up, right? And are you familiar with the concept of cuffing season? No. Cuffing season is usually around October. This is less like in California where we live, and more, but basically in places that experience winter, right around October, people are like,

oh, I need that warm body to spend the winter months with. And so they get into a relationship, they rush into it. And then when it's spring, and you can date again and meet people out and about, those people break up, that's the stigma of cussing season. So you can think about that applied to quarantine dating where you rush to get into relationship with someone and you're just with them to have the warm body and when COVID is over, then maybe you'll break up. So right, that's one hypothesis. And I'm sure there are people like that. I think there's a couple other situations

that I've been seeing. So one is a close friend of mine, and he would be fine with me talking about this. He had a bad habit. He was always going after women who weren't interested in him. He really just wasn't picking the right people. And when he did wind up with someone who would be good for him, he kind of like let it go or he thought he picked on their imperfections all of that stuff. And because dating in quarantine was so hard when he met one of these

great people who he probably would a nitpick, he actually just said, I'm gonna invest in this person. And so, right, we talked a lot about habits today. The pandemic was the thing he needed to break the bad habit. He invested in that person. They just got a puppy. They're gonna move in together. I don't know if they'll ever get married, but they want to have a kid in the next year. Like, he basically was able to break the bad habit of choosing the wrong person by the fact that there was limited choice. And then you all are going to have people who... I know that guy, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe not that guy by no my guy, that's like that guy. Yeah. And so, there are people I know who are in the best relationship they've been in for 10 years

because they had limited choice. Another type of person is someone who was the hesitator, right? I'll prioritize dating later, I'm not perfect, I'm not there yet. Then they were like, this sucks, I'm alone and I don't want to be alone for the next pandemic. And so it actually just became more of a priority in their life. And I hope that that continues after the pandemic where they say, I'm going to give this more time, I'm going to give this more effort, I'm going to be more and more vulnerable. And so it created this sense of loss aversion, right? The sense of what if I never get this thing that I want? And just that

fear, which is very powerful, is getting them to change their mind. And that's why I called the book, How to Not Dialone. I'm actually supporting, so sort of triggering you to be like, wait, I could die alone? That's a scary thing. And then hopefully you'll take action. Yeah, oh, I love it. Well, thank you. This has been great. I had a great time talking to you, seriously Logan.

The book is called How To Not Die Alone. We just talked about it by Logan Yuri. It's out by the time this podcast airs, it will be out. So we're good. And where do people find you? Where, like, give us, like, where do people get more information? Yeah, you're like, you're like a fountain of information.

Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, people can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at at Loganurie. I also have some fun quizzes on my website, which is Loganurie.com. And yes, I hope people do check out the book, How to Not Dialone. And I also read the audiobooks,

so they might be interested in that. Well, thank you so much for being a guest today. I really appreciate it. Yay! It was fun for me. Thank you. Hey, Habitson hustle. Time to get it rolling.

Stay up on the grind. Don't stop. Keep it going. Habitson hustle from nothing in the summit. All out, hosted by Jennifer Cohen. Visionaries, tune in. You can get to know. This episode is brought to you by the Yap Media Podcast Network. I'm Holla Taha, CEO of the award-winning Digital Media Empire Yap Media, and host of Yap Young & Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit. On Young & Profiting Podcast, I interview the brightest minds in the world, and I turn

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