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

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  When you look at who gets the right swipes and who receives messages on the apps, it's the most popular people. I mean, folks have claimed that it's one of the most unequal markets in the world, but regular acquaintanceship is not nearly so dramatic. I don't think the influence of attractiveness ever goes away, right? There's always going to be an unlevel playing field to some extent, but the more that people spend time together getting to know each other, it reduces some of those market forces that give the desirable people all the advantages.

• 0:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

• 0:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Paul Eastwick, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. Today, we discuss the science of attraction, mate selection, and relationships. And I promise you, what you are going to hear will surprise you. Paul's research has discovered that much of what you've heard about how people select partners, date, form relationships, even break up or repartner, is simply wrong, at least when you look at the actual data. For example, his data show that both men and women, when given a choice, select partners that are younger than them. Yes, you heard that right. It's not just men. Men and women equally select partners that are younger

• 1:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  than them, given the choice. His data also challenged the idea that financial status is more important to women when looking for male partners. Turns out that when men are looking for female partners, on average, financial status is as important as it is when women are looking for men. And somewhat less surprising, his work shows that indeed dating apps select for qualities that are not the ones that research shows builds lasting partnerships. But he also offers solutions to those that are using dating apps to try and find a partner. Today's discussion is not just about finding a partner, it's also about what solidifies and maintains healthy relationships over time. Again, what the data say about that. Things like physical intimacy being among the very strongest Predictors of relationship stability as well as both partners feeling that no matter who else

• 2:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  might be attractive to them, that their partner has unique qualities that no one else can match. So whether you are in a relationship or not, looking for a relationship or not, today's discussion gets into social bonding of all sorts. And repeatedly throughout today's episode, both as it relates to single people looking for a partner, people who are already partnered, we talk about the importance of activities that are done with other people. Could be other couples or other single people, et cetera. And that this is critical for those wanting to meet a partner. And it turns out to be critical for maintaining a healthy, long-term relationship. We'll talk about what the data say about that. Super interesting. So today is not just about the real data of how people rate attractiveness, find partners, and the glue that keeps people happily together.

• 2:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's about the real life data and the actions that anyone can take that help you build and sustain excellent romantic and other types of relationships. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Paul Eastwick. Dr. Paul Eastwick, welcome.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 3:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  Lot of theories out there, a lot of speculation about attraction, dating, romance, and relationships, which are separable things, of course. We'll talk about all of them. But one of the semi-dominant themes in the public narrative, and indeed on many podcasts, is kind of anchoring to evolutionary theory, which, to put it really coarsely, is sort of a market-based theory. You know, people will even say, I married up, or, you know, and people, but quantitative measures on people, they're a six, they're a seven, they're a 10 in this, but a four in that. You know, as a neuroscientist, I hear that. And I immediately go to, and again, this is just purely theoretical. Oh, this sounds very limbic.

• 4:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  This is very much of like the hypothalamus. This is very much like the kind of thing that you might expect under conditions of like low food availability.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:22Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 4:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  And you step back and go, well, that's not the world we live in now. We have a forebrain, we can make choices, we can be strategic in the direction of benevolence. We can think about kindness. And so to me, it seems we need a revision, or at least a better understanding of what's actually true in 2026 and forward. So if you would, what are your thoughts about what is not true based on the data? And perhaps what is true about this quote unquote evolutionary model of dating relationships and so on?

• 5:07Speaker 00

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

• 5:47Speaker 00

  And you tell the students, your goal is to pair up with the highest value person that you can. And you don't know what your number is, but I'm going to count to five and then I want you all to stroll around the room and try to make mating offers to folks. And what you see is that the people who have been randomly assigned a low number, they start to panic because what happens is that nobody will talk to them.

• 6:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  And this is random?

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  Otherwise it would be very unethical.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Right, right, right, exactly.

• 6:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  And also, who would decide?

• 6:18Speaker 00

  But people don't like it. I mean, if you get a low number, it's not an enjoyable experience. And I think there is a parallel to what people are experiencing as they're growing up, or maybe even if they're a little older and they're going to a party and they haven't met anybody there. So this is an analogy for how people internalize and act upon something that we call mate value. And it's like what you described. It's supposedly linked to traits that reflect your core desirability, like maybe your physical attractiveness, but it could be other related traits too. It could be things like the size of your bank account or your status.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  What we tend to see is that when people are meeting for the first time, this is a reasonable facsimile of how people behave. But interesting things tend to happen when people get to know each other over a little bit more time. What then tends to happen is that that agreement that is required for that study to work, that study only works because you can read the numbers on people's foreheads. But if I were to blur that number, we wouldn't see as much pairing up. It wouldn't be as sad and as difficult for the people with low numbers. And in real life, that's kind of what tends to happen.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  We stop agreeing about who the eights are and who the fives are. And people might, on average, say that you're a six. But if I've gotten to know you over time, it means there's a chance I think you're a nine. There's also a chance I think you're a three. And so that increase in idiosyncrasy and variability, I think, is a really fortunate thing. And it's the thing that's going to allow a lot of partners to find each other, even if they're not consensually the most desirable people.

• 8:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  Consensually meaning in the eyes of others.

• 8:20Speaker 00

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

• 8:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  Wow. So many things come to mind. The first thing that comes to mind is the question, you know, who and what are others looking at?

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:05Andrew D. Huberman?

  It seems like one of the more, I want to use the word immature, but let's say less evolved, not in the evolutionary biology context, but kind of like life maturation sense, like less evolved aspects of self is when we are not thinking about what we actually like and don't like, but we're paying a lot of attention to what other people like and dislike as a barometer of what we should do or not do. Now, of course, that can be very informative in healthy ways, but when it really comes down to it, it's a potentially very toxic aspect of human nature, right? So what I, what I hear you saying is that at some point, there's this kind of dating, romance and relational maturity that people come to where they're really able to sense

• 9:49Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  And admittedly, we're all pretty immature in junior high.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  That's my memory.

• 10:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, exactly. So has this been looked at in, in a structured way? For instance, are there adults who are good at ignoring what you, you know, what the consensus is? And are, are they able to find mates and, and set up relationships more readily than people who are paying a lot of attention to what other people like and don't like?

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Yes, I'm, I am sure that there's considerable individual variability in how people react to what's going on around them. Sometimes you see this phenomenon called mate choice copying, but what that essentially means is that, you know, you kind of look to see who's attracted to somebody in my, you know, is everybody attracted to this person? Well, there must be some signal there. I'll sort of follow that. I totally agree. It's a very junior high way of thinking about this whole process. But I think a lot of what is happening is that if people are spending time together,

• 11:27Speaker 00

  and I often go back to thinking about what is it like when we're hanging out in mixed gender groups if you're heterosexual? So we're spending time together and maybe for whatever reason, I happen to spend more time with this person. We find something interesting to chat about. I see her reacting in situations that other people don't get to see. And so the particular time that I spend with her ends up being the material that I use that causes my opinion to diverge from everybody else's. So everybody else might be like, she's not all that great. And I think, but you weren't there when we were hanging out, talking about, you know, some family challenges that I had.

• 12:11Speaker 00

  I'm trying to put myself back and like, what were the things we would have been frustrated about in high school? But, you know, talking about like problems at school or problems with other friends, like she was supportive and listened to me. And then I was supportive and I listened to her. And that reciprocity through a unique experience with another person, a lot of times, this is where initial attraction comes from. It sounds a little squishy. It doesn't sound like the sexy form of attraction that we often think about. But what we see in our work is a lot of times, this is how it happens. It takes a little while, but attraction can form when two people spend that time together, sort of pulling unique things out of each other.

• 12:55Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 13:36Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 14:20Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 15:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  Lingo, and it's been an invaluable tool for improving my metabolic health. If you would like to try Lingo, Huberman Lab listeners in the US and UK can save 10% on a four-week plan. Just visit hellolingo.com/huberman for more information. Terms and conditions apply. Again, that's hellolingo.com/huberman. It's interesting. I'm thinking about movies. Yeah. And admittedly, I haven't seen that many romantic comedies, but there's some very there's some pretty awesome. I've seen a few of them, but there's some awesome movies about this issue. Yeah. And I'll offer some examples that will date myself. I'm ready. But that seem to fall into at least three bins. One is

• 15:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  You're awesome, I'm awesome, let's get together. All right, nowadays, I think regardless of music taste, I think the kind of like royally celebrated couple is not a royal couple. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Incidentally, I would say it's like the Taylor Swift Kelsey couple. Yeah. Like people are like, they're both winners, they're both super attractive, they're both super successful and you know, whether you like the Chiefs or you don't, whether or not you like her music or you don't, you're like, you're like, they're like two like badass winners pairing up. And it's very hard to say anything except like, wow, they totally quote unquote belong together, right? Yeah. There's a sort of, so there's that pairing and you can find that in movies and all the like eighties, like John Hughes movies centered around this, like, and then broke

• 16:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  that model, we'll go back to that. The other one would be, yeah, the breaking of that model, the like, the, it's very eighties, but the kind of like, the athlete, you know, pairs up with the nerd. Yeah. Right, okay, now we, nowadays we have athlete nerds and so it doesn't work quite as well. And then the third model is the like, well, you're screwed up and I'm screwed up, but we're really good people. Like you get True Romance, the movie True Romance, which is an amazing movie, right? You know, she was a, you know, not by her own choice, apparently, like she was, she's like, I've been a prostitute for three, call girl for three days and he's like, well, I, you know, someone paid for you to be on this date with me, they fall in love, they leave their professions, right?

• 17:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  And they go and they go on this sort of semi-crime spree that really demonstrates their immense love and devotion to one another. And the whole notion is like, you're so cool. They both think the other person is super cool, don't care about their past and kind of enjoy the fact that they're both kind of from hardscrabble backgrounds. Right. So then there's that. And what's so different about that kind of model compared to like today where I hear, because I, so I don't have a lot to offer about personal experience on apps many years ago, but it's been a while, is this notion that like everyone, you hear this, everyone's competing for the same small number of people. So it seems like even those, those three cliche models that are presented in a number of movies, they exist, it's like.

• 17:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  Since when is everyone thinking that they're supposed to pair up with the same small number of people? This is like ridiculous. That's like saying everyone's supposed to like the same top three songs.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  Even though you might not even like that genre of music.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's insanity.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. The apps absolutely pull for this. So when you look at who gets the right swipes and who receives messages on the apps, it's the most popular people. I mean, folks have claimed that it's one of the most unequal markets in the world. I mean, it's basically a kleptocracy. The extent to which it's

• 18:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, kleptocracy, right.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  The extent to which it's skewed, right? That there's like, you know, the rich, quote unquote, who have all the, you know, who get all the right swipes at the top. But regular acquaintanceship is not nearly so dramatic. So, you know, one example that I like to use is that if our job was just to evaluate whether somebody standing in front of us was hot or not, and it was somebody that we like interacted with briefly, and we're making just simple binary judgments, you and I are gonna agree about like two thirds of the time. So that's better than 50/50, but it's far from 100%. I think actually that would surprise a lot of people.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  There's a reasonable amount of disagreement there. That's already starting to set the stage for us not necessarily pursuing the most appealing person, because if there's disagreement, that means there's a chance that, well, you're gonna go for this person, I'm gonna go for that person, and it levels out the playing field somewhat. I don't think the influence of attractiveness ever goes away, right? There's always gonna be an unlevel playing field to some extent, but the more that people spend time together getting to know each other, it reduces some of those, you know, those market forces that give the desirable people all the advantages.

• 20:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  The reason junior high school seems so dreadful in my memory. I mean, I had a good time in junior high school, but it was largely, at least for me, the fact that people in my peer group, because it was a pretty broad age range, were still among the guys were hitting puberty at different rates. Yeah. So like a game of soccer that at one time was pretty even with respect to who could play well, like suddenly you're playing against what felt like a grown men. Yeah. There was actually a kid in our town who, I don't want to give up his name, who I think he went on to, I don't ever think he became a professional soccer player, but he was just, he was like fully developed by the eighth grade. He was like facial hair and he was fast and he had like legs like tree trunks and he could move and I mean, it was just completely dangerous to have him out on the field with

• 20:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  the rest of us, right? And he was respected, adored, admired, like, and it was very context dependent. This was the other thing I was gonna say, I think you and I are both scientists, so coming up, you spend a lot of time in labs. Yeah. I'll never forget, there was a romance in a neighboring lab that none of us understood, like none of us understood. That's funny. And I remember asking my friend who was in this pairing and he said, the attraction for him, although she was also attractive, but the, the hook was her prowess at aliquotting. So there's a thing you do with antibodies in labs where they come in and you have to put them into the little thing so that it, you know, it frees out a little bit. It's really hard. Yeah, and it's hard to do that. You get good at it, but apparently like he walked in one day and she had a bunch of

• 21:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  these little tubes stuffed between her fingers and she was just aliquotting really quickly while talking and from that moment he was just like smitten. That's beautiful. And I'll say they both had. I've never heard an example that's good. I was like, her aliquotting process, like a prowess? And I thought to myself like, is this like tapping into something? They actually have children. He's his professor, they have children together, they seem very happy. I think anyone would say they're both attractive people, but their pairing seemed like. Not predictable by any other external metrics. And the fact that something so specific was the hook.

• 22:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  And that opened up into what turned out to be a longstanding marriage with kids. It's kind of wild.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  It is.

• 22:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  But is this uncommon? Because what you described before is kind of like this. Like, there's something unique that makes it feel like there's a special attraction that indicates something that opens up to a special discussion. And then there's this kind of intimacy, right? That they share.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  Around alacquading.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  Round alacquading.

• 22:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  That was spawned by alacquading.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  I don't recommend folks run out and learn how to alacquad in order to like, this is not a strategy.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  But that's the thing.

• 22:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Thematically, it might be, but so what are your thoughts on something like that?

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Okay, this is an incredible example. And I think if we're talking about couples, I think most people would find this idea intuitive. That if, you know, I ask somebody, what is, what is it that you love about your wife? Or what is it that you love about your husband? You know, you're gonna get a bunch of, if you get them talking for long enough, you'll get some idiosyncratic details. You'll get some stories. I mean, maybe if they're really forthcoming, they'll give you the in-jokes and they'll explain the moments that made them feel something special for this person. I think what I'm suggesting is that those moments, the, the, the creation of a narrative

• 23:23Speaker 00

  with another person, it goes back earlier than we think. And that a lot of times what we're doing, when we're trying to figure out if we're into somebody, yes, we look at how they look visually and we, we take in all that information and it matters a lot. But we're also talking with them, forming little stories. If you have a little bit of good banter, that means when I see you at the party next week, I'm gonna wanna sit next to you and see if we can recreate that moment. And that's often where attraction is coming from. I think that's why the apps are so hard, because it turns it into an interview where you're trying to impress other people with your traits. And again, traits are important, but it's like, it's not the life of the thing.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  The life of the thing is the little stories and moments that two people are sharing. And, and that's, I think, is something that, that people can be doing more with.

• 24:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'd like to divide this process that we call dating, romance, relationships, et cetera, into some pieces that may or may not be the right way to segment it. So, so please change any of what I'm about to, you know, toss out. We're talking about impressions.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  That either seed or don't seed desire for more time as an interest.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  And then I'll just broadly separate with compatibility over time.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  So let's spend some time on impressions that lead to desire.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  Which ones are meaningful, which ones aren't, which ones can be a bit misleading. I think most people are probably more intuitive about those if they're really honest, like what they find, who they find attractive, who they'd be willing to admit they find attractive if you remove all the other social inputs.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  And so on. But the compatibility over time piece is the one that is really hard. If you just look at the statistics on marriage, let alone the statistics on, you know, other relationships. It's not a bleak picture, but the numbers don't play out into if people get together and make the commitment, most of the time it works out. It unfortunately doesn't seem to be that way, or maybe who knows, fortunately. But so impressions leading to desire. Given that many of the people listening to this will, they'll be thinking about their own history with their current partner or are seeking a partner, or maybe not. What do the data say about what people are picking up on as really valid cues that drive

• 25:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  real desire as opposed to the BS about like, well, everyone else thought they were great or the great on paper kind of thing?

• 25:52Speaker 00

  The early phases especially are just naturally filled with a lot of uncertainty. And I think this is a bummer for a lot of people because it can feel like you're really into somebody or like they're really into me and then it turns on the dime. So part of that is about like searching for signals, trying to resolve the uncertainty. And the problem is that it's not like, oh, if I get sufficient evidence that you're smart, that's going to do it. Or if I get sufficient evidence that you're really good at aliquotting, that's going to do it. What people are, I think, trying to do is they're trying to Figure out like, do I feel enough of something for you that I want to continue this? That I want to keep it going?

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Yes, and that, but I don't want to act like, because sometimes when people think about the spark, what they think is, oh, it's got to be there right away. And I've already got to be feeling a hundred for this person, right? I gotta be at the top of the scale. That actually isn't what happens on average. Typically, if you, if you look at what most relationships look like, and you look back at the beginning, the, the typical first impression is middling. That's how we feel at first. Middling, just kind of, I don't know, middle of the sky, this seemed all right. You know, it was fine. And then we interacted again.

• 27:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  Not bad, not over the top.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Not bad, not, not over the top. And as we spend a little more time together, oh, like, actually, I find him pretty funny. Or I think he's really smart. Or, um, you know, I really like how good a listener he was. And I think what people are often trying to do is get enough moments that fit enough of these different trait categories that they think, well, you know, whatever other people say about this person, like with me, he seems like a pretty sensitive guy. With me, he seems pretty witty. With me, you know, like, I actually think he's really hot when he does X, Y, C. And so if you accumulate enough of those, then you find yourself, you know, it's like you keep coming back.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  So that's how I think about it, is this like slow accumulation of information. Sometimes people will encounter things like, like the ick, where there's one moment and then they tip over the edge the other way, into feeling like, I can't be with this person.

• 28:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is that typically women who feel that about men? I mean, do men describe that?

• 28:12Speaker 00

  I think, yeah, men have those experiences too. It is pretty under researched. And one of the reasons why is because this whole phase I'm talking about is remarkably hard to study. Because as researchers, we're very good at how do you feel about somebody? If you're looking at a picture or if you've hung out for like four minutes? I mean, that's what a lot of the initial attraction paradigms look like. I like those paradigms. I study those. Myself. And then it's very easy to recruit couples. And then see what happens to them. What explains why their relationships stay together and why they fall apart. But this period, and it's it's my favorite thing to think about.

• 28:53Speaker 00

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

• 29:38Speaker 00

  And what you just hope for is that as two people, you're collapsing to a fairly stable impression that is both very positive of each other. And I think a large part, that's how people get together. And hopefully accurate, too. Yeah. So the accuracy part is interesting because, I mean, you know, I'm a psychologist. I'm a social psychologist. And so, social psychologists are big into, well, your perception is your reality. And boy, do you see a lot of evidence, especially in relationships, that people are biased when it comes to their romantic relationships. In what sense? It can happen in ways like, you know, everybody kind of agrees that your partner is a jerk.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  But you genuinely don't think they're a jerk. And when they're with you, they don't seem like a jerk. So any kind of measure I would take about your perception of, you know, your partner versus everybody else's perception, you would seem to be horribly positively biased for your partner. The question is whether you're wrong. And I land on the side of, I mean, from your perspective, you're not. To argue that it would be better to listen to the consensus that your partner is a jerk. Kind of, it's sort of like, you're arguing for like a sleeper effect.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  Like there's wisdom and what other people know that you don't see. The evidence for that is actually not, not great. It's, it, it could be, and I'm sure it happens sometimes. But what usually happens in relationships is that people's own impressions and perceptions tend to be the major driver. Now, that can go in the other way, too, because we might all agree this person would be the most amazing partner to be with, and yet you've now gotten to the point in this relationship where you don't see it anymore and you can't unsee the negative things you've seen. And so that relationship can be very hard to salvage.

• 31:43Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:22Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 33:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  That they're navigating that process in a way where they're not in tune with their own taste. They're integrating all this other information in a way that's not helpful. It's not protecting them. In fact, it's it's just clouding the signal. It's noise, right? In the signal to noise model, like it's noise. It's just pure noise.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:23Andrew D. Huberman?

  And as a consequence, people are wasting their time and other people's time.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I don't believe everyone's trying to waste each other's time. It just seems that we're conditioned to do this.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I will say, it does take a pretty strong person to say, listen, I know that's what you see. I know that's what they say, but like this person's great. Like they're right for me. And when people do that, in general, people tend to back off.

• 33:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  And of course, there's Shakespeare about this, right?

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 33:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  But that tends to be cultural pressure of like, no, you two can't be together. Or the parents don't want it, or one set of parents.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 34:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  I mean, some of the greatest romances have been born out of that F you to the to the elders.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  To the community.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  But this is a little different.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  Yes. You know, it's a tricky thing to navigate because I I think one of the best situations to end up in is where you're in a relationship and let's say it's a new relationship. And your friends around you basically think, you know, we're happy for you. And we're gonna celebrate you and, you know, we're gonna celebrate this relationship. We support you. We just wouldn't be terribly interested in this person ourselves. That's the ideal, right? Where it's not exceptionally competitive. You're not worried about your friends trying to poach your partner away. But at the same time, they're supportive of the relationship.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Because that support from friends and family, it is important. Like, it certainly shapes how people feel. There's a way to navigate that that doesn't make it a, you know, like, I'm glad you I'm glad you like my girlfriend. But like, don't like her too much, please. You want to kind of try to find that balance there. And that's a tricky. Thing. I mean, I think this is a lot of what people are trying to navigate in adolescence. They're trying to figure out like, how can I be part of a friend group and have a romantic relationship and navigate the complexities that come with that? I mean, I vividly remember these like junior high, early high school experiences of dating

• 35:39Speaker 00

  somebody, but also your friends are into this person. And actually, it was a relationship where my girlfriend at the time broke up with me, starts dating my best friend. We're all friends now. It's all fine now. And it's like at this moment that I discover evolutionary psychology, that I discover this narrative. And it just felt like such a double edged sword because how wonderful is it to think about how people have been navigating these challenges? Ex-girlfriends breaking up with you for your best friend. This has been happening for tens of thousands of years. Like, I'm not alone. I'm not the first person to experience this.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  And then to also read at the same time, oh, my God, this reflects something true about my deep underlying value? This is kind of scary. So those two things together weirdly were what got me hooked on this. The feeling like evolutionary psychology is fascinating and really bleak at the same time.

• 36:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, I agree. I was gonna say brutal. I'm sorry you had to go through that, although I'm glad you're all friends. I think it happens.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  It's all good.

• 36:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  Probably not to everyone, but I can remember similar experiences where you're just like, oh, man, what a gut punch. And part of the maturation process is realizing like, okay, they might be better suited and there'll be someone for me and.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  Honestly, they were better suited for each other.

• 37:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  All right, all right. I have a question about the science.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  Or how to study these sorts of things. So if I set aside my science hat and I say, all right, you can study this stuff, but wait.

• 37:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  If we're talking about a kind of unique hook, like let's just assume the person, the people are within the range of attractiveness. Again, I hate this quantitative thing, but they think the other person's attractive.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  They they're dating because they want to find someone, right? They're not resistant to commitment. They're looking for for a partner. And the number of histories that people are bringing to that is infinite or near infinite. So let's say the hook is, listen, one person had a hard past based on an abusive household. The other person is really gentle. They had a great past and the person feels very safe in that, right? We always think about the trauma bond, right? Which is an unfortunate thing that does seem to happen. But it could also be, both people had difficult past, you know, parents with addiction issues or mental health issues and they can relate. Okay, that's one example. The other is, we both value X, we both value Y. And so the the unique glue.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:13Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  Does that make sense? There's a lot of words there, but basically like how well one knows themselves can often help lead to better choices and in partner choice. And so people go know like, gosh, I really, really would like someone that I could feel understood around this or feel really safe around this or make them feel really safe around that.

• 39:03Speaker 00

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

• 39:45Speaker 00

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

• 40:30Speaker 00

  We become overly independent. We become convinced that we really don't need anybody else. These are broad attachment dynamics that people will go through their whole lives having to navigate. A lot of people have probably heard about like the, you can have an anxious attachment style or an avoidant attachment style. And all of that is true. But one thing we know today from studying more couples and getting better at studying couples over longer periods of time is you realize that, boy, people's attachment orientations really can change. So somebody can come into a relationship with an avoidant, trauma-filled past,

• 41:12Speaker 00

  but with enough time with the right kind of person, again, sharing their unique bond, which maybe science will never crack, but they know all about it. That person will start to become less and less avoidant with time. They'll become more secure. They'll get more of those physiological benefits out of the relationship. They'll get more of the support-related benefits out of the relationship. And that can, in effect, turn somebody into a more secure person. So these are the attachment lessons that I often point to. And I think they're useful for at least helping me remember that tension between like, yeah, anxiety and avoidance.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  Two very broad processes that are always happening behind the scenes. And yet, the way it unfolds for any one particular couple, it's always going to be this weird, unique combination of stories and in-jokes and little moments that scaffold up to hopefully, you know, help somebody become more secure eventually.

• 42:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since. The reason I started taking AG1, and the reason I still take it every day, is because AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. AG1 is designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy. And it does so by helping to fill any gaps that you might have in your daily nutrition. I get asked pretty much all the time, if I could only take one supplement, what should that supplement be? And my answer is always AG1.

• 42:59Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 43:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  the less that couples are talking to other people besides a trained therapist,

• 43:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  if they choose to do that,

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  maybe not even doing that, about their relationship, probably the more protected their relationship is

• 43:54Speaker 00

  That's interesting.

• 43:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  from the darts of envious people.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  The unhelpful positive comments from people, right? Because there could be instances where a relationship is really flagging and someone doesn't disclose that and they don't really understand what's going on. And were they not to share that? Then, you know, everyone's getting all this positive input and they think, well, I think this is just how it's supposed to go.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  So there's the suffering in silence piece.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 44:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  We want to, I don't think that's good. But there's the kind of going out for external assessment piece. And as I say this, you know, it's funny because we, you're at UC Davis and I, my PhD there, I was just remembering like, when you pick projects in graduate school, you get some consensus about what's a good project.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  But so much of becoming a good scientist is kind of learning to put up the middle finger and just keep going.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  As the sort of pressure test of doing science is people going, well, that's, is that really that interesting? You don't really know how much to pay attention to it. And it kind of pays to be a little bit bulldog-ish and just go, yeah, I don't know, like, and just ignore it and just keep going. I can say this is also true in any kind of creative endeavor, public facing life, like, it doesn't make good adaptive sense to pay too much attention. But nobody wants to be the person that like steps in it or does something really stupid. But in relationships, when, if something feels good, maybe we shouldn't be going out and getting, you know, putting our finger in the wind

• 45:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  to get input.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  So it's fascinating because I mentioned earlier that, right, the extent to which you feel at least, like the people around you have your relationships back, that's a useful thing. But I think that probably isn't happening through a process of

• 45:46Speaker 00

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

• 46:23Speaker 00

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

• 47:05Speaker 00

  it is so tempting to look at that relationship and think like, oh, man, like she shouldn't have done that. Or, I don't know, if I were her, I wouldn't stand for this. But I'm not in that relationship. So unless you are a therapist and they're coming to you for therapy, I find it useful to try to resist that impulse. Because a relationship is this vast, deep store of information that two people have. And often, we're not privy to what's really going on there.

• 47:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm going back to junior high school again. And I can remember this one game.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  I hope this isn't traumatic.

• 47:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  No, no, it's not, not at all. But we had this all-girls school in our town, Castilla School, which was a boarding school. And so their dances were the best because they'd invite people from other schools. But all the guys were really excited to go, right? Because the numbers were really like, worked out really well and our favorite. Because women and, and, and boys and girls, it was a male school, right? Would go to these dances. But that means you just have like an outsized pool of, you know, so everyone got someone to dance with at some point. This is what mattered in the seventh grade, right? But there were these people. I had to say, there were these individuals who were not going through the admittedly like tense challenge of first dance, first slow dance, this would be for phones and it was tense then too.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  And they weren't doing any of that. What were they doing? They were running around telling people about who was doing what and who was doing that. And I remember thinking at the time, I mean, I'm no psychologist then or now, but thinking like, they're avoiding the whole thing.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  This is like going to a soccer game and instead of playing soccer, they're like critiquing people from the sidelines because it's a lot easier to do that than to actually get out there and risk and risk, you know, like being the goalie that lets the winning shot through. And I remember thinking like, these people are really, really corrosive. One or two in particular. I don't know whatever became of them. Hopefully they're doing well in their lives. They got over this. But those people exist throughout life.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  Meaning they're rarely the people that are happy in their own relationship life. Now, I have to say, it's probably a Y chromosome link disorder, but I assume that my friends who are in, male friends who are in relationship, if they're still in the relationship, that it's going great.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  That's funny.

• 49:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  There's not a lot of feedback, like there's not a whole lot of feedback exchange. That said, if something were really, like really off, I assume that they would bring it up, but probably not to me. Like there's, I do think that there's probably a sex difference here and these things are changing now, but I think that there's not a lot of sitting around talking about how well or poorly the relationship is going. It's sort of like, you know, you ask about somebody's spouse, like, how are they doing? And they go, yeah, great. Like, we did this this weekend. There's not a whole lot of, yeah, we had this one moment of exchange. It was kind of sticky. Can I get your input on it? Like, that's not happening. That's just not happening. At least not in my life.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  I'm glad you brought up these gender differences because I think you're hitting on one that at least, again, as a relationships researcher, I would sit here and say, I think this is the big one. And the big one is that women generally are better at cultivating social support from all corners of their lives, not just their romantic partner. Whereas for men, It's largely their romantic partner. That's where they're getting most of their support, intimacy needs met. Probably the person who, at least for a while, is mostly in their corner. And this is why you see across the full range of the arc of a relationship,

• 50:36Speaker 00

  that men are always a little bit more eager than women.

• 50:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  Eager in what sense?

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Eager in all the ways I want to be in this relationship in the first place. I'm more likely to say I love you first. I'm more likely to want to be exclusive. I'm more likely to want to take things to the next level.

• 50:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  Men are more willing to do that.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Men.

• 50:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  This runs counter to all this stuff about men being non-committal.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. So like, I don't, I don't, this is what, there's like new review papers on this that are really compelling. And it's like, kind of the same effect size across the board, which is how we talk about, you know, how big is the sex difference? You know, it's medium size, but it's just right there, all the way through. Through, through breaking up, who wants, who's more likely to want to break up? It's women who are more likely to want to break up. Men are more likely to be thinking about their exes. And the, the-

• 51:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  Not while they're in a relationship.

• 51:28Speaker 00

  Right, right, right. Not while they're in a relationship, right? Now it's over, it's like, oh, what's she doing?

• 51:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's the meme, you know?

• 51:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not the meme.

• 51:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  The meme is like, who's he thinking about?

• 51:35Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 51:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  Okay, yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Exactly. The reason put forward for this, and I find it very compelling, is that that's because men just don't quite have their social lives put together in the same way that women do.

• 51:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  Meaning they don't have a lot of male friends, or, by the way, I should have set up a disclaimer at the beginning. I should have said this. To make the conversation more fluid, we're framing everything in the context of heterosexual pairings. But I think it's fair to assume that this would also extend to homosexual pairing.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  I think it would, yes.

• 52:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  In many ways. But men have friends.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  I realize activity-based friendships are, you know, kind of the dominant theme. Men not getting, having connection in other things.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:22Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I'm not trying to just, you know, like, be, you know, put up a wall to my, whatever feminine traits I happen to harbor, you know, like, I, I'm, I'm cool with that. I'm good with the idea that I have emotions and that I have needs and stuff, but I, but I think it just makes good intuitive sense to me. That if I have something that I'm really, that I want input on, that's of a more, like, has a more of an emotional undercurrent. That I would bring that to my romantic partner.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  So here's the question I would pose. I would be clear. I'm not a therapist. I'm a scientist, but I would, I would ask you this. If something went wrong, do you feel like you have a sense that there are other people in your lives? And not your partner, but other people that you could go to if you needed to?

• 53:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  Definitely.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  See, that is the essence of social support. It's actually not literally, do you take people up on it? It's, do you kind of have a vague sense that people are around? And that's the part that matters. That's the part that gives us the health and wellbeing benefits. It's like a bank account you never have to dip into. It just gives you the sense.

• 53:52Andrew D. Huberman?

  I had to dip into it.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. Right. There you go.

• 53:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  Luckily, it's a vast account. I try not to make too many withdrawals on it.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. So just the feeling that it's there is really the core component. And I think there are a lot of men, not you and not me, but a lot of men out there. That don't feel like they have that social support bank account.

• 54:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  Like a close male friend or female friend.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Yep, or female friend.

• 54:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's purely platonic.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  Or family for that matter. I mean, you know, who's, who's more likely to like lose touch with siblings? I, I'm willing to bet that that's more likely to be men too. So I think this is part of like the modern challenge of masculinity that, that, that worries me that I point to. Like, I want to help men at least have that sense. I think they can cultivate it through all the activity based things that you describe. And like I did that myself throughout my twenties and thirties. Like I could not count the number of kickball and softball teams that I participated in. And I did that not because I wanted support.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  I don't think I ever got emotional and cried in front of any of those guys, but I knew they were there. And that if I ever had to go to that, I, I could.

• 55:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, I'm talking about memes and internet themes and I have to be careful doing that because I don't want to put too much weight on the, uh, the direction of those things and what they really mean. And the science is what I'm interested in, but you know, I think, um, most guys would probably say that that scene in that movie, The Town, where, uh, Ben Affleck walks in and says, you know, listen, yeah, we gotta do something. People are going to get hurt. We gotta do this and you know, like, and you can't talk to anybody. And his friend's only response is who's driving?

• 55:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is, is kind of like the essence of what a lot of men want and kind of idealize male friendship as.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  Like, oh, we gotta go bury a body or create one and like, and, and there's, it's just that it's the loyalty. It's the trust is a lot's encapsulated in that. It's a bad, quote unquote badass scene, right? They're about, but they're about to do something real bad. I recommend that.

• 55:54Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 55:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's not the friend test you want. I know people have used that as the friend test and they paid dearly for it.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 56:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  But the point is that friends who aren't going to ask too many questions, that they can hold in the center of their, um, mind without any long preamble that your friend needs something.

• 56:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  And you'll do whatever it is that they need because you love them. I think that that's what's the deeper layer of it. Yes, exactly. I'm realizing there, I have this like sense that there's a, a big contradiction, not in the scientific literature, but in the public perception. Yeah. Which is this, I feel like one common narrative these days is, look, men failed. They just failed. Like they didn't step up, right? They weren't committal, you know, we have to take care of them. They live much longer in a relationship. We die much earlier. Yeah. That's one narrative that you hear a lot about. It's a scary narrative, right? Because you also hear the narrative, yeah, like women are just very extractive.

• 57:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  They'll trade up, you know, how, now unfortunately, your friend dated your, then they, you, they, they broke up. She broke up with you first. Right, right. You know, a lot of the things that come into play, like the Coldplay concert affair that got, it went viral. Yeah. It was about this woman and you know, and a lot of it was pointed at her, him too. But you know, it was like, a lot was made of this thing that does happen. Yeah. That there's this notion like, well, who would actually pair up with their, you know, their female friend? A woman pairing up with a female friend's husband or brother? There's a lot of that. And you never know how much of this is being, these narratives are being fed. So I feel like now we're at this point that seems to be resolving a little bit, but we've been at this point where there are these two camps.

• 57:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I saw something on Twitter X some time ago, and it just like stopped me in my tracks, which said, the way you destroy a society is to get the men and the women to hate each other. And maybe I would just underwrite distrust each other. Yeah. Right? And so we need to move through this. I'm not actually asking you to solve it, but what did the data say? For instance, if we were to look at dating apps and I ask, do you think that the dynamics on dating apps, the algorithms, which are clearly designed to make the companies money? Yeah. Do you think those are more female-driven algorithms or male-driven algorithms? Not meaning who runs the companies. Oh, interesting. We know the answer to that. Yeah. For the most part. The question is,

• 58:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Do you think that the apps are trying to optimize for more women to come to them? Or for more men to come to them and stay there? Because the theory is always kind of launching the opposite direction.

• 58:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 58:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  And if that wasn't clear, I'm just wondering who's who's got the power.

• 58:43Speaker 00

  My understanding, now again, the dating apps are hard to decipher because like these companies don't share data with us. I've worked with some matchmaking companies' data. They're more interested in generally collaborating with scientists because they've they gotta make people on dates happy. They don't work on engagement, they work on happy dates.

• 59:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  So they're more interested in talking to scientists. But I think when your goal is getting users and getting engagement, what you're probably trying to do is bring more women in. Because my understanding is that there's more men on the apps.

• 59:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is that right?

• 59:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so. What I don't know, and I don't know if anybody knows other than the people at these companies, is like, okay, but how many of those apps are in use? And how many people, you know, regular users, I'm not sure. So you gotta bring more women in. But again, engagement is the goal, right? I mean, that's what the apps want. They want you spending time on it and then they want you to get the fancier features. So is that gonna be more geared toward men? It might be, but I'm kind of speculating here. I expect that when you're trying to create an app for heterosexual men and women, you're gonna have to somehow marry those two challenges.

• 59:59Speaker 00

  And look, one of the bigger gender differences that we see in the whole realm of sex and relationships is in swiping behavior. The fact that women will swipe yes on like 5% of the men they see, but men swipe yes at about 50/50.

• 1:00:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  But that fits the kind of evolutionary quote unquote narrative, like men being less selective, wanting to spread their their DNA, this kind of thing. I mean, to my mind, that whole thing around like men want to spread their DNA, okay. Like, I believe in evolutionary biology, sure. But There's a lot of modern features that make like accountability for offspring and things like, it's not like men can run around just having kids with anyone and afford all of that, right? It's, I mean, you know, we were talking earlier, there's sort of like two models. There's like the, there's like the Genghis Khan ideal within this evolutionary biology model. And then there's, you know, kind of like, where are we now?

• 1:00:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  I mean, I don't think anyone, with the exception of some very wealthy people who have kids with lots and lots of people and clearly can afford it, I don't think anyone's thinking they're gonna go out and just have kids with as many people as they possibly can.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  Right. And so what's so interesting about these gender dynamics is that,

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  from my perspective, they tend to get the largest, the biggest gulf between men and women in the situations that are the weirdest. So, for example, and this is a real study. You recruit Confederates, so that means it's somebody who's working for the experimenter. And then they go around campus and they ask people, I've noticed you around and I find you very attractive. Would you like to go to bed with me? And when you do this, you find that men are about 20 times more likely to say yes to that request than women. Very few women say yes to this request, but a reasonable number of men do. All right. But the thing about that experiment, and that experiment is very valuable and it's

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  very influential, and I love at least that it was real, that people were actually out in the world doing something, even if it's a little wild and probably a little scary, especially for the women. But if you do this one little tweak and you say, yeah, okay, but how about like the last time that happened to you in real life, like in a context where you knew people, and then you look at the gender difference, it's not 20 times more, it's two times more.

• 1:02:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  What do you mean?

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  It's like the last time somebody you know, like among a group of friends, like asks like, hey, do you want to go hook up? How much more likely than are men to say yes than women? And Men are still more likely, but they're only twice as likely, rather than 20 times as likely.

• 1:02:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  So this is not my belief, but the cynical incel types on the internet, or just cynical guys will say, oh, that's because women are sleeping around more than they used to when the first experiment was done. I don't believe that's true, but I can tell you that would be their reflexive response. Like, there's, so there's this ammo, there are these arrows that each side holds. One side holds the, guys aren't stepping up, they're not, they're not managing their own lives, let alone making themselves somebody who would be attractive as a partner, who could listen and do, and take, help take care of somebody. Because the notion of taking care is something that we can talk about. The guys are saying, well, they're just all extractive, you know, and there's deceptiveness there.

• 1:03:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  And they'll trade up at a moment's notice, you know, and, and so, I mean, I don't want to feed the flames of distrust, but the data you just provided, what are they, what is the conclusion? Like, so that's the result, but in that paper, what's the, the authors, you know, we the authors therefore conclude that.

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

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

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  And so that is what I would tell these hypothetical incels, is I think part of the problem is that you're locked into a way of thinking about sex and romance that it's about a pick-up line, or it's about an initial impression. I think women are more interested in casual sex when it's somebody that they like, kinda know, and have been friendly with. For a while and have had like some good banter with. And if you surround yourself with people, not just women, but also men. And you meet friends of friends, you're gonna find more opportunities that way. So it's like a shift in the mindset that we have about how it is we meet people and how it is we get to know them.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  And that hitting on strangers is like low yield, very difficult. Spending time with friends, it's time consuming, although it's enjoyable in and of itself. It's a time consuming approach, but it's ultimately going to be better for more people. You know, on average, at least.

• 1:05:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  In light of the apps, social media, this divide. I'm very grateful that you're bringing up this notion of spending time in small groups.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  Probably around certain activities. Could be pickleball, could be a barbecue, could be, I mean, that's how people used to meet.

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:06:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  So they tried to lock it down.

• 1:06:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  I mean, in graduate school, I worked alone in the lab. But my graduate advisor actually suggested I not even date within our graduate program. This is peer to peer. I was a graduate student and for the most part I obeyed. But I was so focused on work and I guess it happened with like, you'd go to meetings, you meet other graduate students. So it was really peer to peer.

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  In my postdoctoral laboratory, my advisor was like vocal to everyone, like no dating in the lab. And of course, there are certain married couples nowadays with kids. Several of them, in fact, that met in the lab just by proximity interest. And who knows, aliquotting prowess, who knows?

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  Somebody out there is an incredible aliquotter that never got to attract somebody.

• 1:06:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  Totally. To my knowledge, this is, by the way, boys, again, this is not a way to attract a mate. Unless you're a molecular biologist per. Perhaps, but I think that there's real value in this, in this because unlike our earlier discussion where other people's input can be kind of toxic to the process of understanding and really getting in touch with one's sense of taste. I like this person. I don't. This feels safe. It doesn't feel safe. And I'm not using, by the way, the safe language to be politically correct. Like, some people feel emotionally unsafe because it's just like, like if there were a stressful circumstance, they would dissolve into a puddle of their own tears. That's a different version of it, right? I think we all kind of like flip to the extremes, but that's, that's another aspect. But this is a context in which you can

• 1:07:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  get a read of how someone behaves, their values, their reflexive levels of kindness or lack thereof with other people. You get a lot of data in a, in a setting that you're hopefully enjoying yourself in any way. That seems very, very valuable.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  So we're talking 80s movies and 90s movies already. So I'm gonna throw out Say Anything. Oh, yeah. You remember Say Anything? Okay. So the John Cusack lead character asks out the Ione Sky character. But where they go on their first date is absolutely fascinating. They go to a party. So they are clearly going together, but they don't spend the whole party like attached to each other. And they're not interviewing each other like they met on an app. They're actually kind of watching each other as they float through these various groups. And sometimes they're talking to other folks about the fact that they're kind of on a date right now and how is it's going. But they're also talking to each other and it's kind of

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  a beautiful depiction of this old kind of lost art of you're dating, but you're also with other people seeing how they behave. And, and one of the moments where Ione Sky sort of you can see you're starting to fall for John Cusack is when he's actually looking out for some of the other folks there, like, you know, taking their keys away so they don't drive. And I think that that idea of like watching how we behave around other people can be very powerful.

• 1:09:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  So one of his unique qualities was that he's protective of other people and responsible. He put other people's safety ahead of his own desire to go out and drink that night or something.

• 1:09:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, I forgot that scene.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's a perfect segue to what I was gonna say next, but I'm brought to this mildly traumatic experience in high school where I didn't go any, go to any high school dances. Early in high school, I was like really in the skateboard community, just really focused on that. And then it was my junior year of high school.

• 1:09:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  The now woman, then young woman, girl, whatever. Asked me that it was the Sadie Hawkins dance where the the girls asked the boys. This was this very old fashioned, right?

• 1:09:49Speaker 00

  It's like, I've heard this.

• 1:09:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  It already assumes, right? That the guys always ask the girls.

• 1:09:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  Which was pretty much the standard.

• 1:09:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  We go and she was a year older and extremely beautiful, super kind. It ended up being a very long term relationship, but I remember going and she had something back then where her hands would get really cold. She had this thing where it was a cold night and so she went into the bathroom. She said, I have to like warm my hands. She was in there a really long time and I'm standing out there and people are coming up to me. And I'm like, what are you doing here? Like, why are you at a dance? And I said, so and so invited me and no one believed me. There was like, there's no chance. And I have to say, it was the most mortifying thing. And I kept waiting for this moment where she would come out of the bathroom and like vindicate me. And they all kept like dissipating before she came back. She eventually came back and I just remember thinking like, oh man, like nobody even.

• 1:10:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I'm thinking like, I'm either completely outclassed, like completely outclassed. Or like this is one of the best opportunities that ever landed in my lap. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna pursue this with everything I've got. So I went with the second thing and anyway, we.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  This is John Kiesak energy.

• 1:10:52Andrew D. Huberman?

  It was, it was brutal. Like I had to sit there and like, you know, and like, no one believed me. They actually thought like I just like snuck in or something like that. Anyway.

• 1:11:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  The John Cusack example is a really good one because his character in that movie is a little awkward along certain dimensions. He's certainly not as quote unquote ambitious in the typical sense, although he wants to be a great kickboxer. Right. Kickboxing sport of the future. Right, right. So a great scene between him and her dad where he's explaining what he's gonna do in life and not in any kind of fluent way. Yeah. And her family clearly has other plans for her. But it gets to this thing that I had written down because I want to ask about next, which is this notion of texting in particular, so not even apps, but let's just say it's migrated off app or people meet, they exchange number and there's some texting, right?

• 1:11:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  And this notion of the kind of unique advantage, at least early on, that I think can be somewhat misleading of people who are hyper-verbal. Oh, interesting. And in particular among men. So here's what, I think years ago, when I was on the job market for academic science, a really fantastic neurobiologist who actually ran, let's just say, a very famous school in Boston's Brain Science Center. They never admit the name of their school anyway. Said to me, he said, you know, the worst part about the job search process in neuroscience is that it selects for hyper-verbal people, where people can present their data, excite people about it, present their vision.

• 1:12:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  And he said, and there are so many amazing scientists that just don't know how to communicate their data. And we're selecting for someone who can also teach, who can also do these things. And I realized he's absolutely right, you know? And some people can overcome this, but some of the best scientists in the world, speaking isn't their forte. Yeah. Okay. So in the realm of text communication, there's a kind of a bias toward can somebody, like a good listener in a face-to-face interaction, like a guy can just sit there, listen, not interrupt, nod, maybe reflect. Yeah. Maybe reflect, tell me more, why that must have been interesting, hard, whatever, you know? And can convey a lot of genuine ability to communicate and bond.

• 1:13:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  Over text, just listening doesn't work. In fact, if it's just like, wow, that must have been hard to like a paragraph this long. It starts to fall flat. And this is where I think some people might be screaming, no, no, no, that's what I want. You know, but there's a strong selection process now for people who can communicate quickly with their thumbs, be witty in writing. And so the hyperverbal thing has moved to text.

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's a challenge. And I do think, even though some men are very hyperverbal, there is a sex difference here that we are well aware of. So do you think that that's skewing things? Because the ability to to kind of keep to get and keep somebody's interest early on is strongly dependent on these days on texting.

• 1:13:57Speaker 00

  Right. I think this is a really good point. You know, I was reminded of some work, this is early work in the like online interaction space, that suggested that actually anxious people get a lot out of being able to communicate with a keyboard or with texting because they don't get so overwhelmed. So this is probably going to be somebody who also on a first date would be having a bit of a tough time. So it might be that actually texting for them has at least the advantage of reducing some of the anxiety because they can take a minute to think about what they want to say before they have to actually come out with it.

• 1:14:42Speaker 00

  But I also think you're right that the ability to be witty over text, as opposed to the kind of like nonverbal listening that you're describing, that is going to be a special advantage for some people today. So it could very well be skewing things in the way that you described. There's not great data on this either. I mean, I mentioned earlier, we don't have great data on like the arc of the relationship. But some of the people that have tackled this question, this is a great researcher named Mimi Brenberg at Ohio State. And what she does is she gets couples who are together and then says, "Let me see your texts."

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

  And then gets the whole text thread with their permission, all the way back to when they first started texting. And what you see are some cool things, like essentially their styles of communicating start to like cohere, right? It's like a pattern of mutual influence where they get the similar cadence and they start using similar words and other things as they're talking to each other. Now, of course, those are the successful cases. So what would it look like if we had the unsuccessful cases? And I think you're right. We would see that the people who can't match or can't be witty early on, that those are the text threads that never become couples.

• 1:16:09Speaker 00

  So we just have to figure out how to recruit those folks to be in our studies. Give us the last 10 threads of dates that never went anywhere.

• 1:16:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking Element makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. My days tend to start really fast, meaning I have to jump right into work or right into exercise.

• 1:17:02Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 1:17:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  you know, if I were to, you know, ask a close family member, you know, like what's great about the relationship you're in. This is a woman and she'll be referring to her male partner. Yeah. In this case, she'll generally talk about the things that he does and the things that he is able to do in support. Oh, interesting. That may or may not even require the ability to speak. Yeah. Now, he's not aphasic, you know, but, you know, it's, it's more about like what he does. And when, when we've had conversations on this podcast in the past about kind of relationship glue and things like that, it's like, it's like, oh, that they always like, you know, one person always seems to like make the bed by time I'm back from the bathroom in the morning.

• 1:18:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  And you're like, no, my turn. And they, or the other person always sets out the coffee or some of it. It's these, the little thing phenomenon. Rarely is it like, sometimes it's a note, but rarely is it like, yeah, I love the way, you know, he strings together, uh, you know, sentences or something like that. I love the way that, I love the way that, um, you know, she describes this thing, you know, so. It's often about actions, at least in the, in the observing the qualities of the positive qualities of the male partner. And that's very kind of stereotypical, but I think that it just, it's, it's a kind of window in my mind into the difference between the quote unquote exploration and courting process.

• 1:19:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  Although the courting process, what people do arguably matters more than what they say. Yeah. And. The kind of long-term thing.

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  The consistency of the stability of the relationship over time. So I wish that, you know, it's a shame that these apps don't select for action.

• 1:19:25Speaker 00

  The only way to do that would be something where you would say, okay, if you're going to sign up for this app, you know, we're going to ask you to go on at least three dates with, you know, anybody that you match with. And we want to see you dating in these very different circumstances where the point isn't always to just talk at each other. That also you like, you gotta do things together. I wish there were dates that were like assemble this Ikea furniture.

• 1:19:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  Don't people still go for like a hike or go to a show?

• 1:19:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, that's, that's good too, because at least it's, it's talking and interacting, but a different kind of talking and interacting. I want, I want like physical challenges. Get out of this escape room, stuff like that. Anyway, I'm not actually dating. Yeah, right. You're right. Yeah. So you gotta be witty, but also not panic.

• 1:20:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  Do you suggest that? Is it like a first date?

• 1:20:11Speaker 00

  I don't know, maybe third date.

• 1:20:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  Okay.

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  Third date sounds good for escape. I want to be clear. I've never, I've only done the, the escape room board games.

• 1:20:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  You're just drawing people under the bus just to see what happens. Yeah, no, I'm just kidding.

• 1:20:22Speaker 00

  But like, you know, events, sporting events, I mean, things that are, um, uh, that are exciting, that you're doing together, but also facilitate interaction, I think can be really good. It is very, very hard though, to simulate the patterns of what would it be like to be in a long-term relationship with this person? And the 4,000 daily responsibilities that come with that. And I think even when we are really crazy about somebody early on, we try to forecast what that's going to be like as best we can. But we really don't know.

• 1:21:03Speaker 00

  And I think the like, the beautiful thing, but also the challenge that a lot of relationships have is, you know, what you do is, you know, like you just described, like, okay, it becomes my job to set out the coffee and it becomes your job to mow the lawn. And we create this very elaborate structure that guides not just our day to day lives and the crap we have to do, but it also guides how we communicate, when we communicate, what we communicate about. If we create a business together, that can create a relationship that starts to feel like more transactional, that's maybe less warm, has less opportunity for connection.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  As opposed to creating a relationship that builds, you know, time for fun activities together, for fun experiences, or again, I recognize like people are stressed and often work in multiple jobs, but at least when we are interacting, are we able to interact about the fun, silly things that brought us together in the first place? I think it's, it's very challenging to do these things. When people go to couples therapy and the couples therapy is effective, it's usually because therapists are able to help couples essentially like rewind all the bad patterns they've created and go back to when things were good, rediscover what it was that they really appreciated about each other and like

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  recreate their relationship from there in a new way. But yes, many of these things are, they're just deeply, deeply hard to forecast.

• 1:22:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. And there's always the natural desire to want to know if one's time and energy is well spent. I mean, it's really, in some sense, the most important investment is time and energy.

• 1:22:53Speaker 00

  It's kind of all we have.

• 1:22:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's all we have. And that's very evolutionary in its core. You talked before about this kind of crystal ball question, or probing for particular disclosures that people are willing or not willing to make as a, as a perhaps better indication of whether somebody is interesting or appropriate for you. I realize however, that

• 1:23:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  The notion that there's a like a question or a set of questions that would say green light is that's not true. That is just like can't be true. There's probably some answers that are red light. Everyone, you know, knows red light. Hopefully they're paying attention to that. But it's the yellow, it's the yellow, but it's the yellow lights and not knowing what questions to ask to see if there's a sort of green light path forward. Uh, tell me what those questions are.

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:23:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  Like, yeah, phrased differently. If two people are on a date and they have only a few minutes, it's kind of a speed dating type situation and they need to make a good assessment as to whether or not they genuinely would like to spend more time with the person again. Uh, what, what are the questions they should ask?

• 1:24:01Speaker 00

  All right. So I like the questions that are a little bit more offbeat. You know, what people tend to do on speed dates is they, they want to find common ground quickly. You know, if it's college students, maybe we're going to talk about their major. Uh, do we share a major? No, uh, like pivot, uh, where are you from? And they'll try to find something that they can bond over. And that can work very well. But I think the core of what we want in an initial interaction with somebody is to take away something that feels like it was at least a little different than all the other interactions that we have. And so sometimes what that means is going a touch deeper than people are comfortable with.

• 1:24:45Speaker 00

  Now, in, in four minutes, it's tricky. If you have a little bit longer, like a regular evening length date, I really like the 36 questions test. Like this is the, sometimes it's called the fast friends procedure. But these are questions like, you know, what's one thing that you've never told somebody that you've always wanted to tell them and what's stopping you? Or

• 1:25:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  People answer that?

• 1:25:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, after, if you've been hanging out with somebody for 60 to 90 minutes, that is a pretty good way to elicit real depth and give like both people a chance to do some reciprocal self-disclosure, because that's what people want. That's what people connect over is like, I've like, I feel like I've just heard, you know, maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but I feel like you've just told me something that you haven't told most people and maybe you haven't told anybody. I vividly remember. Falling for somebody when that moment happened, it's like, I really, you are telling me this, I don't, I don't think you've ever told anybody this before.

• 1:25:51Speaker 00

  And it is such a rush. I think like, I don't know, man, the internet, it's like convinces, all we care about is like sex and hotness. There is nothing like the rush of having somebody tell you something that they've never told anybody else. And again, this is like the stuff that gets relationships researchers excited, because this is what we see in our data. responsiveness, closeness, like building trust and all of that stuff. Now, again, four minutes is really hard. Four minutes, you've just got to get a little nugget of something that you want to build off later, and maybe that is your hometown, and maybe it is like, isn't this a weird experience that we're only going to get to chat for four minutes?

• 1:26:31Speaker 00

  But whenever there are routes to go for a little bit more disclosure, I usually advise that, that people go for it. It will pay off on average, even if it can feel kind of awkward in the moment.

• 1:26:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  Do you think there's more excitement if one gets the sense that the other person is taking a bit of a risk in disclosing it?

• 1:26:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:54Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 1:27:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is that what you're talking about?

• 1:27:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  Like, you know, creating a real moment of intimacy early on, that's not physical intimacy, it's...

• 1:27:47Speaker 00

  I don't even know if it's emotional intimacy. It's like, it's like human connection, right? It's like, I'm a person that's had particular experiences and you're a person that's had particular experiences and we have these like narratives and stories about ourselves. Again, the science historically has been so focused on traits and I get it. Like, and I understand the evolutionary focus on traits. But man, humans are stories, right? We're narratives and we want other people to be privy to that narrative and then maybe eventually be a part of it. So I think that that is often what can be very powerful. Now, for people who are single and they like want to be in a relationship, I do think

• 1:28:30Speaker 00

  that it can be that sense that they're lacking. A lot of people are single and are very, very happy with their single lives. And I also understand that a lot of people, if they're single and they're dating, look, there's a lot of reasons to be cautious. Forming a relationship is a low base rate event. It doesn't happen all that often.

• 1:28:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  And it's time costly. It can be financially costly.

• 1:28:52Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:28:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's energetically costly.

• 1:28:54Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:28:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's very energetically costly.

• 1:28:56Speaker 00

  Exactly. Like, we don't go around forming relationships with everybody. But I also happen to think that like, once the ball gets rolling, the pull can be very strong. And part of that pull is this, this desire to have somebody kinda see me, get me, understand me. I might be talking about securely attached people on average, right? There's always gonna be that avoidance pull too. Like, people need to self-protect to some extent. But the sort of desire to open up and have somebody like really get you, it's so core to the relationship science worldview. And I think it says a lot about like who we are as a species and like how we form mating relationships.

• 1:29:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  You've said in so many words before that men and women essentially want the same things.

• 1:29:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  I think that's gonna hit some people square in the face.

• 1:29:50Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:29:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  And they're gonna say, that is so not true. Men just want blank, women just want blank. I'm like on this campaign lately to try and defang

• 1:30:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  the trolls.

• 1:30:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  That seem to have like, it's like, we were in high school.

• 1:30:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  Let's leave junior high school, let's go to high school.

• 1:30:07Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:30:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  And they were like, a bunch of like, really awful people. Let's evenly distribute it between the sexes, let's just do that for fairness sake.

• 1:30:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  And they're like constantly pointing out how these people are always bad and extractive. And these people are always, you know, cold and avoidant and like,

• 1:30:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:26Andrew D. Huberman?

  And if those narratives were just constantly like posted on the walls and like, and talked about and over lunch and whispered in the hallways, it would be very poisonous to the whole environment.

• 1:30:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  And that's kind of what the internet is.

• 1:30:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  And then the traditional news, but also some podcasts, not this podcast, but we'll kind of amplify these narratives because they feel juicy, they feel, and they get clicks.

• 1:30:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I think we all have an innate desire to avoid danger. So we're like, know where this stuff is. But when you step back, you go, like, most people are pretty well meaning. Most people are looking for good partnership. Nobody's perfect, but where people make mistakes, most people are like looking to at least modify their behavior over time. Like, it's all reasonably benevolent, but then there are these like,

• 1:31:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  kind of nasty characters out there. And we give them so much credit and we give them so much power. And they just plain suck.

• 1:31:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  So, men and women want the same things. Let's shut them up for a second and ask what the data say.

• 1:31:28Speaker 00

  This was one of the first things I studied when I started looking at attraction, like, almost 20 years ago now. And in part because I found the gender differences fascinating. It was very clear for decades and decades that if you ask men and women about the qualities they want in a partner, that you'll see these differences show up pretty routinely. And they are differences that then in the hands of nefarious characters online get spun out into exactly the narrative that you're describing. But the basic data on what men and women say they want, it's there. Men will say they care about attractiveness in a partner more than women. And women will say they care about earning potential in a partner more than men. Now, I'm phrasing that in a particular way.

• 1:32:13Speaker 00

  And I'm saying what people say they want because I'm critiquing the experimental paradigms that were used. It usually had people rating a bunch of traits on scales. And as a psychologist, I have no problem with that. I'm very interested in people's subjective experiences and I use scales all the time. But we wondered, that's different than, or it might be different, than what happens when you're meeting people face to face and you're reacting to a set of people who might be very attractive or of middling attractiveness or not very attractive at all. And that, to me, seems closer to capturing what people actually want.

• 1:32:57Speaker 00

  Like, if you meet 10 women, how much does their attractiveness drive your desire to date them? How much does attractiveness affect whether you want a second date with them or not? So we ran speed dating studies to try to capture exactly this phenomenon. I'll make it about earning prospects because it's really the same, the same thing. So we have these men and they go speed dating. And some of these women are very ambitious. They're going to be lawyers and doctors. Others are a little bit less ambitious. And what you'd see is that the men tended to like the women a little bit more to the extent that they were ambitious. It wasn't a huge driver of their liking, but it was definitely there and it was definitely positive.

• 1:33:41Speaker 00

  But then when we flipped it and we looked at what the women were drawn to, not what they said, but what they were drawn to, they also tended to like the ambitious men a little bit. And the magnitude of that preference was identical. And it's been 20 years of this, where we've looked at ongoing relationships. We've looked at 40 something countries throughout the world. That narrative plays out every time. There's no gender differences in the extent to which these traits appeal to men and women when they're evaluating like real people they've actually met. Online is different. What people say they want is different, but real people that you've at least met face

• 1:34:23Speaker 00

  to face seems to dramatically reduce the power of the gender differences and the appeal of these traits.

• 1:34:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  Fascinating and runs counter current to I think what many people, including I, have heard out there.

• 1:34:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I think the like, I think the key lesson here is like, believe your subjective experience when you're interacting with somebody and you're getting to know them. And maybe that subjective experience is like, she's hot, but I am not feeling this. And maybe that subjective experience is like, you know, I know that maybe to some people, he looks like he doesn't have his life together, but I really see a spark there.

• 1:35:02Speaker 00

  If you trust that experience, I think that's likely to go better. And we don't have an experience to go on like that when it's online. When it's online, it's very easy to put people in boxes, put people in groups, and then make the groups fight each other. And I too am very distressed about all the hetero pessimism.

• 1:35:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  Hetero pessimism.

• 1:35:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. That's it's not my turn, but it's one of my favorite terms.

• 1:35:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  Do you know who coined it?

• 1:35:26Speaker 00

  I know the year is like 2019, but I forget the author.

• 1:35:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, look at it. Great term, hetero pessimism.

• 1:35:32Speaker 00

  Right, it's like, men and women can't get along. How could they get along? They've got different interests and different priorities. Look, in the close relationships realm, it's not true. And that's the realm I know. Men and women, they want the same things out of their relationships. Yes, there are gender differences in like the thresholds for sex and especially early on, that can be, that can be really messy.

• 1:35:57Speaker 00

  But overall, I see a lot of similarity and a lot of potential for these, the bonds that men and women form to do great things for people. And women and women and men and men and any gendered combination that you want to come up with. I think we're pair bonding creatures. We get a lot of joy and a lot of fulfillment out of that. And I want to see men and women find a way to make it work again.

• 1:36:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  Springboarding off of the hetero pessimism.

• 1:36:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:23Andrew D. Huberman?

  Term, which is great because it encapsulates so much, even though what it encapsulates is definitely not great.

• 1:36:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  The term I'm about to use is gonna sound like it means something. It doesn't, but is there any research on homo pessimism? Which is not the same as homophobia. Homo pessimism, meaning, I'm not aware, because I happen to be heterosexual, but I have homosexual friends, men and women. I'm not hearing them talk a lot about how dating culture is much worse now.

• 1:36:51Speaker 00

  I hear this too, yeah.

• 1:36:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  But then again, sample size isn't that great here.

• 1:36:56Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:36:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  So I don't know, because a lot of the same things apply in terms of like apps. Sure, cultures vary.

• 1:37:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  But there are some constants in this picture. So in any research, yours or others, research about homosexual dating and couples.

• 1:37:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is there pessimism? Guys saying, well, guys these days and women saying, lesbian women, for lack of a better term, saying, women these days.

• 1:37:29Speaker 00

  I don't think that's out there nearly to the same extent. I think some of the like interesting components that you see out there is, look, the apps, I think, did, they did a lot of good in the world for people who, you know, just felt like their social networks had no options in them. But especially for people who might have been living in places that were genuinely unsafe for gays and lesbians and might have helped them to find romantic partners. So like, I always want to be the first one to give the apps credit for that, for providing those kinds of opportunities.

• 1:38:06Speaker 00

  Classically speaking, what you tend to see is that, you know, I've talked a little bit about the timeframe as people form relationships in the first place. And that sometimes we get locked into this idea that it's like, oh, it's gonna happen in an instant and, and now you're together. But the reality is it's often an elongated process. That process.

• 1:38:27Speaker 00

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

• 1:39:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  Loss of jobs.

• 1:39:03Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:39:04Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 1:39:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:39:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. It doesn't go well.

• 1:39:18Speaker 00

  I love the movie Call Me By Your Name.

• 1:39:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  I don't think I've seen it.

• 1:39:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's about 10 years old. It's Luca Guadagnino and he's a fabulous director, but it's about two men who get together over the course of a summer. Young men who find it's one of Timothy Chalamet's earlier movies. And one of the things they come to regret is that like, well, we didn't disclose our feelings sooner, but it's the movie was taking place in the 1980s. So you had to be really careful with whether you were going to be upfront about how you were feeling about somebody. It wasn't in a place where you can't be fully confident that you have a sense of safety. It could be really dangerous. So that's an important difference that we see.

• 1:40:04Speaker 00

  And I think the apps were really good at helping people to come together in that sense.

• 1:40:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  I have a question about financial stability and level.

• 1:40:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  You mentioned there aren't real big gender differences there. Earlier we were saying scientists are always doing the opposite of improv. Instead of yes and, they always say, yeah, but, you know, what, yeah, but what about?

• 1:40:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, but what about?

• 1:40:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's in our training.

• 1:40:31Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:40:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  Income level on its own, or amount of money that somebody has, in my mind, is somewhat informative. What's more informative is

• 1:40:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  Having the additional data point of where they started out.

• 1:40:44Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:40:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  Because people with money who um didn't have to work very hard to get it.

• 1:40:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's a different picture. Now, some people might say like, who cares? And I will make the argument that some people.

• 1:40:56Speaker 00

  It's a cool idea.

• 1:40:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  Some people who had to make a work very hard to make their money. Oftentimes are still in the working hard mode. The the the twist in the in the high level of income thing like that.

• 1:41:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  The additional question that's useful is how much free time do you have?

• 1:41:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  Because a lot of the people I know who have a lot of money, they don't have a lot of free time. So if people pair up with them thinking that they're gonna feel very financially secure and have a lot of stuff, that might be true.

• 1:41:21Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:41:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  But um how often they're gonna see their partner or that the co-parent of their kids is an important question. And this extends both ways.

• 1:41:30Speaker 00

  Like so many of these attributes that in the abstracts sound really good to us. But then when you actually put it in a person that also has all these other attributes and things going on, you realize like, wait a minute. Their cutthroat ambition actually wasn't that great, right? Because it means that they're never around. I think for this reason, it can be very challenging, especially if you're looking at long term relationships, to take things like like a person's um income level and use that to forecast like, for example, how their partner is gonna feel about them. I mean, we've done some of this work, indeed some of the work looking at gender differences. And like the reality is like a person's objective income is very, very small effects

• 1:42:13Speaker 00

  on how their partners feel about them. The bigger effects are things like, you know, if now we scaffold up and look at like socioeconomic status. So do you have the resources to get by as a couple? That can be very challenging for people.

• 1:42:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  I've seen numerous examples of couples where the man loses his work.

• 1:42:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  And if he's not able to get stable work again reasonably soon.

• 1:42:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  In most of the, this isn't a peer reviewed study.

• 1:42:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  Most of the examples I can think of, um, the couple eventually dissolved. And it wasn't necessarily for a lack of enough resources.

• 1:42:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  Families were able to help, et cetera. Um, and of course, we could talk about depression.

• 1:42:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  We could talk about some other thing that might have happened, or many things that happened. But is there a sex difference there?

• 1:43:03Speaker 00

  The part that I find the most intuitive about these examples is that when a man loses his job like that. And I love that there are other resources around, so we know that that's not the exact problem. My guess is that the challenges are coming more from his like genuine troubling, like loss of identity, loss of self, what am I going to do with myself? And less, maybe not zero, but less about his partner thinking, oh, now he's no longer a provider. And that's just generally my bias from what I see in the science, which is when tragedies befall us, they affect our perceptions especially strongly.

• 1:43:48Speaker 00

  So this guy is going to feel this pretty hard, that he's lost his job. Stepping back and looking at the broader picture of the data. It used to be true that marriages were more fragile when the woman earned more than the man in the marriage. But this stopped being true in the nineties. So that gender difference doesn't exist anymore. And I think it's, it's easy to surmise. I don't know if the sociologists who study this have drawn exactly this conclusion, but it's easy to posit that what's happening there is that people in general have gotten more comfortable with the gender imbalance relationships. And in the nineties, we were still getting used to this idea.

• 1:44:33Speaker 00

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

• 1:45:07Speaker 00

  That's not a risk factor relative to if they were the same level, relative to if, you know, he were higher. It just doesn't really seem to be doing anything. I know we can like get really nervous about like, what does it mean for men's desirability? If they're not ambitious, like I get that. If men are not out there like making things of themselves, I'm not worried about the women getting a better education than them. I think it's important for men to have a sense of purpose. Think trade schools can be awesome, but the mismatches in the level of education and in the level of income, those don't spell a problem. We just got to get like men feeling good about themselves again. And the data say they're not.

• 1:45:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's what you see. I mean, the data that concern me the most are that men, and I think especially low SES men, they're the ones that feel like their social networks are gone. They don't know where to go to get any kind of companionship. So if they're really feeling that acute sense of loneliness, of lack of belonging, you know, among like real people in their lives, that's the thing I worry about because then that's going to affect your sense of self. That's going to affect, you know, all of your ambitions. And in really bad cases, might, you know, push people to some of those nastier corners of the internet.

• 1:46:32Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 1:47:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  To learn more, visit functionhealth.com/huberman and use the code HUBERMAN for a $50 credit towards your membership. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman. In the classics, pure stereotypical narrative, you know, men who were slightly older had more resources. Yeah. This isn't always true. Yeah. But there's this, what apparently, based on your work, is a myth that women desire older men, men desire younger women. Yeah. Your work points to the possibility that there is no gender differences in attraction to younger partners. Yeah, and look, let me say that this is, I think, one of the more tentative... And it's a big, and it's a big sample size.

• 1:48:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  Forty-five hundred. Forty-five hundred. I'm like, wait. It's a lot. So, and I'll weave a quick anecdote. There's this guy at the gym that I sometimes go to. He's probably in his like seventies or something and he's in like great shape. He's retired. He made money. He's enjoying life. He's got grandkids. He's like, he just seems like, I don't know him that well, but it seems like he's really got it together and he's really loving life. And I always say, uh, what brings you here every day? You know, I figured it would be like, I just feel so good. And he's just always says the same thing. He always just says, I don't want to lose my wife to a younger guy. And I always laugh and I go, then like I know a lot about the contour of his life. And maybe there's something he's not disclosing, but you know, anyone would say like, this guy's just totally got it made.

• 1:49:27Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 1:49:43Speaker 00

  Preach it.

• 1:49:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  And his wife, but he always answers the exact same way. How's it going? He goes, pretty good. Just don't want to lose my wife to a younger guy. So I'm here again today.

• 1:49:50Speaker 00

  Let me tell you about this study and look, again, I'm a scientist and sometimes the data I'm like, huh? You don't say. I didn't see this one coming. I mentioned this earlier. So we partnered up with folks who do matchmaking. So these are people who are paying for a service because they want to be in a long-term relationship. And so they will set people on dates and they've got a whole pool that they're working with. And within that pool, the men who are searching for dates are older than the women by about four years on average. Okay. So that's, that's what they've got to work with. And they set people up on these dates. And so most of the time, the woman is going to be younger than the man, but there's a range.

• 1:50:35Speaker 00

  Sometimes the woman is much younger than the guy. And sometimes the woman is the same age as the guy, and sometimes the woman's even a little older than the guy. All right? So what you'd expect to see is that if men are looking for younger women and women are looking for older men, then when we look at how the age of the partner affects whether you want to go on a second date with this person.

• 1:51:00Speaker 00

  It should be the younger folks appeal to the men more and the older folks appeal to the women more. But that wasn't what we saw. We saw that the younger folks appeal to the men more. And by the way, it's not a huge effect. It's not like the gross stereotype that's out there. Men are a little bit more interested in the women to the extent that they're younger, but it's not gigantic. Women are doing the same thing. They're a little bit more interested in the younger guys. They don't say that on paper. In fact, sometimes they're like, don't set me up with the younger guys. And then they do, and they say, huh, that was interesting. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that date. I would like to see him again.

• 1:51:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  Are the stated reasons similar in any way? For instance, are both groups saying less baggage? That would be kind of a cliche answer. But we could place that on either side.

• 1:51:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know, and I would love to know. I think sometimes when women are, when they downrate, like, whether they care about attractiveness or something, I think sometimes they are like kidding themselves a little bit, that they actually do appreciate a younger guy who's maybe is fit and in shape. Or they don't fully appreciate how exciting it would feel to be sitting across the table from a guy like that. I mean, this is my best, my best guess. And what's so fascinating about this data set is that, look, they're trying to create these couples, but, you know, you only create a couple a fraction of the time. Much of the time, the people don't really hit it off.

• 1:52:27Speaker 00

  But in the couples that get created, the guy was four years older than the woman. And in the couples that don't get created, the guy is four years older than the woman because that was what they had in the sample to begin with. So we look around and you see that age difference. That age difference is real, and I am sure it means something important. And data like this just make me think something else is going on here. Whatever is creating this age difference, it's at least, it's not, you know, age difference in how people sort. It's not happening on date one. It's not happening at the initial attraction phase. Maybe it's happening earlier. Who puts themselves in the pool? Maybe it's happening.

• 1:53:09Speaker 00

  Later, I don't know. She's gonna date this younger guy like once or twice, but then she's gonna be done with him and she'll, you know, settle down with somebody who's a little older.

• 1:53:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  You said she's done with him.

• 1:53:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Right, but right, but it could go the other way too.

• 1:53:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, what I've heard before, uh, cause I'm 50, I have some female friends who are dating and they'll say that they do date younger guys, but then the deal breaker is if the guy says he wants kids.

• 1:53:35Speaker 00

  Kids, that's tough.

• 1:53:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  And then, yeah, so the agreement is to move on based on that often. This is a common, reasonably common thing.

• 1:53:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:53:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  I should hear about this more and more these days.

• 1:53:47Speaker 00

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

• 1:54:31Speaker 00

  shouldn't it be within their power to craft a pool of partners who also want kids to give them that opportunity? Like, that seems like a reasonable, humanistic thing to do. And so to the extent that the apps are able to do that, or the services are able to do that, I think that's, uh, that's ultimately a good thing. I think we-

• 1:54:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  Don't they click, like, want kids or not?

• 1:54:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think often. I think, I think you can. I, in, in some apps, that might be like a special feature you have to pay for, and things, these things get complicated.

• 1:55:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  Who knows if the news is accurate, uh, because it's not real data. It's sort of whatever the news decides to shine a light on, this idea that, um, more young people are going to church with, which is a values, plural, uh, indicator. Like, you know, people can, most churches are open to whoever shows up, but the assumption is that people are there, for certain reasons, that they're either trying to build on or, or have certain values.

• 1:55:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  That are family, children, uh-

• 1:55:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  Values, morals, adjacent if not central, right? I think people know what I'm saying. I mean, sure, bad people can show up at church.

• 1:55:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  But, but the idea is that somebody's taking the time to get dressed up on a Sunday morning and go and listen to someone else speak. And a lot of people are meeting that way now.

• 1:55:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  Are there any data that that's a response to the kind of like Wild West of,

• 1:55:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  of online dating and, you know, social media and, and just the general culture of like, everybody, it's kind of the, the culture of everybody. I mean, even in high school.

• 1:56:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  There were subgroups. Some people moved between subgroups.

• 1:56:08Speaker 00

  I see what you mean.

• 1:56:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  But it's, you know, it, the, the vastness of the internet and social media.

• 1:56:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Even if you state your preferences about what you do and don't want to see on social media is like, it's a flood. I mean, I see people and things on there from way back when that like, they're not bad people. I have no interest in what they're doing now. And then occasionally I see people, I'm like, oh, no way.

• 1:56:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  And reconnect. So, but it's a, it's a fire hose.

• 1:56:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you need some way to reduce it to something manageable. I mean, again, we, we evolved in an environment where we knew like 50 other people. You know, that's like your group. You, you probably knew more than that. Maybe you know, like 150, some nearby groups, but that's all ages and all genders and everything else. It's a small number of potential partners for you. But you had reasons to interact, structures that were going to put you in contact with each other. And to the extent that church is fulfilling a function like that, I think that's great. And in fact, I think that's exactly what's missing. And if church isn't your thing, there's like a million other things that people can do

• 1:57:10Speaker 00

  in any kind of modern urban context that are going to be helpful along those lines. I mean, you can join any kind of intramural sports team. I mean.

• 1:57:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  Improv class.

• 1:57:21Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:57:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  Just came up on it.

• 1:57:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. So I think the improv classes are amazing because not only is it a chance to interact in a group over a, a period of time where you don't get to opt out if you don't love somebody right away. But also, you're like practicing being vulnerable and, you know, being responsive and things like that. So I think these things are all wonderful. Are people doing it because they're trying to limit the pools to the folks that they think will fit what they're looking for? I'll bet you some people are doing that. I'll bet that, you know, if somebody's like, I really want to be with somebody else who's active, so I'm gonna join a running club. Or, yeah, I want to be with somebody who shares my values, so I'm gonna join church.

• 1:58:06Speaker 00

  I think that's great. If I'm like, being buzzkill scientist, I'd probably sit there and be like, it probably actually doesn't matter. Like, join the church, join the running club, join all these things. Like, you're probably no more or less likely to find somebody that you're gonna click with.

• 1:58:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's more about getting yourself in a small group environment.

• 1:58:27Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. But I'll be the first to say, like, when it comes to like, the base rates of these things, like, if your, if your goal was, you know, in 90 days, I want to be in a relationship, what are the things I should do that give me the best likelihood? I'm embarrassed to say my field can't answer that question. I can't tell you, you know, use two apps and use these two apps and go to church, don't join kickball because they're a mess. I was a kickball player, so I'm allowed to say that. But you should join the running club. We can't answer questions like that. So, in the absence of that kind of specificity, my answer is always just be around people on repeated occasions.

• 1:59:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm not trying to provide pushback here. I'm not qualified to do it.

• 1:59:10Speaker 00

  Okay, no, I love it.

• 1:59:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm from a totally different field, but I feel like there's certain small group, smallish group environments.

• 1:59:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:59:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  Like church, but there, there could be other examples, like, for instance, like a hiking club, or rock climbing, or something like that, where there's kind of a, this shouldn't be the reason people do it, the only reason people do it. But let's say, people pair up.

• 1:59:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:59:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  As a consequence of time there.

• 1:59:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:59:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  That the culture of that thing provides additional opportunities to grow the relationship with peers.

• 1:59:41Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:59:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right? Because there's certain things, like you join an improv class.

• 1:59:43Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:59:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  Great. Like, my sister's really into drama and theater, still does. Through your classes for her own enrichment. Yeah. But if you meet someone there, it's not like the the culture around it sort of cultivates the evolution of the relationship. Like whereas in like church, like you might even get married in that church. Yep. In the context of a hiking club, like you might be out with the other couples that you meet or or single people that you meet for many years. Like you can sort of, it's a community that Yeah. that can grow over time. Yeah. Certain things, here I'm showing my ignorance around improv classes. Yeah. But certain things like a pottery class or pickleball or something like it doesn't just at face value present a sort of trajectory of like That's right. I'm sounding really nerdy here, but kind of like a set of maturational stages that

• 2:00:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  it that you can continue to like be in the relationship. Yeah. There. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yep. Really stumbling for the words here. No, no, no, I totally get it. This, by the way, is a great reason to not meet people at work. Not meet people at work. I'm not trying to like throw a cold blanket on people who decide to meet people at work, but oftentimes It's the challenge. oftentimes that the relationship doesn't necessarily flourish in the context of the work environment. It's not like the work environment makes the relationship grow. I've seen more things split over time if both people work there. Oftentimes they have to move to separate buildings. Right. Just for a variety of reasons, but it's not like the culture encourages it. Whereas there's certain things that are a bit more, since you were talking for a moment there, like an evolutionary biologist, like we evolved in small villages and small groups

• 2:01:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  where, you know, you had peers and elders that that provide this positive reinforcement on relationship. You know, it's kind of an interesting thing, like no matter how evolved we are or progressive Yeah. we are. I don't know many women that ask men to marry them in 2026. I'm sure they're out there, but it's still the Interesting. tacit assumption Yeah. that men are going to do the asking. Yeah. Just saying, okay, so how progressive are we really? Right? It's also true that when people get married, most of the time, they stand up in front of other people Yeah. and state their vows. This is not like, you know, you know, under the bed sheets, I promise, I promise. This is like a public disclosure. These days it ends up on Instagram. You know, so.

• 2:01:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, there's clearly a feedback that comes from being part of a larger structure that reinforces relationships over time.

• 2:02:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it can be a big

• 2:02:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  You promised. You didn't just promise to me, you promised to the whole world.

• 2:02:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:02:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right?

• 2:02:10Speaker 00

  And that can be an important source of support too, because then it's that, at least the subjective sense, like, these people have our backs, right? If we run into hard times, there's a community that's going to be there and support us. And then I think you're right, on the initial attraction side, having a sense that we're part of this larger collective, that there's something about that that feels good and provides structure that like, that can help keep moving things forward. And you're right that the workplace context is particularly tricky, because many workplaces don't want to encourage that kind of thing. And it's going to often happen anyway.

• 2:02:53Speaker 00

  And probably the smartest workplaces are the ones that allow for the possibility that peers are going to get together and have structures in place that will be able to keep the personal life appropriately personal and then, you know, deal with the fallout if the fallout happens.

• 2:03:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  One place I trained might have been UC Davis. All the junior faculty, of which there were many of them when I first joined, there were a large fraction of couples

• 2:03:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:03:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  in the department.

• 2:03:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:03:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  Or who had spouses in other departments. I think more than 80% of those couples ended up divorced.

• 2:03:24Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 2:03:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  Now, we can't, there are a lot of variables there. Fortunately, most of them are on good terms. I can't say they ended up with other people in the department, that didn't happen. But, you know, I watched and was like, whoa, like, this is interesting. You know, this didn't, I want to say didn't end well, because I think they're all happy now. But there does seem to be some additional stress of that. So, I mean, this gets to a question you've actually studied, which is this notion of similarity. So maybe we should talk more about that because it's more data-driven question, which is perceived similarity matters more than actual similarity.

• 2:04:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:04:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  What is perceived similarity?

• 2:04:04Speaker 00

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

• 2:04:47Speaker 00

  They will really come to think that what really matters is that we love Japanese cinema and that we, you know, that we share the same politics. Whereas for another couple, you know what? We have different politics, but that doesn't really matter to us.

• 2:05:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  Does anyone say that nowadays?

• 2:05:03Speaker 00

  No, people still do. I mean, look, what you see in the political matching data is that the odds that people of, you know, diametrically opposed preferences, the odds they're going to get together in the first place are very, very low. But among the mismatches that do exist, it actually doesn't predict satisfaction all that much. And I think this is why, because you just compartmentalize it. If we match, it's important. If we don't match, oh, who cares? Does anybody care about that, right? So much motivated reasoning. So this is why, if what I wanted to do was take two people who had never met and assess everything I could about them, and then figure out whether they were going to be a match

• 2:05:45Speaker 00

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

• 2:06:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, this is why the app seemed totally useless. Because if you were just pair up, well, you want this and you want this, I want that too, and I want that too. You're telling me that it's as good as chance.

• 2:06:24Speaker 00

  It's as good as chance. And look, if there's evidence for similarity on anything, it could be in the realm of like demographics, socioeconomic status kinds of things. I've seen like unpublished data, but promising. But even then, those effects are so small. So I'm, you know, we're going from a 50/50 coin flip to like 53/47. These are small effects across the board. Because we get all of this motivational latitude. When we really like somebody, we find the things we have in common, we focus on those, we convince ourselves those are the most important things in the world. And the thing is, who am I to criticize them? Because the people in the happiest relationships, that's what they're doing.

• 2:07:07Speaker 00

  They're exhibiting those kinds of biases. And it's like stupid human tricks, but it like kinda works.

• 2:07:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  You wanna hear something really scary?

• 2:07:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:07:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  You probably know this already, but I was shocked. Let's just say someone I know who would know told me that the biggest dating app in the world by an enormous margin is?

• 2:07:30Speaker 00

  It's not Tinder?

• 2:07:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  Instagram.

• 2:07:33Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:07:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  And this was actually very much in parallel to the algorithm favoring communication by direct message. People will say like, social media isn't social anymore. It's not about like seeing what people are doing. The real dynamics, the real time spent, and you'll notice how you get rewarded and what gets served up in the algorithm. Rewarded meaning like what posts do better than others? If there's a strong correlate to communication about that through direct message, it's a Dating app that's kind of cloaked for many people as a social media app. But of course, I use it to teach neuroscience and other things. And this will be on Instagram.

• 2:08:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  So I mean, I'm a big fan of Instagram and other social media platforms for teaching and learning. And I say that sincerely. But the majority of the time spent now is not scrolling. It's it's getting to communications that move to real world. And then feedback to social media. So I found that interesting. So I'm imagining a question.

• 2:08:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:08:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  Because you study questions people ask them on dates. And we used to be able to say, if you were on a deserted island, who would you want to be there with? Like, who's the one person that you could stand being with? Or perhaps even really enjoy being with, assuming you have all the resources.

• 2:08:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:08:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  Now, I think the question should be, who's the one person that would get you to not engage with anyone else in the world? In other words, set down what you called, and I've never heard this before, the derivation of alternatives.

• 2:09:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  This is an interesting term.

• 2:09:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:09:10Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 2:09:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:09:30Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 2:09:45Speaker 00

  Resolves.

• 2:09:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, that he helps resolve. Win for his clients started with a innocuous communication on Instagram. It starts with a like, starts with a like, starts with a conversation, starts with a ends up in the corner of a grievance or a or a commonality that sensed. And then the derivation of alternatives emerges and eventually the relationship dissolves.

• 2:10:09Speaker 00

  We think about how people handle alternative partners. If you're in a purportedly monogamous relationship, this is a challenge that relationships are going to face. And I sort of see these like twin streams happening at the same time. So what you see in general is that for people who are in relationships, and especially if they are happy in that relationship, any alternative partner that you can throw at them.

• 2:10:38Speaker 00

  They will tend to think that that alternative partner is pretty weak sauce. They think that person is less desirable than any other metric you might want to come up with for how desirable that person actually is. That's what we mean by derogation of alternatives. It's like, they're coming in up here, but because I'm partnered with you and I'm happy with you, I see them as less desirable than they actually are. Side note, that's why, is one of the reasons why the marketplace metaphor starts to break down, because people actually start to become bad barometers of what is quote unquote, "good." You stop seeing this alternative's actual value because you're so happy with the person that you have.

• 2:11:20Speaker 00

  Okay, so this is a good thing and this is a real defense mechanism that people have.

• 2:11:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is it a defense mechanism? Or, I mean, but it's protective of healthy, monogamous relationships?

• 2:11:31Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, and in the best, yes. You know what? That's so funny, because in our jargon, we see defense mechanism. I mean that in the best possible way. Protective mechanism. Yeah, protective mechanism, right. Yeah, you're defending the relationship. That's so funny. I'd like forgotten.

• 2:11:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  We've had a few too many psychologists on here.

• 2:11:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, right, of course. That is a negative connotation for some people, not for me. Okay, so it's a protective mechanism. But at the same time, people also do this thing that I call like playing with fire, but it's more like, you know, playing with what really seems to be a harmless book of matches. And I'm just messaging these people, well, what's the big deal? This isn't going to go anywhere. I'm just, you know, we're chatting a little bit. This isn't going to go anywhere. And things escalate.

• 2:12:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  Sorry to interrupt.

• 2:12:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:12:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  And, you know, one of our former guests on this podcast, who's immensely popular in the dating, relationships and romance sphere is Esther Perel.

• 2:12:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:12:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I think the perception about some of her messaging, whether accurate or not, is that there can be some value to, you know, in her first book, I think, and I haven't read it, but the excerpt that was... relayed to me was this notion like, oh, like someone isn't feeling as much chemistry in their relationship. So like, the woman, this wouldn't happen nowadays, most likely, but goes to a bar and like flirts a bit and then like, some, some sense of, of sexual confidence is restored and then her husband is then attracted to her differently again. And, you know, I've heard the more crude phrase, doesn't matter where you get your appetite, as long as you eat at home. This is more of the 1950s, 60s variety. By the way, none of these statements come from me, although my mouth is saying them. These are things

• 2:13:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  that you hear out there, right?

• 2:13:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:13:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Directly in opposition to what you're saying, which is not to say that what you're saying is wrong. I just think that there was a, there was about a 20 or 30 year period there, where people kind of assumed that monogamy could thrive.

• 2:13:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:13:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  Despite the inputs and monogamy could thrive, perhaps even better if people acknowledged this aspect of self that is still attracted to other people. They talk about it. What you're talking about is really a, more of a protective cloak around the commitment. I do sense people are veering back toward that, what you're describing.

• 2:13:48Speaker 00

  You know, how I think about it is, is the protective cloak, that that's sort of there as a baseline, but then signals will get through some, sometimes. Sometimes because you're messing around on Instagram, but sometimes because you went to the bar with your friends and there was this cute guy who was chatting you up. And the evidence there too, I interpret, I think the way a stare would interpret it and, and what you see in the data, also suggests something like a protective mechanism. Again, it's playing with fire, but if you look in studies where they ask people, have a sexual fantasy about your partner. Now, how much sexual desire do you feel for your partner? It has gone up. Great. That's pretty straightforward.

• 2:14:33Speaker 00

  Now, please have a sexual fantasy about, I don't know, whoever's in second place. That's not your partner. Then you start having sexual feelings for that person. And you start having sexual feelings for your partner at the same time. So it's exactly the metaphor that you're describing. That when we feel a sense of attraction, it can rebound onto our partner. And by the way, it doesn't happen in the reverse. Okay, so the partner, your current partner, again, for most people in happy relationships, holds a special position, you might say, where even when there is a little bit of a threat, and I've noticed somebody, it rebounds somewhat. I don't advise that people go out and do this.

• 2:15:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  Are you saying it rebounds like it's a fuel for the relationship? The way that Esther and other people have talked about? That's a real thing?

• 2:15:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, I mean, it's recent studies, I can point to one or two, they're all like within the last few years.

• 2:15:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's gonna be very uncomfortable for some people to hear that their partner may come home immensely attracted to them because they had some sort of interaction during the day of either being attracted to someone or receiving signals of attractiveness.

• 2:15:43Speaker 00

  Right, where I am 1,000% with Esther is that the danger, the problem, is not that your partner was sexually attracted to somebody else. The problem is usually in the escalation. It's, yeah, but now are they like repeatedly hanging out with them and having like conversations that they feel secretive about, or that, you know, if it's you, that you feel secretive about. Those are the warning signs. Because then what will start to happen is that the protective layer that people typically put around their partners, it will start to erode. And that's when people are at a greater risk of infidelity. It's usually a process like that. The simple fact that we can be attracted to other people, that is not a problem for the average relationship.

• 2:16:28Speaker 00

  It's the repeated follow through on that attraction that becomes a problem.

• 2:16:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  And that's something that evolved in recent years, that there used to be far more transient interactions that would never resurface again. You sit next to someone on a plane, you have a conversation, there might be attraction, there might not be, but you develop some degree of intimacy. Some people would disclose a lot on planes. And then you never hear or talk to them again.

• 2:16:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:16:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  Nowadays, there's almost always an opportunity for people to follow up and connect with people. That's what James Sexton is referring to.

• 2:16:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:16:59Andrew D. Huberman?

  When he talks about social media being a, um, an, uh, borrowing other person's language here, an attack vector, you know, on a relationship. And maybe that is a good reason for people who are in committed relationships to just get off of

• 2:17:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:17:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  social media, period. But it's also a context where people spend, quote unquote, spend time with people for other reasons.

• 2:17:20Speaker 00

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

• 2:17:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  What about in the reverse?

• 2:17:46Speaker 00

  Or in the reverse, yeah, sure.

• 2:17:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  Some of the, um, what appear to be the strongest and happiest couples that I know, I know very little about their dynamics, period.

• 2:17:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:17:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  Which is kind of an interesting thing in its own right. But some of the people that are in that set.

• 2:18:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  Seem to have a pretty, uh, relaxed rapport around, oh yeah, uh, so and so, referring to their spouse, really likes that actor or actress.

• 2:18:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  Like, it's like, it's just kind of a thing that they understand.

• 2:18:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:18:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  But it's over there, right? It's, it's, it's out of distance.

• 2:18:16Speaker 00

  It feels safe, yeah.

• 2:18:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, it's not, um, it's not like a looming threat.

• 2:18:20Speaker 00

  It's very different if it's about somebody that you both like, know and spend time with. It's much more threatening in those cases. And, and I think that also is part of why that derogation process happens is because that threat feels very uncomfortable. You're like, even if it's your attraction, like, you kind of want to downplay it because the thought of what would it mean if I'm like, with the wrong person? Or like, what would happen if this thing spiraled out of control? It, it's upsetting for most people. I mean, we take all this time to build a relationship up, to be this thing that we really value, that's a central part of our lives.

• 2:19:02Speaker 00

  The thought that like, it could disappear at a moment's notice because of, of a, a mistake that we would make, it, it can be threatening to most people. E- even if we're imagining ourselves engaging in the actions that would bring things to an end.

• 2:19:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  I heard a really scary story that may or may not be informative. I think it is, and maybe you can help me understand it. Anytime someone starts a story with, I have a friend. Yeah. It gets a, uh, full. Weird, but based on an observation I had a long time ago where I was going to a gym and I had a truly just platonic friendship with this woman. She would go to the gym too. Back then, not a lot of women worked out in gyms. If I'm honest, like it was like not a lot of women lifted weights. It was like something that was kind of reserved for guys or for female bodybuilders. But she wasn't a bodybuilder, but she, she liked lifting weights. Yeah. And super fit. She's a super accomplished athlete now. She, um, one day when we were leaving, she was like really upset. I was like, what's up?

• 2:20:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  And she's like, all these guys kept coming up to me. And I'm like, well, that's happening all the time. Like, you know, and she's like, no, they were all really unattractive. And I said, okay, well, you're good at dealing with you. Like she was very skilled. She's very beautiful then and now. And so very skilled at like saying, thanks, but no thanks. Yeah. And then she said something that was absolutely like shocking to me that I've shared with other female friends and some men, and they always go, no way. And she said, I feel like I have to go like flirt with a really attractive guy now. And it was clear that despite being incredibly attractive, incredibly accomplished and

• 2:20:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  super athlete was questioning her own value. This is very evil evolutionary biology because the guys that were approaching her were in her mind, very quote unquote, low value, unattractive. Yeah. It, it like got to her. You know, of course my interpretation was, okay, guys, the next time a really attractive woman walks up to you and seems like she's chatting you up, you don't know that it's actually about you. Right. You know, like just know that it may not be about you. Like, like note to self. And what's wild is that years later, I

• 2:21:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  Observed and talked to someone in a basically same dynamic.

• 2:21:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:21:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  But she's married and she said, yeah, if a bunch of people hit, people always hit on this.

• 2:21:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:21:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  This other woman too. She's like, if they do that, I sort of feel like I have to go kind of um, get a clear perception again of whether or not I could be with an attractive guy. And now granted, she's married.

• 2:21:40Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:21:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  To a super successful.

• 2:21:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:21:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  What anyone, male or female, would describe as super good looking guy.

• 2:21:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:21:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  And they have a super stable family. And I thought to myself, oh, my God. And I don't know that this is unique to women. I don't know, but it's kind of weird if you think about it. Now, it could be their unique insecurity, but it's like if data start coming in. Let's flip it.

• 2:22:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:22:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  If a lot of really attractive people of the opposite sex.

• 2:22:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:22:05Andrew D. Huberman?

  Start talking to you, whoever's listening to this. That you perhaps start to wonder if something important is going on there. There's information there.

• 2:22:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:22:14Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 2:22:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:22:23Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's just like, like, what's really going on here?

• 2:22:26Speaker 00

  I think the part of the story that's the most head scratching is that they're in relationships. So shouldn't they be?

• 2:22:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  In the second case.

• 2:22:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, in the second case. So shouldn't they be getting the feedback that's positive on a regular basis anyway? Let's, for the sake of argument, just assume that she was. So she was getting positive feedback at home and yet the experience of having less appealing men come up to her led her to feel like, ooh, I need to do something to reaffirm.

• 2:22:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, I think it was a question, am I losing it was that was kind of the language that came out.

• 2:23:01Speaker 00

  Am I losing it?

• 2:23:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  Whatever it was.

• 2:23:04Speaker 00

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

• 2:23:23Andrew D. Huberman?

  I've observed that.

• 2:23:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:23:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Many, many times.

• 2:23:25Speaker 00

  Sure. There you go.

• 2:23:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:26Speaker 00

  So that happens all the time. I think one of the strongest, uh, most uh, like resonant things that made value does for us, or the way that we experience it most acutely is indeed in the attention we get from strangers and or the junior high type scenarios that we talked about. So. That we do have a level of attractiveness and it changes as we age. There is a consensus out there about how desirable we are. And that consensus is not going to stay exactly where it is. It's going to shift. And you might be in a relationship and be very happy with the person who unambiguously thinks you're a 10. And yet still wonder, what does everybody else think?

• 2:24:11Speaker 00

  Like, do they think I'm a seven? Do they think I'm a four? What has happened to me? So I totally get that that experience of how am I coming across to the world? Is it less than I thought it was? And that the only great information that you have is how strangers respond to you. It's sort of a funny way of flipping all of this stuff around. Because again, as a relationships researcher, my bias is always, your husband thinks you're a 10. You think he's a 10. You won the lottery. Like, that's it. You did it. But I acknowledge, yeah, there can be cases where we still wonder about what strangers think of us. And it might matter to our sense of self-worth and sense of who we are.

• 2:24:56Speaker 00

  So, so I'm not going to judge it, but it is a fascinating flip of the way I typically think about these things.

• 2:25:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  It makes me wonder whether our notions of self, and this goes back to what we were talking about before, the Esther Perel thing and attractiveness that sort of boomerangs back into the relationship. Something that's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people to hear. But at some level, all of it makes me wonder whether there's a healthy compartmentalization that we could adopt as a society. Which is not to say like, anyone can be attracted to anyone and therefore commitment isn't real. Nor is it saying like, okay, when you're in a committed relationship, it's a complete black box.

• 2:25:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:25:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right? Because there is this thing called the internet and there's this thing called the human psyche. And you study it around these issues. But maybe it's, if people understood that those are two different things.

• 2:25:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:25:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  Sometimes we refer to it like as the shiny object, but that that's a, an aspect of self or it's an aspect of wanting that's not, it's not not real. It's real. But that. Maybe there's a way to compartmentalize it so that it's has the potential to be toxic to a relationship.

• 2:26:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:26:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  But acknowledging that it's real, that it's part of our wiring, might diffuse some of its power. Like I said, some of these couples that are like, oh yeah, like, what's the phrase couples have where they're like, oh, you get a, it's like a hall pass.

• 2:26:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:26:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  Which is never gonna happen, right? She's like, you know, so and so, you know, my, my wife gets a hall, I get a hall pass with, because basically it's never gonna happen.

• 2:26:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 2:26:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  So it's not really a hall pass. It's a, it's a, it's a hall pass that exists in this alternate universe where the other person could actually. So you're someone, be careful with the hall pass notion, because I don't know where that could lead, I'm not suggesting it.

• 2:26:43Speaker 00

  They need to be like really famous.

• 2:26:44Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 2:27:16Speaker 00

  I've always wondered about this.

• 2:27:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  That was the younger, more attractive, working, funny, sexy, whatever. And this is men and women versus the like tortured, I'm not getting work, the work is not as good as it used to be. I mean, there, it's like, and I've seen this with people who had fame young for other reasons, in sports and things like that, and they are crushed. And so what you wanna say is, like, just realize that you have this awesome aspect of self that doesn't live in you right now anymore. But it's still you, like, you got that.

• 2:27:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:27:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, I think there's a similarity here. Like, if people would just be like, I've got everything I need and I'm good because, yeah, that other stuff exists and I feel good about it. Not like I'm gonna pretend it doesn't exist. Seems that there could be a very functional way to move through life for people who have this insecurity.

• 2:28:09Speaker 00

  I totally agree, and in fact, I'll even go. A step further, which is to say, I try, I don't always succeed, but I try to think this way about relationships that have come and gone too. Because I think there's a real tendency, I mean, I was gonna say in our culture, but it might be a lot of cultures, to see like past relationships that have ended, and I'll even put divorces in this category, to look back and say, I failed. And I think people reinforce this, even unintentionally. You know, you, you go through a breakup, a dating breakup, and people say, I'm so sorry, I know what that's like, come over and have some ice cream.

• 2:28:52Speaker 00

  You go through a divorce, and people say, well, what happened? Because they're trying to make sure that it doesn't happen to them, because they're interpreting it as a failure. And boy, I think if we give each other a little bit of grace and see it all as, yeah, that was the thing that happened, it was real, it mattered in that moment, things happened along the way, it, it, it didn't work out, I changed, you changed, like, being able to accept that, like, all of those things are real and have or had value, you know, I'd love to try to encourage people to do that. I know, like, there's so many people out there right now who are like, yeah, but my ex is a dick, and I, I'm with you, I totally get that.

• 2:29:37Speaker 00

  And to the extent that there's any ability to hold these two thoughts in mind simultaneously, I think it's good.

• 2:29:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  My girlfriend and I have a rule, we don't have many rules.

• 2:29:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:29:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  One of the rules is we don't talk negatively about anyone else that we've ever been with.

• 2:29:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:29:52Andrew D. Huberman?

  We, we are.

• 2:29:53Speaker 00

  This is good.

• 2:29:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  We're very comfortable with the fact that we've had previous relationships, because early on, we realized that, like, in the end, like, that's all about our choices.

• 2:30:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:30:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  So it's kind of a crazy argument.

• 2:30:04Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:30:04Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 2:30:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:30:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  And she's careful to ask, not to ask too many questions. We, we actually have, um, selective ignorance around, around certain, we just like, I don't care, like, I genuinely don't. Go down certain lines of inquiry and she doesn't either. And I think it's great.

• 2:30:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:30:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  I think it's great. I think it's a, it sets up like a, you're the, we're here now. This is time moving from now forward and where it goes, we determine that. But, but histories are real. And I have always admired, I have a few friends that paired up very early. And they went through all these developmental milestones together. First jobs, some even graduate college as couples, kids, you know, all this stuff. And there's something really beautiful about people that you have a long developmental trajectory to, big milestones that they reach together. Nowadays, people are pairing up later. They're getting divorced and remarrying. It's harder to build a common narrative.

• 2:31:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:31:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is there any data about common narrative? Good or bad, like we went through a lot.

• 2:31:22Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:31:23Andrew D. Huberman?

  Can be building as well. Is time together a factor? Like when you control for everything else, is duration of relationship an indicator of sort of quality and satisfaction of relationship?

• 2:31:36Speaker 00

  So if we're looking strictly at relationship duration, honestly, on average, it tends to be a bad sign. In other words.

• 2:31:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  Wait a second. Staying together is bad?

• 2:31:50Speaker 00

  No, it just means that like, that over time, people were the happiest early on in their relationship than they are today.

• 2:31:59Andrew D. Huberman?

  Oh, no.

• 2:31:59Speaker 00

  Right. It's actually kind of a bummer.

• 2:32:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  Can you just break up and get back together a bunch?

• 2:32:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 2:32:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  Okay.

• 2:32:04Speaker 00

  We don't study that. We should.

• 2:32:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  Okay.

• 2:32:06Speaker 00

  Um, that might have some promise.

• 2:32:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm not volunteering.

• 2:32:09Speaker 00

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

• 2:32:52Speaker 00

  but you're also losing the continuity with yourself. You're losing the stories and the narratives that you've built with this other person and all of those memories and all of those components.

• 2:33:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, I think that's why it can feel like a failure because there's this understandable and I think very desirable wish that this it's like a novel, it's gonna have a beginning, a middle and an end. And the end is death. Like, we're gonna, till death do us part. That is written into the script, right? And so I think if it ends early, I think a lot of people don't know how to integrate it into their life story.

• 2:33:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:33:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  The evolutionary biology part, which seems very real to me, is that all we have is time and energy.

• 2:33:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:33:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  And when we invest, time is running. There's no do-over.

• 2:33:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:33:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, there's no do-over. So I think that people carry a lot of resentment about the time lost.

• 2:33:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, and the energy and the investments that you put into it. But, and I think, I think it's useful to think about those investments as being about like self and story. And that to the extent that you can use it as an opportunity to, like, whether it's like reinvent or recreate or, you know, you preserve some of the parts of yourself from the prior relationship, but maybe not all the prior parts of yourself. There are some things that you'd rather let go. To the extent that you can hold on to the good parts of the story, the parts that you want to remember, that you want to keep. It'd be so painful when you're going through the breakup in the first place that I think a lot of times people just wanna like take all of it, put it in a box and get rid of it.

• 2:34:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  Definitely throw away the photos at some point.

• 2:34:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. Although now everything's, you know, in the cloud. It's very, very challenging.

• 2:34:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Hypothalamus versus forebrain. Does the good primitive stuff, meaning

• 2:34:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:34:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  sexual attractiveness outweigh the ability to think about how great someone is? Ideally, there's both.

• 2:34:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:34:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  But the good lover beats stated preferences model.

• 2:34:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:34:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is something that

• 2:34:57Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:34:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  you've talked about before. In other words, is the real glue in a long-term relationship?

• 2:35:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  Some form of physical intimacy that, or put differently, can we think and talk our way, perhaps to ourselves?

• 2:35:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:35:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  Forward through a relationship that doesn't have that physical intimacy?

• 2:35:18Speaker 00

  Usually you will see that things like sexual satisfaction or sexual desire for your partner are gonna be pretty tightly related to how you feel about the relationship in general. It's an important component. I wouldn't say it's an essential component or even the central component for many people. But for other people, it certainly can be. And I, again, I do believe in the Church of Ester Perel, which is that there are ways of recultivating sexual feelings about somebody that actually are sexual feelings about somebody. It's not like a switch where it's just on or it's off. And we know just when we look at them

• 2:36:03Speaker 00

  that sometimes it's about the things we're talking about, the time we spend together or the time that we spend apart. And that that can be rekindling in various ways. So I think the key thing for me is not to engage in fatalism about the sexual desire component. That when, like, when the passion fades in a relationship, that doesn't mean that it's gone forever. It might not be something that you feel like every day at 7:00 PM anymore. It might be the kind of thing that, that comes to the fore in certain circumstances or when you're not totally exhausted. I think that's okay.

• 2:36:45Speaker 00

  And a lot of relationships can absolutely thrive under those circumstances. And you can push it to extremes too, where it's like, my partner hasn't been sexually attracted to me in, you know, years and years. Like, that's gonna be tough. And part of the reason that's tough is because you don't have the sexual intimacy. But also part of the reason it's tough is because it's making me feel terrible about myself. So these things all like cascade in various negative ways. But I think they can also be, be helped in ways too that, you know, that engage some of these more, you know, the, the parts of our brains that at least we're more aware of and, and have some agency over.

• 2:37:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  So is it true that sexual attractiveness, that rating the person's, a person rating their partner as a quote unquote, good lover is? Among the strongest predictors

• 2:37:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:37:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  Of how positively they feel about their partner.

• 2:37:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:37:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Okay, cuz that's, I really appreciate your answer, but I wanna make sure that if that's true, that comes through.

• 2:37:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:37:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  What I'm hearing is, yes, it can, those feelings can wax and wane. And yes, life circumstances and raising kids and job and stress.

• 2:37:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:37:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yes, yes, and yes. I think everyone, including me, acknowledges that. But this idea that it's not important after a certain stage, or that a really healthy romantic relationship can exist without that, what I'm hearing is the data pointing the other direction.

• 2:38:10Speaker 00

  No, that is absolutely correct. The subjective sense that, and that's exactly the wording that we use, the subjective sense that like, this person that I am with, or this person that, in that study, we have people who are in relationships, but we also have people who are reporting on like, just folks that they're initially attracted to. But in both, it actually doesn't really matter. In both cases, feeling like this person is a good lover, or likely to be a good lover, in the case of the attraction scenarios, is a very, very good sign for how positively you feel about the relationship in general, and whether you want the relationship to continue. But again, it's that, it's that subjective sense.

• 2:38:53Speaker 00

  And that's, that's kind of where I'm getting to this component of like, if, if I start to feel like you're not a great lover, like, that's gonna rebound so that then you don't feel desirable, and it's gonna sort of cascade in all of these negative ways.

• 2:39:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  All seems to converge on, it's an important feature of romantic relationships to cultivate, protect from, you know?

• 2:39:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 2:39:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  And you described some, to me, surprising, you know, I, I think for some reason, it makes total sense, and yet it's surprising that this kind of energy from the outside can provide positive support to the relationship.

• 2:39:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:39:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  But Esther said it, Esther, excuse me, has said it, and others have said it, so. Very interesting. Final question. Sounds like a game show.

• 2:39:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:39:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Final question.

• 2:39:39Speaker 00

  Billion dollar question.

• 2:39:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  Your course on this topic and related topics is incredibly popular for obvious reasons. It's a super interesting topic. I mean, at the, at the end of the day, like, our species evolved through these dynamics.

• 2:39:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:39:52Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, it, it wasn't all like, you know, club the,

• 2:39:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:39:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  The lion, you know, gather food, make baby. There was a lot of dynamics. I always chuckle when people say like, you know, stress is a holdover from when we were being hunted by saber toothed. No, that's complete like nonsense. It was also there for when your spouse went hunting for the day.

• 2:40:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:40:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Or gathering and you didn't know if they were going to come back or they came back after sundown when normally they're there at sundown. It's for when your baby was sick.

• 2:40:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:40:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  Like this notion that like stress was only about predation. It's just so stupid. I'd like to have words with whoever came up with that. It's so dumb. It makes no, it's not true.

• 2:40:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:40:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  What are the questions that students are asking most often nowadays? Because I realize that as a, you know, 50 year old male, I suffer from a number of different delusions about relationships as it is for people in their twenties, thirties now. And maybe for everybody because we're all in our own experience. But I think even though the college classroom is not a perfect sample.

• 2:40:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:40:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  By any stretch, presumably there are a lot of different people in there.

• 2:41:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:41:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  Men, women, right? Some are, most are probably straight, some are gay. On average, 2%. Like you're going to get a lot of questions. What are the big questions that, that people seem to want answered? That you're just hearing over and over again, that are both in the direction of like, this is a challenge, but also like, what's going right out there?

• 2:41:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:41:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is anything going right?

• 2:41:23Speaker 00

  I think most of the questions are about, like, like there is often an assumption that like,

• 2:41:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, but these days, it's so screwed up.

• 2:41:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's what they're saying.

• 2:41:36Speaker 00

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

• 2:42:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  Activities.

• 2:42:14Speaker 00

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

• 2:42:56Speaker 00

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

• 2:43:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  Love it. And I'm also hearing, perhaps, don't just sign up for something, but be the person who organizes it.

• 2:43:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I love this, I love this.

• 2:43:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, you can throw a picnic or a party.

• 2:43:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:43:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  When I was a graduate student at Davis, I often didn't make it because I was in lab, but every Friday, there was a pickup beach volleyball game.

• 2:43:49Speaker 00

  Oh, that's fantastic.

• 2:43:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  And then people would go to, there was a Thai restaurant that was, that was also a bar. That night sometimes ended the next morning.

• 2:43:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:43:59Andrew D. Huberman?

  There was a tattoo shop right across the street that closed called American Graffiti.

• 2:44:02Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 2:44:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, that some people got tattoos.

• 2:44:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:44:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  Do not recommend and definitely don't get tattooed drunk. Probably don't even get, do what you want, but, um, but, but it was every Friday.

• 2:44:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:44:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  And there was only one rule, which is that you had to at least attempt to do the kind of like bump set approach to beach volleyball. You couldn't just hit it across the net. And it didn't matter how bad you were, you know.

• 2:44:28Speaker 00

  You had to do the three part.

• 2:44:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, and then everyone would go have Thai food. Some people would have drinks if they drank. Some people would have a lot of drinks, they definitely drank. It's just a really cool thing. Anyone could come.

• 2:44:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:44:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  Things like that happened a lot and it took like zero planning. It was an email that basically just went out. And no one person was in charge. It was just kind of in the collective.

• 2:44:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:44:50Andrew D. Huberman?

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

• 2:45:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:45:05Andrew D. Huberman?

  These things are super easy to do.

• 2:45:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:45:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  You don't have to have any real athletic ability or cooking ability, trust me.

• 2:45:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  It, I just feel like there's so much opportunity for that. But the barrier must be really there for people if they're not doing these things. Cause I think it was just reflexive.

• 2:45:22Speaker 00

  Technology has a pull.

• 2:45:26Speaker 00

  And we can say it's the phones, um, but we could also say that it's whatever is on your TV. I mean, there's lots of reasons these days for people to stay in that just weren't there 20 to 30 years ago. I'd hope that the message would resonate like, you know, gang, like, like these, whether it's the entertainment companies or the apps that are there, they're trying to keep you away. From real socialization, young people, don't you like rebelling and stuff? Rebel against this, you know? Exactly, like form these groups, go out and meet people again in person. I think it's coming back. I really do.

• 2:46:07Speaker 00

  I think the pand- I think it was like a long pandemic hangover where we just kind of forgot this part of our social architecture, but it's coming back. It didn't go anywhere. We're still social creatures and we also have these great frontal lobes. And even if you don't feel like going out and interacting with people, you can kind of nudge yourself to do it. And I think, I think that's pretty fantastic.

• 2:46:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  Thank you so much for the work you do. It's very brave. It's very brave because it runs right up against some longstanding theories of which I, you know, I still think very highly of a good fraction of the evolutionary biology and psychology literature. I now have to filter it through these new findings. But you've created your own new field, basically, which is of course, why your book, which we'll provide a link to, and your work is so popular. And I love the optimism that it shines into every interaction. I'm sure people picked up on that, that you're not a doom and gloom guy, you're a solutions guy. Really appreciate your time here.

• 2:47:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Many people will thank you, both those in relationship, you learned some things to, you know, armor your relationship, understand your relationship better, yourself. And for those who are seeking partners or who are just observing the world around them and are content where they're at, they're going to benefit. So thank you so much. Really appreciate you.

• 2:47:33Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 2:47:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Paul Eastwick. To learn more about his work and to find a link to his book, Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection, please see the links in the show note caption. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific, zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review and you can now Now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast, or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments

• 2:48:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by pre-sale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body.

• 2:49:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, the Neural Network newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one- to-three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training.

• 2:49:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top-right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Paul Eastwick. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

• 2:50:15Speaker 02

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