The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1364: Dr. Max Butterfield | Challenging Viral Dating Myths with Science

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

A late text isn't a diagnosis and chemistry isn't destiny. Psychologist Dr. Max Butterfield is here to debunk viral dating advice with science.Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1364What We Discuss with Dr. Max Butterfield:Viral relationship advice converts ambiguous behavior into confident universal rules because certainty sells. The halo effect makes attractive people believable and provocative claims spread, while real science says "maybe, sometimes, it depends," which rarely goes viral."If he wanted to, he would" ignores that motivation and desire are separate systems. People stall from fear, old wounds, or being buried — not indifference. Knowing what to do isn't the same as doing it, so give people room before writing them off.Separate the pattern from the story. A slow text reply is a pattern you can verify; "they hate me" is a story you author on top of it. Before committing to the worst version, tell yourself the most likely, least likely, and current story — most people default straight to worst-case.A red flag isn't one bad moment — it's a pattern that makes your life worse instead of better. The clearest one is inconsistency: a partner who pays out like a slot machine. What you actually want is the "boring" change machine that reliably returns four quarters.Audit every rule you hear — is it one anecdote or real data, and does it lean on always/never or honest hedges like sometimes? Then keep it simple: find someone you like, make sure they like you back, and try really hard to make it work.And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: BetterHelp: 10% off first month: betterhelp.com/jordanK12: Learn more at k12.com/jordanNorthwest Registered Agent: Get more at northwestregisteredagent.com/jordanProgressive: Free online quote: progressive.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. We had the best time in Victoria, BC, staying with our friend Chad, who lives up there, also happens to be an incredible fitness trainer, leave it to Chad to sneak a strength training block into a relaxing vacation. But staying with somebody local, it made the whole trip feel different. It wasn't the tourist version of Victoria. It was the Here's What You Actually Need to See version. We flew on a seaplane, wandered Government Street and Fantan Alley, found an amazing coffee

spot, hiked Mount Douglas Park for this incredible 360-degree view over the whole city. and that's the kind of travel experience people actually remember. It's also what makes listing your space on Airbnb in Canada so practical. While you're away, your home doesn't have to sit empty. It can become part of someone else's trip. Maybe you love your quiet street, your walkable neighborhood, the coffee shop around the corner, the nearby trails, the cozy backyard at your stay,

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most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better-informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, and performers, even the occasional Fortune 500 CEO, four-star general, astronaut, or a real-life pirates. And hey, if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, and I always appreciate it when you do that, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation,

psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanherbanger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, the internet has turned dating into amateur forensic psychology. A late reply means avoidant attachment. An argument means narcissism. A bad first date means there's no chemistry. And if your partner doesn't speak your love language, God forbid, apparently the relationship

is already on life support. Dr. Max Butterfield built an audience of more than a million people online by challenging this stuff with actual relationship science. But there's a catch. Science doesn't give us a magic formula either. Today, we're going to find out what psychology can genuinely tell us about attraction, red flags, conflict, breakups, choosing a partner, and what remains an unpredictable mess because human beings refuse to behave like lab rats. Here we go with Dr. Max Butterfield.

I'm here with Max Butterfield, Dr. Max Butterfield. It's cool that you came up with that almost like video, audio trademark. Yeah, and it was an accident. But it'd be honest to be. I'm sure. Yeah. I just got started on social media. Not that long. ago. It's been about 18 months. And so my very first video, you don't know what you're doing. And so I had in my head, make sure to introduce yourself as Dr. Max Butterfield, because I don't, that's not how I talk in real life. People generally, I don't know what they expect, but in real life, I'm just a regular guy. So I said to myself, make sure you introduce yourself. And I forgot. And I just said, I'm Max Butterfield. And then to be funny, I was like, Dr. Max Butterfield.

And people liked it. And so I thought, well, I could do that again. It's the putting your nose within a millimeter of the camera lens without leaving. a print on it and then back you know. There's prints. No, there's prints. That's how you know you're doing it right. You're cutting it so close. Sometimes you step over the line. You have that audio video trademark. Everybody who knows your videos knows exactly. If they didn't know who you were before, now they're like, oh, that guy. You know, I was doing research on you and it says you're an experimental psychologist and professor. So what is experimental psychology? I've never actually heard of that, which surprised me because, I don't know, it seems like I should know what that is.

Yeah, so experimental psychology is the oldest branch of psychologists. What do you think of when you think of the classic experiments like Pavlov's dogs? Oh. That's experimental psychology. So I like to say it's not the helping people psychology, at least not one-on-one. And instead, it's the seeing what happens when, you know, people are put in situations. It's the torture dogs type of psychology, yeah. That's the downside is all the kind of bad things that have happened in psychology have come from, for the most part, the experimental side. Most of us don't do that. But, That is true. Like Stanford prison experiment. Wow. It should have this right at the forefront, but the one where they're shocking people.

Yeah. So that's Stanley Milgram. Milgram. Back in the 60s. Experimental psychology, Stanford Prison Experiment, Phil Zimbardo, experimental psychology. And that's what people think. Experimental, do you mean like you don't know what you're doing?

That's kind of what it sounds like. We're just throwing shit at the wall. That sets the whole field. Right. No, exactly. And honestly, like, I think that's how it was in the 60s and 70s, probably just let's see what happens here. But truly what it is, it's like experimental physics, where you're designing experiments to find out why people do what they do and why people are what

they are. And so it's the scientific arm, really, of psychology. Okay, thank you for that. I feel dumb, but also educated. So good job there. So what I love about your videos and your content is that most viral relationship advice, it converts ambiguous human behavior, which I guess most behavior is, into this very confident, universal rule. And real relationship science is frankly far less satisfying. There's all this context and nuance and all this stuff that makes it useful that doesn't do well in like a 90 second or 60 second. I don't know how long TikToks are, but short.

And I have some examples here that we'll get into it a bit, but people rely a lot on pop culture or trendy science. And I get it, right? I think it's called accessibility or availability bias, right? It's like it's on your phone, you're on the toilet, it's right? front of you, you didn't have to go take a class from Professor Max Butterfield to learn about it and then study it and take an exam on it. So if you don't have a lot of life experience, right, you're in your 20s or maybe even your 30s, but you spend a lot of time in school in your

career. And then you see a video that says, you know what? I've noticed. Soulmates all look like each other and you're like, wow, that totally makes sense. I do know some people that seem kind happy that sort of, I guess, look kind of the same. This must be a rule of life. And my girlfriend is a different color than me, so it's never going to happen. It doesn't play well on social media for an expert to come in and go, maybe, sometimes. That's possible. And so that's been the challenge, I think, for a lot of experts in joining social media, kind of joining that fray, is figuring out, okay, well, how do I talk like that while still also communicating kind of the truth? And it's interesting, you mentioned the toilet because what occurs to me that most of education today is probably

the classroom is the bathroom. It's a toilet. And that's weird if you think about it. That's a big chain. At best the couch. Yeah, it's true. Even just in your car. So I ordered something called a squirrel box, which is like a birdhouse for squirrels that has cameras in it. Have you heard of these? Squirrelboxes.com. And I ordered it. And the guy was like, are you the Jordan from the podcast? And I was like, yeah, because I had a problem. My order, like, didn't go through as I called. And he goes, yeah, I listen to you all the time, but only when I drive, which actually is quite a bit. But I thought, huh, imagine your number one point of learning is an adult who's been out of school for 30 years is your vehicle. It makes sense in 2026, but you're right. It's weird. It's weird to be like, I educate myself solely while commuting and going to the bathroom. No time in between that is spent learning anything. That's just regular. Hopefully not simultaneously on those two things. Thanks. You mean commuting and going to the bathroom at the same time? Probably not that.

I thought you meant educating. I'm like, what are you doing? No, that'd be good. Yeah, both of those. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because a lot of these videos that you have that have gone viral, there's got to be a lot of arguing in the comments.

I've looked at the comments on a few, and I think it's quite hilarious that somebody will sit down and go, listen, Dr. Max Butterfield with a PhD in psychology. I do think that soulmates are a real thing. And I do think that they tend to look like each other. And it's like, at some point, you just have to realize that people have cognitive bias. and you can't talk to them anymore, but you can only talk to the other, I don't know, 80% of people that don't have their head in their butt.

I don't know. How do you feel about this? Well, and that's the truth. You're always going to make somebody mad. Literally, it doesn't matter what I say in the comments. Someone will say, how dare you? And I could say the opposite thing that I just said yesterday. How dare you, sir? So interesting. I have a similar issue where people say, you're a right-wing kook. And then the next email or review is this left-wing lib-wing, And it's the same episode. 100%. No, 100%. Something for the first half and the other person heard something for the second half.

And so it depends on what they paid attention to that offended them. Soulmates is probably a good place to start because I never thought that made any sense. Just even in high school when people would talk about it, I would be like, isn't it weird that you met your soulmate in your high school? Isn't it weird that everybody who met their soulmate met them through one friend or lived in the same town? What are the odds that there's eight billion or at the time? I don't know, when I was younger, six billion people on earth. And your soulmate's not like a person in a village in India. It's a person who lives in the exact same town as you, who's your best friend's sister.

The odds are just so in your favor. Isn't that a happy coincidence? It's amazing. Yeah. So that alone was enough to be like, maybe you have a few hundred thousand of these soulmate people that would work as your wife or girlfriend. Definitions for experimental psychologists matter a great deal. So I really wonder, what do they truly mean when they say soulmate?

So if we're talking about there's one person that the universe has designed specifically for you. Okay, absolutely not. But I also wonder how many people truly believe that? Like how many people truly would say, no, there's only one person for me. And in fact, that is because of stardust that has made that happen. But I think a lot of times what people actually mean when they say soulmates is there is an ideal person out there for me. that's probably true to some degree. There are people who are going to be better for you

and people who are going to be worse for you. But I also think the reality is that we grow our soulmates. We create our soulmates. So you can choose to live a life with someone. You can choose to become better and closer together over time. Most people are going to agree with that. But we get stuck on the words. That's my point is a lot of times I think we're just talking past each other.

For me, maybe I'm biased not to believe and the soulmates looking like each other thing because my wife is Chinese and that wouldn't go well for me. But yeah, I do wonder what you think. What is the most popular piece of relationship advice that sounds wise and feels emotionally satisfying but has probably damaged more relationships than it's served or saved? You can't make me choose just one. There's infinite horrible advice out there.

A few that come to mind right now. How's that? Well, okay, so the first one immediately just kind of jumps to my mind. I don't know why is if he wanted to, he would. and I think that applies to if she wanted to she would as well but it's most often said if he wanted to he would which just says that essentially guys are going to put an effort and if they don't put an effort if they don't immediately overwhelm you with their love that they just are not interested in you at all and the fact is if I wanted to go to the gym I would that's true but sometimes like I literally I don't have time

I want to eat ice cream for dinner every night. I don't. So just because I want to doesn't mean that I will. There's a variety of reasons why people are legitimately afraid of being in a relationship or legitimately unable to get over themselves or don't have the skills or whatever it might be. And I think we don't give people the benefit of the doubt enough. And sometimes people just need room for growth. They need space.

They need all sorts of things to be able to do what they want. motivation and desire are two separate cognitive systems. I had a friend who had been engaged and he had put so much effort into, this is when we were kids, we were like 20 something, he had put so much effort into this relationship and then she rejected him. So in his next several relationships, he was like, I need to invest way less because that scared her off and also it hurt more when she and I broke up because I had invested too much. So then his later girlfriend, I remember one of them was like, he just doesn't put an

effort and I hear about his ex and how much he invested in her so I don't think he loves me and I'm like, oh, let me explain something to you. She took his heart and threw it into a wood chipper. And he's not investing in you because he actually does like you and doesn't want you to run away while drop kicking his feelings all down the staircase on the way out. So I had to sort of reframe this for her like, no, the reason he's doing nothing to further your relationship is because he actually really likes you. And he basically had to reprogram himself, right? Because he was in hardcore defense mode. So if he did like a girl, he wouldn't do anything. And then he had a couple casual relationships before that where he like put in medium effort because he didn't care if he

scared her away. He's like, ah, it's a new thing. I can buy her flowers. If she runs away, it's just some flowers. Meanwhile, he really liked this one girl. He dated her for a few months. And he's no flowers, no date nights, no trips, no words of affirmation. And I'm like, I don't think this recipe is for you. I don't think this is working for you. And that's the wild part is we get in our own head so easily, where you might know, exactly what it is that you need to do, but because of this history and these wounds that you carry, you do the opposite of what you actually legitimately know you should be doing. We're complicated animals and we think too much. And those anxieties get in the way of happiness.

I noticed that you are not a huge fan of the five love languages type of stuff. That has an absolute cult following. I would love to hear your opinion on this. I'm going to be generous for a moment. And I think the love languages give people who are, and I don't mean this in a bad way, but give people who are largely unskilled in their vocabulary a language to talk about what's important to them. So that to me is important. And if it's important to you and it gives you vocabulary to voice what you need to your partner, I think that's great. However, there are other languages that you can learn to use that same metaphor that are much more effective. at helping you communicate. So what I'm saying is, it's like a horoscope. Horoscopes give people a language

to say, hey, you know, I feel a certain way or I am a certain way. Are they accurate? No, of course not. And the love languages just don't hold up in the research literature. We have much more effective ways to help describe what our needs are in relationships, what our relationship styles are like. And love languages were, they were invented by a Christian pastor, and that's fine if you're into that kind of thing. But they're not the most effective language that's out there for love, which is really weird because that's their marketing. And what's funny is I have friends who've covered this or done roundup videos on this, and they're super litigious. And I remember when I was like, oh, I want to do this on my podcast because my podcast used to be about dating for years and years. That was it.

That's why I like this topic, because it's sort of like throwback to something I used to do when I was a relevant. elephant person who was dating. And I don't have a PhD, so I can't keep doing it after I'm married with any sort of shred of credibility, right? Like you can. Hey, there's still time, Jordan. Hey, my wife is Chinese. Anything could happen. Our relationship is automatically on the rocks because we don't look like you. No, I meant the PhD. You've got time. Your relationship's great, I'm sure. Your relationship could dissolve. You could be single again. That's where my head went. You're right. I could get a PhD, but I don't plan on doing that. What were we talking about? So this guy, the guy who invented that, I remember was like, you have to pay me to join your show.

and then they sued this YouTuber and I was like, I thought this guy was all, I just want to spread this as far and wide as I can, and it's like, no, not really. It's quite the business. Look, I don't blame people for copyright and forcing copyright and trademark, but it just struck me as a little bit extra aggressive,

and I thought it was quite funny, and they're very not receptive to criticism on any of this stuff. The love languages thing, you're right, they're convenient and they're horoscopy. I don't find them completely useless, but I'm curious. You said they just don't,

hold up in the research, and that's more important than sometimes they're useful. It doesn't mean it was scientific. Exactly. And that's the love languages. They haven't been thoroughly investigated either, to be fair, because researchers know that they're a little too horoscopy. It would be like thoroughly investigating a horoscope. Part of it is we don't actually need to do that because of the nature of the way these have been designed. So they haven't been designed in what's called a testable way. In other words, if I say there is a hidden secret monster living under your house that's undetectable, prove me wrong, you don't need to go looking because it's impossible to falsify. And love languages, they're not as bad as a secret monster hidden under your house, but at the same time,

they have that flavor. It's very hard to falsify them. Yeah, some people like these. And I'll say, just knowing my wife likes acts of service, it just reminds me to do her favors sometimes. And that's useful enough. Yeah. And so I would put them in the category of probably not harmful for most people, maybe even helpful. Yeah. Notice how I'm couching that, you know, very carefully, very specifically, because it might work, truly it might, but things like working on your communication skills, far more efficacious and concrete. You can actually do that today. Whereas if you know that your wife's primary love language is acts of service, you can also work on that today. So again, that's not bad, but if you get stuck there, that's where the problem can occur. Because just doing

acts of service and then being a jerk in the rest of your daily interactions, that's not going to fix the main issue. It's the communication thing. It's really it. So that's truly, for me, what the problem is, is if people use them as their only tool, if they get stuck in that box. But if you want to use that as part of your approach to a happy and healthy relationship. That's also based on some of the more efficacious interventions that you can do. Great. That's amazing. I remember back when I was single, my friend ran speed dating events and she's like,

you can come to any of these. And I was like, I definitely want to go. I might meet some girls, but also I get a chance to test out all kinds of funny stuff. And she's like, just don't piss anyone off, right? So one of the things that I tested, because I was also doing experimental psychology without knowing what it was. I would say something like, what is your astrological sign? And the right answer for me was, I don't believe in that stuff. But people would go, oh, I'm a Sagittarius or whatever. And then they'd be, and they'd go off and talk about that. And I would just be like, I don't need

to deal with the rest of this because I don't believe in that at all. And people who do believe it, I just, I'm a man of science, even though I didn't know what your science field was. It's like, yeah, what's your love language. I don't know what those are. That's a good answer. Or I think it's probably this or I haven't read the book. But if somebody's like, I am a, the gifts one, it's like, oh, run. Because this person likes expensive stuff. They're going to expect you to buy it all the time. And if you don't, it means you don't love them. Check please. I like gifts too, Jordan. Yeah, I guess I do too. That's not my love language, but if you buy me a Camaro, like, I'll take it. Sure. I think both the cost and the benefit of love languages is they give people this language to

communicate what is important. And so I never want to ignore that. It's like horoscopes have been around star signs have been around for it's something like 3,000 years they must be useful in some way, shape, or form if they've persisted for that long. Useful is not the same as accurate or predictive, but useful, why have they persisted so long? And it's because people need a language to be able to talk about themselves. And truly, it might be a good starting place. Does it predict whether you're going to find your soulmate or achieve your dreams or whatever? No. But is it helpful for human interaction? Yeah, probably or else it wouldn't have lasted so long. Yeah, that's an interesting point. Yeah, you look at anything that's antiquated and you go like, wow, this is so stupid. It's like, yeah, but for 2,000 years,

it told people what was going to happen after they died and still does for some folks. And like, that's not nothing. That's not nothing. I think it's interesting that you decided to start your social media career essentially because you wanted to write a book. And I think the publisher, your agent was like, nobody wants to publish a book unless you have an audience. Is that? Nobody cares about you. That was the lesson. Yeah. So what did you just tell all your students to follow you on Instagram? How did you kick things off? That was basically it. I asked them nicely. I didn't actually expect them to. I started in January of 2025. And I just decided I'm going to make a video every day. I knew reels were kind of the way to go on Instagram for discoverability. And so I didn't know what I was doing. I like making videos. I've always tried to be entertaining in the classroom and elsewhere. So I just, I made a video and I showed it to my students on the very first day of the semester. I said, hey, look, I'm going to be.

to make an idiot of myself the whole semester. If you want to follow the train wreck, please do. So I gave this personal pitch that like, hey, I'm an idiot and I'm going to embrace it. And nothing happened for three or four months. And then I figured a few things out. I had a real gold viral. And I thought I could do that again. And I did. And by July, I think I had a million followers on Instagram. And now you have two million, which is crazy. It's crazy. I'm I truly, I never expected that at all. I thought I might be able to get some attention. I didn't even know if it would be positive or not.

But 2 million followers, that's just wild. That's not something I expected at all. I'm betting you were like, once I hit that 1,000 mark, I'm calling my agent, get that book going, right? Maybe 10,000. And now it's 2 million. You probably have every publisher being like, hey, have you thought about writing. Are you writing a book? Is that happening?

I do have a book deal. Yeah, have a big book deal. And you keep mum about it at first, what it's about and when it's going to come out. I can guess what it's going to be about. Yeah, relationships, probably a pretty good bet, but it'll be coming out and about, let's say, a year. Never ignore a red flag, unless it's attached to somebody who's really hot, and then you probably need, like, I don't know, 12 more months of data.

We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. You've heard me talk about BetterHelp for years now, but let's be honest, I'm also the guy reading the ad, so rather than taking my word for it, go see what the people who have actually use the service are saying, and of course I've used it too, but BetterHelp has a reviews page at betterhelp.com slash reviews where you can look through customer feedback for yourself. The page is updated every day with hundreds of people sharing their experiences and talking about how

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Jordan. That's BetterHELP.com slash Jordan. This episode is also sponsored by K-12 powered online schools. As a parent of two, one thing I've learned is that every kid is different. What excites one child might not work for another, and sometimes the best thing we can do is stay open to finding the environment where they feel supported, engaged, and excited to learn. A new school year brings a fresh start, and for families considering a different path, there's still time to enroll in K-12 powered online schools. K-12 offers tuition-free, accredited online public education for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Students can learn at their own pace with a curriculum designed to meet them where they are and support their individual

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codes, you're not just scoring a discount. You're giving the show a boost. We don't earn sales commissions from your purchases of the things that you hear online. But when companies see that listeners are engaging with the ad, it encourages them to keep supporting the show. So if you're planning to sign up for something or buy something, please use our deals page, Jordan. and Harbinger.com slash deals. Our code is usually Jordan, but not always. It's a win-win. You get an awesome deal, and you help keep the show going strong. We really appreciate your support. Now, back to Dr. Max Butterfield. I think these viral videos, I love seeing somebody take them down. And I think that's part of the allure of your account, right? It's because people who believe in the viral stuff,

they might want the truth. And people who definitely think, this is so stupid, my eyes are rolling back in my head so hard that it hurts. I want somebody else to articulately dismantle this type of advice because it is so stupid and it's like, gosh, somebody please correct the record. And that's kind of what you're trying to do here. I wonder, do you think that's why relationship misinformation is such an efficient growth market compared with other areas of psychology? I think there are a couple of factors. One is that it's really easy to believe someone who is attractive. You see somebody hot, or female, they're saying something, you're like, yeah, that's probably true. That's a cognitive bias that we have. And everybody has that. The halo effect, right? Is that what that's called?

Halo effect. Yeah, exactly. This good looking person is tall, therefore they must be competent. Exactly. And sometimes young people will call that pretty privilege, which it's more alliterative. But yeah, and so that's part of it. If you're attractive, you can say whatever you want, and it'll be believable. And so on social media, that just attractiveness just sells. And so you combine that with something provocative. You say soulmates all look alike, just like we were talking about before. That gets the conversation going. It gets both people who hate what you said.

It gets people who agree with what you said. And then gets people who are kind of curious about it. And so I think it's a recipe in a lot of ways for virality. And there was no one fighting back against that for the longest time, especially not experts, because it's hard to get traction on social media. And you do have to look like an idiot. And you do have to be willing. People called me ugly for probably every day for the first year.

And it still happens. You just have to have a thick skin. And so it's not for everyone. And I think that's why I was able to gain some traction. I just went all in. I just took the plunge. Geez, imagine if you were actually ugly. That would really hurt your feelings.

I appreciate that. I also appreciate that most of your listeners are not going to be watching me. So they can't verify. They'll just take your word for it here. That's right. He's not ugly, folks. Take my word for it. Trust me.

Trust me, bro. Was your wife amused, horrified, or is she now suddenly expected to fact check every argument in your marriage? So she was both amused and horrified. That's a thing about me being on social media. All my friends, all my family, everybody who knows me, they say, yep, that's him. Nothing about this is an act. Nothing about this as me putting on errors.

This is what I'm like in real life. Imagine if you're my mom and I go, no, false, wrong. As a five-year-old or whatever, but that's the truth. And I've really had to learn how to tone that down personally. Like growing up, that's been difficult for me to do. But social media is a place where I've been able to in many ways be myself. But there are consequences for that. Some people get really mad.

And my wife feels bad when that happens. She doesn't want me to get hurt. But she also knows that it's been an outlet for my creativity and my, just my intellect to be able to kind of shine forth. When that book deal, advanced check gets cast, I think many of her criticisms will melt way. It's a pretty good, yeah, it's a pretty, pretty good, just, you know, you put a dollar amount on it and you're good to go. I'm sure it is. Yeah, I got to wonder, I've seen many of your videos, which one made people the most mad? Because obviously, nothing I've seen even makes my

blood pressure go up at all. I can't imagine what that would be to trigger people. That's the thing. I sometimes will say the blandest stuff. It'll be like, be kind to each other. And they'll go, how dare you attack that woman or how dare you contradict that man's personal lived life experience? And so I think it's not actually the content often that makes people mad. I don't think it's how I go about it either. I try very much not to criticize anyone personally. I really go out of my way never to say, don't follow this creator, this creator is bad or whatever.

You've never said, look at this dumbass. I can't believe this guy is popular. I've never heard anything like that. And let me tell you, I want to say that. that. That's something I would love to say, yes. No, but it's rude. Honestly, there's a better way to do discourse in that. So I try to stick to the information, but people, this is another cognitive bias, people don't often have the ability to separate what you say from how you articulate it, from who you're talking to, and from that context. So I think the things that make people the maddest are

when I contradict someone who they love and they're jumping to that person's defense. And so in that way, I actually, I can't get that mad at them for that because I probably do the same thing. Sure. Yeah, you listen to, I don't know, Sam Harris for five years and someone says, oh, this guy's a racist. You're just like, wait, wait, wait, okay. Hold on, I know him. He's not. That's not it.

Are you sure? That's not the thing. Yeah. I do wonder, so I'm going to push back a little bit here. Sure. You criticize influencers for using certainty, right? But your breakthrough on social media came when you learned to use their hook, their format, and their algorithmic machinery, some people might say, aren't you fighting the junk food by making

slightly more nutritious junk food? Sure. And that is my counter argument as always, tit for tat is the most effective communication strategy that exists. John Nash and a team of other people won the Nobel Prize for this. There's a movie about it, a beautiful mine. And this is a well-known idea that if you, let me phrase it this way, a lot of academics try to go on to Instagram. or other social media, and force Instagram to play by the rules of academia. The rules of academia don't work there. That's not what they were built for. So I went on Instagram and I said, I'm going to play by their rules.

They don't cite their sources. I don't really feel a need to cite my sources either. You can absolutely go find them if you're interested. But if somebody says X is true based on my experience, I say X is false based on the scientific research. If you want to check it, go ahead. So I think that is fair. I agree with you.

I think it is fair. If you cited sources, you wouldn't be able to do this. And that's the thing. If I cite a source, people will go, no, that one's too old. Yeah. It's like the quote, if you've seen Parks and Rec, there's this great Fred Armisen bit. It's like, no matter what you do, straight to jail, undercooked the fish, overcook the chicken or whatever it is, like straight to jail. And so sit a source, jail.

Don't sit a source. also jail. Yeah, that's true. Honestly, I don't even think people are waiting for that. They're just going to go, is there a source for this? And you could probably even throw them in the caption. Actually, do you do that? I haven't.

Sometimes. I feel like I've seen that. What I try to do is if I make a specific claim, like if I give a number, 47% of people are unhappy because of this, then I will cite a source. But if I say kindness is good for relationships and you're like, source, source, what's the source for that? that is like asking Bill Nye why water is made of H2O, how could you possibly believe that?

I need a source. It's such basic information that it doesn't need to be sourced every single time. So that's kind of my approach is, yeah, the sources are there, but Instagram is not the place for that discourse. We can have that. Absolutely, we can have that. But not in a 90-second clip. You're just going to say you're wrong, no matter what I say source or not.

So a lot of social media dating advice or whatever human behavior that goes into this sort of universal diagnosis. He said this, therefore he's insecure. She did this, therefore she must be cheating. And it's often something that's heads eye, when tells you lose, right? Like, oh, you accuse me of cheating. You're projecting, therefore you must be cheating. And it's like, actually, no, I just really think you're cheating. Now you're just projecting harder. And it's like, okay, so how do I tell you that I think that you are cheating without you saying that I'm just They pulled away, therefore, their avoidant attachment style. Why do people crave these simplistic rules? What do they provide relief from or what do they offer?

We live in a very uncertain world, and uncertainty is scary. If you trace it back to something more basic, say you don't know where your next meal is going to come from, that is a huge problem for any organism. But it's a huge problem for us as well. And so we prefer certainty over uncertainty. That might sound like a cop out a little bit. It's like we like certainty better. Why? Because it's survival-based.

Yeah, we cover uncertainty on the show all the time. And it's one of these things that makes people believe conspiracy theories because you'd rather believe that, I don't know, Jewish people are secretly reptiles. There's a secret cabal that's doing all this stuff on purpose, rather than be like, hey, all of our world leaders have their heads firmly in their own asses and are preoccupied with getting rich and they don't care about you. and we have no idea what we're going to do next week.

That's way scarier than secret cabal of Illuminati reptilian, I don't know, Jews or something like that, right? Which is kind of weird if you think about it. I don't want my leaders to be wearing a human mask, but they are wearing a human mask in a lot of ways. And I don't mean that as in there's a reptile underneath, metaphorically, maybe. Yeah.

But the world is so complex that we look to simplify everywhere. Our brains are designed not to think hard. That is what our brains are trying to do is to try to streamline as much as possible so that when it comes to a life and death situation, we still have resources available. It's like if you're running a marathon, you don't sprint at the beginning. That'd be crazy. And that's how it is in regular life. You don't use your mental horsepower on what you should have for lunch. You just take a shortcut and you say, this is what I had for lunch yesterday.

So I'll have something different today or all the same thing today. It is just about conservation. I think this explains perfectly why, and a lot of people wrote and asked some form or another and asked me this, why intelligent people, otherwise intelligent people, become astonishingly gullible when the subject is their own love life. So you'll find somebody who's like a Harvard-educated lawyer and worked at the Supreme Court and they're reading all these dumb pop culture books on relationships and believing in the silliest old wives tales type of stuff when it comes to dating and relationship, and it's just, oh my gosh, what's wrong with you? You're one of the smartest people I know,

but when it comes to your own dating life, not even the advice you give your friends is brilliant and on point. When it comes to your own life, you're a complete mess. That's always so shocking, I think. And I don't know if there's another comparison. Do you know any dentists with bad teeth, for example? Not yet. Of course not. They take care of their teeth. They know what they're doing. That's right. But relationships require some degree of cooperation from another person. And so even if you're an expert, If your partner's being crazy, what are you supposed to do with that? And also knowing what to do is different than actually doing it. It's like that he wanted to, he would, where I might know that doing 30 minutes of cardio,

doing strength training, and eating healthy is the right way to live. Do I actually do that sometimes? Yeah, exactly. Sometimes. People often will ask me why I still have a trainer, even though it's been, I don't know, five years and I'm thinking, I love that you would give me enough credit that I would work out hard on my own. That's cute. Right. The accountability. Yes, exactly. I think it's interesting that an inaccurate label or idea is sometimes emotionally preferable to an accurate but incomplete explanation of something.

We're more than willing to accept something that is certain but probably wrong and we know that it's probably wrong versus a nuanced but sort of uncertain outcome. And I wonder if this dovetails here, what psychological need is being met, aside from the certainty thing, when someone says, oh, here, Cheryl, here's an article about seven signs your partner is secretly a narcissist. What are we getting out of this? It's a good question because it's different for everyone. So what you might get out of it might be different than what I might get out of it versus what Cheryl or whoever might get out of it. And that's why it's, see, I'm hedging even now. Well, you have to. It's like, well, hey, wait a second. I just asked you a basic question. No, you didn't.

It's not that basic. That's the subject to somebody's dissertation out there somewhere. Sure. And so that's where relationship science, I think, and just psychology in general, it can be unsatisfying for a lot of people, is we're not willing to lie to you. Truly, that's what it is. I am not willing to say, well, here's why. And it's because the here's why is 50 different things. And so, You have to get to know each individual person. I think that's the value of translating this science for individual people, but also the challenge, because I can't just broadcast out there. Here is exactly what each and every one of you should do.

I need to talk to you to find out. And there are certainly some commonalities across certain types of people or certain types of situations. And so that's the challenge to translate that science into actionable things for everyone. Do you have any rule of thumb that might help us differentiate between a useful pattern and a story we invent just because the uncertainty is intolerable? Yeah, even your phrasing there is super helpful pattern versus story because the story is your interpretation of the pattern. So that takes it one step further. So you see somebody, suppose you take a common situation, which is somebody doesn't text you back as fast as you want. So common.

Yeah, that's a pattern. That is undeniable. You just look at the timestamps. It took an hour. It took a day. It took three days. Okay, that's a pattern. But what it means is the story.

And that story, you can tell in a very calm way. They are busy. Or they have ADHD. Or they hate me. Those are three very different stories. And each and every one of them, without additional information, it doesn't really give you anything to go on. And that's why learning about the people you're interacting with is so important.

I remember when texting started to be a thing in the United States and I had already been doing it. I was an exchange student in Germany in the 90s and people were texting and I was like, this is so stupid. But it was way cheaper than calling because calling was like 25 cents a minute or whatever it was back then, Deutschmarks. So I came to the United States and I was like, oh, you can't really text on most phones yet. And then once texting started to kind of be a thing, I think it was a T-Mobile sidekick. It had like AOL and Sim Messenger on it or something. I remember I used it to talk to girls, and they were still girls back then because I was like 19. And the stories were crazy.

And I remember some of these red flags where it would take me a day to get back to somebody. Because again, texting wasn't something you were doing all day like you do now. It was like you would check it like your email or something back then after class. And some girls would say, you're talking to a bunch of other women. And you're like, what do you mean? How did you come to that conclusion? It took so long to get back to me. The only explanation is that you're talking to a bunch of other women.

And I'm thinking, no, the other explanation is I'm trying to get a degree at the University of Michigan. And I am Barry. I'm drowning. Talking to you on AOL Instant Messenger is like number gazillion on my priority list. That's the real reason. Priority is the key word there. It absolutely is the key word. Everybody has different priorities.

I remember when I first realized that this kind of generation of dating and relationships was taking over. I was in class. It was about 10 years ago. I was a young professor at that time. And a student was texting a guy. He was texting a girl. And he didn't know. She had said something and he didn't know how to respond.

And there was a crowd before a class started of about 11 people around him looking over his shoulder, girls and guys. And they were like, no, here's what you should say. And I remember just watching him thinking because that kind of uncertainty and insecurity, of course it takes a day to respond. You got 50 people telling you different things. That's wild. As a married guy, do you ever think, thank God I'm not dating anymore? It's too hard. Oh, absolutely. My wife and I, we got married. We were stupid. Don't get me wrong. We got married when we were 20. So I haven't been dating in a long time. And a lot of people will say, well, Doc, you don't know what it's like out there.

No, I talk to people. I read the research. The research is a wide swath of what's going on out there. It's the best picture we have. And it's bleak. Yeah, it sure is, but it doesn't have to be. That's the good news is some people are able to navigate this just fine. But, man, am I glad I don't have to? Because I don't know if I would have been able to do it while at 20. Now I have the tools. Yeah, that's the thing. People go, oh, imagine being single now.

I can't imagine being single now. I think it would be way easier than it would be if I was 25 right now. Because, again, I used to talk only about dating and teach the dating stuff back in the day 20 years ago or 15 years ago. And it was like, it was tough. We were reading behavioral science and how do we apply this in real life. But you didn't have dating apps back then. It was all about going to the bars and meeting people on the street. And that was hard.

But the apps were supposed to make it way easier and instead just made it a million times harder. I saw this funny comic that I'm going to post on Instagram at some point. And it was two people at the end of a date standing by the door. And she goes, hey, do me a favor. Tell everybody we met on Tinder. I don't want anybody to know I talked to a stranger in a bar. And I thought that was perfect because, Back then it would be like, don't tell anybody we met online.

Oh, there's such a stigma. Your parents will freak out. If you met this person over the internet and you showed up, you're lucky you're not in pieces in a garbage can, right? Now you met somebody in real life. Wow, what did he say? I've got to hear the whole story. This must have been a magical interaction.

And it's like, no, I just sent me a DM on Twitter and I showed up, and it was date number 87 that month. And I guess he was the only non-creep who didn't try to grope me under the table. And here we are. That's like the modern-day meat queue. I find it sad, and I think one of the things that makes it harder for people is people take one painful incompatibility and then reverse engineer it into a universal law about men or women. And you cover this at some points in your videos as well. Like when they do this, it means this.

And it just, that can't be true most of the time. Yeah. And that's a major pain point for my audience. And I think the audience in general on dating and relationships, this is. It's this idea that someone's personal story can absolutely be true. But that doesn't make it true for you. And that certainly doesn't make it true for everyone. If I dated a woman and she had a St. Bernard dog and it didn't go well because the dog breathed in my face all the time.

And I didn't like it. That's one of those huge dogs that's like as tall as you when you're sitting down, right? Is that one of them? Huge. Yeah, exactly. And I then make a video that says never date a woman with a woman. with a big dog. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Of course that doesn't apply to everyone. And yet that's exactly what sells on social media because it gives you something to go on. We have too many choices. And so what you can do is you can now cut everybody with a big dog. So actually, that's kind of nice because you've got a million people to choose from on Tinder. Now you only have 980,000 or whatever. And we're always looking for these ways to cut. Never date a guy under six feet.

Okay, now you've just eliminated a bunch of people. Is it accurate? No, but does it help you cut? Yeah, actually it does. Dating apps give you access to thousands of potential partners so you can reject all of them and text your X at 2 a.m. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Northwest Registered Agent. Starting a business involves a lot more than filing a few forms. You need the pieces that make the business feel legitimate and professional, a business address, website, email, phone number, operating agreement, and a clear way to stay. compliant. I've formed businesses a few times and I'll be the first to admit that I am not an expert in business formation nor have time to figure out which documents you're supposed to have. But thanks to Northwest registered agent, you don't need to do it yourself. They help build that complete business identity from day one without forcing you to coordinate with a stack of different vendors. They've been helping entrepreneurs for nearly 30 years and are now the

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And one of the things they say is if you are under six feet or you can't get away with saying you're six feet because you're not five foot 11 and a half or something, don't bother with the apps. And I said, oh, is it because women are so shy. shallow or whatever. And he's like, actually, here's what my theory is. And you tell me what you think, because I want to run this by you. It's not that women are shallow. He said this. He goes, I'm on the apps right now because he's currently single. And he goes, I have two messages in here from last night at 6 p.m. overnight all the way through lunch. He goes, but if we were sitting with a woman that was reasonably attractive, she would have somewhere close to or possibly over a hundred

messages just from before lunch after this two, two and a half hour lunch in a big city like Toronto or Vancouver, which is where we were at the time. And I said, my God, that's insane. And he goes, yes. So if you have two messages from somebody, you're going to reply to both. If you have a hundred and two messages from people, you have to figure out a way to stop the incoming flow. So what do you do? You raise the income slider all the way up to six figures or however high it goes. You lower the radius of people that it looks for to five miles from 50 miles or whatever it is. And then that doesn't work. You're still getting 68 messages an hour. So then you raise the height thing to six foot and over. And then you go, ah, okay, now I'm getting 20. And I can just sort of look at the opening line or the

photo and see if I want to talk to this person. It's not necessarily that women have suddenly become way more shallow. There is maybe an illusion of choice that's happening. But it's also just please stop the influx of crazy that's in my inbox, slide all the sliders to 11. And one of the sliders happens to be height. And he gave an example of another slider that you could have, and I wish I'd remembered it, but it was basically like,

what if you had a personality compatibility slider? You'd slide that one up to 11 too. Or he goes, what if guys had a slider that was how many men the woman had slept with? That one would go all the way to one extreme too. It would probably go all the way down to zero or one or something for a lot of guys. not because men actually care about that, but because, geez, I'm getting 100 messages.

I might as well find women that haven't had any other experiences other than me, right? So it's all arbitrary in many ways. At least that was his theory. What do you think about that? I think it's an awesome theory. And it goes back to the ideas that we've talked about being cognitively overloaded from a variety of sources. We have to have shortcuts. Cognitive psychologists call them heuristics.

This is another word for mental shortcut. Rule of thumb. and these mental shortcuts help us navigate a world that's overly complex. And what's interesting is stress increases the difficulty we have in dealing with complex situations. So if you, suppose the economy was bad, for example, suppose you wanted to buy a house and you couldn't because you have rising student loan costs and more inflation than you know what to deal with. Actually, that bleeds into your ability to make good choice. And so you have to make cuts somewhere and you have to save resources mentally.

And so one way that you do that is by shortcuts. I like to think of it too. This is not just in dating. Employers do this all the time. So Jordan, if you and I were competing for a job and employers only knew where we had done our undergrad, you said you went to U of M. Yeah. So you went to U of M.

I went to Calvin College right down the road. Calvin doesn't have the name brand that U of M does. And so if an employer is going to say, who should we hire you a lot? for this job and they only know some basic information, which is really common in both job babblecanges and dating apps. They're going to cut everybody who is not from a blue blood. Why wouldn't they? Even if you and I are equivalent, it doesn't matter because we have to get past that first apron or that first weight. And dating is no different. There's just too much accessibility. And so people have to find shortcuts. Yeah, this is interesting. I ended up with a job on Wall Street.

and I remember thinking, I didn't need my legal education to come here. Why do they only hire from top tier law schools? And the answer, the only reasonable convincing answers were those schools require you to work 16 hours a day and this job requires you to work 16 hours a day. So they want to make sure that you can handle that. It's really competitive. The schools are really competitive. So they want to make sure you can handle that too.

But the truth is really they just pay a lot because the hours are terrible and they figure they might as well get some of the quote unquote best people. But what I found interesting was you go to work in New York. It's like Harvard, Yale, Michigan, UVA, whatever, Columbia. And then it's Hofstra and all these other schools in New York because they're close by and one of the other partners went there and he knows that it's fine. And it's like, wait, wait. And that's a shortcut too.

That's just a different shortcut. It's like, hey, I know that school. Therefore, those people are probably good. Damn, if you want to work in New York, go to a school in New York. You don't have to go to Columbia, Michigan, Harvard, Yale, whatever it is. go to a decent school in New York and you can get the exact same jobs and you will be equally qualified as anybody else who went to a fancy, boozy school who has a $300,000 bill to pay. The challenge there is how do we translate that to relationships?

Not that the job question isn't also very important, but what are the things you can do then to reach that second tier of evaluation? How do you get past people's filter? And I think there are some things you can do, but the reality is it's almost impossible on the dating apps because how do you ever get a chance to display that you are, for example, hardworking or that you are kind or warm or funny or whatever it is? That's hard to do. And the answer is you have to have an opportunity to meet with people in person. That's the way to get it done. So my friend, again, who teaches dating, he's like, the secret weapon now is the stuff

we did 15 years ago where you just go to a bar or a party or an event and you have Riz and charisma and you're talking with people and you're introducing people to each other because that's way more rare than it used to be because nobody's doing it and if you're 510 you can't use those apps bro so you better learn how to get the ris go and the thing is even if you're awesome on these apps i've got friends who are like models and stuff and they clean up on the apps but the problem is they eventually have to meet people in person you got to be a real human being if you can't be a real human being you hook up a lot and then you come crying to me and go why don't i ever have the to get people to have a lasting relationship.

And I go, you have a cardboard personality and you're shallow. And some of your listeners might be thinking, okay, well, why don't I just say I'm six feet, even though I'm 5'10? Guess what that signals when she shows up. It signals you're a liar. Yes, not good. And that's even worse than not making it to the second tier. That is an immediate rejection.

Correct. Yeah, that's not cool at all. So I feel for guys who are not able to use the apps, but on the other hand, now you have the ability to develop a secret weapon, which is meet people in person. The real awesome hack here, though, man, I got to tell you the audience at large because I don't use it. Find a couple tall, good-looking friends who absolutely clean up on the apps. They invite a ton of people to a party that you host

and you show up at this party and you do your thing. That has worked ridiculously well for some people who I've talked to about this because those guys can invite 40 people. They went out with them before. It didn't necessarily work out, but they're, hey, you want to come to a part? party, you were cool. We kind of jive, but we just didn't have a romantic thing going, sure. So they show up, and there's a bunch of guys and a bunch of gals at a party, and then all of the five foot, nine,

and up, but under six feet guys are cleaning up at the party. And I'm thinking like, that's genius. You guys have it together. I love this. I think that's great. That's great. Another hack is literally just ask people out. Yeah. Because we did a study in our research lab this past year, a couple of studies, actually. And the very first question we were answering was, do people prefer to be asked out in person or on Instagram? So if we say exactly the same thing, it's exactly the same person, same profile picture, whatever, these college students who we surveyed vastly preferred being asked in person. Yet we know nobody's doing it. And so the next study was, hey, why aren't you doing it? Dummies? I didn't say that. it's not that they were afraid.

It's not that they thought they'd get rejected more. It's that they thought it was against the rules. They specifically, that is what they endorse, is that is against the rules. It violates a social rule. So society is preventing these people from just doing the basic, hey, do you want to grab coffee?

You want to go to a park and take a walk? I have some sympathy for both men and women in this situation because this is kind of an online meme. You've probably seen this. guys who are attractive, if they ask someone out and that person has a boyfriend, it's fine and it's flattering. If an unattractive person asks somebody out and she does or does not have a boyfriend, it can be considered creepy. And the rejection can actually have career or social consequences that go well beyond not being able to go to that Starbucks anymore. Correct. Most people don't know

which category they fall into. Because I wouldn't even so much as say it's about who's attractive and who's not. Although somebody who's obviously a 10, okay, they get the pretty privilege that we talked about before. But most of the time, it's like I'm a six and she's an eight. Is that gap okay? But if she sees me as a five and she sees herself as a nine. Yeah, now it's insulting. Now that's inappropriate. And I'm the weird creepy guy. I would be anyway as an old person with a wedding ring on. You get the point here is that attraction is not as certain as we suspect it to be. Our level of attractiveness is not as certain as we suspect it to be. And so there's this uncertainty of can I actually ask her out?

Can I actually go talk to him? Is that allowed? And people don't know. They legitimately, they're not sure. Yeah, it's tough. And then you've got like women going, that's fine. I'll take charge, but guys are too thick because the subtle signals that a woman would throw off to me would go right over my head.

I remember being like, I finally ask somebody out and she'd go, what took you so long? And I go, what are you talking about? And she's like, I've been looking at you. Yeah, I dropped a pencil near you, and I came and picked it up. And then I said, excuse me? And then when you were at the gym, and then I said, hey, do you know where the other 20 is? And you said, over there. And I thought, like, then it might happen.

And I'm thinking, no, those are not signals. What I need is for you to jump over while I'm bench pressing, sit in my lap, plant a kiss right on my lips, and then sit there until I come up with the balls to ask you out for cough. That's the signal I'm waiting for. Anything less than that. is not going to hit my radar. And it's tough. It's tough out there for everybody. Because there's a huge penalty if you as a man overperceive a signal from a woman. So you think she's sending you a signal and she is in fact not. If you're friends, you've just ruined the friendship. If you're strangers,

you're now a creeper. And so guys in many ways are trained to underperceive those signals. Maybe they think that they see them. They might overread them into the situation, but they know socially like, no, no, no, I really shouldn't. That's actually a guy you want who's that socially aware. And so he's going to miss those signals simply because he doesn't want to be wrong because they're serious. It's tough. One of the things we used to teach again before you could get fired for doing something like this, you probably could back then too, but we were in our 20s and didn't care. It was, if you thought there was something going on, you could literally say, are you flirting with me right now? And if they were like, no, then you're like, oh, of course I was just kidding.

but they go like a little, then they are, and you proceed past go, collect $200. But it's tough, right? Because now it's like, no, and also I'm your boss. What are you doing? Like, you have to really be careful of all these sort of things. And now there's those groups on Facebook, don't date them. And you're thrown in there, there's literal rapists in there and domestic violence people. And then there's guys in there who like, I don't know, went to the same Starbucks twice

in one day and are therefore now maybe a stalker that's dangerous. and it's like, yikes, and they don't know they're in there, right? The photos have all been taking surreptitia. So I feel bad for anybody dating right now. This has been a long tangent. I'm curious if you can create a practical exercise, like a relationship rule audit. Give listeners a test they can apply

the next time they hear a relationship rule online. Do you have any sort of heuristics to use your vocabulary? People can apply to these relationship rules they hear online or from friends to see if they're crap or not? Two big things. First of all, does it come from personal experience and observations? So is it part of someone's personal story?

That doesn't make it false, but that is the first layer of defense. You should do more digging and find out, is this actually going to hold up in my situation? So look at the source. Is it personal or is it based on big data? two, is this something where they use simple words like everyone, everybody, all the time? Over generalizing? Yeah, exactly. So if it comes from a personal anecdote, if it generalizes to everyone or even to maybe too many people,

those are two things that are pretty sketchy. And then to put a positive spin on it, if the person couches it in words like sometimes, or the data tend to show much, much better. I like the idea that you should examine if something is a repeated pattern because I think it's really tempting to find one isolated incident and just go, okay, blanket,

because this thing really hurt my feelings. So therefore, anybody who does X has that St. Bernard is always going to do this. It's like if you dated five women that had St. Bernard's and all of them had stank breath in your face all the time and ruined your libido or whatever,

Okay, now maybe you got a rule or the makings of a rule, at least for you personally. I think also, maybe if I can add to this test, maybe come up with three plausible explanations. You kind of did this earlier, right? Does it mean that she doesn't like you or does it mean that she's really busy because she has two jobs and is also in school and therefore is deprioritizing her social life? And even her best friend doesn't hear from her for two days at a time. Maybe you're on the same tier as that person. That's pretty good, actually. right come up with other plausible explanations and yeah i think that's a decent test so i'll coach people

individually and what i implore them to do so i think this is so important is to tell three stories about what's going on one is the most likely story one is the least likely story and the other is the story you're telling yourself right now and so in other words he didn't text me back for a day. So what's the most likely story for that? What's the most likely explanation? What's the least likely explanation? So in other words, like, what's best case scenario? What's worst case scenario? And then what are you telling yourself? And my guess is most of the time, people are leaning towards worst case scenario. Sometimes they're full in worst case scenario. When in reality, what we need to be thinking is predictively, what is actually likely to be going on here. And what's likely is like, he's busy.

he's not the kind of guy that would just disappear. Here's an interesting example. He says every ex of his was crazy. This is something I came across a few years ago with a friend of me. Yeah, I've seen this one. Of course. Every ex is crazy. Men are women.

Most likely the common denominator is him. Therefore, maybe they're not crazy. Maybe he's the problem. But I've also met guys that are otherwise stable, great guy. And they love crazy women because, I don't know, it's fun for them. I can't relate. But they love it. So, yes, all their exes were crazy, actually.

But he filtered for that. He dated a stable woman for five minutes, got bored and moved on. And I think most likely it depends on what's this guy like. So if you phrase it as best case versus worst case scenario. So best case scenario, he's had a run of bad luck. He's dated a bunch of women that are just not right for him or for anyone. Two, okay, worst case scenario is he's crazy in any variety of ways. Maybe he's selecting for crazy people or maybe he is just a maniac.

Okay, what's the most likely scenario? It's a mix of those two things. You know, he's doing some selecting, but also, yeah, people have bad luck sometimes. That's legitimate. And as he builds skills, is he likely to do that in the future? No, probably less likely anyway. I want to talk about ghosting and things like breadcrumbing, which most people haven't heard of, situationships.

You cover this. And first of all, what is breadcrumming? I feel like this is way more common now than it used to be, but that could just be internet perception. So I actually didn't encounter the term breadcrumbing until I came on social media. So like 18 months ago, I found it almost instantly. But I had no idea what this was. And so I thought researchers wouldn't have looked into this because I know this research really well.

So one of the first things I did was I looked at the research. And so let me tell you, it is in fact there. Okay. So let me tell you what bread crumbing is. Bread crumbing is when you lead people on with just little crumbs so that they are always hungry for more. It's like the old story of Hansel and Gretel, the wicked witch leaves a little trail of bread clams to her house where she's going to bake you in the oven. This is really gruesome in terms of relationship analogy. But the idea is the person is leading you on and they're just

giving you just a bare minimum of what you need to keep you hooked in and to keep you addicted to them. And yeah, it turns out people do that. And it turns out it's a pretty effective strategy if your goal is emotional manipulation. I don't think that should be. And this applies more broadly than breadcrumbing. People will say to me, yeah, but will it work? It's like, yeah, it actually will work. If your goal is to ruin someone's life.

When is the ambiguity accidental and when is somebody strategically preserving access to you for attention or manipulation purposes? Yeah, I think most of the time it's a mix. It would take a very insane thing. person and that's an inflammatory word that's a insane person what i really mean is it would take a really terrible person to do this on purpose 100% intentionally there are very few people who are going to do that most of the time it's something they learned that's effective so maybe you learn it

when you're in second grade if you're a t's just a little bit and just with friendship even this is something that has been learned over time is like this works but works how that's always the question People want closure. Usually in the form of one final conversation, maybe a few dozen follow-up texts, and light felony stalking. We'll be right back. Also, our newsletter We Bit Wiser seems to be a big hit around here. The idea is to give you something specific and practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decision, psychology, relationships in under two minutes. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show.

Jordan Harbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Dr. Max Butterfield. It dovetails a little bit with situationships, right? Which I guess are what, relationships where one slash both parties just refuse to negotiate the terms of what's going on. They're sleeping together, but then sometimes they go out to dinner, but they're not really dating, but they kind of are, but it's not your girlfriend, so you can date other people. And like, I find that most of the time both parties are miserable in this, or the one person who wants something more. is, of course, very miserable in this. But then the guy might not want to say anything because he doesn't want anything more,

but that means you're going to probably stop sleeping with him, so you can't have that. What is going on with these? Are these more common now? Or, again, is this just internet perception? No, again, this is common enough that researchers, they've been talking about this longer than the term situation ship has been around, except they use something, I think it's even catchier. It's called sliding versus deciding.

And the basic idea is that you just kind of accidentally slide into a relationship. there's been some freezing rain in Michigan, typical Michigan February or whatever. Yeah, I was going to say, that's a Michigan analogy that some people are not going to have a clue what we're talking about here. You hit a patch of ice and you just slide a little further than you intended to go and that's what happens in the relationship. Not because you intentionally decided to take the next step and move in together, but because your lease was up and you needed somewhere to live. And so you're like, hey, maybe I could stay with you for a little while. And she's like, yeah, I think that'd be fine. You didn't decide to move.

in together. That was just convenient. And so that's a situation ship is you haven't actually had the real conversation, which is, are we serious enough to live together? And the answer is probably no, if you haven't had time to have that conversation yet. But if it's easy and convenient, you just slide right into it. That's actually quite funny. And this is exactly what happened with my wife, too. Is it? Yeah, in many ways. Because so I met her, I needed an apartment. She's like, I'm moving out of my apartment. So I basically stayed in the apartment that she was in for a while. And it was like, okay, we're roommates. And then she moved and I leased her apartment from her before she sold it. And then I moved to San Francisco and she's like, I love with my parents. And this kind of sucks.

And I was like, well, why don't she just stay with me? I live in the city. It's awesome. And then I remember her parents were like, are you kidding me? And I jokingly said, this is a long time ago now. So it's okay. We have two kids. We better get married because if we don't, your parents are going to really hate this and they're never going to let it go. And thank God we got married. Otherwise, she was going to have that stain on her record forever. So it worked out for you. Yeah, it did. That is a perfect example of why people shouldn't learn that lesson from you. No, definitely. And maybe it shouldn't have, but it did. So that means it's true for your life. I wouldn't do it again. And I remember people being like, what are you doing? And I was like, no, no, no, I know this is a bad

idea. I just don't currently care. And it was also the same thing with working with my wife. I remember I worked with her because I needed an assistant. My assistant, I had to fire her because her boyfriend stole something from my company. Right. So I was like, crap, I need an assistant really bad. And everyone's like, do not hire your girlfriend. Do not hire your girlfriend. And I was like, I just temporarily need to hire my girlfriend.

She was awesome. And I was like, this is great. And we still work together. And it's great. And when people go, oh, good, I was thinking about working with my wife. And I'm like, don't do it. And I'm the other dentist, right? The nine out of ten, I'm the one who doesn't recommend this vibrating two.

toothbrush. It just happens to work out for me. It's probably not going to work out for you. Everybody I've talked to that's had this that's hired their sister-in-law, their wife. It's a freaking hot dumpster fire. Don't do it. And I'm speaking from zero credibility because I did it and it worked out fine. And researchers have a name for this. It's called survivorship bias, which you probably have heard of. Yes. And survivorship bias is everywhere. It's like you see an interview with a guy who's a hundred years old. And the interviewer's, what's your secret to success? And the guy goes, well, it's whiskey and cigarettes. That's not what makes you live to be 100.

It might have been 150 had he not had cigarettes and whiskey. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah, and you get the blue zones and stuff. This is a funny example. You might know this. So there's this whole book about Blue Zone diet and the Blue Zone and these people live really long. And I talked to another PhD health researcher, not on the show.

And he told me that it actually is almost certainly some kind of government benefits fraud where they're saying a person is still alive and is 113 years old because the government doesn't check to see if that person's alive and just keeps sending the check to their house. So the family's just collecting the social security or whatever it is. For another decade. And then finally someone's like, hey, we need you to come in and do X. And they're like, he died last night. And they're like, oh, well. And they're like, the jig is up on this. But they got 13 extra years of welfare from, I don't know, Greece or whatever. So it turns out to just be complete nonsense. Well, it's the survivorship bias. But again, like the blue zones thing,

whether it's true or fraud or somewhere in the middle, the advice for the diet is actually not harmful. It's eat healthy and live a healthy life. Sure. Yeah, that's great. And that's where a personal story can be fine. It's like back to the love language as things as a bookend here. That could be useful. But we have to verify. Let's find out if it actually is. And that's really what relationship science is all about, is just verifying some of these claims. And that's where I kind of try to step in and say, here's a good one, here's a bad one. I'm calling a ball on this one. I'm calling a strike on this one. What about ghosting, man? Again, when I was dating, literally never happened to me. I don't think it happened to me one single time. And now it seems to be the default way of people ending

relationships. It's like, well, she just hasn't answered any of my calls or texts. And so that's over. Weird. What I don't hear people talking about today is a lack of emotional skill causing ghosting. So in other words, it's easier to ghost someone than to say, I don't like you. Let's stop talking. And you might think that's easier for them, but it's not, actually. And so I think people don't have the same level of communication skill today that they had when you were dating because of social media and because of phones. because they haven't grown up having hard conversations with people having to face someone to tell them something difficult. Instead, you can just disappear.

And that's so much easier today than it used to be. It used to be you would see the person in your neighborhood. You couldn't go. You'd have to move if you wanted to ghost them. And that's a lot of work. Now it's more just, I'm not going to respond. Yeah, I just blocked them on Insta and their texts turn green. So the end.

Yeah. When should a person seek closure and when are they using? closure as a respectable euphemism, whatever, for one more chance. Because on our feedback Friday segment, we've gotten letters like, I just need closure. And I'm like, no, you want to try again and you are stalking your ex-girlfriend. Well, it's so funny. So when I do one-on-one coaching, so often I'll hear people say, I just want closure. And I go, hey, man, she told you she never wants to talk to you again. That's literally what closure is. What you want is a better resolution.

And those are two different things. So that's my decision point right there is, what are you actually looking for? Are you looking for an end to this chapter? Or are you looking for a postscript? Are you looking for another chapter? And most of the time, we actually already have the end of the chapter. If they're ghosting you, it's over. That is a really good point.

I do understand why people want quote unquote closure. Like you said, they want a better resolution. and it is unsatisfying that somebody just ignores you. It sucks, but I think it's probably worse, hey, your breath is disgusting, your teeth are a little bit messed up, your style sucks, you're really boring, and I don't click with, I mean, do you need to hear all that, or can you just move on? So if you have the skill,

if you're in the position where you're ghosting someone or you're thinking about ghosting someone, the best thing you can do truly is provide them with some measure of closure. So you can say, hey, this is not working out. for me and I want to give you the courtesy of ending it personally. So I'm going to stop things here. And notice I didn't say, I hate you, you ugly fish, whatever. Like, you look like a bass. Your breath smells like a Saint Bernard. So you don't have to be mean. Closure can also just mean putting a period on the end of the sentence. And we don't even do that. In text, it's like, you don't put in a period. That's scary.

You say, hey, see you later. But closure is, hey, I won't see you later. And that's a okay, we're going different directions. I do feel like that's harder for women to do because they have a actual physical safety concern with telling a guy they don't want to see them again. It's like you do the wrong thing and you've got a violent enemy chasing you around, terrifying. And so I think it's really important for women and men too, but for women especially to assess who they're talking to. If this is someone you've known since second grade and he's never shown any indication,

of violence, but he said that he would like to date you and you never saw him that way, you could probably safely. Again, I can't say this for everyone's specific situation. But if you've known the guy, you can say, hey, I don't see you that way. But I can't say that with certainty. I'm couching it again. Yeah, you have to. It's crazy out there.

That guy might be a crazy person. That's true. So I think it's important to recognize that. I'd love to talk a little bit about chemistry, right? Because it means so many different things. physical attraction, maybe there's some uncertainty, or there's some familiarity, or there's anxiety, there's reciprocity, or some cocktail of all these things. But I do wonder why emotional instability for some people can feel like passion.

I told you about my friend who liked crazy, actually crazy, sort of rude women. He loved it. And it's weird because it comes from like a totally normal, stable family, he's got a great job. He's a totally grounded guy. It's actually shocking for me that he likes that, but he feels like that emotional instability is somehow a key ingredient in a relationship. It's a lot like skydiving. You could die if you jump out of a plane and yet thousands of people do it every year, maybe more. I don't know what the stats are on that. But what that's doing is we only have kind of one system and it's either on or off. It's the fight or flight system. And some people enjoy to have it activated a little bit. Maybe not an actual fear of death. You don't want to

want to be chased by a bear in the middle of the forest, but some people might actually get some amount of rise out of that. And so I think that's what we're seeing is individual differences in sensitivity to stimulation. And some people just need a little bit more. And some people need a lot more. And so when someone is emotionally unstable, yeah, that gets you going. It gets your heart rate up, respiration rate up, get your blood pressure up. And in some ways, that's the same as jumping out of a plane in a safe situation. You also know that relationship argument is not truly dangerous probably for most people. It just gets you going. I'd love to talk about red flags because I think this is one of the most interesting elements. We have to define red flag in a way that does not turn every

imperfect human being into toxic waste. Tell me what you think a red flag actually is. For me, the best indicator of a red flag is a pattern that makes your life worse instead of better. And notice that's not a specific behavior because there are certain specific behaviors that are going to be obvious to everyone. Physical violence. Emotional violence. Being mean. Those are obvious.

But the question is not, was my partner mean to me today? The question was, is my partner usually mean to me? Is my life worse because they're in it? Or is it better because they're in it? So it takes more of a bird's eye view to get a sense of that. But we like the shortcut. Oh, he yelled at me once. That's a red flag.

He forever is a problem. Maybe. But one episode of yelling is very different than 10 episodes of yelling. So what's the difference then between, let's say, a red flag, incompatibility, and an annoying personality trait? Yeah. Is there one? I mean, there has to be. Yeah.

My experience is that everyone on earth is annoying. I don't know if you've had this experience at one time or another. Not all the time, of course, but you could have just the greatest person on earth. You're locked in a room with them for three days. That's not going to go well. And a big part of that is we just don't deal well with the same stimulation over and over again. So even somebody being too nice, that can be a red flag. We see that.

I was like, he's nice all the time. That's a red flag because he's hiding something. Yeah. Maybe. But probably you just are annoyed because. you need some space. So ultimately, I don't know that there is a difference between somebody who's annoying and somebody who is showing a pervasive problem other than is it making your life better or worse most

of the time. I see. That's a good heuristic. I would love to hear some real red flags that you see people rationalizing away for whatever reason. You'd be shocked at the type of things that people rationalized. We can all rationalize anything if it provides us with hope or if it provides us with some benefit. But the biggest one, it goes back to this pattern idea, is inconsistency, is this rationalization of,

I tried something and it didn't work once. And so I'm going to try it again and again. And you're not getting a just predictable, reliable response from this person. you think next time, next time they'll do it right or next time they'll be nice to me. What we're really talking about, to put it in concrete terms, is sometimes relationships are like a slot machine. You put in a dollar, you don't win. You put in a dollar, you don't win. You put in a dollar, you win a bunch. That is an inconsistent relationship, and it's easy to get addicted to that in the same way that it's easy to get addicted to a slot machine. Nobody gets addicted

to a change machine. You put in a dollar, you get four quarters. But actually, that's what you want in a relationship. It's just not as compelling for us. It was a little bit of a, I won't say a dodge, but you gave me a better answer than probably what I was going to get anyway, so I accept that.

You're like, hey, but no, seriously, give me a universal red flag. Well, yeah, domestic violence. I'm not going to do that other than someone who is unkind, someone who is cold, someone who is a jerk. And everybody already knows that stuff anyway.

That's the issue. Here's a better version of that question. I would love to know the top internet red flags that are mostly bullshit and not really red flags, but people just jump on these. Like, oh my God, never date this person because they did this thing. And it's like, no, that's called having a bad day, for example. Totally. I think that, and this goes back to something that we hit on earlier, which is the idea of things like, if he wanted to, he would, things like always, people everywhere do. It's not actually individual items that I see as.

a problem. Maybe this is a better answer. It's not individual things. It's an approach to information. It's the approach to relationships. That's the problem. So hitting on this idea of someone who is saying with certainty that this is always true or someone who's saying this is true and I have nothing to prove it other than my own experience. So what I'm trying to do ultimately is teach people how to evaluate every claim they see because so many claims are just going to appear out of nowhere. By the time this airs, there might be a new claim sweeping the world that's totally bogus. And I want people to have the tools to be able to evaluate that rather than combating single claims at a time, if that makes sense.

Yeah, of course. I'm curious what you think of attachment theory. I've done shows on this. I'll probably do more shows on it. It seems like it's science, but I think people jump on it too much and it becomes horoscopy, Oh, you're avoidant. Therefore, all of these other things must be true about you. 100%. So I have always been skeptical of attachment theory as a whole because attachment theory says your way of being is set in the first year or 18 months of life. Your way of relating to people

is forever fixed. If something goes wrong in your first 18 months, you're cooked, bro. And I just, I find that hard to believe. And I don't know that the data supports the strength of that claim by itself. Early relationships matter. The data absolutely supports that. People do end up with attachment styles, but they're not boxes that they get stuck into forever. And I think truly the attachment theory researchers, they recognize that today. There's a second or even third wave of attachment theory that has advanced beyond the beginnings, this guy named John Bowlby. And that's from like the 50s. And so I think there's an acknowledgement in the research that these are not as fixed as people on the internet act like they are. And that's the issue is it's like attachment theory gone

wild. That's what you see on social media. Yes. Yeah. They do one thing, therefore they're avoidant, therefore, and thus they will never change. Since this person is, I don't know, secure attachment, it's never going to work or this behavior will never change. Can a person behave, let's say, secure attachment style with one partner and then anxious attachment style with another partner? Is that during your experience? Yes, that is exactly what I'm, I try to emphasize when I talk about this with people is that you and I can be really secure in our relationship. That doesn't mean that you and I are going to be secure when we go out and interact with other people because we have a history together. Whereas you meet somebody new, if you're secure,

you're a nut. Why would you be secure with someone who you don't know at all? That's wild. That is a really good point. Yeah, you're the weirdo if you have nothing, you're not worried about anything and it's a brand new relationship. I wonder, and I see this all the time, right? A lot of understanding someone's attachment pattern becomes an excuse for tolerating mistreatment or rationalizing, maybe pathologizing the fact that the other person doesn't want a relationship

or something like that. They're avoiding. No, they're with a low level of skill trying to tell you that they're not interested in you. Exactly. Are they avoiding or they just not want a relationship with you? Yeah, they're avoiding a relationship with you. That doesn't mean they're avoiding relationships with everyone.

That's a totally different story. And I think people, they use that avoidant label to absolutely demonize others. And that's not fair either. I think legitimately there are people who are avoidant across all of their relationships or across most of their relationships. But that is widely overused, in my opinion. I got to give you one last farewell question here. When your children eventually ask you how to choose someone to love, what will you tell

them that no algorithm or psychology textbook or viral video can teach. It would be such a privilege if my kids would ask me that question. Yeah, they're not going to, this is never going to happen. Right, no, exactly. You have no credibility in their eyes, but let's fantasize that it did. I just hope maybe they'll watch my video someday in secret. But the truth is, it's very simple. And so this is what I would tell my kids.

This is what I would tell a six-year-old when choosing friends on the playground. But this is what I would tell a 60-year-old divorcee who's looking to, to find a new relationship or a 16 year old or anyone. Find someone you like, make sure they like you back, and then try really hard to make it work. And it's just that simple. Love it. Simple.

Some might even say simplistic. But it's not easy. And that's where it's not simplistic is... That's true. It's not. The lessons are actually very simple. Applying them is the hard part. That's why I'm here to do what I do is to help people apply.

It is legitimately very difficult. Dr. Max Butterfield, we'll have to have you come back on the show and discuss some of these leftover notes. I shouldn't even say leftover, just the pile of things we were unable to get to. And then you got a book coming out. Man, you're flooding the zone. Absolutely. Your video a day content strategy is working really well. Thank you for coming on, man.

It's a fun conversation. I really enjoyed it, Jordan. Thanks for having me, and happy to come back. You're about to hear a preview where Dr. Abigail Marsh unpacks why psychopathy is more treatable than we think, how kindness can quietly reshape lives and why we may need to rethink labels like sociopath. You know somebody with psychopathy already. So if one to two percent of the population

has a clinically significant level of psychopathy and most people's social networks include 100 to 150 people, all of us know somebody with psychopathy. So that's the bad news. But the good news is that the stereotypes people have about psychopathy are usually a little off. And so the person with psychopathy you already know

you may just not have recognized that that's what their behavior adds up to. Many people who are psychopathic themselves are like, I don't want to be this way. I just don't know how to behave differently. No differently from somebody with any other disorder. It's just they can't find anybody who will help them. I fully recognize that people with psychopathy are totally capable of coming up with a code for how they want to live, including a code that dictates what it means to be a good person, even if they don't have the same emotions and drives and motivations as other people do.

So I think that's really important to clarify. However, in that context, people who are psychopathic just don't intrinsically value other people's welfare that much. They are just much more instrumental in their social interactions. Every interaction is about, like, what can I get? What can I get out of this person? What can I get out of this situation? So that's why there's so much manipulating and lying exploitation is it's because people most of the time are just sort of tools to get whatever the ultimate goal is. Every other psychological disorder can be treated.

And so why would these be uniquely immutable? And in fact, the evidence is they can be changed. They can be improved. They're totally treatable. To hear the science behind who actually does the most harm, check out episode 1293. It might change how you see everyone around you. Thanks to Dr. Max for coming on the show. The hard truth here seems to be that relationships don't come with cheat codes.

A delayed text is not a diagnosis. Chemistry is not destiny. Understanding somebody's attachment style doesn't obligate you to tolerate their bullshit. But we can pay attention to patterns communicate like. adults, invest in people who invest in us, and frankly, stop letting TikTok turn every disagreement into a crime documentary. As usual, all things Max Butterfield will be on the show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about six-minute networking

as well over at six-minute networking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, and this show is created an association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Tadasidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who watches way too many relationship videos online, believes a whole lot of nonsense, maybe they're on the rocks in their personal life.

Definitely share this episode or somebody who just loves relationship science. Definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.