The Wellness Scoop - Love and Relationships: 15 Facts

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

From the impact of coronavirus and quarantine on our relationships to online dating, marriage, divorce, the ups and downs of being single, love at first sights and whether soulmates exist, we’re looking at fifteen facts on love and relationships with Laura Mucha.   Laura’s Book: We Need to Talk About Love Laura’s first podcast episode on attachment theory: https://play.acast.com/s/deliciouslyellapodcast/who-whyandhowwelove Paul Dolan’s podcast episode on Happy Ever After: https://play.acast.com/s/deliciouslyellapodcast/ishappyeverafteramyth- Half price links for Quick and Easy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/deliciously-ella-quick-and-easy/ella-mills-woodward/9781473639249 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deliciously-Ella-Quick-Easy-Deliciousness/dp/1473639247/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=quick+and+easy+cookbook&qid=1590666905&sprefix=quick+and+easy+&sr=8-1 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills. I've missed you guys the last couple of weeks. I'm very happy to be back. We are still recording from home, things are still a bit up in the air with coronavirus but recording from bed has its perks. Pregnancy is getting a little bit exhausting at this point as we start to go into the third trimester so I'm not complaining about a little extra time to relax as we record and I had three exciting things to tell you before we get into today's episode. First things first, our new cookbook launches this week. It launches on Thursday, so two days from now.

Quick and easy has been really, there's nothing I've ever done that is marked by so many rollercoasters. It started when I wasn't pregnant. It saw me through. The whole first pregnancy was Skye. I went back to work on it when she was four weeks old. She came to all the shoots. So kind of early motherhood was like the center of getting the book together.

Then a global pandemic came and changed all our launch plans. And then I got pregnant with baby number two. So the book has been really kind of an emotional roller coaster and I can't quite believe it's here but it is here and it is designed to make plant-based eating as easy as possible so it's 10 to 15 minute recipes, 30 minute recipes, 20 minute recipes, big batch cooking so you can stock the freezer, it's a kind of dream for working from home sort of lunches at the

moment as well loads of like dips and dressings and sandwich ideas and things so I'm hoping it's going to make things very easy we've got a shopping list at the beginning which is all the pantry staples so that will keep you going and you won't have to be kind of popping out for one ingredient that you'll only use once as is in the title it's designed to be especially quick and easy so you don't have to do things like that as of Thursday it launches in the UK and then in America and Canada Australia and New Zealand and for anybody else you can also order it on the book depository which can ship worldwide and I know it's half price in Waterstones and Amazon UK right now so I'll pop those links in the show notes below if anyone's keen to get it and we've also just launched our brand new ultimate vegan chocolate chip cookie which you might have seen

on our social media it's our most popular recipe ever into the frozen aisles of tesco's onto waitrose online and into whole foods and our baked veggie crackers have just arrived in the waitrose free from aisle so it's been a busy couple of months while we've been off from the podcast and we're jumping back in with hopefully a topic that will kind of fascinate everyone because the first episode we did on this topic was one of our most popular ever and I felt like it was a topic that still had so much more to be explored it seems kind of really apt actually again with so many things this year life's changed them and edited them and maybe changed our perspectives of them and maybe changed our situations. And so maybe there's something extra for us to be thinking about or learning from here. So today we're talking about love and relationships.

And there's just so much for us all to learn. And I'm sure everyone's relationship has been affected in some way, good or bad, by lockdown and being stuck at home for ages and ages. And so I'm hoping that we'll all get a lot from this. So our guest today wrote the most brilliant book called We Need to Talk About Love, which is all about the facts and fictions that surround love and about people's stories and from all different types of love and relationships. So Laura is the author, she's been on with us before and welcome back back Laura. Hi, thank you for having me. So today what I wanted to do is I think the way that Laura's kind of dissected love and

relationships is absolutely fascinating and I wanted to do a sort of 15 facts of love episode and this covers all sorts of different things from being single to getting divorced to grieving and there's a special section at the end on relationships and coronavirus because as I said I think everyone's had some kind of impact good or bad from coronavirus. So can we kick off with number one which is I think is such an important one to start with which is that there's this kind of myth obviously because of all like the Disney movies and all the rom-coms out there that being single is kind of a negative thing but actually the statistics around that again are just they're not true and actually most people really like being single and 49% of single people actively said they didn't want to

partner and I quite loved why which is that they love not being nagged they love being able to spend their money as they like and they love choosing how to spend their time yeah I I love that too I also it's not an unusual finding it's been a finding that is echoed around the world so US research has found that 55 percent of singles had no interest in actively looking. And the Japanese study of over 5000 single people found that more than a quarter said they weren't looking of not being married and they liked to be able to take it easy and that they weren't having to be responsible for a family. That was something that came up with the men. So I think it's an important topic because a lot of the people that I interviewed around the world who were single talked about this kind of expectation that they would be in a relationship by a certain age,

or that if they weren't, it was because of some sort of failing or that they hadn't been chosen with this brilliant lady called Marie, who is from the Pyrenees, saying that her friends in Paris would always say to her, I don't understand how someone like you is single. And she was like, well, I do understand it's a choice so I think there is something really interesting about the way that single people can be treated sometimes when actually it can be a really valid choice and there are massive advantages to it yeah it's an it's an interesting part of the kind of grass is always greener syndrome isn't it you know which we have in so many things not just in our love lives but the the idea that yeah when I have this everything's

going to be better and when I get to this point in my life everything's going to be great but actually it's so yeah as you said there's so many people who absolutely love it and we need to take out any sense of judgment about that we did a very interesting episode actually with a professor from LSE about kind of myths around happiness and so much of that was myths around these sorts of things of this expectation in life that you know in order to be happy you need to get married and you need to have children you need to have a kind of quote-unquote successful career and actually again statistics show that that doesn't necessarily make people happy at all. Yeah. Was that Paul Dolan? Yeah, it was. Yeah. I'll put the episode link below as well, if anyone didn't listen to it. His work's really interesting.

Yeah. I love him and I love that episode. Yeah. I think it's really easy. And it also, I reflect on my own life. I remember I thought that when I graduated as a lawyer, I would somehow magically feel really happy. And then when I got my rights of advocacy, so I could speak in court, I would magically be really happy. And, you know, I achieved that. And actually the achievements, you know, I thought when I had my first book out, I'd suddenly magically feel really happy. And actually, those things never had, they've never magically made me really happy. But I think it speaks to this whole grass is greener thing. And once you get this, whatever it is, this thing that you've set yourself, that you'll be

magically happy. But it also, I think, speaks to the idea that sometimes people want to assume that what they have, i.e. couples want to assume what they have is the right choice or the best choice. And in order to hold that belief they need to imagine that people who are single aren't having a great time because it kind of justifies their life or justifies their decision and I don't think that that's always that fair on the other people. No it's a bit like making ourselves feel better by making someone else feel worse which is ultimately never the answer to happiness is it's definitely going to lie much more within our own selves than it is on what we project on people around us yeah I totally agree and also you know the research suggests that actually it is much better to be single than in a dysfunctional or

deeply unhappy relationship because those relationships are really bad for your physical and mental health and so actually know, being single is better in some ways. But the whole, you know, happier, healthier debate is really difficult because it's really easy to compare married relations, like people who are married to people who are single, and there's a huge amount of variety in each, you know, people who are married encapsulate people who are happily married, but also people who are being abused by their partner. And people who are single can involve people who are actively choosing to be single who are in their early 20s, and people who have just been bereaved and are, you know, in their 40s with children. So I think making those comparisons are a bit dangerous, but a lot

of researchers do them. Yeah, absolutely. And I thought it was really interesting following on from that point. Number two was that you said that single people are represented as miserable in the media, which is really fascinating. And that when sociologists analyzed 40 films from a list of the top 200 US grossing rom-coms, they found that single people were depicted as either lonely, miserable, insecure or frustrated? It's just so mean. But it's also it's interesting, like sociologists have done a few of these, where they've looked at the number of films that have grossed a certain amount or whatever over a time period. And they found, for example, in films aimed at children between 1995 and 2005 that friendship was kind of really devalued like Pumbaa and the Lion King a bit of a joke really and actually it was romantic love

that was idealized so it's interesting to think about how different relationships and relationship statuses are represented but I think it's it's really sad like in the study that you just mentioned that was um films between 1995 and 2005 and included lots of random films like 50 first dates and how to lose a guy in 10 days and you know secretly love that film but like but like it's not I don't think it's great for single people to have their mates saying oh why aren't you single is it because you haven't been chosen and then to have that kind of message reinforced by media where single people look really miserable all the time yeah no absolutely and then you can start questioning whether you're making the right

choices I thought that was a really really interesting one. And the third one was exactly what you said, which is that if you're not happy in your relationship, then studies have shown those who are married but are dissatisfied in that marriage have poorer health than those that weren't married, which I think is really, you know, that's a really powerful and important tool, which again, just shows exactly what we were saying, which is that like, ticking a box isn't the answer to anything in life. No, I agree. And also, I think it was interesting thinking about this, because quite a lot of research, international research has found that on the whole, there is a tendency to think that people who are married are happier than people who aren't married. And, you know, there was a very large study called the General Social Survey that collected

data from more than 40,000 people across the US since 1972. And that study found that married people were happier than those who were divorced, widowed, separated, or had never married. But you'd expect people who were married to be happier than those who were widowed. That's not a fair comparison to just group all these different people into one group. And where were they in being divorced? Was that something that happened yesterday or 10 years ago? And a really interesting finding, which doesn't actually look that great for single people,

sadly, but there was a long-term study called the British Household Survey, and they followed thousands of people every year from 1991 until now. And they found that marriage did make people happier, but it was only like the tiniest little like, woo, when they got married. And then it went straight back to pre marriage levels. So they concluded that marriage didn't really, I mean, it made you happier ever so briefly when you got married, and then it went back to where you were before. Stevie Yap, who is one of the researchers behind this, found that the people who stayed single all the way through declined in happiness over time. So they concluded that marriage doesn't make you happier

in the long term but it protects you from the growing unhappiness that you see in people who remain single that is very interesting so it's a question of whether something's kind of an active choice or not because perhaps in the very long term people would have preferred a partner yeah also one of the conclusions I've come to is that I think obviously a lot of people choose to have long-term romantic relationships but I think really the most important thing is the companionship that you get from those relationships and that doesn't need to be in a romantic context and I spoke to a lot of people around the world who had that kind of relationship with a sibling or a best friend,

you know. So I think as long as you have that sense of safety in a relationship, that there's someone there for you, there's someone that cares and you can turn to. And I don't think that needs to be in a romantic relationship. But, you know, all of this nuance is totally missed when you just compare married to single. Yeah, no, no it's so true and it's really interesting I was thinking about it while you're saying that like just you know if I see it like in my own family my parents were really unhappily married and then they got divorced well obviously they were both very unhappy because going through a difficult period and they're both now in committed relationships with other people and so but so technically they'd be in the single bucket but they're the happiest I think I've ever seen either of them yeah as in single bucket because they're not married so technically they'd be divorced but they're so much happier than I've

ever seen them yeah and it's actually I think dangerous to make sweeping generalizations because it is also individual and the idea that if what you're doing is leaving a really dysfunctional relationship then you'll probably be happier when you leave it whereas if you're leaving a relatively happy relationship because you're fearful of commitment or for whatever reason then you might you might actually be less happy and so it's really there's there's so much variation in individuals and in their relationships that it is hard to make generalizations. Yeah, no, I think it's a very good point. And you made a really interesting point about soulmates, which is something that

is a topic I find personally kind of very, very interesting. But you said that 88% of single 20 to 29 year olds in America thought that there was a soulmate out there waiting for them. And I guess it brings up the question of like, you know, from your research and from your just experience as well of talking to so many people around the world, you know, do soulmates exist? Like should, you know, 88% of people be sitting and waiting for them you know well I often wonder when they say that they think there is a soulmate waiting for them like what is their soulmate doing are their soulmate just like sitting there knitting waiting to be found and I think that

the idea of soulmate I personally find it a tiny bit dangerous because it implies a line of thinking that a number of ideas that I don't think are very helpful. One being that love is discovered rather than it is built over time. Another one being that, you know, if you do find that soulmate, they will be the right person and everything will be perfect rather than no human being can be. And that if you meet this right person and if there's only one then that's quite intimidating that you will somehow just know and if you have any doubts whatsoever then they can't be right whereas I'd argue that you know if we go back to attachment theory which we talked about when we spoke in the last podcast episode there are

some people that will never think any relationship is right. And that's a reflection of them, not the other person. And then, you know, finding this soulmate will be the most important factor rather than effort or skill and that passion and lust will never end because everything will just always be brilliant. And, you know, there's massive and very robust research that passion declines over time. So I worry that the idea of a soulmate sets us up for unrealistic expectations. And the other worry I have with it is that for as many people I interviewed that thought they'd found their soulmate and got it right, I met just as many that felt that and then got it horribly wrong. And were they all people when people felt they had found their soul mate

was that effectively kind of love at first sight yeah often yeah I mean because I know we've we've spoken about this before and I know we've spoken about it more generally but that's that's what Matt and I had and I I do look back on it sometimes and think you know what on earth were we thinking like you know we met and were married and it was starting business together and got a dog and you know moved in together and like you know all the rest of it by the time we've been together for something like four months you know which is really like in retrospect it's pretty insane and so far so good but it's um I look back on it now and I just I felt so strongly that I knew and and so did he and and I think we were right but I I just so often just wonder why was that was it just

like a brilliant stroke of luck and it was a lot of like we were both in the right time at the right place was it that we genuinely are soulmates? But I, like you, find that idea a bit terrifying. What happens if something happens? You know, there's something terrifying to think that there's no one in the world that you could ever connect with in the same way. It's quite a scary, quite daunting prospect. Yeah, it is really daunting. And I don't know of any evidence that says, hey, don't't worry if you find your soul mate and something happens you'll find another soul mate but I do know that the research is quite positive about you know if your relationship comes to an end you're very likely to find someone

else so people that were separated I think it was 94 percent of them ended up in another relationship. So, but I hear you. I think it's not very reassuring to think that there's only one soulmate out there for people that haven't found a partner, but also for people that have found a partner to think that, well, if anything happens to this partner, I'm doomed because that's my soulmate. So from like a purely logical point of view, I don't think it's a great way to think about things. But you were saying, you know, what were we thinking? Well, I interviewed this guy who said, I think that there are some got it right. But my worry is, I guess, almost like as a policy decision, that it's not great to kind of be advocating, yeah, just jump in. If you think you found your soulmate, go for it and go for it early on. Because yes, there will be people that get it right, but there will also be people that get it wrong.

Yeah, the over-optimistic is an interesting point. It always fascinates me when I look back on it and it's the best decision that I have made and hoping Matt feels the same way. But it is fascinating because there was this kind of over-optimistic, this is it, this is perfect. And I do sometimes wonder whether we were just very lucky that actually we were incredibly similar and in many many ways and actually you know did really gel but what how were we really to know that when we decided to get married after about three minutes I mean like I'd broken up we were engaged by the first of August and I'd broken out my boyfriend of four years that January and I had to call him to tell him and he was like is this a joke sounds like it but it's actually not yeah I mean that is pretty quick yeah I we said this last time but my advice would have been if

we'd spoken on the phone I would have said okay I'm really pleased for you this guy sounds amazing could you just delay it by you know a year maybe a year and a half. Because, you know, there's no, the cost of delaying is not that much compared to the cost of doing it now. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I always think of Pascal's wager, this idea that you either believe in God, and then if there's a God, and you die, then you know, you go to heaven or whatever. And if there's no God, and you've believed in God, then no problem. But if there is a God and you haven't believed in a God, then you die and you have eternal damnation. And so basically the argument is you may as well believe in a God

because it's sort of a win-win. And I feel like you may as well delay. You don't lose that much by delaying, but you stand to lose a huge amount if you jump in and make really big decisions when you're high on drugs basically which is basically what's happening in your brain at that like initial intense point of a beginning of a relationship yeah they did uh studies where they put people into an fMRI scanner and found that similar parts of the brain were engaged in people that had recently fallen in love as those who had taken cocaine and opiates it's the same part of the brains that have led rats to choose starvation just because they wanted to keep getting that high it involves serotonin levels seen in people with obsessive compulsive

disorder it's really intense and that's why you know no one should expect that level of passion to last for decades no and the research on this is just so interesting. Like they've attached measuring devices to people's genitalia and made them watch erotic films on repeat and found that, you know, the more you see... Who volunteers for that? I don't know. I don't know. Can you imagine? What? Oh, I'd love to take part in that. Yes, please. Thanks. To my genitalia. Yeah. So they signed up, watched the same erotic film on repeat. And unsurprisingly, over have been found when they've looked at people across the US and have asked them loads of questions, including about their sex lives, and have found that steadily over time, sexual frequency decreases. And with the people that

didn't fill it in, they left it blank. They could go and find out who their partner was because they had the same marriage date and the same address and found out that when they'd not put the sexual frequency down and their partner had it's because they were having incredibly low levels of sex and so there's this I think this kind of cultural expectation that we're going to have loads and loads of sex all the time forever and ever and actually that's not what happens and it's also something that a lot of the older people that I interviewed talked about you know Noel who was an Irishman in his 80s said you know what sex was important to begin with but now it's more about companionship and it was you know it's they're quite honest about it I also interviewed someone called Kay

Wellings who co-founded some of the biggest research in sex across the uk and found that that one generation are particularly suffering in terms of sexual frequency are what she called the sandwich generation which is people who where both partners work and they have children and they might also have elderly parents and so they found that they weren't having much sex and when they asked these people why they'd say because I'm knackered like why would I have sex at the end of an absolutely knackering day when I've got no energy for anything so I do think yeah sex sex declines there's a lot of evidence that that happens and you can do stuff to help rejuvenate it but on the whole it declines yeah better to be honest about it though isn't it but there's the next um number six although we haven't actually touched on them before yet so we've

jumped ahead to number six but which I think is quite interesting because it it kind of in some ways is goes against what you said which I by the way agree with which is about slowing things down what on earth have you got to lose but that living together before marriage makes divorce more likely couples who live together before getting married are more likely to break up than those that don't yeah I find it so fascinating I I remember reading that at my desk thinking what because I would have thought that living with a partner before would kind of be good due diligence to use loyally terms you know practice well yeah you're checking out what they're like you know do they clean up are they considerate do they really snore to the

extent that you can't cope the argument that researchers put forward was well maybe you have a lower threshold for who you're prepared to live with than who you're prepared to marry. So you think, okay, I'll give it a try. And then you move in together. And then actually you accrue more things together. There are more barriers to leaving. So you buy a sofa, you stay together longer, you get a dog, you buy a bed, you know, and also during this time, your friends might be coupling up, or the other options might be reducing or might feel less attractive. And your other options feed into your levels of commitment if commitment theorists are right. And then before you know it,

you've kind of slid into a long term commitment, whereas with with marriage it's more of an active choice so that's the theory but there is more recently some conflicted research on that but I think it's an interesting point now that you've explained it it makes much more sense and I guess it's the idea that it's you know which we see in so many things in life sometimes it feels easier to stay where you are whether that's an unhappy career or an unhappy relationship because it's easier in some ways than unpicking so many parts whether that is the sofa that you've bought or the mortgage you've taken out or you know the courses you've taken during your career in order to start something new yeah I totally agree and I I think the career point is really interesting as well, because obviously, I used to be a lawyer. And I know quite a few people who are lawyers who have been talking

about not being a lawyer for some time. But I think it's really easy once you've got in a career and you become, you know, increasingly senior, and you get more benefits, and you know what you're doing, and that feels nice, and you earn more money maybe or whatever it is it can become harder and harder to leave so it does make sense from that point of view but I'm also surprised and maybe that's why there are more mixed results happening now but I do think that living with someone can be quite useful to see you know what they're like every day instead of, you know, just for a date. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, we lived together for about 10 seconds before we got married, because the whole thing was 10 seconds. We moved in together after our third date.

So yeah, which was a week. But thank God, because you so quickly realise so many things about someone. And it's so interesting. I mean, obviously, we run Delicious Yellow together. So we do live together and work together. So we're used to sharing one space. But even like still lockdown the last couple of months, it's even that's been different because we might work in the same office, but we tend to be in different meetings and doing different things. So we're kind of coexisting, but often quite separately and would be overlapping here or there and obviously now we've all been spending 24 7

with the people that we live with and again you even through that I feel like you learn new things about people yeah I agree I am so my husband's a food writer and we often work in the flat together and even though we're working on different things we'll kind of pop into each other to say what do you think of this or what do you think he'll cook me nice food which is great and then actually now it's even though we're very used to working in the same place together there's there's something very different about the current circumstances because it before it was punctuated by us going to different meetings or seeing other people for work point of view but like actual other humans

and that's not happening at the moment and he would also go to lots of restaurants and there's there's something and I think it's not just for couples that work together but all couples normally in life you have other things that balance your relationship out a little bit you see your friends you know if your partner doesn't like rugby and you love it you can see your friends that love rugby not that there has been any rugby on and you know you get different things from different people and all of a sudden all of that has gone all of the balance in life and in relationships all of the variety has gone and I think that puts a lot of pressure on relationships I mean it can also do good things

too and you know there's some research about this you know some people 43 percent said well we've been really enjoying spending time together but there will be a lot of people who've been finding the increased time together pretty tricky okay so we've tried to do this fact about six times now and for some reason my computer is having a bit of a mental breakdown and it keeps closing the podcast session and Laura's been the trooper of all troopers and the most heroic guest we've ever had because we've had to restart this and she's restarted the same sentence literally seven times now so anyway but unplugged all the gizmos and gadgets and microphones and things so if they sound a little bit different then I apologize but hopefully you can hear us and hopefully we can continue to shine light on what coronavirus has done to relationships well I think this is a perfect example right like

if we were in person we wouldn't have had to start new sessions and this is how relationships are now right like not all of them but a lot of them a lot of business relationships family relationships it's all online and there are benefits because you can speak to people all around the world without traveling or putting anyone's health at risk. But there are massive disadvantages because, you know, you don't get to see all of their body language or, you know, sometimes you see yourself because, you know, if you're on a platform that shows you an image of yourself, then, you know, whether you're trying to or not, you still can see how you look. And that takes a bit of your brain space. So I think this is literally the embodiment of what's happened to relationships. And it seems like it's gone kind of two ways. Some people are having more sex,

saying it's bringing them closer, are generally happier. And then other people are saying it's really making them doubt their relationships. Yeah. And really interestingly, more than a dozen cities in China saw a surge in divorce after lockdown ended. And the director of the Marriage and Family Committee in Wuhan said that after lockdown ended, the divorce rate in Wuhan doubled from its level before the outbreak. But you know, there's nuance to that, like the divorce application procedure was suspended during the lockdown. And there outbreak. But you know, there's nuance to that, like the divorce application procedure was suspended during the lockdown. And there was some, you know, this divorce lawyer was interviewed, and he said, some people who were thinking about divorcing before

lockdown, then decided not to divorce. So it's really easy to make generalizations. But I, I'm not surprised that the divorce rate has increased to the extent that now there is a new Chinese law that requires all divorcing couples to do a 30-day calming period before they're actually allowed. That 30-day calming period applies where both people agree they want to divorce. Whereas if only one person wants to divorce, you don't have to have a calming period to protect people who are in abusive situations. And that has also doubled compared to the same point in time last year. So there are some brilliant upsides, yay, family spending time together and some really, really dark sides. And we don't even, we can't even get to the bottom of that. Because if you're locked in a home with someone who is really

abusive and controlling, how are you going to going to you know make the call or get in contact with someone that you need help because that can be really really dangerous in itself so there's there's light and dark for relationships I think. Yeah absolutely and I think you know on a really kind of mundane level even for people in happy relationships it's not normal for us to expect so much from one person I know for me my girlfriends my siblings like my mum you know these are they're such big support parts of your support system and then suddenly you you know your partner is your entire support system and that is definitely a you know an unusual thing for anyone it's also interesting as a kind of reflection of the way

relationships are in the decade we're in because people I interviewed that were much older for example Noel an Irishman who I've already mentioned he said that you know historically when he was younger he got a lot of support from community and from religious institutions there was decreased mobility and there's already a lot more pressure on relationships because we now come to expect so much more from our partners. With some philosophers like Simon May saying we now expect from our partner what we only thought God was capable of. So we've already piled a hell of a lot onto relationships. But I think lockdown has has made that a lot worse but also aside from expectation you know you might not expect it but you're you're going to

have to get it because you just can't get what you were getting before yeah completely and your other two coronavirus special points which I thought were really interesting with it which I think is really worth noting actually is that studies are showing that quarantine does cause low mood and irritability and could you hear that that was my dog yawning low mood and is irritable awesome like I don't want to talk about relationships I'm firmly single um perks of recording at home yeah which I think is really interesting just to acknowledge that, you know, it does make you irritable. And that's okay. I love that. So I looked into research into SARS and Ebola outbreaks, because I wanted to know,

like what we had learned from history, basically. And unsurprisingly, quarantines aren't great for mental health. But also, it's not just that we're in quarantine. You know, people will be facing worries about finances, job security, the health of parents that are in care homes or, you know, being unable to see their parents, worries about the future. And then, you know, on top of that, there's just so much going on. Like, for many people, they're realizing that we live in a hugely racist world, that they might be questioning, you know, the people that are making important decisions in the country. And all of this really macro stuff can have a very big impact on your micro life, it can have a massive impact on your mental well-being. Then add to that, that you don't have the social structures of work or friends, the sense that every other human poses a risk.

And it's not surprising that mental health is impacted. And of course, that then impacts relationships. I interviewed this guy called Morris, who was 95 and had been married for 65 years and 49 days. And he talked about when he was married at the beginning, he'd been a soldier in World War II. And he talked about him having PTSD, but that it wasn't diagnosed, you know, back then, they didn't really have the language to talk about it. And, you know, as a soldier, you were just put back into civilian life. But he said that it really, really impacted his relationship. And it took him a while. And it was only sort of really after he recovered that they managed to get into the flow of their relationship.

And I think it's an important reminder that, you know, the big picture does have a really big impact on each of our little pictures. Yeah, no, I think that's so well put. So there's so much that's been happening in the world this year I mean 2020 has been kind of cataclysmic in so many different ways and that's so much for everyone to process and also invariably I'm sure even if you're very similar and you live together and you're absorbing similar kinds of information at similar ish times you're still going to assimilate it differently and you're going to probably react to it differently and you're probably going to feel it at different points and so I think it

would be a kind of unrealistic expectation to think that that wouldn't impact you at all. Yeah but yet even though I've looked into the research and I you know intellectually know this I find it surprising that it's impacting me do you know I mean like I still think I should just be able to carry on and be totally fine and then I'm surprised when I'm feeling a bit anxious or exhausted or irritable or sad I personally am really missing seeing my friends a lot you know and I'm happily married and I have a wonderful wonderful son and I'm seeing my mum a lot and she's great, but I just miss my friends. So I think everything that's going on is, is difficult and that impacts relationships. So, you know, I'm not surprised that people

are struggling in their relationships. And some of those struggles will be because the world is difficult right now or has been and is. But some of it is because these difficulties are kind of highlighting problems in the relationship that were always there, but, you know, people could distract themselves from, or that they plan to deal with later. And some of them will be because everything that's going on is eliciting things in individuals that means that they withdraw from a relationship. Yeah, that's a very interesting point. But yet, people are still looking for love. You said that on March 29th, Tinder had its busiest day in history, which is absolutely brilliant. Yeah, I know. It's good, isn't it? So the stats suggest that there aren't more users,

but the users that are there are doing a lot more. They're looking more and they're refocusing and they're spending more time swiping and online platforms have to kind of up their game a bit because, you know, as people face financial pressures, online dating isn't a must have. It's a nice to have. So to keep that income coming in, online dating companies have been offering online speed dating or video functionality that they didn't have before. Because it's not like you can go up to someone in a pub, the pubs are closed. Yeah, exactly. No, so, so true. Gosh, honestly, I feel like there's so much to say, it's impossible to get through 15. I think I was

ambitious about this. So I'm going to go back in with some of the earlier ones. Which I think I was ambitious about this so I'm going to go back in with some of the earlier ones um which I think I guess this one makes a lot of sense but I think it's still interesting reflecting on which is that who you choose changes who you become yeah the Seattle longitudinal study is a study that followed people for up to 35 years it's quite a robust study looked at a lot of people across the US and they followed the people that stayed together over that period of time. And they found that couples became more similar in terms of vocabulary, happiness, and intellectual ability. And it's not actually that surprising, right? And it's something that philosophers like Aristotle commented on a very long time ago. He said, you know, if you want to be a good person, it's going to be a hell of a lot easier if you have a very close friend. Kind of the friendship he's talking about is very similar to what we think of in romantic relationships. If you have a very close friend who is also good, and if you want to be good, but you're with someone who is not good,

then that's going to thwart you in trying to be a good person. Then it makes like on a really banal level, you know, if you want to go to the gym and you make an agreement with your best mate that you're going to go to the gym, you're more likely to go to the gym. You know, it's easier to do things with someone else, or it's easier to even think about who you are as a person and whether you're on track for what you want to be doing and who you want to be if you're with someone who's willing to kind of explore those questions and if you're with someone who just doesn't even want to go there it's going to be a bit harder so it makes perfect sense that that who you're with changes you and that you might become more similar but there are there are also ways in which

you know it's not as straightforward as that it's not just you then suddenly miraculously everything just becomes more similar but I think also what was interesting was reading into existential philosophy which I had read many years ago but kind of forgotten and a lot of the existential thinkers say well it's bigger than that, actually, because, yeah, fine. You know, you might choose someone who changes who you become. But the act of choosing, the act of thinking about what you want in someone, that is changing who you are. So if you go online and you select filters or you decide to really prioritize finding someone with loads of cash, for example, versus someone who's really kind, that choice just in and of itself is changing who you are and who you become. Yeah, that's a very good point. And actually, it linked perfectly to one of our other points that we got distracted by earlier, because there's so much good stuff to talk about with this,

which is that people were asked what they looked for in a romantic partner and what was most important and their kindness and understanding were the two most popular picks for people of all ages and all backgrounds which I think actually is a really nice thing to reflect on it makes me certainly feel much better about the world what I love about that study is that it was you know more than 10,000 people 37 countries six continents I mean that is a big old study it's not like you know some studies in psychology they get you know a bunch of undergraduates who have to take part in a study to get a course credit you know they're usually white middle class privileged they're in their 20s you know

really what are they going to tell us about five decades of commitment you know I think you're getting a very narrow view whereas this is people all around the world and I love that kindness and understanding was most important and that came above closely followed by exciting personality which I love and intelligence and health. But also money was really low down on that list, which I find really life affirming as well. But there is some evidence against that. There was a really tiny study where people were given a kind of budget to spend on a partner. And when they had all the money in the world, they prioritized kindness. But when they had a restricted budget, kindness kind of sank a bit lower and attractiveness became more important which is

a little bit less uplifting it just shows as well the studies are absolutely fascinating and lots to learn from them but they're never going to incorporate everything yeah always keep saying life's sort of too nuanced for that and also people will say what they want but there is a big difference between what people say they want and what they actually go for yeah very good point and it's that that's like that's actually verified in speed dating and online dating studies so you know another kind of counter argument against being supremely picky is that you don't really know what what you want and half the things you think you want aren't actually that important in the first place. And so I wanted to finish with three more points.

And one of them, which I really, really like, and actually isn't necessarily what I expected, which is that a man's idea of what is attractive doesn't age with them. At 50, they still fancy who they did when they were 20. Yeah. From the kindness, most uplifting stat to something that I find a bit sad. Yeah. So basically Christian Rudder, who was a co-founder of OkCupid, looked at the data of real-time users. So this isn't a study where, you know, they got 100 people to answer some questions on a piece of paper. You're watching how people actually behave when they think they're not being watched. And men aged between 20 to 50 essentially went when rating for attractiveness for women who were in their low 20s, so 20 to 24-ish. But there is a kind of shift in terms of who they messaged. So

you see that until about 35, they're happy messaging people in their 20s. And then suddenly at 35, they decide they shouldn't be doing that anymore. And then they stick to messaging people that are in their 30s. And then from 35 to 40 they continue messaging 35 to 39 they continue messaging people who are basically 30 until they turn 40 and then they decide 30 is a bit young so they jump to 35 so it's almost as if men are messaging the youngest people they feel is socially appropriate to message so they go oh you know what now I can't message people in their 20s anymore but what I'll do is I'll message people with 30 and they do that for five years but this is you know this is looking at heterosexual guys who are online dating

and you know not everyone online dates but a lot of people do yeah no as you said it you know can't encapsulate everyone but it's still interesting and can you compare that to what women do at all yeah well the the findings for gay guys and lesbians are quite similar there's a tendency to go for younger throughout but with women there were some smaller studies that found kind of mixed results but Christian Rudder's findings are probably the most robust and he found that um I think it was up to 29 women wanted older men and then up to 32 sort of similar age and then above that they wanted people that were younger oh interesting so everyone's growing younger basically and the the one thing I think about the being younger thing is, what do you get if you go for someone younger?

Yes, you get someone who looks younger and that may or may not be more aesthetically pleasing. And evolutionary psychologists would say, well, if you go for a younger female, that shows that they're more fertile, blah, blah. But that doesn't explain why the LGBTQ plus community sometimes choose to go for people who look younger. But another point that a psychoanalyst made, which I really like, is that maybe actually what they're trying to do is sort of avoid their mortality. Because if you're going for someone younger, then you can deny that you yourself are aging. Yes. Classic midlife crisis. Except it's not a midlife crisis because it's consistent for between 20 and 50 we don't know what happens after 50 because he didn't get that data and I think partly because

not you know there aren't that many people over 50 who are using the platform at the time but I doubt there would be much change so that our last one to finish is one that I think I actually did find quite surprising, which is that men around the world are likely to think that marriage makes you happier than women do. Well, there is some gender difference when it comes to what people get out of heterosexual marriages. And the evidence is quite robust that men tend to get more health benefits out of marriages. They don't know why, you know, they're pontificated. Maybe their female partners drag them to the doctor or look after them or make them good food or stop them from going out and drinking or whatever it is. But we also know that men tend to suffer more when relationships end and men are more likely to

jump into a new relationship faster which has ramifications if there are any kids involved but as well as there being a gender difference there is a cultural difference because in some cultures for example in Russia and the Philippines 70% assumed that people who were married were happier. So there is this kind of cultural idea that feeds in. If you are in Russia or you're Russian and you think that marriages are happier, why is that? Is that because they have happier marriages? Is it because being single is more miserable there? Or is it because you have absorbed this cultural nebulous belief that marriage is what you ought to do and therefore you think that that makes people happier? There's literally just so much to think about here. It's unbelievable. And I think the ultimate thing is all the stats say so many different things.

And it's just the ultimate example of the fact that relationships are just so complicated and individual and ever changing and nuanced and all kinds of events impact on them. You know, one of the stats we didn't get to was that grief shown to last half a century. And, you know, and then we're also seeing how a pandemic and a quarantine impact relationships. And it's just absolutely fascinating and I think that it's good to pick apart some of the nuance because often the nuance isn't really reflected you know in in media or in song lyrics you know there are just so many representations of all you need to do is find that one white person and then off you go and I just don't think it's it's even nearly as simple as that oh my god no no I know it's like the Disney movie and you're like you know Jasmine and Aladdin

get on the magic carpet and then you know everything's perfect and you float off onto an adventure and it's just it couldn't be less the case but it's just the most fascinating topic and I could literally spend days talking to you about it and just so appreciate you taking the time to share a bit more with us today it's it's as I said it's just I think it's completely fascinating well it's been lovely talking to you and I'm really pleased that you made a really good decision even though you jumped in very early on is paid off I know I know we are we're so lucky and um it's been the most amazing yeah four and a half years now so um we've now been together over five years so I think we're feeling like okay we obviously did make the right decision because we're still very happy but it's

um it is quite a funny one to look back on I love that you're honest about it because a lot of the people that I think have that jumped in early maintain that they knew all along and maybe they did but maybe they didn't you know I just I think it's dangerous I always think about my responsibility you know if I'm researching this and talking about this I want to facilitate people making the best decisions they can do you know what I mean and I think delaying big decisions until the drugs wear off is just such a no-brainer for me so I think it's really great that you're like yeah we got it right but you know we're lucky that we got it right I definitely feel that I think in retrospect I can totally see that like over excitement over enthusiastic sort of slight kind of drug addiction you know impact that the most amazing relationship has at the beginning and it's um you know it is different to to every day especially

when you're running you know running business together babies you know all of it has such a massive impact parenthood I'm sure we could talk about for a million years more about how that impacts relationships but it certainly does in so many different ways but I've taken up so much of your time today because I crashed the podcast so many times so Laura just a massive massive massive thank you I'll put all the details for Laura's book below and I'll also put the link to our first episode together because there's really really interesting things in there especially on attachment theory and understanding how our different ways of attaching to people have such a big impact on our relationship so hoping you'll find that really interesting too if you haven't listened to it yet otherwise have a lovely lovely week everyone we will be back again next tuesday hopefully you'll get the book in

between and absolutely love cooking from it and can let us know what you've been cooking next week we will be talking about the amazing power of breath. Such a simple thing, but such a profound impact. So we will see you next Tuesday. Thanks so much. Bye. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more.

That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com.