HealthyGamerGG - Psychiatrist Explains the Science of Love

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Dr. K talks about red flags, love, relationships being a two way street, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's not just, hey, I think you need to do this so you should start, and it's all on you. It's when partners accept responsibility for each other and sort of work together towards making changes, that people end up being the best. So let's talk a little bit about love. So Vox recently had an article called What Science Still Can't Explain about love. And the article is pretty good. It talks a little bit about different perspectives on love. And they sort of interviewed dating coaches, matchmakers, psychologists, and tried to get a sense

of like why is love, why haven't we figured this out yet, right? So like love, like we've got a bunch of science. We understand so much about relationships and, you know, what's going on here. So they make a couple of major conclusions. The first is that our preferences can't always predict attraction. So that's one of the hypotheses that they state. And I'd say I kind of agree with this, that a lot of times we have preferences and we don't really, just because someone meets our preferences or checks our boxes, doesn't necessarily mean that we'll be attracted to them. And what is far more woeful, is that sometimes we are actually very attracted to people who don't meet our preferences, which causes so many problems.

The second thing that they sort of dig into is that, so as they're sort of talking a little bit about, okay, why can't we figure out love? They come up with a couple of theories. So the first theory is that scientists can crack the code if they look hard enough. So this is a theory that basically posits, as long as we do enough research and we crunch enough numbers, we will eventually figure out what it takes to fall in love.

We'll figure out the formula or a question. like, you know, the equation for gravity, F equals GMM over R squared, right? Like, we can figure out love if we just do enough research. That's one perspective. Another perspective is, and this is something that I personally agree with, is that love is actually chaotic by nature. So as I mentioned earlier, I've been reading a lot of papers about neuroscience of love and neuroscience of relationships and things like that. And there are actually a lot of studies that show that love is actually like a chaotic and dysregulated state in the brain. So we know that. that from fMRI studies, which are studies of blood flow to the brain, that when someone is in love,

they start to inhibit all kinds of like useful circuitry in the brain. So our risk assessment circuitry gets inhibited when we're in love. Our executive function kind of gets messed up. Our ability to plan kind of gets messed up. There are all kinds of amplifications of particular emotional circuits and even suppression of other emotional circuits, like suppressing negative emotions, while we're in the state of love. So there's actually evidence that shows that love, at least in the brain, is sort of like a pro-chaotic, pro-bad decision, not considering risk sort of state.

Like it literally we see reduced blood flow to some of our risk assessment parts of the brain. And there are even, if you look at some of the studies, they'll even sort of posit evolutionary hypotheses for this, is that there's a certain amount of stupidness that you have to induce that is sort of tips things towards procreation. So creating babies is like a huge energy investment can cost people a lot. And so what we want to do is like our brain sort of handicaps us and sort of like doesn't

let us really think about the consequences, which may actually be a trait that's been selected for evolutionarily over the course of millions of years. Okay? That's theory number two, some evidence of this. And the last thing that they talk a little bit about is which theory do matchmakers and relationship coaches kind of believe in? And so they talk a little bit about, you know, how matchmakers. matchmakers and relationship coaches sort of function.

And this is sort of what I'd like to share with y'all a little bit. So as we kind of, I'd like to just offer my perspective on this. And what I'd love to do is share with y'all almost like a story of how I came to believe what I did about love. And then also share with y'all, I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make nowadays when approaching relationships. So this kind of starts out with my job as a psychiatrist. So one of the interesting things is that I get to see the inside of a lot of.

lot of relationships. Now, people may think, oh, as a psychiatrist, if you're doing couples counseling, doesn't mean that, doesn't that mean that there's a selection bias and you get to see the inside of the worst relationships, right? Because in couples counseling, it's only like people who have problems that are going to see a psychiatrist. Whereas actually, I see a lot of relationships that are not a part of couples counseling. So just as an example, if I have a patient, but there's nothing wrong with their marriage, let's say I'm treating them for ADHD. At some point, I will ask about their marriage, right? Is their marriage something that is supportive in terms of like, you know, mental health standpoint. Oftentimes, I'll meet their

spouse, right, because we'll have sort of like a kind of meet and greet and sort of make sure we're all on the same page, see if the spouse has any concerns, if there's any kind of plans that we have to develop. So oftentimes I see the inside of a lot of really healthy relationships. And the first thing that I noticed, I made an observation when I was back in residency, I noticed something very strange, which is that the healthiest relationships almost always have at least one red flag. Now, I was kind of surprised by this. So I was meeting people that were like in their 40s and their 50s and like they had really strong healthy relationships when I'd ask them like oh you know when did you meet what were things like you know early on in your relationship there was almost always like

one red flag right so one example is you know I had one patient who I'm going to sort of make these chimerical for those of you that don't know so I'm going to change around gender and age and ethnicity and stuff so that people can't be identified but I had one patient who you know decided to marry someone who was like unemployed in a few years older than they were and And so this was a patient who was 18 years old, decided to marry a dude six years older, who was, like, unemployed at the time. And, like, that seems like a terrible idea, right? You're an 18-year-old marrying a 24-year-old is a terrible idea.

Furthermore, 24-year-old is, like, kind of unemployed, not really going anywhere. Anyway, they're happily married now, doing very, very well in terms of careers and family and stuff like that. So it's kind of like a red flag. And the more that I saw the insider relationships, the more that, like, okay, like, all of these relationships ended up really good, but it sounds like they actually had relatively rocky starts. And so I was really kind of curious about that. And I started to think about, like, how does this work? Like, what's going on here? So I made that observation, but wasn't really

sure. For what it's worth, I kind of think that my relationship also sort of had, like, in a sense, a red flag or yellow flag, in the sense that my wife was dating someone who told her explicitly that they were going to become a monk and be celibate and forsake the world, right? Which, like, seems kind of like red flag territory of me. Like, why would you date? date someone like that. Anyway, she was wiser and understood that I was, you know, didn't understand what I was talking about. But my point is that on paper, like that's sort of like a red flag, right? So then I started getting curious about this. And so I started asking people from my culture, so I'm Indian. And in our culture, we have a lot of arranged marriage, or at least used to.

There's still a lot of arranged marriage. And I started asking people a little bit about, okay, so like, how does this, you all been married for 30 years? Like, how does that work? Like, you know, what was the arranged marriage like? And then I thought they shared with me something that was really, really interesting, which is that when they had an arranged marriage, happiness was not guaranteed, right? So when you get married in an arranged marriage, you're not sure that you're going to be happy. You kind of get married for a number of different causes, a number of different reasons that will hopefully lead to a successful and harmonious life. But happiness in and of itself, or even love for that matter, is not guaranteed. And so the interesting thing that

that I sort of discovered talking to a lot of people who had been in arranged marriages is that they had to work for it. So like you started this relationship with both people sort of under the impression that depending on what we put into the relationship is what we're going to get out. So whether we're happy or not sort of depends on a certain amount of my flexibility, a certain amount of like, you know, how much I try. And it also depends on the other person being flexible and trying. And hopefully if the two of us work together, we can end up at least happy and hopefully in love. And so I thought that was that kind of a really, really interesting perspective. And so I think that's sort of, when I sort of talked to, when I went back to my, you know, my patients and stuff who had been

in love marriages with red flags, I sort of started to ask them a little bit about this kind of principle as well. And what I actually found is that in every one of those cases, there are red flags, which had to be actively overcome by both parties, right? So people were sort of, in a sense, committed to the relationship, stupidly so, right? Because there's that risk assessment part of your brain that's not getting as much blood, right? So you're taking risks. But that both people were sort of, in a sense, committed to the relationship. And they recognized that, like, finding happiness or harmony in the relationship was, like, a co-op game. And so I think this is the big thing that we've lost. We've lost, sort of this idea that a relationship's happiness is not, so what we think right now is that

the happiness in a relationship is sort of determined by the other person. And we sort of see this, right? So the third thing that I want to share with y'all is I talk to some people who, We're like on dating apps, right? So especially more recently past three years, four years, a lot of my patients are using dating app. And I sort of talked to them a little bit about, okay, like, what's the psychology of like, you know, help me understand why you're using a dating app. What are you looking for?

And here's the way that they explain it to me. So I want to be in a long-term relationship. A long-term relationship, let's say 30 years, 40 years, I want to get married, I want have kids, I want to roll together, all that good stuff. Have someone in my corner. And so I kind of ask them, okay, so what determines whether you're in a long-term relationship or not. And they essentially get to, well, whether I'm happy or not, right? Because if I'm unhappy in a relationship, I'm going to leave. And if I'm happy in a relationship, I'm going to

stay. And so the happier I am in the relationship, the more likely I am to stay in a relationship for 30 years. And so their goal, they were sort of equating happiness in a relationship with like long-term committal. It makes sense. So then the interesting thing is that I'd ask them, okay, so like, what determines whether you're happy in a relationship? And that's when they'd sort of essentially say, well, it depends on whether I get what I want. And this is where the selectivity comes in. So essentially what's happening is you have people sort of like thinking, okay, if I get A, B, C, D, and E,

if I check these five boxes, or if my partner checks these five boxes, then I will be happy in a relationship. If I'm happy in a relationship, then the relationship will last. And that's how I'm going to find a long-term relationship. And so I realize that the major mistake that people seem to be making now

is that they think that happiness in a relationship is something that is found instead of something that is built. So if I'm unhappy in the relationship, and this is what we sort of see with online dating, is that like, okay, if this person, if I'm unhappy with this person, instead of working on that relationship and trying to get that person to change or even shockingly change myself, what I'm going to do is just look for someone who checks all the boxes. So since I have, you know, a thousand different people that I can examine over here and see if any of those are better fits, I'm not going to invest in working on this relationship, working on myself, or trying to encourage. this other person to grow and change. And so this is what is crazy is that when I talk to people who are in successful relationships, a huge part of that is actually like them working on themselves. So it's like learning to be flexible when you don't get what you want. Right. So can I be happy

in spite of getting what I want? And this is where we can pull in a bunch of like excellent theory from sort of Eastern religions. So if we look at like the karmic religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, the religions that gave us meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, these kinds of things. And what they basically taught us is that a lot of our unhappiness has to do with what's in here. And actually, what we sort of find is that the more that you get what you want, sometimes the more unhappy you become. So I felt this, you know, very strongly when I was playing video games all day. Because what did I want? I didn't want to go to class.

I wanted to play video games all day long. And so that's what I did. In the next day, I played more video games because I didn't want to go to class. I didn't want to fail the class. Can't fail the class if you don't show up to the final. I mean, you can't fail the class. I guess you can't fail the final. You can fail the final as well.

But it happens somewhere over there. You got a letter grade in the mail on a piece of paper that you don't even have to open, right? So a big part of what I see in relationships now is that everyone is looking for happiness instead of building it, instead of investing it, instead of being flexible. And so then what you sort of, I want you all to think about this, if someone is not willing to be. flexible in compromise and find happiness in spite of them not getting what they want, what situation is that create? That creates, I'm going to date this person for a couple weeks. Oh, I'm unhappy.

Let me find someone else. I'm a little happier for a little while. And then I start to become unhappy. Let me find someone else. Let me find someone else. Let me find someone else. And so you get people who are on dating apps for a very, very long time. And that's because they keep on looking for happiness from their partners instead of doing

any kind of internal work. It's like the complete opposite of what we see in an arranged marriage. And so this is kind of the big thing that I think that we need to really understand is that if you want to be happy in a relationship, if you want to be successful in a relationship, a lot of that doesn't have to do with checking boxes. And we actually use checking boxes as proxies of our own happiness. But if we look at theories of like Eastern wisdom or Eastern psychology, what they say is that a lot of our happiness doesn't actually have to do with fulfilling our desires.

In fact, they say the opposite. it. And the more that you focus on fulfilling your desires, like, the worse off you're going to be. So this is what I think what we're missing is that if you're sort of dating for you to think a little bit about if you're unhappy in a relationship, how much of this does my partner need to change or how much of this do I need to find the perfect partner? And how much of this is like, do I need to learn how to be happy in spite of not getting what I want? And what I tend to find in all of the successful relationships, whether the love marriages or arranged marriages, is that it's people who are willing to be somewhat flexible with what they want and what they're willing to get

and what they're willing to sacrifice or not sacrifice. It's that kind of flexibility that really is a good prognostic factor, success in relationships. And I think even when you look at all the science on that, everyone's sort of looking at relationship factors and people like, okay, did you get what you want? Did you not get what you want? You know, if you get what you want, how does that correlate with success in a relationship? And all the research says it doesn't correlate with success in a relationship. I mean, that's an oversimplification, but a lot of it is not very promising that way, right? That's why we haven't figured it out yet, because when we ask people what they want, it doesn't

seem to correlate very well. But what people don't ask, or there is relationship research on this, and this is what's really interesting, is when people start to ask, not so much about the other person, but about you and your ability to compromise, your ability to be flexible, your ability to, like, really think about what you want, and are you able to prioritize your partner's happiness? And what we tend to see is it's in situations like this where partners are willing to prioritize each other's happiness as opposed to checking all the boxes for their hypothetical perfect relationship. Those are the ones that lead to good relationship outcomes. So a lot of what we're missing in relationships is actually a lack of awareness about our own flexibility.

And how much of my happiness am I willing to work on? How much am I willing to let go? How much am I willing to set boundaries? how much am I willing to support my partner in making healthy changes? It's not just, hey, I think you need to do this so you should start, and it's all on you. It's when partners accept responsibility for each other and sort of work together towards making changes that people end up being the best. So that's kind of a quick summary on relationships and kind of my perspective.

I think that I've had the privilege of looking at a lot of different relationship perspectives, both from sort of like hard science research, including brain scans, doing therapy, with people who are in healthy and unhealthy relationships, and even culturally, like, looking at people who are in arranged marriages versus love marriages. And what I've sort of found is that there's one thing that we're really missing, especially when it comes to online dating.

And that's this idea that, like, whether I'm happy in a relationship or not, does not just depend on whether my partner checks the boxes. It depends on my own flexibility and my own willingness to be happy in spite of not getting what I want. And the more that we move towards online dating and an over-

abundance of choice, the more we have this idea that, okay, if I find the perfect person, if they check all the boxes, then I will be happy. And we assume that getting what we want is what makes us happy, whereas I'm not so sure that that's the case. For the record, I'm not saying that arranged marriage is superior to love marriage or that love marriage is superior to arranged marriage or that there aren't arranged marriages that end very, very terribly. What I'm talking about is for all kinds of long-term relationships that I've seen, what floats to the surface in terms of determining whether that relationship is successful or not. And I think the biggest thing that we tend to miss is that we think that the success of our

relationships depend on the other person. But a lot of the success of our relationships depend on us and how much we're willing to grow, how much we're willing to sacrifice, how much we're willing to put our partner ahead of ourselves. And the healthiest relationships, the longest lasting relationships are the ones where I prioritize my partner and my partner prioritizes me. Yeah, as Fokuz is saying, be flexible to success. scene. Questions. Great question. So SVM Potato is saying, what if you feel like you will never be good

enough so you don't get into a relationship? That's exactly what I'm saying is the problem. Is that if we think about it, what like good enough is that checkbox system, right? So if we assume, okay, so like how do I end up in a successful relationship? Well, people are looking for, so if I'm someone out there, people are looking for someone who checks all the boxes. And so if I find someone who checks all the boxes, then I will be happy in a relationship and the relationship will be successful. Now let's put ourselves in the shoes of someone who is trying to check the boxes, right? So I want to be all these things so I can be successful in a relationship so that people will pick me. My whole point is that people who are successful in relationships don't necessarily

have to check the boxes when we start out. That becoming a good partner is not something that, it's not like you're a finished product. It's not like you get made in the factory and then shipped out to be purchased as the perfect partner, right? And so like if you're like, oh, I'm not great. Like, I don't have a job. I don't, you know, like maybe I'm short. Like, maybe I'm not as physically attractive. Maybe I'm a little bit out of shape. Maybe I have an addiction that I'm dealing with or some kind of depression or maybe like, you know, there's something about me that's off. So I'm not a perfect product. This is the whole thing is that in dating, we think about people as finished products, right? This is, I'm going to select this person to be my mate and they have to check all

the boxes. We like, it's like going into a store and picking up a product that has been, you know, play tested and calibrated and refined. But that's not what human relationships are. I don't think you need to be perfect to start a relationship. In fact, I think it's that kind of thinking that screws people on both sides. Because I'm expecting perfection from my partner. You're supposed to be, I'm looking for someone who's emotionally available, financially stable, clean, has their own house, drives their own car. Is financially independent.

We already said that one once. Is good looking, knows how to groom themselves, is self-sufficient, can do their laundry, can cook. doesn't use any drugs or uses the same level of drugs that I do, but doesn't use any more. Is religious. Is not religious. So we're expecting perfection from our partners. And on the flip side, we have people who are like, I'm not perfect yet. What do I do?

You date anyway. You acknowledge that like when I started dating my girlfriend, like I had no job, no money, no net worth, shitty GPA, was planning on becoming a monk. Like, I had like five red flags. All I had going for me was a good set of hair. And so like, that's my point is that when you care about someone and when you're, when your brain gets muddy up here, you start disinhibiting certain parts of your brain. You start inhibiting the more calculating parts. And then you work towards it, right?

You say, okay, so like you're unemployed and, you know, you've got a crappy GPA. So like, let me help you try to build your life. And so if your life isn't entirely together, you know, you work towards it. I make one comment about hair and chat goes wild. Someone's asking, what do you think about getting back together with your ex? So here's what I'd say, not knowing anything about the situation. Let's talk about exes for a second. You should only get back together with your ex if both of you are committed to working on the problems that made you exes.

It's not about them having changed or you having changed. Both you all have to be committed to fix whatever crap caused you all to break up in the first place. And if people are committed to that change, then it's not a bad idea, knowing nothing else about the situation. But if people aren't committed to that change, then you're in trouble. Ami the Pleb or Ami the Pleb is saying, what if you feel like you don't have the capacity to help the other party, then I don't think you're ready for a relationship, right? So the thing about a relationship is that, remember, that it's, it's on equal footing. So let's talk about another relationship that is problematic. So sometimes we have a relationship between a broken person and a

whole person. One person who's got their crap together, another person who doesn't have their crap together. So these relationships can start out very lopsided, right? Because one person is doing the caring of and one person is being cared for. And that can be okay for some amount of time. So like those I've seen those relationships actually work out, but the goal there is that, you know, both people have to be invested in trying to take care of each other, in trying to support each other and trying to help each other grow. But you may be asking, but if I'm the busted one, how do I help my partner grow if they have all their crap together? Well, you help your partner grow and you support them by investing heavily in yourself so that they don't have to carry all the time, right? Like, it's in

recognizing that, okay, the thing that I can do the most for my partner right now is in taking care of myself and getting myself into such a place where they don't have to take care of me, where I can start taking care of them. And that's the whole point behind a relationship is that y'all share the load. And so if you're not carrying your part, the best thing you can do to help your care, your partner is to start carrying your fair share and really focus on yourself. And I think that's, that works out great. Now, this person said, I recognize I actually kind of reverse what I was saying, but they were sort of saying, like, what if I can't take care of someone? So I would be super careful because if you're not in that situation where you really can't take care of yourself,

you could be setting yourself up for one of the many other lopsided situations that don't end well. So we share the side that goes well, but here's what can happen a lot of time. One thing that happens is that the relationship becomes dependent, where one person is always doing the lifting and one person is always doing the receiving. Then we feel love, right? And then we feel guilt because we're not kind of, but like there's love involved and maybe there's even like intimacy involved and stuff like that. so things get tangled. And then like we,

then we get into complacency of dependence, which is very, very common. My partner never does the laundry, never does the sheets, never cleans the house, and I just do everything for them. Or my partner doesn't get a job, is home all day,

is depressed, you know, and I support them. We can fall into this like dependency relationship very, very rapidly. And then sometimes, why don't people leave those relationships? Well, it's because I don't know if you'll get this,

but people are afraid of being alone, right? Sometimes we're in a relationship with someone who's very dependent. on us and we think that like if we don't want to give up on love we don't want to be a bad person we don't want to abandon them and by the way if we abandon them am i ever going to find anyone so there are all kinds of problems that end up with when we've got this kind of like imbalanced relationship sometimes we can also develop power dynamics that's another reason why this these relationships can go poorly right because if i'm making the money and you're not making the money

then it's my way to the highway i get to make all the decisions and that can be sort of toxic in a relationship you know if you're not ready to help someone else in a relationship i think probably the best answer is to focus on yourself first and have the capacity to give, because that's what a successful relationship requires, have the capacity to give. But you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to like check all the boxes ahead of time. That's my whole point. If you think about, you know, who is going to end up in a more successful long-term relationship. So let's say scenario number one, I check all the boxes. Therefore, someone agrees to date me because I check all the boxes ahead of time. And then what happens is like what happens if I uncheck a box in the future?

and then that person is unhappy. Let's say that they want someone who's got a nice set of hair. And then I start to go bald. And now they're unhappy. What was their solution to happiness? Their solution to happiness was find the perfect partner. And as long as a partner is perfect, then I will be happy. And if partners starts to lose hair, well, now I'm unhappy.

And what's my solution is find the perfect partner. So what do we do? Divorce. Versus someone who's more flexible with their happiness. My solution is I'm going to find someone that I really love, even if they're not perfect. And we're going to work together towards building a relationship that's healthy. and we're going to work together towards building a life that's good. That's my point, is that like we just assume that other people checking boxes of our criteria

is going to lead to a healthy relationship. And that's like, that's not a good assumption. Melin Biscuit is saying there's no such thing as the perfect partner. I completely agree with you. But just because there ain't no such thing as the perfect partner doesn't mean that people won't date you because you're not perfect and doesn't mean that they're going to stop looking for perfect. Half the problem right now is that we've got a ton of people out. there who are looking for the perfect partner who doesn't exist.

But they have no problem judging people for not being perfect and they're going to keep looking for it. And so what you see is people who are getting older and older and older on dating apps who are getting more and more and more selective, right? So it's like I date one person and these are my four criteria and by the way, I didn't realize that my partner was a gamer. So next time around, no gamers. So now I had a fifth criteria to the list. No gamers. And then I find someone right because there's 10,000 people out there. I find the one who checks all for the criterion isn't a gamer. Turns out they have an alcohol problem.

Okay, so like no alcoholics next time around. And so the list keeps growing and growing and growing and growing. The more failed relationships that I have, the more I expect from other people. Whereas the problem's in here.