Logan Ury: The Dating Myths You Need to Stop Believing

Most people date the wrong way. They chase the spark, mistake attraction for compatibility, and expect their partners to read their minds. Then they wonder why relationships don’t last. Logan Ury thinks about dating differently. As the Director of Relationship Science at Hinge, she’s spent years studying what actually makes relationships work. Her findings will change the way you think about attraction, communication, and commitment. In this conversation, Logan reveals why the spark is overrated, how to optimize your dating profile, and the one thing (actually, 8) you must do after every first date. We break down attachment theory, orbiting, polyamory, and having hard conversations in a healthy way. We get answers to questions like: "what’s an appropriate age gap?" and "what to say if you’re not interested after a date?" Plus, Logan shares how she made the decision to be with her husband and the importance of “other significant others.” If you want to stop wasting time on the wrong people and start building something real, this episode is for you. (2:49) First Dates and the Slow Burn (8:07) The Post-Date 8 (14:30) Dating Like a Scientist (15:50) The Height thing... (18:56) The Spark vs Lust (26:35) Fear of Rejection (29:01) Understanding Attachment Theory (39:20) Navigating Online Dating (41:36) Effective Communication in Dating (51:58) Texting Etiquette (01:05:33) Dealing with Rejection (01:08:44) Polyamory (01:13:32) Orbiting (01:30:45) Logan's Story of Meeting Her Husband (01:37:12) Navigating Crucial Decision Points in Relationships (01:41:48) Having Difficult Conversations in Relationships (01:50:15) Other Significant Others (01:59:05) Breaking Up Respectfully (02:02:08) Tips for Creating Dating Profiles Logan Ury is a behavioral scientist, dating coach, and the Director of Relationship Science at Hinge. She’s the bestselling author of How Not to Die Alone. Newsletter - The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at fs.blog/newsletter Upgrade — If you want to hear my thoughts and reflections at the end of the episode, join our membership: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/membership⁠⁠ and get your own private feed. Watch on YouTube: @tkppodcast 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Your dating app profile is sort of like your billboard. You are telling a story about who you are. Am I ready to date? Who should I date? Should I keep dating this person? Should we move in together? Should we get married? Each of these is a pivotal point in your life. The thing that we think makes us unlovable is often what makes somebody feel comfortable around us. But if we truly feel like we're unlovable, we never open up and give somebody the chance to see that for themselves. The sooner you learn how to date, the sooner you can stop dating. It's not about gathering information. It's about having an experience with them. Imagine that you spend 50 years with someone. The day that you meet is 0.0055% of your total time with them.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  You have to shoot your shot. You have to approach people in public. You have to take a risk.

• 1:05Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to The Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. If you want to take your learning to the next level, consider joining our membership program at fs.blog/membership. As a member, you'll get my personal reflections at the end of every episode, early access to episodes, no ads, including this, exclusive content, hand-edited transcripts, and so much more. Check out the link in the show notes for more. Today's episode is all about rethinking modern relationships, from first dates to breakups and everything in between. My guest is Logan Urie, a behavioral scientist, dating coach, and the director of relationship science at Hinge.

• 1:46Shane Parrish?

  She's the bestselling author of How Not to Die Alone and a leading expert in how we form, maintain, and end relationships. Logan challenges some of our biggest myths about dating, including the idea that you need to wait for the spark. Instead, she shares what really matters in a long-term partner, someone you're genuinely interested in, who makes you feel good and who brings out the best. We cover how to approach dating apps and first dates with the right mindset, why clear communication is everything, and how to navigate a difficult conversation in love and beyond. I've got to be honest, I feel a bit vulnerable putting this conversation out there. I share more about my personal life and mindset than I have before,

• 2:28Shane Parrish?

  but I'm hoping someone out there can relate and feel less alone in their journey to find a partner. So whether you're looking for that partner, trying to strengthen your relationship, or just hoping to better connect with the people in your life, this conversation is filled with insights to help get you there. It's time to listen and learn.

• 2:51Shane Parrish?

  I want to start at the beginning, which would be a first date.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Great.

• 2:55Shane Parrish?

  You've reframed this from, I want to find my soulmate, to do I want to spend more time with this person? Walk me through that.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  A lot of people on a first date put so much pressure on themselves. They're really thinking about, could I spend the rest of my life with this person? I'm really busy. Would I want to see them again? I'm going to treat this like a job interview where I ask them, what's your five-year plan? And what did you study in college? And really interviewing this person for the role of spouse. And then, of course, people don't feel any spark or any excitement. And so I like to take the pressure off of a first date and say, this is really an opportunity to have an experience with somebody else, to have some fun. And then, if you have a good time, you can see them again. And you don't have to overthink it and think, is this person who I want to spend the rest of my life with?

• 3:44Shane Parrish?

  So I've been guilty of this in terms of the spark. You know, you walk away from a first date and you're like, yeah, they're a nice person, but maybe they're boring, or you didn't feel that instant romantic connection. And what do you think about the spark? I mean, we all look for the spark.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the spark is very exciting. Who doesn't want to have that feeling of fireworks and instant chemistry with someone? But through the work I've done, I've actually come to see the spark as a bit of my nemesis, because I have coaching clients who say to me, Logan, I went out with this guy. He was great. We had a good time. Oh, I'm not going to see him again. Like, what are you talking about? And they say, I just didn't feel the spark. And so, in our culture, people have come to expect that if you don't have that instant feeling, then it must not be your person. And instead, I teach my coaching clients about the three myths of the spark. So the first myth is that if you don't have the spark, then it can't grow. And that's absolutely not true.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  So we know from research that only 11% of people feel love at first sight. And that means many people are getting to know someone over time. Maybe they live in the same apartment building, they work in the same place, and that attraction and appreciation grows over time. So, the spark can definitely grow. The second myth is that if you feel the spark, it's definitely a good thing. And actually, sometimes, certain people give us the spark because we actually don't know how they feel about us. So sort of that hot, cold feeling makes us wonder, "Does he like me? Does he not like me?" And through that, we end up feeling what we think of as butterflies or chemistry, but it's actually anxiety, and it's actually alarm bells in our head going off. "Do they like me? Do they not like me? Am I accepted?"

• 5:28Speaker 00

  And so, sometimes, it's actually a sign of either the person giving you a hot, cold feeling, or it can be somebody who's a narcissist. I've also found that, let's say I go to an event, and I talk to some of my girlfriends later, and I'll say, "Oh, I really like that guy. We really hit it off." And then they're like, "Wait, I really hit it off with that guy." And we realize we all had what felt like unique connections to this person, but they were actually just really sparky. And I imagine you meet a lot of people through doing this that are really sparky. And so, certain people just give off that spark, and it's not about your dynamic with them, it's about who they are. And then the third myth is that if you have a spark, the relationship is viable. We also know that that's not true.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Just because you met the right way, doesn't mean that it's the right relationship. And so, you can have a very sparky beginning, but it can fizzle out quickly. And you shouldn't stay in the relationship because you had a really good "we met" story. And so, my antidote to the spark is going after the slow burn. And the slow burn is somebody who you like them more and more as you get to know them. They may not be instantly the most charismatic person that you've ever met, but they're really a quality person and they really grow on you. And not because you're settling, but because you're looking for love in a different package than you originally thought. You're not just looking for the life of the party person that's immediately as charismatic.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  And so I feel like I'm married to a slow burn. I met my husband in college. We met again at Google a number of years later. And now we've been together for almost 10 years. And so he's somebody where I really feel like as I got to know him more and more, I liked him more and more. And so I really encourage people to go after the slow burn.

• 7:16Shane Parrish?

  But wait a second, because what ends up happening in this is like you go out on a date and you're like, maybe, maybe not. And back in, you know, 1950, you'd have that maybe, maybe. It was good enough to go out on it again. And then you'd see the person again. But now you go home and you, you pick up your app and you open Hinge. You open whatever app you're using. And you had a average, but maybe slightly above average date that could be a slow burn. And now you've got 16 new messages from all these people who are more exciting. And how do you do a slow burn in that case when all of these people, oh, like, look at this person. They're hot. Oh, they want to text me and they want to see me.

• 7:58Shane Parrish?

  And, you know, this guy or girl that I just went out with is like, oh, they set something up next week, but that's the slow burn. How do you date in this environment?

• 8:06Speaker 00

  Yes, so when I wrote my book, I have a chapter called Make the Second Date the Default. And this was influenced by one of my mentors, Dan Ariely. And the idea here was that if you go on a first date and you think about it as I'm going to be evaluating you the whole time and you're going to either win a second date or not, it puts you in this evaluative mindset. Instead, I want people to be in this experiential mindset where they're asking themselves how the moment feels for them, if they're connecting with the person. And so in the book, I say, assume that every first date you go on, you'll go on a second date and that will help you identify the slow burns more and to really take the pressure off the first date.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  Well, since the book has come out, I feel like that advice is not that realistic. People are busy, people... Sometimes feel like I had no connection with that person. I'm not going to go on a second date with them. So I have changed my advice since the book came out. And instead of thinking about it as make the second date the default, my go to advice here is really to do the post date eight. So the post date eight is a series of questions that I came up with for a client who was having a hard time deciding if she wanted to see someone again. And also somebody who was having a hard time spotting the slow burn. So when you finish the date, you look at this, you can have a screenshot on your phone or you know, memorize the questions. And they ask you things like, how did I feel in my body during the date?

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Did I feel stiff? Did I feel relaxed? Did this person make me laugh? Did this person make me feel heard? Did I feel curious about the person? And probably the most important one, what side of me did they bring out? Because whatever side of you you are with that person is who you'll be for a big majority of your life if you end up with that person.

• 9:54Speaker 02

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• 10:23Speaker 03

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• 10:37Speaker 03

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• 10:53Speaker 00

  And so the post date eight is a great way to see if it was really a dud and you were 0% interested, forget it, don't go on the second date. But if there was maybe not the most charisma that you've ever encountered, or there's been people that you've been more attracted to in the past, it's fine to acknowledge that, but to think there was a seed of something that was planted that I'd like to give another chance to. And so the post date eight is a great way to see when there's potential and to really spot those slow burn people.

• 11:22Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me a little bit more about what side they brought out in you. I've never thought of it that way, but looking back through some of my dates through this lens, I'm like, oh, I was defensive, I was confrontational, I was, yeah, go through that a little bit more.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm glad that you're double clicking into that because it's really something that I think about in a lot of areas of my life. So when I was just making this career shift into the work that I do now, I met with a lot of different people to learn from them. And I'm not going to say her name, but there was one person in particular that whenever I met with her, I would just come home and sort of collapse into the couch and want to watch TV for the next few hours. I was like, what's going on with me? And I was like, there's something about the way that she communicates that makes me feel really small and anxious and like, I don't know what I'm doing and not good enough. There was just something about the words that she used or the questions that she was asking. And so that's a platonic situation, or you know, it's about career.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  But in that moment, I understood, I don't really enjoy being around this person because she brings out a side of me that's insecure. Then I think about my friend Michaela, who's one of my favorite people in the world. When I'm around her, she laughs a lot. She makes me feel hilarious. We want to stay up all night talking because she makes me feel creative and generative. And so I really will do whatever I can to be in the same room as her because she brings out a side of myself that I love. And so when people are dating, especially as they get older, their checklist of what they think they need get longer and longer. So that checklist might look like must be financially independent, must own their own home, must be this tall, must want exactly this lifestyle. And so when they go into that date,

• 13:06Speaker 00

  they are really looking at those things, which are often who that person is on paper. And then they ignore how they feel around that person. Because sure, you need some basic biographical data to decide if you want to go out with someone or not. But once you're on that date, it's really about paying attention to who am I around them?

• 13:25Shane Parrish?

  I love that. And that applies to all areas of your life. Is it your job in that moment to dissect why you're having that response? Or is it to just, I just don't want to be around this person and that's okay?

• 13:39Speaker 00

  I mean, my cheeky answer would be it's my job as your dating coach to tell you that. But no, I think that in life, it really is great to dig into things like that. So it might be, I'm just remembering this story where like early on, when I shifted into doing the dating and relationship stuff, I met up with this guy and I thought it was like a peer to peer conversation. And when I got there, he kind of leaned back and said, so what can I do for you? And it was like that one statement kind of created a power dynamic, which was like, I have power and I can help you. And I remember it really threw me off. And so when I went home and I didn't feel good and I reflected on it, I was like, oh, like maybe our expectations weren't the same going into it. Or the person who did the intro didn't set us up for success.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  And so I made changes so that in the future, when I had an intro like that, I was clear with the person introducing us, you know, what our goals were, things like that. Or I find that if I'm really tired and I push myself to go to an event, I may not have a good time there because I don't have energy to give. And so I think for everyone, being more in touch with who you are, how you show up in different situations, what personality traits trigger you to feel more anxious or insecure, all of that is data that just helps you be a happier person. And so something that I really promote people do is date like a scientist, which is this idea of have hypotheses.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  So a hypothesis could be, I need to date somebody with a graduate degree, but then test that hypothesis. Maybe what you actually care about is intellectual curiosity and somebody who listens to the knowledge project, not somebody who has a master's degree or a PhD. And so really having a hypothesis, testing it, and then being willing to be willing to be proven right or wrong. I think if we all live like a scientist and date like a scientist, we learn so much about ourselves, we push ourselves, and we actually wind up in a much happier place than if we just follow all the assumptions in our head.

• 15:42Shane Parrish?

  I want to double click on the date like a scientist thing a little bit, and maybe I'll bring an anonymous friend into this.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  Great.

• 15:49Shane Parrish?

  Who runs a business, very successful, very ambitious, very wealthy. In theory, he checks all these boxes that women would want, but in reality, I mean, his saying is, they don't want what comes with that.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 16:03Shane Parrish?

  Is that, what do you mean by dating like a scientist in the checklist? And maybe I'm loosely working around this.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I would say a majority of my clients at this point are sort of more powerful male CEOs, and I feel like it is interesting to just hear, you know, women are excited about what they have access to, but then they may not understand that this person works 18 hours a day, or that maybe this person has a chip on their shoulder because when they weren't successful, they felt like they didn't get a lot of attention. And so I feel like the unique problems of that situation are something that I've dealt with. So just breaking down date like a scientist. When I work with people in my coaching, in my courses, people walk in with assumptions of what they need. So it might be, I need to date somebody who's six feet or taller because I'm a taller

• 16:53Speaker 00

  woman, and that's what makes me feel feminine. So then I might say to them, hey, in the United States, only 14% of men are six feet or taller. So now you are eliminating 86% of the male population. You've been actively dating for 12 years. This has not worked out for you so far. Why don't you change your filter on the dating apps? Be willing to date somebody who's shorter and see maybe what you actually care about is somebody who's confident where your height doesn't feel like a factor. Maybe you'll end up with somebody a lot shorter than you, and this is what happened to a man and a woman that I know, because it's not about how tall the guy is, it's about how they make you feel.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  And so her dating like a scientist moment would be changing her filters on the app, dating some men who are shorter, seeing if she can feel attracted to them and attractive with them, and then understanding it wasn't height that was the deal breaker, it was confidence or how attracted she was to them and how attractive they made her.

• 17:54Shane Parrish?

  That six feet thing is like such a killer. I'm like 5'11" and 3/4". It's like, what do you do? Do you say six feet or do you do 5'11"? In which case, every woman has this like six feet.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  The height thing is really interesting. So I would say over the last few years, the posts of mine that have gone the most viral are reels where I've posted about this stat. Because in the comments, you have a lot of women saying, well, guys lie about their height anyway. And then guys say things like, yeah, you should change the height filter. And then women say, well, you filter based on weight. And so anyway, it's just really interesting to see how much this bothers people. And I wish that I could kind of shout from the rooftops to everyone and say, imagine that you were in a bar and you were sitting next to somebody and you're both sitting on stools and you have a 45-minute conversation that is incredible. It's deep, it's soulful, it's mind-blowing.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  And at the end of the date, the guy stands up and he's 5'7". Are you telling me that you're not giving him your number now? No, of course you're going to give him your number because you just saw who this person was and what an incredible connection you had. And in that moment, you're not thinking height first, you're thinking connection first. And I really want people to change their framework and to understand, yes, the filters exist, but you are. Filtering out so many great potential connections. Why not date like a scientist? See if these things that you think are deal breakers are really deal breakers, when most of the time they're not? And move them to the pet peeves or nice to have column?

• 19:27Shane Parrish?

  It strikes me as the difference between how we used to date and how we date now. So we used to date in a way that like, a guy would call on you. You might not know him well. You might have friends. You might have met through your parents or something. But you don't know much about him. And then you spend time with him. So your first impressions. But now we're filtering before you even get to that point. We're filtering based on a dating profile. We're filtering based on pictures. We're filtering based on politics. We're filtering based on all of these things. I want to come back to the spark thing. Is there a difference between the spark and lust?

• 20:01Speaker 00

  I've thought about this a lot because, you know, when you write a book, you're writing it alone. Maybe a few people read it and your editor reads it. And then when it's out into the world, you really get to see what takes off with people. And so I would say a few things have taken off. And one of them is this concept of fuck the spark. And so people have really strong reactions when I say that. Because they feel like, oh, Logan's telling me I shouldn't be attracted to the person or it doesn't matter. Logan's telling me to settle. Wait, I said fuck the spark and then I met someone I wasn't interested in and I dated them for six months and it didn't work out. And so I really want to talk about what the spark is. The spark is a huge emphasis on instant chemistry and instant connection versus allowing it to grow over time.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  I would say that lust is about attraction. And a lot of times, you know, I want to have sex with this person. I hope this person wants to have sex with me. And I think being sexually attracted to someone is of course, something that you should look for in a relationship. But it's slightly different from the spark, which is this overall feeling of like, when I meet someone, I want to be around them more and more. And the big message I'm trying to get across here is that that feeling of chemistry can grow over time.

• 21:15Shane Parrish?

  What should a first date look like to maximize information gathering or connection, I guess?

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I will even push on that question and say, I don't think it's about information gathering. Imagine that you spend 50 years with someone. The day that you meet is 0.0055% of your total time with them. And so it's not about gathering information, it's about having an experience with them. So one thing that I've done through my research is look at people who are consistently getting asked on second or third dates. Look at people who people really are drawn to. And when I talk to these people, it's not what you might think. They're the tallest people, they're the hottest people. It's often that they're very fun. They meet up with you on a date and they tell you a funny story, or they have a silly

• 22:05Speaker 00

  interaction with the bartender, or they tell you about what happened at work that day and the funny situation that they got into. There's something about them that's very vibrant and lively. And when people are around them, they feel like they are also having an experience. They're not just exchanging information. And so I think if we think that a first date is really about, I need to leave and know your biography, that's not really fun for either person. If it instead shifts to what I was talking about, our first date is about seeing how does it feel to be around the person? What side of me do they bring out? Those dates end up being so much more successful. Because even if they don't lead to a relationship, they lead to you knowing, how would it feel to be with this person?

• 22:49Shane Parrish?

  I like that a lot. What are the indicators that I should be looking for on a date that would lead to emotional connection?

• 22:58Speaker 00

  So, one thing that I've looked at a lot is this idea of what matters more and less than we think for long-term relationship success. So, a lot of the things that people think matter more than they do include things like looks and money. So of course, looks matter. We just talked about lust. You want to feel attracted to the person, but I wouldn't give anyone the advice of try to date or marry the hottest person that you've ever met, or the person maybe who you've had the hottest sex within your life. Because like many things in life, our brains adapt to them over time. And so if you think about some of the most beautiful celebrities in the world, there are often people kind of known to humanity who have cheated on them. And so it's like if even

• 23:43Speaker 00

  these people that are considered the most attractive by cultural standards are being cheated on, there's this idea that people adapt over time to somebody's looks, and even if someone's really attractive, will get used to that over time. The same thing is true with money. I know this amount of money has changed over the last few years, but you know, they used to say happiness doesn't change over $75,000. Now I think they've raised it, but it's this idea that whatever amount of money you have, you get used to. A few more things that matter less than people think they do. So people think, we need to have all the same hobbies. If I love wine, I want someone who loves wine too. And you don't actually have to share the same hobbies. You just need to support the other person's hobbies and have them support yours so that you can continue investing

• 24:28Speaker 00

  in that hobby. And you don't have to have the same personality. Sometimes people will say, I have a big personality. I love to go out. I want to find a woman who does the same thing. And I'm like, no way. Two of you in a room, two of you at a dinner party, two of you in a relationship, that's way too much. I want you to find somebody who grounds you. And it's often about being complimentary versus being the same. So that was really the category that matters less than we think it does. For the things that matter more than people think they do. So the first one is loyalty. Really, is this somebody who will stick by you? Of course, that's a hard thing to find out on a first date, but one proxy for that that I've found is asking people about old friendships. People

• 25:12Speaker 00

  who have friendships from different phases of their life. Do they hang on to people? Or when they move, do they let those go? Or are they social climbing and always trying to trade up? So does this person keep friends from different phases of their lives? Another one is emotional stability. And that's also hard to figure out on a first date. But how does this person deal with adversity? How does this person deal with frustrations? Are they somebody who can sort of pause and think before they react? Another one is the ability to make hard decisions together. So, early in dating, you're maybe not making a lot of hard decisions together, but pay attention to how you talk about things. Like, if one person wants to meet up near their house and the other person wants to meet up near their house,

• 25:57Speaker 00

  are you debating it? Are you compromising it? Are they listening to your needs? There's so many ways to really perceive who someone is if you're actually looking for these things. And then, the one that I've been talking about, which is what side of you they bring out, and really thinking about the dynamic itself. And that understanding that a relationship is not about two instruments on their own, but it's about the music that you're making together. And really paying attention to, almost this third object of the dynamic between the two of you, as opposed to just who that person is on their own.

• 26:31Shane Parrish?

  I had a friend who made this comment. Well, we just adjust to

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 26:35Shane Parrish?

  what we have. And then we kind of like, we are human, so we yearn for something different than what we have.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. My husband is very scientific, and he's worked in a lot of different labs. And when we first started dating, early on, he said some quote to me, or he was telling me about some study, which is like, there's a male rat in a cage, and they put in a female rat. And at first, they have sex, but over time, the male rat gets sick of having sex with that female rat. But then, if you keep replacing the rat with new female rats, that male rat will have sex with those female rats until it literally passes out from exhaustion. And so, it's just this idea of, yes, a lot of what is sexually exciting to people is novelty. And so, instead of being disappointed or frustrated by that in a monogamous, long-term relationship, you can just think about the fact that I acknowledge that that will happen,

• 27:27Speaker 00

  and so I'm not gonna spend all of my, you know, partner choosing coins just on looks, because that's not a good long-term strategy.

• 27:34Shane Parrish?

  Do you think we've sort of broken dating in a way where, I mean, I've been on dates with people, we all know people who are like, I wish people would come up to me and ask me out. I wish I didn't have to use a dating app. And my defense of, you know, thinking immediately in this is like, society has taught guys not to approach women anymore. What's your reaction to that?

• 27:55Speaker 00

  This is something that I'm thinking about a lot specifically with Gen Z and Gen Alpha. So I was recently speaking to somebody, she's a 16-year-old entrepreneur, and she's trying to deliver help for teen daters. And she said by far the number one thing that she gets questions about is how to deal with rejection. And so I am genuinely concerned that because of different societal factors, because of people who maybe lost out on some social skills during the pandemic, because of people who live a lot of their lives online, there is not that rejection resilience that many of us need in life. So if you want your dream job, you need to go out there, get a lot of no's and go after it. You don't just sit at home waiting for a LinkedIn recruiter to message you about your dream job.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  That doesn't happen. You have to make it happen. And the same thing is true with dating, is that you have to shoot your shot. You have to approach people in public. You have to take a risk. And so I'm encountering a lot of people who are very afraid of rejection and are not taking those risks, and I think that it's leading to fewer relationships.

• 29:02Shane Parrish?

  I'm a make it happen kind of person.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  I can tell.

• 29:04Shane Parrish?

  In work and in life. I also know that that can come off as aggressive or assertive. How do you deal with that?

• 29:13Speaker 00

  That's interesting. So what's a scenario that you feel like could come across the wrong way?

• 29:18Shane Parrish?

  Well, make it happen is like you have a great first date or something, and then you're instantly like on to the next date, you know? You're like, I want to see you again. How about tomorrow? And then the other person, I don't know. Like, I feel like we're just in a society now where, you know, you're supposed to wait till tomorrow almost. And I hate personally waiting. I'm sure there's other people out there like me too. Where it's like, no, you're in charge. You have agency and you can make the world happen.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  I love this question because I think it speaks to a really real phenomenon where people are experiencing excitement about somebody, but they feel like they need to hold it back to seem cool. And so I love to talk to people about attachment theory. Has that come up on your podcast?

• 29:59Shane Parrish?

  No, let's go into it.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Okay, so attachment theory is something in the world of relationship science that's truly backed by the research. It's something that first came about around 60 years ago with someone named John Bowlby. And this research was originally done with children to see their attachments to their primary caregiver, but now we have an entire field of adult attachment specifically around relationships. And so there are people who are anxiously attached. What happens for them is their story of love is that I'm gonna chase you, I have to convince you to like me, you might pull away, and we're gonna have this chase dynamic, and that I'm constantly worried that you're not gonna be interested in me and you're gonna disappear.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  So how those people show up in relationships, and I know because I really was one of these daters, is if you don't hear back from somebody, you start spiraling. They met somebody else, they don't like me anymore. You send a bunch of texts to try to reconnect with them, and you're often just in this danger zone where you're not being the person that you want to be because you're trying to have this reconnection moment, you think somebody's gonna pull away. Then there's people who are avoidant attached. They sort of have the opposite experience. Their version of love is I'm gonna be smothered, I'm gonna lose my independence, and when they get too close to somebody, they are the ones pulling away. So they're the ones, you know, great sleepover on a Saturday night, Sunday morning, they wake up, the person hasn't left, and they're like, damn, should I call her an Uber?

• 31:25Shane Parrish?

  Oh my God, that's me.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  That's you?

• 31:28Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  You have that feeling of like, I need my space.

• 31:30Shane Parrish?

  Well, I need my space, and I don't wanna get hurt. There's like an element of vulnerability.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  Absolutely. What you're talking about is completely true. It's not that those people don't wanna be in intimate connection, it's that the fear of being smothered, or the fear of being hurt, causes them to pull away. I'm gonna reject you before you reject me. And so for those avoidant attached people who think that they're gonna be smothered... And then for the anxiously attached people who think they're going to be abandoned, what ends up happening is they often date each other and they reinforce this idea. So I think that love is a chase, you think that love is being smothered. So when I go after you, you pull away. That reinforces mine and that reinforces yours. And anxious, attached, and avoidant people keep dating each other in this anxious-avoidant loop that leaves both people feeling pretty unhappy.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  But there's a third type of securely attached people. And these are people who have a healthy relationship with independence and with intimacy. I want to be close to you, but I also respect and need my alone time. And so often, the way that people get out of the anxious-avoidant loop is they either become more secure themselves, or they date someone who's secure. And so that's what happened for me. After, you know, 10 years of chasing after different people, being rejected, being disappointed, thinking, "Well, if only I could prove my value, then this guy would like me." Instead, when I dated somebody who was secure, it broke a lot of those patterns and we formed what I feel like is my first really healthy relationship.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  What happens is 50% of the population is secure, which sounds like a good thing, but those people are so good at being relationships that they often get snatched up and you have the anxious-avoidant people dating each other. But in the example that you described, it can actually be very secure for somebody to follow up after a date and say, "Hey, I really enjoyed getting to know you. I'd love to see you again. When are you free?" And in that moment, somebody who's used to dating somebody who's avoidant might be like, "Whoa, they're coming on too strong," or "That's so obvious. They're so obviously interested. That's boring." But a ton of the work that I do is training people to identify secure partners and to reestablish them in their heads, not as boring, but as secure, and to know that those are the people to go after.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  So sometimes, that person who pulls away is exciting, that sparky feeling, because you don't know if they like you or not, but instead, really honoring the person who says... I like you, I'm interested, when can I see you again? And so the slight tweak that I would have to yours is not, I like you, can I see you tomorrow? That does kind of feel a little bit intense. But being clear about like, hey, that was a really great date. I feel like we really connected. I'd love to see you again. And then like working together to come up with the next date. And a lot of dating that people miss is that it's about matching somebody's momentum and matching somebody's speed. So it's a dance where I take a step forward and then you need to take a step forward. If I take 10 steps forward, you might feel overwhelmed and take a step back.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  So just paying attention to, are you always the one reaching out? Are you always the one making plans? There needs to be momentum matching for the speed to feel right to both people.

• 34:40Shane Parrish?

  So last year, I realized something was getting in the way of myself. What sparked this in our conversation was freedom. And so I decided to do therapy for the first time as my adult life as a single person. I did marriage counseling as well before my divorce. But it was so fascinating to me because one of the things that led to this was I wouldn't accept compliments from people.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 35:06Shane Parrish?

  The minute somebody started to say something positive, my brain would turn off and I would instantly move to the groceries, what's next in the conversation? I'd stop listening.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:17Shane Parrish?

  And what came out of this is that compliments, in my body, I had somehow associated compliments with power over me because at some point they were taken away. And so it was like, I'll compliment you as long as you do what I want. And then all of a sudden, and so I would associate these things. And so I developed this really strong aversion to people having power over me. And so loss of freedom is a great example of like how that manifests itself in dating, where it's like, no, like that's really hard in dating context because I default to the state of I want to continue to do the things that I'm doing in the way I'm continuing to do them.

• 36:00Shane Parrish?

  And that makes it really hard to find somebody and build a life together and adapt to each other.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  That's super interesting. So for the compliments, was it that? You grew up in a home where there was a strong sense of external validation if you did the right thing, and then you felt like you constantly had to please someone, and the compliments were a sign that you were doing the right thing, but then they could be taken away if you didn't do the right thing?

• 36:26Shane Parrish?

  I don't quite know. A lot of people remember a ton about their childhood.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:30Shane Parrish?

  I don't. I remember certain moments, and like, not a lot before grade eight, to be honest with you. And I was like, I got into a ton of trouble as a kid. I was a bit of a misfit. But the thing that I learned at a very young age was just not to pay attention to them.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  See, because that could also be a positive thing, where you have an internal locus of control that's not looking to other people. Like, even my daughter is one, and she started doing this toy, maybe you remember it, where it's like, you know, there's a stick, and then you put the different round things on top of it. And when she does it, every time she puts one on, she claps. And she doesn't even smile, she just thinks that that's part of how the toy works. You put it on, and then you clap for yourself, because when she does it, we clap for her. I was like, she's a brand-new human in the world, and she's already learning that she's doing things for external validation. Or it's, the clapping, to me, is really bothering me, where I'm like, we're not gonna clap anymore. We cannot reward her for every single thing, because then she will be doing it for us and not for herself. And so, it's

• 37:29Speaker 00

  so interesting that compliments shut you down.

• 37:33Shane Parrish?

  They used to. I've done much better since then. It's sort of being vulnerable. Like, I never wanted to be vulnerable. I would get to this point, and this goes back to the attachment styles, is I needed to feel like somebody else couldn't hurt me or take something away, because I'm giving them power over me in a way, power to hurt me.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  What was that?

• 37:51Shane Parrish?

  I don't know. I'm messed up. If you're listening to this, like...

• 37:53Speaker 00

  But, okay, I'm just gonna push this topic, because I think it's so interesting. But on my first date with my husband, he told me that when people tease him, or troll him, or... It actually makes him feel very close to them. Because something inside of him was like, oh, I'm a piece of shit. So if somebody like, if somebody sort of like calls that out, it makes him feel known. And like, I don't know that-

• 38:16Shane Parrish?

  Oh, it's like, you see me.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I don't know that that happens all the time, but like, it is something that I've seen with certain people who are maybe more powerful or dominant, is that when somebody actually calls them out on stuff, it makes them feel like, oh, I can trust that person because they see my flaws. And they know from the beginning what my flaws are. I don't have to put up a front of seeming perfect all the time and then disappointing them. Like, this is a whole rabbit hole of like, I don't want to let somebody in because if they knew the real me, then they would reject me.

• 38:48Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, totally. If you saw all of me, then you wouldn't, I'm not lovable is effectively what you're-

• 38:53Speaker 00

  That is such a big part of the work that I do, is this idea of people come to me and they think I'm undatable.

• 38:59Shane Parrish?

  I, yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Do you feel that way?

• 39:02Shane Parrish?

  Generally, yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  You feel undatable?

• 39:04Shane Parrish?

  Well, I feel unlovable. Like, I do feel like-

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's use those words anonymously.

• 39:07Shane Parrish?

  If, if somebody saw all of me-

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 39:10Shane Parrish?

  And could see my inner monologue-

• 39:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:12Shane Parrish?

  And just had like, full-

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:14Shane Parrish?

  -access to me, then they wouldn't love me, of course.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  I think that's extremely common, and it has different ways that it comes up. So some people say to me, you know, I have a chronic illness. I'm unlovable. I have an STI. I'm unlovable. I've never been in a relationship. I'm unlovable. I've been in too many relationships. I'm unlovable. And so many people have this inner narrative around how if somebody really, really knew them, they wouldn't love them. And what's so hard for people to understand is like, it's often that vulnerability and that imperfection that connects people. Because I think about friends of mine or people I know who come across as perfect. And I'm like, you have such a glossy exterior that there's nothing for me to grab onto.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Actually need cracks in the wall to grasp onto and to have a connection with you and to feel like I can be my full imperfect self. And so it's like, the thing that we think makes us unlovable is often what makes somebody feel comfortable around us. But if we truly feel like we're unlovable, we never open up and give somebody the chance to see that for themselves.

• 40:20Speaker 02

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• 40:49Speaker 03

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• 41:19Shane Parrish?

  I want to come back to sort of dating just a little bit and profiles and like how you end up on a first date. One thing that I think everybody does these days is they Google the other person. And for whatever reason, I mean, people think this doesn't happen. I don't know why, like you can upload photos from dating websites and find out who the person is fairly easily. How does that work for you and against you?

• 41:45Speaker 00

  It's so interesting. So there's research on the brain that shows when our brain gets an incomplete picture of something, we fill in the gaps in a way that makes it more positive. So have you ever seen a black and white photo of yourself and think, huh, I look pretty good in that?

• 42:03Shane Parrish?

  I've never seen a photo of myself where I think I look pretty good.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  Okay, well, take a photo of yourself and make it black and white and you might be like, huh, I'm looking pretty good there. And the point is that by taking out the color and actually some of the information, our brain fills in the gap and it actually often looks more attractive than it does. The same thing happens on dating app profiles. So if somebody says, I love music, our brains fill in the gap and think, oh, they love music. You know, I really like hip hop. I bet they like the same music that I do. And with this incomplete picture, we start building up this fantasy in our head. And that's why people get into this really bad situation where they start. Talking to somebody and they're almost penpalling and having all these text conversations and building up this fantasy. And by the time they meet in person, that person's great,

• 42:49Speaker 00

  but they're not the fantasy you had in your head. And so you reject them because they're different from who you thought they were. And that's why it's so important that people get to the date faster. Honestly, meet on Hinge and a few days later, we've actually found that the sweet spot is after three days of chatting, just say, hey, I always walk my dog at 6:00 PM. Can I give you a phone call? Or do you want to FaceTime for a few minutes tonight? And instead of turning the digital courtship phase into this weeks-long thing, make it much shorter. Get on the phone, get on FaceTime, see if you have a connection, and then meet up in person as quickly as possible. And so I actually think the point is to learn who the person is by talking to them directly versus either having your brain fill in the gaps or doing all this external research that might be incorrect

• 43:34Speaker 00

  or outdated.

• 43:36Shane Parrish?

  So two rabbit holes I want to go down here. Well, actually, one comment. It's interesting that you said we fill in our own gaps. Matthew Dix, who's like the Olympic storytelling champion of the world effectively, was on the podcast. And one of the things that you said that just triggered this is when he was describing, he's like, I describe, but vaguely. So everybody sees their own thing. If I say kitchen floor, I don't describe like green linoleum tiles, because the minute I say that, people might have a hard time picturing it. But everybody knows what their kitchen floor is. So he used this example of, I'm in the back of my school. My back is up against the wall. And he's like, it doesn't matter what my school looks like, because everybody has this own image of their

• 44:20Shane Parrish?

  school. And I don't know why, but I connected those two things.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  Just to comment on that, like, I definitely want to listen to that episode. Was it an episode you recorded with him?

• 44:27Shane Parrish?

  Yes.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  Because I'd love to learn from that. Because, you know, a big part of my job is communicating. And it's so true that stories are really the filing system of our brain.

• 44:37Shane Parrish?

  Totally.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  And I was thinking last night about the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. And I was like, it's so smart that we teach kids fables. Because if somebody had sat me down and said, if you raise a lot of false alarms when it's a real alarm, no one's going to listen, like, I wouldn't remember it. But The Boy Who Cried Wolf, it's so memorable. It's like, that's why we have these oral storytelling traditions. And even like, you know, why the Bible is the greatest meme of all time. People really remember these stories. And so that is a good tip that I'm going to use, which is, you know, you want to be Speaking about visuals, but maybe vague enough details that people can insert their own version of the kitchen floor. I love that.

• 45:14Shane Parrish?

  You should listen to the episode I did with Becky Kennedy, too. She talks about how she made up stories to teach her kids lessons.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  That's really cool.

• 45:23Shane Parrish?

  Which it is so powerful. It's such a power, because we remember stories. We don't remember facts.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  Not at all.

• 45:27Shane Parrish?

  We don't remember digits.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  And that's actually part of dating advice that I give people. So, you know, I have people who come in who are amazing communicators, really charming. They just kind of have a few things holding them back from connecting, and we work on that. I have other people who come in who have never been on a date in their life. From that starting point, we really have to start talking about like, how do you have a good conversation? And so, one of the key ideas there, you basically just said these words, is share stories, not facts. And so, what's an example of that? Well, a fact would be that you have a younger brother. A story would be your younger brother lives across the country from you, you haven't met your niece yet, you feel sad about the lack of connection with that person, and one of your resolutions is to really get closer to your brother.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  And so, I think oftentimes, when people are less experienced with first date conversations, they share the facts about their lives, and it's not memorable, and it's boring. And really think about the emotions, and the feelings, and the stories behind those facts, because that's what a good conversation is.

• 46:30Shane Parrish?

  Walk me through a little bit more about good conversations on a first date. I think a lot of people tend to just have this list of questions, almost, that they're like, it doesn't quite feel like an interview, but it kind of feels like an interview on the same token. How do you get out of that?

• 46:48Speaker 00

  Okay, let's think of examples. So, I think a bad question would be, what did you study in college? I think then you're just finding out about a fact about somebody, about their major. I think a good question would be something like, oh, you just told me that your job was a marketing manager for this tech company. Like, how is that different from what you thought it would be? Or, can you see yourself doing that for a long time? Or like, what changes would you want to make to it? And that one might be a little interview-y. But I think the point is that if you go on a first date and you're information-seeking, then what you will get is facts. If you go on a date and you're connection-seeking, then what you will get are stories.

• 47:33Shane Parrish?

  I like that. That's a, that's a good way to do it. One of the things you brought up was having a phone call first. Is that like the recommended protocol?

• 47:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. So before the pandemic, I did not like the idea of video dates or phone calls before a first date. To me, it triggered this idea of like a tech job and a phone screen, like that 15 minute call with the Google recruiter to see if you're crazy or not. And I felt like it was going to create too much of a feeling of, okay, I saw who you were. I'm not interested in you. I'm out. But during the pandemic, that was the only way that people could really date for a while. And so there was this proliferation of video chats or phone dates. And I actually felt like they were a great technique for people to just see, can we hold a conversation? Are they who they say they are? It makes people feel more safe before meeting up for the first time. It helps people who are

• 48:24Speaker 00

  really busy, like executives or single parents feel like, is this somebody who I want to get a babysitter for in order to meet up with them? And so now I actually think that it's a really helpful technique for a lot of people.

• 48:37Shane Parrish?

  And what do you cover on that call? Like, say it's 15 minutes. Like, you're just trying to get a feel for the person, like the awkwardness? Or like, what are you?

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I think that you could start the conversation and just start talking about your day. So for example, I like to tell people about this concept of in medias res, which is a Latin term that means in the middle of things. So a play might open up in the middle of a battle scene. And then it sort of zooms out and later you find out who's in the battle, why are they in the battle, what's going on. But it really just captures your attention right away. And so you could enter a date or a phone call and say, hey, I'm Logan. This is where I live. This is what I do. And like, I'm already asleep just talking about this. But instead, if you walk in there and you say, so, my

• 49:28Speaker 00

  sister called me this weekend and she's having this issue at work and she told me this, but I thought that she was handling it the wrong way. What do you think about that? It's like, boom, we're friends. We're having an experience. I'm hearing how you think. I'm hearing if you give good advice. I'm learning about you. I'm not trying to glean information from you and facts about your life. I'm truly trying to get to know you as a person and how you think. And I feel like for me, as someone who's been with my partner for 10 years, who has a new baby, so much of my life is How my partner thinks, that influences my life. That influences the decisions we make together. It influences whether or not I trust him. And so I really think just creating these conversational dynamics where we're expressing ourselves,

• 50:13Speaker 00

  we're responding to situations, we're not just repeating the same tape in our head that we press play on in every boring first date, that to me is so much more fun and provides such deeper information.

• 50:26Shane Parrish?

  No, I love that. I want to like also come back, we're sort of in a rabbit hole here a little bit, to attachment. You know, I feel like I've taken steps individually towards more secure and away from avoiding attachment. What are the things that we can do, short of finding a partner who's safe and secure?

• 50:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:47Shane Parrish?

  That reinforces the best in us and gives us patience and tolerance for the worst in us? What are the things that people can do individually to put themselves in a better place? And, you know, you don't have to make that leap overnight, but what are the steps that we can take to get to a better place?

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Right, so people do tend to have one attachment style and it's a mixture of genetics and how they were raised, but around 25% of people are able to shift their attachment over time. So if you are insecurely attached, there is hope. It's not just, oh, I need to find one of those securely attached people that's already in a relationship. So for people who are anxiously attached, it's really important to understand triggers for you. So a trigger for somebody who's anxiously attached might be, I text the person I'm seeing all day, but I just sent them a meme, they usually respond to that right away, they haven't responded in four hours. Okay, so a trigger was not hearing back from somebody. What usually happens in that moment is you sort of go down into the danger zone and

• 51:47Speaker 00

  you start, you know, texting them a bunch of times, hey, what happened? Or you spiral in your head, they don't like me anymore, they met somebody else, when I said this thing two days ago, they thought it was super weird and they're pulling back. And then they sort of do these behaviors to try to reconnect with the person, which can really turn the other person off. And so instead... Set yourself up for success by not getting to the danger zone in the first place. So when you feel like, oh, no, they didn't respond to my text, what are other things you could do? So you could text a friend and distract yourself with the conversation with them. You could even tell a friend, oh, this is what I'm feeling and, you know, make me feel better about it. Give me a pep talk. You can give yourself a pep talk.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  There's this concept called disconfirming evidence. So basically explaining to yourself, no, they just have a busy day. They're at that conference. They told me that they weren't going to be in touch. Why am I jumping to his conclusions? Let me just wait and see what happens. And so there's different things that you can do to sort of catch yourself before you start doing those protest behavior things like sending them a million texts or calling them and then turning your phone off. For avoid and attach people, it's the same thing. The danger zone is when you feel really overcome by them and that you're losing your independence. And you might notice strategies that happen for you. So with anxiously attached people, it's activating strategies. And with avoid and attach people, it's deactivating strategies. So in your head, you start thinking, ah, they're not really that cute.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  I'm not interested in them. Or I can't believe she pronounced that word that way. She must not be that smart. So it's almost like you're giving yourself a reason why you don't like them to push away. I wonder if you ever do that.

• 53:25Shane Parrish?

  Oh, totally.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so instead, what to do in those moments is to really realize that you need space and just ask for it. So for example, if you have that Saturday night sleepover and Sunday you want your space, you can just say, I had so much fun last night. I actually have a big project at work tomorrow that I was going to spend the majority of today on. Let's make plans for seeing each other later this week. So you are creating that space for yourself. You're not assuming that they are a mind reader and they know that you don't want to spend the day together, but you're basically stopping the problem before it starts.

• 53:58Shane Parrish?

  I want to come back. You said texting. What are the rules around texting and dating?

• 54:03Speaker 00

  What do you think the rules are?

• 54:04Shane Parrish?

  I don't know. What are they?

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Do you think you're a good texter?

• 54:07Shane Parrish?

  No, I don't think so.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  What do you think you could work on in your texting?

• 54:12Shane Parrish?

  With anybody?

• 54:14Speaker 00

  Or in dating, if you're actively dating?

• 54:16Shane Parrish?

  Um, just communicating better, I think. I'm of an era where I don't pick up the phone.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 54:23Shane Parrish?

  And so like I think I've answered like five phone calls in the past like two years. They're all from my mom.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  We've had a phone call.

• 54:30Shane Parrish?

  I know.

• 54:31Speaker 00

  Was that shocking?

• 54:32Shane Parrish?

  You know, unless it's scheduled, like if it's unscheduled, I just don't really answer the phone. And I try to communicate over text, but sometimes nuance doesn't come across.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:44Shane Parrish?

  I'm a visual person, so like when I make a joke, I usually like do something funny with my face.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:49Shane Parrish?

  But over text, that can come off as like very dry or cold.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:53Shane Parrish?

  Or, because there's no emotion attached to it. No emoji sometimes. It's just like a dry, almost sense of humor or very pointed.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  Are you a voice note guy?

• 55:04Shane Parrish?

  Sometimes.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  I do feel like that helps with sense of humor.

• 55:06Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, totally. So it gets better. But like, what are the rules around text?

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:09Shane Parrish?

  And by rules, I mean like, okay, if you've sent two texts and you haven't got a reply, like, are you, you gotta wait? Is it like, there's three, is it five, is it six, is it one for one at the start? Like, what is the etiquette around this?

• 55:23Speaker 00

  So one of my favorite projects I've done over the last five years was a big Gen Z research project at Hinge, where I followed this group of international Gen Z daters for around six months. And one of the things that came out of it was this idea of digital body language. The fact that we talk a lot about body language, right? I'm sure this is something that you've thought about in your own life. So if I'm sitting forward, I am really interested in what you're saying. If I'm leaning back, I might feel defensive. Am I averting my eyes? And that your brain is subconsciously interpreting that as whether I'm a threat or whether I'm interested in you. And so there's a ton of digital body language, these unspoken cues as to my intentions.

• 56:05Speaker 00

  And so the hard part about digital body language is we don't all interpret it the same way. So through this research, there was a woman I remember who said, if somebody says K instead of okay, then she thinks they're mad at them. And she's like, specifically, I want them to say O K A Y Y Y Y. Which is like, who would know that that's what she wants? But a K seems rude to her.

• 56:28Shane Parrish?

  Oh, it's just like sure.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 56:29Shane Parrish?

  If you say sure to somebody, oh, my god.

• 56:31Speaker 00

  If my sister says, got it?

• 56:33Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  I'm like having a mini panic attack.

• 56:35Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 00

  Because I'm like, you don't got it. You're mad at me. You're just giving up on this conversation. So I think we all have versions of that. But we did do research at Hinge, looking at what are the most commonly agreed upon parts of digital body language? So one of them is that actually the double text is okay. So if I text you and, you know, we're early dating and I say, Hey, I'd love to hear about that show you were talking about. How was it? And then you don't respond. I might feel like, oh, he's not interested. I can never send another text. But sending one more text that either like follows up on it or says like, hey, do you want to go out this week? People don't mind that. People are busy and they understand that sometimes messages get mixed.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  Another one is one-word answers are seen as very rude or curt, or the person's not interested. So if our text messages look like a lot of blue and a little bit of gray, there's probably a problem there. And so making sure that our messages seem pretty equal, this is kind of going back to the idea of I take a step forward, you take a step forward, building the momentum together. The other thing that comes up around text messages, and it might surprise people how often people talk to me about texting. But a common thing that somebody might say is, I hate texting, I have a job where I keep my phone in my pocket, I love deep work. How can I tell somebody that I am interested in them, I just don't like texting?

• 57:59Speaker 00

  Or the opposite, which is, I really love spending time with this guy in person, but he's terrible over text. And so the way that I've thought about it is, I think that you need to understand as a person, the maximum amount of text that you're willing to give and the minimum that you're willing to take. And if the minimum that you need is not within somebody's maximum, you may not be a fit. And it sounds so crazy, because it's like you're really not going to date someone because of your texting styles. But look, that's how a lot of people talk for a lot of the day. And like, as parents, as busy people, it's like, I'm texting with my husband more than I'm really talking to him every single day. And so you need to have some overlap in your minimum and their maximum.

• 58:44Speaker 00

  And so, you know, kind of a long-winded way of saying, I do think that texting styles are really important, since that's such a big part of digital courtship. And it's really good to express to somebody what your texting style is and to maybe give them a heads up. Like, in the past, I found that sometimes people like can't read my tone over text, just to let you know, like, I'm not the biggest texter, but I will do my best to call you or just to make plans and don't read too much into my texting.

• 59:11Shane Parrish?

  Okay, let's come back to mind reading because you said that. And I've always had the opinion, I would say until maybe the last year, that if somebody knew me and liked me and wanted to be in my life, that they would be able to read my mind and know exactly what I was thinking.

• 59:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:29Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me about how that gets in the way in relationships and how we can be more comfortable just telling our partner or prospective partner what we want.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  It's so funny because one of my closest friends in the world is a professional mentalist or a mind reader. And we lived together as roommates for a number of years. And it's just, I love the concept of mind reading. People would say, oh, you live with David. Like, what's it like? Is he always reading your mind? And I would say, if he was always reading my mind, he would unload the dishwasher a lot more often. And so I just think it's so funny how there's this sense of, well, we're close and you know me, so you must know what I want. And that's something that I've personally worked on a lot in my life. So I've found that with a lot of my female friends, they get frustrated that their husbands or partners didn't give them what they wanted for their birthday of, why didn't they know I wanted a surprise party?

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  And what I'd say to them is, it's much more important to get what you want than to have the person guess what you want and then not get it right and be disappointed. So I feel like I try to be really explicit with my husband and say like, hey, like for Mother's Day, like this is what would be a really great day for me. And like, it's not like he always delivers on that, but I'm kind of sharing what matters to me. Or I have friends, one guy is an economist, and they have a pretty complicated system. But it's basically like when one of the people in the couple invites the other person to an event at their work, they'll basically say how much it matters to them on a scale of, you know, zero to 100, to basically say, this invite, I care about it 90 out of 100, please come. Or I care about it 10 out of 100.

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  If you don't come, it doesn't matter. And so I just think that if people get over this kind of romanticized idea of, if you really knew me, you'd know what I want, into what I think is much more romantic, which is, I feel safe enough to tell you what I want and I hope that you'll be able to honor it to the best of your ability.

• 1:01:24Shane Parrish?

  I have a theory that the people who expect unconsciously other people to be able to read their mind. They do that because they're very good at reading other people's minds, but not actually reading their mind. They're just,

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Shane Parrish?

  They tend to be maybe more thoughtful.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Shane Parrish?

  They pay attention to a lot more nuance or details. Do you think that's true?

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  I haven't thought about that before, but it resonates with me. Something that I'm working on with my business coach is I make a lot of assumptions about what people want. And then I get really nervous about saying something that I think will disappoint them. And then I just avoid the conversation. But the feedback that I'm getting from my coach and from these people that I'm dealing with is you're actually getting wrong what I want. And so by not having the conversation with me, you're making decisions on my behalf. And if you actually just told me what was going on, we could come to a happy medium about it. But because you think you know what I want, and then you want to avoid discomfort for me, you're not even bringing it up. And so I think for me, the work that I'm doing there is to have uncomfortable conversations sooner.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  Instead of saying, well, I'm so good at knowing what everyone wants, I must be right. And instead, being more curious and asking them what's going on.

• 1:02:36Shane Parrish?

  It's kind of like a kind versus nice thing, right? Like a kind person will tell you you have spinach on your teeth, but a nice person won't.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  Oh, I haven't heard of that, but I do like that. And I absolutely resonate with that, where I always want to be the person who's telling somebody that there's food in their teeth. And rather than finding that it embarrasses people, I find that especially like a first meeting, that it really

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  makes them feel closer to me because it's like they feel comfortable enough to tell me the slightly embarrassing thing. Therefore, I am safe with them.

• 1:03:05Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I like that a lot. I want to come to priorities in terms of life and dating, especially post, I don't know, 30. A lot of people are divorced, maybe they have kids.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  Not in San Francisco.

• 1:03:17Shane Parrish?

  I mean, fewer and fewer people have kids. I'll ask.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  I just feel like it's like, you know, in San Francisco, 30 and single and dating is kind of the norm.

• 1:03:25Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  Without kids.

• 1:03:26Shane Parrish?

  So, but I mean, you're at a point in your life where you have a lot of competing priorities. Like, you could make an argument, at the risk of offending people, that having kids younger is better because you learn to be less selfish. And that's better for society. And all of a sudden, the world's not about you. But if you go through your twenties, you can also make an argument that you tend to be more focused on your career. And you have priorities. And dating has to fit into those priorities. But it's not the number one thing anymore. How do you think about priorities and dating?

• 1:03:58Speaker 00

  So many of the people that I work with are very career oriented, these maximizers who are trying to strategize their way through life. And oftentimes, they come to me when they have been prioritizing their career for the last 12 years and then are like, oh, wait, I'm not where I want to be relationship wise. And that's why when I do get the opportunity to speak to younger people, I really encourage them, start prioritizing dating when you're younger. You have a more flexible lifestyle. You have a bigger population of single people to choose from. And, you know, in the last few years, as there's been more and more layoffs, I feel like a lot of people have had the reality check of this company that I dedicated 10 years of my life to and that I missed a lot of dates

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  because I had to travel for my job. Guess what? We were not in a long-term relationship. We were in a 10-year-long relationship. And now I'm single and I don't want to be. And so sometimes when I talk to people, it's not just what do you want to add to your plate a day a week? It's what are you willing to take away from your plate in order to make time for that? And so work is such a compelling system, right? If I work harder, I get promoted. If I get promoted, I make more money. If I make more money, I get to have a nicer apartment and my mom gets to brag about me. I get to update my LinkedIn. It's like, it's the perfect gamified system to find self-worth through achievement. And dating is a lot harder. There's a lot of constant rejection.

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  It costs time, it costs money. It might take away from that gamified career. And so I love to help people understand that the sooner you learn how to date, the sooner you can stop dating. And why not do that when you're younger? And there's a larger pool of people to date.

• 1:05:45Shane Parrish?

  Is there an age difference that it becomes too much? You probably see everything at Hinge, from like the 60-year-olds going for the 20-year-olds to everything in between. What's an appropriate age gap that people should be looking for?

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  Most of my research has been with Gen Z and millennial daters, who are sort of dating for their first marriage, or dating to have kids, depending on the situation. But then, when I-

• 1:06:12Shane Parrish?

  That covers up to maybe 50, right? Like, I mean, they're younger, but their partner, the person that they're looking for, might be older.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  Potentially, but what I was gonna say is, you know, I did this Netflix show, The Later Daters, and that was where I worked with people 55 plus. And so that was sort of my first exposure to that age group. And it was really interesting to see the different age differences, and if people were dating somebody at the same life stage as them. And so I think what came up a lot on the show, and in the kind of coaching conversations that maybe didn't make it onto the show, was that sometimes if you look younger, you might go on a date with somebody younger, and that feels really good from an ego perspective. But then you're just in a different life stage. And so I think what really matters is, do you have the same values? Do you like spending time the same way? You know, if you're retired and you can travel,

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  and the other person is hustling and building their business, then maybe you just aren't a good match, because you're not gonna be spending the majority of your time together. And so I think instead of, you know, one of those funny calculations, like, I don't even remember it, but it's something like, "half of your age minus seven." Like, I don't believe in any rules like that. I think people mature at different rates, people have different life experiences. But instead, really tuning into, "am I dating this person because they're younger and hotter, and an ego boost? Or do I actually feel like this is somebody I wanna partner with in life?"

• 1:07:34Shane Parrish?

  Okay, so we go on a first date. We're not interested. What do we say?

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  We say, in a text, probably, and not ghosting, "Hey, it was really great to meet you. It was so fun to hear about your podcast and the cool people that you're interviewing this year." I don't think we're a romantic match, but it was great meeting you. I don't owe you feedback. I don't need to get into a long conversation about what you did right or wrong. I'm acknowledging you, that you're a person. We had an experience together and I don't want to move forward.

• 1:08:10Shane Parrish?

  And that's it? You just leave it there?

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the most important thing, kind of going back to your word of kindness, is to be kind but firm. So if you write back and say, "I really don't think I was my best self. You know, I was kind of jet lagged, I want to see you again." You know, maybe that's not what feels right for me. And so I can respond or not respond, but I feel like I did my duty by saying to you, "I met you, we had an experience, I'm not interested." And what's so hard about ghosting, and it truly has become more and more common over, say, the last five years that I've been tracking it, is that it leaves people in this ambiguity.

• 1:08:46Shane Parrish?

  Totally.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  "Oh, maybe he likes me, but he just is busy and he hasn't gotten back to me. So I'm not going to get back to this person in case this person wants to see me." And so in the research that I did on this at Hinge, what we found is that 86% of people say, "When it comes to rejection, I'd rather you tell me. It hurts, but I want to know." So you have this problem where people want the facts, they want the truth, so that they can move on. But then the other people don't share the truth because they say, "Oh, I don't want to hurt their feelings." But you're actually hurting them more by not being upfront from the beginning about how you feel.

• 1:09:21Shane Parrish?

  Do you block the person after you send this text?

• 1:09:25Speaker 00

  I don't think that's necessary. Do you block the person?

• 1:09:28Shane Parrish?

  Well, I don't know. We're going to come back to this maybe later. Actually, let's dive into this now. A lot of people text their exes.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Shane Parrish?

  Is that healthy?

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  In general, the research shows that moving on from your ex is the best way to find a new relationship. Because when we keep all of these doors open, it actually prevents us from finding a new door to open. And so if you have these five people from your past that you sleep with when you're in a certain city, or you wonder, "Oh, maybe I should get back together with her. I'll keep her on the back burner," what we call like orbiting. It can actually prevent you from focusing and finding somebody new. And I even find this is especially true with sex. So if you are somebody who craves a lot of sex, but you occasionally sleep with your exes, you almost don't have the motivation to find somebody new to be in a partnership with because you're getting some of those needs met by other people.

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  And what if you actually were dating in a different way where you're like, I'm going to focus all of my time, energy, really even life force, on a new person because that's aligned with my goals versus just getting some of those needs met in the short term.

• 1:10:35Shane Parrish?

  Well, let's double click on that again. So if your needs are getting met outside of a relationship, then there's no incentive to be in a relationship? Is that what I?

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  You know, living in the Bay Area, there is such a big community of people who are polyamorous or in open relationships. And I'm personally not in one of those, but I see a lot of value in it. I think that with the divorce rate being at 40 to 50% over the last 40 years, we've really seen that this one size fits all version of marriage doesn't work for most people. So if you have a product and 50% of people are returning it, then maybe you need to rework that product. So anyone who's rethinking the structure of marriage, I am a fan of. So relationship fluidity, all those things I think are great. And so in a polyamorous relationship, you might have somebody where you have more of a sexual relationship with them, somebody where you have more of an intellectual connection with them.

• 1:11:28Speaker 00

  There's so many different ways of doing it. And so I wouldn't say that you need to get all of your needs met by one person and you should not get those needs met by other people because I believe in these open relationship structures. But what I'm saying here is when you're single and you have limited time and you really want to find someone, ask yourself, is this ongoing relationship with my ex something that's pushing me forward or pulling me backwards? And if the answer is that it's pulling you backwards, then I would cut ties for the time being and really focus on the next person that you could have a relationship with.

• 1:12:00Shane Parrish?

  Interesting. I have a friend who's a GP and she's mentioned in the past that one of the biggest reasons that people come into our office for antidepressants is because they're in an open relationship.

• 1:12:14Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:12:15Shane Parrish?

  And they don't want their partner to know. That it's causing them all this anxiety or all of this. And I don't know if that's true or not. I mean, I'm personally not a fan of them.

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:12:26Shane Parrish?

  But I respect people.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I do feel like your body language changed a little when I brought it up.

• 1:12:30Shane Parrish?

  Oh, interesting on the body language. But I'm all for people doing whatever they want to do.

• 1:12:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:34Shane Parrish?

  You know, as long as everybody's a consenting adult, like I'm in favor of it. You're not bringing in laws, you're not hurting people, and everybody's aware of the situation. That's fine. I do wonder like what emotional toll it takes on people over time.

• 1:12:47Speaker 00

  I'm very far from an expert on polyamory, but I'm just thinking about one of my friends who's very proudly polyamorous and kind of, I can hear her in my head sort of being like, that person may not be a good fit for an open relationship and why are they in one? Because in an ideal world, there's this concept of compersion. Have you heard of that?

• 1:13:06Shane Parrish?

  No.

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  It's a word that means I get pleasure when you get pleasure. So like kind of the first polyamorous couple that I got to know about 10 years ago, I remember the guy describing to me, oh, tonight my wife has a date with her boyfriend and I'm really excited for her. And like my anxious brain, my jealous brain was like, I cannot relate to that on any level. That is a nightmare.

• 1:13:29Shane Parrish?

  That's instantly where my brain went.

• 1:13:31Speaker 00

  Right. And I think I'm just way too jealous and anxious and insecure of a person to really be a good fit for an open relationship because I think that the part of my brain that would be thinking about, am I going to be rejected? Am I going to be abandoned? Would just be so loud in my head that it would overcome any pleasure that I might get from having my own relationships outside the marriage. For other people, they are truly not there. That's not where the brains are. I know people very intimately who feel like I'm so happy when my partner gets this other need met. Or maybe it's like, I'm really busy at work right now and I'm not feeling that sexual. I'm so happy that my partner has this outlet.

• 1:14:12Speaker 00

  And so that story about the GP, I would say that doesn't resonate with the experiences that I've heard. And it kind of goes back to, why is that person in an open relationship in the first place? Is it because they think that that's the only way their partner should stay? And probably instead of talking to the GP about it, or maybe in addition, they should talk to their partners and say, either this isn't working for me or we need to change the stipulations of this because it's currently causing me more pain than it is pleasure.

• 1:14:41Shane Parrish?

  Just thinking out loud, I wonder if it would feed this side of me that doesn't feel enough or doesn't feel lovable. And so it would just cause like this endless torment in my head.

• 1:14:51Speaker 00

  That's what I think it would feel like for me, but I find polyamory really endlessly fascinating because it's basically alerting me to a different brain chemistry.

• 1:15:02Shane Parrish?

  Totally.

• 1:15:03Speaker 00

  And it's sort of like in our society, we've accepted extroverts and introverts. So like, I know that I could be in a terrible mood and then go to a party and then have the time of my life. And it's like, why was that party bringing me so much energy? Well, I'm extremely extroverted. For my husband, it's the opposite. So why can't we all think there are people for whom compersion is possible and amazing for them, it's okay that I'm not like that, instead of this assumption that for everyone, they would have the same experience around it.

• 1:15:32Shane Parrish?

  And the other term that you mentioned that I've never heard of before is orbiting. What does that mean?

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  Okay, so orbiting is a term that a reporter from Mashable, Anna Iovine, came up with. And it's about this idea of keeping a bunch of people or several people in orbit around you, sort of to increase your opportunities. So you're sort of not committing to any of them, but they're all there, sort of on your bench as people that you could interact with. And instead of keeping all of these balls in the air, sorry, I'm like totally mixing metaphors here, it's much better to commit to somebody, see how the relationship goes, than decide if you want to stay in the relationship or not, and then move on, versus feeling like, well, the more possibilities I have, the more freedom I have, the more chances of success I have. Actually, success comes from committing to something, seeing if it works,

• 1:16:22Speaker 00

  and then moving on if it doesn't.

• 1:16:25Shane Parrish?

  There's so many parallels between that and business, right? Where, you know, a lot of people just tend to dabble in all of these different projects and they don't actually get things done versus people who commit to a project, focus on it and make it a priority.

• 1:16:39Speaker 00

  There's a great concept from Dan Gilbert of Harvard. Called changeability. So, we often crave the ability to change our minds because it makes us feel more free. So, in this experiment that he ran on the Harvard campus, he had a bunch of students take a photography workshop. And, one of the weekends that students took the workshop, they would get a call at the end of the weekend and say, "Hey, we're actually gonna have an art show in London in a few weeks. Pick one of your pictures from this weekend of taking pictures, and that's gonna be sent to London." And they didn't have the opportunity to change their mind. In a different scenario, they would call the students and say, "Pick one of the pieces to be sent to this art show in London, and I'm gonna call you in a few days and see if you wanna change your mind."

• 1:17:24Speaker 00

  Most of the time, people didn't change their mind about the photos. But when you asked people in which situation they were more satisfied, the people who didn't have the chance to change their mind were actually more satisfied because they made a commitment and they immediately rationalized it and they felt good about it. When you can change your mind, you start wondering, "Well, that picture's a little sharper, but this one's a little more original, and maybe people in London will like this one more." And so, you sort of start making this pro-con list in your head that actually works against you because you start doubting your original answer.

• 1:17:58Shane Parrish?

  But this comes back to almost what we were talking about earlier, in dating multiple people and having all these options available. And you're sort of like, "Oh, I'm making these choices all over again every day."

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  Absolutely, and that's something that Hinge is thinking about. So, my favorite feature that's come out in a long time is this thing that came out last year called "Your Turn Limits." And basically, the idea is that people were thinking, "I wanna get as many matches as possible. I really wanna get this ego boost from attention and see how many people will like me." And instead, it's about connection over attention. So now, if you have eight conversations where you owe somebody a response, you cannot match with anyone else until you respond to one of those people. So, either you close out the conversation and show that you're not interested, or you keep the conversation going with them. I was with my cousin over Christmas and he was like, "Oh, Logan, like, this feature is so challenging. Like, I'm just trying to meet some new people." And I'm like, "Dude,

• 1:18:50Speaker 00

  look at your matches. Who are these women? Do you like them?" Then ask them out on a date. And I think that, in general, the brain just has such a natural tendency to want options and choices, when in reality, limiting those options or going through things one at a time makes it much easier to make a choice. And so I think, in the age of dating apps, having this "your turn limits" feature is actually a really smart way to kind of nudge people towards making decisions, instead of endlessly trying to match.

• 1:19:18Shane Parrish?

  And then, once you've had a date with somebody, what does the science say about whether you should... Should I be dating three people at once for a first date, or should I date one person and then be like, "Oh, I kind of like this person. I'm gonna, like, pause the app," or like, "hide my profile," or whatever it is?

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  I found that it does differ by person. So there are people out there that are really anxiously attached, and when they meet someone, their brain goes into, "I need to lock it down. I don't want to date anymore. So I just want to date them. So how can I become exclusive with them?" And for those people, sometimes having multiple people that they're seeing in the beginning is actually a way to sort of ease some of that, and just makes it a little bit easier for them to be a bit more relaxed and have a bit more of an abundance mindset. There are other people for whom seeing multiple people at the same time in the beginning either feels immoral, or uncomfortable, or just too exhausting. And so I would say, for the person, really explore what are the patterns that have held you back in the past, what feels hard for you, what makes you feel like you're dating successfully,

• 1:20:18Speaker 00

  and then do what's right for you. While, of course, keeping in mind things like making it clear to someone if you're not exclusive, or if you're not sexually exclusive.

• 1:20:26Shane Parrish?

  How do you have that conversation on maybe your first date or your second date? Do you just ask outright, like, "Hey, are you dating other people?" Like, how do you bring that up?

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  I would say that in modern dating, it's sort of assumed that you're not exclusive until you have the conversation.

• 1:20:42Shane Parrish?

  Until you agree to be exclusive.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  And that pain can come from somebody making an assumption, "Well, oh, we've been dating for six months. We must be exclusive. Oh, we've had sex. We must be exclusive." And there is a lot of heartbreak that happens when people don't have that explicit conversation. So, in life... In relationships, in dating, I am such a big fan of just checking in with the person because there's really this natural tendency, kind of going back to mind reading of, well, if I really like you, then we must think the same way and be on the same page. And when you bring it up, you're afraid, well, what if I find out information that makes me sad, then I'll be sad. It's like, no, that information is power and you need the data to make an informed decision for yourself. And if you find out information that's disappointing, yes, it hurts, but now you can decide if that's the right person

• 1:21:28Speaker 00

  for you or not.

• 1:21:29Shane Parrish?

  What are women not getting from men and men not getting from women?

• 1:21:34Speaker 00

  That's a question that I'm going to be researching more this year, so stay tuned. But it's really on my mind.

• 1:21:40Shane Parrish?

  What's your intuition?

• 1:21:42Speaker 00

  I don't know if it's gender-specific things, where there's a lack of connection, or just maybe cultural things going on where, you know, there's big differences in religious institution attendance or political divergence. But when I think about the issues in dating, I tend to focus less on what does this gender or that gender think? And I tend to focus more on patterns of behavior or blind spots that people have. And so, of course, there's going to be different advice that I give to a woman in her late 30s who wants to have biological children versus a guy in his 20s. Like, those conversations sound different and they have different timelines. I think so much of the work that I do is really about

• 1:22:24Speaker 00

  helping people understand who they are, understanding these patterns, holding them back. And those are sort of universal things. But I am interested in what's happening in dating right now, and I am sort of at the beginning of a research project that will dig more into sort of what are certain groups not understanding about other groups.

• 1:22:42Shane Parrish?

  What makes somebody good at dating and maybe bad at being a partner? And then the opposite, what makes somebody bad at dating but like good at being a partner?

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  What do you think you are?

• 1:22:54Shane Parrish?

  I think I'm terrible at dating but good at being a partner.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  What do you think makes you bad at dating?

• 1:23:01Shane Parrish?

  I get bored. I...

• 1:23:07Shane Parrish?

  The opportunity cost of being on a first date is incredibly high.

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:23:11Shane Parrish?

  So going back to priorities, like if you think about my priorities, it's sort of like the kids.

• 1:23:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:23:16Shane Parrish?

  Uh, and then work. And those two things matter a lot to me. And between those two things, it doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else. And the difference between running a business and working for somebody else often is I could be working and earning money like you at 6:00 PM. Right? So if I'm on a date or something with somebody, then there's all these things. And you start thinking about that and then you just get caught up in your day sometimes. And you're extremely focused, which is part of what makes people successful is extreme focus. And then I think, and I don't know if I'm right or wrong, correct me on this. If you come home to a person, I value connection.

• 1:23:55Shane Parrish?

  I value that time, but it's really hard to make that time in your day versus it exists naturally because you're coming home. You're going to bed or you're cleaning the kitchen together, or you're making dinner together, or you're doing these things together, which becomes a natural part of your day versus I'm not going to text you. And I'm like with the kids and I'm making dinner and I'm not gonna.

• 1:24:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:15Shane Parrish?

  And so by that time it's 9:00 PM and I don't know about everybody else, but 9:00 PM I'm pretty much ready for bed. You know, maybe 10 I can, I can go up till, but how does that work? And maybe this is the wrong way to think about it. I don't know.

• 1:24:28Speaker 00

  It's very interesting that you said you're good at being in a relationship, but sort of not as good as getting into one.

• 1:24:35Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  And it sounds like once somebody has jumped through the hoops necessary to kind of make it into the top priorities in your life, you will give them the time and attention, but you find that hard to do in the early stages where maybe they haven't earned that spot yet.

• 1:24:50Shane Parrish?

  Totally.

• 1:24:51Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:24:52Shane Parrish?

  I mean, that's a bit more extreme than I would word it, but I think you're, you're generally on the right track.

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  And so what are your long-term goals in dating and relationships?

• 1:25:01Shane Parrish?

  I want to be in a relationship.

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Shane Parrish?

  You know, I want to be happy and I want a life post my kids. Like right now, one of the things that's top of mind for me or has been for a while is sort of the kids. They're 14 and 15. The path to them going to university is very clear. And then what? I have a great, amazing group of friends. I'm very close with my family. I have a very full life, but then what? They move out and now I'm alone.

• 1:25:32Speaker 00

  The reason why I asked you what your long-term goals are, are that if you're really clear on your goal, I think it helps you prioritize your life differently. So it's like for the next five years, as you have kids at home, it's very clear what your evenings look like.

• 1:25:49Shane Parrish?

  Totally.

• 1:25:50Speaker 00

  But what happens when you don't have any kids at home? Do you then suddenly start dating? And then do you feel behind? Do you feel like, I'm a little rusty on my dating skills. I don't know what kind of person I like. I actually wanted to have more kids, but now I feel like I've aged out of that. And so by getting super clear on your long-term goals, for you, for anyone else, I feel like it helps you make those adjustments in your life. And so if you told me, I want to run a marathon, but I don't have time to train, then I would say, I don't really think you want to run a marathon.

• 1:26:22Shane Parrish?

  Totally.

• 1:26:22Speaker 00

  Or you're not going to run a marathon this year. But if you said, I really want to run a marathon and I'm willing to lose an hour of sleep every night or be slightly worse at my job or even have a few fewer hours a week with my kids, then I would say, it sounds like this is something that you're willing to do. And so instead of thinking, this is something that'll happen in the future, I think it does look like making, sacrifice is too strong a word, but making adjustments now to how you spend your time so that you are getting close enough to somebody to even decide if you want to be in a relationship with them.

• 1:26:57Shane Parrish?

  Dating's a bit of a show, though. Like, you put on your best face, right? You might have had a bad day at work. You sit down and all of a sudden, you just want to be in your sweatpants at home, like watching trashy TV. But you're doing something that you don't want to do. And so like, not not want to do, but you're putting on a bit of a mask, right? You're hiding part of yourself through dating. I feel like it might be better if people just saw all the different sides of you rather than this pretend little dance.

• 1:27:24Speaker 00

  So what would that look like?

• 1:27:26Shane Parrish?

  I don't know. Like, you're the expert.

• 1:27:29Speaker 00

  No, but why I'm pushing you on that point is like, Your job right now is flying to different locations to have deep one-on-one conversations with somebody.

• 1:27:40Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:40Speaker 00

  Isn't that a little bit of a show? Isn't it a little bit like a first date? It's like, I'm meeting a stranger, I want to have a connection with them, I want to have an experience. There's cameras here, but I don't think we're thinking about the cameras. I think we're thinking about the fact that we are getting to know each other, exchanging information.

• 1:27:56Shane Parrish?

  Totally. And that's why I prefer to do them in person.

• 1:27:59Speaker 00

  Right, me too. So my assumption is that like, you must enjoy this if you've built a life around it. How can you reframe dating to be something where it's like, I get to meet somebody, have an experience with them, go deep, have thoughts I've never had before because we're playing a conversational game of ping pong and I'm having a good time. Whereas right now, it sounds like the frame is, dating is draining, dating is time away from my kids, dating is, I can't be in my sweatpants. As opposed to reframing it to, this is aligned with my goals and I can actually make it fun.

• 1:28:30Shane Parrish?

  Maybe the way to think about this is, I feel broken in a lot of ways, right? And this is part of the reason I went to therapy last summer and spent a lot of time. I did immersive therapy, which is kind of crazy.

• 1:28:41Speaker 00

  Oh, tell me about it.

• 1:28:43Shane Parrish?

  I spent like 10 hours a day with this woman who like flew to Ottawa.

• 1:28:46Speaker 00

  Cool.

• 1:28:47Shane Parrish?

  And we walked, we walked like 20 miles a day.

• 1:28:50Speaker 00

  This is like my dream.

• 1:28:51Shane Parrish?

  For five days, oh my god.

• 1:28:53Speaker 00

  That's healthy, that's so great.

• 1:28:54Shane Parrish?

  And by the end of the day, she's like totally energized and I'm like, oh my god, I'm ready for sleep.

• 1:28:58Speaker 00

  Okay, this is a new modality that I need to pursue.

• 1:29:01Shane Parrish?

  It was amazing, it was the best thing ever. I didn't want to do this like every two weeks thing.

• 1:29:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:05Shane Parrish?

  And I definitely didn't want to do therapy over Zoom.

• 1:29:07Speaker 00

  I love this.

• 1:29:07Shane Parrish?

  So I hired this world-class therapist, flew to Ottawa, and spent like four or five days with her.

• 1:29:14Speaker 00

  Incredible.

• 1:29:14Shane Parrish?

  Totally immersed. And I figured, you know, from my point of view, the worst thing is like, she knocks on the door, we don't get along, I've already paid for the week.

• 1:29:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:23Shane Parrish?

  You know, it's sort of like, just go home and I'll do work or whatever. But we really hit it off and, and part of what came out of this is, I don't know, maybe I'm alone in this, but I feel like when I get broken up with, where a relationship doesn't work out, I feel like I'm constantly telling my friends, oh, it didn't work out. And then there's a part of me on the inside that just feels like I'm broken. What's your reaction to that?

• 1:29:49Speaker 00

  That you are so not alone. Rejection sucks. Having somebody spend time with you, evaluate you, and tell you that you're not what they want is so painful. And I think that if you apply for a job and you don't get it, it's, oh, I wasn't right for the position, and they had an internal candidate. It's just one slice of your life. There's something uniquely painful about rejection in dating because it's like, I've met you and I don't want you. And so I'm just validating that I think many, many, many people find this whole process very painful, especially people who've been dating 10, 15 years and are just like, my body, my soul, I can't go through this anymore. So I just have a lot of empathy for that. But what is so interesting about the conversation

• 1:30:33Speaker 00

  that we're having is you sort of started with, it's hard for me to make time for dating, when I think what's actually going on is it's very painful for me to feel rejected, so I don't want to subject myself to that. And so the time is an excuse for a much deeper thing that you're experiencing.

• 1:30:50Shane Parrish?

  There's definitely an element of that. I feel broken even when I break up with somebody. Do you know what I mean? Like, I feel like maybe I pushed them away or did something to like cause the fracture and then, you know, eventually manned up and called off the relationship or something. But then I walk away from that feeling like I'm, like, why did I do that?

• 1:31:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what's the story in your head?

• 1:31:16Shane Parrish?

  I mean, it comes back to vulnerability at a point, right? Like, I think you get to a point in any relationship where you have to make a decision. And for me, it's more binary maybe than other people. And that decision is, do I trust this person to not hurt me? And for whatever reason, post-divorce, that's been really hard for me to get to that point and then trust somebody. And when I have got to that point and I do overcome it, it hasn't worked out. And so it's like, oh, gosh.

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• 1:32:46Speaker 00

  So you did these five days of immersive therapy.

• 1:32:49Shane Parrish?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:51Speaker 00

  What are you currently doing to kind of heal that inner wound, which is I am broken? Because if your analysis is that until you feel less broken, both when you break up with someone and when they break up with you, I think you're not going to be able to connect with someone.

• 1:33:07Shane Parrish?

  Walk me through how you made your decision about your husband, because that was not a love at first sight.

• 1:33:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:14Shane Parrish?

  That was a slow burn. How do you decide between falling into a relationship with inertia and choosing to be in a relationship?

• 1:33:22Speaker 00

  Thank you for indulging me and letting me talk about my husband, who I love so much. And I, it's so cliche, but like I just, I feel like I love him way more now than I did, you know, in our first year, our second year. Like our lives are just so much more enmeshed. And so. My husband and I met in college and we only know this because we became Facebook friends at the time. So I have this vague memory of like, sitting next to him in the dining hall and we had a mutual friend and he wrote on my Facebook wall, which back in the day, you know, maybe he was flirting or maybe he wasn't. And then we met again at Google and I saw him on a dating app. And I looked at his photos, I can just remember exactly where I was, exactly what the photos

• 1:34:07Speaker 00

  looked like, and I swiped left, I said no, because from his pictures, he just looked like this unsmiling bro. They were sort of all from this like, one hiking trip and maybe one wedding he went to, wasn't smiling in any of them. And I was just like, oh, this guy's like, wearing tank tops and a backwards hat, like, not for me. And I like that part of the story because I think it shows like, how quickly we make judgments and how incorrect a lot of those judgments are. So then some period of time later, I held this lunch at Google, which was people who had gone to our college who worked at Google. And, you know, in retrospect, I think I was expanding my network, I was doing it for the interns from our school, but it was also a way of just like, meeting more people

• 1:34:51Speaker 00

  and maybe meeting more potential partners. And so I sat next to my then-husband at this lunch, and I was talking about how I was trying to learn the statistical programming language of R, and how it was very hard. And he said, "Oh, I just dropped out of a math PhD program where I wrote R every day. I will tutor you in it." And now that I know this person extremely well, I feel like that was out of character for him.

• 1:35:17Shane Parrish?

  He was totally like, hitting on you.

• 1:35:19Speaker 00

  Like, I think he must have been, but that's not like, what either of our versions of it are. He didn't like, ask-

• 1:35:25Shane Parrish?

  It's not how it felt.

• 1:35:26Speaker 00

  It's not how it felt, but it's so interesting. It's like, even using my language of what side of you does the person bring out, I feel like in that moment, I brought out a generous side of him, that he maybe doesn't always access. My husband is not the person going through the world, asking people if he can do them favors. And I don't know if it even was romantic for him, or a feeling of like, I want to be around this person more. Or like, I'm lonely, I just dropped out of a PhD program, I want to make new friends. And so, over the next year- We did have these R tutoring sessions and I remember them so well and I remember and of these like celebratory moments where I'd figure things out and he was a good tutor and it really put him in a good light, right? Like, he's just so smart and it was a chance for him to chime.

• 1:36:10Speaker 00

  At the same time, there was this guy that I had met at Burning Man, who I was obsessed with and definitely pursuing. And every textbook example of anxious attachment was coming true for me. So it was like, he would pull away, so I would chase him more. He rejected me, so I thought, how can I prove to him that I'm worthy of his love? This guy who I was obsessed with, I had a mutual friend with him. We were sort of in the same extended group of friends. And somebody who knew the guy that I was chasing, you know, was just witnessing how in pain I was and was like, hey, like, this isn't working out. I think you should see a dating coach or this isn't working. And so I started seeing

• 1:36:50Speaker 00

  this dating coach and it was so helpful because a lot of what we did was kind of pull back the curtain. And so I started to understand, when she asked me, the person who you're gonna end up with, how do you want them to make you feel? And so a lot of that stuff was, I want to feel desired. I want to feel smart. I want to feel cared for. And how does this guy from Burning Man make you feel? Well, he makes me feel anxious. He makes me feel not good enough. He makes me feel not attractive enough. And it's like, in continuing to pursue him, I was continuing to pursue those feelings that felt really bad. She said, well, do you know any guys, have you ever dated anyone, who makes you feel this way that you want to feel? And this guy from work popped up in my head. I

• 1:37:35Speaker 00

  was like, wow, those tutoring sessions are really fun. And we've gotten closer and now we have lunch at work and sometimes I call him after my dates with other people. But why am I not dating him? And so pretty quickly, you know, being a goal-oriented person, I was kind of like, hey, I don't have plans this Friday night, like, you know, dot, dot, dot, you should ask me out. And we quickly went on a first date and, you know, a number of dates. And now we've been together for almost 10 years. And I just feel like...

• 1:38:09Speaker 00

  On paper, there were some reasons why we wouldn't have worked. So for example, like at the time, I was very into Burning Man and he not only didn't go, but he would say, I don't really trust anyone who goes to Burning Man. Well, guess what? We went to Burning Man together multiple times. It's like, I felt like the deepest parts of us that were connected, so sort of same sense of humor, which is a huge part of a relationship, mutual intellectual respect, really trusting each other deeply. Like those things were there from the beginning and have continued to grow. And we still have parts of our lives where we're not the same. He's vegan and I'm not. I like traveling a lot more than he does. But we've built a life where the Venn diagram of the middle is super strong and we each

• 1:38:53Speaker 00

  also have the parts of our lives that are separate and we're not trying to be 100% merged.

• 1:38:59Shane Parrish?

  What was the transition from friendship to dating? Was it seamless or was it awkward?

• 1:39:04Speaker 00

  You know, I think in my head, it's so mythologized that like, I don't know if I can give you a truly honest answer, but I think it was kind of pouring gasoline onto like the chemistry that we already had.

• 1:39:16Shane Parrish?

  There was tension already.

• 1:39:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it was like, it was really exciting. I mean, it felt so exciting, like especially, you know, we've worked, both worked at Google. It's this big company with thousands of people. So I would go to his cafe instead of my cafe and like, hope that I would see him or like, you know, I would, what did we call it back in the day? Like G-chat him like on the shuttle. Like there was just so much excitement in the beginning around like, wow, like I have a lot of chemistry with this person and we're going to take that friend chemistry and see if there's something romantic there. And it was not smooth sailing all the way. Like there was definitely a moment a few years later where I kind of blew up my life where I left this study job that I had at Airbnb and I moved to New York for a few months to do this TED program and just a lot of changes were happening.

• 1:40:02Speaker 00

  And we definitely hit a moment of like, we're either going to break up or get engaged. And we navigated that moment and, you know.

• 1:40:10Shane Parrish?

  How did you navigate that moment? That is like such a decision.

• 1:40:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:15Shane Parrish?

  Where there's a fork in the road.

• 1:40:16Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:40:17Shane Parrish?

  You're in a relationship.

• 1:40:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:19Shane Parrish?

  You have a lot of sunk cost in the relationship.

• 1:40:20Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 1:40:21Shane Parrish?

  How did you make that decision?

• 1:40:22Speaker 00

  I think people often assume that relationships are smooth sailing and that you just keep dating until you're married. But as somebody who does these like breakup consultations and has really talked to a lot of people over the years, that idea of breakup or getting engaged is pretty common because it's like we either keep going and it escalates to marriage soon, or there's no marriage at the end of this, in which case we should break up because we both want to find other people to marry. And so I think just like normalizing that that happens, or that people put ultimatums or deadlines on things. I actually think that's happening all the time. For us, it was a lot of conversations about things that we wanted long term. So for example, one of the conversations that we had was I said like, here are three

• 1:41:06Speaker 00

  values of mine. I really like travel and I want to travel more with you. I want you to get to know my friends better because my friends are so important to me and I want those people to really know you and vice versa. And I probably want to live in community at some point and I want to know if you would be open to that. And now, six or seven years after that conversation, it's like, we've done a ton of international travel together. Most of my closest friends are his closest friends and we lived in this amazing communal environment for two and a half years during the pandemic. And so my husband is super stubborn, he's super independent. It's not that he changed himself, it's that he understood things that were important to

• 1:41:47Speaker 00

  me and he was able to give them to me in a way that felt genuine. And there's plenty of things that I've done over the years, such as, you know, I'm not vegan, but like, there's not a lot of meat in our home and like, I'm closer to that, or we're currently raising our daughter to be vegan. And so, I just feel like, we just kept finding that our values were aligned and that we loved hanging out together. And like, I can't even emphasize enough this idea of mutual trust. Like, it's almost annoying to think about it, but it's like, I think my husband's right most of the time and I think he's right about really big issues. And so I feel so lucky that I have this person as my... Decision maker, partner, where I can really say like, I have this opportunity.

• 1:42:32Speaker 00

  This is how far away it is. Do you think I should do it? And when we talk through it at the end of the conversation, like I either agree with him or he's helped me come to the right decision for myself. And when people have partners where they don't really trust or admire or respect them, like I couldn't be in that relationship. And so I think that as parents, you're just constantly making decisions. And that's why I feel even closer to him than ever before because I'm like, we're really basically partners in this big class project and it's been really fun.

• 1:43:03Shane Parrish?

  That's awesome. Do you agree with the time boxing? Or the ultimatum, I guess, as you called it, or sort of like these, these points where you, you artificially create this? One point for people who are not younger and maybe dating again is, do you meet the kids?

• 1:43:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think that the ultimatum, I mean, that term is even loaded at this point because there's like this Netflix show about the ultimatum. And I think when people hear that, they probably have a negative assumption of somebody being like, if you don't propose by the end of the year, we're breaking up. Like, that doesn't sound collaborative to me. But I actually do think that decision points are very important in life and in relationships. So there's this great research about, you know, people eating cookies. So like in one part of the experiment, people just eat cookies in a sleeve and they just eat the whole sleeve of cookies until it's over. And then they're like, damn, I just ate a lot of cookies. In another part of the experiment, in between every few cookies are these colored pieces of wax paper. And when you get to the piece of colored wax paper, you think like, do I want to keep

• 1:44:04Speaker 00

  going or not? And it creates a decision point that makes you consciously decide, do I go forward or not? And so I think that relationships do offer these decision points. Do we want to be exclusive? Do we want to move in together? Do we want to get married? Do we want to have kids? And each of those is an opportunity to check in with the other person. And so sometimes creating that by saying, hey, let's go away for a weekend and talk about our future, you're really shining a light on an important topic that impacts both of you. And so maybe I'll take back the word ultimatum and instead say, I want people to make conscious choices. I want them to be deciding, not sliding through relationship transitions.

• 1:44:48Shane Parrish?

  How do you have those hard conversations in a secure way where? A lot of people might interpret them as like, oh, no, the relationship's over. They close up, they get defensive. How do you structure them in a way where both people stay open and they're trying to solve the problem together? It's like, we have a problem or we have a decision point, but we're both on the same side of the table. How do we deal with this? Versus the perception that one person might have that, oh, God, it's over. I'm going to start protecting myself. And the minute they do that, it becomes almost a self fulfilling prophecy.

• 1:45:20Speaker 00

  So there's definitely people who are more experts on this than I am. Like, a lot of people love Marshall Rosenberg, who wrote Nonviolent Communication, or even, I think, some of the work by different negotiation experts is really helpful because you say, how can we solve this together? So I really encourage people to seek out those resources. But some of the things that I can say are really approaching things from being a team. So we, as a team, are thinking about our financial future. And this is, you know, I don't know if you know Ramit Sethi, but sort of some of Ramit's work, where it's like, what is our rich life? Let's sit down together and have a fun, generative conversation around our rich life.

• 1:46:03Speaker 00

  And isn't that fun to think about what we could achieve together? Versus, hey, I save a lot more money than you do. I don't want your debts to be mine. It's like, we're adversaries. And so how can you come at it from a place of, we get to do this really exciting thing of design our lives together? Let's have a conversation about it. Versus, this is a negotiation where one of us wins and the other loses.

• 1:46:25Shane Parrish?

  There's no one size fits all, but how do you, money is a great point, right? Like, how do you have those conversations when maybe there's a huge income gap? Or do you have a joint account? Or do you have separate accounts? And how does that work? Does having a large income gap correlate to problems in a relationship?

• 1:46:42Speaker 00

  I truly do pull on Ramit's work for a lot of this stuff. You know, he has this great podcast where he interviews couples and money. And he has a new book, Money for Couples. And I just did a newsletter with him where it was about how to have the first money conversation. And some of the key tips are things like, it's the first conversation, it's not the only conversation. So maybe it's just where you open up and you talk about... What does money mean to you? What was your family's relationship with money? When you think about money, what feelings does it evoke? And so just having a conversation where more people are sharing versus having a conversation that needs to come to a specific outcome. Like, well, I make two times what you make, so I should pay two times the rent.

• 1:47:24Speaker 00

  It's like, you don't have to get into all the tactical stuff right away. I think approaching it as the first of one of many conversations is a really healthy idea because I just went to this event that Ramit had and he said, "A lot of times, people don't even know what somebody else makes or how much money they have, you know, until something like having a kid or, you know, buying a house." And it's like, we should be having conversations about sex, money, spirituality, children a lot earlier.

• 1:47:54Shane Parrish?

  I like that. Politics has become very divisive in the last, I don't know, 10 years, let's say. What's the difference between having different political views and a deal breaker?

• 1:48:08Speaker 00

  It's been so interesting in the 10 years of doing this to see how this has changed. So 10 years ago, I did an event with Christian Rutter, one of the founders of OkCupid. And we talked about this question that they have on an OkCupid survey of, you know, do you care about politics? And what he told me at the time was, it was way less important if the person had the same political views as you as if they cared about politics or not. And now, fast forward to this year, I would say that's no longer the case, that people really do care about political views because it's moved into the category of values. And so people are really thinking about, if we share political views, that's a proxy for do we share values?

• 1:48:51Speaker 00

  And so for a lot of people, it's as important or more important to them than something like religion. And so at the end of the day, it's about understanding what really matters to you in your life, what really matters to you in a partner. And if politics are something that's at the top of that list, I think that that's a legitimate deal breaker.

• 1:49:08Shane Parrish?

  Interesting. I remember being on a date right before COVID and politics came up. And I was like, oh, I'm moderate. And she instantly replied, oh, so you can't make up your mind?

• 1:49:18Speaker 00

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:49:19Shane Parrish?

  And I was like, whoa, that's not what I said. I was like, I'm just sort of like center, you know, I'm not extreme. I'm not extreme left. I'm not extreme right. I'm policy based. I'm not party based. And it turned into this like really interesting discussion about politics, but it was clear from her point of view that that was never going to work.

• 1:49:39Speaker 00

  Did that change how you presented your political views on future dates?

• 1:49:44Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I was more hesitant to sort of bring them up because it could be such a contentious point, but maybe you should bring them up earlier if you know it's going to be a source of contention. But I always think like, let's avoid some of the more nasty stuff, at least in the first like few dates and then get into more understanding the person and how they approach life versus what do you think of abortion? What do you think of politics? What do you think of XYZ? And because then you're just, you're almost looking for an argument, right?

• 1:50:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I think it depends on how important those things are to you. So if somebody said, I'm Muslim. I really want to raise my kids to be Muslim, talking about that on a first date feels completely fair.

• 1:50:26Shane Parrish?

  Totally.

• 1:50:26Speaker 00

  So if you feel the same way about your political views, then I'm totally fine with somebody talking about that on a first date. I don't think it's let's debate the role taxes play in America. And it sounds like to you, having political views in common isn't as important. So I could see you talking about it later, but.

• 1:50:43Shane Parrish?

  But it's also shocking. Like I had a Jewish woman once on a date asked me if I would convert. And I'm like, it's a first date. Like, wow, I don't know. I've never thought about this, you know, like.

• 1:50:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, but then when you.

• 1:50:53Shane Parrish?

  But that's important to you.

• 1:50:54Speaker 00

  But then what, what, what did you think? What did you say?

• 1:50:57Shane Parrish?

  Exactly what I just said. Like, I don't know. I've never thought about that. I understand from you bringing it up so early that it's like clearly important to you.

• 1:51:05Speaker 00

  You know, that's a really interesting one because I could see it going a few ways. So I could see it being where the guy, not just you, but in general, is like, that's way too forward, that's way too intense. The truth is that if I was in love with somebody, I might consider it, but being asked on the first date makes me so turned off that I'm not interested.

• 1:51:23Shane Parrish?

  That is a much better response.

• 1:51:24Speaker 00

  But I could see, no, no, no, but I could see another argument in which the person says like, oh, you know what? Actually, being Catholic is just such a big part of my family that like, I just cannot ever see that. And then the woman gets the information that she needs. And so I think a lot of times it's about how you bring things up. You don't want to paint somebody in a corner where they feel like there's a wrong answer. You want to sort of share and model and make them feel safe saying whatever's true to them. And so, for example, she could have said something like, you know, I've been dating for a while. And the older I get, the more I realize my Jewish identity is really important to me. And I grew up celebrating the holidays. I really want to celebrate the holidays with my kids.

• 1:52:09Speaker 00

  How important is your religion to you? Then you get a chance to talk about your experience versus feeling like there's a right answer. Like, what would you say to that question on a date?

• 1:52:19Shane Parrish?

  I like your response, which is, you know, if I was in love with somebody, I don't think it would really matter. I haven't thought about it at this point because I haven't reached that point with somebody. But it wouldn't be a, I don't think it would be a deal breaker for me, but I don't know. Like, I haven't got to that point.

• 1:52:34Speaker 00

  I think that's a great answer because she can either say, eh, that's wishy washy. I think that's probably a no. That's not good enough. Or, okay, he's open to it. Religion's not something where he has his own conflicting thing that he's attached to.

• 1:52:46Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:47Speaker 00

  And so, in most of these situations, I feel like we think so much about like the strategy and the response and the right thing. It's like, what if we just prioritize communication skills that allow people to ask questions that are true for them? And listen to someone's answer and have a conversation around it. Instead of like some AI resume reviewer that's basically saying, well, they didn't have the right keywords. I'm not going to pass them on to the recruiter.

• 1:53:13Shane Parrish?

  I like that approach. Is it a red flag if a guy's best friend is a girl or a girl's best friend is a guy?

• 1:53:21Speaker 00

  I don't care about any of that stuff.

• 1:53:22Shane Parrish?

  No, I knew you were going to say that. But like statistically has that? No, but I'm just wondering, like, what does the science say behind that?

• 1:53:28Speaker 00

  I haven't seen science behind that, but just in my own relationship, I feel like a lot of my closest friends are men. And the fact that, you know, just two days ago, I spent like a lot of the day with one of my close male friends. And my husband was like, oh, I'm so glad that you're getting to see David. Like, make sure you like ask him about this and that. Like, I want the update. And it's like, it's so attractive to me that he's so confident.

• 1:53:52Shane Parrish?

  But you hang out together, right?

• 1:53:53Speaker 00

  Sometimes. This is a person, but like I have plenty of male friends that he's not particularly close to. And from the beginning, I think he's just understood, like Logan is a social creature with a lot of deep friendships. And some of them are men. And there's this concept called other significant others, which is this idea that it came from research from Eli Finkel and Elaine Chung at Northwestern. And you basically say to a couple, you know, who are the different people that you go to in your lives for different things, whether it's like talking about TV shows, talking about baseball, career advice. And couples that have longer lists of the individual people they go to tend to have these happier, more successful relationships. Because instead of putting all the pressure on getting their needs met from one person,

• 1:54:38Speaker 00

  they actually have this network that they lean on. And so my husband and I really invest in this idea of other significant others, to the point where our WhatsApp channel with 30 of our friends is called OSOs. And this is truly something that we in our community embody. And so I think that when my husband knows I'm having brunch with Mike, he's thinking, oh, Mike and Logan are just like these creative animals that literally have brunch with Post-it notes and a notebook and like they're just going to jam out in a way that Logan and I don't. And he feels like that makes Logan happy and makes our relationship stronger. He doesn't feel threatened. And I think that that's hard. A lot of people do feel threatened or they do feel jealous. But the more you can do in your own life to feel confident in yourself and your relationship,

• 1:55:23Speaker 00

  people just are drawn to that sort of confidence and it's better for both partners.

• 1:55:28Shane Parrish?

  Tell me more about this OSO WhatsApp group.

• 1:55:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:32Shane Parrish?

  And like how it's used and how it started.

• 1:55:34Speaker 00

  Sure. So I mentioned communal living. So I have these friends named Kristen and Phil, who are very visionary people. And they're people that are truly living their values and thinking like many steps ahead of most people. So in their twenties, or maybe it was their early thirties, when they were dating, they lived in this communal house that they ran in San Francisco, where it was about like nine people in a house. They would have dinner together and there was a lot of... You know, shared activities and close relationships. And none of this is sexual. This is not like, I don't know, sometimes people's heads jump to like orgies. That's really not the vibe.

• 1:56:10Shane Parrish?

  My mind did knock.

• 1:56:11Speaker 00

  Okay, good. The vibe is really like people who come home from work and like wanna have an interesting dinner conversation with somebody else and like eat the like rice pilaf that they made. So then they said, well, you know, we're getting to be in our mid 30s and people are gonna start having kids soon. Well, this house is not gonna work for kids. So they bought a piece of property and they said, we're gonna turn this into the next phase where if people wanna have kids, they can have kids. And in the beginning, everyone's like, this piece of land sucks. This is like close to the highway and close to BART. But like over the years, everyone flocked there, including my husband and me. So during the pandemic, when my husband was going through cancer treatment, that's where we wanted to live. We wanted to live with people, with a community of support, with these other significant

• 1:56:56Speaker 00

  others. And so we really had just this group of people who were either old friends or new friends to rely on. And this place now has five kids. It's soon gonna have eight kids. And people are just truly living in a pretty radical way, which is why do you have to have a concrete house with just you and your partner and your kid? Why do all your resources have to go towards making one dinner and doing all the dishes? What if you only had to cook every 14 days? What if you could pull your resources and have a hot tub, a cold plunge, a sauna? Like, that stuff is doable when people live in this alternative environment.

• 1:57:32Shane Parrish?

  It's incredible, because we tend to do that in Western world. As we get older, once we retire, we go to.

• 1:57:39Speaker 00

  Truly, yeah. And you know, there's plenty of jokes there about like, you know, a millennial retirement community, or I think someone has called it like a rave for introverts. They have a lot of funny names for it. But the point is that this is a group of people who've decided, life is better when you're living with your friends. They're not optimizing for the maximum square footage. They're not maximizing for the tonyist neighborhood. They're really saying, I feel happy when I see a friend in the middle of the day without social coordination. I feel happy when I have an interesting dinner conversation. I love being able to host friends here and now having children there. People just feel like, oh, well, I never had to hire a babysitter because like I'll watch this parent's kid or they'll watch my kids. And like, I no longer live there.

• 1:58:24Speaker 00

  I live like in a house like. 10-minute walk away, but I truly feel like the people who are there are way less stressed than the average parent that I know.

• 1:58:32Shane Parrish?

  I think that that's true even if you're not living in that community. I mean, as a single parent, it takes a village to raise your children. And having that help and social support network easily accessible, and I like how you mentioned uncoordinated kind of social events.

• 1:58:47Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:58:48Shane Parrish?

  I remember I used to live in the neighborhood of a lot of my close friends.

• 1:58:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:58:51Shane Parrish?

  And then I moved.

• 1:58:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:58:52Shane Parrish?

  And I missed those impromptu sort of wines or walk-bys or stuff. Now it requires more coordination.

• 1:59:00Speaker 00

  So there's a lot of research that shows that people are happier if they live within a five-minute walk of their friends. So Phil, one of the guys who started this community, he's now built an entire company around this premise, and the company's called Live Near Friends. And it's basically either how can you buy property with a friend or near a friend, or even like rent something nearby? It's basically like, instead of making your housing based on your commute or, you know, your favorite coffee shop, like why are we not centering our relationships?

• 1:59:28Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I like that. I think often it comes down to commute or cost, right?

• 1:59:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:59:33Shane Parrish?

  We often trade off

• 1:59:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:59:35Shane Parrish?

  money to live farther away from the city, increasing our commute so that we can get a bigger house, or I don't know what the variables are, because I don't resonate with that. So we're in a relationship. What are the questions that we should be asking ourselves as we decide whether we want to commit to this person for the rest of our lives?

• 1:59:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is really hard. I mean, the reason why I love that I have a background in behavioral science is that it's really about the science of decision-making. And so much of a relationship is, am I ready to date? Who should I date? Should I keep dating this person? Should we move in together? Should we get married? And so each of these is a pivotal point in your life. And so the first thing I would say is just having a lot of honest conversations. So before my husband and I got married, we did, there's a great book called Eight Dates by the Gottmans, who are sort of the kings and queens of relationship science and really research-backed. And in the book, there's a series of dates that you should go on to get to know your partner. And so there's conversations about money, there's conversations around family, there's

• 2:00:39Speaker 00

  conversations about hopes and dreams in the future. And I did all of the dates with my husband sort of as this like project where I was blogging about it, but I'm really glad I had that container that forced me to do the dates because we got so much out of them that I think really did lead us to get engaged and kind of build a life together. And so I think that the questions differ per person, but a lot of it is just sitting down and think about like, what does our life look in the future, look like in the future? Like, do you plan on working? What are your values? Do you want to have kids? What are things from your childhood that you really want to repeat? What are things about your childhood that you want to do the opposite of? And I think sometimes when we're so in love with someone, we just assume we're on the same

• 2:01:21Speaker 00

  page. And so just kind of echoing our earlier sentiment that I think it's about having these intentional conversations to decide, is this somebody who I could really build a life with? The other key thing is to understand that people often think, am I making the right choice? There's not really such thing as the right choice. I don't believe in soulmates. I think that you could have many great relationships with many great people and you get to decide, is this the person that I want to do it with? And so of course, you can think about the lives that you didn't live and all the other stories that you could have written, but instead I think, think about the fact that this is a story that I am excited to write.

• 2:02:01Shane Parrish?

  Your husband sounds like an awesome man.

• 2:02:04Speaker 00

  He's great.

• 2:02:05Shane Parrish?

  How do we end that relationship if we decide it's not for us? But we've been in the relationship. So it's not after a first date, but maybe we've been dating three months or six months and we've reached one of these points. We've had these conversations. Now, how do we respectfully break up?

• 2:02:19Speaker 00

  Okay. We talked today about how painful rejection is. And so I think the first guiding principle for breaking up with someone really should be empathy and just understanding and really imagining how painful it is to be broken up with in most situations. And so a few things to keep in mind. So one of them is, there's this rule kind of in corporate America that if you're going to lay somebody off or give them a bad performance review, it shouldn't be the first time that they've gotten that feedback. So I think it's much more fair to let somebody know Throughout the relationship, if something isn't working, I think it's so painful for people when somebody breaks up with them and says, you know, you love going to restaurants and city culture and I love camping and skiing, but since we've been dating, I haven't gotten

• 2:03:02Speaker 00

  to do any of those things. And then the person's like, what? You never brought that up once. Like, of course, we could have made time for that. Why were you keeping that from me? And so I think just understanding that as things are happening and coming up, share them with your partner so that you can tackle them together. Maybe it comes to the same outcome of breaking up, but don't kind of hide all of that until the moment that you break up with them. Another thing to keep in mind is I don't think it's the opportunity to give somebody feedback. I think that can be very painful for somebody. So sometimes in a breakup scenario, the person will be like, tell me what I did wrong. Tell me when you fell out of love with me. I don't find that that's helpful unless there's something really specific, like, I constantly felt like you were breaking plans with me, or, you know, something that they can change.

• 2:03:45Shane Parrish?

  You were unreliable.

• 2:03:46Speaker 00

  You were unreliable. But a lot of times, it's like, you just weren't a match. And whatever you say to them is really going to stick in their mind and they're going to go over it a million times. So I just sort of find that that's unhelpful. There's also this idea, do you know Elan de Batan?

• 2:04:00Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 2:04:01Speaker 00

  His work. So he has this concept of like, the nice breakup person, where it's like, I'll keep being in touch with you after the breakup because it makes me feel like I'm a nice person, which makes me feel better. But it's actually really about respecting your boundaries, which is like, it's probably better for you if we're not as in touch. And so really letting you define that, or not trying to sort of assuage my own guilt by like, being in touch with you all the time, which actually makes things harder for you. So I have a conversation guide in my book for how to have a breakup conversation, which has a lot of things about like, preparing for it in advance. So when are you going to have this conversation? You know, if somebody has a big presentation on Monday, like, don't

• 2:04:43Speaker 00

  do it Sunday night. Is this person able to get in touch with some friends or family to support them afterwards? So just really trying to Soften the difficulty of the situation by setting them up to get support from other people, sharing with them kind of how you're feeling, but not giving feedback. And then I think honestly, not having sex with them and giving them space to honor the fact that this is challenging and they need to move on.

• 2:05:07Shane Parrish?

  I like that. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about dating profiles. What are the tips that people, the most common things that people get wrong?

• 2:05:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I've done a ton of research on this and I can tell you some of the main tips. So your dating app profile is sort of like your billboard. And if you were buying a billboard, let's say on the 101 in San Francisco, like you would of course think a lot about what you're going to put on it. And I think people should give the same amount of attention to their Hinge profile. So for example, you are telling a story about who you are. So let's say that you have a side of yourself that loves anime and there's a side of yourself that's passionate about baseball. If all of your pictures are from Comic Con, I'm not going to see that. So really, I like to teach people this concept of your three big things. What are three big things about yourself that you want to express in your profile?

• 2:05:59Speaker 00

  And then make sure that through your prompts and through your photos, you're getting those things across. Another thing is having a mixture of humor and vulnerability. You don't want to be all jokes and you don't want to be all super serious. You want to show people different sides of yourself. You also don't want to fall into these dating app cliches. So there's this one on Hinge, like I'm overly competitive about everything. And people have seen that all the time. So like at best, they sort of just ignore it. And at worst, they're like, oh, cliche, like I'm not interested in that person. There's actually a new feature that just came out on Hinge called prompt feedback, which uses AI to kind of give you personalized private feedback on your prompt responses. So like if you give a one word answer or it's cliche, it'll say like, dig a little bit deeper.

• 2:06:44Speaker 00

  You know, what are you overly competitive about? So hopefully that's going to kind of raise all profiles. Other do's and don'ts, you know, don't have one of those Where's Waldo photos where we can't tell which one you are. People don't like that. In general, selfies perform worse. If you have sunglasses or filters or wearing ski goggles, it's really hard to tell what you look like. So just like make it easy for the person to tell what you look like. Have a photo of, you know, a clear headshot, photo of your full body, photo of you doing something that you love, and then a photo with friends and family. But not so many that we can't tell which one is you. But in general, it's really about using it as an opportunity to share who you are,

• 2:07:27Speaker 00

  what you're looking for, and what kind of person you want to meet.

• 2:07:30Shane Parrish?

  Should you smile?

• 2:07:32Speaker 00

  Smile's good.

• 2:07:33Shane Parrish?

  Should you have a pet?

• 2:07:35Speaker 00

  If you have a pet, sure, but you know, I think that when people-

• 2:07:38Shane Parrish?

  You know what came to mind there is like Tim Ferriss did this thing. I think I remember this correctly where he tested like eight thousand photos or something crazy. And the one that was most successful was him like carrying a cat on the cover.

• 2:07:51Speaker 00

  I have seen over the years, different research about people with cats, people with dogs. When I hear those things, I'm just like, do you have a fucking cat or dog?

• 2:07:59Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:59Speaker 00

  Like, if it's really important to you, put it in there, but like, don't dog bait somebody. If you don't-

• 2:08:05Shane Parrish?

  Dog bait.

• 2:08:06Speaker 00

  I just made that up, but it's like, if you have a friend with a cute dog, like putting the dog in your picture, it's like, that's not representative of life. It's like, show us authentically what spending time with you would be like. So if you once went on a hike, but you actually spend every Saturday night playing board games, take a picture of board game night, don't show that one hiking photo. And so I think the dog or cat thing kind of fits into that overall advice of authentically show us who you are, and if that involves your dog, great, but if not, like, don't take eight thousand pictures, some of which have a stranger's dog in them.

• 2:08:39Shane Parrish?

  I always end on the same question, which is, what is success for you?

• 2:08:44Speaker 00

  Success for me is balance. Feeling like I'm not forsaking my health for the sake of career, not feeling like I'm forsaking my husband for the sake of our daughter, not feeling like I'm forsaking my family for the sake of my friends, and really just knowing my priorities and having that reflected in how I spend my time.

• 2:09:08Shane Parrish?

  Thank you so much. This was an awesome conversation.

• 2:09:11Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.

• 2:09:14Shane Parrish?

  Thank you for listening and learning with me. If you've enjoyed this episode, consider leaving a five-star rating or review. It's a small action on your part that helps us reach more curious minds. You can stay connected with Farnham Street on social media and explore more insights at fs.blog, where you'll find past episodes, our mental models, and thought-provoking articles. While you're there, check out my book, Clear Thinking. Through engaging stories and actionable mental models, it helps you bridge the gap between intention and action, so your best decisions become your default decisions. Until next time.