How to Learn from a Rom Com Movie

In the absence of better advice, we learn a lot about love and dating from rom com movies - but is the depiction of relationships in these films leading us in the wrong direction? Let's find out. Eli Finkel of Northwestern University and Paul Eastwick from UC Davis are both accomplished relationship experts - but for fun they’ve launched a podcast called Love Factually https://www.lovefactuallypod.com/ exploring what the makers of rom coms get right and wrong about how humans really find love. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:32Laurie Santos?

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• 1:55Laurie Santos?

  Pushkin.

• 2:02Laurie Santos?

  Where did you learn the do's and don'ts of dating? From your high school friends? An older sibling? Your mom? Many of us long for a happy, romantic relationship. But we don't always get reliable advice about how to meet and bond with a potential life partner. You might have learned about the birds and the bees in biology class, but I bet you didn't get much instruction about how to navigate a first date or diffuse your first big marital fight. If we're being honest, a lot of our relationship advice comes from Taylor Swift songs. And the research material my expert guests in this episode focus on a lot: rom-com movies.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  And we'll probably talk about initiating relationships, but also maintaining them. We'll just like cover the whole gamut.

• 2:43Laurie Santos?

  Kinda, yeah.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Okay, great. All right.

• 2:46Laurie Santos?

  Eli Finkel of Northwestern University and Paul Eastwick from UC Davis are both world-renowned relationship experts. They've recently launched a podcast called Love Factually, which explores what rom-coms get right and wrong about how humans really find love. Eli and Paul turned to films like Clueless, La La Land, and When Harry Met Sally to compare their plots to the actual scientific research on love. Their goal is to figure out the facts from the fiction. So in honor of Valentine's Day, I just had to include Eli and Paul in this episode in our how-to season, which we are calling "How to Learn from a Rom-com Movie." Now, I know Eli and Paul's academic credentials are top-notch, but are they really experts on rom-com movies? There's only one way to find out.

• 3:30Laurie Santos?

  So having found out that you all were both into this stuff, my producer decided to make an impromptu quiz, surprise rom-com quiz.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 3:38Laurie Santos?

  Nice. Best quotes, most famous quotes.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 3:42Laurie Santos?

  So I'm gonna read you a rom-com or rom-drom quote, and I just wanna see if you know which movie it's from.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Should we buzz in? Like, should we compete to see who gets it first?

• 3:51Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, let's see.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:53Laurie Santos?

  Number one: "I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy."

• 3:57Speaker 03

  Notting Hill, thank you very much.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  And the buzzer doesn't even count? What about the buzzer?

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Oh, sorry.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  I am playing the rest of this game under protest.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:07Laurie Santos?

  Okay, well, I think we got one for Paul that that quote. Because we didn't finish it, I'll give the whole quote. It was, "I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her." Eli, do you want to give context for that quote, since you all said?

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a lovely scene. I mean, Notting Hill, right? A lot of people will remember this. It's something between a drama and a comm in the rom category. It's a rom-com, I guess. She's a famous American actress and she's in love with some like everyday English guy. And there's, you know, some consternation about whether she's out of his league and so forth. And at the end, you get this really vulnerable, open moment where she shows back up at his door. And, you know, it's not really a story about her being out of his league or what their status is in the broader world. It's, she's a vulnerable person, just like the rest of us. And she's in love with him and is just hopeful that that he returns the love. And it's beautiful, of course, because she's Julia Roberts, and that's kind of awesome.

• 5:02Laurie Santos?

  Okay, moving on to number two. And I guess we'll use Paul rules, where you just jump in and say it if you know it as quickly as possible.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  Protest.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Those are Paul rules, that's funny.

• 5:13Laurie Santos?

  Okay, number two, number two. "You see how picky I am about my shoes, and they only go on my feet."

• 5:18Speaker 04

  We did this one, Paul. This is 10 Things I Hate About You, right?

• 5:22Laurie Santos?

  No.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  No, this is clueless.

• 5:25Laurie Santos?

  Ding ding ding.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Yay.

• 5:27Laurie Santos?

  Yes.

• 5:27Speaker 03

  Clueless, okay. Oh, sorry.

• 5:30Laurie Santos?

  Okay, moving on, moving on, moving on. Number three. "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

• 5:36Speaker 04

  How am I not remembering what this is from originally?

• 5:40Speaker 03

  I have to be honest, I don't think I've ever seen this.

• 5:42Laurie Santos?

  This is old school.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is Love Story, right?

• 5:46Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, ding ding ding. Very good.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Nice job, Paul.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  But I've actually, I've actually never seen it. I'm, I'm, I'm, here I am, admitting this.

• 5:54Laurie Santos?

  Okay, that'll be a new episode. Okay, number, number four. "Nobody puts baby in a corner."

• 5:58Speaker 04

  All right, I'll take it. This is dirty dancing. This is a great one. This is a totally adorable movie. I carried the watermelon, all sorts of great moments in that one.

• 6:08Laurie Santos?

  Okay, so we're talking about rom coms and it seems kind of silly, but you all in this new podcast have really argued that we can learn something really important from rom coms. Eli, explain why that is.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Well, what we realized is that rom coms are fun, they're entertainment and the dramas too, right? They're entertainment. And the fact is that these movies contain messages. They contain implicitly or explicitly messages about how relationships work. And due to the fact that films are so influential, we can think of them as messages that are injected into the cultural psyche. And some of these messages are accurate. That is, some of these messages, when we consider them, we say like, is that true? Is that an accurate way of thinking about how relationships actually work? Most people in the world don't realize there's a field called relationship science where people collect evidence on these things. So we thought it would be fun to fact check Hollywood and to say, these are the messages

• 7:02Speaker 04

  that the movies are sending and to what degree do these messages actually align with the evidence?

• 7:07Speaker 03

  And I think too, that sometimes it's really exciting when the movies are getting it wrong.

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Because many times that's a great way to set up a contrast between something that feels very intuitive when you see it on screen. Often it's these tropes that we've seen many, many times. But it's kind of handy to be able to say, you know, we know from these kinds of studies that it doesn't actually work this way, or it doesn't usually work this way. And there was something about the realization that we could do both, point out what they're doing well, but also point out what they're getting wrong. That seemed pretty exciting.

• 7:44Laurie Santos?

  So I know there's some kinds of TV shows, like historically, the shows like Survivor have had these like psychology consultants that come in, you know, and even some movies like Inside Out, that franchise definitely has lots of famous psychologists that consult.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:57Laurie Santos?

  Do you know if like rom coms and rom drams do this?

• 8:00Speaker 04

  I'm not aware of it. Paul, I think there was one episode where we joked that like, it almost seemed like they had a great advisor on set and then both of us were jealous of that hypothetical job.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it was, I think it was with the her episode. Spike Jones, the writer-director, really had these sharp insights. It's about how people build intimacy and well, what if you just made that person not have a body? Couldn't you do it just as well and just as seamlessly? But I don't think anybody is necessarily going to scientists for this. I think a lot of times they're generating these insights on their own.

• 8:36Laurie Santos?

  And talk to me about what we know about our own insights when it comes to love and romance. You know, if you had to guess kind of how much we're accurate versus how much we're inaccurate, you know, what would the findings show?

• 8:46Speaker 03

  You know, it's a 50 50 proposition. I think there are some times when people have really good insights and instincts when it comes to relationships. I think generally speaking, most people recognize that relationships require a certain amount of vulnerability and a certain amount of self-disclosure and give and take. And that's going to be required to build a relationship in the first place. And it's going to be required to sustain closeness over time. So this is one area, and we see this in the films too. They do a pretty good job of making this clear, right? Whether you're talking about people initiating relationships with each other

• 9:29Speaker 03

  or you're talking about people maintaining a relationship, that is a message that comes through fairly well.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of movies that do this really effectively. And one of the movies that we had in season one is Before Sunrise, which is basically a movie that's about, again, your audience may be familiar with this, but two people meet on a train on a Eurail Pass, basically in Europe, and spontaneously get off the train and then spend the evening together in Vienna. And basically, it's a film about them walking around the city and talking to each other. And what the film captures beautifully, among other things, is this process through which people confide intimate information with each other. How we start as strangers and then I get to know a little bit about you. You get to know a little bit about me. And the beautiful thing about that movie in particular is that it puts that whole relationship initiation process,

• 10:20Speaker 04

  this process of getting to know each other, including really intimate information, in a turbocharger. And again, that's something that I think people do. Do have decent instincts about this and and the films generally get right. The process through which intimacy generally develops in relationships.

• 10:35Laurie Santos?

  And so let's dive into that franchise because this actually is one of the kind of if you had to pick a few tips that you've learned from rom coms and rom drams that really get relationship science right. It seems like the before sunrise before sunset franchise is one of those. Eli, do you want to do a quick plot summary on before sunset?

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love this movie. It's not something that we did in season one. We just did before sunrise in season one, but I did watch all three in advance of our episode and. In brief, in the first movie, they get to know each other and they spend the night together and then they make this plan to meet up again. And that's basically where the first movie ends. Second movie and he Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke, is on a book tour and he's on a book tour in Paris. And then while he's doing an event at a bookstore, Celine walks in and what we discover is. He had arrived six months later when he was supposed to, and she couldn't because her grandmother had passed away. And so he had written a book about their experience and now he's on this tour. And then the rest of that movie, now they're walking around a different European city and.

• 11:34Speaker 04

  I, you know, I don't want to ruin the end, but the the tension in the movie is that he has a flight back to the States. That leaves that evening right before sunset is the second movie. And she keeps saying, you're about to miss your plane. You're about to miss your plane. And they're having these amazing conversations in these amazing settings.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  And reconsidering and revisiting many of their major life decisions in the process. And to watch again, a process that when people are going to upend their lives, they usually take, I don't know, a few months to do it. But now we're going to see that whole thing happen in a very compressed period of time. So it's in many ways, the same conceit, but now we're seeing this whole different relationship process happening very, very fast.

• 12:14Laurie Santos?

  Okay. So I'm trying to guess what the major correct relationship insight I'm supposed to take from this, right? You know, visit European cities with Ethan Hawke, like upend your life in 24 hours.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  That's it. I mean, that would be a good one. Like if, if, if, you know, it is an opportunity that's available to you, I'd recommend it or Julie Delphi would be great too. I mean, that movie's tricky. This is again, the second movie in the, in the series, the before. Sunset film. And the reason why it's tricky is it has this really interesting moral complication is that he by this point has gotten married and has a son. And so when Paul talks about how these major life decisions are happening quickly, Jesse didn't realize that Celine was going to show up at this reading. He thought she was gone forever and he built this alternative life. And then over a course of a few hours of walking around Paris has basically uprooted all of it. Now for a second time in a really different sort of way to from the first movie.

• 13:07Speaker 04

  And the third movie engages with something different when they're now in their 40s and have a family together. And all three of the films deal with those sorts of things.

• 13:14Laurie Santos?

  Okay, so what's what's the relationship insight here, though?

• 13:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think if one is going to take a lesson from these movies, it's that any amount of intense self disclosure that you're going to get into with somebody is going to build a lot of intimacy and has the potential to build a connection. Although, again, if you're in a relationship that you'd like to keep, then be careful who you're doing that with. Because it might seem like, oh, we're just like harmlessly getting to know each other, strolling around this gorgeous European city. And before you know it, you are now really questioning some of your life choices. There is a really famous study by Art Aaron back in the 90s, often called the 36 question study. But what he does is he takes unacquainted pairs, gives them these questions which escalate in intensity,

• 14:00Speaker 03

  escalate in the degree to which they elicit intimacy and vulnerability. And what he shows with enormous effect sizes is you can get two people to really like each other if they go through this 16 to 90 minute process. So again, that's great. If you're looking to build a relationship, those are good tips. You know, if you're not looking to build a new relationship, be really careful with how you do that.

• 14:24Laurie Santos?

  But one of the things I love about the Aaron study is that you forget that you can continue building that relationship with a long term partner. I mean, I think one of the reasons relationships kind of often fall into kind of boringness is that we're not doing that vulnerability, that sort of moments of disclosure, they kind of fall by the wayside when you've been with somebody five years, 10 years, 20 years. Do you think we can use that same kind of technique, Eli, for? Are kind of building current relationships?

• 14:49Speaker 04

  The brief answer is, I think so, but the full answer is, I don't think we know. Because the question is, why do people stop doing this as much? I share your premise. People don't do this as much later on. One possibility is what you're suggesting, that, you know, they get distracted or they just don't prioritize it to the same degree. Another possibility is, we know quite a bit about each other after 20 years. And so this idea that there's some like big well of discovery to start exploring makes it tricky. But nonetheless, there's always more to know. There's always more sort of new perspectives on things. Or, you know, going, for example, to a thought provoking film and discussing it. These options are always, always, always available to us. So I think it's a little bit in the column of it's easier to have big discovery

• 15:35Speaker 04

  before you really know each other. And also, we get into ruts and sort of lazy habits and don't bother to try to rekindle some of these high intensity, high emotion sorts of experiences.

• 15:46Laurie Santos?

  I think another great thing that we learned from this study is the fact that that kind of self disclosure is actually positive. I think so many of us have the misconception that like kind of sharing our messiness might be yucky. But of course, social scientists have talked about this beautiful mess effect, right? Paul, what's that effect and kind of how does it play out here?

• 16:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so people often, when they're trying to make an initial impression on somebody, they want that impression to be good. They want to come across perfectly. They want to self promote. And often those instincts are really misguided. What people really find appealing in those early moments is, like you put it, a little bit of messiness, a little bit of vulnerability. You know, old classic study, right? The person who's kind of a klutz ends up being more appealing than the person who's fully put together. And these are examples of how we can make ourselves open and seem approachable to another person. And it also makes us interesting.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  I mean, there actually isn't a lot that's very interesting about somebody who's fully put together. You know, it's not clear why they would be interested in us because they're fully put together. So having a little bit The vulnerability opens up an opportunity for more connection in a way that the movies often get right. And sometimes we kind of miss when we get into resume exchange mode on dates. I gotta come off as good as I can because I know there are all these other competitors out there and I gotta be the best.

• 17:18Laurie Santos?

  It's time for a quick break, but Paul, Eli and I will be back soon. There's nothing quite like having pieces in your closet you love and know you can count on for any occasion, except maybe giving someone else that same feeling. And I have to tell you, when it comes to my go-to gift this season, I think this might be the year of the hoodie, specifically Quince's Mongolian Cashmere Full Zip Hoodie, which I bought for myself and absolutely love. You know when you get something that's so comfortable, so soft, and so easy to throw on that you suddenly want to wear it every day? That's where I am with this hoodie. And I started to think that instead of agonizing over what to get everyone on my holiday list, I might just buy them all one of these. I mean, who on my list wouldn't love a gift of perfect coziness? But it's not just hoodies. Quince

• 18:02Laurie Santos?

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• 18:47Laurie Santos?

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• 19:36Laurie Santos?

  Okay, so that was first insight that we get from rom coms, positive insight that self disclosure, often a good thing, try to promote more of it. Now we're going to get to big tip number two, which comes from a classic rom com, one that I've seen, although very, very long time ago, When Harry Met Sally. Who wants to do the When Harry Met Sally two second plot twist? Paul?

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Here's the arc of When Harry Met Sally. They first meet, they don't like each other very much. Five years pass, they meet again, they don't like each other very much. Five years pass again, and now they kind of hit it off. They form this genuine friendship that goes on for a few years. And they go to each other as confidants. They try to set each other up on dates with some of their friends. It doesn't really work out. But it's a genuine friendship that we see for the majority of that movie. And of course, you know, there is the rom com trope of they do get together at the end in a romantic way. Okay, but what this movie nails is what's often called the friends to lovers pathway. The idea that people are commonly good friends

• 20:41Speaker 03

  before they form a relationship with each other. And it's often underappreciated just how common that pathway is. Some research by Dan Eustinsen and colleagues suggests that it's something on the order of 70% of relationships formed through that route. So that's reflected in the movie really well.

• 21:01Laurie Santos?

  I'm glad you explained what it was about because I was like, does it have to do with the orgasm scene? All I remember from the movie.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  Is there any other scene in that movie?

• 21:08Laurie Santos?

  We supposed to fake our orgasms? Are we supposed to not fake our orgasms? So I think this idea that the arc of the relationship matters is really important. You know, what kind of advice do we get? Are there kind of, obviously this sort of friends to partners arc is a pretty good one. Are there other good arcs that we should think about, Eli?

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Sometimes when we're single and looking, it can feel like, how are we going to meet new people? You know, where are we going to go to try to meet new people? And luckily now we can just swipe left and right. And I, well, luckily and unluckily, you can do all that stuff. And one of the things that we, I think, under utilize is that that's not the way, at least historically, at least until very recently, that relationships have really begun. And to a significant degree, they still emerge from our existing social networks, from people that we already know. And Paul, you've studied this a bit, but there's this like view that there's the one night stand or that we met and we'd never met before and we started a relationship. And that is just a vast oversimplification of how relationship initiation works, right?

• 22:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think people often think that the way you start a relationship is you like, arm yourself with some really good pickup lines and you know who to approach. And, you know, 30 minutes, start to finish, ah, I did it. I started a relationship. And it's just those skills, the ability to approach somebody and make them experience desire for you in minutes or even hours is a rare and rather unnecessary skill, historically speaking, that wasn't how most people did it. You get to know people, some people grow on you, some people don't. But you're within these networks that shift and grow and change. And that's where most relationships come from.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  It's very easy to lose sight of that in the modern world of online dating. And I think online dating pushes us to think we need these skills that most of us historically have not really needed.

• 23:03Laurie Santos?

  So that's for people who are kind of starting out relationships and just sort of dating. The sort of arc kind of matters. It doesn't work the way we think. What can people who've been in relationships for a long time take from the movie?

• 23:13Speaker 03

  I think in a lot of ongoing relationships, people develop these narratives about who we are as a couple, how we came to be this way. And these narratives are really important. I mean, having a coherent and positive narrative definitely predicts things like relationship satisfaction, right? How stable people's relationships are. And it's also important to keep in mind that relationships often change with the seasons, too. Somebody takes a new job, right? Maybe there are kids that come into the relationship.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  Somebody just comes by and like, lose them. I don't know how that happens.

• 23:46Laurie Santos?

  Show up. Yeah, drop off.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. There you go. I got this kid for you. But but relationships go through these dramatic changes, too. And I think it's very easy for people to remember and stay locked into their early narratives and patterns about who we are, right? We are the fun couple. We are the couple that stays out late. And now we have a two-year-old. And does that make it feel like you're losing yourself? You're losing your identity for who you are as a couple? Or can you try to reinvent who you are as a couple to fit the new reality? These are also places where people have challenges. And how they adapt to those circumstances can be really important.

• 24:28Speaker 04

  You know, we saw that in La La Land, right? This is one of the things that I think was not obvious in La La Land, but was an interesting aspect, which is, so Sebastian, played by, you know, the ever gorgeous Ryan Gosling. He is a very, very traditional jazz enthusiast. He's like on this crusade to save traditional jazz. He then ends up in like a jazz fusion band, and it's pretty popular. But because of how much he's always cared about traditional jazz, his girlfriend Mia, played by the Oscar-winning Emma Stone, can't really understand what he's doing. So even though now he's in this other band and he's kind of enjoying it, she's like, this isn't you, and I don't get it. And so, you know, one of the interpretations of what happens in that film is that he

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Changed that his goals changed in ways that she didn't really track. And therefore she's supporting one of his goals. That's no longer what his current goal is. And their narrative about who each other is, is no longer fitting the changed version of who they are now.

• 25:26Laurie Santos?

  And so any advice for how to kind of update those narratives and kind of understand?

• 25:31Speaker 03

  I mean, a good relationships therapist, right? A good couples therapist will come in and will try to get people to unpack all of the unspoken assumptions that people have about why we're doing this thing and why it works best that we interact like this and why it's best that we're pursuing these goals. So to unpack it all, put it on the table and then identify, look, these things seem to be conflicting with the new reality. What can we take away? What can we change? What can we alter in order to make these pieces fit again? So this is what couples therapists are really good at. But you don't have to have a couples therapist in order to be able to do some of that rearranging of the pieces.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  But it's not easy because we're often very defensive about, you know, why we behave this way or why we have this goal or, you know, but you had said this. And we hold people to things that they said years earlier. And so having some amount of humility and flexibility and the ability to reflect in this meta way about what exactly are we fighting about? Is it really about, you know, you stayed out late, but I was expecting you to come home? Or is it about these broader goals that we once had that kind of don't fit our current reality? And is there anything here that we can change to make this work better?

• 26:47Laurie Santos?

  Now we get to tip number three that rom coms get right. And this one is from a kind of oddball movie, I think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I saw many, many years ago, but totally don't remember, except they're like lying on some beach in Montauk or something. That's like the whole memory I have of this film. Who wants to do the 30 seconds on it?

• 27:09Speaker 04

  Well, I'm delighted that the main experience you have of this movie is failing to remember it because that is of course what the movie is, right? They erase their memories of each other. This is Clementine and Joel, they erase their memories of each other. And one of the messages that that this movie gets to is related to what we were talking about a little bit ago, which is that relationships are tied to a specific person. That that is, it's not just that, you know, if you find somebody who matches me on certain dimensions, we're going to get along. No, it's the sculpting and the building of relationships over time. That's what we mean when we talk about relationships as microcultures.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  And the reason why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind gets this so right is that one of the characters has access to like weirdly intimate information about something that happened in somebody else's relationship and then tries to do the same thing and fails. So let me be specific about this. They're erasing Joel Barris' memory. He's the one played against type by Jim Carrey. He's trying to forget his memories of Clementine, who's played by Kate Winslet. But in this process of having his memories erased by the company named Lacuna Inc., who does the memory erasure, one of the really creepy guys who works there now knows everything Joel did with Clementine to get him to like her so much.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  The things that he did that were just incredibly effective, including nicknames and including which gifts he gave her and when. And he knows that her memory has been erased too. That is, this creeper played by Elijah Wood knows that that both of them have had their memories erased. So he tries to go and basically get Clementine, doing the things that he knows full well she really dug when Joel did it, and they are colossal fails. And the lesson here, which I think is really crucial and illustrated perfectly in this movie, is that it's not a copy paste way to relationship success. It's not like you can say, everything that I did with Alice was effective and therefore I'm going to do the exact same things with, you know, Juanita and that'll be effective.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  No, we have to track and tailor what it is we're doing to the like authentic growth of this particular relationship. It's not a story about finding people who do the things we like in general. Finding people who adapt with us in ways that make our own little unique microculture effective rather than like venomous.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Sometimes people use the term strategic or strategy when it comes to all aspects of relationships, whether it's initiating, whether it's maintaining relationships. Like, oh, you've got to find the right strategies to make yourself appealing, to make partners happy, et cetera. And I don't want to throw out that concept entirely, but I do think it is misleading for exactly this reason, because a strategy for most people implies, I'm going to learn how to do this skill, and then wherever I take this skill, it's going to be effective. And the lesson we get from Eternal Sunshine, and the lesson that we get from the science too, is that that's not really how it works, that what makes one person appeal to us is going to be totally different from the reasons that somebody

• 30:27Speaker 03

  else appeals to us. What's going to make this relationship satisfying and fulfilling, the things we're going to do to make that happen are jointly co-constructed. And if I try to take those ideas and copy paste them onto the next relationship, it's not really going to work. You know, maybe you can sort of start with that and then alter it and try to make it work with this new person. But the idea that you can develop a set of strategies that's going to be universally effective across partners, this is, this is not a good way to think about it. And Eternal Sunshine seems to know this.

• 30:59Laurie Santos?

  I like this advice because it also seems like if you had some strategy that you kind of liked, or maybe part of a relationship microculture that really resonated with you, and maybe a former partner wasn't that into it, it doesn't mean it's never going to work again. You might find somebody else who kind of really gets that, either your humor or your goofiness, or whatever it has to be. So hang tight. Your Kate Winslet might be out there waiting for you.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's exactly right. And people often have

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Core things that they want a relationship to be built around. And I do think that's a useful way of thinking about like, what your deal breakers might be, or whether this relationship doesn't work for you. That you really want to be able to connect with this person over XYZ. And if you're having trouble making that happen, that could be something that you can't get past with this particular person. But my advice is often try not to go into it with very strong assumptions about what you need that person to do. And assume that there's going to be some joint construction that's going to happen along the way.

• 32:07Laurie Santos?

  All right, so those were our positive tips from rom coms. So when we get back from the break, we're going to turn to what rom coms get wrong. Happiness Lab will be right back.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:21Laurie Santos?

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• 34:34Laurie Santos?

  So I'm curious, as we start this section, with your relationship science background, are you ever like, you know, in the middle of some new rom-com and watching it, and then just the characters do something, and just from a scientific perspective, you're just like, no, like, no. You're both nodding. It seems like this comes up a lot from the nods I'm seeing. Eli?

• 34:54Speaker 04

  Yes, I do this. I kind of wish I didn't, right? Like, there's some times that I want to watch something in the role of critic, and sometimes I just want to like bask in the enjoyment of it. But yeah, it's hard to unknow the things that we know about what's effective and what's ineffective in general, as, at least for me, as I watch something on the screen.

• 35:15Laurie Santos?

  And so let's get into some of the kind of misleading messages that we get from rom-coms, starting with one that breaks my heart, because it's one of my only favorite rom-coms out there, Clueless.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:26Laurie Santos?

  I like already have like, don't believe this premise. I don't think Cher Horowitz can do anything wrong, but but maybe it was the movie. It wasn't it wasn't Cher herself.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  No, you're right about that.

• 35:35Laurie Santos?

  For all the folks out there that don't know Clueless, sad folks you are, go see it right now. Um, who wants to do the thirty thirty second on Clueless? Maybe I'll do it.

• 35:42Speaker 03

  Do it, do it, do it.

• 35:43Laurie Santos?

  I'm not as good as you are. Okay, Clueless is Cher Horowitz, Alicia Silverstone, very popular girl in high school, decides she's gonna use her powers to like, match everybody up together. I think she starts with a teacher. But then she takes her kind of slightly dumpy friend, uh, kind of teen Brittany Murphy, um, and hooks her up with somebody. But then the dumpy friend, Ty, I think becomes even more popular. And she realizes, oh, my gosh, I've been using my powers poorly and realizes that the, this was an insight that she's heard from her stepbrother, amazingly cute looking Paul Rudd. And she figures out, oh, my gosh, I'm in love with Paul Rudd. And then magic of rom com makes everything work out.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  I think the phrase is, she's butt crazy in love.

• 36:25Laurie Santos?

  Butt crazy in love. Yes, exactly. So, so how, how is this misleading us when it comes to the science of relationships? What is this movie getting wrong?

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Paul, I'm happy for you to do it, but can we just acknowledge that we're just bad people? And that really this movie has done nothing wrong and that everybody who loves this movie is a hundred percent correct?

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Uh, I completely endorse that statement and, uh, Cher Horowitz is my personal hero. That being said, there is an important assumption that Cher articulates, which is that there are popular people and the unpopular people. And her goal is to turn Ty into one of the quote unquote, popular girls. So she can date one of the very few acceptable boys at this high school in Cher's eyes. And in order for her to do her magical work, she has to do a couple of things related to messages that lead us astray. One is that she plays the game of desirability as a project.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  So you need to boost your attributes in various ways in order to make yourself appealing to other people. Right? So when Ty comes in, we are to understand that she is not desirable. And she must have things done to her to make her appealing and acceptable. Now, the movie actually knows that this is silly because the reality is that she was always meant to be with skater boy Travis, and that could have happened in minutes. Two of the movie, but we have to wait for minute 88 and that's fine and that's great. So the movie knows that that this is an idea that leads us astray. But the second thing, and this is the one that is really tied to some of the complexities in the science, has to do with agreement about who is desirable and who is not.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Cause this movie is playing with ideas that I think take for granted that there is a clear hierarchy of desirability with popular people and middlingly popular people and unpopular people and people must date within their sphere. The reality is that much of the time, dating doesn't actually work this way, especially in environments where people are getting to know each other over time.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  I'd love to reinforce this. I mean, first, I just want to ask Paul, did you use the phrase, boost your attributes?

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Yes, I did.

• 38:41Speaker 04

  Seems like there was some subtle meaning there that, but, but I would love, Lori, if you'll indulge me, to drive this home forcefully. What Paul is saying is that this widespread view that pretty much all of us seem to adopt, that, you know, some people are tens and some people are threes. He's basically saying that's false. And to a significant degree, he's predicating that conclusion in the evidence. He's not saying that there's no individual differences at who's conventionally attractive, or that we wouldn't agree on that on first meeting. That's for sure true. But in terms of who's going to be a good relationship partner, almost all of that is driven by who is uniquely compatible with us.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  That is with whom have we built an effective relationship? And almost none of that is figuring out that you're a seven and then making sure you don't date anybody who's like lower than a seven. And the reason why this is such a big deal is that it ends up being such a corrosive story in the broader marketplace of ideas that you might conclude that you're a three. And like, what a catastrophe that would be to walk through the world being like, I'm a three. I'm just not very datable. People aren't going to like me. There's a truer version of reality that you're at least an eight for someone and, you know, going out there. And trying to make it work with various people that is totally available to you. And that is what I think is the messages that Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You.

• 40:07Speaker 04

  They're sending this message that there really is a hierarchy and who's objectively awesome to date. And there's a little bit of truth in that, but there's much more truth to the idea of building something compatible and being tens for each other.

• 40:20Laurie Santos?

  I think this is so important because it's one thing when this kind of idea of like you're three and that's it. Kind of plays out in sort of 90s culture, like, you know, you, you gotta go out to the mall and get the new skater pants or something.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:31Laurie Santos?

  But I think there's a much more insidious version of it that exists now and sort of incel culture and online. Where people really have these categories and it's really fueling some incredibly nasty behavior. Paul, you're nodding a lot. Is this the kind of thing that you've sort of seen?

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, and I, I worry about this too. I mean, honestly, this has been a journey for me over the last 10 years. Because the idea that there are tens and there are threes, it goes to some pretty grim places online. If you look at things like the red pill ideologies or even worse, black pill ideologies. And it is not lost on me that the people who are talking about these ideologies are often talking about other aspects of the science. It's actually not usually relationship science that they're pointing towards. They're looking at some of the classics, sometimes it's evolutionary inspired research on what people find attractive.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  And over the last 10 years, it's gone to some pretty depressing places. And this point is exactly the one where I want to jump up and down and be like, but you're misunderstanding the science. All of those studies showing the high agreement about who's attractive. We're done with photographs and people who are meeting each other for the first time. When you put people in situations where they're getting to know each other over time, consensus goes down. Agreement goes down. Some people grow on you and some people don't. And this is how most people end up getting relationships. But if you're not in social networks that are morphing and changing and you're getting to know people over time, you'll miss out on that whole.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  Process. And so I worry that there are all these forces in society today taking us in this terrible direction where the reality is much more hopeful as long as you are out there, meeting people and not relying on your, you know, your photograph on an online dating site to carry you through to a relationship.

• 42:28Laurie Santos?

  So that one seems pretty harmful. Now we get into bromcom, rom dron, relationship advice. That's pretty bad. And this one comes, I think, from 500 days of summer. And so Eli, do you want to do my 500 days of summer real quick?

• 42:42Speaker 04

  Okay, so plot summary of 500 days of summer. We meet Tom, played by Gordon Levitt, Thomas, something, something. Okay, what's his name?

• 42:51Speaker 03

  Joseph Gordon Levitt.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Do it again, do it again. Start over, start over.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  We track Tom, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, and his relationship with Summer, played by Zoe Deschanel. And the movie plays with this idea that there are soulmates, right? And at first, he's convinced that there are soulmates, and she's convinced that that's ridiculous, and she has a much more cynical view. By the end of the movie, I think you've more or less decided that there are soulmates. She's come to the view that there are soulmates. He's wavered a bit, but then at the very end, it's like, no, the fates really did bring this to us. Now, it's above the pay grade of a scientist of any sort, a relationship scientist or otherwise, to say, is the universe determined by fate? So let's set aside that issue to ask a more empirically

• 43:37Speaker 04

  tractable question, which is, what are the consequences of believing that people are either meant to be or not meant to be? And here, you know, this will sound familiar to you, Lori, because you're familiar with Carol Dweck's work on incremental and entity beliefs and all those things. But there's a lot of work in the relationship space, some of it from my lab, that looks at this question of what is it like to believe that there are soulmates? And the answer is, if the relationship is going well, then believing that, you know, we are meant to be in some cosmic sense is just fine. The problem really is, if the relationship is going through a difficult time, which is, Basically, the over under on that is 100% of relationships will eventually go through hard times.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  Once that happens, what is the story we tell ourselves about why we're going through hard times? If you don't really believe the soulmate story, then you talk about, well, we're going to try to work through this and figure it out. But if you do believe in the soulmate story, what you might be seeing is evidence that we weren't meant for each other anyway. And the conflict isn't really like, yeah, but we're going to learn and grow from like working through this together. It's evidence that, wow, maybe we're not meant to be, and therefore, we are less forgiving, at greater risk for breakup and so forth. So it is risky to hold the sorts of beliefs that movies like 500 Days of Summer inject into the cultural bloodstream, which is that really what you want to do is find your soulmate.

• 45:03Laurie Santos?

  I think it's also problematic, just because it causes you to do something really bad when relationship troubles come up, right? Which is you say, uh-oh, this is just a sign that everything's wrong. This is the kind of thing we see in the happiness work a lot, right? Someone experiences like a mild negative emotion and it's like, oh, everything's wrong, right? It's supposed to be good vibes only. But I think when we kind of mistakenly assume that relationships are good vibes only, then we just don't do the stuff that we need to do to fix relationships.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  The fixing part is really important, because I think many times, these caustic beliefs are somehow linked to, and there's nothing I can do about it. So another kind of belief that comes up from time to time is this idea that men and women are fundamentally different. And look, you know, we see this in Before Sunrise. This is one of the fun things that they debate throughout that movie, and they're really interesting conversations. And the belief that men and women are very different, or at least in heterosexual, mixed gender couples, those beliefs are linked to relationship difficulties.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  And part of the reason why is because eventually, couples do encounter conflict, they do encounter differences of opinion. And if you are someone who believes that that is linked to something deep and essential... About your gender that often comes with the unfounded assumption that there's nothing we can do about it. So these ideas that like, oh, gender is essentialized, that our behaviors are determined by gender, right? There's no way to intervene and stop those things. That could be sort of fun to chat about as you're getting to know people. But if you really carry those beliefs with you into a mixed gender relationship, that's another place where people are going to be headed for trouble.

• 46:51Laurie Santos?

  So finally, since we are running out of time, which I knew would happen because you all are both so fun and so awesome. And this is why I love listening to Love Factually. The last movie that gives us some bad ideas about relationship is a very recent one. This is the movie Challengers. Paul, do you want to do 30 seconds on Challengers?

• 47:09Speaker 03

  So in this movie Zendaya, her character Tashi is interested in these two guys, Patrick and Art. And Patrick and Art have these very different depictions in the movie. But one thing it sets up very clearly is the distinction between the good dad in the character Art versus the the cad, right? The like hot, but a little bit skeezy guy, in this case, played by Patrick. And this is a dichotomy that we commonly think is out there and explains differences between people, that there are the people you sleep with and the people that you marry. And this, again, applies across gender as well, right?

• 47:50Speaker 03

  So we have this stereotype. And this is a very misleading idea about people's interests and abilities when it comes to short term and long term relationships. Because the reality is that people's interest in having short term and long term relationships tends to be pretty weakly correlated. You can be into both, you can be into neither. But more importantly, somebody's attractiveness or appeal as a short term partner truly has nothing to do with their appeal as a long term partner. So just because somebody has had a lot of fun hookups in the past, there's zero implications for whether or not that

• 48:31Speaker 03

  person could be a good partner with you. And when people carry those assumptions around, boy, do they make some nasty unfortunate inferences about other people.

• 48:40Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, it just becomes a sort of interesting self fulfilling prophecy, it seems like, if you're sort of carrying these beliefs. And also might make you kind of feel nasty about your own history, depending on what it's like, too.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  Why are you looking at me?

• 48:56Laurie Santos?

  So just as we're winding down, I mean, what seems tricky is that we both can't get these really good scientifically-based insights from rom-coms and also some really terrible strategies, too. What should we take away? Like, what's the sort of health warning that should go with rom-coms, Eli?

• 49:10Speaker 04

  Mostly, I just want people to enjoy the films. Like, I, there's a cost to, you know, being in your head all the time. That said, films send messages whether we know it or not. And we internalize these messages to a significant degree. And so I am delighted that we started the podcast. I think some idea that there might be like a fact check for this stuff that we can look up somewhere. I don't think that exists anywhere. So I would advise people, enjoy the movies. And then if you want a fact check, check out Love Factually.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:41Laurie Santos?

  Seriously, you really should check out Love Factually. It's a great show and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Plus, I was a guest on a recent episode, which I'm going to drop in this feed on Valentine's Day as a special treat for you. But before we wrap up, let's go over Eli and Paul's rom-com-themed advice one more time. Tip one: learn from films like Before Sunset and build intimacy through self-disclosure. You'll be surprised how much people will like you if you share something vulnerable. Tip two is from When Harry Met Sally. Friends can become lovers, so don't overlook people you already know. The third tip comes from Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. Relationships are unique. What worked in one partnership might not work in another.

• 50:24Laurie Santos?

  So don't be tempted to think there's a single formula. Tip four is a cautionary tale from Clueless. Don't believe that high school myth that the sevens can never date the tens. Potential partners don't exist on some objective scale. Even the most conventionally beautiful person is a three to someone, and we're all a nine or 10 to somebody else out there. 500 Days of Summer provides tip number five. Soulmates just don't exist. If you believe there's only one person for you, you might give up too quickly when your relationship inevitably hits a rough patch. And our final piece of advice comes from challengers. What attracts you to a short-term partner? Things like looks, fun, a thrill of danger? That has little to do with the attributes that make for long-term relationship happiness.

• 51:08Laurie Santos?

  If you enjoyed my conversation with Paul and Eli, stay tuned, as we'll be bringing you a whole episode of Love Factually in this feed on February 14. After that, our how-to season will turn away from dating advice and back to the bigger questions, starting with the puzzle of how to lead the richest life possible. All that next time on the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

• 51:35Laurie Santos?

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