#926 - Ty Tashiro - How To Find The Love Of Your Life

27:00Sometimes, but I'm both there. 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 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. Let's sit by the same token.

27:38Yeah, let's avoid people who you know are bad for you, but for whatever reason, you just have a weak spot for those folks. 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? Yeah, there's some universality about that actually. So like David Busch, for example, has done some really nice cross -cultural studies. But 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 whose kind. You know, we want someone who's loyal and can be committed.

28:15All these things that would make sense. With short -term mating partners, we tend to not prioritize those things. We go for the hotness or the excitement 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 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 in the passionate love with this person To all of a sudden be in a rut and 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 don't think I'm actually happy with this person.

29:02And 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. Yeah. It really is. 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 in a dog and a marriage and a ring on their finger. Yeah, they never intended to. And yeah, 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.

29:40and then stuff just kept progressing. And, yeah, do you know what the Abilene paradox is? Are you familiar with this? Please, so tell me, I don't think I do. It's a really cool idea. So, Abilene paradox, it's 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 a number of accurate individuals can become idiots when they get together. So I think kind of Emperor's new clothes. 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.

30:24Or 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 to prove 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. Yeah, sure. The passionate love phase was great. And before you know it, you're in your 40s with a couple of kids and you didn't actually ask for this.

31:00Sure. I think a ton, you know, end up that way. So there's the okay, we just thought each other were hot. And then you know, we kind of got together for that reason. Next thing we know are 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 married by a 25. Now, I'll be married by a 27. I want to have kids by, you know, 29.

31:32And I respect that. That hasn't been my path, for example. I respect that people... No mind. Yeah, yeah, have that aspiration, but I think sometimes people can be so rigid about wanting to check out 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 Dude, that's good enough, right? I kind of check off the box. So I was at my best friends writing a couple of weeks ago. I gave a Very successful best man's speech as well. I think I made it made it made him suitably uncomfortable and I was walking around outside and it's the classic thing.

32:09I imagine that bridesmaids get this as well. If you're a groom's man or a best man or whatever, one of the best men, the rest of the wedding, once all of the forning has been done over the couple, is spent scrutinizing your dating life. And you know, there's so Chris, when, you know, when are we gonna meet? You know, you really need to say, I'm like, okay, and I mentioned, I said,

32:36I'm glad that I did 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 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 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 you mean to buy 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 Yes, and that's exactly what you're talking about.

33:24Yeah, such such sage advice So always listen to the mother -in -law always listen. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's great piece of advice and but you know like you said There there's a lot of pressure out there. So you could imagine right 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 you can certainly be tough. So I understand how people You know can maybe make some sub -optimal decisions because of those pressures, but But of course the best thing to do is, you know, wait for the right person and not the checking off the box for the institution.

34:04And then be able to say the sentence, when you know, you'll just know and be a total black box of advice that's useless to everybody else. Drive the single crazy. Correct. Okay. What should you look for in a partner if you want to improve the odds of finding enduring love?

34:22So I used to teach a course for undergraduates on the psychology romantic relationships. And I loved that class, I loved 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 this time. And I said, write down all the things you want in your ideal partner. Pretend I'm like your very 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 and their ideal partner. And I think that's great. You should dream big. And then say, is anybody want to volunteer their list?

35:02So I can read it in front of the class. And great, a lot of students have volunteered the list. And so I'd go through and I'd read in the order that they had put them, the traits. rates. So there's 200 students in this class that have everyone raised their hands and I'd say, okay, 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 100 people, you'll lose 80 people with that because only 20 % of men in the US are six footer taller. And then they say something like, I want someone who's who's wealthy.

35:46And I say, so was that was that mean to you? Maybe she says, I want someone who makes at least $150 ,000 a year to her. That's what that means. Well, you know, of the remaining 20 guys, you're going to 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, we'll take you down to one person out of 100, or we'll take you to a fraction of a person, which is actually much more likely. So, you know, when we say, what's the things to choose in a partner? I think the first place we wanna start with is, we need to really prioritize and be laser focused on the things that are most important to us before we generate our list of 20 to 25 things.

36:34Less, the answer what traits should you look for in a partner is less, fewer traits. It's fewer. You know, the way I like to phrase that is I say, make the list of your dreams. So you could make your 20 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 let's, the top three traits that she wanted to partner, I told 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.

37:19And one of the beautiful things though about psychology is if you take that time to just do that simple task and you remind yourself fairly consistently about what you want, your selective attention and will now direct you towards those things that you want without you even having to think about. 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, where are those things that you want.

37:58And so one of the things I did in this, I wrote a book about this and so it can't start out the first third talking about hey you get free wishes and here's why 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 wander 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 and 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.

38:42So 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 and speed dating or online dating, those aren't the things at the top of their list, you know, those aren't their three wishes. is they got 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. Yeah.

39:12And, you know, so two of your three wishes, you know, you know, 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. So I said, well, maybe that's okay. 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. And 20 years later, that makes me so happy in my marriage. And so there's data about that as well. And what you find is that for physical attractiveness, the return on investment for that is not good. It's around zero. So early on in a relationship, it's actually decent and even early in marriage, it can be somewhat beneficial for marital satisfaction, but it quickly fades away.

40:00When you say return on investment, you mean how predictive is this of marital satisfaction? That's right. That's right. So how much return am I getting from your hotness on my marital satisfaction? Yep. If you look at money, same kind of thing, you don't want to be stressed about money, so So you don't want to be below the poverty line, for example, or close to the poverty line. But once you get to 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. I like to tell people, if you have a partner who makes $80 ,000, there's really no difference between the $80 ,000 and $800 ,000 partner.

40:43You 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 two things that we usually spend our wishes on, you know, really don't get us what we want. A quick aside, grooming isn't just about looking good. It's about feeling good, and the right tools make all the difference. That's where man escapes beard and balls bundle comes in. It comes with their beard, hedger, lawnmower, 5 .0, ultra, and all the essentials that you need to keep looking sharp from head to toe. The beard hedger is your precision trimmer featuring 20 adjustable lengths so you can dial in the perfect style, whether it's light stubble or a full but -rennelled stash, like I'm rocking here.

41:23And for downstairs the lawnmower 5 .0 Ultra has a cutting edge ceramic blade, reduced grooming accidents, 75 minute battery, waterproof technology and an LED light. So you could use it as a flashlight if you needed to scare off an intruder, perhaps. Right now you can get 20 % off and free shipping on the beard and balls bundle by going to the link in the description below or heading to manskaped .com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom 20 a checkout that's manskaped .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom 20 a checkout. Let's just interject the interesting the men still signal up socioeconomic status for women.

41:58Oh for sure. Yeah, in so many ways, right? And you know, you're watch or you're, you know, like quiet luxury is not what they call it hoodie or whatever it might be right and you're just saying hey I'm doing pretty well You know over here in New York you'll see these guys I'm not just reading books on the subway or something and they're not really reading they're just signaling to people hey I'm sorry. It's just when you ask a guy 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.

42:41And yeah, sure, we can't judge those things immediately. So we use rough -cune metrics and from that we sort of infer what this person is, oh my god, they've got a master's. They did a double major in blah, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, you just, I think a lot of guys, I would be interested to know whether men are very 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. So I just I just think that's an interesting asymmetry.

43:25It really is. And as much of things have changed over the past couple of decades, one finding that remains stubborn is this, is that if the woman outerns 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 if you look at it, yeah, there still is this social role stereotype. I mean, I had Brad Wilcox on the show yesterday. He said that if a woman loses her job, there is no change in the predictive power for divorce. If a man loses his job, 33 % increase in divorce. If a woman, if a man wins the lottery, no change in like the divorce.

44:10If a woman wins the lottery, it goes up by, I think this is Norway or Finland or something like that. Hungary may be where that study came out of. So, look, in some ways, you could say that many women, for a long time, were financial prisoners of their partners, and 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 we could say. And yet, if the wrong person got a hold of that particular segment of the podcast, in entire swaths of Reddit would have a fucking meltdown.

44:56So yeah, yeah, not exactly. I mean, you know, this is kind of like one of the things I say about relationships for searches. It's really easy to kill the messenger sometimes. Right? That's so good. I love it. I'm giving a talk somewhere, I'm like, look, don't. That was from the vlog 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 a lot of things remain separate findings that stick around. 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?

45:35So I just read a really interesting study actually a couple days ago. And there's this series of three personality traits that called the dark triad. So it's psychopathy, it can be anti -social, Machi -Vellanism, you're really manipulative for your own self -gain and narcissism, right? Accessive self -love and vanity and 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 rationally know, hey, being in relationship with a narcissist isn't going to lead to me being in tears and a fetal position in the corner, right?

46:26We know that intellectually, but why do we feel a draw towards narcissists, for example, or people of high encyclopathy for that matter. And there's a couple things here. So one thing that they found to study was that maybe it's dependent on age. And so they found for women, women who are older do not want a narcissist. They don't want someone high encyclopathy. 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, they're pretty good for getting what you want in a short -term situation.

47:10So, psychopathy, for example, like you have really low impulse control, you're willing to cheat, to get 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. If you were trading in really volatile and competitive financial markets, I wouldn't mind if my trader actually had some high psychopathy trade, so it would actually be adaptive. So that's one of the reasons why early in a relationship, right, those things could 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 and better.

47:52So the sexual satisfaction is a little funny. Yeah, but you know, they're low impulse control. They're kind of aggressive. They have these traits that could manifest as really exciting sex. And so it is more satisfying sex now. And that's fine. And I'm okay, judge that. But now if you're in a companion at a relationship with this person, you're married to this person, And now you have to deal with the slow impulse control and the aggressiveness and this cheating and all this other stuff. And it's not gonna be so much fun anymore. Right. So avoid the psychopath, Machiavellian, not cysts as best you can.

48:32As best you can. And once again, though, it's one of these things where it's easier set than not. And so it's important to understand that you might have a draw towards these things. That there's something actually kind of like dangerous is an 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 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 can feel good. But yeah, so it people really have to be self -aware about it and then they have to say, hey, I'm going to be on the lookout out for these things because there's going to be like a sirens call to gravitate towards some of these traits.

49:18Okay. What are some beta traits that we should want? Yes. So 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 80s and 90s have mature. So what they did in these studies is they got people before they were married and they assess them on all kinds of psychological characteristics. So like attachment style, personality, 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 maybe got divorced or stayed together.

50:00And these studies are a gold mine for seeing which traits actually matter and predicting long -term satisfaction and stability. And, you know, let's take personality as one example of how you can use this. So there's the big five personality traits. This would be extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. And these are kind of broad brush strokes 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, you're right, people who are moody, prone to anger, have negative and pessimistic, they're less satisfied in a relationship, they're partners less satisfied in a relationship, and they're higher risk for divorce.

50:57And if I had to say there's one trait that people should wish for, you know, wish for somebody who's not high in neuroticism, especially uncontrolled neuroticism. It's just predictive of so many, not great things. Okay, just briefly on that, how can people tell if someone is, what is the sort of behavior of somebody that is high in your neuroticism? Yeah. You kind of feel like you're walking, walking on a lake shell 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. I mean, you're picking up on some of that vibe, some of that neurotic vibe that they have.

51:32And maybe because they've been angry or explosive with you in the past, like, you're like, oh, we don't wanna 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. I try not to do this that often, but 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 dress. 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?

52:17Do they respond in the even -keeled, reasonable, patient kind of way? Or do they get reactive and angry and worked up. And that's one thing that people can look at. The oddly enough, I still love the litmus test of looking at how does the person treat the weight staff 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, maybe your table's not ready. Maybe the service isn't great. Can that person hold it together or do you start to see the cracks of their neuroticits? Yeah. Okay. So, again, avoid neuroticism. Avoid neuroticism.

52:58Now, one caveat there is, like, 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 in a row and or in therapy to make sure that it's not a problem consistently for other people. So that's one caveat I put on a neuroticism piece. There's also a degree of depth 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. Yeah, there's an additional level of depth which could maybe even be useful.

53:42For sure. For sure. You know, I'll say a partner is prone to being depressed, for example. It doesn't make him a bad person, but do they have a sense of, hey, I want to take a sense of the responsibility for this and I want to do the things I can to live with that as best as I can, then you're probably going to be all right. But if it's this uncontrolled neuroticism, it brings nothing but pain probably in a long run. So that's one wish. 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 you watch what people actually do when they're choosing a partner.

54:25Number two, I think like being a nice guy, for example, in our culture, it 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 Frank 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'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.

55:04You know, 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 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 all kinds of great things.

55:42They're better in bad. 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 to hide an agreeableness, wish number two. So 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 ex games type people who want to jump out of a plane or jump off a cliff or something like that. And people in high -incense station 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.

56:33And so that means that they're really, really into you and really enthusiastic about you. And that all feels wonderful and fun. But high -incense 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 too. That's just end of relationship but usually blow up the relationship in spectacular fashion.

57:15In other news, you might have heard me say that hold luggage is a sionp meant to keep you poor and late. And while that's true, it turns out that when a brand puts hundreds of hours into design, an organization and durability, suddenly checking a bag doesn't feel quite so much like a trap it actually feels like an upgrade, which is what nomatics done with their new method check -in luggage. It's been designed from the wheels up to be lighter, stronger and hold more. It's got best in -class materials, 360 -degree silent glide wheels, patent -pending micro -weldings technology and integrated TSA locks.

57:47Basically, you can pack for between one and two weeks of clothes, it's got a full perimeter expansion for even more space and it's lighter so no more panic attacks every time that you wear your bag and then new carry -on can hold up to 20 % more than other carry -ons which means you can fit nearly a week's worth of clothing without checking your bag. And they'll last you a lifetime with a lifetime guarantee plus there's a 30 -day moneyback guarantee. So you can buy your new luggage, try it out for a month if you don't like it, I'll give you your money back. Right now, you can get a 20 % discount, see everything I use and recommend by going to the link in the description below, or heading to nomatic .com slash modern wisdom.

58:23That's nomatic .com slash modern wisdom. What would be the presentation of somebody who's high in sensation seeking? I mean, for me, I use the phrase for those folks, I'll be like, they are so fun. Like, I'll be 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.

59:06Like they have a good idea about it and they could try to control it, supply it. Let me give you an example. So I'm really high in Sense -Tasian seeking and when I take personality tests It's like good lord. That's It'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 I thought to myself I can never do cocaine. I had this like really strong thought about this, you know. I kind of ran them 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 too sensational seeking to be able to handle that in any kind of way that would be okay.

59:53I've never had a TV in my life like I just can't I can't modulate how much I watch TV for example, so I just don't even have it at So those would be some examples of some small things maybe the other ones 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 Hmm 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 fascinating, okay, I'd just Broadening out from personality I mean personality is an awful lot What else should we be looking for in terms of green flags and red flags, trade -wise, behavior -wise, values -wise, life history, life future, etc.?

1:00:43Yeah. Yeah. One of the fortunate things is there's such a wealth of relationship research now that we have dozens of things now that we can look at that are predictive of long -term satisfaction and stability. So let me give you an example of another area. There's attachment, which I think probably a lot of people are familiar with, who has certain extent. So attachment is how secure you feel in your relationship with your caregivers, first of all, and then second of all, people who are 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.

1:01:29There's people who are avoidance 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 that's one of the insecure attachments, of course. The other insecure attachment is anxious avoidance. And 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. One of the ways I like to describe attachment actually is how they measure it in infancy.

1:02:10So for infants, they have this thing called the strange situation. And so, women marry Ainsworth devises 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 plan kind of way. And what happens with most of the kids is they start to cry, which is kind of predictable. They're in a strange place, their mom's gone.

1:02:54That's not that interesting. What is interesting is what happens when the mom comes back. So after a couple of minutes, the mom comes back into the room, sits down in the chair. Security 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 kind of a cool thing or they might bring it to their mom.

1:03:29And 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. Now, kids who are anxiously attached, when their mom comes back into the room, they're not comforted by her presence. 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 clinging this really needy looking kind of way, but that'll alternate then with like pushing away and sometimes even hitting the parent.

1:04:06So they're pissed that the mom left the room, but they're also clingy and can't trust that you'll say 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 going to be there. And if they do go explore, they don't explore as far as a securely attached kid. The avoidantly attached kid, these kids could care less that the mom has come back into the room. So, you know, maybe they didn't find the first place, they'll stop crying when the mom does come back. But they're kind of, if you could hear what they're saying in their mind, it's like screw you for leaving, I don't care about you.

1:04:50And the other interesting thing about the avoidin' 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 kind of 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. 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 style. And so like at the University of Minnesota, for example, they had this really cool study where they got kids when they were actually in a third trimester, still in their moms, Belly's 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 the romantic partners like 30 years later and They found you know these really robust correlations between if you are secure infant you tended to be pretty even in how you manage conflict and Emotions with your partner if you're an anxious kid You tended to be engaging in that push, pull, clingy, lashing out kind of behavior.

1:06:10Some people, some of your listeners might have experienced that interromantic relationship. And you know, kids who were avoidant, yeah, tended to have that kind of stone walling with drawing, interaction style, that's not great in a interrelationship. So that's another thing, Chris, you know, people can look at someone's attachment style, once again, knowing that it's relatively stable over time and it is pretty strongly predictive of long -term marital satisfaction and marital stability. What do you say to the anxious or avoidant people? They go, all right, okay, I'll just be celibate then. Will I tie?

1:06:47I'm a lost cause. Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the good things for folks to know is two thirds of people are securely attached. So that's good news. The second thing is this is there's this guy, Glen Royceman and Chris Brailey, and 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 work hard at it and get the right people in their lives, then yeah, they can become actually earns secures and adulthood.

1:07:34Now, 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 and bevelant in their attachment style and they're really pretty soundly anxious and bevelant. 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.

1:08:14But, you know, 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 then securely attached, it's not necessarily the end of the world, but they're not going to change anytime soon if they change it all. And if you're in a dating situation, I would certainly call that a red flag. Wow. Okay. Is this why the in laws matter in your opinion? 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.

1:08:53And then why 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 also have a solid relationship with me in the long run. And I think you know the evidence kind of points toward yeah There is some good evidence for that. Now, conversely, if someone has a conflictual relationship for their parents, it doesn't guarantee that they're gonna have a bad relationship with you, but it is a risk factor.

1:09:34So it is just once again, people wanna 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 a problem. What about life history, stuff like that, that's sort of what the breadcrumbs of how somebody has spent their time up until this point when you've got to know them. Yeah, super important. Best predictor of future behavior is fast behavior. So yeah, you wanna 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?

1:10:13People are getting this kind of ethnographic, right? Observation of life. So how did your other things go? Because am I going to suffer the same fate? It's not a bad idea to do that. One of the things I would distinguish between is sometimes people have freely chosen to make bad decisions repeatedly. Other times, people have been dealt bad hands by life. And I think that's a different kind of thing. And I guess for me, personally, although I'm interested in bad decisions, for example, what I'm more interested in is, so what's the story after that? So if you made a bad decision, a 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?

1:11:03And 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. Hmm. What about similarity and personality? Should you be trying to find someone who's similar to you in that regards?

1:11:40Yeah, 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 at dating apps, they're based on matching on things like personality. The match group, actually, 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 gonna 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 predicts long -term satisfaction stability.

1:12:18It really doesn't. Matching actually doesn't matter that much when it comes to personality. You can be extroverted, your partner can be introverted. Can that create some problems sometimes? Yeah, probably, but does it really matter that much in the long run? 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, the other partner has a perfectly healthy personality.

1:13:01What'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 Burchide, had this great saying that applies to so many relationships situations. And 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 relationships is, Tyre? It takes two people to make it work and only one person to make it not work. 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.

1:13:41You 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 might is that with our hypothetical a bad trait partner we just talked about with high neuroticism, low agreeableness, high sensation seeking. That's when you really have a problem. So sometimes people will ask me and they'll say, hey, you know, Tai, I'm kind of high 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 just an out of hope for your relationship future, right?

1:14:24Because one, they're self -aware about it, two, they wanna do something about it, and three, they're concerned about how is that gonna 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 in its own is not damning for your relationship future. But now you're neurotic and you're low in agreeableness? that's actually someone who's like a psychopath or as antisocial first alley disorder. Your high neuroticism, low in agreeableness, high incensation seeking, now you've got like a sociopath on your hands, right?

1:15:01So 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, it also has that same multiplicative effect where it's more than the sum of parts. So if you get someone who's kind, who's emotionally stable, who is really committed to the relationship, oh my gosh, two things. One, they're probably always going to be that way. And two, it's going to have a multiplicative effect force. It's just going to give you so many good things more than you could ever imagine. 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.

1:15:49You mentioned emotional stability there. David Busce 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? Yeah, so emotional stability is the term that's the flip side of their otisism. Okay, so it's very similar 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.

1:16:29So things like depression, for example, it's like a negative emotion, but like the way feel that in your body. It's not like your heart's racing or your red in the face or anything like that. It's just actually an absence of energy. What seems to be particularly destructive in romantic relationships are these high activation negative emotions. So rage and anger and those things where you really get hot in the face and your heart rate really gets up there.

1:17:04Those of emotional stability. 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? 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 does this look like?

1:17:41How can you tell that unless you're gonna get somebody to go and do a hexacotest or a big five or something, how are you gonna judge this? So 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, turbulence, difficult challenging the classic I can fix him meme. What have you come to believe about that? Yeah, I can go on reverse there. So you're not going to fix anybody. It's all 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.

1:18:23It almost just never sits low odds that that ever ends up working out. But Now, 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, the time that they're retired. And if you were neurotic when you were highly neurotic when you were 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 directly.

1:19:03I'm not directing that's the same for sociosexuality If you were the girl that was sleeping around below didn't hide school you're still the girl that's sleeping around It's retirement home. Well, you know that is 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. Yeah, phenomenal. 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 you can change your personality. And that is true to an extent.

1:19:38But the number of people who will change their personality, like the rough way to put that is about 20 to 25 percent 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 I have this person who's high in neuroticism. Do I think that's going to change? 80, 75 % chance, yeah, I mean, exactly the same way for the rest of my life. 25 % chance they change.

1:20:20That's not a bet I would probably want to make. You know, yeah. It's interesting when you think about sort of what people are doing when they first find a partner. They're kind of, 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 passion at 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.

1:21:06And it seems like those two variables, how close are you? Where's the starting point? And how capable are they of running and maneuvering towards something that is more healthy? Yeah, yeah, not exactly. So you're kind of identifying the strength 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, if people want to put something in our top three, that would be another great trait to put in their top three. Like this? Like this? Yeah, it's capacity for growth and that dog -ed commitment to it.

1:21:45Because this 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, it has a word radical in front of it, you know? I'm talking about it. I mean, it gives you a radical self -disclosure or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Radical honesty, radical painting. Yeah, and I'm always like, you know, what I'm more interested in is, I mean, that's cool and that's part of it. It's necessary for stuff, but, but then how many people now have the dog and determination to actually make that happen?

1:22:19Because it's so hard, right? Over the course of really years to, you know, turn that huge ship around. around and make it so that you have as a better range in your personality. 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, nature, whether it, you know, whatever it is, whether it's personality, whether it's attachment style, whether Whether it's values, whether it's ideological belief, whether it's all of that stuff, it is no matter which of those you're playing with, it is a marathon to try and get that to be nudged.

1:23:11And that's where the 20 % sits. For the most part, these are probably... I imagine there's not many people that flook themselves into lowering the neuroticism. It's probably the people that listen to podcasts like this one. the insecure over -achieving personal growth maximizers, who are really sort of trying to better themselves in the world they're thinking very carefully, they're very reflective, you know, they're really trying to work on themselves, but that's a terrifying minority of most people. That's so true. So maybe for some of your listeners who So, you know, maybe a 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?

1:24:02It's the summer run with all the creases taken. That's right. That's right. And all these new years of resolution people. I mean, the same exact mindset now comes, could apply to something like personality. Like, okay, someone's going to 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? Who's going to be there much less in December? And as your listeners know who are really committed to fitness, it's not even a year. 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 fitness and their health.

1:24:46Same thing with your mental health and your psychological health. It's that degree of commitment and obsessiveness, right, to make some sort of long -lasting change. Okay, so I can fix him probably not darling. Why else are people drawn to relationships that are tough, turbulent, challenging, stuff like that? Yeah. It gets sloppy, research -wise to try to investigate this. I think it's a great question. It'll be one of the enduring questions we have to long after I'm gone, I'm sure. As you can imagine, it's a little tough to investigate. The best hypothesis I've run across is the recreation hypothesis.

1:25:34What personality researchers have been interested in this curious thing that people choose sub -optimal situations for a lot of things. Not just dating, for example. And a lot of times what they find is they choose these suboptimal situations for themselves because it gives them a chance to repair something or to fix something that they weren't able to repair or fix in the past. And of course, this becomes very obvious from anticorelationships. If someone had something in their family of origin, for example, where let's say it's the stereotype like I never got love for my dad kind of thing, which happens more or that it should probably, right?

1:26:16Yeah, that's really frustrating. Yeah, that's really hard on folks. But now to seek out partners who aren't gonna be committed to you, who aren't gonna pay attention to you or be interested in you. You know, I understand why folks do that, but like it's gonna 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 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 were the frustrated urges I had growing up that just sadly never got met and you know, will never probably get met by one.

1:27:09person. 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? Why, so is it us trying to salvage, close a loop, fix, sort of a childhood wound? Is that what's going on? Yeah. 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 be guessing trying to, you know, we have this need for completion in our mind just in general as humans and it's particularly powerful for something like being loved by a parent, for example.

1:27:58And 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 gonna end up the same, it's gonna end up the same exact way. 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 they less attracted to those two? Yeah, I think one of the things 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 ask them to.

1:28:40So useful in romantic relationships, right? Because 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 truthful friend of yours. What do you think is the bad kind of, what's the bad kind of partner I choose? What does that look like? What characteristics and traits do they have? I bet that for end of years could tell you exactly and very eloquently who that person is. And they'll probably have a level of insight and depth about that. That I, for example, as the, you know, I just wouldn't know. And so I think that's one thing that people can do.

1:29:23And usually when people hear it, they're like, it's one of those insight moments where you can just see it washing over them. You know, yeah, darn it. You know, that's exactly what I'm doing. Now you got a shot 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 regard. Why is it that we're not drawn? So I understand we have this sense for completion. We go back to the absent parents 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?

1:30:10Somebody who does show us love. Why is it that we're not drawn to the thing that solves the wound as opposed to reopens it? Yeah. Yeah, gosh, so let's take a different kind of example here, right? Let's say you had an abusive home environment. And sometimes, then you'll see these folks now go date abusers one after another in adulthood. And if you're on the outside, you think yourself rationally, why would you do that? Why would you not run the opposite direction from that? And I think when there's a social psychology theory, this really interesting called self -verification theory and at the heart of it, self -verification theory poses to this hypothesis that we'd rather be consistent than right.

1:30:58And what they found across a series of studies is there's all kinds of cases where we'd rather 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, 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 a good idea? I mean, obviously no way that's a good idea. But people, because we're so often on autopilot, that would rather be consistent than right.

1:31:38That's fascinating. I don't know whether, so I understand consistent than right, it almost seems like consistent than happy or we would rather prove because it's we're proving ourselves right. I am the sort of person who is inherently unlovable. I am the sort of person who people eventually are going to leave if they get to see the real me. 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. Therefore, I'm going to do things which engender that to happen so that I have this continuous sense of self 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.

1:32:30Yeah. Exactly right. So, you know, in some of these studies, they'll get depressive, for example, in the lab. And they'll get the opportunity to get positive feedback or negative feedback, and the depressions will go for the negative. Wow. Keep it back. Even though the positive feedback is just as accurate or more useful or whatever. Yeah, you know, and it's scary, right? Going back to 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 want to get better. You know, it's hard. And especially gets hard when as we get closer to who we want to be rather than who we've been.

1:33:13There is that point where you're like, and this is starting to get, this is actually starting to get a little bit scary for me on some level. You know? I feel unmoved. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's totally unfamiliar. and all these coping skills and ways of knowing the world that I grew up with, I can't latch on to that worldview anymore. And now I gotta make the sleep to, even if it's more adaptive and helpful, it's still a scary kind of thing. And I think so, that's why you see so many people relax back into an old way of being just when they're on the precipice, right? They're transforming themselves into a new way of being.

1:33:52Have you got any idea with that? I'm sure that there's probably no. 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? 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 is 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?

1:34:38Now let's look at the next two -year block, did it change? So yeah, 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 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 becoming more conscientious and put together, for example. That point from A to B, it's realistically what is, is it 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.

1:35:18But when things go the right direction, what happens is it, 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, 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 going to just get back out of my horse and give it a try again because that's how growth actually happens for anybody.

1:36:06Timing and randomness play a pretty big role in love. 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 one call to not Irish goodbye it, I decided to be there and we met and so on and so forth. Is there such a thing as optimizing serendipity when it comes to luck in love? Oh yeah, I'm Big believer, Big believer in that. And you're right, there are these kind of lucky moments where you're like, I can't believe that's the way this thing played out. There was my aunt, a real interesting character. She's great. But there was this nursery we always want to growing up is huge.

1:36:52And this guy owned like a bunch of nurseries, actually. I think he's done very well for himself. And he's a super nice guy. And 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 going on? She's like, so we dated in college. It's like, no, no way. You dated the nursery guy? She's like, yeah, yeah. He was super kind. Such a great guy and she had, you know, broken it off because they were graduating in 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 response my letter?

1:37:39And she said, 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. Oh, I lost in the mail. USPS. No, no. Postal service. So yeah, luck can play a huge role in things for better, for worse. But to your question, yes, people can improve their luck just like they can in a lot of other things. There'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.

1:38:25And as you look at 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. She was just had seven tough time with the online dating and finding a guy she was going to match with. And so I said, well, what do you want? What are your three wishes? and see, at 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 roll with the third one, I can't roll with third one was, but let's just take those first two wishes.

1:39:07You 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? Can you do equinox? I said, yeah, I'm like, I heard the equinox in a lower aside is just loaded with dudes. We just have a bunch of 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 three or four times a week. And she had an abundance of suitors.

1:39:50No time at all. And not only abundance of people, but people she had met in real life, 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 we're all of these guys great. No, you know, some of them had liabilities or whatever, but it was a lot better, right? Then if she had just kept doing her normal life. So my point here is this is You know, you can make your luck in romantic relationships 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?

1:40:29That's step one for making yourself more lucky. I Mean David Bus have talked about this so much That's the single best bit of advice that I can, I mean, I'm also, I'm 37 and unmarried, so what the fuck do I know? But abstractly, I can tell you exactly what you should be doing. The do as I say, something, something. You need to inhabit places that have people like the person you want to date in, right? That's a, obviously, it's pre -selection. 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.

1:41:17And you're really into physical fitness. It's like you're really not into someone that gets up super early and is going out endurance running. It's like, well, a run club is probably not the place to find someone or you're not really into going out partying all the time. It's like, why are you in the night club at 2 in the morning? That's not your vibe. So yes, that's a phenomenal first one. What next? Yeah, I think the second thing to do then is we don't always behave. I think we still 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 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 bad assness.

1:42:28Right. And a lot of times with friends like this, they'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 going to 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.

1:43:04But 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. So if it's a woman who's minimizing herself, it's like, hey, you be here bad -ass self and if some guy gets scared of that, good. Now you find out after the first or second date, you don't find out two or three months from it. What the alternative is that you have to spend the remainder of your relationship editing yourself. Yes. Yeah. What some people do, some people spend their whole life editing themselves.

1:43:44I think Bad as well. You've drawn somebody who's not actually the person, not actually the person. Yeah, 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. Yes. Yeah. No, 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 actually see them physically like hunching over and he's kind of at the bar dating situations or whatever. And I just think to myself like 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.

1:44:24But I was just like, yeah, just be you. And 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 a guy that you actually that you actually want. 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 phater, like being unapologetically yourself. You know, we have to have a degree of decorum here.

1:45:03We have to understand there are sort of objectively worse and better ways to exist within a relationship and adjusting, it's like I'm a father and I've always been a father and if you don't love me as a father then that's your problem that you need to get over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, exactly. Yeah, I think sometimes to 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 just gonna be my mean self. I'm like that's not what I, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, it's like don't embrace your inner asshole.

1:45:34No, no, no, no. But someone could say, for example, at some point, maybe a few dates on, when you're self -disclosing being more vulnerable, you could say, yeah, sometimes I can have this mean streak and I don't like that about myself if I'm being honest about things. And look, here's some way as Madfest in the past, but here's what I'm doing about it. Now you're being genuine and you're being transparent about who you are, which is, I think good thing, but you're also just not saying like, hey, I'd deal with my farts and my meanness and all this stuff and be unapologetic in that kind of way. Anything else on serendipity?

1:46:14I think those would probably be the big, you know, probably be the two biggest things I would recommend for people, but yeah, make your own, make your own luck. It's so hard to find somebody who you hit it off with, right? 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 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, you do need to create more opportunities.

1:46:53Numbers game, right? Yeah, yeah, just expand it and to find the person that you actually need. It's interesting this battle that we have between the sort of bottom up, heart, how I feel, spark, love, lust, liking, and top down what it is that I know about what's good for me, avoiding the wounds in the past. And I think this tension between cognition and intuition is very prevalent when it comes to relationships. Yeah, 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 20s. And that's okay. That's just part of growing up, right?

1:47:39But 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. Yeah, it takes some time to be reflective. Get your priorities, your wishes in order. And then let's get that solidified in some kind of voice. So now, when you do fall in love, you're not passionate love, pounding heart butterflies in the stomach, you can just enjoy it. As opposed to seeing it as warning signs. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because especially with people who have been stung a bunch of times and I understand this, but if you've been heard a bunch of times, It's almost now like here expects you the good thing the good feelings have been paired with the bad thing Well, you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop and I think if you've used your reasoning and your intelligence The best of your ability before you've gotten into a relationship You know that gives you now this confidence and this trust say hey It's right here on this sheet of paper that I've laminated and made concrete I know I can trust that.

1:48:50And now you can just be an emotional and free person in the relationship. Yeah, a land of buttons got this interesting insight where he talks about people, people sometimes change, but rarely in a relationship and never when we ask. And I think you're sort of pointing at the fact that heartbreak is really one of the only catalysts that cause most people 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 gonna fix him after you break up. Right. It was his killer, right? He always, 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 girlfriends like, I did that work.

1:49:40Right? to make him to make him someone better. I fixed him. Yeah. It's 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 he 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. Yeah, yeah. Good. You know, it's a good choice. It's a hard one though, right? Because when our hearts telling us one thing, we're just kind of wired to think like the hearts got to be right.

1:50:29And our society. Watch me dance through this minefield. I'm not going to trip any of the trip wires. I've got that. That's right. I'm going to float over it all. Yeah, good, good stats, nerd, research, a man. Don't apply to me. I'm the main character in my life. Go fuck yourself. Ty, you're amazing, mate. You know, 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. 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.

1:51:01Chris, hey, I appreciate all that. And I really enjoy talking to you. and I love the work that you're doing 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 to go in depth with folks and ask hard questions and wrestle with things. So I think very well of you as well. Yeah, well, yeah, for anyone that wanted 30 seconds, they've got like one hour, 50 minutes more, 50 minute, 51 minutes, 30 seconds more than they anticipated. Where should people go? They want to check out the stuff that you do. I think you could go to tie2shurow .com, which says again, kind of everywhere.

1:51:47I'm not grand social media. I'm on Instagram, I guess, but yeah, tie2shurow .com, that should have everything that people need. I can tie until we speak again later this summer. I appreciate you mate. Sounds good. Thanks for having me.