1364: Dr. Max Butterfield | Challenging Viral Dating Myths with Science

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25:27Our code is usually Jordan, but not always. It's a win-win. You get an awesome deal, and you help keep the show going strong. We really appreciate your support. Now, back to Dr. Max Butterfield. I think these viral videos, I love seeing somebody take them down. And I think that's part of the allure of your account, right? It's because people who believe in the viral stuff, they might want the truth. and people who definitely think this is so stupid, my eyes are rolling back and my head's so hard that it hurts. I want somebody else to articulately dismantle this type of advice because it is so stupid and it's like, gosh, somebody please correct the record.

26:05And that's kind of what you're trying to do here. I wonder, do you think that's why relationship misinformation is such an efficient growth market compared with other areas of psychology? I think there are a couple of factors. One is that it's really easy to believe someone who is attractive. You see somebody hot, male or female, they're saying something. You're like, yeah, that's probably true. That's a cognitive bias that we have. And everybody has that. The halo effect, right? Is that what that's called? Halo effect. Yeah, exactly. This good looking person is tall. Therefore, they must be competent.

26:36Exactly. And sometimes young people will call that pretty privilege, which it's more alliterative. But yeah, and so that's part of it. If you're attractive, you can say whatever you want, and it'll be believable. And so on social media, that just attractiveness just sells. And so you combine that with something provocative. You say soulmates all look alike, just like we were talking about before. That gets the conversation going. It gets both people who hate what you said. It gets people who agree with what you said, and then gets people who are kind of curious about it. And so I think it's a recipe in a lot of ways for virality.

27:14and there was no one fighting back against that for the longest time, especially not experts, because it's hard to get traction on social media and you do have to look like an idiot and you do have to be willing. People called me ugly for probably every day for the first year and it still happens. You just have to have a thick skin and so it's not for everyone. I think that's why I was able to gain some traction. I just went all in. I just took the plunge. Geez, imagine if you were actually ugly. That would really hurt your feelings. I appreciate that. I also appreciate that most of your listeners are not going to be watching me, so they can't verify.

27:47They'll just take your word for it here. That's right. He's not ugly, folks. Take my word for it. Trust me. Trust me, bro. Was your wife amused, horrified, or is she now suddenly expected to fact check every argument in your marriage? So she was both amused and horrified. That's the thing about me being on social media. All my friends, all my family, everybody who knows me, they say, yep, that's him. Nothing about this is an act. Nothing about this as me putting on airs. This is what I'm like in real life. Imagine if you're my mom and I go, no, false, wrong, as a five-year-old or whatever. But that's the truth.

28:22And I've really had to learn how to tone that down personally. Growing up, that's been difficult for me to do. But social media is a place where I've been able to, in many ways, be myself. But there are consequences for that. Some people get really mad. And my wife feels bad when that happens. She doesn't want me to get hurt, but she also knows that it's been an outlet for my creativity and my just my intellect to be able to kind of shine forth. When that book deal, Advanced Check, gets cast, I think many of her criticisms will melt away. It's a pretty good. Yeah, it's a pretty, pretty good. Just, you know, you put a dollar amount on it and you're good to go.

28:57I'm sure it is. Yeah. I got to wonder. I've seen many of your videos. Which one made people the most mad? Because obviously nothing I've seen even makes my blood pressure go up at all. I can't imagine what that would be to trigger people. That's the thing. I sometimes will say the blandest stuff. It'll be like, be kind to each other. And they'll go, how dare you attack that woman? Or how dare you contradict that man's personal lived life experience? And so I think it's not actually the content often that makes people mad. I don't think it's how I go about it either. I try very much not to criticize anyone personally.

29:38I really go out of my way never to say, don't follow this creator. This creator is bad or whatever. You've never said, look at this dumbass. I can't believe this guy is popular. I've never heard anything like that. And let me tell you, I want to say that. That's something I would love to say. Yes. No, but it's rude. Honestly, there's a better way to do discourse than that. So I try to stick to the information. But people, this is another cognitive bias. people don't often have the ability to separate what you say from how you articulate it, from who you're talking to, and from that context. So I think the things that make people the maddest are when I contradict someone who they love, and they're jumping to that person's defense.

30:19And so in that way, I actually, I can't get that mad at them for that, because I probably do the same thing. Sure. Yeah, you listen to, I don't know, Sam Harris for five years, and someone says, oh, this guy's a racist. You're just like, wait, wait, wait, okay. Hold on. I know him. He's not, that's not it. Are you sure? That's not the thing. Yeah. I do wonder, so I'm going to push back a little bit here. Sure. You criticize influencers for using certainty, right? But your breakthrough on social media came when you learned to use their hook, their format, and their algorithmic machinery. Some people might say, aren't you fighting the junk food by making slightly more nutritious junk food.

30:56Sure. And that is my counter argument is always tit for tat is the most effective communication strategy that exists. John Nash and a team of other people won the Nobel Prize for this. There's a movie about it, A Beautiful Mind. And this is a well-known idea that if you, let me phrase it this way. A lot of academics try to go on to Instagram or other social media and force Instagram to play by the rules of academia. The rules of academia don't work there. That's not what they were built for. So I went on Instagram and I said, I'm going to play by their rules. They don't cite their sources. I don't really feel a need to cite my sources either.

31:36You can absolutely go find them if you're interested. But if somebody says X is true, based on my experience, I say X is false based on the scientific research. If you want to check it, go ahead. So I think that is fair. I agree with you. I think it is fair. If you cited sources, you wouldn't be able to do this. And that's the thing. If I cite a source, people will go, no, that one's too old. Yeah. It's like the quote, if you've seen Parks and Rec, there's this great Fred Armisen bit. It's like, no matter what you do, straight to jail, undercook the fish, overcook the chicken or whatever it is, like straight to jail.

32:13And so cite a source, jail. Don't cite a source. Also jail. Yeah, that's true. Honestly, I don't think people are waiting for that. They're just going to go, is there a source for this? And you could probably even throw them in the caption. Actually, do you do that? I haven't. Sometimes. I feel like I've seen that. What I try to do is if I make a specific claim, like if I give a number, 47 % of people are unhappy because of this, then I will cite a source. But if I say kindness is good for relationships and you're like, source, source, what's the source for that. That is like asking Bill Nye, why water is made of H2O?

32:49How could you possibly believe that? I need a source. It's such basic information that it doesn't need to be sourced every single time. So that's kind of my approach is, yeah, the sources are there, but Instagram is not the place for that discourse. We can have that. Absolutely, we can have that. But not in a 90 second clip, you're just going to say you're wrong, no matter what I say, source or not. So a lot of social media dating advice or whatever, human behavior that goes into this sort of universal diagnosis. He said this, therefore, he's insecure. She did this, therefore, she must be cheating.

33:27And it's often something that's heads, eye, wind, tails, you lose, right? Like, oh, you accuse me of cheating. You're projecting, therefore, you must be cheating. And it's like, actually, no, I just really think you're cheating. Now you're just projecting harder. And it's like, OK, so how do I tell you that I think that you are cheating without you saying that I'm just projecting? They pulled away. Therefore, they're avoidant attachment style. Why do people crave these simplistic rules? What do they provide relief from or what do they offer? We live in a very uncertain world and uncertainty is scary.

33:59If you trace it back to something more basic, say you don't know where your next meal is going to come from. That is a huge problem for any organism. But it's a huge problem for us as well. And so we prefer certainty over uncertainty. That might sound like a cop-out a little bit. It's like, we like certainty better. Why? Because it's survival-based. Yeah, we cover uncertainty on the show all the time. And it's one of these things that makes people believe conspiracy theories. Because you'd rather believe that, I don't know, Jewish people are secretly reptiles. There's a secret cabal that's doing all this stuff on purpose.

34:33rather than be like, hey, all of our world leaders have their heads firmly in their own asses and are preoccupied with getting rich and they don't care about you and we have no idea what we're going to do next week. That's way scarier than secret cabal of Illuminati reptilian, I don't know, Jews or something like that, right? Which is kind of weird if you think about it. I don't want my leaders to be wearing a human mask, but they are wearing a human mask in a lot of ways. And I don't mean that as in there's a reptile underneath, metaphorically, maybe. Yeah. But the world is so complex that we look to simplify everywhere.

35:07Our brains are designed not to think hard. That is what our brains are trying to do is to try to streamline as much as possible so that when it comes to a life and death situation, we still have resources available. It's like if you're running a marathon, you don't sprint at the beginning. That'd be crazy. And that's how it is in regular life. You don't use your mental horsepower on what you should have for lunch. You just take a shortcut and you say, this is what I had for lunch yesterday. So I'll have something different today or all the same thing today. It is just about conservation. I think this explains perfectly why.

35:40And a lot of people wrote in asking some form or another and asked me this. Why intelligent people, otherwise intelligent people, become astonishingly gullible when the subject is their own love life. So you'll find somebody who's like a Harvard educated lawyer and worked at the Supreme Court. and they're reading all these dumb pop culture books on relationships and believing in the silliest old wives tales type of stuff when it comes to dating and relationship. And it's just, oh my gosh, what's wrong with you? You're one of the smartest people I know. But when it comes to your own dating life, not even the advice you give your friends is brilliant and on point.

36:15When it comes to your own life, you're a complete mess. That's always so shocking, I think. And I don't know if there's another comparison. Do you know any dentists with bad teeth, for example. They take care of their teeth. They know what they're doing. But relationships require some degree of cooperation from another person. And so even if you're an expert, if your partner's being crazy, what are you supposed to do with that? And also knowing what to do is different than actually doing it. It's like the he wanted to, he would, where I might know that doing 30 minutes of cardio, doing strength training and eating healthy is the right way to live.

36:55Do I actually do that? Sometimes. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes people often will ask me why I still have a trainer, even though it's been, I don't know, five years. And I'm thinking, I love that you would give me enough credit that I would work out hard on my own. That's cute. Right. It's the accountability. Yes, exactly. I think it's interesting that an inaccurate label or idea is sometimes emotionally preferable to an accurate but incomplete complete explanation of something. We're more than willing to accept something that is certain, but probably wrong. And we know that it's probably wrong versus a nuanced, but sort of uncertain outcome.

37:36And I wonder if this dovetails here, what psychological need is being met aside from the certainty thing when someone says, Oh, here, Cheryl, here's an article about seven signs your partner is secretly a narcissist. What are we getting out of this? It's a good question, because it's different for everyone. So what you might get out of it might be different than what I might get out of it versus what Cheryl or whoever might get out of it. And that's why it's, see, I'm hedging even now. Well, you have to. It's like, well, hey, wait a second. I just asked you a basic question. No, you didn't. It's not that basic.

38:09That's the subject of somebody's dissertation out there somewhere. Sure. And so that's where relationship science, I think, and just psychology in general, it can be unsatisfying for a lot of people is we're not willing to lie to you. Truly, that's what it is. I am not willing to say, well, here's why. And it's because the here's why is 50 different things. And so you have to get to know each individual person. I think that's the value of translating this science for individual people, but also the challenge, because I can't just broadcast out there, here is exactly what each and every one of you should do.

38:43I need to talk to you to find out. And there are certainly some commonalities across certain types of people or certain types of situations. And so that's the challenge to translate that science into actionable things for everyone. Do you have any rule of thumb that might help us differentiate between a useful pattern and a story we invent just because the uncertainty is intolerable? Yeah, even your phrasing there is super helpful, pattern versus story, because the story is your interpretation of the pattern. So that takes it one step further. So you see somebody, suppose you take a common situation, which is somebody doesn't text you back as fast as you want.

39:25So common. Yeah, that's a pattern. That is undeniable. You just look at the timestamps. It took an hour. It took a day. It took three days. Okay, that's a pattern. But what it means is the story. And that story, you can tell in a very calm way. They are busy. Or they have ADHD. Or they hate me. Those are three very different stories. And each and every one of them, without additional information, it doesn't really give you anything to go on. And that's why learning about the people you're interacting with is so important. I remember when texting started to be a thing in the United States, and I'd already been doing it.

40:04I was an exchange student in Germany in the 90s, and people were texting. And I was like, this is so stupid. But it was way cheaper than calling, because calling was like 25 cents a minute or whatever it was back then, Deutschmarks. So I came to the United States and I was like, oh, you can't really text on most phones yet. And then once texting started to kind of be a thing, I think it was a T-Mobile sidekick. It had like AOL and SIP Messenger on it or something. I remember I used it to talk to girls and they were still girls back then because I was like 19. And the stories were crazy. I remember some of these red flags where it would take me a day to get back to somebody.

40:37Because again, texting wasn't something you were doing all day like you do now. It was like you would just check it like your email or something back then after class. And some girls would say, you're talking to a bunch of other women. And you're like, what do you mean? How did you come to that conclusion? It took so long to get back to me. The only explanation is that you're talking to a bunch of other women. And I'm thinking, no, the other explanation is I'm trying to get a degree at the University of Michigan and I am buried, I'm drowning. Talking to you on AOL Instant Messenger is like number gazillion on my priority list.

41:08That's the real reason. Priority is the key word there. It absolutely is the key word. Everybody has different priorities. I remember when I first realized that this kind of generation of dating and relationships was taking over. I was in class. It was about 10 years ago. I was a young professor at that time. And a student was texting a guy. He was texting a girl. And he didn't know. She had said something, and he didn't know how to respond. And there was a crowd before class started of about 11 people around him looking over his shoulder, girls and guys. and they were like, no, here's what you should say.

41:42And I remember just watching and thinking, because that kind of uncertainty and insecurity, of course it takes a day to respond. You got 50 people telling you different things. That's wild. As a married guy, do you ever think, thank God I'm not dating anymore. It's too hard. Oh, absolutely. My wife and I, we got married. We were stupid. Don't get me wrong. We got married when we were 20. Jeez. So I haven't been dating in a long time. And a lot of people will say, well, doc, you don't know what it's like out there. No, I talk to people. I read the research. The research is a wide swath of what's going on out there.

42:19It's the best picture we have, and it's bleak. It sure is, man. But it doesn't have to be. That's the good news, is some people are able to navigate this just fine. But man, am I glad I don't have to? Because I don't know if I would have been able to do it while at 20. Now I have the tools. Yeah, that's the thing. People go, oh, imagine being single now. I can't imagine being single I think it would be way easier than it would be if I was 25 right now. Because, again, I used to talk only about dating and teach the dating stuff back in the day 20 years ago or 15 years ago. And it was like, it was tough.

42:52We were reading behavioral science on how do we apply this in real life. But you didn't have dating apps back then. It was all about going to the bars and meeting people on the street. And that was hard. But the apps were supposed to make it way easier and instead just made it a million times harder. I saw this funny comic that I'm going to post on Instagram at some point. And it was two people at the end of a date standing by the door. And she goes, hey, do me a favor. Tell everybody we met on Tinder. I don't want anybody to know I talked to a stranger in a bar. And I thought that was perfect because back then it would be like, don't tell anybody we met online.

43:24Oh, there's such a stigma. Your parents will freak out. If you met this person over the internet and you showed up, you're lucky you're not in pieces in a garbage can, right? Now you met somebody in real life. Wow, what did he say? I got to hear the whole story. This must have been a magical interaction. And now it's like, no, I just sent me a DM on Twitter and I showed up and it was date number 87 that month. And I guess he was the only non-creep who didn't try to grope me under the table. And here we are. That's like the modern day meet cute. I find it sad. And I think one of the things that makes it harder for people is people take one painful incompatibility and then reverse engineer it into a universal law about men or women.

44:04And you cover this at some points in your videos as well. Like when they do this, it means this. And it just that can't be true most of the time. Yeah. And that's a major pain point for my audience. And I think the audience in general on dating and relationships, it's this idea that someone's personal story can absolutely be true, but that doesn't make it true for you. And that certainly doesn't make it true for everyone. If I dated a woman and she had a St. Bernard dog and it didn't go well because the dog breathed in my face all the time and I didn't like it. That's one of those huge dogs that's like as tall as you when you're sitting down, right?

44:46Is that one? Huge. Yeah, exactly. And I then make a video that says never date a woman with a big dog. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Of course that doesn't apply to everyone. And yet that's exactly what sells. on social media because it gives you something to go on. We have too many choices. And so what you can do is you can now cut everybody with a big dog. So actually, that's kind of nice because you've got a million people to choose from on Tinder. Now you only have 980 ,000 or whatever. And we're always looking for these ways to cut. Never date a guy under six feet. Okay, now you've just eliminated a bunch of people.

45:23Is it accurate? No. But does it help you cut? Yeah, actually, it does. Dating apps give you access to thousands of potential partners, so you can reject all of them and text your ex at 2 a.m. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Northwest Registered Agent. Starting a business involves a lot more than filing a few forms. You need the pieces that make the business feel legitimate and professional, a business address, website, email, phone number, operating agreement, and a clear way to stay compliant. I've formed businesses a few times, and I'll be the first to admit that I am not an expert in business formation, nor have time to figure out which documents you're supposed to have.

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48:00Now, back to Dr. Max Butterfield. I've got, I still have friends that teach dating to middle-aged guys or younger guys. And one of the things they say is, if you are under six feet, or you can't get away with saying you're six feet because you're not five foot, 11 and a half or something, don't bother with the apps. And I said, oh, is it because women are so shallow or whatever? And he's like, actually, here's what my theory is. And you tell me what you think, because I want to run this by you. It's not that women are shallow. He said this. He goes, I'm on the apps right now, because he's currently single.

48:31And he goes, I have two messages in here from last night at 6 p.m. Overnight all the way through lunch. He goes, but if we were sitting with a woman that was reasonably attractive, she would have somewhere close to or possibly over 100 messages just from before lunch after this two, two and a half hour lunch in a big city like Toronto or Vancouver, which is where we were at the time. And I said, my God, that's insane. And he goes, yes. So if you have two messages from somebody, you're going to reply to both. If you have 102 messages from people, you have to figure out a way to stop the incoming flow.

49:09So what do you do? You raise the income slider all the way up to six figures or however high it goes. You lower the radius of people that it looks for to five miles from 50 miles or whatever it is. And then that doesn't work. You're still getting 68 messages an hour. So then you raise the height thing to six foot and over. And then you go, ah, okay, now I'm getting 20. And I can just sort of look at the opening line or the photo and see if I want to talk to this person. It's not necessarily that women have suddenly become way more shallow, there is maybe an illusion of choice that's happening.

49:42But it's also just, please stop the influx of crazy that's in my inbox. Slide all the sliders to 11. And one of the sliders happens to be height. And he gave an example of another slider that you could have. And I wish I'd remembered it, but it was basically like, what if you had a personality compatibility slider? You'd slide that one up to 11 too. Or he goes, what if guys had a slider that was how many men the woman had slept with? That one would go all the way to one extreme too. It would probably go all the way down to zero or one or something for a lot of guys. Not because men actually care about that, but because, geez, I'm getting 100 messages.

50:15I might as well find women that haven't had any other experiences other than me. Right. So it's all arbitrary in many ways. At least that was his theory. What do you think about that? I think it's an awesome theory. And it goes back to the ideas that we've talked about being cognitively overloaded from a variety of sources. We have to have shortcuts. Cognitive psychologists call them heuristics. This is another word for mental shortcut. Rule of thumb. And these mental shortcuts help us navigate a world that's overly complex. And what's interesting is stress increases the difficulty we have in dealing with complex situations.

50:53So if you suppose the economy was bad, for example, suppose you wanted to buy a house and you couldn't because you have rising student loan costs and more inflation than you know what to deal with. Actually, that bleeds into your ability to make good choices. And so you have to make cuts somewhere and you have to save resources mentally. And so one way that you do that is by shortcuts. I like to think of it too. This is not just in dating. Employers do this all the time. So Jordan, if you and I were competing for a job and employers only knew where we had done our undergrad. You said you went to U of M.

51:29Yeah. So you went to U of M. I went to Calvin College right down the road. Calvin doesn't have the name brand that U of M does. And so if an employer is going to say, who should we hire for this job? And they only know some basic information, which is really common in both job applications and dating apps. They're going to cut everybody who is not from a blue blood. Why wouldn't they? Even if you and I are equivalent, it doesn't matter because we have to get past that first apron or that first weight. And dating is no different. There's just too much accessibility. And so people have to find shortcuts.

52:01Yeah, this is interesting. I ended up with a job on Wall Street and I remember thinking, I didn't need my legal education to come here. Why do they only hire from top tier law schools? And the answer, the only reasonable convincing answers were those schools require you to work 16 hours a day and this job requires you to work 16 hours a day. So they want to make sure that you can handle that. It's really competitive. The schools are really competitive. So they want to make sure you can handle that too. But the truth is really, they just pay a lot because the hours are terrible and they figure they might as well get some of the quote unquote best people.

52:35But what I found interesting was you go work in New York, it's like Harvard, Yale, Michigan, UVA, whatever, Columbia. And then it's Hofstra and all these other schools in New York because they're close by and one of the other partners went there and he knows that it's fine. And it's like, wait, wait, wait. And that's a shortcut too. That's just a different shortcut. It's like, hey, I know that school. Therefore, those people are probably good. Damn, if you want to work in New York, go to a school in New York. You don't have to go to Columbia, Michigan, Harvard, Yale, whatever it is. Go to a decent school in New York and you can get the exact same jobs and you will be equally qualified as anybody else who went to a fancy bougie school who has a$300 ,000 bill to pay.

53:14The challenge there is how do we translate that to relationships? Not that the job question isn't also very important, but what are the things you can do then to reach that second tier of evaluation? How do you get past people's filter? And I think there are some things you can do, but the reality is it's almost impossible on the dating apps. Because how do you ever get a chance to display that you are, for example, hardworking or that you are kind or warm or funny or whatever it is. That's hard to do. And the answer is you have to have an opportunity to meet with people in person. That's the way to get it done.

53:51So my friend, again, who teaches dating, he's like, the secret weapon now is the stuff we did 15 years ago where you just go to a bar or a party or an event and you have riz and charisma and you're talking with people and you're introducing people to each other because that's way more rare than it used to be because nobody's doing it. And if you're 5 '10", you can't use those apps, bro. So you better learn how to get the Riz going. And the thing is, even if you're awesome on these apps, I've got friends who are like models and stuff and they clean up on the apps. But the problem is they eventually have to meet people in person.

54:24You gotta be a real human being. If you can't be a real human being, you hook up a lot and then you come crying to me and go, why don't I ever have the ability to get people to have a lasting relationship? And I go, you have a cardboard personality and you're shallow. And some of your listeners might be thinking, okay, well, why don't I just say I'm six feet, even though I'm 5 '10". Guess what that signals when she shows up? It signals you're a liar. Yes, not good. And that's even worse than not making it to the second tier. That is an immediate rejection. Correct. Yeah, that's not cool at all.

54:56So I feel for guys who are not able to use the apps. But on the other hand, now you of the ability to develop a secret weapon, which is meet people in person. The real awesome hack here though, man, I got to tell you the audience at large, cause I don't use it. Find a couple tall, good looking friends who absolutely clean up on the apps. They invite a ton of people to a party that you host and you show up at this party and you do your thing. That has worked ridiculously well for some people who I've talked to about this because those guys can invite 40 people. They went out with them before. It didn't necessarily work out, but they're, hey, you want to come to a party?

55:31You were cool. We kind of jive, but we just didn't have a romantic thing going. Sure. So they show up and there's a bunch of guys and a bunch of gals at a party. And then all of the five foot nine and up and under six feet guys are cleaning up at the party. And I'm thinking like, that's genius. You guys have it together. I love this. I think that's great. That's great. Another hack is literally just ask people out. Yeah. Because we did a study in our research lab this past year. a couple of studies actually. And the very first question we were answering was, do people prefer to be asked out in person or on Instagram?

56:06So if we say exactly the same thing, it's exactly the same person, same profile picture, whatever, these college students who we surveyed vastly preferred being asked in person. Yet we know nobody's doing it. And so the next study was, hey, why aren't you doing it? Dummies. I didn't say that. it's not that they were afraid. It's not that they thought they'd get rejected more. It's that they thought it was against the rules. They specifically, that is what they endorse, is that it's against the rules. It violates a social rule. So society is preventing these people from just doing the basic, hey, do you want to grab coffee?

56:42You want to go to a park and take a walk? I have some sympathy for both men and women in this situation because this is kind of an online meme. You've probably seen this. Guys who are attractive, if they ask someone out and that person has a boyfriend, it's fine and it's flattering. If an unattractive person asks somebody out and she does or does not have a boyfriend, it can be considered creepy. And the rejection can actually have career or social consequences that go well beyond not being able to go to that Starbucks anymore. Correct. Most people don't know which category they fall into because I wouldn't even so much as say it's about who's attractive and who's not.

57:19Although somebody who's obviously a 10, okay, they get the pretty privilege that we talked about before. But most of the time, it's like, I'm a six and she's an eight. Is that gap okay? But if she sees me as a five and she sees herself as a nine. Yeah, now it's insulting. Now that's inappropriate. And I'm the weird creepy guy. I would be anyway as an old person with a wedding ring on. You'd at the point here is that attraction is not as certain as we suspect it to be. Our level of attractiveness is not as certain as we suspect it to be. And so there's this uncertainty of, can I actually ask her out?

57:56Can I actually go talk to him? Is that allowed? And people don't know. They legitimately, they're not sure. Yeah, it's tough. And then you've got like women going, that's fine. I'll take charge, but guys are too thick because the subtle signals that a woman would throw off to me would go right over my head. I remember being like, I finally asked somebody out and she'd go, what took you so long? And I go, what are you talking about? And she's like, I've been looking at you. Yeah, I dropped a pencil near you and I came and picked it up. And then I said, excuse me. And then when you were at the gym and then I said, hey, do you know where the other 20 is?

58:29And you said over there. And I thought like that it might happen. And I'm thinking, no, those are not signals. What I need is for you to jump over while I'm bench pressing, sit in my lap, plant a kiss right on my lips and then sit there until I come up with the balls to ask you out for coffee. That's the signal I'm waiting for. Anything less than that is not going to hit my radar. And it's tough. It's tough out there for everybody. Because there's a huge penalty if you as a man over perceive a signal from a woman. So you think she's sending you a signal and she is in fact not. If you're friends, you've just ruined the friendship.

59:02If you're strangers, you're now a creeper. And so guys in many ways are trained to under perceive those signals. Maybe they think that they see them, They might overread them into the situation, but they know socially like, no, no, no, I really shouldn't. That's actually a guy you want who's that socially aware. And so he's going to miss those signals simply because he doesn't want to be wrong because they're serious. It's tough. One of the things we used to teach again before you could get fired for doing something like this. You probably could back then, too, but we were in our 20s and didn't care.

59:31It was if you thought there was something going on, you could literally say, are you flirting with me right now? And if they were like, no, then you're like, oh, of course, I was just kidding. But they go like a little. Then they are and you proceed past go, collect$200. But it's tough, right? Because now it's like, no, and also I'm your boss. What are you doing? Like you have to really be careful of all these sort of things. And now there's those groups on Facebook, don't date them. And you've thrown in there. There's literal rapists in there and domestic violence people. And then there's guys in there who like, I don't know, went to the same Starbucks twice in one day and are therefore now maybe a stalker that's dangerous.

1:00:07and it's like, yikes, and they don't know they're in there, right? The photos have all been taken surreptitiously. So I feel bad for anybody dating right now. This has been a long tangent. I'm curious if you can create a practical exercise, like a relationship rule audit. Give listeners a test they can apply the next time they hear a relationship rule online. Do you have any sort of heuristics, to use your vocabulary, people can apply to these relationship rules they hear online or from friends to see if they're crap or not? two big things. First of all, does it come from personal experience and observations?

1:00:44So is it part of someone's personal story? That doesn't make it false, but that is the first layer of defense. You should do more digging and find out, is this actually going to hold up in my situation? So look at the source. Is it personal or is it based on big data? Two, is this something where they use simple words like everyone, everybody, all the time. Overgeneralizing. Yeah, exactly. So if it comes from a personal anecdote, if it generalizes to everyone or even to maybe too many people, those are two things that are pretty sketchy. And then to put a positive spin on it, if the person couches it in words like sometimes or the data tend to show, much, much better.

1:01:34I like the idea that you should examine if something is a repeated pattern because I think it's really tempting to find one isolated incident and just go, okay, blanket, because this thing really hurt my feelings. So therefore, anybody who does X has that St. Bernard is always going to do this. It's like if you dated five women that had St. Bernard's and all of them had stank breath in your face all the time and ruined your libido or whatever. OK, now maybe you got a rule or the makings of a rule, at least for you personally. I think also maybe if I can add to this test, maybe come up with three plausible explanations.

1:02:11You kind of did this earlier, right? Does it mean that she doesn't like you or does it mean that she's really busy because she has two jobs and is also in school and therefore is deprioritizing her social life. And even her best friend doesn't hear from her for two days at a time. Maybe you're on the same tier as that person. That's pretty good, actually. Right. Come up with other plausible explanations. And yeah, I think that's a decent test. So I'll coach people individually. And what I implore them to do. So I think this is so important is to tell three stories about what's going on. One is the most likely story.

1:02:50One is the least likely story. And the other is the story you're telling yourself right now. And so in other words, he didn't text me back for a day. So what's the most likely story for that? What's the most likely explanation? What's the least likely explanation? So in other words, like what's best case scenario? What's worst case scenario? And then what are you telling yourself? And my guess is most of the time people are leaning towards worst case scenario. Sometimes they're full in worst case scenario. When in reality, what we need to be thinking is predictably, what is actually likely to be going on here?

1:03:25And what's likely is like he's busy. He's not the kind of guy that would just disappear. Here's an interesting example. He says every ex of his was crazy. This is something I came across a few years ago with a friend of mine. Yeah, I've seen this one. Of course. Every ex is crazy. Men are women. Most likely the common denominator is him. Therefore, maybe they're not crazy. Maybe he's the problem. But I've also met guys that are otherwise stable, great guys, and they love crazy women because, I don't know, it's fun for them. I can't relate. But they love it. So yes, all their exes were crazy, actually, but he filtered for that.

1:04:02He dated a stable woman for five minutes, got bored and moved on. And I think most likely it depends on what's this guy like. So if you phrase it as best case versus worst case scenario, so best case scenario, he's had a run of bad luck. He's dated a bunch of women that are just not right for him or for anyone. Two, okay, worst case scenario is he's crazy in any variety of ways. Maybe he's selecting for crazy people or maybe he is just a maniac. Okay, what's the most likely scenario? It's a mix of those two things. You know, he's doing some selecting, but also, yeah, people have bad luck sometimes.

1:04:41That's legitimate. And as he builds skills, is he likely to do that in the future? No, probably less likely anyway. I want to talk about ghosting and things like breadcrumbing, which most people haven't heard of, situationships. You cover this. And first of all, what is breadcrumbing? I feel like this is way more common now than it used to be, but that could just be internet perception. So I actually didn't encounter the term breadcrumbing until I came on social media. So like 18 months ago, I found it almost instantly, but I had no idea what this was. And so I thought researchers wouldn't have looked into this because I know this research really well.

1:05:15So one of the first things I did was I looked at the research. And so let me tell you, it is in fact there. Okay. So let me tell you what breadcrumbing is. breadcrumbing is when you lead people on with just little crumbs so that they are always hungry for more. It's like the old story of Hansel and Gretel and the wicked witch leaves a little trail of breadcrumbs to her house where she's going to bake you in the oven. This is really gruesome in terms of relationship analogy. But the idea is the person is leading you on and they're just giving you just a bare minimum of what you need to keep you hooked in and to keep you addicted to them.

1:05:47And yeah, it turns out people do that. And it turns out it's a pretty effective strategy if your goal is emotional manipulation. I don't think that should be. And this applies more broadly than breadcrumbing. People will say to me, yeah, but will it work? It's like, yeah, it actually will work if your goal is to ruin someone's life. Sure. Well, when is the ambiguity accidental and when is somebody strategically preserving access to you for attention or manipulation purposes? Yeah, I think most of the time it's a mix. It would take a very insane person, and that's an inflammatory word, let's say an insane person.

1:06:27What I really mean is it would take a really terrible person to do this on purpose, 100 % intentionally. There are very few people who are going to do that. Most of the time, it's something they learned that's effective. So maybe you learn it when you're in second grade, if you're a tease, just a little bit, and just with friendship even. This is something that has been learned over time is like, this works. But works how? That's always the question. People want closure, usually in the form of one final conversation, maybe a few dozen follow-up texts and light felony stalking. We'll be right back.

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1:08:07If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Dr. Max Butterfield. It dovetails a little bit with situationships, right? Which I guess are what relationships where one slash both parties just refuse to negotiate the terms of what's going on. They're sleeping together. But then sometimes they go out to dinner, but they're not really dating, but they kind of are. But it's not your girlfriend. So you can date other people. And like I find that most of the time both parties are miserable in this or the one person who wants something more is, of course, very miserable in this.

1:08:48But then the guy might not want to say anything because he doesn't want anything more. But that means you're going to probably stop sleeping with him. So you can't have that. What is going on with these? Are these more common now? Or again, is this just internet perception? No, again, this is common enough that researchers, they've been talking about this longer than the term situationship has been around, except they use something, I think it's even catchier. It's called sliding versus deciding. And the basic idea is that you just kind of accidentally slide into a relationship. Like there's been some freezing rain in Michigan, typical Michigan February or whatever.

1:09:20Yeah, I was going to say that's a Michigan analogy that people are going to, some people are not going to have a clue what we're talking about here. You hit a patch of ice and you just slide a little further than you intended to go. And that's what happens in the relationship. Not because you intentionally decided to take the next step and move in together, but because your lease was up and you needed somewhere to live. And so you're like, hey, maybe I could stay with you for a little while. And she's like, yeah, I think that'd be fine. You didn't decide to move in together. That was just convenient.

1:09:48And so that's the situation is you haven't actually had the real conversation, which is, are we serious enough to live together? And the answer is probably no, if you haven't had time to have that conversation yet. But if it's easy and convenient, you just slide right into it. That's actually quite funny. And this is exactly what happened with my wife, too. Is it? Yeah, in many ways, because so I met her, I needed an apartment. She's like, I'm moving out of my apartment. So I basically stayed in the apartment that she was in for a while. And it was like, okay, we're roommates. And then she moved and I leased her apartment from her before she sold it.

1:10:23And then I moved to San Francisco and she's like, I live with my parents and this kind of sucks. And I was like, well, why don't you just stay with me? I live in the city. It's awesome. Stay here. And then I remember her parents were like, are you kidding me? And I jokingly said, this is a long time ago now, so it's okay. We have two kids. We better get married because if we don't, your parents are going to really hate this and they're never going to let it go. And thank God we got married. Otherwise she was going to have that stain on her record forever. So it worked out for you. Yeah, it did.

1:10:51That is a perfect example of why people shouldn't learn that lesson from you. No, because it worked out and maybe it shouldn't have, but it did. So that means it's true for your life. I wouldn't do it again. And I remember people being like, what are you doing? And I was like, no, no, no. I know this is a bad idea. I just don't currently care. And it was also the same thing with working with my wife. I remember worked with her because I needed an assistant. My assistant, I had to fire her because her boyfriend stole something from my company. Right. So I was like, crap, I need an assistant really bad.

1:11:21And everyone's like, do not hire your girlfriend. Do not hire your girlfriend. And I was like, I just temporarily need to hire my girlfriend. She was awesome. And I was like, this is great. And we still work together and it's great. And when people go, oh, good. I was thinking about working with my wife and I'm like, don't do it. And I'm the other dentist, right? the 9 out of 10. I'm the one who doesn't recommend this vibrating toothbrush. This just happens to work out for me. It's probably not going to work out for you. Everybody I've talked to that's had this, that's hired their sister-in-law, their wife, it's a freaking hot dumpster fire.

1:11:53Don't do it. And I'm speaking from zero credibility because I did it and it worked out fine. And researchers have a name for this. It's called survivorship bias, which you probably have heard of. Yes. And survivorship bias is everywhere. It's like you see an interview with a guy who's 100 years old and the interviewer is what's your secret and the guy goes well it's whiskey and cigarettes that's not what makes you live to be 100 might have been 150 had he not had cigarettes and whiskey yeah that's exactly it yeah and you get the blue zones and stuff this is a funny example you might know this so there's this whole book about blue zone diet and the blue zone and these people live really long and i talked to another PhD health researcher not on the show.

1:12:35And he told me that it actually is almost certainly some kind of government benefits fraud, where they're saying a person is still alive, and is 113 years old, because the government doesn't check to see if that person's alive, and just keeps sending the check to their house. So the family's just collecting the Social Security or whatever for another decade. And then finally, someone's like, hey, we need you to come in and do ex and they're like, he died last night. And they're like, oh, well, and they're like, the jig is up on this. But they got 13 extra years of welfare from, I don't know, Greece or whatever.

1:13:08So it turns out to just be complete nonsense. Well, it's the survivorship bias. But again, like the Blue Zones thing, whether it's true or fraud or somewhere in the middle, the advice for the diet is actually not harmful. It's eat healthy and live a healthy life. Yeah, that's great. And that's where a personal story can be fine. It's like back to the love languages things as a bookend here, that could be useful, but we have to verify. Let's find out if it actually is. And that's really what relationship science is all about, is just verifying some of these claims. And that's where I kind of try to step in and say, here's a good one.

1:13:46Here's a bad one. I'm calling a ball on this one. I'm calling a strike on this one. What about ghosting, man? Again, when I was dating, literally never happened to me. I don't it happen to me one single time. And now it seems to be the default way of people ending relationships. It's like, well, she just hasn't answered any of my calls or texts. And so that's weird. What I don't hear people talking about today is a lack of emotional skill causing ghosting. So in other words, it's easier to ghost someone than to say, I don't like you. Let's stop talking. And you might think that's easier for them, but it's not actually.

1:14:27And so I think people don't have the same level of communication skill today that they had when you were dating because of social media and because of phones. Because they haven't grown up having hard conversations with people, having to face someone to tell them something difficult. Instead, you can just disappear. And that's so much easier today than it used to be. It used to be you would see the person in your neighborhood. You couldn't ghost. You'd have to move if you wanted to ghost them. And that's a lot of work. Now it's more just, I'm not going to respond. Yeah, I just blocked them on Insta and their texts turn green.

1:15:00So the end. Yeah. When should a person seek closure? And when are they using closure as a respectable euphemism, whatever, for one more chance? Because on our Feedback Friday segment, we've gotten letters like, I just need closure. And I'm like, no, you want to try again. And you were stalking your ex-girlfriend. Well, it's so funny. So when I do one-on-one coaching, so often I'll hear people say, I just want closure. And I go, hey, man, she told you she never wants to talk to you again. That's literally what closure is. What you want is a better resolution. And those are two different things.

1:15:39So that's my decision point right there is what are you actually looking for? Are you looking for an end to this chapter or are you looking for a postscript? Are you looking for another chapter? and most of the time we actually already have the end of the chapter if they're ghosting you it's over that is a really good point i do understand why people want quote-unquote closure like you said they want a better resolution and it is unsatisfying that somebody just ignores you it sucks but i think it's probably worse hey your breath is disgusting your teeth are a little bit messed up your style sucks you're really boring and i don't click i mean do you need to hear all that or can you just move on?

1:16:17So if you have the skill, if you're in the position where you're ghosting someone or you're thinking about ghosting someone, the best thing you can do truly is provide them with some measure of closure. So you can say, hey, this is not working out for me and I want to give you the courtesy of ending it personally. So I'm going to stop things here. And notice I didn't say, I hate you, you ugly fish, whatever. Like you look like a bass. Your breath smells like a St. Bernard. So you don't have to be mean. Closure can also just mean putting a period on the end of the sentence. And we don't even do that.

1:16:53In text, it's like, you don't put in a period. That's scary. You say, hey, see you later. But closure is, hey, I won't see you later. And that's okay. We're going different directions. I do feel like that's harder for women to do because they have a actual physical safety concern. A hundred percent. With telling a guy they don't want to see them again. It's like you do the wrong thing and you've got a violent enemy chasing you around. Terrifying. And so I think it's really important for women and men too, but for women especially to assess who they're talking to. If this is someone you've known since second grade and he's never shown any indication of violence, but he said that he would like to date you and you never saw him that way, you could probably safely.

1:17:40Again, I can't say this for everyone's specific situation, but if you've known the guy, you can say, hey, I don't see you that way. But I can't say that with certainty. I'm couching it again. Yeah, you have to. It's crazy out there. That guy might be a crazy person. That's true. So I think it's important to recognize that. I'd love to talk a little bit about chemistry, right? Because it means so many different things, physical attraction, maybe there's some uncertainty, or there's some familiarity, or there's anxiety, there's reciprocity, or some cocktail of all these things. But I do wonder why emotional instability, for some people can feel like passion.

1:18:12I told you about my friend who liked crazy, actually crazy, sort of rude women. He loved it. And it's weird, because he comes from like a totally normal, stable family. He's got a great job. He's a shocking for me that he likes that, but he feels like that emotional instability is somehow a key ingredient in a relationship. It's a lot like skydiving. You could die if you jump out of a plane and yet thousands of people do it every year, maybe more. I don't know what the stats are on that. But what that's doing is we only have kind of one system and it's either on or off. It's the fight or flight system.

1:18:49And some people enjoy to have it activated a little bit. Maybe not an actual fear of death. You don't want to be chased by a bear in the middle of the forest, but some people might actually get some amount of rise out of that. And so I think that's what we're seeing is individual differences in sensitivity to stimulation. And some people just need a little bit more and some people need a lot more. And so when someone is emotionally unstable, Yeah, that gets you going. Gets your heart rate up, respiration rate up, gets your blood pressure up. And in some ways, that's the same as jumping out of a plane in a safe situation.

1:19:26You also know that relationship argument is not truly dangerous, probably for most people. It just gets you going. I'd love to talk about red flags because I think this is one of the most interesting elements. We have to define red flag in a way that does not turn every imperfect human being into toxic waste. Tell me what you think a red flag actually is. For me, the best indicator of a red flag is a pattern that makes your life worse instead of better. And notice that's not a specific behavior because there are certain specific behaviors that are going to be obvious to everyone. Physical violence, emotional violence, being mean, those are obvious.

1:20:06But the question is not, was my partner mean to me today? The question was, is my partner usually mean to me? Is my life worse because they're in it? Or is it better because they're in it? So it takes more of a bird's eye view to get a sense of that. But we like the shortcut. Oh, he yelled at me once. That's a red flag. He forever is a problem. Maybe, but one episode of yelling is very different than 10 episodes of yelling. So what's the difference then between, let's say, a red flag, incompatibility, and an annoying personality trait? Yeah. Is there one? I mean, there has to be. Yeah. My experience is that everyone on Earth is annoying.

1:20:53I don't know if you've had this experience at one time or another. Not all the time, of course, but you could have just the greatest person on Earth. You're locked in a room with them for three days. That's not going to go well. And a big part of that is we just don't deal well with the same stimulation over and over again. So even somebody being too nice, that can be a red flag. We see that as like, he's nice all the time. That's a red flag because he's hiding something. Yeah. Maybe, but probably you just are annoyed because you need some space. So ultimately, I don't know that there is a difference between somebody who's annoying and somebody who is showing a pervasive problem other than is it making your life better or worse most of the time.

1:21:36I see. That's a good heuristic. I would love to hear some real red flags that you see people rationalizing away for whatever reason. You'd be shocked at the type of things that people rationalize. We can all rationalize anything if it provides us with hope or if it provides us with some benefit. But the biggest one, it goes back to this pattern idea, is inconsistency, is this rationalization of, I tried something and it didn't work once, and so I'm going to try it again and again. And you're not getting a just predictable, reliable response from this person. You think next time, next time they'll do it right, or next time they'll be nice to me.

1:22:24What we're really talking about, to put it in concrete terms, is sometimes relationships are like a slot machine. You put in a dollar, you don't win. You put in a dollar, you don't win. You put in a dollar, you win a bunch. That is an inconsistent relationship and it's easy to get addicted to that in the same way that it's easy to get addicted to a slot machine. Nobody gets addicted to a change machine. You put in a dollar, you get four quarters. But actually that's what you want in a relationship. It's just not as compelling for us. It was a little bit of a, I won't say a dodge, but you gave me a better answer than probably what I was going to get anyway.

1:22:58So I accept that. You're like, hey, but no, seriously, give me a universal red flag. Well, yeah, domestic violence. I'm not going to do that other than someone who is unkind, someone who is cold, someone who is a jerk. And everybody already knows that stuff anyway. That's the issue. Here's a better version of that question. I would love to know the top internet red flags that are mostly bullshit and not really red flags, but people just jump on these like, oh my God, Never date this person because they did this thing. And it's like, no, that's called having a bad day, for example. Totally. I think that, and this goes back to something that we hit on earlier, which is the idea of things like, if he wanted to, he would.

1:23:40Things like, always, people everywhere do. It's not actually individual items that I see as a problem. Maybe this is a better answer. It's not individual things. It's an approach to information. It's the approach to relationships that's the problem. So hitting on this idea of someone who is saying with certainty that this is always true or someone who's saying this is true and I have nothing to prove it other than my own experience. So what I'm trying to do ultimately is teach people how to evaluate every claim they see because so many claims are just going to appear out of nowhere. By the time this airs, there might be a new claim sweeping the world that's totally bogus.

1:24:25And I want people to have the tools to be able to evaluate that rather than combating single claims at a time, if that makes sense. Yeah, of course. I'm curious what you think of attachment theory. I've done shows on this. I'll probably do more shows on it. It seems like it's science, but I think people jump on it too much and it becomes horoscopy, right? Oh, you're avoidant. Therefore, all of these other things must be true about you. A hundred percent. So I have always been skeptical of attachment theory as a whole, because attachment theory says your way of being is set in the first year or 18 months of life.

1:25:01Your way of relating to people is forever fixed. If something goes wrong in your first 18 months, you're cooked, bro. And I just, I find that hard to believe. And I don't know that the data supports supports the strength of that claim by itself. Early relationships matter. The data absolutely supports that. People do end up with attachment styles, but they're not boxes that they get stuck into forever. And I think truly the attachment theory researchers, they recognize that today. There's a second or even third wave of attachment theory that has advanced beyond the beginnings, this guy named John Bowlby.

1:25:36And that's from like the 50s. And so I think there's an acknowledgement in the research that these are not as fixed as people on the internet act like they are. And that's the issue is it's like attachment theory gone wild. That's what you see on social media. Yes. Yeah. They do one thing. Therefore, they're avoidant. Therefore, and thus they will never change since this person is, I don't know, secure attachment. It's never going to work or this behavior will never change. Can a person behave, let's say, secure attachment style with one partner and then anxious attachment style with another partner.

1:26:10Is that true in your experience? Yes, that is exactly what I try to emphasize when I talk about this with people is that you and I can be really secure in our relationship. That doesn't mean that you and I are going to be secure when we go out and interact with other people because we have a history together. Whereas you meet somebody new, if you're secure, you're a nut. Why would you be secure with someone who you don't know at all. That's wild. That is a really good point. Yeah. You're the weirdo. If you have nothing, you're not worried about anything and it's a brand new relationship. I wonder, and I see this all the time, right?

1:26:44A lot of understanding someone's attachment pattern becomes an excuse for tolerating mistreatment or rationalizing, maybe pathologizing the fact that the other person doesn't want a relationship or something like that. They're avoidant. No, they're with a low level of skill trying to tell you that they're not interested in you. Exactly. Are they avoidant or they just not want a relationship with you? Yeah, they're avoiding a relationship with you. That doesn't mean they're avoiding relationships with everyone. That's a totally different story. And I think people, they use that avoidant label to absolutely demonize others.

1:27:17And that's not fair either. I think legitimately there are people who are avoidant across all of their relationships or across most of their relationships. But that is widely overused, in my opinion. I got to give you one last farewell question here. When your children eventually ask you how to choose someone to love, what will you tell them that no algorithm or psychology textbook or viral video can teach? It would be such a privilege if my kids would ask me that. Yeah, they're not going to. This is never going to happen. Right. No, no credibility in their eyes. But yeah, fantasize that it did.

1:27:53I just hope maybe they'll watch my videos someday in secret. But the truth is, it's very simple. And so this is what I would tell my kids. This is what I would tell a six-year-old when choosing friends on the playground. But this is what I would tell a 60-year-old divorcee who's looking to find a new relationship or a 16-year-old or anyone. Find someone you like, make sure they like you back, and then try really hard to make it work. And it's just that simple. Love it. Simple. Some might even say simplistic. But yeah, but it's not easy. And that's where it's not simplistic is that's true. It's not the lessons are actually very simple.

1:28:30Applying them is the hard part. That's why I'm here to do what I do is to help people apply. It is legitimately very difficult. Dr. Max Butterfield will have to have you come back on the show and discuss some of these leftover notes. I shouldn't even say leftover just the pile of things we were unable to get to and then and then you got a book coming out man you're flooding the zone. Absolutely. Your video a day content strategy is working really well. Thank you for coming on, man. It's a fun conversation. I really enjoyed it, Jordan. Thanks for having me and happy to come back. You're about to hear a preview where Dr.

1:29:04Abigail Marsh unpacks why psychopathy is more treatable than we think, how kindness can quietly reshape lives, and why we may need to rethink labels like sociopath. You know somebody with psychopathy already. So if 1 % to 2 % of the population has a clinically significant level of psychopathy, and most people's social networks include 100 to 150 people, all of us know somebody with psychopathy. So that's the bad news. But the good news is that the stereotypes people have about psychopathy are usually a little off. And so the person with psychopathy you already know, you may just not have recognized that that's what their behavior adds up to.

1:29:40Many people who are psychopathic themselves are like, I don't want to be this way. I just don't know how to behave differently. no differently from somebody with any other disorder. It's just they can't find anybody who will help them. I fully recognize that people with psychopathy are totally capable of coming up with a code for how they want to live, including a code that dictates what it means to be a good person, even if they don't have the same emotions and drives and motivations as other people do. So I think that's really important to clarify. However, in that context, people who are psychopathic just don't intrinsically value other people's welfare that much.

1:30:12they are just much more instrumental on their social interactions. Every interaction is about like, what can I get? What can I get out of this person? What can I get out of this situation? So that's why there's so much manipulating and lying and exploitation is it's because people, most of the time, are just sort of tools to get whatever the ultimate goal is. Every other psychological disorder can be treated. And so why would these be uniquely immutable? And in fact, the evidence is they can be changed. They can be improved. They're totally treatable. To hear the science behind who actually does the most harm, check out episode 1293.

1:30:45It might change how you see everyone around you. Thanks to Dr. Max for coming on the show. The hard truth here seems to be that relationships don't come with cheat codes. A delayed text is not a diagnosis. Chemistry is not destiny. Understanding somebody's attachment style doesn't obligate you to tolerate their bullshit. But we can pay attention to patterns, communicate like adults, invest in people who invest in us, and frankly, stop letting TikTok turn every disagreement into a crime documentary. As usual, all things Max Butterfield will be in the show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

1:31:23Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking as well over at 6minutenetworking.com. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

1:31:52If you know somebody who watches way too many relationship videos online, believes a whole lot of nonsense, maybe they're on the rocks in their personal life, definitely share this episode. Or somebody who just loves relationship science, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

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