Huberman Lab - Science of Attraction, Compatibility & Romance | Dr. Paul Eastwick

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Dr. Paul Eastwick, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and a leading expert on the modern science of mate selection in humans. We discuss what people actually look for in a partner, including surprising findings about age preferences, finances, and physical attractiveness. We also discuss why dating apps often lead people to select for traits that don't support lasting partnerships. We discuss how initial attractions form and evolve and which factors best predict romantic relationship stability and satisfaction. We also explain activities that can expand your dating pool, as well as practical tools for building and sustaining healthy romantic relationships. This episode is for anyone currently in or wanting to be in a relationship. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Lingo: https://hellolingo.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Paul Eastwick (00:03:25) Evolutionary Models of Dating, Mate Value (00:08:57) Initial Attraction, Maturity (00:12:56) Sponsors: David & Lingo (00:15:21) Dating Apps; Shared Moments & Developing Attraction (00:24:17) First Impressions & Early Relationships; Partner Bias (00:31:41) Friends & Family Support; Relationship Research, Attachment Theory (00:42:15) Sponsor: AG1 (00:43:34) Couple Friends, Advice from Others (00:47:35) Social Support, Women vs Men (00:55:05) Dating App Algorithms, Distrust of Men & Women (01:05:29) Activities & Dating, Observing Date Social Behavior (01:11:25) Texting, Verbal Skills (01:16:15) Sponsor: LMNT (01:17:36) Partner Actions, Dating vs Relationship (01:22:57) Dating & Asking Good Questions; Genuine Connection (01:29:36) Attraction, What Qualities Men & Women Want (01:36:18) Homosexual Dating & Relationships (01:40:08) Finances; Job Loss; Men vs Women, Ambition (01:46:28) Sponsor: Function (01:48:05) Age Difference, Men vs Women Preference; Wanting Children (01:54:58) Church, Activities, Small Groups & Dating; Work; Perceived Similarity (02:07:10) Social Media, Attraction to Alternative Partners, Infidelity (02:19:13) Stranger Attention, Mate Value (02:24:58) Past Relationship Value; Relationship Duration, Breakups (02:34:33) Physical Intimacy & Relationship Satisfaction (02:39:32) Young Adults & Changing Relationships, Technology (02:47:31) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Protocols Book, Sponsors, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you look at who gets the right swipes and who receives messages on the apps, it's the most popular people. I mean, folks have claimed that it's one of the most unequal markets in the world, but regular acquaintanceship is not nearly so dramatic. I don't think the influence of attractiveness ever goes away, right? There's always going to be an unlevel playing field to some extent. But the more that people spend time together getting to know each other, it reduces some of those market forces that give the desirable people all the advantages. Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Paul Eastwick, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis.

Today we discuss the science of attraction, mate selection, and relationships. And I promise you what you are going to hear will surprise you. Paul's research has discovered that much of what you've heard about how people select partners, date, form relationships, even breakup or repartner, is simply wrong, at least when you look at the actual data. For example, his data show that both men and women, when given a choice, select partners that are younger than them. Yes, you heard that right.

It's not just men. Men and women equally select partners. that are younger than them given the choice. His data also challenged the idea that financial status is more important to women when looking for male partners. Turns out that when men are looking for female partners, on average, financial status is as important as it is when women are looking for men. And somewhat less surprising, his work shows that indeed dating apps select for qualities

that are not the ones that research shows builds lasting partnerships. But he also offers solutions to those that are using dating apps to try and find a partner. Today's discussion is not just about finding a partner. It's also about what solidifies and maintains healthy relationships over time. Again, what the data say about that. Things like physical intimacy being among the very strongest predictors of relationship stability, as well as both partners feeling that no matter who else might be attractive to them, that their partner has unique qualities that no one else can match.

So whether you are in a relationship or not, looking for a relationship or not, today's discussion gets into social bonding of all sorts. And repeatedly throughout today's episode, both as it relates to single people looking for a partner, people who are already partnered, we talk about the importance of activities that are done with other people, could be other couples or other single people, et cetera, and that this is critical for those wanting to meet a partner, and it turns out to be critical for maintaining a healthy long-term relationship. We'll talk about what the data say about that. It's super interesting. So today is not just about the real data of how people rate attractiveness, find partners, and the glue that. that keeps people happily together. It's about the real life data and the actions

that anyone can take that help you build and sustain excellent romantic and other types of relationships. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools

to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Paul Eastwick. Dr. Paul Eastwick. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. A lot of theories out there, a lot of speculation about attraction, dating, romance, and relationships, which are separable things, of course. We'll talk about all of them. But one of the semi-dominant themes in the public narrative and indeed on many podcasts

is kind of anchoring to evolutionary theory, which, to put it really coarsely, sort of a market-based theory. You know, people will even say, I married up, or, you know, and people, but quantitative measures on people, they're a six, they're a seven, they're a ten in this, but a four in that, you know, as a neuroscientist, I hear that, and I immediately go to, and again, this is just purely theoretical, oh, this sounds very limbic. This is very much of like the hypothalamus. This is very much like the kind of thing that you might expect under conditions of, like, low food availability.

Yeah. Low mate availability. A lot of weapons and a few, and very few laws. you know, to regulate violence or something, meaning men will harm each other in order to get access to mates. Women will be deceptive. This is the whole idea. And you step back and go,

well, that's not the world we live in now. We have a forebrain. We can make choices. We can be strategic in the direction of benevolence. We can think about kindness. And so to me, it seems we need a revision, or at least a better understanding of what's actually true in 26 and forward. So if you would,

what are your thoughts about what is not true based on the data and perhaps what is true about this, quote, unquote, evolutionary model of dating relationships and so on? The marketplace ideas, I think they definitely have their place. And it derives from a sensible evolutionary perspective, like what you're describing. I think it describes well what happens in initial attraction settings when people are really meeting for the first time. There's this class demo that I do in my undergraduate classes. A lot of people use this demo. And what you do is you have a bunch of your students put a number on their foreheads and they sort of hold it up so that they can't see it, but other people

can. And you tell the students, your goal is to pair up with the highest value person that you can. And you don't know what your number is, but I'm going to count to five and then I want you all to stroll around the room and try to make mating offers to folks. And what you see is that the people who have been randomly assigned a low number, they start to panic because what happens is that nobody will talk to them. And this is random. Yeah. Otherwise it would be very unethical right, right, right. And also who would decide. But if you don't like it. I mean, if you get a low number. It's not an enjoyable experience. And I think there is a parallel to what people are experiencing as they're growing up, or maybe even if they're a little older and they're going

to a party and they haven't met anybody there. So this is an analogy for how people internalize and, you know, act upon something that we call mate value. And it's like what you describe. It's supposedly linked to traits that reflect your core desirability, like maybe your physical attractiveness, but it could be other related traits too. It could be things like the size of your bank account or your status. What we tend to see is that when people are meeting for the first time, this is a reasonable facsimile of how people behave. But interesting things tend to happen when people get to know.

know each other over a little bit more time. What then tends to happen is that that agreement that is required for that study to work, that study only works because you can read the numbers on people's foreheads. But if I were to blur that number, we wouldn't see as much pairing up. It wouldn't be as sad and as difficult for the people with low numbers. And in real life, that's kind of what tends to happen. We stop agreeing about who the aides are, and who the fives are. And people might on average say that you're a six, but if I've gotten to know you over time,

it means there's a chance I think you're a nine. There's also a chance I think you're a three. And so that increase in idiosyncrasy and variability, I think is a really fortunate thing. And it's the thing that's going to allow a lot of partners to find each other, even if they're not consensually the most desirable people. Consensually meaning in the eyes of others.

Right. Right, right, right. So even if on average people think you're kind of middling, with enough time, people are more likely to find, okay, but, okay, you all think I'm a five. But she thinks I'm a 10. And then what you're kind of crossing your fingers for are these moments where I think she's a 10 too. And it's this level of sort of disagreement or the emergence of what we might call compatibility. that I think it's been missing from the evolutionary narratives. But I think it plays a core part in explaining how couples get together as well.

Wow. So many things come to mind. The first thing that comes to mind is the question, you know, who and what are others looking at? Yeah. It seems like one of the more, I want to use the word immature, but let's say less evolved, not in the evolutionary biology context, but kind of like life maturation sense,

like less evolved aspects of self is when, we are not thinking about what we actually like and don't like, but we're paying a lot of attention to what other people like and dislike as a barometer of what we should do or not do. Now, of course, that can be very informative in healthy ways, but when it really comes down to it, it's a potentially very toxic aspect of human nature, right? So what I hear you saying is that at some point there's this kind of dating romance and relational maturity that people come to where they're really able to sense what they actually like and they're able to put the blinders up to how other people are necessarily behaving.

Like, does everyone like this person? Do they not like this person? And the words that come to mind, the two words, are junior high. Like the junior high school dance for a number of reasons is kind of the first time when most kids are starting to hit puberty or somewhere in puberty at that phase. And so there's a lot of recognition of others and kind of like who, you know, is cool, who's not cool, who's getting attention, who's not getting attention,

seems to surface first in junior high. Yeah. And admittedly, we're all pretty immature in junior high. Yeah, exactly. So has this been looked at in a structured way? For instance, are there adults who are good at ignoring what the consensus is? And are they able to find mates and set up relationships more readily than people who are paying a lot of attention to what other people,

like and don't like? Yes. I am sure that there's considerable individual variability in how people react to what's going on around them. Sometimes you see this phenomenon called mate choice copying, but what that essentially means is that, you know, you kind of look to see who's attracted to somebody in my, you know, is everybody attracted to this person? Well, there must be some signal there. I'll sort of follow that. I totally agree it's a very junior high way of thinking about this whole process. But I think a lot of what is happening is that if people are spending time together, and I often go back to thinking about what is it like when we're hanging out in mixed gender groups if you're heterosexual. So we're spending time together and maybe for whatever reason, I happen to spend more

time with this person, we find something interesting to chat about. I see her reacting in situations that other people don't get to see. And so the particular time that I spend with her ends up being the material that I use that causes my opinion to diverge from everybody else's. So everybody else might be like, she's not all that great. And I think, but you weren't there when we were hanging out talking about, you know, some family challenges that I had. I'm trying to put myself back and like, what were the things we would have been frustrated about in high school? But, you know, talking about, like, problems at school or problems with other friends.

Like, she was supportive and listened to me. And then I was supportive and I listened to her. And that reciprocity through a unique experience with another person, a lot of times this is where initial attraction comes from. It sounds a little squishy. It doesn't sound like the sexy form of attraction that we often think about. But what we see in our work is a lot of times this is how it happens. It takes a little while, but attraction can form when two people spend that time together,

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I'm thinking about movies. Yeah. And admittedly, I haven't seen that many romantic comedies. But there's some pretty awesome. I've seen a few of them. But there's some awesome movies about this issue. And I'll offer some examples that will date myself. I'm ready.

But that seem to fall into at least three bins. One is, you're awesome, I'm awesome. Let's get together. All right. Nowadays, I think, regardless of music taste, I think the kind of like, royally celebrated couple is not a royal couple. Incidentally, I would say it's like the Taylor Swift Kelsey couple.

People, like, people were like, they're both winners. They're both super attractive. They're both super successful. And, you know, whether you like the chiefs or you don't, whether or not you like her music or you don't, you're like, they're like, too, like, badass winners pairing up. And it's very hard to say anything except like, wow, they totally, quote unquote, belong together.

Right. So there's that pairing. And you can find that in movies. And all the like 80s, like John Hughes movies centered around this. And then broke that model. We'll go back to that. The other one would be, yeah, the breaking of that model. The like the, this is very 80s, but the kind of like the athlete, you know, pairs up with the nerd.

Yeah. Right. Okay. Now we, nowadays we have athlete nerds. And so it doesn't work quite as well. And then the third model is the like, well, you're screwed up and I'm screwed up, but we're really good people. Like you get true romance.

The movie True Romance, which is an amazing movie, right? You know, she was a, you know, not by her own choice, apparently. Like, she's like, I've been a prostitute for three, call girl for three days. And he's like, well, I, you know, someone paid for you to be on this date with me. They fall in love. They leave their professions. Yeah. And they go and they go on this sort of semi-crime spree that really demonstrates their immense love and devotion to one another.

And the whole notion is like, you're so cool. They both think the other person is super cool. don't care about their pass and kind of enjoy the fact that they're both kind of from hardscrabble backgrounds. Right. So then there's that. And what's so different about that kind of model compared to like today where I hear, because I don't have a lot to offer about personal experience on apps many years ago,

but it's been a while, is this notion that like everyone, you hear this, everyone's competing for the same small number of people. So it seems like even those three cliche models that are presented in a number of movies, They exist. It's like since when is everyone thinking that they're supposed to pair up with the same small number of people? This is like ridiculous. That's like saying everyone's supposed to like the same top three songs, even though you might not even like that genre of music. Yeah.

That's insanity. Yeah. The apps absolutely pull for this. So when you look at who gets the right swipes and who receives messages on the app. apps. It's the most popular people. I mean, folks have claimed that it's one of the most unequal markets in the world. I mean, it's basically a kleptocracy. The extent to which it's, yeah, kleptocracy, right, the extent to which it's skewed, right? That there's like, you know, the rich, quote unquote, who have all the, you know, who get all the, all the,

all the, the right swipes at the top. But regular acquaintanceship is not nearly so dramatic. So, you know, one example that I like to use is that if our job was just to evaluate whether somebody standing in front of us was hot or not, and it was somebody that we interacted with briefly, and we're making just simple binary judgments, you and I are going to agree about, like, two-thirds of the time. So that's better than 50-50, but it's far from 100%. I think, actually, that would surprise a lot of people. there's a reasonable amount of disagreement there. That's already starting to set the stage for us not necessarily pursuing the most appealing person.

Because if there's disagreement, that means there's a chance that, well, you're going to go for this person, I'm going to go for that person. And it levels out the playing field somewhat. I don't think the influence of attractiveness ever goes away, right? There's always going to be an unlevel playing field to some extent. But the more that people spend time together getting to know each other, it reduces some of those, you know, those market forces that give the desirable people all the advantages. Yeah, the reason junior high school seems so dreadful in my memory. I mean, I had a good time in junior high school, but it was largely, at least for me, the fact that people in my peer group, because it was a pretty broad age. range where we're still among the guys, we're hitting puberty at different rates.

Yeah. So like a game of soccer that at one time was pretty even with respect to who could play well, like suddenly you're playing against what felt like a grown man. Yeah. It was actually a kid in our town who, I don't want to give up his name, who I think he went on to, I don't ever think he became a professional soccer player, but he was just, he was like fully developed by the eighth grade. He was like facial hair and he was fast and he had like legs like tree chunks and he could move

I mean, it was just completely dangerous to have him out on the field with the rest of us. Yeah. Right. And he was respected, adored, admired. And it was very context dependent. This was the other thing I was going to say. I think you and I are both scientists. So coming up, you spent a lot of time in labs. Yeah. I never forget, there was a romance in a neighboring lab that none of us understood. Like, none of us understood. That's funny. And I remember asking my friend who was in this pairing. And he said, the attraction for him, although he, she was also attractive. But the hook was her prowess at aliquotting. So there's a thing you do with antibodies and labs where they come in and you have to put them into the little things

so that it, you know, he frees out a little bit. It's really hard. Yeah, and it's hard to be fast. You get good at it, but apparently, like, he walked in one day and she had a bunch of these little tubes stuffed between her fingers and she was just aliquotting really quickly while talking. And from that moment, he was just like smitten. That's beautiful.

And I'll say they both have. I've never heard an example that's good. I was like her aliquoting process, like, a prowess. And I thought to myself, like, is this like tapping into something? They actually have children. He's a professor. They have children together. They seem very happy.

I think anyone would say they're both attractive people, but their pairing seemed like not predictable by any other external metrics. And the fact that something so specific was the hook. Yeah. And that opened up into what turned out to be a longstanding marriage with kids. It's kind of wild. It is. But is this uncommon?

Because what you described before is kind of like this. Like there's something unique that makes it feel like there's a special attraction that indicates something that opens up to a special discussion. And then there's this kind of intimacy, right, that they share around aliquotting. Around aliquotting. Around aliquotting. Yeah. I don't recommend folks to run out and learn how to aliquot in order to, like, this is not a strategy.

But that's the thing. Thematically it might be. But so what are your thoughts on something like that? Okay. This is an incredible example. And I think if we're talking about couples, I think most people would find this idea intuitive. That if, you know, I ask somebody, what is it that you love about your wife or what is it that you love about your husband? You know you're going to get a bunch of, if you get them talking for long enough, you'll get some idiosyncratic details.

You'll get some stories. I mean, maybe if they're really forthcoming, they'll give you the in-jokes and they'll explain the moments that made them feel something special for this person. I think what I'm suggesting is that those moments, the creation of a narrative with another person, it goes back earlier than we think. And that a lot of times what we're doing, when we're trying to figure out if we're into somebody, yes, we look at how they look visually and we take in all that information and it matters a lot. But we're also talking with them, forming little stories. have a little bit of good banter, that means when I see you at the party next week, I'm going to want to sit next to you and see if we can recreate that moment. And that's often where attraction is coming from. I think that's why the apps are so hard, because it turns it into an interview

where you're trying to impress other people with your traits. And again, traits are important, but it's like it's not the life of the thing. The life of the thing is the little stories and moments that two people are sharing. And that's, I think, is something that people can be doing more with. I'd like to divide this process that we call dating romance relationships, et cetera, into some pieces that may or may not be the right way to segment it. So please change any of what I'm about to toss out. We're talking about impressions that either seed or don't see desire for more time is a interest. Yeah.

And then I'll just broadly separate with compatibility over time. Yeah. So let's spend some time on impressions that lead to desire. Which ones are meaningful, which ones aren't, which ones can be a bit misleading.

I think most people are probably more intuitive about those if they're really honest, like what they find, who they find attractive, who they'd be willing to admit they find attractive if you remove all the other social inputs. Yeah. And so on.

But the compatibility over time piece is the one that is really hard. if you just look at the statistics on marriage, let alone the statistics on, you know, other relationships. It's not a bleak picture, but the numbers don't play out into, if people get together and make the commitment, most of the time it works out. It unfortunately doesn't seem to be that way,

or maybe who knows fortunately. So impressions leading to desire, given that many of the people listening to this, will be thinking about their own history with their current partner or are seeking a partner or maybe not, what do the data say about what people are picking up on as really valid cues that drive real desire, as opposed to the BS about like, well, everyone else thought they were great, or the great on paper kind of thing? Yeah. The early phases especially are just naturally filled with a lot of uncertainty.

And I think this is a bummer for a lot of people because it can feel like you're really into somebody like they're really into me. and then it turns on a dime. So part of that is about, like, searching for signals trying to resolve the uncertainty. And the problem is that it's not like, oh, if I get sufficient evidence that you're smart, that's going to do it. Or if I get sufficient evidence

that you're really good at aliquotting, that's going to do it. What people are, I think, trying to do is they're trying to figure out, like, do I feel enough of something for you that I want to continue this, that I want to keep going. Yes.

But I don't want to act like, because sometimes when people think about the spark, what they think is, oh, it's got to be there right away, and I've already got to be feeling 100 for this person, right? I got to be at the top of the scale. That actually isn't what happens on average. Typically, if you look at what most relationships look like and you look back at the beginning, the typical first impression is middling.

That's how we feel at first. Middling, just kind of, I don't know, middle of the scale. That seemed all right. You know, it was fine. And then we interacted again. Not bad, not over the top. Not bad, not over the top. And as we spent a little more time together, oh, like, actually I find him pretty funny.

Or I think he's really smart. Or, you know, I really like how good a listener he was. And I think what people are often trying to do is get enough moments that fit enough of these different trait categories that they think, well, you know, whatever other people say about this person, like with me, he seems like a pretty sensitive guy. With me, he seems pretty witty. With me, you know, like, I actually think he's really hot when he does XYC. And so if you accumulate enough of those, then you find yourself, you know, it's like you keep coming back. So that's how I think about it is this like slow accumulation of information.

Sometimes people will encounter things like the ick where there's one moment and then they tip over. the edge the other way into feeling like I can't be with this person. Is that typically women who feel that about men? I mean, do men describe that? I think, yeah, men have those experiences too. It is pretty under-researched. And one of the reasons why is because this whole phase I'm talking about is remarkably hard to study.

Because as researchers, we're very good at how do you feel about somebody if you're looking at a picture or if you've hung out for like four minutes. I mean, that's what a lot. of the initial attraction paradigms look like. I like those paradigms. I study those paradigms myself. And then it's very easy to recruit couples and then see what happens to them. What explains why their relationships stay together and why they fall apart.

But this period, and it's my favorite thing to think about, and it's also one of the most mysterious, is, yeah, but what happened from like minute 10 to day 30, where now you were really determined to be in a relationship with this person. And that's a typical amount of time. It usually doesn't happen instantaneously that people know right away, hey, no, this is it. I want to be with this person. It's that slow accumulation. And when we look at it, it's almost like you've got a window of uncertainty and it's slowly collapsing to a stable impression that people have of this person. As they're gather a little bit more information and a little bit more information.

And what you just hope for is that as two people, you're collapsing to a fairly stable impression that is both very positive of each other. And I think a large part, that's how people get together. And hopefully accurate, too. Yeah. So the accuracy part is interesting because, I mean, you know, I'm a psychologist. I'm a social psychologist. And so social psychologists are big into, well, you're.

perception is your reality. And boy, do you see a lot of evidence, especially in relationships, that people are biased when it comes to their romantic relationships. In what sense? It can happen in ways like, you know, everybody kind of agrees that your partner's a jerk, but you genuinely don't think they're a jerk. And when they're with you, they don't seem like a jerk. So any kind of measure I would take, your perception of, you know, your partner versus is everybody else's perception, you would seem to be horribly, positively biased for your partner. The question is whether you're wrong. And I land on the side of, I mean, from your perspective, you're not.

To argue that it would be better to listen to the consensus that your partner is a jerk, kind of, it's sort of like a, you're arguing for like a sleeper effect. like there's wisdom and what other people know that you don't see, the evidence for that is actually not great. It could be, and I'm sure it happens sometimes, but what usually happens in relationships is that people's own impressions and perceptions tend to be the major driver. Now, that can go in the other way, too, because we might all agree, this person would be the most amazing partner to be with, And yet you've now gotten to the point in this relationship where you don't see it anymore and you can't unsee the negative things you've seen. And so that relationship can be very hard to salvage.

The statement has been made by someone I know and trust about all things in life, all things in life, not just relationships, but certainly including them, that if people just treated their taste in people, in music, in art, in experiences, the same way they treated their taste in food, everyone would be a lot better off. Uh-huh. Meaning, if one has the impression that they really like something, they really like this person, then just go for it. I mean, unless there's some sort of danger they're not aware of. Right.

Okay. And we'll talk about consensus communicating danger, separate issue, but it crosses into this online dating thing based on a lot of conversations I've had with you. young men and women. But music, you hear it. You either like it or you don't. We don't tend to have a hard time defending our stance on those things. But when it comes to relationships, it's almost like where many people are walking around with a little or a lot of that junior high narrative in their mind. Not necessarily with somebody that they can't stand because everyone else thinks they're great. I think that's pretty rare. Probably happens, but it's pretty

rare, but at these early stages that you study, that they're navigating that process in a way where they're not in tune with their own taste. They're integrating all this other information in a way that's not helpful. It's not protecting them. In fact, it's just clouding the signal. It's noise, right? In the signal to noise model, like it's noise. It's just pure noise. And as a consequence, people are wasting their time in other people's time. And I don't believe everyone's trying to waste each other's time, it just seems that we're conditioned to do this. Yeah. And I will say it does take a pretty strong person to say, listen, I know that's what you see.

I know that's what they say, but like this person's great. Like they're right for me. And when people do that, in general, people tend to back off. Yeah. And of course, there's Shakespeare about this, right? Yeah, right. But that tends to be cultural pressure of like, no, you two can't be. together or the parents don't want her, one set of parents.

Yeah. I mean, some of the greatest romances have been born out of that FU to the elders, to the community. Right. But this is a little different. Yes. You know, it's a tricky thing to navigate because I think one of the best situations to end up in is where you're in a relationship and let's say it's a new relationship and your friends around you basically think, you know, we're having.

happy for you and we're going to celebrate you and, you know, we're going to celebrate this relationship. We support you. We just wouldn't be terribly interested in this person ourselves. That's the ideal, right? Where it's not exceptionally competitive. You're not worried about your friends trying to poach your partner away, but at the same time, they're supportive of the relationship. Because that support from friends and family, it is important. Like, it's certainly shapes how people feel. There's a way to navigate that that doesn't make it a, you know, like, I'm glad you, I'm glad you like my girlfriend, but like, don't like her too much, please.

You want to kind of try to find that balance there. And that's a tricky thing. I mean, I think this is a lot of what people are trying to navigate in adolescence. They're trying to figure out, like, how can I be part of a friend group and have a romantic relationship and navigate the complexities that come. with that. I mean, I vividly remember these like junior high, early high school experiences of dating somebody, but also your friends are into this person. And actually, it was a relationship where my girlfriend at the time broke up with me, starts dating my best friend. We're all friends now.

It's all fine now. And it's like at this moment that I discover evolutionary psychology, that I discover this narrative. And it just felt like such a double-edged sword because how wonderful is it to think about how people have been navigating these challenges, ex-girlfriends, breaking up with you for your best friend. This has been happening for tens of thousands of years. Like, I'm not alone. I'm not the first person to experience this. And then to also read at the same time, oh, my God, this reflects something true about my deep underlying value, this is kind of scary. So those two things together weirdly were what got me hooked on this. The feeling like evolutionary psychology is fascinating and really bleak at the same time.

Yeah, I agree. I was going to say brutal. I'm sorry you had to go through that, although I'm glad you're all friends. I think it happens. It's all good. Probably not to everyone, but I can remember similar experiences where you're just like, Oh, man, what a gut punch. And part of the maturational process is realizing, like, okay, they might be better suited

and there'll be someone for me. And honestly, they were better suited for each other. All right, all right. I have a question about the science or how to study these sorts of things. So if I set aside my science hat and I say, all right, you can study this stuff. But wait, if we're talking about a kind of unique hook, like let's just assume the person, the people are within the range of attractiveness, again, I hate this quantitative thing.

But they think the other person's attractive. They're dating because they want to find someone, right? They're not resistant to commitment. They're looking for a partner. And the number of histories that people are bringing to that is infinite or near infinite. So let's say the hook is, listen, one person had a hard past based on an abusive household. The other person is really gentle. They had a great past.

and the person feels very safe in that, right? We always think about the trauma bond, right? Which is an unfortunate thing that does seem to happen. But it could also be both people had difficult pass, you know, parents with addiction issues or mental health issues and they can relate. Okay, that's one example. The other is we both value X. We both value Y. And so the unique glue is near infinite, right?

So the question I have, and this isn't a challenge, it's just a genuine curiosity, is how do you study this process then? because what are the universals of what, is it what people define as some kind of like lock and key that they didn't know they were looking for that lock and key combination? And then they go, oh, this feels unique. And the reason I ask this is because I want to frame the science, but also I want to know to what extent being aware of what's critical to oneself is important in this process.

Does it make sense? There's a lot of words there. But basically like how well one knows themselves can often help. lead to better choices in partner choice. And so people go know like, gosh, I really, really like someone that I could feel understood around this or feel really safe around this or make them feel really safe around that. With any relationship, it's almost like you have to hold these two seemingly contradictory truths at the same time.

One is that no two people in the history of the world have experienced what we're experiencing right now. And yet, there are broad general principles that we can point. to that can explain some of the dynamics of every romantic relationship that has ever existed. So when it comes to broad principles, I love the attachment framework. I mean, what's fascinating about attachment is that this is just as evolutionary as all the other evolutionary theories you've heard about online. It's just a different evolutionary theory.

But this perspective suggests that we are creatures that form bonds. with each other. We essentially crave closeness, intimacy, support. We thrive when we get it. We're more likely to recover. We sleep better. We get all of these benefits from close-attached relationships. But for some people or at some points in their lives, we can struggle to have those kinds of relationships, sometimes because we become too anxious about them. We need them a little too much. We become uncomfortable in our own skin. Or we tip the other way, we become very avoidant.

We become overly independent. We become convinced that we really don't need anybody else. These are broad attachment dynamics that people will go through their whole lives having to navigate. A lot of people have probably heard about like you can have an anxious attachment style or an avoidant attachment style. And all of that is true. But one thing we know today from studying more couples and getting better at studying couples over longer periods of time is you realize that, boy, people's attachment orientations really can change. So somebody can come into a relationship with an avoidant trauma-filled past, but with enough time with the right kind of person, again, sharing their unique bond, which maybe science will never crack. they know all about it, that person will start to become less and less avoidant with time.

They'll become more secure. They'll get more of those physiological benefits out of the relationship. They'll get more of the support-related benefits out of the relationship. And that can, in effect, turn somebody into a more secure person. So these are the attachment lessons that I often point to. And I think they're useful for at least helping me remember that tension between like, yeah, anxiety and avoidance. Two very broad processes that are always happening behind the scenes. And yet, the way it unfolds for any one particular couple, it's always going to be this weird, unique combination of stories and in jokes and little moments that's scaffolded up to hopefully, you know, help somebody become more secure eventually.

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And my answer is always AG1. It has just been so helpful for supporting all aspects of physical health, mental health, and performance. If you would like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get a special offer. For a limited time, AG1 is giving away a free bottle of their new omega-3 co-enzyme Q10 product. Omega-3 and co-enzyme Q10 are known to support cardiovascular health, cellular health and energy generally, brain health, and much more. I personally take them both every day. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get a free bottle of the new omega-3 co-enzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. Seems to me that barring, again, like an emotional or physical safety issue,

the less that couples are talking to other people besides a trained therapist, if they choose to do that, maybe not even doing that, about their relationship, probably the more protected their relationship is from the darts of envious people. Yeah. The unhelpful positive comments from people, right? Because there could be instances where a relationship is really flagging and someone doesn't disclose that. And they don't really understand what's going on. And were they not to share that?

Then, you know, everyone's getting all this positive input. And they think, well, I think this is just how it's supposed to go. Yeah. So there's the suffering and silence piece. Yep. We want to, I don't think that's good. But there's the kind of going out for external assessment piece. And as I say this, you know, it's funny because we, you're at UC Davis and I, my PhD there.

I was just remembering like when you pick projects in graduate. school, you get some consensus about what's a good project. Yeah. But so much of becoming a good scientist is kind of learning to put up the middle finger and just keep going. Yeah. As the sort of pressure test of doing science is people going, well, is that really that interesting?

And you don't really know how much to pay attention to it. And it kind of pays to be a little bit bulldog-ish and just go, yeah, I don't know, like, and just ignore it and just keep going. I can say there's also true in any kind of creative endeavor or public-facing life. It doesn't make good adaptive sense to pay too much attention, but nobody wants to be the person that like steps in it or does something really stupid. But in relationships, if something feels good, maybe we shouldn't be going out and getting, you know, putting our finger in the wind to get input. So it's fascinating because I mentioned earlier that, right, the extent to which you feel at least, like the people around you have your relationships back. that's a useful thing.

But I think that probably isn't happening through a process of, yeah, like pseudotherapy, I want to talk to my friends about my relationship, or at least to the sense that that is happening, I bet you're right. That has some real risks. I think probably the good version of this process or the one that I would advocate for comes from research looking at like couple friends or like double date nights. So I'm not asking you for input on my relationship, but in effect, I'm asking you and maybe your partner to experience our relationship in real time by hanging out together the four of us.

And so that can often feel like validation without explicitly asking for it. And I think that can often be a very good thing. And there's research showing that, you know, generally couples who feel like they have couple friends and are embedded in networks like that, that generally tends to go well on average. So, yeah, I would think about it that way. It's like you can feel that you have the support of the people around you without directly asking for their assessment of your relationship because the realities, other people don't know. And this is hard as a judge because when I encounter couples and I have friends who are in

relationships, it is so tempting to look at that relationship and think like, man, like, she shouldn't have done that. Or, I don't know. If I were her, I wouldn't stand for this. But I'm not in that relationship. So unless you are a therapist and they're coming to you for therapy, I find it useful to try to resist that impulse because a relationship is this vast, deep store of information that two people have, and often were not privy to what's really going on there. I'm going back to junior high school again. I can remember this one dance. I hope this isn't dramatic.

No, no, it's not, not at all. But we had this all-girls school in our town, Castilea school, which was a boarding school. And so their dances were the best because they'd invite people from other schools. But all the guys were really excited to go, right? Because the numbers were really, like, worked out really well in our favorite. God, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And boys and girls,

was at middle school, right, would go to these dances. But that means you just have like an outsized pool of, so everyone got someone to dance with at some point. This is what mattered in the seventh grade, right? But there were these people. I had to say there were these individuals who were not going through the admittedly, like, tense challenge

of first dance, first slow dances. This was before phones and it was tense then too. Yeah. And they weren't doing any of that. What were they doing? They were running around. telling people about who was doing what and who was doing that. And I remember thinking at the time,

I mean, I'm no psychologist then or now, but thinking like they're avoiding the whole thing. Yeah. This is like going to a soccer game. And instead of playing soccer, they're like critiquing people from the sidelines because it's a lot easier to do that and then to actually get out there and risk,

and risk, you know, like being the goalie that lets the winning shot through. And remember thinking like, these people are really, really corrosive. One or two in particular. I don't know whatever became of them. Hopefully they're doing well. their lives. They got over this. But those people exist throughout life.

Yeah. Meaning they're rarely the people that are happy in their own relationship life. Now, I have to say it's probably a Y chromosome link disorder, but I assume that my friends who are in male friends who are in relationship, if they're still in the relationship, that it's going great. That's funny. There's not a lot of feedback. Like, there's not a whole lot of feedback exchange. That said, if something were really, like really off, I assume that they would bring it up, but probably not to meet. Yeah. Like, I do think that there's probably a sex difference here. And these things are changing now.

But I think that there's not a lot of sitting around talking about how well or poorly the relationship is going. It's sort of like, you know, you ask about somebody's spouse. Like, how are they doing? And they go, yeah, great. Like, we did this this weekend. There's not a whole lot of, yeah, we had this one moment of exchange that was kind of sticky.

Can I get your input on? Yeah. Like that's not happening. That's just not happening. At least not in my life. I'm glad you brought up these gender differences because I think you're hitting on one that at least, again, as a relationship's researcher, I would. would sit here and say, I think this is the big one. And the big one is that women generally are

better at cultivating social support from all corners of their lives, not just their romantic partner. Whereas for men, it's largely their romantic partner. That's where they're getting most of their support, intimacy needs met, probably the person who at least for a while is mostly in their corner. And this is why you see across the full range of the arc of a relationship that men are always a little bit more eager than women. Eager in what sense? Eager in all the ways I want to be in this relationship in the first place.

I'm more likely to say I love you first. I'm more likely to want to be exclusive. I'm more likely to want to take things to the next level. Men are more willing to do that. This one's countercurrent to all this stuff about men being non-committal. Yeah, right. So like, I don't, I don't, this is what, there's like new review papers on this that are really compelling. And it's like kind of the same effect size across the board, which is how we talk about, you know, how big is the sex difference?

You know, it's, it's medium size, but it's just right there all the way through. Through breaking up, who wants, who's more likely to want to break up? It's women who are more likely to want to break up. Men are more likely to be thinking about their exes. And the, not while they're in a relationship. Right, right, right. Now while they're in a relationship, right. Now it's all the meme.

That's the meme. You know, I went online. It's not the meme. The meme is like, who's he thinking about. Exactly. Okay, yeah. Exactly. The reason put forward for this,

and I find it very compelling, is that that's because men just don't quite have their social lives put together in the same way that women do. Meaning they don't have a lot of male friends or, by the way, I should have set up a disclaimer at the beginning. I should have said this. To make the conversation a more fluid, we're framing everything in the context of heterosexual pairings.

But I think it's fair to assume that this would also extend to homosexual pairing. I think it would. In many ways. But men have friends. Yeah. I realize activity-based friendships are, you know, kind of the dominant theme. Men not getting, having connection in other things. Yeah.

You know, could it be that the, But like the connection that I feel to my male friends and coworkers is very deep. They're important to me. They're like family to me by now. We spend so much time together. So it feels connected. It's just, but it's a very different kind of, I don't ever think of the word of intimacy. I think of trust.

Yeah. And I'm not trying to just, you know, like, you know, put up a wall to my whatever feminine traits I have in Harbor. You know, like I'm cool with that. I'm good with the idea that I have emotions and that I have needs and stuff. But I think it just makes good intuitive sense to me that if I have something that I'm really, that I want input on that's of a more, like has a more of an emotional undercurrent, that I would bring that to my romantic partner. So here's the question I would pose. I would be clear. I'm not a therapist.

I'm a scientist. But I would ask you this. If something went wrong, do you feel like you have a sense that there are other people in your lives? not your partner, but other people that you could go to if you needed to. Definitely. See, that is the essence of social support. It's actually not literally do you take people up on it. It's do you kind of have a vague sense that people are around?

And that's the part that matters. That's the part that gives us the health and well-being benefits. It's like a bank account you never have to dip into. It just gives you the sense of it. Yeah, right. Right, there you go. Luckily, it's a vast account. I try not to make too many withdrawals on it.

Yeah. So just the feeling that it's there is really the core component. And I think there are a lot of men, not you and not me, but a lot of men out there that don't feel like they have that social support bank account. Like a close male friend or female friend. Yep, or female friend. That's purely platonic. Or family, for that matter. I mean, you know, who's more likely to lose touch with siblings? I'm willing to bet that that's more likely to be men too.

So I think this is part of like the modern challenge of masculinity that that worries me that I point to. Like I want to help men at least have that sense. I think they can cultivate it through all the activity-based things that you describe. And like I did that myself throughout my 20s and 30s. Like I could not count the number of kickball and softball teams that I participated in. And I did that not because I wanted support. I don't think I ever got emotional and cried in front of any of those guys,

but I knew they were there and that if I ever had to go to that, I could. I'm talking about memes and internet themes and I have to be careful doing that because I don't want to put too much weight on the direction of those things and what they really mean. The science is what I'm interested in.

But, you know, I think most guys would probably say that that scene in that movie, The Town, where Ben Affleck walks in and says, you know, listen, we got to do something. People are going to get hurt. We got to do this. And you can't talk to anybody. And his friend's only response is, who's driving? Yeah.

Is kind of like the essence of what a lot of men want and kind of idealize male friendship as. Yeah. Like, are we got to go bury a body or create one? And there's, it's just that it's the loyalty. It's the trust. A lot's encapsulated in that. It's a bad, quote-unquote, badass scene. Right.

but they're about to do something real bad. I recommend that. That's not the friend test you want. I know people who use that as the friend test and they pay dearly for it. But the point is that friends who aren't going to ask too many questions that they can hold in the center of their mind

without any long preamble that your friend needs something and you'll do whatever it is that they need because you love them. I think that that's what the deeper layer of it. Yes. Exactly. I'm realizing there, I have this like sense that there's a big contradiction, not in the

scientific literature, but in the public perception. Yeah. Which is this. I feel like one common narrative these days is, look, men failed. They just failed. Like they didn't step up, right? They weren't committal. You know, we have to take care of them.

They live much longer in a relationship. We die much earlier. Yeah. That's one narrative. that you hear a lot about. It's a scary narrative, right? Because you also hear the narrative. Yeah, like women are just very extractive.

They'll trade up. You know, how, unfortunately, your friend dated your... Right. They broke up. She broke up with you first. Right, right, right. You know, a lot of the things that come into play, like the Coldplay Concert affair that went viral,

it was about this woman. And a lot of it was pointed at her, him too. But, you know, it was like a lot was made of this thing that does happen, that there's this notion like, well, who would actually pair up with their, you know, their female friend, a woman pairing up with a female friend's husband or brother. There's a lot of them. And you never know how much of these narratives are being fed. So I feel like now we're at this point that seems to be resolving a little bit, but we've been

at this point where there are these two camps. And I saw something on Twitter X some time ago and it just like stopped me in my tracks, which said the way you destroy a society is to get the men and the women to hate. each other. And maybe I would just underwrite distrust each other. Right. And so we need to move through this. I'm not asking you to solve it. But what did the data say? For instance, if we were to look at dating apps and I ask, do you think that the dynamics on dating apps, the algorithms, which are clearly designed to make the company's money, do you think those are more female-driven algorithms or male-driven algorithms, not meaning who runs the companies?

We know the answer to that for the most part. The question is, do you think that the apps are trying to optimize for more women to come to them or for more men to come to them and stay there? Because the theory is always kind of launched in the opposite direction. And if that wasn't clear, I'm just wondering who's got the power. My understanding, now again, the dating apps are hard to decipher because these companies don't share data with us. I've worked with some matchmaking companies data. They're more interested in generally in collaborating with scientists because they've, they got to make people on dates happy. They don't work on engagement.

They work on happy dates. So they're more interested in talking to scientists. But I think when your goal is getting users and getting engagement, what you're probably trying to do is bring more women in. Because my understanding is that there's more men on the apps. Is that right? Yeah, I think so. What I don't know, and I don't know if anybody knows other than the people at these companies, is like, okay, but how many of those apps are in use and how many people, you know, regular users,

I'm not sure. So you got to bring more women in. But again, engagement is the goal, right? I mean, that's what the apps want. They want you spending time on it. And then they want you to get the fancier features. So is that going to be more geared toward men? It might be.

but I'm kind of speculating here. I expect that when you're trying to create an app for heterosexual men and women, you're going to have to somehow marry those two challenges. And look, one of the bigger gender differences that we see in the whole realm of sex and relationships is in swiping behavior, the fact that women will swipe yes on like 5% of the men they see, but men swipe yes at about 50-50. But that fits the kind of evolutionary, quote unquote, narrative, like men being less selected, wanting to spread their DNA, this kind of thing.

I mean, to my mind, that whole thing around like, Medwa spread their DNA. Okay, like, I believe in evolutionary biology, sure. But there's a lot of modern features that make like accountability for offspring and things. It's not like men can run around just having kids with anyone and afford all of that, right? I mean, you know, we were talking earlier, there's sort of like two models. There's like the, there's like the gangus con ideal within this evolutionary biology model. And then there's, you know, kind of like, where are we now? I mean, I don't think anyone, with the exception of some very wealthy people who have kids with lots and lots of people and clearly can afford it.

I don't think anyone's thinking they're going to go out and just have kids with as many people as they possibly can. Right. And so what's so interesting about these gender dynamics is that, from my perspective, they tend to get the largest, the biggest gulf between men and women in the situations that are the weirdest. So, for example, and this is a real study, you recruit Confederates, so that means it's somebody who's working for the experimenter. And then they go around campus and they ask people, I've noticed you around and I find you very attractive. Would you like to go to bed with me? And when you do this, you find that men are about 20 times more likely to say yes to that request than women.

Very few women say yes to this request, but a reasonable number of men do. All right. But the thing about that experiment, and that experiment is very valuable and it's very influential, and I love at least that it was real, that people were actually out in the world doing something, even if it's a little wild and probably a little scary, especially for the women. But if you do this one little tweak and you say, yeah, okay, but how about like the last time that happened to you in real life,

it's like in a context where you knew people? And then you look at the gender difference, it's not 20 times more, it's two times more. What do you mean? It's like the last time somebody you know, like among a group of friends, like, ask like, hey, do you want to go hook up? how much more likely than are men to say yes than women. And men are still more likely, but they're only twice as likely,

rather than 20 times as likely. So this is not my belief, but the cynical in-sale types on the Internet, or just cynical guys will say, we'll say, oh, that's because women are sleeping around more than they used to when the first experiment was done. I don't believe that's true. Yeah.

But I can tell you that would be their reflexive response. Like, like there's, so there's this ammo. There are these arrows that each side holds. One side holds the guys aren't stepping up. They're not managing their own lives, let alone making themselves somebody who would be attractive as a partner who could listen and help take care of somebody. Because the notion of taking care of something we can talk about,

the guys are saying, well, they're just all extractive. You know, and there's deceptiveness there. And they'll trade up at a moment's notice, you know. And so, I mean, I don't want to feed. the flames of distrust, but the data you just provided, what are they, what is the conclusion? Like, that's the result. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But in that paper, what's the, the authors, you know, we the authors therefore conclude that.

So I would, I would conclude this, that approaching strangers is, especially in a romantic or sexual context, is very, very tricky, very challenging, and it is a weird, modern skill. Because we actually evolved in environments where you didn't actually meet that many strangers. So if some people are adept at that, God bless. But for most of us, we had to get to know people over time. We needed that long process to make a good impression on somebody because most of us are like not all that high and not so appealing that people fall for us the moment we see them. And so that is what I would tell these hypothetical incels is, I think part of

of the problem is that you're locked into a way of thinking about sex and romance that it's about a pickup line or it's about an initial impression. I think women are more interested in casual sex when it's somebody that they like kind of know and have been friendly with for a while and have had like some good banter with. And if you surround yourself with people, not just women, but also men and you meet friends of friends, you're going to find more opportunities that way. So it's like a shift in the mindset that we have about how it is we meet people and how it is we get to know them. And that hitting on strangers is like low yield, very difficult. Spending time with friends, it's time consuming, though it's enjoyable in and of itself.

It's a time consuming approach, but it's ultimately going to be better for more people, you know, on average at least. In light of the apps, social media, this divide, I'm very grateful that you're bringing up this notion of spending time in small groups. Yeah. Probably around certain activities. Could be pickleball. Could be a barbecue. Sure. I mean, that's how people used to meet.

Yeah. You know, sometimes there's work adjacency. I mean, I think one of the reasons the Cole play thing went so viral is that the woman was head of HR. There were a number of things that were ethical violations independent of, like, they tried to kind of rescue it. like, but they were in love and their marriages were failing and people were like, there are violations down the line on this, right? You know, in laboratories, many people coupled up in laboratories. You know, my advisors were always like really adamant that no one should do that.

Oh, interesting. Oh, yeah. So they tried to lock it down. I mean, in graduate school, I worked alone in the lab. But my graduate advisor actually suggested I not even date within our graduate program. This is peer to peer. I was a graduate student. And for the most part, I obeyed.

But I was so focused on work. And I guess it happened with, like, you'd go to meetings, you'd meet other graduate students. So it was really peer to peer. Yeah. In my postdoctoral laboratory, my advisor was like vocal to everyone. Like, no dating in the lab. And of course, there are certain married couples nowadays with kids, several of them, in fact, that met in the lab just by proximity, interest.

And who knows, aliquotting prowess, who knows. Somebody out there is an incredible aliquar that never got to attract somebody. Totally, to my knowledge. By the way, boys, again, this is not a way to attract a mate. unless you're a molecular biologist, perhaps. But I think that there's real value in this, in this, because unlike our earlier discussion where other people's input can be kind of toxic

to the process of understanding, really getting in touch with one's sense of taste, I like this person I don't, this feels safe, it doesn't feel safe. And I'm not using, by the way, the safe language to be politically correct. Like some people feel emotionally unsafe because it's just like,

like if there were a stressful circumstance, they would dissolve into a puddle of their own tears. That's a different version of it. I think we all kind of like flip to the extremes, but that's another aspect. But this is a context in which you can get a read of how someone behaves their values, their reflexive levels of kindness or lack thereof

with other people. Yeah. You get a lot of data. Yeah. In a setting that you're hopefully enjoying yourself in any way. That seems very, very valuable. So we're talking 80s movies and 90s movies already. So I'm going to throw out say anything.

Oh, yeah. Do you remember saying anything? Yeah, absolutely. So the John Cusack lead character asks out the Ione Sky character. But where they go on their first date is absolutely fascinating. They go to a party. So they are clearly going together, but they don't spend the whole party attached to each other. And they're not interviewing each other like they met on an app.

They're actually kind of watching each other as they low. through these various groups. And sometimes they're talking to other folks about the fact that they're kind of on a date right now and how is it going. But they're also talking to each other. And it's kind of a beautiful depiction of this old kind of lost art of you're dating, but you're also with other people seeing how they behave. And one of the moments where Ione Sky sort of you can see you're starting to fall for John Kusack is when he's, he's actually looking out for some of the other folks there, like, you know, taking their keys away so they don't drive. And I think that that idea of like watching how we behave around other people can be very powerful.

So one of his unique qualities was that he's protective of other people and responsible when he put other people's safety ahead of his own desire to go out and drink that night or something. Yeah. Yeah, I forgot that scene. Yeah. That's a perfect segue to what I was going to say next, but I'm brought to this mildly traumatic experience in high school. where I didn't go to any high school dances early in high school. I was like really in the skateboard community, just really focused on that.

And then it was my junior year of high school, the now woman, then young woman, girl, whatever, asked me that it was the Sadie Hawkins dance where the girls asked the boys. This was very old-fashioned, right? It already assumes, right, that the guys always ask the girls, which was pretty much the standard. We go.

and she was a year older and extremely beautiful, super kind. It ended up being a very long-term relationship. But I remember going and she had something back then where her hands would get really cold. She had this thing where it was a cold night. And so she went into the bathroom. She said, I'd have to like warm my hands. She was in there a really long time.

And I'm standing out there and people are coming up to me. And I'm like, what are you doing here? Like, why are you at a dance? And I said, so-and-so invited me and no one believed me. There was like, there's no chance. And I have to say, it was the most mortifying thing. And I kept waiting for this moment where she would come out of the bathroom and, like, vindicate me. And they all kept, like, dissipating before she came back.

She eventually came back. And I just remember thinking, like, oh, man, like, nobody even, and I'm thinking, like, I'm either completely outclassed, like, completely outclassed. Or, like, this is one of the best opportunities ever landed in my lap. And I'm going to pursue this with everything I've got. So I went with the second thing. Yeah. Anyway, we, this is John Kusack Energy. It was brutal.

Like, I had to sit there and, like, go. And like, no one believed me. They actually thought like I just like snuck in or something like that. Anyway, the John Cusack example is a really good one because his character in that movie is a little awkward along certain dimensions. He's certainly not as quote unquote ambitious in the typical sense, although he wants to be a great kickboxer. Kickboxing sport of the future. Right, right. It's a great scene between him and her dad where he's explaining what he's going to do in life and not in any kind of fluent way.

Yeah. And her family clearly has other plans for her. But it gets to this thing that I had written down because I want to ask about next, which is this notion of texting in particular, so not even apps, but let's just say it's migrated off app or people meet, they exchange number, and there's some texting, right? And this notion of the kind of unique advantage, at least early on, that I think can be somewhat misleading of people who are hyperverbal.

Oh, interesting. And in particular among men. So here's what, I think years ago when I was on the job market for academic science, a really fantastic neurobiologist who actually ran, let's just say, a very famous school in Boston's brain science center. They never admit the name of their school anyway. Said to me, he said, you know, the worst part about the job search process in neuroscience is that it selects for hyperverbal people where people can present their, data, excite people about it, present their vision. And he said, and there's so many amazing scientists that just don't know how to communicate their data. And we're selecting for someone who can also teach, who can also do these things. And I realize he's absolutely right. You know, and some people can

overcome this, but some of the best scientists in the world speaking isn't their forte. Yeah. Okay. So in the realm of text communication, there's a kind of a bias toward, can somebody, like a good listener in a face-to-face interaction, like a guy can just sit there, listen, not interrupt, nod, maybe reflect, maybe reflect, tell me more, well, that must have been interesting, hard, whatever, you know, and can convey a lot of genuine ability to communicate and bond. Over text, just listening doesn't work. In fact, it was just like, wow, that must have been hard to it, like a paragraph this long. Like, it's just, like, it's just, starts to fall flat. And this is where I think some people might be screaming, no, no, no, that's what I want.

Yeah. But there's a strong selection process now for people who can communicate quickly with their thumbs, be witty in writing. And so the hyperverbal thing is moved to text. Yeah. That's a challenge. And I do think, even though some men are very hyperverbal, there is a sex difference here that we are well aware of. So do you think that that's skewing things? Because the ability to kind of keep to get and keep somebody's interest early on is strongly dependent on these days on texting. Right. I think this is a really good point. You know, I was reminded of some work, this is early work in the like online interaction space that suggested that actually anxious people get a lot out of being able to communicate with a keyboard or with texting because they don't get so overwhelmed. So this is probably

going to be somebody who also on a first date would be having a bit of a tough time. So it might be that actually texting for them has at least the advantage of reducing some of the anxiety because they can take a minute to think about what they want to say before they have to actually come out with it. But I also think you're right that the abuse. ability to be witty over text as opposed to the kind of like nonverbal listening that you're describing, that is going to be a special advantage for some people today. So it could very well be skewing things in the way that you describe. There's not great data on this either. I mean, I mentioned earlier, we don't have great data on like the arc of the relationship. But some of the

people that have tackled this question, this is a great researcher named Mimi Brynberg at at Ohio State. And what she does is she gets couples who are together and then says, let me see your texts and then gets the whole text thread with their permission all the way back to when they first started texting. And what you see are some cool things like essentially their styles of communicating start to like cohere, right? It's like a pattern of mutual influence where they get a similar cadence and they

start using similar words and other things as they're talking to each other. Now, of course, those are the successful cases. So what would it look like if we had the unsuccessful cases? And I think you're right. We would see that the people who can't match or can't be witty early on, that those are the text threads that never become couples. So we just have to figure out how to recruit those folks to be in our studies. Give us the last 10 threads of, of, of, you know, dates that never win anywhere. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

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So to make sure that I'm hydrated and I have sufficient electrolytes, when I first wake up in the morning, I drink 16 to 32 ounces of water with an element packet dissolved in it. I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. I love the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor. So if you'd like to try Element, you can go to DrinkElement.com slash Huberman to claim a free element sample pack to claim a free sample pack. Yeah, we're sort of veering towards compatibility when I say, you know, if I were to, you know, ask a close family member, you know, like what's great about the relationship you're in?

This is a woman and she'll be referring to her male partner. Yeah. In this case, she'll generally talk about the things that he does and the things that he is able to do in support. Oh, interesting. It may or may not even require the ability to speak. Yeah. Now, he's not aphasia, you know. But, you know, it's more about like what he does.

And when we've had conversations on this podcast in the past about kind of relationship glue and things like that, it's like, it's like, oh, that they always like, you know, one person always seems to like make the bed by time. I'm back from the bathroom in the morning. And you're like, no, my turn. And they or the other person always sets out the coffee or some of it. It's the little thing phenomenon. Rarely is it like, sometimes it's a note. But rarely is it like, yeah. I love the way, you know, he strings together, you know, sentences or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the way that, you know, she describes this thing, you know. So it's often about actions, at least in the observing the qualities of the positive qualities of the male partner. And that's very kind of stereotypical. But I think that it just, it's a kind of window in my mind into the difference between the quote unquote exploration and courting process. although the courting process, what people do arguably matters more than what they say.

Yeah. And the long-term thing. Yeah. The consistency of the stability of the relationship over time. So I wish that, you know, it's a shame that these apps don't select for action. The only way to do that would be something where you would say, okay, if you're going to sign up for this app, you know, we're going to ask you to go on at least three dates with, you know, anybody that you match with. and we want to see you dating in these very different circumstances where the point isn't always to just talk at each other that also you like you got to do things together.

I wish there were dates that were like, assemble this IKEA furniture. Don't people still go for like a hike or go to a show? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's good too because at least it's talking and interacting, but a different kind of talking and interacting. I want like physical challenges. Get out of this escape room, stuff like that. Anyway, I'm not actually dating.

See how people handle under. Yeah, right. Yeah. So you got to be witty, but also not panic. Do you suggest that? Is it like a first date? I don't know. Maybe third date. Okay. Third date sounds good for escape. I want to be clear. I've never, I've only done the escape room board games. You're just throwing people under the bus. Exactly. I see what happens. Get that data. Yeah, no, no, I'm just kidding.

But like, you know, events, sporting events. I mean, things that are, that are exciting, that you're doing together, but also facilitate interaction, I think can be really good. It is very, very hard, though, to simulate the patterns of what would it be like to be in a long-term relationship with this person and the 4,000 daily responsibilities that come with that. And I think even when we are really crazy about somebody early on, we try to forecast what that's going to be like as best we can. but we really don't know. And I think the beautiful thing, but also the challenge that a lot of relationships have is, you know, what you do is, you know, like you just described, like, okay, it becomes my job to set out the coffee and it becomes your job to mow the lawn. And we create this very elaborate structure that guides not just our day-to-day lives and the crap we have to do,

but it also guides how we communicate, when we communicate, what we're. we communicate about. If we create a business together, that can create a relationship that starts to feel like more transactional, that's maybe less warm, has less opportunity for connection. As opposed to creating a relationship that builds, you know, time for fun activities together, for fun experiences, or again, I recognize like people are stressed and often work in multiple jobs, but at least when we are interacting, are we able to interact about the fun, silly things that brought us together in the first place? I think it's very challenging to do these things when people go to couples therapy and

the couples therapy is effective. It's usually because therapists are able to help couples essentially like rewind all the bad patterns they've created and go back to when things were good, rediscovering. what it was that they really appreciated about each other and like recreate their relationship from there in a new way. But yes, many of these things are, they're just deeply, deeply hard to forecast. Yeah, and there's always the natural desire to want to know if one's time and energy is well spent.

I mean, it's really, in some sense, the most important investment is time and energy. I mean, and it's kind of all we have. It's not, it's all we have. And that's very evolutionary in its core. You talked before about this kind of crystal ball question or probing for particular disclosures that people are willing or not willing to make as a perhaps better indication of whether somebody is interesting or appropriate for you. I realize, however, that the notion that there's a, like, a question or a set of questions

that would say green light is, that's not true. that this just can't be true. There's probably some answers that are red light. Everyone knows red light. Hopefully they're paying attention to that. But it's the yellow, it's the yellow lights

and not knowing what questions to ask to see if there's a sort of green light path forward. Tell me what those questions are. Like, phrase differently. If two people are on a date and they have only a few minutes, it's kind of a speed dating type situation. And they need to make a good assessment

as to whether or not they genuinely would like to speak spend more time with the person again, what are the questions they should ask? All right. So I like the questions that are a little bit more offbeat. You know, what people tend to do on speed dates is they want to find common ground quickly. You know, if it's college students, maybe we're going to talk about their major. Do we share a major?

No. Like, pivot. Where are you from? And they'll try to find something that they can bond over. And that can work very well. But I think the core of what we want in an initial interaction with somebody is to take away something that feels like it was at least a little different than all the other interactions that we have. And so sometimes what that means is going a touch deeper than people are comfortable with. Now, in four minutes, it's tricky.

If you have a little bit longer, like a regular evening length date, I really like the 36 questions. test. Like this is the, sometimes it's called the fast friends procedure. But these are questions like, you know, what's one thing that you've never told somebody that you've always wanted to tell them and what's stopping you? Or people answer that? Yeah. I mean, after, if you've been hanging out with somebody for 60 to 90 minutes, that is a pretty good way to elicit real depth and give like both people a chance to do some reciprocal self-disclosure, because that's what people want. That's what people connect over. Is like I've, like, I feel like I've just heard, maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but I feel

like you've just told me something that you haven't told most people and maybe you haven't told anybody. I vividly remember falling for somebody when that moment happened. It's like, I really, you are telling me this. I don't, I don't think you've ever told anybody this before. And it is such a rush. I think, like, I don't know, man, the internet, it's like convinced us all we care about is like sex and hotness. There is nothing like the rush of having somebody tell you something that they've never told anybody else. And again, this is like the stuff that gets relationships research as excited because this is what we see in our data. Responsiveness, closeness, like building trust and all of that stuff.

Now, again, four minutes is really hard. Four minutes, you just got to get a little nugget of something that you want to build off later. and maybe that is your hometown. And maybe it is like, isn't this a weird experience that we're only going to get to chat for four minutes? But whenever there are routes to go for a little bit more disclosure, I usually advise that people go for it. It will pay off on average, even if it can feel kind of awkward in the moment. Do you think there's more excitement if one gets the sense of the other person is taking a bit of a risk in disclosing it. Not like I've been dying to tell somebody this and there's never been

opportunity. Thanks for giving me the opportunity and, you know, I, whatever, I always, you know, wanted to come back in my second life as a guppy or something. I don't know. I'm picking a trivial example on purpose because it's not true. Much better tropical fish, a big tropical fish enthusiasts, much better. Freshwater discus, much better fish. Owned by me because it would, have a really good life. Take really good care of my freshwater discus. But in all seriousness, does that mean that people are walking around harboring, especially single people, are harboring parts of themselves that they're craving intimacy, you know, that that's of the exchange things that they've never told anyone, that they wish they could tell someone to feel safe enough to tell

them. Is that what you're talking about? Like, you know, creating a real moment of intimacy early on that's not physical intimacy. It's, I don't even know if it's emotional intimacy. It's like, it's like human connection, right? It's like, I'm a person that's had particular experiences and you're a person that's had particular experiences. And we have these like narratives and stories about ourselves. Again, the science historically has been so focused on traits. And I get it. And I understand the evolutionary focus on traits.

But man, humans are stories, right? We're narratives. And we want other people to be privy to that narrative and then maybe eventually be a part of it. So I think that that is often what can be very powerful. Now, for people who are single and they like want to be in a relationship, I do think that it can be that sense that they're lacking. A lot of people are single and are very, very happy with their single lives. And I also understand that a lot of people if they're single and they're dating, look, there's a lot of reasons to be cautious. Forming our relationship is a low base rate event.

It doesn't happen all that often. And it's time costly, it's financially costly. It's energetically costly. Exactly. It's very energetically. Exactly. Like we don't go around forming relationships with everybody. But I also happen to think that like once the bowl gets rolling, the pull can be very strong.

And part of that pull is this desire to have somebody kind of see me, get me, understand me. I might be talking about securely attached people on average, right? There's always going to be that avoidance pull to, like, people need to self-protect to some extent. But the sort of desire to open up and have somebody really get you, it's so core to the relationship science worldview. And I think it says a lot about, like, who we are as a species and, like, how we form mating relationships. You've said in so many words before that men and women essentially want the same things. Yeah. I think that's going to hit some people square in the face.

And they're going to say, that is so not true. Men just want blank. Women just want blank. I'm like on this campaign lately to try and defang the trolls that seem to have like, it's like we were in high school. Let's leave junior high school. Let's go to high school. And they were like a bunch of like really awful people that's evenly distributed between

the sexes. Let's just do that for fairness sake. Yeah. And then like constantly. pointing out how these people are always bad and extractive and these people are always, you know, cold and avoidant. And if those narratives were just constantly, like, posted on the walls and talked about over lunch and whispered in the hallways, it would be very poisonous to the whole environment.

And that's kind of what the internet is. And then the traditional news, but also some podcasts, not this podcast, but we'll kind of amplify these narratives because they feel juicy, they feel, and they get clicks. And I think we all have an innate desire to avoid danger. So when I know, I know where this stuff is. But when you step back, you go, like most people are pretty well meaning. Most people are looking for good partnership. Nobody's perfect.

But where people make mistakes, most people are like looking to at least modify their behavior over time. Like, it's all reasonably benevolent. But then there's like kind of nasty, kind of nasty. characters out there, and we give them so much credit, and we give them so much power. And they just plain suck. Yeah. So men and women want the same things.

Let's shut them up for a second and ask what the data say. This was one of the first things I studied when I started looking at attraction like almost 20 years ago now. And in part because I found the gender differences fascinating, it was very clear for decades and decades that if you ask men and women about the qualities they want, in a partner, that you'll see these differences show up pretty routinely. And they are differences that then in the hands of nefarious characters online get spun out into exactly the narrative that you're describing.

But the basic data on what men and women say they want, it's there. Men will say they care about attractiveness in a partner more than women, and women will say they care about earning potential in a partner more than men. Now, I'm phrasing that in a particular way. And I'm saying what people say they want because I'm critiquing the experimental paradigms that were used. It usually had people rating a bunch of traits on scales. And as a psychologist, I have no problem with that. I'm very interested in people's subjective experiences and I use scales all the time.

But we wondered, that's different than, or it might be different, than what happens when you're meeting people face to face, and you're reacting to a set of people who might be very attractive or of middling attractiveness or not very attractive at all. And that, to me, seems closer to capturing what people actually want. Like, if you meet 10 women, how much does their attractiveness drive your desire to date them? How much does attractiveness affect whether you want a second date with them or not? So we ran speed dating studies to try to capture exactly this phenomenon. I'll make it about earning prospects because it's really the same thing.

So we have these men and they go speed dating and some of these women are very ambitious. They're going to be lawyers and doctors. Others are a little bit less ambitious. And what you'd see is that the men tended to like the women a little bit more to the extent that they were ambitious. It wasn't a huge driver of their liking. But it was definitely there and it was definitely positive. But then when we flipped it and we looked at what the women were drawn to, not what they said, but what they were drawn to, they also tended to like the ambitious men a little bit. And the magnitude of that preference was identical.

And it's been 20 years of this where we've looked at ongoing relationships. We've looked at, you know, 40-something countries throughout the world. That narrative plays out every time. There's no gender differences in the extent to which. which these traits appeal to men and women when they're evaluating like real people they've actually met. Online is different. What people say they want is different.

But real people that you've at least met face to face seems to dramatically reduce the power of the gender differences and the appeal of these traits. Fascinating. And runs countercurrent to, I think, many people including I have heard out there. Yeah. But I think the key lesson here is like, believe your subjective experience when you're interacting with somebody and you're getting to know them. And maybe that subjective experience is like, she's hot, but I am not feeling this.

And maybe that subjective experience is like, you know, I know that maybe to some people, he looks like he doesn't have his life together, but I really see a spark there. If you trust that experience, I think that's likely to go better. And we don't have an experience to go on like that when it's online. When it's online, it's very easy to put people in boxes, put people in groups, and then make the groups fight each other. And I, too, am very distressed about all the heteropessimism. Heteropessimism. Yeah.

Right. It's not my term, but it's one of my favorite terms. Do you know who coined it? I know the year it's like 2019, but I forget the author. Yeah. Look it up. Great term. Hetero pessimism.

Right. It's like men and women can't get along. How could they get along? They've got different interests. and different priorities. Look, in the close relationships realm, it's not true. And that's the realm I know. Men and women, they want the same things out of their relationships.

Yes, there are gender differences in like the thresholds for sex, and especially early on, that can be really messy. But overall, I see a lot of similarity and a lot of potential for the bonds that men and women form to do great things for people. And women and women and men and men in any gendered combination that you want to come up with. I think we're pair bonding creatures. We get a lot of joy and a lot of fulfillment out of that. And I want to see men and women find a way to make it work again. Springboarding off of the heteropessimism term, which is great because it encapsulates so much,

even though what it encapsulates is definitely not great. Yeah. The term I'm about to use is going to sound like it means something. it doesn't, but is there any research on homopessimism, which is not the same as homophobia, homopestimic, meaning I'm not aware, because it happened to be heterosexual, but I have homosexual friends, men and women. I'm not hearing them talk a lot about how dating culture is much worse now. I hear this too, yeah.

But then again, sample size isn't that great here. Right, right. So I don't know, because a lot of the same things apply in terms of like apps. Sure, culture's very. Yeah. But there are some constants in this picture. So in any research yours or others, research about homosexual dating and couples, is there pessimism? Guys saying, well, guys these days and women saying, lesbian women, for lack of a better term, saying women these days.

I don't think that's out there nearly to the same extent. And I think some of the, like, interesting components that you see out there is, look, the apps, I think, did, they did a lot of good in the world for people who, you know, just felt like their social networks had no options in them, but especially for people who might have been living in places that were genuinely unsafe for gays and lesbians and might have helped them to find romantic partners. So, like, I always want to be the first one to give the apps credit for that, for that. providing those kinds of opportunities. Classically speaking, what you tend to see is that, you know, I've talked a little bit about the time frame as people form relationships in the first place and that sometimes we get locked into this idea that it's like, oh, it's going to happen in an instant and now you're together. But the reality is it's often an elongated process. That process has tended historically to be even longer for folks who are gays and lesbians,

forming same gender relationships. And I think part of that is something that you might even call like a bigotry tax. Because if you lived in a place where it was like vaguely dangerous to admit your same-sex attractions, you've got to be really careful before you start disclosing how you feel about somebody. Because rejection doesn't just mean rejection. Rejection is maybe actually carries other threats and stigma and all of these other things. things with it. Loss of jobs.

Exactly. We've seen examples that, like, it's sort of, again, it plays on stereotypes, but I'm going to assume some of it is true. Like in Mad Men, right? There's a disclosure and then it doesn't go well. Right. Right. Yeah.

It doesn't go well. I love the movie, Call Me By Your Name. I don't think I've seen it. Yeah. It's about 10 years old. It's Luca Guadanino and he's a fabulous director. But it's about two men who get together over the course of a summer, young men who find It's one of Timothy Shalame's earlier movies.

And one of the things they come to regret is that, like, well, we didn't disclose our feelings sooner. But the movie was taking place in the 1980s. So you had to be really careful with whether you were going to be upfront about how you were feeling about somebody. It wasn't in a place where you can't be fully confident that you have a sense of safety. It could be really dangerous. So that's an important difference that we see. And I think the apps were really good at helping people to come together in that sense. I have a question about financial stability and level.

Yeah. You mentioned there aren't real big gender differences there. Earlier, we were saying scientists are always doing the opposite of improv. Instead of yes and, they always said, yeah, but, you know, yeah, but what about? Yeah, but what about? It's in our training. Yeah. Income level on its own or amount of money that somebody has in my mind is somewhat informative.

What's more informative is having the additional data point of where they started out. Oh, interesting. Because people with money who didn't have to work very hard to get it. Yeah. It's a different picture. Now, some people might say, like, who cares? And I will make the argument that some people who had to work very hard to make their money, oftentimes are still in the working hard mode.

The twist in the high level of income thing like that, the additional question that's useful is how much free time do you have? Because a lot of the people I know who have a lot of money, they don't have a lot of free time. So if people pair up with them thinking that they're going to feel very financially secure and have a lot of stuff, that might be true. But how often they're going to see their partner or the co-parent of their kids is an important question.

And this extends both ways. Like so many of these attributes that in the abstract sound really good to us, but then when you actually put it in a person that also has all these other attributes and things going on, you realize like, wait a minute, their cutthroat ambition actually wasn't that great, right, because it means that they're never around. I think for this reason, it can be very challenging, especially if you're looking at long-term relationships,

to take things like a person's income level and use that to forecast, like, for example, how their partner is going to feel about them. I mean, we've done some of this work, indeed some of the work looking at gender differences. And like the reality is like a person's objective income, it is very, very small effects on how their partners feel about them.

The bigger effects are things like, you know, if now we scaffolded up and look at like socioeconomic status, so do you have the resources to get by as a couple? That can be very challenging for people. I've seen numerous examples of couples where the man loses his work. And if he's not able to get stable work again reasonably soon. In most of the, this isn't a peer-reviewed study, most of the examples I can think of the couple eventually dissolved. And it wasn't necessarily for a lack of enough resources.

Families were able to help, et cetera. And of course, we could talk about depression. Yeah. We could talk about some other thing that might have happened or many things that happened. But is there a sex difference there? The part that I find the most intuitive about these examples is that when a man loses his job like that. And I love that there are other resources around. So we know that that's not the exact problem.

My guess is that the challenges are coming more from his genuine, like, genuine troubling, like loss of identity, loss of self. what am I going to do with myself? And less, maybe not zero, but less about his partner thinking, now he's no longer a provider. And that's just generally my bias from what I see in the science, which is when tragedies befall us, they affect our perceptions especially strongly. So this guy is going to feel this pretty hard that he's lost his job.

stepping back and looking at the broader picture of the data, it used to be true that marriages were more fragile when the woman earned more than the man in the marriage. But this stopped being true in the 90s. So that gender difference doesn't exist anymore. And I think it's easy to surmise. I don't know if the sociologists who studied this have drawn exactly this conclusion, but it's easy to posit that what's happening, there is that people in general have gotten more comfortable with the gender imbalance relationships.

And in the 90s, we were still getting used to this idea. Today, even if the average couple, the man earns more than the woman, you do see that because there is a gender difference in income levels on average. But in education, it's flipped now, right? Women, at least in younger couples, the woman is more likely to be educated than the man. More educated or educated, period? More educated than the man in the relationship, right? So women are earning more of the, you know, higher degrees.

So if there's a mismatch, probably the woman has more education than the guy. That's not a risk factor relative to if they were the same level, relative to if, you know, he were higher. It just doesn't really seem to be doing anything. I know we can get really nervous about like what does it mean for men's desirability if they're not ambitious. Like I get that. If men are not out there like making things of themselves, I'm not worried about the women getting a better education than them. I think it's important for men to have a sense of purpose. I think trade schools can be awesome.

But the mismatches in the level of education and in the level of income, those don't spell a problem. We just got to get like men feeling good about themselves again. And the data say they're not. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what you see. I mean, the data that concern me the most are that men and I think especially low SES men, they're the ones that feel like their social networks are gone. They don't know where to go to get any kind of companionship. So if they're really feeling that acute sense of loneliness, of lack of belonging, you know,

among like real people in their lives. that's the thing I worry about because then that's going to affect your sense of self. That's going to affect all of your ambitions and in really bad cases might push people to some of those nastier corners of the internet. I'd like to take a quick break

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towards your membership. Again, that's functionhealth.com slash Huberman. In the kind of classics, pure stereotypical narrative, you know, men who are slightly older had more resources. Yeah. This isn't always true. Yeah.

But there's this what apparently, based on your work, is a myth that women desire older men, men desire younger women. Yeah. Your work points to the possibility that there is no gender differences in attraction to younger partners. Yeah. And look, let me say that this is, I think, one of the more tentative. And it's a big, and it's a big sample size, 4, 4,400. 100. I'm like, wait. So, and I'll weave a quick anecdote. There's this guy at the gym that I sometimes go to. He's probably in like 70s or something. And he's in, like, great shape. He's retired. He made money. He's enjoying life. He's got grankets. He's like, he just seems like, I don't know him that well, but it seems like he's really got it together. And he's really loving life. And I always say, what brings you here every day? You know, I figured it would be like, I just feel so good. And he just always says the same thing. He always just says, I don't want to lose my wife to a younger guy.

And I always laugh and I go, then I know a lot about the contour of his life. And maybe there's something he's not disclosing, but, you know, anyone would say like, this guy has just totally got it made. And he's, again,

I don't know the details of his life and I shouldn't. But I know enough about it that, you know, he's checked off all the boxes three or four times and then had the wisdom, in my opinion, to not just keep working like a maniac and just spend time with his kids and grandkids

and his wife. And his wife, but he always answers the exact same way. How's it going? He goes, pretty good, just don't want to lose my wife to a younger guy. So I'm here again today. Let me tell you about this study. And look, again, I'm a scientist. And sometimes the data I'm like, huh, you don't say.

I didn't see this one coming. I mentioned this earlier. So we partnered up with folks who do matchmaking. So these are people who are paying for a service because they want to be in a long-term relationship. And so they will set people. on dates and they've got a whole pool that they're working with. And within that pool, the men who are searching for dates are older than the women by about four years on average. Okay. So that's, that's what they've got to work with. And they set people up on these dates. And so most of the time,

the woman is going to be younger than the man, but there's a range. Sometimes the woman is much younger than the guy. And sometimes the woman is the same age as the guy. And sometimes the woman's even a little older than the guy, all right? So what you'd expect to see is that if men are looking for younger women and women are looking for older men, then when we look at how the age of the partner affects whether you want to go on a second date with this person, it should be the younger folks appeal to the men more and the older folks appeal to the women more. But there wasn't when we saw. We saw that the younger folks appeal to the men more. And by the way, it's not a huge effect. It's not like the gross stereotype that's out there.

Men are a little bit more interested in the women to the extent that they're younger. But it's not gigantic. Women are doing the same thing. They're a little bit more interested in the younger guys. They don't say that on paper. In fact, sometimes they're like, don't set me up with the younger guys. And then they do, and they say, huh, that was interesting. I enjoyed that.

I enjoyed that date. I would like to see him again. Are the stated reasons similar in any way? for instance, are both groups saying less baggage? That would be kind of a cliche answer. But we could place that on either side. I don't know and I would love to know. I think sometimes when women are, when they downrate like whether they care about attractiveness or something,

I think sometimes they are like kidding themselves a little bit, that they actually do appreciate a younger guy who's maybe fit and in shape. They don't fully appreciate how exciting it would feel to be sitting across the table from a guy like that. I mean, this is my best guest. And what's so fascinating about this data set is that, look, they're trying to create these couples, but, you know, you only create a couple, a fraction of the time. Much of the time, the people don't really hit it off. But in the couples that get created, the guy was four years older than the woman. And in the couples that don't get created, the guy is four years older than the woman. because that was what they had in the sample to begin with.

So we look around and you see that age difference. That age difference is real, and I am sure it means something important. And data like this just make me think something else is going on here. Whatever is creating this age difference, it's at least it's not age difference in how people sort. It's not happening on date one. It's not happening at the initial attraction phase. Maybe it's happening earlier. Who puts themselves in the pool?

Maybe it's happening later. I don't know. She's going to date this younger guy like once or twice, but then she's going to be done with him and she'll, you know, settle down with somebody who's a little older. You said she's done with him. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

Right, but right, but it could go the other way to it. Well, what I've heard before, because I'm 50, I have some female friends who are dating, and they'll say that they do date younger guys, but then the deal breaker is if the guy says he wants kids. Kids, that's tough. And then so the agreement is to move on based on that. Often, this is a common, reasonably common thing. I should hear about this more and more

these days. Yeah, and I think one thing that online dating affords is if you've got something like that that's exceptionally important to you, there are opportunities to filter on it. We haven't talked about this too much yet, but you can get into a whole line of research and studies on, you know, oh, if people are filtering for things in the abstract, is that match what's ultimately going to appeal to them when they meet face to face? We find that generally speaking, these things tend to be pretty uncorrelated. So what people think they want doesn't match up with what they actually end up liking once they meet somebody face to face.

But you can argue that sometimes that's not a good thing. If somebody really wants kids, shouldn't it be within their power? to craft a pool of partners who also want kids to give them that opportunity. Like, that seems like a reasonable humanistic thing to do. And so to the extent that the apps are able to do that or the services are able to do that, I think that's ultimately a good thing. Don't they click, like want kids or not? Yeah, I think often.

I think you can. In some apps, that might be like a special feature you have to pay for. These things get complicated. But who knows if the news is accurate because it's not real data. It's sort of whatever the news decides to shine a light on this idea that more young people are going to church, which is a values, plural indicator. Like, you know, people can, most churches are open to whoever shows up. But the assumption is that people are there for certain reasons that they're either trying to build on or have certain values that are family, children, values, morals, adjacent, if not central, right?

I think people know what I'm saying. I mean, sure, bad people can show up at church. But the idea is that somebody's taking the time to get dressed up on a Sunday morning and go and listen to someone else speak. And a lot of people are meeting that way now. Are there any data that that's a response to the kind of like wild west of online dating and, you know, social media and just the general culture of like everybody? it's kind of the culture of everybody.

I mean, even in high school, there were subgroups. Some people moved between subgroups. But it's, you know, the vastness of the internet and social media, even if you state your preferences about what you do and don't want to see on social media, it's a flood. I mean, I see people and things on there from way back when that, like, they're not bad people. I have no interest in what they're doing now. And then occasionally I see people, I'm like, oh, no way.

Yeah. And reconnect. But it's a fire hose. Yeah. And you need some way to reduce it to something manageable. I mean, again, we evolved in an environment where we knew like 50 other people. You know, that's like your group. You probably knew more than that.

Maybe you know, like 150, some nearby groups. But that's all ages and all genders and everything else. It's a small number of potential partners for you. But you had reasons to interact, structures that were going to put you in contact with each other. And to the extent that church is fulfilling a function like that, I think that's great. And in fact, I think that's exactly what's missing. And if church isn't your thing, there's like a million other things that people can do in any kind of modern urban context that are going to be helpful along those lines. I mean, you can join any kind of intramural sports team.

I mean, improv class. Exactly. Just came up on it. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the improv classes are amazing because not only is it a chance to interact in a group over a period of time where you don't get to opt out if you don't love somebody right away. But also, you're like practicing being vulnerable and being responsive and things like that.

So I think these things are all wonderful. Are people doing it because they're trying to limit the pools to the folks that they think will fit what they're looking for? I'll bet you some people are doing that. I'll bet that, you know, if somebody's like, I really want to be with somebody else who's active, so I'm going to join a running club. Or, yeah, I want to be with somebody who shares my value, so I'm going to join church. I think that's great. If I'm, like, being Buzzkill scientists, I'd probably sit there and be like, it probably actually doesn't matter. Like, join the church, join the running club, join all these things. Like, you're probably no more or less likely to find somebody that you're going to click with.

It's more about getting yourself in a small group environment. Exactly, exactly. But I'll be the first to say, like, when it comes to, like, the base rates of these things, like, if your goal was, you know, in 90 days I want to be in a relationship, what are the things I should do

that give me the best likelihood? I'm embarrassed to say my field can't answer that question. I can't tell you, you know, use two apps and use these two apps and go to church. Don't join kickball because they're a mess. I was a kickball player, so I'm allowed to say that. But you should join the running club. We can't answer questions like that.

So in the absence of that kind of specificity, my answer is always just be around people on repeated occasions. I'm not trying to provide pushback here. I'm not qualified to do it. I'm going to come from a totally different field. But I feel like there's certain small group, small-ish group environments like church, but there could be other examples.

Like, for instance, like a hiking club or rock climbing or something like. like that where there's kind of a, this shouldn't be the reason people do it, the only reason people do it, but let's say people pair up as a consequence of time there. Yeah. That the culture of that thing provides additional opportunities to grow the relationship with peers. Yeah. Right.

Because there's certain things like, you join an improv class. Exactly. Great. Like my sister's really into drama and theater still does theater classes for her own enrichment. But if you meet someone there, it's not like the culture around it. sort of cultivates the evolution of the relationship. Like, whereas in, like, church, like, you might even get married in that church. In the context of a hiking club, like, you might be out with the other couples that you meet

or single people that you meet for many years. Like, you can sort of, it's a community that can grow over time. Certain things, here I'm showing my ignorance around improv classes. Yeah. But certain things like a pottery class or pickleball or something, like it doesn't just at face value present a sort of trajectory of like. That's right. I'm sounding really nerdy here,

but kind of like a set of maturational stages that you can continue to like be in the relationship there. Does that make sense? Yep. Really stumbling for the words here. No, no, no. I totally get it. This, by the way, is a great reason to not meet people at work.

Not meet people at work. I'm not trying to like throw a cold blanket on people that decide to meet people at work. But oftentimes it's the challenge. Oftentimes that the relationship doesn't necessarily flourish in the context of the work environment. It's not like the work environment makes the relationship grow.

I've seen more things split over time. If both people work there, oftentimes they have to move to separate buildings. Right. Just for a variety of reasons. But it's not like the culture encourages it. Whereas there are certain things that are a bit more, since you were talking for a moment there,

like an evolutionary biologist, like we evolved in small villages and small groups where, you know, you had peers and elders that provide this positive reinforcement on relationship. You know, it's kind of an interesting thing. Like, no matter how evolved we are or progressive, We are. I don't know many women that ask men to marry them in 2026. I'm sure they're out there, but it's still the tacit assumption that men are going to do the asking. Just saying,

okay, so how progressive are we really, right? It's also true that when people get married, most of the time, they stand up in front of other people and state their vows. This is not like, you know, under the bed sheets, I promise, I promise. This is like a public disclosure. These days it ends up on Instagram. You know, so, you know, there's clearly a feedback that comes from being part of a larger structure that reinforces relationships over time. Yeah. And it can be a big help.

You didn't just promise to me. You promised in the whole world. Yeah. Right. And that can be an important source of support to it because then it's that at least the subjective sense, like these people have our backs, right? If we run into hard times, there's a community. that's going to be there and support us.

And then I think you're right, on the initial attraction side, having a sense that we're part of this larger collective, that there's something about that that feels good and provides structure that can help keep moving things forward. And you're right that the workplace context is particularly tricky because many workplaces don't want to encourage that kind of thing. And it's going to often happen. any way. And probably the smartest workplaces are the ones that allow for the possibility that peers are going to get together and have structures in place that will be able to keep the personal

life, appropriately personal, and then, you know, deal with the fallout if the fallout happens. One place I trained might have been UC Davis, all the junior faculty of which there were many of them when I first joined. There were a large fraction of couples in the department or who had spouses and other departments, I think more than 80% of those couples ended up divorced. Now, wow. Now, we can't, there are a lot of variables there. Fortunately, most of them are on good terms. I can't say they ended up with other people in the department.

That didn't happen. But, you know, I watched and was like, whoa, like, this is interesting. You know, this didn't, I want to say didn't end well because I think they're all happy now. But there just seemed to be some additional stress of that. So, I mean, this gets to a question you've actually studied, which is this notion of similarity. So maybe we should talk more about that because it's more data-driven question, which is perceived similarity matters more than actual similarity. What is perceived similarity? So perceived similarity is this general sense, like, we have a lot in common.

There are a million things that we could talk about. We share the same values and attitudes and preferences about. things in general. But notice the way I'm describing it, I'm not tethering it to any particular attitude or value or preference or anything else. Because it's so free-floating, I, as the perceiver, get to attach it to whatever I want. And that affords people to have a certain amount of motivated reasoning so that when they like somebody a lot, they will find the similarities there.

They will really come to think that what really matters is that we love Japanese cinema and that we, you know, that we share the same politics. Whereas for another couple, you know what? We have different politics, but that doesn't really matter to us. Does anyone say that nowadays? No, people still do. I mean, look, what you see in the political matching data is that the odds that people have, you know, diametrically opposed preferences, the odds they're going to get together in the first place are very, very low. But among the mismatches that do exist, it actually doesn't predict satisfaction all that much. And I think this is why, because you just compartmentalize it.

If we match, it's important. If we don't match, oh, who cares? Does anybody care about that? Right. So much motivated reasoning. So this is why if what I wanted to do was take two people who had never met and assess everything I could about them and then figure out whether they were going to be a match or not, based on whether they were similar,

I really was probably going to be no better than a coin flip at figuring out whether or not they were going to click. That's actual similarity. I take things that are true about you without the ability for you to engage in motivated reasoning, and I say, okay, you're an 83% match on all the things I could assess. You two should like each other.

When we've done studies like that, you basically get a coin flip every time. Well, this is why the apps seem totally useless. Because if you were just pair up, well, you want this and you want this. I want that, too, and I want that too. You're telling me that it's as good as chance. It's as good as chance. And look, if there's evidence for similarity on anything, it could be in the realm of, like, demographics, socioeconomic status kinds of things.

I've seen, like, unpublished data, but promising. But even then, those effects are so small. So, you know, we're going from a 50-50. coin flip to like 5347. These are small effects across the board. Because we get all of this motivational latitude. When we really like somebody, we find the things we have in common, we focus on those, we convince ourselves those are the most important things in the world.

And the thing is, who am I to criticize them? Because the people in the happiest relationships, that's what they're doing. They're exhibiting those kinds of biases. And it's like stupid human tricks, but it like kind of works. Want to hear something really scary? Yeah. You probably know this already, but I was shocked. Let's just say someone I know who would know told me that the biggest dating app in the world by an enormous margin is.

It's not Tinder? Instagram. Oh. And this was actually very much in parallel to the algorithm favoring communication by direct message. People will say like social media isn't social anymore. It's not about like seeing what people are doing. The real dynamics, the real time spent, and you'll notice how you get rewarded

and what gets served up in the algorithm, rewarded meaning like what posts do better than others. If there's a strong correlate to communication about that through direct message, it's a dating app that's kind of cloaked for many people as a social media app. But of course I use it to teach neuroscience. and other things, and this will be on Instagram.

So, I mean, I'm a big fan of Instagram and other social media platforms for teaching and learning, and I say that sincerely. But the majority of the time spent now is not scrolling. It's getting to communications that move to real world and then feedback to social media. So I found that interesting. So I'm imagining a question because you study questions, people ask them on dates. And we used to be able to say, if you were on a deserted island,

who would you want to be there with? Like, who's the one person that you could stand being with or perhaps even really enjoy being with assuming you have all the resources? Now, I think the question should be, who's the one person that would get you to not engage

with anyone else in the world? In other words, set down what you called, and I've never heard this before, the derivation of alternatives. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is an interesting term. Yeah.

So in some ways, like, committed partnership is about setting aside the idea that there might be somebody better for us. And I would argue, again, I have strong positive feelings towards Instagram. I really do. It's a fun and great platform when used in moderation.

But it's the opposite of the deserted island. And a former guest on this podcast who happens to be a divorce lawyer, James Sexton, has talked about the fact that many, many, many of the divorces that he litigates No, that he's involved in. Resolves. Yeah, that he helps resolve.

Win for his clients. Started with a innocuous communication on it. It starts with a like, starts with a like, starts with a conversation, starts with ends up in the corner of a grievance or a commonality that sensed. And then the derivation of alternatives emerges and eventually the relationship dissolves. We think about how people handle alternative partners. If you're in a purportedly monogamous relationship, this is a challenge that relationships are going to face. And I sort of see these like twin streams happening at the same time.

So what you see in general is that for people who are in relationships and especially if they are happy in that relationship, any alternative partner that you can throw at them, they will tend to think that that alternative partner, is pretty weak sauce. They think that person is less desirable than any other metric you might want to come up with for how desirable that person actually is. That's what we mean by derogation of alternatives.

It's like they're coming in up here, but because I'm partnered with you and I'm happy with you, I see them as less desirable than they actually are. Side note, that's why, is one of the reasons why the marketplace metaphor starts to break down because people actually start to become bad barometer

of what is quote unquote good. You stop seeing this alternative's actual value because you're so happy with the person that you have. Okay. So this is a good thing, and this is a real defense mechanism that people have. Is it a defense mechanism? Or, I mean, but it's protective of healthy monogamous relationship.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean it in the best, yeah. You know what? That's so funny because in our jargon, we see defense mechanism. I mean that in the best possible way. Protective mechanism. Yeah, protective mechanism.

Yeah, you're defending the relationship. That's so funny. I'd like forgotten. We've had a few too many psychologists on you. Yeah, right. Of course. That has a negative connotation for some people, not for me. Okay, so it's a protective mechanism.

But at the same time, people also do this thing that you might call it like playing with fire, but it's more like, you know, playing with what really seems to be a harmless book of matches. And I'm just messaging these people. Well, what's the big deal? This isn't going to go anywhere. I'm just, you know, we're chatting a little bit. This isn't going to go anywhere. And things escalate.

Sorry to interrupt. Yeah. And, you know, one of our former guests on this podcast, who is immensely popular in the dating relationships and romance fears, Esther Perel. Yeah. And I don't want to put words in her mouth. But I think the perception about some of her messaging, whether accurate or not, is that there can be some value to, you know,

in her first book, I think, and I haven't read it, but the excerpt that was relayed to me was this notion like, oh, like someone isn't feeling as much chemistry in their relationship. So like the woman, this one happened nowadays, most likely, but goes to a bar and like flirts a bit. And then like some sense of sexual confidence is restored. And then her husband is then attracted to her differently again. And, you know, I've heard the more crude phrase,

doesn't matter where you get your appetite as long as you eat at home. This is more of the 1950s, 60s variety. By the way, none of these statements come from me. although my mouth is saying them. These are things that you hear out there, right? Yeah. Directly in opposition to what you're saying, which is not to say that what you're saying is wrong.

I just think that there was about a 20 or 30-year period there where people kind of assume that monogamy could thrive. Yeah. about is really a more of a protective cloak around the commitment. I do sense people are veering back toward that, what you're describing. You know how I think about it is it's the protective cloak that that's sort of there as a baseline, but then signals will get through sometimes, sometimes because you're messing around on Instagram, but sometimes because you went to the bar with your friends and there was this cute guy who was chatting you up. And the evidence there, too,

I interpret, I think the way Esther would interpret it and what you see in the data also suggests something like a protective mechanism. Again, it's playing with fire. But if you look in studies where they ask people, have a sexual fantasy about your partner. Now, how much sexual desire do you feel for your partner? It has gone up. Great. That's pretty straightforward. Now, please, have a sexual fantasy about, I don't know, whoever's in second place.

that's not your partner. Then you start having sexual feelings for that person and you start having sexual feelings for your partner at the same time. So it's exactly the metaphor that you're describing that when we feel a sense of attraction, it can rebound onto our partner. By the way, it doesn't happen in the reverse. Okay.

So the partner, your current partner, again, for most people in happy relationships, holds a special position, you might say, where even when there is a little bit of a threat, and I've noticed somebody, it rebounds somewhat. I don't advise that people go out and do this. Are you saying it rebounds like it's a fuel for the relationship the way that Esther and other people have talked about?

That's a real thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, recent studies, I can point to one or two. They're all like within the last few years. This is going to be very uncomfortable for some people to hear that their partner may come home immensely attracted to them because they had some sort of interaction during the day of either being attracted to someone

or receiving signals of attractiveness. Where I am a thousand percent with Esther is that the danger, the problem is not that your partner was sexually attracted to somebody else. The problem is usually in the escalation. It's, yeah, but now are they like repeatedly hanging out with them and having like conversations that they feel secretive about or the, you know, if it's you, that you feel secretive about,

those are the warning signs because then what will start to happen is that the protective layer that people typically put around their partners, it will start to erode. And that's when people are at a greater risk of infidelity. It's usually a process like that. The simple fact that we can be attracted to other people, that is not a problem for the average relationship. It's the repeated follow-through on that attraction that becomes a problem. And that's something that evolved in recent years that there used to be far. more transient interactions that would never resurface again. Right.

You sit next to someone on a plane. You'd have a conversation. There might be attraction. There might not be. But you develop some degree of intimacy. Some people would disclose a lot on planes. And then you never hear or talk to them again. Nowadays, there's almost always an opportunity for people to follow up and connect with people.

That's what James Sexton is referring to when he talks about social media being a, and barring other person's language here, an attack vector, you know, on a relationship. And maybe that is a good reason for people who are in committed relationships to just get off of social media period. But it's also a context where people and quote unquote spend time with people for other reasons.

Yeah, it's tricky. If I don't recommend using that sort of process to bolster your relationship, I guess if you're going to do it, you know, try to do it by watching somebody Yeah, who's, yeah, figure out if you're a man who's with a woman, just ask her, like, what actor does she have the hots for and like be kind enough to watch a movie featuring him? Like, maybe that's a way to make this word for you. Or the reverse, yeah, sure.

Some of the what appear to be the strongest and happiest couples that I know, I know very little about their dynamics, period. Yeah. Which is kind of an interesting thing in its own light. But some of the people that are in that set seem to have a pretty relaxed rapport around, oh, yeah, so-and-so referring to their spouse, really likes that actor or actress. It's just kind of a thing that they understand.

Right. But it's over there, right? It's out of distance. Yeah, it's not like a looming threat. It's very different if it's about somebody that you both know and spend time with. It's much more threatening in those cases. And I think that also is part of why that derogation process happens is because that threat feels very uncomfortable.

Even if it's your attraction, like you kind of want to downplay it because the thought of what would it mean if I'm like with the wrong person or like what would happen if this thing spiraled out of control? It's upsetting for most people. I mean, we take all this time to build a relationship up, to be this thing that we really value that's a central part of our lives. The thought that it could disappear at a moment's notice because of a mistake that we would make, it can be threatening to most people, even if we're imagining ourselves engaging in the actions that would bring things to an end. I heard a really scary story that may or may not be informative. I think it is. And maybe you can help understand it. Anytime someone starts the story with, I have a friend.

Yeah. It gets a full weird. But based on an observation, I had a long time ago where I was going to a gym and I had a truly just platonic friendship with this woman, she would go to the gym too. Back then, not a lot of women worked out in gyms, if I'm honest. Like it was like not a lot of women lifted weights. It was like something that was kind of reserved for guys or for female bodybuilders. But she wasn't a bodybuilder, but she liked lifting weights.

Yeah. And super fit. She's a super accomplished athlete now. She, one day when we were leaving, she was like really upset. I was like, what's up? And she's like, all these guys kept coming up to me. And I'm like, well, that's happening all the time. Yeah.

You know, she's like, no, they were all really unattractive. And I said, okay, well, you're good at dealing with you. Like she was very skilled. She was very beautiful then and now. And so very skilled at like saying, thanks but no thanks. Yeah. And then she said something that was absolutely like shocking to me that I've shared with other female friends and some men.

And they always go, no way. And she said, I feel like I have to go like flirt with a really attractive guy now. And it was clear that despite being incredibly attractive, incredibly accomplished and super athlete, was questioning her own value. This is very evil evolutionary biology because the guys that were approaching her were in her mind very, quote unquote, low value, unattractive. Yeah.

It like got to her. You know, of course, my interpretation was, okay, guys, the next time a really attractive woman walks up to you and seems like she's chatting you up, you don't know that it's actually about you. Right. You know, like just know that it may not be about you. Like note to self.

And what's wild, is that years later, I observed and talked to someone in a basically same dynamic, but she's married. And she said, yeah, if a bunch of people hit, people always hit on this other woman too. She's like, if they do that, I sort of feel like I have to go kind of get a clear perception again of whether or not I could be with an attractive guy. Now, granted, she's married to her super successful what anyone, male or female, would describe as super-gorithm. good looking guy. Yeah. And they have a super stable family and I thought to myself, oh my God.

And I don't know that this is unique to women. I don't know. But it's kind of weird if you think about it. Now, it could be their unique insecurity. But it's like if data start coming in, let's flip it. Yeah. If a lot of really attractive people of the opposite sex start talking to you, whoever's listening to this, you perhaps start to wonder if something important is going

on there. There's information there. Yeah. I just would like you to reflect on this. I've been perplexed by it for a long time. In some sense, it makes total sense. But as a scientist, I've learned, yeah, but. Yeah.

It's just like, like, what's really going on here? I think the part of the story that's the most head scratching is that they're in relationships. So shouldn't they be... In the second case. Yeah. In the second case. Yeah. So shouldn't they be getting the feedback that's positive on a regular basis anyway?

Let's, for the sake of argument, just assumed that she was. So she was getting positive feedback at home. And yet, the experience of having less appealing men come up to her, led her to feel like, ooh, I need to do something to reaffirm. Well, I think it was a question, am I losing it? Was that it was kind of the language that came up. Am I losing it? Whatever it was.

Yeah. One of the reasons that scientifically I am out here, like, questioning the usefulness of the made value construct is because I know that people of quote unquote low value can have absolutely fantastic relationships and people of quote unquote high value can have absolutely terrible relationships. Oh, I observe that. Yeah. There you go. There you go.

Yeah. So that happens all the time. I think one of the strongest most, like resonant things that made value does for us, the way that we experience it most acutely is indeed. and the attention we get from strangers and or the junior high type scenarios that we talked about. So that we do have a level of attractiveness and it changes as we age. There is a consensus out there about how desirable we are. And that consensus is not going to stay exactly where it is.

It's going to shift. And you might be in a relationship and be very happy with the person who unambiguously thinks you're a 10. And yet still wonder, what does everybody else think? Like, do they think I'm a seven? Do they think I'm a four? What has happened to me? So I totally get that that experience of how am I coming across to the world? Is it less than I thought it was?

And that the only great information that you have is how strangers respond to you. It's sort of a funny way of flipping all of this stuff around. Because, again, as a relationship researcher, my bias is always your husband thinks you're at 10. you think he's a 10. You won the lottery. Like, that's it. You did it. But I acknowledge, yeah, there can be cases where we still wonder about what strangers think of us.

And it might matter to our sense of self-worth and sense of who we are. So I'm not going to judge it, but it is a fascinating flip of the way I typically think about these things. It makes me wonder whether our notions of self. And this goes back to what we're talking about before the Esther Perel thing and attractive that sort of boomerangs back into the relationship. It's something that's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people to hear. But at some level, all of it makes me wonder

whether there's a healthy compartmentalization that we could adopt as a society, which is not to say, like, anyone can be attracted to anyone and therefore commitment isn't real, nor is it saying like, okay, when you're in a committed relationship, it's a complete black box. Right.

Right, because there is this thing called the Internet and there's this thing called the human psyche and you study it around these issues. But maybe it's, if people understood that those are two different things. Yeah. Sometimes we refer to it like as the shiny object, but that that's an aspect of self

or it's an aspect of wanting that's not, it's not real. It's real. But that maybe there's a way to compartmentalize it so that it has the potential to be toxic to relationship. Yeah. But acknowledging that it's real,

that it's part of our wiring might diffuse some of its power. Like I said, some of these couples that are like, oh, yeah, like what's the phrase couples have where they're like, oh, you get a, it's like a hall pass. Oh, yeah. Which is never going to happen, right? She's like, you know, so and so, my wife gets a hall, I get a hall pass with it because basically it's never going to happen.

Right. So it's not really a hall pass. It's a it's a hall pass that exists in this alternate universe where the other person could actually sleep with someone. Be careful with the whole. notion because I don't know where that could lead. I'm not suggesting it. They need to be like really famous.

Not a protocol I suggest. Not a protocol I suggest. But it's kind of interesting because the parallel that comes to mind is, you know, if you're in Los Angeles long enough, you get to know some people who are actors. And from time to time, you'll run into somebody, male or female, who was a spectacular actor, had an amazing run on a comedy series or movies, and they're no longer working. and it is a bimodal distribution, people who are happy and content

and focusing on their life. I've always wondered about this. That was the younger, more attractive, working, funny, sexy, whatever. And this is men and women versus the like tortured. I'm not getting work. The work is not as good as it used to be. I mean, it's like,

and I've seen this with people who had a fame, young for other reasons in sports and things like that and they are crushed. And so what you want to say is like just realize that you have this awesome aspect of self that doesn't live in you right now but it's still you. Like you got that. Yeah. You know, I think there's a similarity here. Like if people would just be like, I've got everything I need and I'm good because yeah, that other stuff exists and I feel good about it, not like I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist. Seems that it could be a very functional way to move through life for people who have this. insecurity. I totally agree. And in fact, I'll even go a step further, which is to say, I try,

I don't always succeed, but I try to think this way about relationships that have come and gone to because I think there's a real tendency, I mean, I was going to say in our culture, but it might be a lot of cultures, to see like past relationships that have ended and I'll even put divorces in this category to look back and say, I failed. And I think people reinforce this, even unintentionally. You know, you go through a breakup, a dating breakup, and people say, I'm so sorry, I know what that's like. Come over and have some ice cream. You go through a divorce and people say, well, what happened? Because they're trying to make sure that it doesn't happen to them because they're interpreting it as a failure. And boy, I think if we give each other a little bit of grace and see it all as

Yeah, that was the thing that happened. It was real. It mattered in that moment. Things happened along the way. It didn't work out. I changed, you changed. Like being able to accept that like all of those things are real and have or had value. You know, I'd love to try to encourage people to do that.

I know, like, there's so many people out there right now who are like, yeah, but my ex is a dick. And I'm with you. I totally get that. and to the extent that there's any ability to hold these two thoughts in mind simultaneously, I think it's good. My girlfriend and I have a rule. We don't have many rules.

One of the rules is we don't talk negatively about anyone else that we've ever been with. This is good. We're very comfortable with the fact that we've had previous relationships because early on we realize that, like, in the end, like, that's all about our choices. So it's kind of a crazy argument.

Right. And she said something beautiful. She said, like, I'm grateful to all the good and bad things that you've had to experience, regardless of, you know, and I said the same to her because the relationship is great, and we bring that. And I do think it was built on the trials and tribulations and great things, you know. Now, I'm careful to not ask too many questions. Yeah. And she's careful to ask too many questions.

We actually have selective ignorance around certain, we just like, I don't care. Like, I genuinely don't go down certain lines of inquiry and she doesn't either. And I think it's great. Yeah. I think it's a, it sets up like, you're the, we're here now. This is time moving from now forward. And where it goes, we determine that. But histories are real.

And I have always admired, I have a few friends that, um, paired up very early. And they went through all these developmental milestones together, first jobs. Some even graduate college as couples, kids, you know, all this stuff. And there's something really beautiful about people that you, you know, have a long, developmental trajectory to big milestones that they reach together. Nowadays, people are pairing up later. They're getting divorced and remarrying. It's harder to build a common narrative. Right. Is there any data about common narrative good or bad? Like we went through a lot. Yeah. It can be building as well. Is time together a factor? Like when you control for everything else

is duration of relationship, an indicator of sort of quality and satisfaction of relationship. So if we're looking strictly at relationship duration, honestly, on average, it tends to be a bad sign. In other words, wait a second. Staying together is bad? It just means that like that overtime people were the happiest early on in their relationship than they are today. Right. It's actually kind of a bummer. Can you just break up and get back together a bunch?

Yeah, right. Okay. We don't study that. should. Okay. That might have some promise. I'm not volunteering. Yeah.

But let me say this. The narrative, right, the idea that we experienced a lot, that we grew, that we faced all these obstacles, that is huge. So it's a literal time is not the best metric to capture, I think, the essence of what you're getting at. It's a sense that, like, we were in this together and that we had a shared story. This is also why breakups are so hard because not only are you often losing a source of support, perhaps for men, it might be more likely to be their only source of sport. Not only do you have to face the possibility of getting back out there, but you're also losing the continuity with yourself.

You're losing the stories and the narratives that you've built with this other person and all of those memories. and all of those components. Well, I think that's why it can feel like a failure because there's this understandable and I think very desirable wish that it's like a novel. It's going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the end is death. Like, we're going to, till death do us part.

That is written into the script, right? And so I think if it ends early, I think a lot of people don't know how to integrate it into their life story. Yeah. The evolutionary biology part, which seems very real to me, is that all we have,

have is time and energy. And when we invest, time is running. There's no do-over. Right. You know, there's no do-over. So I think that people carry a lot of resent about the time lost. Yeah. And the energy and the investments that you put into it. But I think, I think it's useful to think about those investments as being about like self and story. And that to the extent that you can use it as an opportunity to, like, whether it's like reinvent or recreate or, you know, you preserve some of the parts of yourself from the prior relationship, but maybe not all the prior parts of yourself. There are some things that you'd rather let go. To the extent that you can hold on to the good parts of the story, the parts that you want to remember that you want to be

so painful when you're going through the breakup in the first place that I think a lot of times people just want to like take all of it, put it in a box and get rid of it. Definitely throw away the photos at some point. Yeah. Yeah. Although now everything's, you know, in the cloud. It's very, very challenging. Hypothalamus versus forebrain does the good primitive stuff, meaning sexual attractiveness outweigh the ability to think about how great someone is. Ideally, there's both. Yeah. But the good lover beats stated preferences model. Yeah. It's something that you've talked about before. In other words, is the real glue in a long-term relationship, some form of physical intimacy that, or put differently, can we think and talk our way, perhaps to ourselves? Yeah.

Forward through a relationship that doesn't have that physical intimacy. Usually you will see that things like sexual satisfaction or sexual desire for your partner are going to be pretty tightly related to how you've. feel about the relationship in general. It's an important component. I wouldn't say it's an essential component or even the central component for many people, but for other people, it certainly can be. And I, again, I do believe in the Church of Esther Perel, which is that there are ways of recultivating sexual feelings about somebody that actually are sexual feelings about somebody, it's not like a switch where it's just on or it's off and we know just when we look at them, that sometimes it's about the things we're talking about the time we spend together or

the time that we spend apart and that that can be rekindling in various ways. So I think the key thing for me is not to engage in fatalism about the sexual desire component. That when the passion fades in a relationship that doesn't mean that it's gone forever. It might not be something that you feel like every day at 7 p.m. anymore. It might be the kind of thing that comes to the fore in certain circumstances or when you're not totally exhausted. I think that's okay. And a lot of relationships can absolutely thrive under those circumstances. And you can push it to extremes, too, where it's like my partner hasn't been sexually attracted to me in, you know, years and years, like, that's going to be tough.

And part of the reason that's tough is because you don't have the sexual intimacy, but also part of the reason that's tough is because it's making me feel terrible about myself. So these things all like cascade in various negative ways, but I think they can also be helped in ways, too, that, you know, that engage some of these more, you know, the parts of our brains that at least we're more aware of and have some agency over. So is it true that sexual attractiveness, that rating the person's, a person rating their partner as a quote unquote good lover is among the strongest predictors of how positively they feel about the partner? Yeah, exactly. Okay, because that's, yeah.

I really appreciate your answer, but I want to make sure that if that's true, that comes through. Yeah. Because what I'm hearing is, yes, it can, those feelings can wax and wane. And yes, life circumstances and raising kids and job and stress. Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, and yes. I think everyone, including me, acknowledges that.

But this idea that it's not important after a certain stage or that a really healthy, romantic relationship can exist without that. What I'm hearing is the data point in the other direction. No, that is absolutely correct. The subjective sense that, and that's exactly the wording that we use, the subjective sense that like this person that I am with or this person that in that study, we have people who are in relationships, but we also have people who are reporting on like just folks that they're initially attracted to. But in both, it actually doesn't really matter.

In both cases, feeling like this person is a good lover or likely to be a good lover in the case of the attraction scenarios is a very, very good sign for how positively you feel about the relationship in general and whether you want the relationship to continue. But again, it's that, it's that subjective sense. And that's, that's kind of where I'm getting to this component of like, if, if I start to feel like you're not a great lover,

like that's going to rebound so that then you don't feel desirable and it's going to sort of cascade in all of these negative ways. All seems to converge on, it's an important feature of romantic relationships to cultivate, protect from, you know, and you describe some, to me, surprising, you know,

I think for some of, reason it makes total sense and yet it's surprising that this kind of energy from the outside can provide positive support to the relationship. But Esther said it. Esther, excuse me, said it and others have said it. So very interesting. Final question. Sounds like a game show. Okay. Final question. A million dollar question. Your course on this topic and related topics is incredibly popular for obvious reasons. It's super interesting topic. I mean, at the end of the day, like our species evolved through these dynamics. Yeah.

You know, it wasn't all like, you know, club the lion, you know, gather food, make baby. There was a lot of dynamics. I always chuckle when people say, like, you know, stress is a holdover from when we were being hunted by saber-toothed. No, that's complete, like, nonsense. It was also there for when your spouse went hunting for the day or gathering and you didn't know if they were going to come back or they came back after sundown when normally they're there at sundown.

It's for when your baby was sick. Yeah. Like this notion that like stress was only about predation. It's just so stupid. I'd like to have words with whoever came up with that. It's so dumb. It makes not true. Yeah.

What are the questions that students are asking most often nowadays? Because I realize that as a, you know, 50-year-old male, I suffer from a number of different delusions about relationships as it is for people in their 20s, 30s now. And maybe for everybody, because we're all in our own experience. But I think even though the college classroom is not a perfect sample by any stretch, presumably there are a lot of different people in there. Yeah. Men, women, right? Some are probably straight.

Some are gay, on average 2%. Like, you're going to get a lot of questions. What are the big questions that people seem to want answered that you're just hearing over and over again that are both in the direction of like, this is a challenge, but also, like, what's going right out there? Is anything going right? I think most of the questions are about, like, there is often an assumption that, like, yeah, but these days, it's so screwed up.

That's what they're saying. Yeah. Like, I mean, you just have this undercurrent. It's almost like, and I worry about this sometimes, that when I teach the science on these topics, there's a general sense of, okay, but that, this is. science from the before times. Like today, when the apps have controlled everything and like nobody goes out anymore, like what are we supposed to do? And sometimes I fall back on the, well, look, like these groups and things like we were talking about, these clubs, they're still out there.

You can still get out there and meet people. Activities. Yeah, activities. Like through these avenues, they tend to work pretty well. And at the same time, I have to acknowledge that the generations are going to change. And these folks' experiences will be different than the experiences that my generation had. So I think in many ways, this ends up being the challenge to, like, to convey the science to folks, but also do it in a way that shows that you're being responsive and aware of the fact that any generation feels like but things have changed now. And sometimes it takes a while to know, like, what has really changed? I do think that these students go out less often. I think they drink less often.

I think they aren't spending time socializing in the same way, and they're interfacing more with technology. That's probably helping some people, and it's probably really making it hard for some other people. And so, you know, I try to, like, live the example of, hey, like, I spent time hanging out with people in groups, and it was hard, and I got rejected. and my high school girlfriend dumped me,

but I ended up doing okay. And I hope that other people can resonate with that message in my classes. Love it. And I'm also hearing perhaps don't just sign up for something, but be the person who organizes it. Yeah. Yeah. I love this. I love this. You can throw a picnic or a party. When I was a graduate student, Davis,

I often didn't make it because I was in lab, but every Friday there was a picnic. Friday, there was a pickup beach volleyball game. Oh, that's fantastic. And then people would go to, there was a Thai restaurant that was also a bar. That night sometimes ended the next morning. Yeah. There was a tattoo shop right across the street that closed called American Graffiti.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Some people got tattoos. Yeah. And those I do not recommend and definitely don't get tattooed drunk. Probably don't even do what you want. But it was every Friday.

Yeah. And there was only one rule, which is that you had to at least attempt to do the kind of like bump set approach to beach volleyball. You couldn't just hit it across the net. And it didn't matter how bad you were. You had to do the three part. Yeah. And then everyone would go out Thai food. Some people would have drinks if they drank.

Some people would have a lot of drinks. They definitely drank. It's just a really cool thing. Anyone could come. Yeah. Things like that happened a lot. And it took like zero planning. It was an email that basically just went out.

And no one person was in charge. It was just kind of in the collective. Yeah. They did like cooking competition things where you'd meet at someone's house and everyone would have to bring like a particular dish and then everyone would try them. And I had no time in graduate school. I was working all the time. I would make time for these things occasionally. And they were a lot of fun.

Yeah. Like these things are super easy to do. Yeah. You don't have to have any real athletic ability or cooking ability. Trust me. I just feel like there's so much. much opportunity for that. But the barrier must be really there for people if they're not doing these things because I think it was just reflexive. Technology has a pull. And we can say it's the phones,

but we could also say that it's whatever is on your TV. I mean, there's lots of reasons these days for people to stay in that just weren't there 20 to 30 years ago. I'd hope that the message would resonate like, you know, gang, like these, whether it's the entertainment companies or the apps, they're trying to keep you away from real socialization. Young people, don't you like rebelling and stuff? Rebell against this, you know, exactly, like form these groups, go out and meet people again in person. I think it's coming back. I really do. I think the pandemic, I think it was like a long pandemic hangover where we just kind of forgot this part of our social architecture. But it's coming back.

It didn't go anywhere. We're still social creatures. And we also have these great frontal lobes. And even if you don't feel like going on interacting with people, you can kind of nudge yourself to do it. And I think that's pretty fantastic. Thank you so much for the work you do. It's very brave. It's very brave because it runs right up against some longstanding theories of which I, you know,

I still think very highly of a good fraction of the evolutionary biology and psychology literature. I now have to filter it through these new findings. But you create your own new field, basically, which is, of course, why your book, which will provide a link to. And your work is so popular. And I love the optimism that it shines into every, interaction. I'm sure people picked up on that, that you're not a doom and gloom guy. You're a solutions guy. Really appreciate your time here. Many people will thank you, both those in relationship.

You learn some things to, you know, armor your relationship, understand your relationship better, yourself. And for those who are seeking partners or who are just observing the world around them and are content where they're at, they're going to benefit. So thank you so much. Really appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Paul Eastwick. To learn more about his work and to find a link to his book, Bonded by Evolution, The New Science of Love and Connection, please see the links in the show note caption.

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