The Viall Files - E254 How Not To Die Alone with Logan Ury

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Behavioral scientist turned dating coach, Logan Ury, joins us today to talk about psychology and how it relates to dating and sex. Nick and Logan dive into some of the chapters of her book How Not To Die Alone, dig into how too many choices in dating is hurting us, how we should 'F' the spark, how The Bachelor romanticizes dating and how it affects our dating culture, and the differences between deal breakers and pet peeves.   “…it is in that moment of breaking your type that you actually are propelling yourself forward into the type of relationship you want to be in…” Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and as always send in your relationship questions to [e-mail] to be a part of our Monday episodes.  THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: Imperfect Foods: http://www.imperfectfoods.com use promo code VIALLFILES for 20% off plus free shipping  Ritual: http://www.ritual.com/VIALL for 10% off during your first 3 months. Bloomscape: http://www.bloomscape.com use promo code VIALL for 15% off plant orders of $100 or more  Better Help: http://www.betterhelp.com/VIALLFILES to get 10% off your first month.  Episode Socials:  @viallfiles @nickviall @loganury See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's going on everybody happy Wednesday to you all the humpiest day of them all is Wednesday I don't know I feel I always Don, maybe you're not listening to this on Wednesday, which means that you're just not getting the information to you as fast as possible. That's fine. We have a great episode for you today. We're talking about relationships yet again, and we're talking about a big focus is on the difference between non-negotiables and our pet peeves. We have the author, Logan Ury, from the book, How to Not Die Alone. Interestingly enough, we recorded this episode a couple weeks ago. And I got to say, it was such a great conversation that I've been using a lot of

what I learned from Logan and my questions with Nick or just other conversations and interviews I've done all while giving credit to Logan, of course. But certainly, it's not the first time we've heard of things like non-negotiables or the things that we've talked about or things like pet peeves. But she really helps articulate this. And we talk about a lot of other things in terms of relationships. A lot of it is things we have talked about it, but it's a good refresher and a good reminder.

Logan is someone who is obviously well-versed and well-educated in this space. She has studied relationships and sociology at Harvard. Behavioral science. Behavioral scientist at Harvard and other places. So certainly knows what she's talking about. I think you're going to love this episode. Please share it with your friends if you find that it could be useful for some of your friends that might be struggling with dating or complaining a lot about their dating. Maybe if you're someone who's also struggling and it's probably why you listen to this podcast. So I think you all are going to love it.

We talk a lot about in this episode about focusing on, especially if we're going through breakouts, about focusing on getting over the heartbreak by focusing on the negative. It's a good time to get your friend or yourself those breakup books on vilefiles.com. Check out our merch. Again, real simple stuff, but we have to execute it easier to romanticize during our heartbreak harder to focus on the things that we don't want to but

that's literally what we should be doing so vile files.com check out the merch also we have great t-shirts hoodies sweatshirts uh beanies masks all of the above uh anything else um chrissy Um, Chrissy? No, I think that's it. You nailed it. Good job. Zing. Let's do it. Logan, thanks so much for joining us. Yes, thanks for having me. I've been really looking forward to this.

You have a very popular and successful book out there, How to Not Die Alone, which I think we're all just trying to accomplish. I think that's sometimes why people listen to this show, because it often feels like we might. You obviously have an extensive background in relationships and psychology. When you were studying at Harvard in psychology, did you have this in mind in terms of like wanting to focus on relationships and dating? Or did you kind of fall into it through like, for me, it's kind of like my own experiences and trials and tribulations got me really interested in

social dynamics. And that's why I talk about it. I'm curious about your kind of how you kind of went down this path of studying psychology and then therefore studying relationships and dating and what brought you to writing this book. Yeah. So when I was in college, I couldn't have told you that I wanted to do this full time. I didn't even know that it was a job and I basically did create it as a job. But I definitely have always been interested in these two different things, right?

So psychology, decision making, how our brains work, and then on the other side, relationships, dating, and sex. And I think this all goes back to when I was in high school and my parents had had this really great kind of perfect marriage and we had this happy family. And then all of a sudden within a year that sort of imploded and they got divorced. And I bet a lot of people listening have had that experience too of having your parents get divorced and then be like, so how do I do this? It's like the happily ever after bubble bursts. And so that's really the origin of trying to explore this stuff and saying, I don't want to make the mistakes that my parents made. How can I do better? And then when I was in college, I tried to combine these two areas and I

did this research on Harvard students porn watching habits. And it was interesting to talk to lots of different people about, you know, who was watching porn and how was the hockey team sharing the video box password and all of these things. And so that was really my first foray into combining these things. But then I went to Google and I actually ran the porn pod there. And that meant that I was running the Google ads for, you know, bang bros and playboy and sex toy operators and going to the AVN awards. And, you know, for a 22 year old Harvard grad, it was a really funny thing to explain to my parents at Thanksgiving, but it was fun to kind of think about those two different

aspects of life. And then, yeah, I was able to run this team at Google called the Irrational Lab, all about how people make irrational decisions. And then ever since then, I've just been trying to find ways to apply that to dating. And so now I do that through one-on-one coaching, through matchmaking, and then of course, through my book, which is all about how to make better decisions

in dating and relationships. Yeah, it's a really fascinating book. I found it to be really helpful. And it really covers the gamut of dating, kind of from cradle to grave, as they say, meeting someone, dating, early stages. And you definitely cover a lot of the things we talk about on this podcast. Just before we get into it, I'm curious,

do the people at Harvard watch a more elite kind of swankier level of porn or is it still the same kind of like, you know, nasty, you know, stepsister stuff that's trending these days? That's a great question. You know, I would have to go back and analyze it against all of the different colleges to see what they do. But it was very fascinating to hear about. I mean, this sounds so pretentious, but it was applying Marshall McLuhan's media theory to porn, basically being like our generation was going through puberty the same time that the internet was going through puberty. So we went from magazines to individual images to short clips all the way to full on videos and sort of analyzing how that was changing

how people interacted with porn online. Yeah, it's super weird these days. When you go on these websites, you're just like, why some of the categories that are trending are terrifying? Is that specifically for you or do you browse incognito? What do you mean? I mean, are these porn categories

that they know you like or it's just whatever pops up i don't know how like i always find these algorithms whether it's instagram or or porn hum to be like because the idea is like hey this is your love you know it's supposed to be designed to you but like sometimes i i you know even on instagram i'm like why why is this showing up on my page like i don't i don't understand you know, even on Instagram, I'm like, why, why is this showing up on my page? Like, I don't, I don't understand, you know? And I, some of these things that I see on the Explorer pages on porn, I've, I've never searched, you know? And it's like, it's all over. Not that, not that I know, but they do generally have the top searches and then there's a lot of, there's a lot of steps, siblings and step parents that are all over.

I'm like, it's creepy. And I'm just like, what are you telling me? You have a large family. It's disgusting. Anyway, we're getting off topic. We're getting off topic. So, yeah, I kind of wanted just to talk about these different stages of dating and kind of get your thoughts and feelings on these topics. I loved what you talked about early on in dating and meeting people. And we talked a lot about this

about just in modern day choice has become our enemy, um, and paralysis of choice or paralysis of analysis by paralysis. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I just wanted to touch base on that and what people can do differently to help themselves out when we're out there trying to find the right person. And yet it becomes so discouraging because here we are all these different dating apps. And literally, as you mentioned in your book, thousands of options a day of who we might be able to date and that, and we still go to bed alone or not have, you know, we don't have a date lined up for the weekend. And that can be really deflating. You know, what's the psychology behind that and why is that happening and what can we do about it to change it? Yeah. I think this is one of the

reasons why dating is so hard right now. We have this natural tendency to want choice, right? People, you know, Starbucks has been around for a long time, but when Starbucks was created, people loved it. You could get these three different sizes, all of these different types of milks, all of these different types of syrups, and people are very drawn to choice and we see choice as freedom. But what the research shows and specifically the book Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, is that many times choice can make us feel depressed, overwhelmed, or even feel so paralyzed that we can make no choice at all. And so we're drawn to the fact that dating apps allow us access to so many people, but it actually makes it much harder for us to know who to go after. The other thing that I've

seen it do is that we just don't value people as much. And so you're on a date and somebody isn't perfect in the exact ways that you would want. And so you just go to the bathroom and you do what I call the wipe and swipe. You know, you're already on Tinder looking for the next person when you are on a date because you're like, well, the perfect person must be one swipe away. And so we don't value the person in front of us because we feel like there's infinite choice and so that's really one of the interesting psychological things going on is we want choice but in many ways choice paralyzes us yeah it's like trying to find a movie on netflix yeah 100 also netflix movies have just gotten much worse in the last few years fair but also like if before net existed, you'd have no problem turning on the TV and you would just watch what's ever like on TBS or like USA because like, oh, like Shawshank Redemption's on again. I'll watch it. And you were fine with that. But now when you have Shawshank Redemption as a choice with 50,000 other choices on Netflix, you're like, ah, nah, I've seen that before. I'll move on. And yeah, you feel this

pressure to watch something great every night. And it seems like the same kind of idea. I'm rewatching Gilmore Girls and I was watching an episode where they go to the local, it's not even a blockbuster, it's like the local video store in Stars Hollow and they're looking for different movies. And I just felt so jealous. I was like, there's a finite amount of options and they're just going to get one of the movies there. And they don't have to go through every single comedy special documentary that was ever made. And I do feel this nostalgia for a time where there were fewer choices. Yeah. I mean, how many times do we turn on a movie on Netflix? We watch the first 10 minutes. You're like, nah, I'll look for something else.

And you spend all night looking for something to watch and you've watched 20 minutes of four different shows or 10 minutes of that. And that's a lot like it sounds like what people are doing in a dating space. I've never been on a date and gone to the bathroom and turned on a dating app. But do you, I mean, do you find that a lot of the people you've talked to and work with are literally doing that? I mean, it's a little bit of an exaggeration, but people do go on dating apps during dates when somebody goes to the bathroom. Also the person at the table might be doing, I mean, there's sort of an addictive quality sometimes to saying who else is out there, what else is out there. I remember the first night that I got a dating app, I swiped for six hours just because it becomes, yeah, it's fun and it's a game and it's look at all these hot people that

are potentially interested in me and oh, look, I got a match. And so there is a feeling of always wanting more versus what I think makes a great relationship, which is actually investing in a good person and building the relationship you want. It's not about just discovering the perfect person and then it's so easy. Let's not put dirty things in our body. You know what I'm talking about, people. It's ritual. So whether it's a dirty dick or it's a vitamin, both of which should be clean when they're entering our bodies. Ritual, as far as vitamins go, are making high quality vitamins that don't have sugars, GMOs, or allergens. They don't have synthetic fillers in them, artificial colorants, all the things that surprisingly go into vitamins. I mean, we think of vitamins as like, you know, it's a vitamin, must be healthy for us. And that is just

not the case when it comes to vitamins, right? So much crap is going into these things, fillers that aren't good for us and have adverse effects. But Ritual does not. They also taste good. Well, by taste good is they have things that don't have that fishy aftertaste, especially when it comes to things like fish oils.

They have mint in it. Mint in it. It has mint in it. Ooh, baby. A multivitamin should contain key nutrients that can actually help fill in the gaps, right? That's why we take vitamins, to supplement our diets.

Ritual's delayed release capsules designed to delivers high quality nutrients, including vitamin D3, and just two daily pills. So it's now available for men and women, you know, and teens. So what was just designed for women, you can now get for the man in your life, or if you're a parent and you want to get it for your adolescent or teenage son or daughter, Ritual has it for them as well. Your multivitamins are delivered right to your door. Free shipping. You can start or snooze your subscription at any time. So get these key nutrients in your body and make sure it's clean at Ritual.

Key ingredients without the BS. Ritual is offering my listeners 10% off during your first three months. Visit Ritual.com slash V-I-A-L-L to start your ritual today. I am a plant guy. I didn't know I would be. Don't know what it says about me, but I am. Got a whole lot of plants. I like going into the plant stores.

Well, actually, never mind. Fuck that. You know what I don't like doing is I don't like going out and shopping. Like anything, we can get things delivered right to our door and customized for us. And Bloomscape is allowing me to be the plant guy that I am dying to be you want to be a plant person bloomscape has you covered it's been a long winter stuck indoors but warmer days are upon us say it with me people spring is here it's coming so get ready to shake off your winter gloom throw open your front door back door or any door that you have and let's get outside even though i'm a plant guy i don't have a green thumb i don't

know the first thing. I just like having plants there. They make me feel good. I can talk to them. I can water in great. But past that, I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but Bloomscape is helping you be the plant person you want to be without knowing a lot about plants.

It's amazing. Bloomscape delivers healthy plants right to your door, plus all the grow-how you need to know to help them thrive. Find out the perfect plants for your space, whether you've got tons of light or hardly any. Thousands of people have already upgraded their spaces with beautiful indoor plants from Bloomscape. And now Bloomscape is taking it outside with our outdoor bloom kits. So listen, plants are a great way to up the vibe in your place. I can't tell you how like it just makes me, it helps with my mental health. It helps to just

kind of just, it feels good, but like, you know know you have to know how to take care of them and I don't know how to do that and the people at bloomscape are helping me do that the grow how team at bloomscape makes it easy they make me feel like a grower not a killer people calling you for advice but they call the grow how team for the yeah think of like the bloomscape is like the arsenic for plants you know we all we all like to we all like to date we don't know the fuck we're doing same thing with plants get 15 plant orders of 100 with promo code v-i-a-l-l at the bloomscape.com that's 15 off your orders of 100 or more at bloomscape.com and use promo code v-i-a-l-l like our options are not going to be reduced right

more i'm sure you know a year from now there'll be more dating apps Like our options are not going to be reduced, right? More, I'm sure, you know, a year from now, there'll be more dating apps available. Our choices are only going to increase. So how do we as individuals self-police and stop making all these choices a hindrance to us finding someone? Yeah. So the whole frame of my book is this idea of behavioral science, the study of how we make decisions. And one of the key principles is that the environment in which we make our decisions affects what we do. And so if you want to eat healthy, then you need to make the environment in your kitchen have healthy food so that when you go and eat something, you're going to pick among the fruits and vegetables you have. You don't have to say,

no, I'm not going to eat those frosted flakes. And so in dating, you can make rules for yourself that make you a better dater. And so for you, that might mean, you know, swiping on fewer people or only going on dates with a certain number of people a week or creating limits for yourself, understanding that although that there's, there's going to be this natural human tendency to have more choices, more options, always looking for the next best thing. What can you basically create this environment with fewer choices? And so one thing that I've seen people do successfully is really just try to say to themselves, I'm going to find somebody great, somebody who sort of meets my standards, and I'm going to invest in them and try to make it work versus going from first date to first date,

always hoping that the next perfect thing will be out there. We've all kind of been guilty of that in terms of kind of over expectations of a first date, right? We had Dr. Laura Berman on not too long ago, and she talked about how butterflies are, you know, could be a red flag. And I know a big chapter in your book is it's called Fuck the Spark, which is you get into a little bit more detail about the psychology behind that. I'd love to discuss, but essentially it sounds like you agree with Dr. Berman is that

sometimes these butterflies or spark as you call it can is not one. It's not necessarily the end all be all right. It's not, it's not how you should evaluate a date, but it can be to your, you know, Dr. Lauren Berman's part point is a negative thing. It could be a reinforcement that like you say, you say in your book, it's anxiety, uh, about, um, or nervousness or like, or a lack of power in

that dynamic. You know, like you meet someone, you're really excited about it. Like, Oh, is this person out of my league? Like, do I can I keep up and you get excited about that, like, uncertainty of where you stand with them. I thought that was really interesting way you articulated that. Thank you. Yeah, it sounds like Dr. Berman and I are really aligned on that. And so for people listening who haven't read the book, one of my favorite chapters is Fuck the Spark. And the idea is that people go on dates and they say to me, I met this guy. He was great. We had a good conversation, really fun night. I'm not going to see him again. And when I ask why, the person will say, I just didn't feel the

spark. And so the spark has become this catch-all word that means I didn't feel that pang of instant chemistry. And so really one of my missions is to debunk the myths of the spark. And the myths are things like the spark can never grow. Well, we know that that's not true. The spark can often grow over time. I knew my now husband for eight years before we started dating. dating. People think if you have the spark and it must be a good thing. That's absolutely not true. Similar to what Dr. Berman said, we often confuse anxiety for chemistry. And so that feeling of, will she call me back? Is she interested? Is she going to reject me or accept me? That feeling of not knowing, we confuse those butterflies for chemistry when they're really a sign that somebody's making us feel insecure. And some people are just really sparky. Some people just give that feeling to a lot of people. And we think it's something between the two of us, but it's actually that they're hot, they're charismatic, they're narcissistic. They give that spark to a lot of people. And then finally, and Nick, I'd be so curious about your perspective on this from all the

Bachelor Nation stuff, but the idea that if you have a spark in the beginning, it must be a viable relationship. And I've just seen so many couples stay together because they had this really romantic how we met story and they felt the spark. But the truth is a lot of divorced couples had the spark and the spark faded and they stayed together for the wrong reasons. Yeah. I remember that part in your book and you told the story about this these this couple had this like really romantic meet cute in Europe and and so much uh that once they got divorced they looked reflected back and thought it was that how they met story that really was a callous for everything you know it was and you hear that a lot especially now like people

will be like well I don't want I want to meet someone like the old-fashioned way i don't want to like i don't want to do a dating app so i don't want to go to a bar or whatever it is like they they want it to sound romantic and you know i don't know why so they can have a fun story to tell but to your point i've always been like i don't think that matters too much but you're right i think yeah so much of the bachelor franchise or the bachelor bubble is very much based off of the spark the old fashion that is what drives the show that is why it improves your point right because practically you know we joke but like the people they're casting on the show are just people you Yeah, they're relatively traditionally attractive. Last few seasons has been pretty good,

but a lot of these attractive people are not the most qualified people. They have various backgrounds and jobs. They're not the most eligible people in the world. And yet, every season, no matter who their bachelor or bachelorette is you have a good chunk of people deeply falling in love with who this person is and it's just like how is this possible and and it's because of this spark and again this listening to this book it makes sense or reading this book or listening i listen to it. You talk about anxiety or insecurity and power. There is very much an uneven power dynamic in bachelor world, right? I mean, it's obvious.

You have one, you're competing with many, like you're isolated. The lead is put on a pedestal and you get hyper competitive people in this controlled environment. And then you get a little bit of validation from the person you're looking for attention. And it's hard not to like fall in love. You know, it's hard not to feel that anxiety. And I've told the story many times that when I was in it for the first time, I knew that what I felt was it felt genuine, right? I felt like I was developing really real feelings, but I had at least the self-awareness to know.

I didn't know what I equated to is like, why am I feeling this? Like, is it because I'm hyper-competitive? Is it because there's only one? And I just didn't know the difference. Like I couldn't tell, like I just, because I couldn't tell because I was still in that world. So it was like, well, I'm just going to go with the feelings that I have.

And that's, yeah, that is very much how that show works, which again speaks to like why a lot of the relationships hasn't worked. But like I've always kind of not necessarily defend the show. What I defend the show is like all the show has always been is a kind of hyper reflection of our society because people do the shit that happens on The Bachelor all the time without the controlled environment, right? You know, all your clients, you wrote an entire book, not necessarily on Bachelor Nation, but about people going out and dating and acting the same way people act in a controlled environment like on the show. So, but very much, it is very much all those things you just talked about.

Yeah. Don't be judgmental in life, in anything, right? Including your produce. They have, I mean, I don't know if they have feelings. We judge our produce. It's gotten to that point. Yeah, it's gotten to that point. We're judging everything, even our fruit.

People at Imperfect Foods don't think you should agree with us. They don't think you should judge your foods. But I'll tell you what, you guys are doing it. Every year, billions of pounds of food go to waste, often because it doesn't live up to the strict cosmetic standards of grocery stores. What the heck? Who cares what it looks like? We're chopping it up anyways.

Don't you wish there was a way to prevent all that? Well, there is. And the people at Imperfect Foods are doing it. Imperfect Foods is on a mission to reimagine grocery store delivered for a kindest, less wasteful world. They deliver sustainable, affordable groceries, including produce, quality protein, eggs and dairy in pantry stables straight to your door. Plus, they're always adding fun and tasty new discoveries for you to try each week. I signed up for it. I get the ugliest fruit.

Tastes just as good. It's amazing. And right now, Imperfect Foods is offering our listeners 20% off plus free shipping on your first order when you go to imperfectfoods.com and make sure to use the promo code VileFiles. That's V-I-A-L-L-F-I-L-E-S. Try Imperfect Foods now and for a limited time, get 20% off free shipping on your first order. Go to imperfectfoods.com and use V-I-A-L-L-F-I-L-E-S to sign up. That's 20% off with free shipping at imperfectfoods.com. Offer code VileFall. I mean, the world's going nuts. That's right, it is. I mean, especially with the things like pandemic, we're just bored. We have nothing to do. And we're freaking out. Well, good thing. Better help is here to help us keep our sanity. We are huge advocates

of taking care of your mental health through therapy, through talking to mental health experts and better help is helping us do that. Especially, uh, keeps our ability to stay inside, keep us, uh, quarantine. And even when the world gets back to normal, it's like, it's, it's stressful to find a therapist, to find a mental health professional to talk to. And then there's the whole thing of like driving and setting appointments so much easier, right at your fingertips from your couch, from the comfort of your home, you go on betterhelp.com. You take a quick quiz. They assign a mental health professional that meets your needs. If they get it wrong, you can get reassigned. You can, you can talk to a new therapist every goddamn time. If you want, it really, it's up reassigned. You can talk to a new therapist every goddamn time if you want.

It really is up to you. They make it super easy, super affordable, and you can't put a price on taking care of your mental health. You've got to invest in yourself, and that means your happiness as well. So to get BetterHelp, I highly encourage you. Our listeners talk about it. They rave about it. I've recommended it to my friends, and they've thanked me for it. To sign up for BetterHelp now, go to betterhelp.com slash vilefiles.

That's V-I-A-L-L-F-I-L-E-S, betterhelp.com slash V-I-A-L-L-F-I-L-E-S. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and vile file listeners get 10% off their first month. Yeah, there's a really interesting study. I remember learning about it in Psych 101. It's called the bridge study. And so basically they have a woman standing in the middle of a bridge, and it's a really shaky bridge, and so it's scary to cross it. In the middle of the bridge, she says to these guys, can you answer a few questions? And they say yes. And then she says, if you have any questions to follow up, you can give me a call. And then she also does it in a regular place, not in the middle of the bridge.

And what she finds is that tons of guys who she asked the question to on the bridge end up calling her back. And the reason why is that they had really high adrenaline when they were on the bridge. And so they confused that adrenaline for a connection with her and they felt very attracted to her. And so they called her. And this is called misattribution of arousal. They were aroused by the situation of being on a scary bridge, but they confused it for this chemistry with her. And so exactly what you're talking about with The Bachelor, right? It's a controlled environment. It's designed to be romantic.

If you're falling in love, you're doing it right. And it's very confusing because is it the cameras and the attention and the wine, or is it falling in love? And our brains are just not that good at telling the difference. Yeah. Is that why as kids we always fall in love with someone like at summer camp, you know, because the kid, the person like didn't go to our school and wasn't from our town and they were just different and unique.

And it was like, or a concert or any kind of heightened environment that's like different than our normal day-to-day lives. Oh yeah. I mean, I loved my camp relationships, right? You would be like three weeks is like three months at camp. It's so intense. I mean, I know for me, it was that I got to be a different person at camp, but it's probably also true on The Bachelor, right? You get to play this role and you know that you're fulfilling some stereotype and maybe you play it up. But I am so excited to have this conversation with you because one of the big themes of the book

is this idea of the romanticizer, the person who loves love, who believes in the soulmate, who thinks there's one person out there for them. And I do feel like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette is sort of perpetuating that idea of one person. And yeah, I'm curious when you listen to the chapter about the romanticizer, how some of The Bachelor stuff sat with you. It very much does. I mean, I was talking to a producer once that's no longer with the show that used to run the show, and they were just like, all The Bachelor is, it's almost glorifying 1950s dating. Because back in the day, it was pretty common for young women to go on a lot of early dates like when they were young and you know and never go past first base kind of thing you know we were more traditional more

conservative uh but they would meet a lot of guys right and then they would pick their kind of who they're going to marry off of going on like maybe 10 dates between the ages of like 20 and 22 right and they would choose their life partner by having a handful of conversations and that's kind of what the bachelor is kind of this glorifying old traditional like style dating and making lifelong decisions off of a little bit of information and uh and and all based off like, there is that special person, the rom-com, the, the notebook of it all, um, you know, type of conversations. And I mean, you know, growing up, it's funny. Cause like, yeah, that was definitely me when I was younger. Right. Um, I had my parents to look at. I, all I knew was their love story, so to speak. Right.

And how they meant that it all sounded very romantic and they barely knew each other. You know, like their story was like how they dated for like six months and got engaged and were married shortly thereafter. And that's, you know, I was like, wow, it sounds amazing. And, you know, there's this like cute story about how they met. And, and, um, I, you know, you try to, I think as a young person, try to replicate that because that's what you have and that's what you're told. And then it's reinforced through movies and TV shows that we watch. And I don't believe that anymore. I haven't believed that for a long time through my own.

Like, it was like self-preservation because I, you know, as a young person fell in love. It didn't work out. Then I fell in love again and didn't work out. And it was like, well, instead of feeling like I'm a failure, I'm just going to come to the realization that like, maybe there's a lot of people I can fall in love with, right? Maybe it's situational. Maybe the world, you know, if I choose to move or not move, like these are my choices. And then based off of my choices, things are going to happen. And, you know, that that's kind of how I got there, but it was kind of an evolution through my own experiences. Yeah, I totally agree. And it's interesting because before you were like, you know,

the bachelor is a representation of modern dating, but I would more agree with what the producer said, which is, it feels like it's a, it's, it's kind of this antiquated thing where it's more like how dating used to be before dating apps and before, um, you know, having all of these different choices and every single night you can go on a different date and the thousands of people, not, you know, the 25 people or however many people it is. And so it's interesting just what a big part of our culture, Bachelor Nation is. And even if you look at how popular Bridgerton is, it's like on some level, we want to think about modern dating and the modern problems, but there just is a part of us that's drawn to these really hyper romantic, extremely curated, whether it's going on balls or being on

The Bachelor, there's just there's just something that people are drawn to. And even though my work is very pragmatic, and I'm like, find a partner, make it work, build the relationship you want. I loved Bridgerton, because at the end of the day, I do think that there's this natural tendency to want to believe in love working out. And we want to believe in the happily ever after. Yeah, it's funny because I think people like I don't know if it's our egos or what, but like we want to believe we're special and we want to believe, therefore, the things that we do are special. And then our relationships are special. I remember the first time I was in love with my first girlfriend, my best friend dated her best friend.

And I remember thinking we're more in love than my first girlfriend, my best friend dated her best friend. And I remember thinking we're more in love than you guys, right? Like you, you want like, we're better than you, right? And which is silly and ridiculous, but we, we want to believe that for ourselves. And I think modern dating, as you call it, is it just, it's more unromantic, right? Because there are more options, the way we go out meeting people, it's, it's, it's more unromantic, right? Because there are more options, the way we go out meeting people. It's realizing some of the realities that there isn't like this kismet special person or this fate or that you can love more than one person.

And a lot of the reasons we felt that way in the past is because the world was different. People didn't get to meet as many people. Their options were limited. But through those options, we've had more relationships fail and now we're adjusting and that all kind of sounds unromantic. I've always looked at a different point is that the choice to make it work with someone is the romance in that relationship. To me, with someone is the romance in that relationship.

To me, it's romantic to have the choice to be with person X versus person Y and knowing that you can choose and to make a monogamous relationship work if that's what you want. There's romance in that choice of sacrifice and giving it up. And to me, that's what I thought, like you make it special kind

of to your point, like you choose to work on it. It's not special just by, you know, deciding to wake up five minutes early. And because you did, you ran into like this new guy at a coffee shop and, you know, only because you showed up early, you know, and making it feel special because of luck. I 100% agree with you. I think people are just so obsessed with the how we met meet cute. And they want to believe that because I was on this flight, but I was supposed to take this earlier flight.

And then I moved my seat and now I'm next to you. And we had a great conversation for five hours. Obviously it's meant to be, and I should marry you. And we should create this whole relationship instead of understanding that every day of a relationship is a choice. A whole relationship is a series of decisions, right? Do I know myself? Am I

self-aware? Have I dealt with my shit? Have I gone to therapy? Have I done the work? Am I choosing to accept your flaws? Am I working on my flaws? That is the romantic part. The romantic part is 10 years into a relationship, being able to put up with somebody else and still seeing the good in them. And so I think if you are trying to have a long-term relationship that's going to last decades, the we met story is 0.0001% of the whole thing. And there's many, many, many more minutes and years together. And yeah, I totally agree with you. The romantic part is choosing to show up and making it work. It doesn't matter how you met. Yeah, like at all, right? I mean, it's like, it's just a story. But in reality, it sounds like it can cause a lot more harm in a

relationship than good because of the risk of romanticizing about it. Yeah. And that's why I have taken on the spark as my nemesis. Because it's not that the spark is in and of itself a bad thing. Like I have a story in my head of meeting this guy and I just felt like I had known him my entire life and there was so much chemistry and I just felt so drawn and I was thinking about him all the time. And that was a peak life moment. The spark feels really good, right? The spark is a great experience, but we shouldn't optimize for the spark. We shouldn't marry someone for the spark. And instead, we let all these great potential partners go by because we don't give them time to open up. We don't understand that some of the best people in life are onions and you need to peel away the layers. And so it's not that I don't want people

to have that moment of the spark. It's that I don't want them to let great potential matches go because they don't understand that some people are not initially charming. It's interesting that you said that. And it's so obvious, but I never really thought about it. I always get asked the question a lot of, why do I always date the same person? And I think a lot of people say that because you're right. Not everyone is super charming or has the gift of gab. Not everyone is traditionally beautiful. Not everyone is traditionally beautiful right um not everyone is funny not everyone is rich you know some of these kind of superficial things that are just as humans were drawn to totally um and yet we always kind of fall for the same people because those are the people at face

value society has taught us is is attractive to kind of our eyes so to speak and you know we're all guilty of that and that's not necessarily a bad thing but kind of our eyes, so to speak. And, you know, we're all guilty of that. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But kind of to your point, if you're always evaluating your attraction and basing it off the spark, then you are going to fall victim to falling for the same person

because you're only looking at these very kind of superficial qualities and then evaluating your immediate feelings towards these things that like only certain people have the ability to do. Yeah. I just, uh, recorded my talk for South by Southwest this year and it's all about, it's fuck the spark, fuck the type, fuck happily ever after. And the fuck the type thing is basically saying when I have dating coaching clients who always go after the same kind of girl or the same kind of guy, and then they call me and they say, I met this person,

she's not really my type, but I'm like, this is the one that's going to work. Because when I hear that, what I know is going on is they have a bad pattern. They have a pattern of chasing after people who are younger than them and don't challenge them. And they like to play the role of the mentor, or they chase after guys who aren't interested in them because they want to convince someone that they're worthy. And so it's in that moment of breaking your type that you actually are propelling yourself forward into the type of relationship you want to be in. And you've just overcome some bad habits of yours. Do you think type is breaking your type is more important when it comes to personality or physical attraction or both? I think it depends what your thing is. And so

I guess I mostly think about it in terms of dynamics. So a dynamic like the one I just described is like I know a lot of guys that are drawn to the mentor mentee thing because it makes them feel, you know, sophisticated and established. I know a lot of women who are drawn to the mentor-mentee thing because it makes them feel sophisticated and established. I know a lot of women who are drawn to the chasing after somebody who isn't interested in them and getting in what's known as the anxious avoidant loop, right? I chase after you, you pull away. I chase after you, you pull away. And so it's really chasing, it's changing the dynamic. It's instead of going after someone who's not interested in me and convincing them to be interested in me, I'm going after someone who says, I like you, let's hang out again. I can see the looks thing breaking the type, but I don't have as much of a problem with that. If

somebody's just really drawn to redheads, that's okay. I feel like it's more like, what is the painful dynamic that you're reinforcing that when you break it, it allows you to actually find a relationship that works? What do you think about that? Well, yeah, I asked that question because, you know, I get teased for having a physical type and it's just like, I don't know, like these are the people and I've dated a variety of different looking people, but my body of work, if you want to call it that, there's definitely a pattern, you know? Yeah. And there's just. There's definitely a pattern, you know? Yeah.

And there's a few outliers. But, you know, with my current girlfriend, what she's very different than a lot of my other serious relationship is her personality, right? And how we interact, right? And it's just a totally different presence. I was always used to, like, not for the reasons you mentioned, but I was always used to uh like not for the reasons you mentioned but i was always used to dating someone who i would describe as a big personality you know dynamic person i liked the challenge i liked i loved that i've always liked the banter and debate i love being challenged i've always loved being challenged but with that i was sometimes drawn to people you know and i'm sure it was mutual

problems. Like it was this, you know, not blaming them versus me, but it became more toxic, you know, interactions. It became more about the challenge, the fighting, the, and it wasn't a lot of bringing out the best. I felt like it was, it got heavy and it got exhausting for both of us. And, uh, my current girlfriend is just a lot more patient and, and we, the way, the way we communicate seems a lot more effective and, um, all those things. I mean, it's, you know, and so, uh, I've noticed that. And I remember when I was like, when I was single, I kind of was, I wasn't actively looking for that, but I thought I did notice the pattern in past girlfriends is like, I don't want to be drawn to someone that immediately. Ooh, like I love this challenge. Oh, she called me out. I'm drawn to her. I would like when I was younger, I would be kind of interested in like, like women who like would give me shit early on, you know, and like we still give each other shit. But like that was something that would draw me to that person early on. And if I was physically attracted to them, then I would go down that path. And that's that's something I was able

to break for myself. That sounds super healthy to me. I mean, just to say it back to you, it sounds like you're pretty consistent in what you're attracted to physically, which it is harder to break a pattern of who you're attracted to. But it sounds like you're pretty consistent in what you're attracted to physically, which it is harder to break a pattern of who you're attracted to. But it sounds like you had this pattern where you were like, I mean, now I'm just going to psychoanalyze you for a second. But it's kind of like, I like to get away with shit and I like to see what I can get away with. But actually, I like when somebody calls me on my shit because then it makes me feel like

they truly know me and they can tango with me. And so you were drawn to these relationships that did have a lot of conflict in them where the person was calling you out, but then ultimately it didn't make you happier. It was too much conflict. And so now the person that you're with isn't as much that dynamic. And so maybe she is your physical type that you've had consistently, but the dynamic is interesting. It sounds like it's a little calmer and less focused on conflict. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I did it because I wanted to get away with things, but I did, you know, it was, I equated it to if you could call me out and even it was like, not that I was even doing anything wrong. It was that like you're, this is a person who's not afraid to keep me in check, so to speak.

It's gonna make you better. I equated that to like making me better or being my equal and things like that. And I recognize that that wasn't the case. It's also like something I really struggled with as I got older because it was the spark too. It was, I, when I was younger, I felt the spark and because I was like, ignorance is bliss. I didn't know what to compare it to. And then, but after for me going through relationships that came and went and, and I kind of evaluate what I

liked and what I didn't like. So I was like, I just haven't felt the spark in a long time, you know, because I w I went into dating a little bit more pragmatically and I was fine. I was actively dating. I'd go on second dates. I love all your stuff about like, like, just go. What's the harm in a third date? You know, like just figure it out. But I was what I was struggling with is like, I didn't know how to like, I didn't know which relationship to like, like well this is the one i'm going to invent

this is the person i want to like give it a few months and see where it goes and then if i do that like what's stopping me from continuing this versus like trying you know trying it with someone else uh and that's something i think i just struggled with in general like i was wondering if like there was a thought at times like maybe there's something wrong with me because i i like i was wondering if like there was a thought at times like maybe there's something wrong with me because i i like i was almost like i become too pragmatic i was like maybe i've lost the romance of love right um and it turned out that i just had to like see it through like again my current girlfriend just using an example she's someone that we i mean it was a hookup situation at first right where we both were like yeah there's a lot of reasons this might not work out

but like we kind of like hanging out and so we we mutually didn't put a lot of expectations of dating but we just kept hanging out and kept seeing each other and through that then we got to know each other and and then eventually got to the point where you know people like one of us like asked to define some expectations and define the relationship. And there were a handful of conversations and we got to a place. But I don't think I would have been able to get to where I am now without allowing that to grow over time. There was, I kind of had to develop feelings over time in ways that I was able to do, like either on a TV show or when I was like 23,

because I was relying on this spark, this kind of intangible, like, I don't know why I feel the way I do, but it's exciting. And that is the reason why I'm going to date this person because I'm excited. And I wasn't able to do that anymore. And it turns out that was probably a good thing.

Oh yeah. Everything you're saying resonates, especially the part around, you know, is there something wrong with me? Am I too practical? Am I not able to fall in love? I think a lot of people feel very trapped by the decision of who should I invest in? If you're just dating casually or, you know, you're in high school or college and you're just having fun, I don't think there's the pressure to really be with somebody

who could make it work with long-term. But I think when people make that mental shift to say, could I create a life with this person? There's a lot of pressure. And one of the main theses of my book is we are born knowing how to love. Love is organic, but we're not born knowing how to date. And we're not born knowing how to choose our life partner.

And nobody tells us how to do this. And so we just sit there being like, well, a lot of people around me have gotten married. There's something wrong with me. Why can't I choose? But it's genuinely really hard because if you're casually dating three people and you like some things about each one and don't like other things, which one do you invest in? And I just think a lot of people feel very trapped by that decision. And I can't even imagine being on The Bachelor. And how was it? When you would go to bed at night, would you write down in a notebook, I like this thing about this person? How did you keep all those different people in your head? And how did you even think about choosing? It's really, it comes down to the spark, really. I mean, we joked about this with Matt in his current season.

I think a lot of weight is put on physical attraction. That makes sense. Because that's what you know. You can see that. That's tangible. You can trust your eyes. And you have these various connections with different people. But, like, you are aware that you may not know the whole body of work.

Maybe they're just telling what you think sounds nice. You don't get to meet their families. I mean, yeah, there's hometowns, but all that other information that you're trying to gather is a big leap of faith. So a lot of it is based off just a physical attraction and just a gut feeling, really, I think, at the end of the day. And some people get lucky and a lot of people don't.

It's definitely an imperfect formula. That's why Love is... Did you watch Love is Blind? I watched the first couple episodes, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do think that that was an interesting element of the show. Because if you say like, when you are making a bunch of decisions, you're going to make decisions with the information that's most salient to you. And so on a show, it's physical attractiveness. On a dating app, it might be height, age, you know, somebody's photos.

But they really took out that element. And so I think the fact that you had to focus on your connection, I mean, it didn't work for all couples. But I did think that that was a very clever premise for flipping the equation on its head. And I think it kind of just speaks to, they're both important, right? And I liked how you talked about, and dating, and people have said this before,

like physical, like sex changes, physical chemistry changes. I'd always, and it's a balance because i always get defensive of people like well you only date a certain you know again like i it's who you're you can't discount who you're physically attracted to but there should be other things that go into it right like if you're only basing it off a physical attraction or you want to make sure that other people are impressed by how your partner looks. That's definitely not a good thing, right? But you want to have sexual chemistry, but you also have to have other things, you know, all these kind of communication and

compatibility and, you know, those things that matter too that will grow over time. compatibility and, you know, those things that matter too, that will grow over time. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like, imagine that you have 50 coins that you get to spend and you can spend them on looks, connection, intelligence, humor, kindness, family, all of these different things. If you spend most of them on the looks department, then you might be making sacrifices elsewhere. And so the point isn't find somebody who you're not attracted to. It's understand that if you are overweighting attraction, inevitably, um, there's this thing called adaptation, whatever we're around, we get used to. And so even the hottest person in the world, the person who's, who's

dating them gets used to how they look. And it's no longer like, wow, I can't believe how hot this person is. And I think I say this in the book, behind every hot person is a person sick of having sex with them. And so the idea is you should be attracted. And it's great if you are a charismatic hot person who can get somebody else like that. But don't overweight attractiveness at the cost of something else. Because in the long term, this is your teammate. This is the person that you're going through life with. And at the end of the day, you know, if you have a child with special needs and you need to sue the school system to figure out how your child's going

to be educated, I don't care, you know, what the golden ratio of hips to bust to waist is. It's like, is this the person who you want as your decision-making partner? And I think as long as people realize that there's a lot more than physical attraction, you know, it's not necessarily bad to have a hot partner, but don't do it at the cost of something else. Totally. You spent some time in your book talking about what I thought was really interesting, how people are almost, what's the word I'm looking for? We're just, we're designed to notice the negative over the positive as a survival instinct. I thought that was really fascinating.

Something I related to having a social media platform, going on the show. It's something like it's advice that I would give a lot to my peers. It's just like, hey, be careful of reading your comments because it doesn't matter how many nice comments you get it only takes one negative comment to like have you spiral and ruin your day and then you know reading your book uh i didn't realize that was something that like

has been studied and and literally our brains are designed that way for like our own survival. But over time, you know, it's, you know, we're not hunting necessarily our own food or, you know, we're not being chased by Willie Mammoths and things like that. And now we're just on the internet and it's kind of fascinating that our brains still have a propensity to focus on the negative, but it's causing sometimes more harm than good these days. Yeah, I'm really glad you liked that part. And so it's called the negativity bias. And this is something that I learned about through Helen Fisher, who's this really awesome biological anthropologist. And so her whole slant is,

how do our brains work? How did our brains develop over time? And how does that serve or not serve us right now? And so I'm sure people are familiar with fight or flight mode, the idea that if a tiger is chasing you, you don't focus on anything else. You focus on getting away from the tiger. But when you're in a business meeting and your boss criticizes you and you go into fight or flight mode, it's not that useful. But we have the same brains that developed from the beginning of humankind. And so the idea with the negativity bias is that it is another survival technique. If you have five ex-girlfriends and one of them wants to kill you, it's a good idea to remember which one that is. And so how this plays

out in dating is that it's so easy for us to see the negative things, right? And so you go on a date with someone and the whole night is great, but at the end of the date, the guy splits the check with you. And then you're just like, oh, he's cheap. He's broke. He's not interested in me. And you write him off or things I've heard about are, you know, the guy wore socks with sandals. I just couldn't possibly date someone like that. And so the whole idea is we have this natural tendency to look for the negative. That's going to happen on its own. And so what I try to train people to do is to actively look for the positive. And so I have a couple of ways that I do that. But one of them is that in the book, I say to people, go on a first date and send me an email, fivegoodthings at gmail.com. And I kind of forgot that I had done this. But then when the book came

out, I started getting these emails that would say five good things. And they would just say, my first date with Priya. And they would list the five things they liked about Priya. And this has been one of the most fun things about the book coming out because I'm like, oh, people are actively doing this exercise. They were going on the dates, looking for the good things. And it's helping them realize, oh, the fact that he followed up with me about my big meeting at work, that's a sign of being a good listener and of being caring. And so I really do try to create these activities and exercises and environments that help you override the brain's natural tendency to, as you said, focus on the negative comment on the internet, focus on the socks with sandals. The only exception to that that I can

think of is that when people break up with someone or they're actually, they're broken up with usually, and they have a hard time moving on, we have a way of obsessing over the things we miss, you know? Oh, and we forget the things we didn't like in the relationship, right? It seems like the only time we will give our partners credit they don't deserve is when we can't have them anymore. And I'm just wondering, is there something in our psychology or our brain that causes us to do that? Yeah. So first of all, I just love the psychology of breakups. I think it's super fascinating. Some of the original work that I've done has really focused on breakups. And there's two exercises in my book for getting over breakups, and they basically focus on exactly what you're talking about. So one of them is a journaling exercise

where you write about all the negative things about the person because your brain does, especially if you get broken up with, your brain goes into, but remember when she did this for me? Remember when he did that for me? And so there's research that shows that if you focus on the negatives of the person

who you just broke up with, it helps you move on. And then the second thing is focusing on the positives of the breakup. So, okay, your partner didn't like jazz and you haven't seen live jazz in two years. Now you can go do that again. Or your partner didn't want to move back to Portland with you. Now you can do that. So our brain does tend to kind of wallow in what could have been and have rose colored glasses about the past person. But there are exercises that you can do that help you focus on the negatives of the relationship and the positives of the breakup. And so the whole kind of idea here is that whatever frame you have for something, whatever angle you're looking at things with, that affects how you feel about it. And so how can you

actively change your frame, either by looking for the five good things on a date or by focusing on the negatives of your partner once you break up? Yeah, that's really interesting. And I totally agree. Something I've mentioned to the people who call in, but it's nice to have that being reinforced by an actual expert. Ghosting you wrote about, I thought it was really interesting and the most interesting i think i thought about it is not that ghosting is bad and you shouldn't do it and and why people ghost that kind of seemed like pretty obvious right like well i ghost because i feel bad i don't know what to say it's awkward etc etc but I thought the most interesting thing you wrote about ghosting is that ghosting makes us feel worse about ourselves because we judge ourselves for the obvious thing. It's like, that's a shitty thing to do. And so if we're trying to improve or help our

own opinion of ourselves or our own mental health, that we should stop ghosting if for no other reason than for our own selfish needs. Yeah, I mean, you explained it really well. The idea is called self-perception theory. And so it's not that we all have these consistent views of ourselves. It's that we actually look to our actions to tell us who we are. And so the research shows that volunteering is one of the most reliable ways to feel good about yourself because you volunteer at the soup kitchen and you say, hmm, I volunteered. I must be a good person. Or the other day, my husband gave a generous gift to somebody who just moved into a new house. And he's like, hmm, I'm a pretty good guy. And I'm like, yes, that's self-perception theory. You're looking at your actions to tell

you who you are. And so yes, people shouldn't ghost because it's a dick move. But maybe the best way to convince somebody not to ghost is to say ghosting makes you the ghoster feel worse because you know it's a bad thing to do. You do it anyway. You look at your actions and you say, I might be kind of a jerk. And so if at the very least you just want to make yourself feel better, kindly but firmly letting the person down is the right thing to do. And doing it is going to make you feel better about yourself.

Yeah. Because I, I always hear from people. It's like, well, I didn't want to be mean, you know, like I didn't know what to say.

So I just didn't say anything at all. I'm like, you know, and like everyone knows it's like a bullshit thing. Bullshit. But yes, you're going to feel worse about yourself. And it,

cause like, it's weird because I will say that what's not obvious is that in that moment there, because I will criticize people when they say, well, I don't want to, I don't want to be a jerk, you know? And I'm like, that's not why you don't want to do it. You're just afraid. You're just avoiding the obvious, right? But even if that were true, that's what I found to be most fascinating.

What you're saying is the psychology of it says you're not even going to accomplish that goal because you're going to still feel like more of a jerk after the fact because you know deep down it's a shitty thing to do. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of the issue with ghosting is that – how do I explain this? Okay, so one of my mentors, Dan Ariely, he was in the hospital for three years. Um, he had, he was in a very serious fire. And so when they had to change his bandages every day, they would do it very slowly. They would very slowly peel off the bandages. And he said to them, you know, he ended up doing research on pain and people prefer short bursts of intense pain over longer bursts of less intense pain. And he said to the

nurses, please rip them off faster. Don't go through it slowly. And they were like, well, it's harder for us to do that in this and that. But the analogy here is rip off the bandaid, say to the person, you're great. Thanks for the date. I'm not interested. But instead, slowly ghosting them until they realize that you're never going to text them back, that hurts more. And the research supports this. People would rather have a feeling of intense pain of rejection than swim in the ambiguity. But the person who's ghosting is like, well, I don't want to give them that intense ripping off the bandaid thing. But that's a misperception. Just do it and get it over with and allow them

to move on because you're punishing them by not being clear. Or in the breakup when people are like, listen, who knows what can happen in the future, but I don't think we should date now. And that person only hears, oh, well maybe they'll want to date me in six months. Maybe there's something I can work on. Maybe, you know, like you, like you just all the person hears hope, you know? Yes. 100%. And Nick, there's a part of my book where I talk about the Mr. Nice breakup person and it's, you know, checks in, you know, right. Checks in with you on your birthday, still likes your mom's Instagram posts. It's like, get out of here. You're doing that to make yourself feel better. But what helps me move on is having a clear break. And so I think this all goes back

to the theme that we were talking about. We like choices. We like reversible options. We like replying maybe to an event. But the research shows that having irreversible options, having fewer options and committing to something is what makes us happier. Yeah. I've often said to some of the people who will call in and be like, it's okay. As long as you're not being mean and your intentions are cool. Like you have to allow your ex or your boyfriend or girlfriend who you want to end their life to like kind of hate you or be mad at you. Like that's okay because that will allow them to move on and deal with, you know,

making that list of things they didn't like in the relationship. And you just, you're just going to have to live with the fact that they're going to have to do that to get over you. And, and that's okay. And that's not because you're a jerk. That's just because you selflessly want them to move on because you want to date someone else too. A hundred percent. I think it's an ego thing. You want to be seen as the nice person. You want to be seen as kind, but the kind thing to do is to give them space to move on from you because you don't want to be with them. Totally. You spent a lot of time in your book talking about defining the

relationship. It's something that we get asked a lot about. It's become a very complicated and convoluted thing for people. Can you kind of give us some pointers on how the best way to go about defining the relationship and maybe some of the most common mistakes people make when deciding how to do it and how to go about doing it? Yeah. So one of the big points of the book is decide, don't slide. And so the idea is it's really easy to just slip into the next stage of the relationship to say, hmm, we seem to be spending a lot of time together. I'll delete the apps. I bet he deleted the app too. Or my lease is up. Let's just move in together and not talk about what moving in means. And the research shows that couples that decide that make these intentional choices as they navigate relationship milestones, they're happier,

they have more successful relationships, they even have better sex. And so the main idea is to decide your way into these decisions. And the first big one is defining better sex. And so the main idea is to decide your way into these decisions. And the first big one is defining the relationship. And so the mistakes that I see people make is that they don't bring up the DTR because they're afraid of getting bad news. They're afraid of the person saying, I'm not interested or I'm not ready to commit. But what I want people to do is to date like a scientist. And so what a scientist does is they have a question, they explore it, and they're not attached to the outcome. They say more data is better. And so what that means here is, let's say you've been hooking up with somebody for a while, and you want to know where things stand. You might say to yourself, well, what if

I bring it up and I don't get the answer I want to know? Well, that's still more data. That's good. And so what I recommend people do is say something like, you know, we're going to be meeting my coworkers for drinks tonight. How should I introduce you? Or I've been thinking about deleting the apps. How are you feeling about that? And sort of just in a casual way, bring up the fact that you want to check in with what's going on.

And you need to give the person space to be honest with you. If you say to someone, we're boyfriend and girlfriend, right? That kind of traps them. Instead, you need to just create more space for them to tell you how they're feeling. And I remember a long time ago, some guys said to me, are we exclusive? And I was like, I really like you, but we just started seeing each other and I got out of a big relationship recently. I'm not ready to put a label on it yet. And then he was like, okay. And we kept dating, but he could have recently. I'm not ready to put a label on it yet. And then he was like, okay. And we kept dating, but he could have said, I'm not fine with that.

And so the point of defining the relationship is you need to see where are we now? Are we on the same page? And where are we headed? Because so many times people just waste time assuming things, not knowing what's going on. And then six months into it, you're like, wait, you've been on a dating app this whole time. And then the person will be like, yeah,

we never said that we were exclusive. Yeah, totally. And I almost like how, and I feel like we've been saying this for a while, but how you like define the relationship doesn't necessarily mean, uh, Hey, are you going to marry me? Totally. Are we going to buy a house? Are we going to have four kids together? It's just, it's setting upfront expectations on wherever the relationship is. You know, if you want to define the relationship in a week, I guess, sure, because you just want some clarity on where this is going,

but you also need to be reasonable what that definition looks like to you, right? Like, hey, you know, i really had fun there i want to keep hanging out that could be defining the relationship to a certain degree right yeah i think like what you're saying it's like people just want to know where this is going they don't want to be confused on what the other person is doing and a lot of people like you say seem to avoid asking these questions because and we said like they just don't want to hear the truth right they're just afraid of hearing it because well i guess i'd rather just hang out with him one more time rather than have him tell me he doesn't really want to date me and i know

deep down oh i'm afraid he's going to say that if i push him to that answer um that's exactly the why do people do that yeah that's the shift that I want people to make. Yes, there is fear and anxiety of getting news that you don't want to hear, but you are better off knowing bad news, being more informed, and then making a decision for yourself than avoiding potential bad news and then just wasting your time.

And so the reason I want people to have these conversations is because I know what happens when they don't, which is that people date for years not knowing, wait, I thought you wanted to have kids. You don't? Why didn't, which is that people date for years, not knowing, wait, I thought you wanted to have kids. You don't, why didn't you talk about that? And so I think people need to be having more honest conversations sooner. And one of the big ones is moving in together, right? Some people think moving in together means we're on a path for marriage. Some people think moving in together means my lease is up and this saves money. But if you think about it differently,

that's a plan for disaster. And so, yes, having crucial conversations is scary. Being vulnerable is scary. But you're going to be better off if you two are honest with each other, because then that avoids paying down the road. Totally. Well, often what happens, too, is it's like, oh, well, let's move in because our leases are up we'll save money and they just assume well of course we want to get married someday and i guess maybe an engagement's around the corner but to your point they they often don't actually have that conversation they just assume because like that's what our parents taught us or you know or we never we just imagine we'd never live with someone we wouldn't get engaged to. How did you get to, if you feel like sharing, how did you get to the DTR with your girlfriend?

She brought it up. Yeah. She tried to define the relationship because I was like, we'll never date. She was like, do you remember how she said it? Like, is it, was it a good phrase that people should use? Oh yeah. I like, she did it. She, She did what I think a lot of people, I guess men or women should do, is she just stated what she wanted at the risk of... And she kind of expected me not... She expected me to give the initial answer I gave her,

which was, I don't know what to say, but I don't know. but she didn't beg. She didn't plead her case. She didn't try to convince me. She just stated what she wanted and set her expectations that she wanted for herself. She didn't make it about me. And she let me say no. And then she followed through on what she said she wanted for herself, which was, I don't want to keep doing this. I'm going to go do other things. And I was kind of like, wait, hold on.

I kind of had to realize for myself. But had she not shown me what she wanted for herself, I, you know, we take things for granted if we're not forced to sometimes make a decision. Like it's kind of human nature. You give someone an inch, take a foot type of thing. I love that story. I think that people listening could really learn a lot from it.

I think there's so many ways that that's relevant. I've been thinking about this topic a lot of how do you get what you want? First step in getting what you want is knowing what you want, which I think for some people is the hardest part. Step two is asking for what you want, which is also hard. And then step three is accepting what the other person says, which they may not be willing to give you what you want. And then you can choose to walk away. And people ask me all the time, like, okay, I'm in my mid thirties. I'm ready to find someone.

How can I tell someone I'm looking for something serious without scaring them off? And it's exactly what your girlfriend did. You say, this is who I am. This is what I want. Are you interested in the same thing? It's not needy. It's self-aware and it's self-confident. And then the other person can rise to the occasion or not, but at least you stated what was going on for you as opposed to pretending to be okay with something that doesn't feel good anymore. Yeah, totally. Amanda has a question. Yeah, I was wondering sort of in talking about defining the relationship and sort of like

living in ambiguity, I found in COVID in terms of what's ethical disclosure wise has really shifted in terms of before you can kind of avoid the conversation about if you're seeing other people versus in like dating in a COVID climate. I feel like you sort of owe people that honesty and that openness in a way you might not have before. And so I was just wondering sort of how you've heard people in your orbit responding to that. And if you think there's going to be any long term changes in terms of what we view as ethical disclosure. Yeah, I think that's a really percept any long term changes in terms of what we view as ethical disclosure? Yeah, I think that's a really perceptive question. And I've been looking into that in particular through my research.

And so I see this as a silver lining of the pandemic, that basically the idea is that having hard conversations is good for couples, seeing if this is a person who you can talk to about hard things and navigate conflict and compromise, right? That matters. But for most people, they don't have any sort of hard conversation until the DTR. But with COVID, that conversation is happening not after three weeks or three months, it's happening, you know, before date two or three. And so the conversation looks something like, what is your COVID safety

protocol? Will you be wearing a mask when we meet up? How many people are in your pod? What kind of risks have you taken? Have you had COVID? And so people for their lives are literally at risk. People have to have these safety conversations. And so couples are being forced to have hard conversations earlier, which I think is giving them really good information on, is this the type of person who I could make hard decisions with long-term? Yeah. I'd almost look at as a, like you said, a kind of a catalyst to do what people probably should have always been doing. Again, because we think of define the relationship as, hey, are we going to date so we can fall in love

and get married and have kids? I think people, that's how they assume defining the relationship. People generally don't commit to a monogamous relationship unless they can see them spend the rest of her life. That often doesn't work out, but we've we put that weight on it. But kind of like we discussed earlier, to find the relationship could just be that like any any interaction between people is a relationship. You're just trying to set expectations.

Like, what are you what's your goal next week? You know, it might just be like you. We don't know. We assume. And now that the world's changing and we, as a society, we're becoming less and less traditional, right? Like, so before, like 30, 20, 30 years ago, everyone's like, hey, you're gonna,

you're gonna go to college or not college and then you're gonna get a job and you'll meet someone and then you'll start getting married and have a family. And now it's, you know, that's not the case. People have open relationships. People like wait longer to get

married it's not as uncommon to wait to your 40 or 50 to get married uh uh we are far more open and accepting of um you know homosexuality and and you know bisexuality and transgender and and there's all these other things when it comes to dating that like there's more things on the table to discuss and yet we still like go back to like not having conversations and not checking in earlier just to kind of get a feel of what person wants for themselves in a dating situation. Because if you meet a 25, 30 year old, I mean, we shouldn't assume what they want for the next 10, 15 years because there's so many things on the table that weren't on the table at least talked about 10, 15 years ago. Right. I mean. Yeah, absolutely. There's a much larger menu of what a relationship can look like. And so for anyone listening, I think the big takeaway here is, yes, bringing something up is scary because

you have a fear of losing somebody, a fear of scaring somebody off, a fear of hearing what you don't want to know. But the bigger thing that you should be afraid of is not having the information you need and wasting your time. And so having that hard conversation earlier is ultimately the better thing because then you have the information, you know, to decide, is this the right thing for me? Yeah. Yeah. That is interesting. But yeah, maybe, maybe the COVID can give us practice on just, Hey, what's up? What are you doing? I agree. Right.

Cause now you have to say, can I kiss you? Because literally removing somebody's mask, like getting in their face, that is a different thing. And so there's weird, hard conversations that have to happen now that just wouldn't have happened a year ago. Who's in your pod? Do you want to get married? I have a friend who, after the first date said, do you want to join my pod and move in? And she was like, no, that's too intense. Yeah. But I, but to that point,

I just think it's good to just, again, start asking questions earlier on without the pressure of being judged or feeling like, why are you asking me that? Like, you're crazy for like, asking me a question about my expectations about my dating life, even though we're on a date, you know, people are going to like, whoa, whoa, what are you, what are you, what are you, what are you doing here? Like, why, why are you asking me this? We just met. It's like, I don't know. We were having sex. Like, isn't that so funny? Why am I nuts? You know? Right. Yeah. We, I'm comfortable having sex with you, but I'm not comfortable asking you what your intentions

are. It's like, when did that become the case? Yeah. I don't know. Somewhere it did. And yeah, guys will call women crazy and women will call men weird. And we love to shame each other because we don't want to, I don't know, we want to have our cake and eat it too, I guess.

But that's also a red flag. If somebody can't handle a hard conversation where you're talking about your needs in the future, like maybe they're not ready to be in a relationship. And so this is the point, like more data is better. It's good to know how the other person responds to conflict and hard conversations. And if they get super weird about it, well, why do you want to be with a person that can't handle conflict in the first place? Totally. One thing I wanted to talk about before I let you go, we're kind of backtracking a little bit, but you spent some time talking about small distractions, pet peeves, PPPs, and deal breakers and knowing the difference between those because it seems like a lot of people have a hard and knowing the difference between those. Because it seems like a lot of people have a hard time knowing the difference and confuse them with one another often.

Oh, yeah. So the story there is that this woman came up to me at a networking event. She's like, I'm really ready to find someone. I'm very open minded. I'm down to date any type of guy as long as he's not a mouth breather. I was like, what are you talking about? A mouth breather? And you know, she thought she was being cute, but what she was specifically saying is she has a pet peeve. She prefers when people don't breathe from their mouth, but it had become this thing in her mind that that was a deal breaker. That was something that she couldn't be with. And so what I try to do with my dating coaching clients is help them understand, yes, there's such thing as a deal breaker. If you want to have kids and somebody else doesn't, if you're very religious and want to raise your kids a

certain way and the other person doesn't, that's a deal breaker. You know, if you have different views of how you're going to split money and housework, that might be a deal breaker. But so often people confuse pet peeves for deal breakers and they let really good partners go. And so the exercise in the book is saying, is this a deal breaker? Or is this a permissible pet peeve? And so a permissible pet peeve is, I find it annoying, but I'm not going to let some great person go just because they violate this pet peeve. Yeah, I think that's really do you do you did that? Were there any studies on people? I feel like it's something we do when we're younger i think to a certain degree we all do it through our entire lives but do you notice people do it younger rather than older or is it

because we're just trying to figure out what we like and not like or we just decided when we were younger we're gonna make sure we date someone who has a college degree doesn't you know doesn't have any tattoos and always opens the door for me or something? Or where did we start confusing pet peeves with deal breakers? Yeah, I think it's a wonderful question. So some of it is cultural. So for example, I was just talking to a group of women who were talking about if a guy doesn't pay on the first date, then that's a deal breaker to them. And I happen to not agree with that. And they were just saying like, in my culture, that means that the person likes you and will take care of you. And so I would consider that a pet peeve. They would consider it a deal

breaker. And for them, some of that has to do with cultural stereotypes. In some ways, people who are younger are more flexible around dating. There are people that I dated in my teens and twenties who I would not even go on a first date with now because I know myself more and I take myself more seriously. And so one of the best analogies here is that when you're younger and two people come together, it's like a startup. It's two kind of unformed people that are coming together to build something. When you're older, when you're maybe in your 30s or 40s, coming together is like a merger. It's two completely formed companies that are trying to combine.

And mergers are notoriously very hard because people have different cultures. People are stubborn. People are set in their ways. And so what I would say is that actually a lot of people are more stubborn and have more pet peeves and more deal breakers because they think, I've been doing things this way for 35 years and I don't want to change. And so a lot of the work that I do with people who are in their thirties and forties is help them kind of say, yes, I know you like to set your alarm at this time. I know your fridge is set up the way you like, but if you want to find someone, then part of that is compromise. And you do need to adjust your life to them

because that's what a relationship is. It's making room in your life, in your fridge, in your bed for another person. Totally. Where do you land on politics as a deal breaker or a pet peeve? That's a complicated one. I mean, I think our life, our world is so polarized right now that I do understand that somebody can feel like this is my team. And if that's not your team, then we could never work. I think it depends on, um, how important politics are to you and what the underlying values are. But one interesting story I heard this week is that a woman read my book and was like, I learned the lesson that you shouldn't make assumptions. And so I saw this guy in a dating app who wrote conservative. And instead of swiping left, I said, what does conservative mean to you? And it turned out it meant more things about traditional family values than about particular politicians. And they went out and had a great

date. And so my advice is to actually question your assumptions and don't assume that somebody who puts liberal or conservative that you know exactly what that means. Yeah, that's well said. I think that's an important piece for people to think about, especially in the climate that we're in today. Before I let you go, what's kind of one thing you just want to leave with the audience in terms of a number one piece of advice or number one thing to look for

as they kind of venture out into the dating world or in their relationships that they're in? Yeah. The number one thing I would say for anyone who's listening and is single and is looking for someone is figure out what's holding you back. What are the bad patterns? Are you too picky? Are you not picky enough? Are you going on too many dates or are you not going on enough dates? And really just doing that self audit, you know, taking the quiz on my website, figuring out your attachment style, just understanding who you are and what's holding you back. That's how you're going to break a bad pattern. Because if you just go on 50 more dates, doing the things you did on the last 50 dates, you're

not necessarily going to see a change. And so you really need to own what's going on for you. And you need to make active, different decisions to break that bad habit. And that's how people get into great relationships. I know I said that was my last question, but do I now have one more? Is there a perfect, I mean, I know there's no perfect number of number of dates. We definitely more than one go on two, but three, four, where do you like have to start holding yourself accountable to saying, I need to, how do I feel

about this person? I know I'm getting this question a lot and I wish I had a more scientific answer. I mean, the whole thing in my book is go on the second date. And that's the idea that some people just don't charm on the first one, but is it three? Is it four? At what point are you wasting your time? At what point are you leading them on? And I don't have a scientific answer. I think it's more like after the date, asking yourself a series of questions. How did I feel around this person? Am I curious about them?

What side of me did they bring out? And if you feel like you are building momentum and you're interested in learning more, then keep going. And I wouldn't consider that leading somebody on. I would consider it giving someone a chance. Totally, yeah. Unless you actively know you don't like them and you're hanging out with

them for alternative motive because either you're bored or you only want to have sex with them, et cetera, et cetera, then you could be leading them on because you have the answer. I like what you said there. As long as you still want to get to know someone and it takes time to get to know people, six, 12 months. And listen, sometimes when we date, feelings are hurt and that's inevitable, but we can't be afraid to get our feelings hurt or at the risk of hurting someone else. Avoid dating altogether because then we'll never, we'll never figure it out. I totally agree. Well, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find you? Obviously your book, I'm assuming, is available wherever you can get a book.

Amazon, probably a great place. I bought it on Audible. I listened to it. It's a great listen. But if there's other ways people can get it, please let them know. Yeah. Thanks so much, Nick. This was really fun.

So people can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Logan Urie. People can take the quiz on my website, LoganUrie.com. And yeah, I recommend that if people were interested in what we talked about today, they can buy the book, How to Not Die Alone, wherever you get great books. All right, Logan, thanks so much. And hopefully none of us will die alone. I hope so. But hey, if it happens, it's fine. All right. Have a good one. Thank you.

Take care. Bye. Bye-bye. Well, thank you guys for listening. I hope you enjoyed All right. Have a good one. Thank you. Take care. Bye. Bye-bye. Well, thank you guys for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I know I did. I mean, because obviously I asked the questions. But yeah, thanks for listening.

Don't forget to send in your questions at asknickatcastme.com. Cast with a K. Also, merch is out there, specifically our breakup books, as we learn from Logan. Write that negative shit down when you can't get over them. Just fucking make a list of all the annoying little things he did or the things they stopped you from doing.

I promise it will help and it will have a catchy saying on the front of the book. Give it to your friends. I would recommend the He Is Toxic breakup. He Is Toxic breakup book because he probably is. Vilefiles.com.

Thanks for listening, guys. We will see you back on Monday.