How To Find Your “Happily Ever After” - Ty Tashiro

Ty Tashiro is a psychologist, author, and relationship expert. Searching for love can feel overwhelming, especially when you're trying to find the right person. So what traits should we actually seek out, or avoid, and how can we give ourselves the best chance of finding our person? Expect to learn why happily ever after is so hard to find, why people have difficulty envisioning their romantic future, why we only get 3 wishes for our partner, the biggest mistakes people make when choosing a long-term partner, why some people are drawn to relationships that are really tough, if it is possible to optimise your chance of finding the right partner by increasing your odds of timing and randomness and much more… - 00:00 Is It Hard To Find A Happily Ever After? 03:09 Are We Designed To Be Monogamous? 08:57 Why Do We Find Difficulty In Visioning A Romantic Future? 16:24 Differentiating Passionate Love And Companionate Love 24:19 How To Know If You're In Love 33:03 What To Look For In A Partner 43:23 Traits We Should Avoid For A Relationship 57:06 Green And Red Flags To Be Aware Of 1:08:13 Does Compatibility In Personality Matter? 1:14:35 Reasons Why People Are Drawn To Challenging Relationships 1:32:48 Is There Such A Thing As Optimising Serendipity In Love? 1:48:20 Where To Find Ty - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  I hear that I've got you onto creatine and protein powders.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Life changing. I gotta say, I listened to an episode of yours about a year ago.

• 0:10Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  With Peter Attia and the two of you got me on creatine, got me on protein powder. And I have never, I mean, it's the best shape I've been in in decades.

• 0:21Chris Williamson?

  Let's go.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm not the same level you guys are at, but for my modest goals, it's it's been it's been really tremendous. So I appreciate that.

• 0:33Chris Williamson?

  Think about how many better relationship outcomes are downstream from you being a bit more jacked over the last 12 months, from me and Peter talking shit about how good creatine and protein powder is. The world is interconnected, Ty. Everything is this big sort of mess. Look, dude, I I hope that you've had your creatine this morning because I I've fallen in love with your work. Dr. Shannon Curry a couple of weeks ago introduced me to you and I think your stuff's so great, you know, this real evidence-based, science-backed look at relationships, attachment, love, what it is, what predicts effectiveness, red flags, green flags. I want to I want to do a real full run through today.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Great. Looking forward to it.

• 1:14Chris Williamson?

  Awesome. Okay. Happily ever after. How come it's so hard to find?

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Oh, this is a this is a long story. It gets a little depressing. I promise people

• 1:27Speaker 01

  have a better story as to go along here, but you know, the two things people really want when they sit down and think about it is they want a relationship that's happy. I think that's the more obvious thing, but they can forget that, hey, we also want something that's going to be stable and last. You don't want to have something that flames out after two or three years. And so happily ever after actually is a phrase that captures that well. And if you look at the data on that, happily ever after is really elusive for modern love. So I think a lot of people are familiar with the divorce statistics, but let me break that down with a little bit more detail. So the divorce rate for first marriages is somewhere between forty one and forty three percent. So it's obviously pretty high.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  You would think maybe in a second marriage, your divorce risk goes down because you learned a couple of things. Actually, not the case. It goes up ten percent for second marriages.

• 2:20Chris Williamson?

  God damn it.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, goes up fifteen percent for third marriages. So if you kind of average all these numbers together, the divorce risk is about is about fifty percent. Now, also, part of that is the happy part. So some couples stay together, but they're really unhappy, chronically unhappy. And if you use the most modest estimate possible, you know, that's that's going to be about eight percent of eight to ten percent of couples. So now we're up to sixty three percent. So, you know, or sixty percent, I'm sorry. So happily ever after, yes, is is really hard to find. And I think it's harder than ever in the modern dating environment that we have.

• 3:04Chris Williamson?

  Okay, that's a very depressing way to begin a conversation about love. Um, yeah. Look, it it seems to me that I'd be interested to get your thoughts on this, too. As fun as reading Sex at Dawn was, I don't think it's accurate. It seems to me that humans are sort of serially monogamous or monogamish, something like that, working on between two to seven, ten year cycles with partners, getting infants to the stage where they're able to remotely fend for themselves. What's your perspective sort of anthropologically here?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's about right. It gets confusing with some of this evolutionary psychology theory because it could be true, for example, right? Let's say that we're not designed to be as monogamous as we are in modern society, but we have all these social constraints. We have financial commitments attached to marriage. We have kids attached to it who are dependent on their parents for longer than ever, maybe in human history. And, you know, any reasonable person then who has some degree of willpower is going to be able to fight some of these tendencies or biological pushes to kind of craft the life that they want. Now, I think the value of something like Sex at Dawn is to say, hey.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Maybe I have some of these base urges and when I feel those pop up, I know what those are. But now let's develop a plan to deal with that. So I don't burn down the rest of my life.

• 4:36Chris Williamson?

  Dude, the best story around this, David Buss wrote the evolution of desire. And he's telling me this story, this guy reached out to him and said, I wanted to thank you because your book saved my marriage. David said, oh, it's interesting. What happened? He said, well, you know, I've been happily married to my wife for a decade or so, and everything's really great. And I do love her, but I found myself getting attracted to other women. You know, I'd see an attractive woman walk down the street and I'd think, wow, she's hot. And I thought that that was an indication that there was something wrong with me or wrong with the relationship or wrong with my partner, or there was an incompatibility. And I read your book and I found out that men especially have a reward circuit in the brain.

• 5:18Chris Williamson?

  When we look at anything remotely sexual, a pair of rocks that kind of look like boobs to us, like I'm in. So, you son of a bitch, I'm in. And I realized that, oh no, this isn't some early indication that there's a problem in my relationship. This is just a pretty effective, pretty old bit of my biology. Just making sure that I'm sort of keeping a weather eye on what the surroundings look like. Says, marriage with the wife has continued to tick along perfectly fine. I don't feel guilty. I don't feel ashamed about this. I feel like that's, that's similar to what you're talking about.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  I think that's awesome. Yeah. You know, it's, I think just having these desires, having these reflexive, you know, can maybe a turn of the head or something like that. It's totally natural. The question is, is, you know, can you be honest with yourself about that? First of all, so you have the insight, the awareness. And then two, do you have a contingency plan so that you're not at the whims of your desire? And so one of the really interesting things, for example, about couples who are really satisfied and who stay committed and are resistant to divorce is that they actively, we use this esoteric term derogate. So, so they actively disparage attractive alternative options. So other people they could hook up with.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  And so like, if you have them look on a computer screen, for example, and a hot woman pops up on the computer screen.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Men will reflexively avert their eyes for a second to try to not look at it. Now they'll look back eventually because they're guys, but they have this kind of protective mechanism to say, I can't just, you know, passively work with this. I need to actively try to manage my desires so that I can have a happy relationship.

• 7:07Chris Williamson?

  I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Um, it's like the insight, um, it's far easier to avoid temptation than to resist it. And Brad Wilcox in his book, Get Married, he talks about, uh, there are certain like high risk environments that you can find yourself in. If you're in a relationship, you know, if you really want to be faithful to your partner, you could say, well, you should love them so much that it shouldn't matter if you're in a nightclub, drunk at 2:30 in the morning and you go, yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe it shouldn't. But in the same way as I don't ever intend on becoming a heroin addict, but if I just left loads of heroin needles around the house and one evening I was bored, I'm like, nah, you know, I might shoot up. Who knows?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:52Chris Williamson?

  So, uh, yeah, um, avoiding temptation rather than resisting it, sort of environment design in that way. I guess like this relational environment design too, which is, hey, look, I'm just not going to give myself the chance to become enthralled because I understand how, um, fast acting, the lust system can be, and it just sort of kicks into high gear and you don't really know. So yeah, I very much think, um, designing your lifestyle and thinking carefully about what you expose yourself to is probably a pretty, a pretty smart idea.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're so right about that, Chris. One of the phrases I hear so often from people who have cheated on their partner, now they're like, whoops, I shouldn't have done that. Um, is they use the phrase, so next thing I know, as if it's this total surprise that they're drunk at the nightclub and now they're making out with somebody.

• 8:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  And, you know, one of the things they'll do is you just backtrack them to this whole host of bad decisions that eventually led to them, right? Being in that moment where they made out with someone or something else that they shouldn't have.

• 8:56Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Why do people have a difficulty in envisioning their romantic future?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Well, we're not very good with the future in general, right? When we think something good's gonna happen, we have this affective forecasting problem is what they call it. So we, we think that something good is gonna be much better than it's actually gonna be emotionally. And then if there's something aversive coming up, we think it's actually gonna be much worse than it really is. And then we get to the experience and sometimes we're disappointed. Like for the positive thing, I call it the prom effect, where you think the prom is gonna be this amazing night and all magical. Most people will tell you their problem is a little bit disappointing, right? And that's because they made it out to be the thing it wasn't gonna be. You know, same thing with negative events. A lot of times if you just, for example, get into your email and do the thing, right?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  For me personally, I'm like, this isn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. So the same thing applies to relationships where sometimes we put unreasonable emotional expectations on what our relationship will provide us. And by the same token, if there's something hard to do in a relationship, let's say, talk about a tough topic or bring up something uncomfortable, we tend to catastrophize that and think it's gonna be much worse than it's really gonna be. And so both of these errors in either direction can cause problems with us accurately envisioning the future.

• 10:20Chris Williamson?

  I suppose when you layer on top the hormonal neurochemical cocktail of being in passionate love as well, that accurate prediction of anything pretty much goes out the window.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Well, now, yeah, now that's that state, that, that phase, however long it lasts. Now that's a total neurological disaster.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I, now, I'm not a neuroscience expert, but I know enough to, you know, make, make sense of these things. I remember reading, I first read those studies about these people in passionate love and they're thinking about their partner. I mean, if you look at the things that are activated, not activated, the kind of the takeaway is you're not making cost benefit analyses. And you're having, the reason is because you're having a really hard time seeing cost at all. Those areas are actually deactivated, so it's harder to see cost. It's all benefit based. And of course, when we've been You know, in that phase when we're in passionate love, yeah, we're totally irrational. And we make, uh, anything the partner does seems cute or quirky.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Of course, if you fast forward two or three years, some of those cute quirky things become super annoying.

• 11:34Chris Williamson?

  Wildly irritating. I just love the way that she's like slurps her tea. And then that's the sound that makes you want to tear your own eardrums out only, only a couple of years later.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  That's right. That, that's right. So, you know, sometimes I can get quiet. I'm, I'm pretty introverted and so maybe a woman early in a relationship might think it's mysterious or something like that. It becomes much less mysterious when I'm not having an active conversation when we're supposed to be really engaged with something. So, yeah, you know, it can happen to all of us. But, uh, there's all kinds of mistakes we make and passionate love is. That being said, Chris, I think, you know, sometimes people are like, well, so, so maybe I should try to hold it together a little bit more when I'm like, no way, you know? What, what feels as good as passionate love? When do you ever feel that way emotionally, um, you know, physically?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  When are you just that euphoric about anything in life and almost never, right? And so I, I think it's this really great thing that people should just enjoy. But one of the things I like to do then is say, let's put some guardrails up ahead of time before you're in that state. So you can enjoy it and you know that you're not going to make bad decisions about getting a dog together or something when you're in passionate love. But now it traps you in a situation that's not good in the long run.

• 12:58Chris Williamson?

  I mean, this is exactly the same as what I just said. It's easier to avoid bad temptations than it is to resist them. So I think, uh, you should be careful who you let yourself fall in love with. You should see, um, you know, I mean, even maybe from one week of spending time. I have a, a friend that went and spent, I think 10 days, this sort of, you know, a whirlwind romance. Spent 10 days with this woman and then at the end, both of them are, and they're happily married now and it's sweet. But, you know, you think, oh God, 10 days, 10 days, you're, you're telling me that I can go from totally or relatively rational, functioning human who can do cost benefit analyses, who can observe red flags, who can plan their future, who can prioritize themselves, make their needs known to.

• 13:44Chris Williamson?

  Useless blob of like serotoninless, dopamine fueled sex hunger with one person with and and here's the here's the fucking wild thing with no ability to perceive other mating options. That's the other thing that passionate love does, which I don't think many people realize. And again, it's a huge price cost risk, maybe that people go through, which is you are essentially unable to see other viable mating options, which means you will stay in a relationship which is mistreating you, which is not good for you. You will be more scared of leaving one, which is unsatisfactory, no matter how short of a period of time it

• 14:26Chris Williamson?

  is, because just the way that your mating mind works, you have shut off other mating options. And that's real functional if you're about to make babies, but it's not so functional if your relationship sucks. So you're you you you're right. It's not just cost benefit analysis. It's also you're unable to observe the market, right? You're not having to you're not having to force yourself to avert your eyes. Your eyes are never strained. You're just locked on to your partner.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah, it's a totally immersed, totally absorbed in the experience. And all of our psychology and all of our physiology is pushing us in that direction. It's really remarkable, right? If you think about it. I say it's kind of like when you have to when you have to pee, there's nothing else you can think about, except I have to pee. Oddly enough, being in passionate love can be a little bit of the same, blinders on and just totally focused on on one thing. And if it's good and it's healthy, gosh, that's a beautiful thing, right? But if it's, let's say with a narcissist or a psychopath, and they're getting their claws into you, well, you're not in this position to make good, reasonable choices. You know, now it's not so now it's not so great anymore. But but on this on

• 15:31Speaker 01

  this point, though, on this passionate love point, if you do have these guardrails up ahead of time for yourself, and you find someone and you're just, gosh, you're really into it, and you're just absorbed in that experience, just enjoy it. It's great. It doesn't last for forever. And sometimes people ask, so, hey, Ty, why can't I stay in that heart pounding butterfly in the stomach passionate love feeling for forever?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  And I tell them because you would die, you know, that pounding hard is high blood pressure and those butterflies are burning a hole in your, would burn a hole in your stomach, you know, burn a ulcer in there from all the cortisol and everything else they're leaving off. So, you know, if you're just passionate love for a year or two, don't, don't worry about it. But if you stay that way, it's too high of a state of arousal for any human to maintain.

• 16:24Chris Williamson?

  Just do a little bit more of a primer for the people listening, passionate love system, companionate love system, transition between the two, how, how people feel, how they interpret and misinterpret that kind of journey.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know, so, so passionate love is, uh, it's pretty heavily lust driven. So, you know, you're very sexually interested in a person, you're just starting to get things kicked off sexually or physically with that person. So, yeah, it's really kind of heavy on the lust side of the equation. Now, when you get to know the person better and you get into more stable phase of the relationship, now you start to see this companionate love emerge, which is more of just like the, we enjoy hanging out with each other. Like, we're, we're, we're really good friends. I actually just enjoy who this person is beyond the physical aspects. And now you have the two components in place, you know, being in love. So you

• 17:20Speaker 01

  can love somebody, you can love your dog, you can love candy, you know, you could love a partner to a certain extent, but when you say you're in love, the use of that preposition, it's a, it's an either or thing. You don't say like, I'm kind of in love with somebody. It's an either or thing. And researchers have found there's actually only two components necessary for the in love. And it's, do you have that companionate love, that liking, right, for them? The second part is, is do you have the lust or the kind of passionate side of things? You have those two ingredients, um, you know, it's pretty likely that you'll, that you'll fall in love with the person. And if you then track that over time, as you could imagine, the companionate love. That's got to be your rock, right?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  That's going to be in like athletic terms. That's like playing good defense. You can always rely on that happening. You can always rely on putting effort into that and that showing up. The passionate love will still be there and it'll come stronger at certain times. But it's much more, there's much more turbulence with passionate love and the lust side of things. So you want to really invest in someone who you can fall in companionate love with. Primarily, right? You also want the physical component as well, but I would, I would put the companionate before the lust part of it.

• 18:40Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting. What would you, how would you distinguish between lust driving traits and companionate driving traits? Lust positive traits and companion positive traits?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the lust one's pretty easy. So, you know, um, there's hotness. Well, we'll really just, that could probably take you the entire way with, with the lust part of it. So if someone's physically attractive, uh, there could be other components to that. So researchers have found, for example, that, um, with women, when they're at peak fertility in their menstrual cycle, they're actually sensitive to men's scent, to their smell. And so, you know, women in peak fertility, uh, like the body odor of men who tend to have symmetrical bodies and symmetrical faces, which is oftentimes more attractive and kind of a outward sign of physical fitness or physical health.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Um, so all these physical things kind of fall on the, on the lust side of things. You can also put in that category for, you know, women choosing men, a certain degree of social dominance or leadership capability can be very hot as well. You know, they like, they like the power or they like the, you know, there's a reason why lead singers and quarterbacks tend to do pretty well, uh, kind of showing that leadership, you know, showing that dominance. At the start, at least, women times often can find that lust, lust worthy. Now, companion to love is going to sound totally boring by comparison, but you know, these are things like stability, is the person a kind, you know, person, do they have good

• 20:22Speaker 01

  values and those sorts of things. And of course, those things are important for a long-term relationship and important for liking the person and trusting a person. But they're a lot less flashy than the components for lust.

• 20:35Chris Williamson?

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• 21:17Chris Williamson?

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• 21:59Chris Williamson?

  I'm wondering whether somebody that was in an intermittent, long-distance relationship, perhaps, that might extend out because it's an amount of time, or something similar, maybe, maybe contact is more intermittent than you might. Think so. The familiarity as well also doesn't proceed as quickly. I'm trying to work out what the mechanism is, the ticking clock that occurs that transitions you from passionate to companion at love. And whether there are certain ways that people can speed run through that, not that you necessarily would want to. Or ways that people could extend, not that you would necessarily want to do that either, but I'm just intrigued.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  You know, I wish I had a good answer for you that was, hey, we're totally positive how to make this happen. But one thing I'll say that might be helpful here is that there is a tremendous amount of variability with how long it takes people to transition out of passionate love, actually much more than I would have expected. So some people transition out of passionate love after just a couple of months. Other people will keep it going for a year or two. There's some just outliers though, who will keep it going for years on end. Once in a while, anecdotally, I'll meet some of these couples have been married for, you know, a decade, two decades, and they're all over each other. I'm like, you know, get a room kind of situation. And I'm like, wow, that's really, that's really amazing. That's really great.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  And, you know, who knows what, why that's the case. So I think someplace where psychology hasn't gotten yet with the research on passionate love is exactly to your question. So why is it the case some people transition out more quickly? Why do some people sustain it for longer? One thing I will say that seems to be one of the most promising variables is what we would call expansion of the self. So, you know, you have your own traits and characteristics that are unique to you. And even though your partner might have some similarities with you, they're of course going to have their unique personality traits and, you know, interests and all kinds of things, life experiences.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  One of the things that happens in couples that maintain a higher degree of passionate love is they're super curious about the things that are different in their partner. And they want to learn about it and they want to try to expand their own self, so their own interests and personality. To try to emulate some of those qualities as well. And so what you can imagine is you don't have just two people who are fixed circles like coming together. You have two people expanding, right, who they are, expanding their possibilities into each other. And so they grow individually, but then they also grow together as a couple. So for couples have been together for a long time.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  That's one of the best pieces of advice I could give is one, be really interested in your differences, even though they annoy you sometimes. Number two, get some things together as a couple where it's new to both of you. And you can both grow, you know, within learning about this thing and make it something of your own.

• 25:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I, I wonder why, I wonder why people who take on some more of their, their partner's interests and, and stay curious. I wonder why that helps to examine. I mean, it's, it's very good for keeping relationship longevity because it makes you become sort of more attuned with your partner. You're almost speaking the same language in one way. How do you know if you're in love with somebody as opposed to just liking them or lusting after them?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  You, you know, one of the weird things, Chris, is people just know. Like, and so I know it's a really unsatisfying answer, ethistemologically, but um, yeah, that, that's kind of the case. They're just, yes, married couples, this always cracks me up when I hear a single person ask a happily married couple. So how do you know that, you know, this was the right person for you? And they always give the same answer, which is you just know, which is totally unhelpful, you know, to the person who's single. But um, yeah, it is this kind of cliff-like phenomenon, this dichotomous thing where people just switch into it and they're like, you know what? I'm in love with this person. They might withhold that for a little bit so they don't look bonkers. But um, yeah, people just, it's one of those weird things in life where we just know it.

• 26:20Chris Williamson?

  Isn't it strange that you don't get to choose who you fall in love with and you kind of don't get to choose necessarily who you fall out of love with? I suppose you can do things that are predictive. Again, you cannot expose yourself to people that you don't think you should fall in love with. You cannot expose yourself to situations and you can cut off at the knees issues which will cause you in future to fall out of love. But the actual act of it happening, it's like being convinced that two plus two equals four. It's like I can't unconvince you of that fact unless I unconvince you of that fact. And I kind of, it's, it's not your choice to be convinced or unconvinced of something. And I kind of get the sense that love is a little bit like that.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  It is, yeah. And gosh, it's really inconvenient sometimes, we're on both ends there. But I like what you said about when it comes to falling in love though. Yeah, you can try to avoid folks that maybe you know are bad for you, that you tend to, tend to go for. On that same note though, you can also say, hey, there are qualities in people that I really do enjoy and that I really value. But sometimes for whatever reason, I don't place emphasis on those when I'm choosing partners. So yeah, you want to over select from these pools of people who have these qualities that you know are really good for you, that you don't naturally gravitate towards. By the same token, yeah, let's avoid people who you know are bad for you, but for whatever

• 27:42Speaker 01

  reason, you just have a weak spot for those folks.

• 27:45Chris Williamson?

  Why do we like the things that we like in partners? How are we socialized into wanting the things that we do or inheriting the wants that we have?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's some universality about that actually. So like David Buss, for example, has done some really nice cross-cultural studies where it looks like what do people want in a mate? And there's some commonality there for long-term partners. You know, we want someone with, who's kind, you know, we want someone who's loyal and can be committed, all these things that would make sense. With short-term mating partners, we, we tend to not prioritize those things. We go for the hotness or the excitements. And that's fine as well, if that's, if that's your goal and you're clear about it. I think where we get tripped up sometimes is we want something that's long-term.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  But we get tempted by the things that are good for the short term, right? So we go for the hot, exciting person. And as we've talked about, it's really easy now, if you fall into passionate love with this person, to all of a sudden be in a rut. And next thing you know, you're spending a ton of time together. You've moved in together, you got a dog together. And it's like two years down the road and you're like, gosh, I, I don't think I'm actually happy with this person. Uh, and it seems like a blur that you got to that point, but of course there were all kinds of decisions that led you up to that situation.

• 29:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it, it really is. I, I wonder how many relationships, marriages, families even, were born out of somebody falling backward into a lustful relationship. And before they knew it, they woke up with two kids and a dog and a marriage and a ring on their finger.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:27Chris Williamson?

  And, uh, yeah, they, they never intended to. And yeah, at, at no point did it feel right to back out. You know, it felt good and then it felt okay. And then it didn't feel so good, but it was kind of more committed and you were in really deep. And then stuff just kept progressing. And, uh, yeah, do you know what the Abilene paradox is? Are you familiar with this?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Uh, please, uh, tell me, I, I don't think I do.

• 29:49Chris Williamson?

  Uh, it's a really cool idea. So Abilene paradox, um, it's a, a situation where a group makes a decision that's contrary to the desires of the group's members, because each member assumes that the other members approve of it. So it kind of explains how, uh, a number of accurate individuals can become idiots when they get together. So I think kind of Emperor's New Clothes, um, an acquaintance invites you to his wedding despite not wanting you there because he thinks that you want to attend and you attend despite not wanting to, because you think that he wants you there.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:23Chris Williamson?

  Um, or at a business meeting, someone suggests an idea that he thinks that the others will like, recruiting some spicy influencer as the face of the brand. And each other member has misgivings, but assumes that the others will consider them bigoted if they don't agree. So everyone approves the idea despite nobody liking it. And I wonder how many Abilene marriages we've got where both partners have kind of fallen backward into this thing. No one really ever thought about it. You, yeah, sure, the passionate love phase was great. And before you know it, you're, yeah, you're in your forties with a couple of kids and you, you didn't actually ask for this.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Sure, I think a ton, you know, end up that way. So there's the. Okay, we just thought each other were hot and you know, we kind of got together for that reason. Next thing we know, we're married with kids. I think that happens, but you bring up a good, a really good point there, which is this broader, broader societal context where people think, well, there's just certain things I'm supposed to do in life by a certain age and they almost have this checklist like mentality. Well, I want to meet the person I'm going to marry by 25. You know, I'll be married by 27. I want to have kids by, you know, 29. And I respect that. That hasn't been my path. For example, I respect that people.

• 31:36Chris Williamson?

  Nor mine.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, have that aspiration, but I think sometimes people can be so rigid about wanting to check off those boxes. I think you and I have probably both seen this with friends where you just think to yourself, they're just plugging in somebody.

• 31:51Chris Williamson?

  Dude.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  That's good enough, right? So they can kind of check off the box.

• 31:55Chris Williamson?

  So I was at my best friend's wedding a couple of weeks ago. I gave a very successful best man's speech as well. I think it made it made it made him suitably uncomfortable. And I was walking around outside and it's the classic thing. I imagine that bridesmaids get this as well. You know, if you're a groomsmen or a best man or whatever, one of the best men, the rest of the wedding, once all of the fawning has been done over the couple is spent scrutinizing your dating life. And you know, they're so Chris, when you know, when are we gonna meet? You know, you really need to sound like, okay, and I mentioned, I, I said, like, I really am, I'm glad that I did

• 32:38Chris Williamson?

  the things that I did in my life to get myself to this point, but I also feel, you know, I feel, yeah, I'm, I'm ready. I'm ready to settle down. I'm ready to become a dad. I'm excited for the prospect of starting a family and being a little bit less selfish and living for something more than just my own vapid needs for validation from the world. And they, one of the parents gave me a fucking awesome piece of advice. This is going to be seared into my mind for the rest of my life. So thank you. Shout out Zach's mom. She said, make sure that you fall in love with the person, not the institution. And I think what she means by that is you want to get married to the person because you want to get married to the person, not because you want to get married.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:21Chris Williamson?

  And that's exactly what you're talking about.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, such, such sage advice. So.

• 33:27Chris Williamson?

  Always listen to the mother in law. Always listen.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Gosh, yeah, yeah. That's a great piece of advice and. But you know, like, like you said, there, there's a lot of pressure out there. So you could imagine, right? Uh, you, you sound like very secure with where you're at and when, where you've been. But if someone's more susceptible to those societal pressures, yeah, it's, it's, it can certainly be tough. So I understand how people, um, you know, can maybe make some suboptimal decisions because of those pressures. But, uh, of course, the best thing to do is, you know, wait for the right person and, and not the checking off the box for the institution.

• 34:04Chris Williamson?

  And then be able to say the sentence, you'll ju- when you know, you'll just know and be a total black box of advice. That's useless to everybody else.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Drive, drive the singles crazy.

• 34:14Chris Williamson?

  Correct. Uh, okay. What should you look for in a partner if you want to improve the odds of finding enduring love?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Hmm. So, uh, I, so I used to teach a course for undergraduates on the psychology of romantic relationships. And, and I, I loved, I loved that class. I love my students. And one of the things we would do is that say, take out a piece of paper. I guess they still had paper at, at this time. And I said, write down all the things you want in your ideal partner. Pretend I'm like your fairy godfather and I can grant these wishes to you. And so they would, they'd always ask for more time. They'd write down about 20 to 25 things under paper that they wanted in their ideal partner. And I think that's great. You know, you should, you should dream big. And then say, does anybody want to volunteer on their list?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  So I could read it in front of the class. And great, you know, a lot, a lot of students would volunteer the list. And so I'd go through and I'd read in the order that they had put them, the traits. So it was 200 students in this class. I'd have everyone raise their hands and I'd say, okay. Uh, this person wants someone who's tall. So just by thought experiment, let's say everyone's a guy in here, right? So I said, if you're a guy who's under six feet. Put your hand down. Now, you'll lose, out of a hundred people, you'll lose eighty people with that because only twenty percent of men in the US are six foot or taller. And then she might

• 35:43Speaker 01

  say something like, I want someone who's wealthy. And I say, so what does that mean to you? Maybe she says, I want someone who makes at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. To her, that's what that means. Well, you know, of the remaining twenty guys, you're gonna be down to about five now, right? Whatever trait is your third wish, you will end up, I guarantee you, I've done this now dozens, if not hundreds of times, whatever your third wish is, will take you down to one person out of a hundred, or will take you to a fraction of a person, which is actually much more, much more likely. So, you know, when we say, what's the things to choose in a partner, I think the first place we want to start with is, we need to really prioritize

• 36:27Speaker 01

  and be laser focused on the things that are most important to us before we generate our list of twenty to twenty-five things.

• 36:33Chris Williamson?

  Less. The answer, what traits should you look for in a partner is less, fewer traits.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Fewer, you know, the way I like to phrase that is, I say, make the list of your dreams. So you could make your twenty trait list, let's say. But what nobody does, or I haven't met anybody yet, what nobody does is rank order those traits then. So what's number one, what's number two, what's number three, so on and so forth. And then, the top three traits that you want in a partner, I tell people, write that out, print it out, and put it on your mirror, or put it on the back of your phone, or put it someplace where you'll just always see it, because you need to have that really salient in your mind, that these are the things you're actually looking for. And one of the beautiful things, though, about psychology is, if you

• 37:22Speaker 01

  take that time to just do that simple task, and you remind yourself fairly consistently, right, about what you want, your selective attention will now direct you towards those things that you want, without you even having to think about it. And it'll direct your behaviors towards choosing people like that. And so it's this thing that doesn't take that long, but has a really high return on investment for that time. So, yeah, I tell people, imagine you have a fairy godmother. Fairy godmother can give you three wishes for your ideal partner. What are those things that you want? And so one of the things I did in this, I wrote a book about this. And so I kind of started out the first third talking about, hey, you get three wishes and here's why.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  In the middle part, I was interested in, so how do people usually spend their three wishes? Because in a good fairy tale, people always squander, right? Their wishes on things that that aren't good. And now we have these really great studies where we can actually watch what people do in things like speed dating or with online dating. And let me explain why this is important. So if you ask people, if a researcher asks a bunch of people, hey, what do you want in your ideal partner? They'll say what they think is socially desirable. So they'll say, I want someone who's kind. I want someone with good character, you know, all these things. Now, if you watch what people actually do in speed dating or online dating,

• 38:52Speaker 01

  those aren't the things at the top of their list, you know? Those aren't their three wishes. They go, two of those three wishes will go to looks and the money. So for men, it's looks first, socioeconomic status second. For women, socioeconomic status first.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  And, you know, so two of your three wishes, now you know, now you just down to one. So two of your three wishes go to looks and money. Yeah. Now, I wanted to be open minded about it. So I said, well, maybe that's okay. You know, maybe it's 20 years down the road and you wake up next to your partner and you say, I am just so glad that they're hot, you know? And 20 years later, that makes me so happy in my marriage. And, you know, so there's data about that as well. And, you know, what you find is that for physical attractiveness, the return on investment for that is not. Good, you know, it's around zero. Early on in a relationship, it's it's actually decent.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  And even early in marriage, it can be somewhat beneficial for marital satisfaction. But it quickly fades away.

• 40:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, when you say, when you say return on investment, you mean how predictive is this of marital satisfaction?

• 40:06Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. So how much return am I getting from your hotness on my marital satisfaction?

• 40:12Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  If you look at money, same same kind of thing, you don't want to be stressed about money. So you don't want to be, you know, below the poverty line, for example, or close to the poverty line. But once you get to like a middle class income, now there's a diminishing return on income for your long term happiness and stability. So it doesn't really matter that much. You know, I like to tell people, look, if you have a partner who makes eighty thousand dollars, there's really no difference between the eighty thousand and the eight hundred thousand dollar partner. You have nicer things for sure, but when it comes to your marital satisfaction and stability, really not that much of a gain at all. So those those two things that we usually spend our wishes on, you know, really don't get us what we want.

• 40:56Chris Williamson?

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• 41:40Chris Williamson?

  by going to the link in the description below or heading to manscaped.com/ModernWisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM20 at checkout. That's manscaped.com/ModernWisdom and MODERNWISDOM20 at checkout. Let's just interject there. Isn't it interesting that men still signal up socioeconomic status for women?

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. Yeah, in so many ways, right? And, uh, you know, your, your watch or your, you know, like quiet luxury. Is that what they call it? Uh, hoodie or whatever it might be, right? And you're just saying, hey, I'm, I'm doing pretty well, you know, over here. In New York, you'll see these guys obnoxiously reading books on the subway or something. And they're not really reading. They're just signaling to people, hey, like I'm, I'm a smart guy.

• 42:24Chris Williamson?

  But you know, it's, it's just when you ask a guy, um, how bothered are you about what your wife earns? How bothered are you about? Maybe, maybe they would say education level, but I think what you're looking at with education level is sort of a proxy for intellectual capacity, curiosity, stuff like that. And yeah, sure, we can't judge those things immediately. So we use rough hewn metrics. And from that we sort of infer what, what this person is. Oh, my God, they've got it. They've got a masters. They did a double. They did a double, a double major in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:55Chris Williamson?

  Um, but yeah, you just, I think a lot of guys, I, I, I would be interested to know whether men are very, um, not ashamed, but are more likely to hide their desire for socioeconomic status in a woman than women would be for men. Because women for men, it's cliche and there's the fear of being a gold digger. But men for women, there isn't even an archetype for that. Uh, so I just, I just think that's a, an interesting asymmetry.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  It, it, you know, it, it really is. And as much of things have changed over the past couple of decades. Um, one finding that remains stubborn is this, is that if the woman out earns the man in a marriage, it's related to less marital satisfaction and even divorce risk. So I'm not saying that that's the way things should be, but, um, you know, if you look at it, there, yeah, there still is this social role stereotype.

• 43:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Look, I mean, we, we, I had Brad Wilcox on the show yesterday. He said that, um, if a woman loses a job, there is no change in, uh, the predictive power for divorce. If a man loses his job, 33% increase in divorce.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:02Chris Williamson?

  Uh, if a woman, if a man wins the lottery, uh, no change in likelihood of divorce. If a woman wins the lottery, it goes up by a huge, I think this was Norway or Finland or something like that. Hungary, maybe where that study came out of. Um. Look, in some ways, you could say that many women for a long time were financial prisoners of their partners and, you know, liberating them by a big windfall in one form or another. But the bottom line is that women seem to be sensitive to resources in a way that men aren't, and that to anybody that's ever studied mating is the least shocking finding that

• 44:46Chris Williamson?

  we could say. And yet, if the wrong person got a hold of that particular segment of the podcast, entire swaths of Reddit would have a fucking meltdown.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, exactly. I mean, you know, there's just kind of like, one of the things I say about relationship research is it's really easy to kill the messenger sometimes.

• 45:04Chris Williamson?

  That's so good. I love it.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  You know, if I'm giving a talk somewhere, I'm like, look, don't send a mob after me here. Yeah, I'm just saying, this is, so yeah, there's certain ways that things are, and we can decide what we want to do with those things. But, you know, a lot of things remain stubborn findings that stick around.

• 45:24Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so we've got those two at the top that are typical and interchangeable for men and women. What else on the traits we want that we probably shouldn't want before we get into the traits that we should want?

• 45:35Speaker 01

  So I just read a really interesting study, actually, a couple of days ago. And there's this, this series of three personality traits they call the dark triad. So it's psychopathy, kind of being antisocial, Machiavellianism, you're really manipulative for your own self-gain, and narcissism, right? Excessive self-love and vanity, and a lot of selfishness goes along with that as well. So you don't want these traits in a partner. Obviously, they don't make for a happy relationship. One of the things that they looked at was, dark triad traits are oddly attractive, more attractive than they should be, right? Given that we

• 46:18Speaker 01

  rationally know, hey, being in a relationship with a narcissist is going to lead to me being in tears and a fetal position in the corner, right? We know that intellectually, but why do we feel a draw towards narcissists, for example, or people high in psychopathy, for that matter? And there's, there's a couple of things here. So, one, one thing that they found in the study was that maybe it's dependent on age. And so they found for women...

• 46:45Speaker 01

  You know, women who are older do not want a narcissist. They don't want someone high in psychopathy. But the young women, they were actually more attracted to the dark triad traits. And one of the reasons for that is that those dark triad traits, as bad as they are in a long-term relationship, like they're pretty good for getting what you want in a short-term situation. So psychopathy, for example, like you have really low impulse control, you're willing to cheat to get, you know, to win, to get what you want. You tend to be aggressive. Like if you were in a threatening situation, those would actually be really great traits to have.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  If you were trading in really volatile and competitive financial markets, I wouldn't mind if my trader actually had some high psychopathy traits. Those would actually be adaptive. So that's one of the reasons why early in a relationship, right, those things can be attractive to us. The other curious thing about that that I find interesting is that people high in psychopathy, is pretty reliable, are better at bed. So the sexual satisfaction is higher.

• 47:55Chris Williamson?

  So funny.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know, they're low impulse control. They're kind of aggressive. You know, they have these traits that could manifest as, you know, really exciting sex. And so it is, it is more satisfying sex now. And that's fine. And I'm not going to judge that. But now if you're in a companion at love relationship with this person, you're married to this person, now you have to deal with this low impulse control and this aggressiveness and this cheating and all this other stuff. And it's not going to be so much fun anymore.

• 48:26Chris Williamson?

  Right. So avoid the psychopath Machiavellian narcissist as best you can.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  As best you can. And once again, though, it's one of these things where it's easier said than done. And so it's, it's, it's important to understand that you might have a draw towards these things. That there's something actually kind of like dangerous and exciting about those types of people. And even early on in a relationship, it can be really fun, actually, dating someone high in psychopathy or like someone who's narcissistic because they're manipulating you. You're getting a lot of attention, right? And they're telling you all these wonderful things and that can, that could feel good. But yeah, so it, people really have to be self-aware about it. And then they have to say, hey, I'm gonna be on, on the lookout for these things because

• 49:13Speaker 01

  there's gonna be like a sirens call to, uh, to gravitate towards some of these traits.

• 49:18Chris Williamson?

  Okay, what are some better traits that we should want?

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Yes, so there are, there are much better decisions to make. So one of the things that's happened over, you know, the past decade or so is that a lot of these research studies they did in the eighties and nineties have matured. So what they did in these studies is they got people before they were married and they assessed them on all kinds of psychological characteristics. So like attachment style, personality, you know, all, also intelligence, all sorts of things. And then they could track them over the course of 10 or 20 years into the point where they got engaged and they got married and, you know, maybe got divorced or, or stayed together. And these studies are a goldmine for seeing which traits actually matter and predicting

• 50:05Speaker 01

  long-term satisfaction and stability. And, you know, let's take personality as one, one example of how you can, how you can use this. So there's the big five personality traits. It's be extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. And these are kind of broad brushstrokes of who somebody is. Now, if you put those five variables in a predictive model and you say, so which of those five traits predicts long-term satisfaction and stability, if at all, you find really consistent findings, which is that neuroticism, probably no surprise here, right?

• 50:45Speaker 01

  People who are moody, prone to anger, have negative and pessimistic, uh, they're less satisfied in a relationship, their partner's less satisfied in a relationship, and they're at higher risk for divorce. And if I had to say there's one trait that people should wish for. You know, wish for somebody who's not high neuroticism, especially uncontrolled neuroticism. It's just predictive of so many not great things.

• 51:10Chris Williamson?

  Okay, just briefly on that, how can people tell if someone is, what is the sort of behavior of somebody that is high in neuroticism?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you kind of feel like you're walking on eggshells all the time after a while, right? So people can mask it for a little bit, but after a while, you just feel yourself being tense all the time and you're picking up on some of that vibe, some of that neurotic vibe that they have. And maybe because they've been angry or explosive with you in the past, like you're like, oh, we don't want to upset them or anything like that. There's this overreactivity in them. You know, I always, sometimes friends, you have to be a pretty good friend of mine. But sometimes friends will ask me to meet their partner and give them my evaluation. Yeah, I try not to do this that often, but if I really love someone, I'll do it. And one of the things I'll do is I'll put that person under a certain degree of duress.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  So I'm like a really, I'm like a pretty nice guy on average, you know? But I might get a little adversarial with that person. Or I might push them on something. And one of the things I'm looking for is how do they respond to that stress? Do they respond in an even keel, reasonable, patient kind of way? Or do they get reactive and angry and worked up? And that's, you know, that's one thing that people can look at. Oddly enough, I still love the litmus test of looking at how does the person treat the waitstaff at a restaurant? And I know that's a good common sense thing that people use. I would encourage them to continue to use it. But yeah, you know, maybe your table's not ready. Maybe the service isn't great.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Can that person hold it together? Or do you start to see the cracks of their neuroticism? Yeah.

• 52:53Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so again, avoid neuroticism.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Avoid neuroticism. Now, one caveat there is, look, I have some friends who are super neurotic, you know, but they have the maturity and, you know, the consideration of other people to have worked on it a lot. So they know that about themselves and they've worked really hard, you know, either on their own or in therapy to make sure that it's not a problem consistently for other people. So that's one caveat I put on the neuroticism.

• 53:25Chris Williamson?

  There's also a degree of depth, right, that you can have from that, that people are able to see and empathize in ways, especially if it's been sort of alchemized neuroticism. Uh, yeah, there's an additional level of depth, which, which could maybe even be useful.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure. You know, let's say a partner's prone to being depressed, for example. Um, it doesn't make him a bad person. Um, but do they have a sense of, hey, I want to take a sense of responsibility for this and I want to do the things I can to, you know, live with that as best as I can. Uh, you know, then you're probably going to be all right. But if it's this just uncontrolled neuroticism, it can bring nothing but pain, probably in the long run. So that's, that's, that's one wish. Um, you know, a second wish is agreeableness. So people who are empathic and kind and generous, and I think that might sound like common sense to folks, but let's remember, it doesn't make the top three when

• 54:22Speaker 01

  you watch what people actually do when they're choosing a partner. Number two, I think, like, being a nice guy, for example, in our culture gets a really bad rap. So if people are bringing their partner out to meet their friends for the first time, kind of the initial public offering of the partner, right, to the friend group, and the partner goes to the bathroom for a little bit after we've all chatted, and they say, hey, so what do you think of my new partner? And you say, oh, they're nice. That person would kind of feel insulted, right? Like, what? That, that's it? It's actually one of the best things that you could say about an evaluation of a partner, as unsexy and unspectacular as it is. You know,

• 55:04Speaker 01

  people who are high in agreeableness are going to be more trusting of you. And what that means in a romantic relationship is they're going to trust that they can give freely and generously to the relationship and to you.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Because they think that you will give that back in the long run. And so what happens is when you have that trust, both people give more to the relationship, not worrying about some zero sum kind of game. They're more empathic, they're more interested in being empathic, so they can try to understand who you are and how they can support you. They're kind, you know, there's just all kinds of great things. They're better in bed, so agreeableness associated with better sex and long-term relationships, because they're interested in your sexual satisfaction, not just their own. So choosing someone high in agreeableness, wish number two.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  The third wish, if we're talking about personality, would be someone who is not too high in sensation-seeking. So people who are high in sensation-seeking are always looking for their next thrill, right? We kind of stereotypically maybe think of X Games type people who want to jump out of a plane, or jump off a cliff, or something like that. And people high in sensation-seeking are great to date at the start, because they're really fun, they're really spontaneous, they're high in what we would call absorption, so they really get into the things that they love, and so that means that they're really, really into you, and really enthusiastic about you. And that all feels wonderful and fun.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  But high sensation-seekers also get bored more easily. They're more prone to risky behaviors, like substance abuse, or infidelity, or other things, right, that aren't good for a long-term relationship. And so, high sensation-seeking, as fun as it is, as sexy as it is at the start, is one of those things, you don't want too much of it, because person ends up getting bored with you, and then they'll end up doing something to... Not just end a relationship, but usually blow up the relationship in spectacular fashion.

• 57:15Chris Williamson?

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• 58:33Speaker 01

  I mean, for me, I use the phrase for those folks, I'll be like, they are so fun. Like, they are so fun, and they're so random, and they're so spontaneous. And like, I love that in friends. Actually, a lot of my friends are high sensation-seekers. But you know, you want to have a sense of, is this person really high in sensation-seeking? And do they have no, once again, do they have no control over that or self-awareness about that? So, you know, my friends who are high sensation-seekers, they're not gonna be reckless about it. Like, they have a, they have a good idea about it, and they're gonna try to control it someplace. Let me give you an example. So I'm, I'm really high in sensation-seeking. And when I take

• 59:16Speaker 01

  personality tests, it's like, good lord, that's, that's really, it's really up there. And when I did that in graduate school, I kind of look back on things, and all of a sudden, a lot of things made sense. So when, when I was a teenager... Um, I thought to myself, I can never do cocaine. I had this like really strong thought about this, you know? It was kind of random and I don't judge, you know, I don't have like a big moral problem with it. It's just I thought I am, I'm too sensation seeking to be able to handle that in any kind of way that would be okay. Uh, I've never had a TV in my life, like I just can't.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  I can't modulate how much I watch TV, for example, so I just don't even have it at all. So, uh, those would be some examples of some small things. Maybe the other one's not so small, but those would be some small things I've done to just try to have some self-awareness about how impulsive I can be. And then try to craft an environment. So like, hey, let's make it good for me, but also if there's somebody else in my life, let's not make it so my impulsiveness leads to bad consequences for them as well.

• 1:00:23Chris Williamson?

  Fascinating. Okay. I just, uh, broadening out from personality. Um, I mean, personality is an awful lot. Wh-what else should we be looking for in terms of green flags and red flags? Trait wise, behavior wise, values wise, life, history, life, future, et cetera.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, one of the fortunate things is there's such a wealth of relationship research now that, you know, we have this whole, we have dozens of things now that we can look at that are predictive of long-term satisfaction and stability. And so let me give you an example of another area. There's, um, attachment, which I think probably a lot of people are familiar with to a certain extent. So attachment is how secure you feel in your relationship with your caregivers, you know, first of all. And then second of all, people who are like really close friends or romantic partners in adulthood. And so people can be securely attached where they trust that they can rely on other people. They feel secure about who they are and in a relationship with others.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  There's people who are avoidant and these folks are emotionally distant. They don't want to get too close to people. They always feel like they're kind of aloof. And, um, that's one of the insecure attachments, of course. The other insecure attachment is anxious avoidant. And, you know, these folks are anxious that the person is going to leave them. They also tend to be kind of push-pull people in relationships where they can be clingy, alternating with being angry at you for things that seem kind of random. And that's obviously no fun in a relationship as well. And one of the ways I like to describe attachment actually is how they measure it in infancy. So for infants, they have this thing called the strange situation.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  And this woman, Mary Ainsworth, devised this really clever methodology. So what you have is you have a mom with a, let's say, like a one-year-old, two-year-old, let's say, two-year-old, and they have a child on their lap. And in that room, in this laboratory, are a bunch of toys scattered around at measured distances from the middle where the mother and child are at. A light will go off, the mother leaves the room in a planned kind of way. And what happens with most of the kids is they start to cry, right? Which is kind of predictable. They're in a strange place, their mom's gone. That's not that interesting. What is interesting is what happens when the mom comes back.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  So after a couple of minutes, the mom comes back into the room, sits down on the chair. Securely attached kids will come to their mom, you know, get on the lap and will be comforted relatively quickly. What's interesting then is once they're calmed emotionally, which doesn't take that long, they'll get off their mom's lap and they'll start to explore the room. And so they'll go out and get some toys there nearby and they'll look back at their mom and say, hey, isn't this, isn't this kind of a cool thing? Or they might bring it to their mom. And they'll do this thing where they start going further and further out into the room, exploring further and further away and not needing to look at their mom to make sure that she's there. It's because they're secure and they can trust that she'll be there for them.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Now, kids who are anxiously attached, when their mom comes back into the room, they're not comforted by her presence. And so they continue to cry in a really intense kind of way. They'll get on her lap and they'll cling at first, like cling in this really needy-looking kind of way, but that'll alternate then with like pushing away and sometimes even hitting the parent. So they're pissed that the mom left the room. But they're also clingy and can't trust that she'll stay there. So, right? You get this push-pull kind of thing. They're less likely to get off the mom's lap and actually explore the room. Because they can't trust that their mom's gonna be there. And if they do go explore, they don't explore as far as a securely attached kid.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  The avoidantly attached kid,

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  these, these, uh, these kids could care less that the mom has come back into the room. So, you know, maybe they didn't cry in the first place. They'll stop crying when the mom does come back. But they're kinda, if you could hear what they're saying in their mind, it's like, screw you for leaving. I don't care about you. And the other interesting thing about the avoidant kids is they will go very far out into the room and get the toys that are really far out there. So they'll explore a lot. But it's because they kinda don't care if the caregiver is there. They've just reached this like, hey, I can't trust you, so I don't care mentality.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  You can imagine if this was the interaction pattern hundreds and thousands of times during infancy and during childhood, how kind of concretized that would become, right? In a child's relational, relational style. And so like at the University of Minnesota, for example, they have this really cool study where they got kids when they were actually in the third trimester, still in their mom's bellies there. And they've now tracked those kids for like 30 or 40 years. And they've been able to look at, did their early attachment behaviors with their, with their mom, their secure, anxious or avoidant behaviors predict how they would interact with their romantic partners? Like 30 years later?

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  And they found, you know, these really robust correlations between if you were a secure infant, you tended to be pretty even in how you manage conflict and emotions with your partner. If you were an anxious kid, you tended to be engaging in that push, pull, clingy, lashing out kind of behavior. Some people, some of your listeners might've experienced that in a romantic relationship. And, you know, kids who were avoidant, yeah, tended to have that kind of stonewalling, withdrawing, interactional style. That's not great in a, in a relationship. So that's, that's another thing, Chris, you know. People can look at someone's attachment style, once again, knowing that it's relatively

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  stable over time, and it is, you know, pretty strongly predictive of long-term marital satisfaction and marital stability.

• 1:06:39Chris Williamson?

  What do you say to the anxious or avoidant people? They go, all right, okay, I'll just be celibate then. Will I tie? I'm a lost cause.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the good things for folks to know is two thirds of people are securely attached. So that's, that's, you know, good news. The second thing is this, is there's this guy Glenn Royssman and Chris Brayley, and they've, they've done some of these longitudinal studies as well. And one of the questions they've had is can people become what they call earned secures? So if you were anxiously attached or avoidantly attached in infancy, for example, can you become securely attached as you get older? And the good news is yes, that can happen. It's not the majority of them, but there's a subset of folks, if they, you know, work hard at it and get the right people in their lives, then yeah, they can become actually

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  earned secures in adulthood. Now, if you're the person choosing a partner, this is one of the mistakes folks make sometimes is, let's say someone's dating, dating someone who is anxious, ambivalent in their attachment style, and they're really pretty soundly anxious, ambivalent. One of the things that a lot of us do, even the best of us, is we're overly optimistic about what's going to happen with that person in the long run. So we'll say, oh, I'm sure they'll change, right? Or even worse, we'll say, I will change, you know, this person's attachment style. And that's not a good bet to make. So I would say if someone's insecurely attached, hey, no judgment, that's okay, but, you know,

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  learn about it and then do the work you need to do to try to mitigate some of the negative things and move towards a more secure attachment style. If you're dating someone who's insecurely attached, it's not necessarily the end of the world, but. You know, they're not going to change anytime soon if they change at all. And if you're in a dating situation, I would certainly call that a red, a red flag.

• 1:08:40Chris Williamson?

  Wow. Okay. Is this why the in-laws matter in your opinion?

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. So I think people intuitively do this and there's like, there's a good kind of lay wisdom to that. Is they want to look at, they want to meet the parents and they want to say, they're kind of looking at how good is the relationship between the parents and the person that they're dating. I don't know that they're always aware of why they're interested in the quality of that relationship, but part of it is they're actually implicitly looking at these attachment things. Like if there's a solid relationship there, they think they can transfer that to maybe this person will also have a solid relationship with me in the long run. And I think, you know, the evidence kind of points toward, yeah, there, there is some good evidence for that. Now conversely, if someone has a conflictual relationship with their parents,

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  it doesn't guarantee that they're going to have a bad relationship with you, but it is a risk factor. So it's just, once again, people want to be careful when they see these red flags. They're not necessarily deal breakers on their own, but as these things start to accumulate, that's when it becomes, that's when it becomes a problem.

• 1:09:47Chris Williamson?

  What about, uh, life history, stuff like that? Sort of what the, the breadcrumbs of how somebody has spent their time up until this point when you've got to know them?

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, super important. You know, best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So yeah, you want to pay attention to that. I think it's one of the reasons why we ask our partners, hey, can you tell me about your relationship history a little bit? People are getting this kind of ethnographic, right? Observation of like, so how did your other things go? Cause am I going to suffer the same fate? It's, it's not a bad, it's not a bad idea to, to do that. You know, it's one of the things I would distinguish between is sometimes people have freely chosen to make bad decisions, right? Repeatedly, you know, other times people have been dealt bad hands by life, and I think that's a different kind of thing.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  And, um, I guess for me personally, like, although I'm interested in like, like bad decisions, for example, what I'm more interested in is

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  So what's the, what's the story after that? So if you made a bad decision, kind of almost like a job interview? So what did you do then about that bad decision? Or that bad place that you got to? And you're looking for, does this person have insight about their bad decision? And then two, did they develop some coping skills or strategies? For one, not only how to fix it, but two, how to avoid making that same mistake in the future? And well, it sounds like common sense that people would do that. I think very few people do. It's more common that people keep making the same mistakes with little insight, rather than, you know, being the kinds of people who are self-aware and change.

• 1:11:29Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. What about similarity in personality? Should you be trying to find someone who's similar to you in that regard?

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's a good question and such a good question. In fact, that researchers have devoted a tremendous amount of time and money to investigating this. And if you actually look a lot of the dating apps, they're based on matching on things like personality. The match group, actually, it's, it's in the name, right? And there's this intuitive appeal to this idea that, yeah, if I match someone on personality, we're going to have a happier and better relationship. But what they find in these studies, and there's been some meta-analyses of tens of thousands of couples, where they've looked at, does match predict long-term satisfaction, stability? It really doesn't, you know? So matching actually doesn't matter that much when it comes to personality.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  You can be extroverted, your partner could be introverted. Can that create some problems sometimes? Yep, probably, but does it really matter that much in the long run? You know, it, it, it doesn't. What matters with personality, and I really like to drive this home for folks. What matters with personality is not whether you match your partner. What matters is which partner has the worst traits in their relationship? So if one of the partners is low in agreeableness, high sensation-seeking and high neuroticism, for example.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  The other partner has a perfectly healthy personality. What's going to predict in that is not the healthy partner's personality. It's going to be the personality of the partner who has the worst traits. So my old advisor, one of my old advisors in graduate school, Ellen Burchard, had this great saying that applies to so many relationship situations. And she was, she was at the end of her career when I knew her. And she's saying this resigned voice. You know what the problem with the relationships is, Ty? It takes two people to make it work and only one person to make it not work.

• 1:13:33Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  And that is so, you know, that is so true. So yeah, people don't need to spend a lot of time thinking about matching up personality. You know, think about what's the quality of the traits that each partner has? And that's the more important thing. You know, one thing I might add to that real quick, if I, if I might, is that with our hypothetical bad trait partner we just talked about with high neuroticism, low agreeableness, high sensation seeking.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  That's when you really have a problem. So sometimes people will ask me, they'll say, hey, you know, Ty, I'm kind of high in neuroticism. Does this mean I'm doomed to have bad relationships? And I love that question. And what I say to these folks is the fact that you're asking me that question in the first place gives me a tremendous amount of hope for your relationship future. Right? Because one, they're self-aware about it. Two, they want to do something about it. And three, they're concerned about how is that going to affect somebody else? So they already have the mindset, right? To be on a path to handle that well. It's, all of these things are incremental risk factors. So just being neurotic all on its own is not damning for your relationship future.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  But now you're neurotic and you're low in agreeableness? That's actually someone who's like a psychopath or has antisocial personality disorder. You're high neuroticism, low in agreeableness, high in sensation seeking. Now you've got like a sociopath on your hands. Right? So it's as you stack these bad traits or these risk factors, that's when you have the real problems. Conversely, I'll say, and just as importantly, as you stack great traits in a relationship.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  It also has that same multiplicative effect where it's more than the sum of the parts. So if you get someone who's kind, who's emotionally stable, you know, who is really committed to the relationship. Oh my gosh, you know, two things, one, they're probably always going to be that way. And two, like, it's going to have a multiplicative effect for us. It's just going to give you so many good things, more than you could ever imagine.

• 1:15:39Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting that we don't rise to the level of the best partner. We fall to the level of the worst partner, best and worst, most optimal, most suboptimal, perhaps. You mentioned emotional stability there. David Buss must text me once a month, reminding me about the importance of emotional stability. I'd love to get your take on it because I know what his is. But how does that fit into what we've maybe spoken about already? How does it slightly differ? How would you, how does it present?

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so emotional stability is the term that's the flip side of neuroticism. Okay, so it's very similar to what we've been, to what we've been talking about. I think in the context of romantic relationships, one of the interesting things that's just come out over the past couple of years is that it's not so much what we would call low activation emotions. So things like depression, for example, it's like, it's a negative emotion. But like, the way you feel that in your body, it's not like your heart's racing or like you're red in the face or anything like that. It's just actually an absence of energy, right? What seems to be particularly destructive in romantic relationships are these high activation negative emotions.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  So rage and anger and those things where you really get hot in the face and your heart rate really, you know, gets up there. Those seem to be the more destructive parts of neuroticism or, you know, conversely, a lack of emotional stability.

• 1:17:07Chris Williamson?

  David's got this lovely idea around emotional stability. He says, after some emotional perturbation of some kind, some dysregulating event, how long does it take a person to get back to baseline? You know, if you are late for a flight, is that the rest of the holiday? Or are they over it by the time that you arrive at the hotel type thing?

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Chris Williamson?

  And yeah, I think that's a lovely, you know, because all of this stuff, whenever I think about it, I think it's so fascinating. It's so interesting, sort of in the abstract, but when it comes to functionally, what, what does this look like? How can you tell that, you know, unless you're going to get somebody to go and do a hexaco test or a big five or something? How are you going to, how are you going to judge this? You know, so I think, I think that's very important. Another question, why do you think it is that people are drawn to relationships that are very tough? That from the outside look turbulent, difficult, challenging, the classic, I can fix him meme.

• 1:18:08Chris Williamson?

  What have you come to believe about that?

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, go in reverse there. So you're not going to fix anybody, I tell folks out there. It's a common belief. People almost seem to have it as sport or hobby, right? Like I'm going to fix, go fix people. It almost just never, such low odds that that ever ends up, ends up working out.

• 1:18:28Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Because people are, people are stable, you know? There's these really beautiful studies of personality where they track people for 40 or 50 years. From the time they're in their teenage years to the time that they're retired. And if you were neurotic when you were, highly neurotic when you were a teenager, you're like the grumpy person at the retirement home, you know, it's just like a stable kind of thing. You know, also if you were the sweetheart, really nice, always helping people out kind of person in high school, you're doing the same thing.

• 1:19:03Chris Williamson?

  Do you reckon, do you reckon that's the same for socias actuality? If you were the girl that was sleeping around alone in high school, you're still the girl that's sleeping around alone in the retirement home?

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Well, you know, that is a concern actually with older adults right now. So there's this. STD STD concerns, one of the places is most acute in public health is among older adults.

• 1:19:24Chris Williamson?

  Phenomenal.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:25Chris Williamson?

  Phenomenal.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Which is amazing. So yeah, people don't change because traits are, you know, traits are stable and folks might see these articles every now and then that that you can change your personality. And that is true to an extent. But the number of people who will change their personality, like, like the rough way to put that is about 20 to 25% of people. Like, for example, who are neurotic will turn themselves into not neurotic people anymore. The remaining 75 to 80% will show stability over time. And the reason I like to put things that way is if you're in a position of choosing a partner, you know, this is a bet, really, right? And you're saying, okay, so this person is high in neuroticism.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  Do I think that's going to change? Eighty, 75% chance, yeah, gonna be exactly the same way for the rest of my life.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  25% chance they change. That's not a bet I would probably want to make, you know? Yeah.

• 1:20:24Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting when you think about sort of what people are doing when they first find a partner, they're kind of.

• 1:20:30Chris Williamson?

  I get the sense, and you may tell me that my belief in personal growth and malleability is misguided and must be subdued. But you're trying to find somebody that is as close to the bullseye of what it is that you're looking for, whilst making the decision rationally before you get into passionate love, using evidence-based insights from somebody as educated as yourself, trying to find somebody that's close to the bullseye, but also has, I would guess, as strong of a capacity to grow, to work on themselves, to be able to update their beliefs, the way that they operate as possible. And it seems like those two variables, how close are you? Where's the starting point?

• 1:21:13Chris Williamson?

  And how capable are they of running and maneuvering towards something that is more healthy?

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. So you're kind of identifying this trait that sits outside of personality a little bit, right? Which is this, this interest and this, this persistence to grow as a person. And I think you're. Gosh, that's if people want to put something in our top three, that would be another great trait to to put in their top three.

• 1:21:40Chris Williamson?

  Capacity for growth?

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's capacity for growth and and that dogged commitment to it because it's one thing you and I probably both know people who have some bright idea every other month about, oh, I'm totally going to change myself in this way. Usually has the word radical in front of it, you know?

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  I'm engaging radical self disclosure or something.

• 1:22:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Radical honesty, radical painting.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm always like, uh, you know, what I'm more interested in is, I mean, that's cool and that's part of it. It's a necessary first step, but but then how many people now have the dogged determination to actually make that happen? Because it's so hard, right? Over the course of really years to, you know, turn that huge ship around and make it so that you have this better range in your personality.

• 1:22:32Chris Williamson?

  You've got to be dead ass committed if you are going to actually do anything. I mean, yeah, you're right. I think the way to look at it is these forces, personality, whether it's infant upbringing, genetic predisposition, time, place, confluence, nature nurture, whether it, you know, whatever it is, whether it's personality, whether it's attachment style, whether it's values, whether it's ideological belief, whether it's all of that stuff.

• 1:23:03Chris Williamson?

  It is no matter which of those you're playing with, it is a marathon to try and get that to be nudged. And, you know, that's where, you know, the 20% sits, right? For the most part, these are probably, I imagine there's not many people that fluke themselves into lowering the neuroticism. It's probably, you know, the people that listen to podcasts like this one, you know, the insecure, overachieving, personal growth maximizers, who are really sort of trying to better themselves within the world. They're thinking very carefully. They're very reflective. You know, they they're really trying to work on themselves, but that's. A terrifying minority of most people.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's so true, you know, so maybe for some of your listeners who, you know, maybe are really into fitness, for example, if you think about, I'm always annoyed, like January 2nd in the gym, when you can't get on anything, right? It's this overrun with.

• 1:24:04Chris Williamson?

  All the creatine's taken.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. All these new year's resolution people. I mean, the, the same exact mindset and outcomes could apply to something like personality. Like, okay, someone could have this really bright idea, like they want to get fit, or they want to change their neuroticism, but who's going to be there even in March? You know, who's going to be there, much less in December? And, you know, as your listeners know, who are really committed to fitness, it's not even a year, right? It's, it's a course of numerous years and being really disciplined and constantly evolving and learning about new things in nutrition and technique and other things that actually lead to a meaningful change in their body composition and their, and their fitness and their health. Same thing with your mental health and your psychological health.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  It's that degree of commitment and obsessiveness, uh, right? To, to make some sort of long lasting change.

• 1:24:57Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so I can fix him. Probably not, darling. Why else are people drawn to relationships that are tough, turbulent, challenging, stuff like that?

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, it, it gets, it gets sloppy research wise to try to investigate this. It's, I think it's a great question. It'll be one of the enduring questions we have till long after I'm gone, I'm sure. As you can imagine, it's a little tough to, to investigate. The best hypothesis I've, I've run across is the recreation hypothesis. So, um, what personality researchers have been interested in this kind of curious thing that people choose suboptimal situations for a lot of things, right? Not just dating, for example. And a lot of times what they find is they choose these suboptimal situations for this, for themselves, because it gives them a chance to repair something or to fix something

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  that they weren't able to repair or fix in the past. And of course, this becomes very obvious for romantic relationships. If someone had something in their family of origin, for example, where. Let's say it's the stereotype like I never got love from my dad kind of thing, which happens more than it should probably, right? Yeah, that's really frustrating. Yeah, that's really hard on on folks.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  But now to seek out partners who aren't going to be committed to you, who aren't going to pay attention to you or be interested in you. You know, I understand why why folks do that, but like it's going to be the same outcome, probably, which is heartbreak and disappointment. So I think for folks who, you know, choose a lot of bad partners, kind of one after the other, as much as I'm not a Freudian and like, so tell me about your, tell me about your mother, tell me about your father, kind of thing. This is one area where I think it can be really productive. And you say, hey, what what were the frustrated urges I had growing up that just sadly never got met?

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  And, you know, will never probably get met by one person. And now, right, same kind of methodology. Now, how can I set myself up to avoid the temptation of drawing those kinds of people so I can try to fix it?

• 1:27:22Chris Williamson?

  Why? So is it us trying to salvage, close a loop, fix a sort of a childhood wound? Is that is that what's going on?

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  Yep, it's the same thing as if there was a chalkboard and you were able to read 80% of the sentence and like some part was erased. It would really bug you that you can't figure out what the last part of the sentence is and you'd keep guessing, trying to, you know? We have this need for completion in our minds, just in general as humans. And it's particularly powerful for something like being loved by a parent, for example. And so, yeah, we're just trying to close that loop. But the problem is, is that if we're choosing that same kind of person who's not loving, who's not attention giving, it's going to end up the same, it's going to end up the same exact way.

• 1:28:11Chris Williamson?

  What are some of the common manifestations of how that would present itself? And then what about if somebody finds the opposite of that? And why are they less attracted to those two?

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think one of the things I always, I always like to do is ask friends. Like if you have really honest, we always have a couple of honest friends who will deliver just like crushing truths to us if we, if we ask them to.

• 1:28:40Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  So useful in romantic relationships, right? Cause after they get to know your partner a bit, now they've known you probably as you've dated a few people. And, you know, imagine you ask this, uh, this truthful friend of yours. What do you think is the bad kind of, what's the bad kind of partner I choose? Right? What does that look like? What characteristics and traits do they have? I bet that friend of yours could tell you exactly and very eloquently who that person is. And they'll probably have a level of insight, right? And depth about that, that I, for example, as the, you know, I, I just wouldn't know. And so I think that's one thing that people can do.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  And usually when people hear it, they're like, it's one of those insight moments where you can just see it washing over them and they're like, ah, yeah, darn it. You know, that's exactly what I'm doing. Now you got a shot at, uh, at trying to break the cycle, but getting that insight, it's amazing to me, Chris, how hard that is to get it in this, in this regard.

• 1:29:48Chris Williamson?

  Why is it that we're not drawn? So I understand we have this sense for completion. Uh, we go back to the absent parent surrogate now in a partner who doesn't show us love in the way that we wanted, or whatever other compensatory mechanism we have. Why is it that the opposite of that, somebody who does show us love? Why is it that we're not drawn to the thing that salves the wound as opposed to reopens it?

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  Gosh, so let's, let's take a different kind of example here, right? Let's say you had a, an abusive home environment. And sometimes, you know, then you'll see these folks now go date abusers one after another in adulthood. And if you're on the outside, you think to yourself rationally, why would you, why would you do that? You know, why would you not run the opposite direction from that? And I, I think one, there's a social psychology theory that's really interesting called self verification theory. And at the heart of it, self verification, self verification theory poses this hypothesis that we'd rather be consistent than right. And what they found across a series of studies is there's all kinds of cases where we'd rather

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  just do the things that are consistent with how we see ourselves rather than doing the thing that's right. So if I see myself as someone who's unworthy and I see myself as someone who's victimized, I subconsciously, I will just think that's the way I need to be treated. That's the way I deserve to be treated. Even though if you asked me, right, rationally, is that, is that a good idea? I'd say, yeah, obviously no, no way that that's, that's a good idea. But people, because we're so often on autopilot, you know, would rather be consistent than right.

• 1:31:38Chris Williamson?

  That's fascinating. I, I don't know whether, so I understand consistent than right. It almost seems like consistent than happy. Or we would rather, because it's we're proving ourselves right, right? I am the sort of person who is inherently unlovable. I'm the sort of person who people eventually are going to leave if they get to see the real me. Um, if I expose myself to somebody too much, then they're going to use that against me or they're going to find me totally disgusting or unspeakable or shameful or whatever. Uh, therefore I'm going to do things which engender that to happen. So that I am, I have this continuous sense of self.

• 1:32:21Chris Williamson?

  Because yeah, we would rather have our inner fears proven correct than we would a novel sense of happiness that threatens our own sense of self-identity.

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, exactly right. So, you know, in some of these studies, they'll get depressives, for example, in the lab. And they'll give the opportunity to get positive feedback or negative feedback. And the depresses will go for the negative.

• 1:32:42Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  Even though the positive feedback is is just as accurate or more useful or whatever. Um, yeah, you know, and it's scary, right? Going back to our, what we were talking about earlier. I mean, well, I think it's venerable and it's desirable to be someone who's oriented towards personal growth and always wanted to get better. You know, it's hard and it especially gets hard when a- as we get closer to who we want to be rather than who we've been.

• 1:33:12Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  There is that point where you're like, man, this is starting to get, this is actually starting to get a little bit scary for me on some level, you know?

• 1:33:21Chris Williamson?

  I feel unmode.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, totally. It's just totally unfamiliar and all these coping skills and ways of knowing the world that I grew up with. Um, I can't latch on to that worldview anymore. And now I gotta make the sleep to, you know, even if it's more adaptive and helpful, it's it's still a scary kind of thing. And I think so. That's why you see so many people relapse back into an old way of being just when they're on the precipice, right? Of transforming themselves into a into a new way of being.

• 1:33:52Chris Williamson?

  Have you got any idea with that? So I'm sure that there's probably no, i- it's a very amorphous question, but how long somebody needs to sit in a new self-image worldview set of personality traits to for that to be who they are as opposed to the old version of them. Are they more likely to relapse into the newer version or the older? Have you got any idea about longer is better, I would imagine?

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, exactly. So I think, you know, what they'll do is it's usually across the course of years. So they'll say, hey, so for this two-year time span, how was the person's conscientiousness, for example? Now for this two-year time span, did it change and did it stay consistent over those two years? Now let's look at the next two-year block. Did it change? So yeah, that's that's how long we're talking about. But I think for the for us as individuals, as we're thinking about this data. You know, one way to think about that process of going from, okay, I was disorganized and kind of a mess, you know, dumpster fire person for most of my life. Now I'm becoming more conscientious and put together, for example.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  That point from A to B, it's realistically what it is, is it's advances, like maybe three steps forward, two steps back, kind of thing, right? And so you'll make advances and you'll slip up. You'll make advances and you'll slip up. But when things go the right direction, what happens is, you know, eventually turns into, hey, four steps forward, only two steps back, right? Five steps. And that's why it's so hard, though, because for a lot of people, when they have those two steps back, they just kind of give up and they're like, well, what's the use? But I think that's one of the real distinguishing things about people who actually make a change in their life, is that they handle those setbacks with a certain degree of,

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  you know, centeredness and equanimity. And they say, hey, this is disappointing and this is frustrating, but it doesn't mean that I'm a failure and I'm gonna just get back on my horse and give it a try again. Because that's how growth actually happens for anybody.

• 1:36:06Chris Williamson?

  Timing and randomness play a pretty big role in love. You know, I saw her across the room and if only I'd not left with my friend who wanted to get a taxi, I wouldn't have for that, you know, one call to not Irish goodbye it, I decided to be there and we met and so on and so forth. Is it, is there such a thing as optimizing serendipity when it comes to luck in love?

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm a big believer, big believer in that. And you're right, there are these kind of lucky moments where you're like, oh, I can't believe, right, that that's the way this thing played out. There was a My aunt is a real interesting character. She's, she's great, but um, there was this nursery we always went to growing up. It was huge. And this guy owned like a bunch of nurseries, actually. I think he was, had done very well for himself and he was a super nice guy. And um, we went to that nursery one time with my aunt. I think I was in college at this point. And she got really emotional afterwards. And I was like, hey, what's, you know, what's,

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  what's going on? She's like, so we dated in college. It's like, no, no way. You dated the nursery guy? Yeah. He was super kind, such a great guy. And she had, you know, broken it off because they were graduating and that whole familiar story. Well, what had happened that day at the nursery is he had come up to her and he said, why did you never respond to my letter? And she said, what, what, what letter are you talking about? He said, after we broke up that summer, I wrote you a letter and I told you how much I loved you and how much I wanted to be with you. And I begged you to come, you know, come back. And she would have. And she never got the letter.

• 1:37:55Chris Williamson?

  Oh.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  Must have got lost in the mail.

• 1:37:58Chris Williamson?

  USPS. Oh, no.

• 1:38:00Speaker 01

  Postal service. So, uh, yeah, luck can play a huge role in things for better, for, for worse. But to your question, um, yes, people can improve their luck, just like they can in a lot of other things. It's actually one of my favorite areas of psychological research is like, yeah, people are lucky sometimes, but there are consistently certain people who are luckier than others. And as you look at their, how they live their lives, they just put themselves in more optimal situations more, you know, more often. So, for example, in the context of dating. I was talking to a female friend of mine here, maybe about three years ago. And she was having a tough time with the online dating and finding a guy she was

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  going to match with. And so I said, well, what do you want? What are your three wishes? And um, she had one, one is she wants someone who is physically fit, which is fine. She wants someone who is motivated and she wanted someone, I can't remember what the, what the third, I can't remember what the third one was. But um, I said, let's just take those first two wishes. You want someone who's motivated. You want someone who's physically fit. I said, you know, what are you doing for physical fitness? She was going to a yoga studio with a bunch of other women. And so I said, you know, probably not a lot of, so I said, how about this? Uh, can you do Equinox?

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  She said, yeah. I'm like, I heard the Equinox in the Lower East Side is just loaded with dudes. It's just a bunch of

• 1:39:34Chris Williamson?

  Sausage fest then.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Sausage fest down there. I said, not for me, but I think that would be great for you. So, you know, she did it and she got a membership and she was in the weight room, you know, three or four times a week. And she had an abundance of suitors, you know, no, no time at all. And not only abundance of people, but people she had met in real life, you know, face to face. And also people who she had a lot more in common with and was interested in than the people she'd been meeting online. Now, were all of these guys great? No, you know, some of them had liabilities or whatever. But it was a lot better, right? Than if she had just kept doing her, her normal life. So my point here is this, is, you know, you can make your luck in romantic relationships.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  And a lot of times it does, it's not that sophisticated. It's just like, who are the people I want and where are those people hanging out? That's step one for making yourself more lucky.

• 1:40:33Chris Williamson?

  I mean, me and David Buss have talked about this so much. That's the single best bit of advice that I can, I mean, I'm also, I'm thirty seven and unmarried. So what the fuck, what the fuck do I know? But abstractly, I can tell you exactly what you should be doing. Do as I say, something, something.

• 1:40:54Chris Williamson?

  You need to inhabit places that have people like the person you want to date in, right? Like, that's a, that, obviously, you're just pre, it's pre-selection. You, you have a set of filters when you go to online dating. It's crazy that we're having to use online dating as the example for this. And this is how you take the app out of the app and you put it into the real world. And you, you're really into physical fitness. Like, you're really not into someone that gets up super early and, and is going out endurance running. It's like, well, a run club is probably not the place to find someone. Or, you know, you're not really into going out partying all the time.

• 1:41:38Chris Williamson?

  It's like, why are you in the nightclub at two in the morning? That's not your vibe.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:42Chris Williamson?

  So yes, that's a, that's a phenomenal first one. What next?

• 1:41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the second thing to do then is we don't always behave. I think we sell ourselves short sometimes in how we present to other people, you know? And I think this happens for women more often than it does for, for men. And one of the things, you know, you'll find with women is they will sometimes minimize themselves in dating situations as to, not all women, but you know, it happens more than maybe we would like. They try to minimize themselves so they don't appear threatening to a guy, which is a real thing out there in the, in the dating market. And then they get these guys who are just kind of not at the same level that they are at in their level of badassness, right?

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  And a lot of times with friends like this, I'll say, well, you know, how are you? Let's talk about how you're presenting yourself and how are you coming into these interactions? A lot of times what you find out is they're minimizing themselves. And it's like, no, you have to be unapologetic about who you are and what you want. And that doesn't mean being a jerk. It just means. I'm gonna be totally confident in who I am. And I understand that certain people will reject me for that. And maybe more people will reject me than if I had been some more vanilla, middle of the road kind of person. But the long term payoff for that is tremendous, right? Because now you're, that's a blessing, actually, because now you're actually filtering out people who you don't want.

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  So if it's a woman who's minimizing herself, it's like, hey, you be your badass self. And if some guy gets scared of that, good. Like now you, you find out after the first or second date, you don't find out two or three months from now.

• 1:43:28Chris Williamson?

  The, the alternative is that you have to spend the remainder of your relationship editing yourself.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, it's what some people do. Some people spend their whole life editing themselves. I think that happened particularly with older generations, right? But, um, or you, you know, and then bad as well, you've drawn somebody who's not actually the person, not actually the person you want.

• 1:43:49Chris Williamson?

  The, the person who would have fallen in love with the person that you are walked by you because you weren't being the person that you are, you were being this other version of you.

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, exactly. I mean, one place to give you a really physical, concrete example of this. Sometimes you'll see this with women who are tall. And you'll, you'll actually see them physically like hunching over, um, in these kind of, at the, at the bar or dating situations or whatever. And I just think to myself like, just, just as easy as it is for me to say from the outside, I guess it would be mansplaining if I said something about it. But I was just like, yeah, just, just be you. And, uh, there are, that maybe some guys will be intimidated by that. But hey, for the guys who aren't intimidated by that, that's actually a really good sieve to get the kind of guy that you actually, that you actually want.

• 1:44:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so inhabit places that have people like the partner that you're looking for in. Be unapologetically yourself. That being said, you also do need to match that with a degree of ability to grow because being unapologetically yourself, like maybe you're a chronic farter. Like being unapologetically yourself, you know, we, we have to have a degree of decorum here. We have to understand there are sort of objectively worse and better ways to exist within a relationship and adjusting. It's like I, I'm a father and I've always been a father. And if you don't love me as a father, then that's, you know, that's your problem that you need to get over.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, exactly. You know, I, I think sometimes too, the way that, that's a great point, Chris, because sometimes that manifests. Where people, you know, let's say, for example, they're, they can be mean and I was gonna be my mean self. I'm like, that's not what I, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:45:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:32Speaker 01

  It's like.

• 1:45:33Chris Williamson?

  Don't embrace your inner asshole.

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no. You know, but someone could say, for example, at some point, maybe a few dates on.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  When you're self disclosing, being more vulnerable, you could say, yeah, sometimes, sometimes I can have this mean streak and I don't like that about myself, if I'm being honest about things. And, uh, look, here, here's some ways manifest in the past, but here's what I'm doing about it, you know? Now you're being genuine and you're being transparent about who you are, which is, I, I, I think a good thing. But you're also just not saying like, hey, you gotta deal with my farts and my meanness and all this stuff and be unapologetic in that kind of way.

• 1:46:12Chris Williamson?

  Anything else on serendipity?

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  Uh, I think those would probably be the big, you know, probably be the two biggest things I would recommend for people, but, uh, yeah, make, make your own, make your own luck. It's, it's so hard to find somebody who you hit it off with, right?

• 1:46:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Um, and there's so many people, I don't know, this has been my experience, just even personally where there's so many people I've met who on paper, it's like, yeah, this person and I should be a good match, but for whatever reason, it's just not in real life. And so since it is hard to find that, let's say one in a hundred or one in 500 person, whoever that is. Um, you do need to create more opportunities.

• 1:46:52Chris Williamson?

  Numbers game.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. Yeah. Just expand it and to find the person that you actually need.

• 1:46:59Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting, this uh battle that we have between the sort of bottom up heart, how I feel, uh spark, uh love, lust, liking, uh and top down, what it is that I know about what's good for me, uh avoiding the wounds in the past. And I think this tension between cognition and intuition is uh very prevalent when it comes to relationships.

• 1:47:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, the head heart, right? Doing a tug of war with each other. And the heart usually wins that a lot of times, especially when we're teenagers in our twenties. And that's, that's okay. That's just part of, it's just part of growing up, right? But um, but that's why I like to tell people, hey, in between your relationships. So after you've gotten over the misery of the heartbreak of something ending, yeah, uh it takes some time to be reflective, uh get your priorities, your wishes in, in order. And then let's get that solidified in, in, in some kind of way. So now, when you do fall in love, you're in that passionate love, the pounding heart butterflies in the stomach, you can just, you can just enjoy it.

• 1:48:09Chris Williamson?

  As opposed to seeing it as warning signs?

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cause especially with people who have been stung a bunch of times, and I, I understand this, but if you've been hurt a bunch of times, it's almost now like, like you're expect the good thing, the good feelings have been paired with a bad thing, where you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I think if you've used your reasoning and your intelligence to the best of your ability before you've gotten into a relationship.

• 1:48:35Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  You know, that gives you now this confidence and this trust to say, hey, it's right here on this sheet of paper uh that I've laminated and made concrete. Um, I know I can trust that. And now you can just be uh an emotional and free person in the relationship.

• 1:48:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, Alain de Botton's got this interesting insight where he talks about people.

• 1:49:02Chris Williamson?

  People sometimes change, but rarely in a relationship and never when we ask. And I think he's sort of pointing at the fact that heartbreak is really one of the only catalysts that cause most people to to make changes. And it sort of goes back to the I can fix him meme of maybe he can fix him, but he's probably going to fix him after you break up.

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  Right. It's his killer, right? He always uh sometimes see the guy who's in a healthier relationship, not perfect, but healthier relationship, two or three girlfriends down the line. Then the old girlfriend's like, I did that work, right? To make him to make him somewhat better.

• 1:49:43Chris Williamson?

  I fixed him. Yeah, it's uh one of the one of the most ruthless things that I ever heard a friend say about a a girl that he actually didn't get into a relationship with. He was going to and he sort of bailed out and he said, what did he said? Said she'll be amazing after a divorce. Was his insight. He was like, she's someone needs to step in and refine this rough rock into a diamond. And there's a lot of raw materials there. But he's like, I'm not doing it. So yeah.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, good. Good. You know, it's a good choice. It's it's a hard one, though, right? Because when um when our hearts telling us one thing, we're just kind of wired to think like the heart's got to be, the heart's got to be right in our society.

• 1:50:30Chris Williamson?

  Watch me dance, watch me dance through this minefield. I'm not going to trip any of the tripwires. I've got it.

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. I'm gonna float float over it all.

• 1:50:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, good, good stats, nerd researcher, man. Don't apply to me. I'm the main character in my life. Go fuck yourself. Ty, you're amazing, mate. You're this. I literally could keep going for hours and hours. I want to bring you back. I've already said to the guys to bring you back in July. Let's, we haven't even touched on within a relationship, developing values, the sort of habits, behaviors, all that sort of stuff. There's so much more, but uh.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Chris, hey, I appreciate all that. And I really enjoy talking to you and I love the work

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  that you're doing on your on your podcast, like in this world where everything's like 30 seconds or whatever, you know, I actually just honestly do think it's a great value. Let's go in depth with folks and ask hard questions and wrestle with things. So I think very well of you as well.

• 1:51:27Chris Williamson?

  Heck, yeah. Well, yeah, for anyone that wanted 30 seconds, they've got like one hour, 50 minutes more, 51 minutes, 30 seconds more than they anticipated. Where should people go? They want to check out the stuff that you do?

• 1:51:41Speaker 01

  They could go to tai-tashiro.com, which has, again, kind of everywhere. I'm not great on social media. I'm on Instagram, I guess, but, uh, but yeah, tai-tashiro.com, that should have everything that people need.

• 1:51:53Chris Williamson?

  Heck, yeah. Tai, until we speak again later this summer. I appreciate you, mate.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  Sounds good. Thanks for having me.

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