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Compatibility Explained: What Actually Predicts Lasting Love & Relationships w/ Eli Finkel · The Psychology of Relationships

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Julie Kraftcheck, and I'm UASU.
0:03
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the Psychology of Relationships.
0:07
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you actually know if someone's a good match for you?
0:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just on paper, not just on a first date, but in a way that lasts.
0:14
[SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, we're joined by Eli Finkel, social psychologist and director of the relationships and motivation lab at Northwestern University to unpack what compatibility really means and to challenge many of the assumptions
0:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Because while shared interests, similar personalities, and instant chemistry can feel important early on, they're actually not the strongest predictors of long-term relationships at a faction.
0:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We explore the psychology behind why compatibility isn't something you simply find, but something you build.
0:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Eli introduces the Michelangelo effect.
0:50
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that the healthiest relationships are once where partners help shape each other into their best, most fulfilled selves.
0:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Rather than asking, are we the same?
1:00
[SPEAKER_00]: The better question becomes, do we help each other grow?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Through research back insights.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Eli explains how attraction, alignment and compatibility evolve over time, especially when both partners are willing to invest intentionally.
1:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether you're dating, deciding whether to commit, or reflecting on your current relationship, this episode offers a grounded science-informed way to rethink compatibility, one that's less about perfection and more about possibility.
1:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember to subscribe to the psychology of relationships on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and if this episode helped you rethink what really matters in love, we love a rating or review.
1:42
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the psychology of relationships, and you're listening to an episode that just might change the way you show up for love.
1:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Enjoy!
1:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome, Eli, to discuss one of the most debated topics we've ever had.
1:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Compatibility, how do you choose the right partner?
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you know you're with the right partner?
2:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And we keep going back and forth, but you've devoted a lot of research into this topic.
2:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's nice to have an expert versus just a huge audience.
2:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm delighted you back, it's always fun visiting YouTube.
2:14
[SPEAKER_01]: We love having people like you to scientifically back up a lot of the stuff that we been talking about.
2:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think like one piece that I found really interesting that you've quoted before is that like initial compatibility, like shared interest or having similar personalities isn't actually a strong of predictor of long-term relationship satisfaction as we may think.
2:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is this the case?
2:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
2:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And look, I was surprised by this.
2:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, if you'd asked me 20 years ago, you know, how important is it to be with somebody who has similar hobbies as you or similar personalities or compatible personalities and even even things like values, these effects are much smaller than I would have anticipated.
2:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
2:55
[SPEAKER_03]: How could it be that people have such strong instincts that similarity is crucial and yet the evidence is so weak?
3:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think the most foundational reason for that is that perceived similarity is a huge effect.
3:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Like if you're trying to predict how much I like a girl I went on a date with and you ask me, like how much did the two of you have in common, that will be a huge predictor of how much I'm into her.
3:22
[SPEAKER_03]: an objective measure of compatibility and what we've learned I mean really over the last 20 years we've incrementally put the pieces together on this is when we meet somebody we go through some sort of conversational process we you know explore this terrain of the conversational space and that terrain of the conversational space we touch on these various topics and especially in so far as there's some sort of spark we lean really heavily into that tiny fraction of the conversational space
3:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, afterward, we have some feeling about whether we're compatible with someone but we base it on a very specific subset of the possible space.
4:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So it feels like we have a lot of similarity, but we could have focused on the other 98% of the space and maybe we weren't similar there at all.
4:07
[SPEAKER_03]: We just focused on a very small subset in Drew conclusions.
4:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And can we take that a step further?
4:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it because when people have this perceived similarities with someone?
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: They become lazier in getting to know them.
4:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And kind of where I'm going with this is that I've read that when you speak a second language, you actually exercise more of your empathy muscles, speaking that language.
4:28
[SPEAKER_00]: because you're more careful about the words that you choose, but when you speak your native language, you default to what you normally speak in.
4:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's less empathy and I do wonder if you just assume someone's so similar to you, you exercise less of those muscles of getting to know them as a newer person and you can default some of these perceptions.
4:47
[SPEAKER_03]: boy, that is an interesting idea.
4:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know that we can speak to it based on the evidence, but let me comment on a related idea.
4:55
[SPEAKER_03]: This idea of like how much effort are you putting in to not only making the connection, but really like making an impression of someone.
5:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And the truth is that when we have a confident assessment of the person, regardless of whether it's positive or negative, we kind of turn off our assessment instruments.
5:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is actually a pretty important thing that we do when we're developing trust in, uh,
5:18
[SPEAKER_03]: in a significant other or in a friend or in a coworker or whatever, one of the ways that you can think about trust is as a matter of faith.
5:26
[SPEAKER_03]: As a matter of I'm no longer monitoring, I'm no longer keeping track, I'm no longer paying attention to what you're outdoing.
5:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I just know as a matter of faith that you're out there doing good stuff for me.
5:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is a version of this idea of like turning off the effort that is probably beneficial most of the time.
5:43
[SPEAKER_03]: You're you're no longer having to do this, careful calculus because you know the person's out there doing good
5:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, one of the things I should mention in this space is when we're first meeting people, we draw impressions really fast.
5:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Those impressions matter, regardless of whether they're accurate.
5:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That is, if in those opening moments, I traverse down this part of the conversational terrain, and you were like, oh, yeah, I saw that movie that was so funny.
6:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And I say, I know, don't you love the scene where we've something something?
6:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Then what we'll do is we'll interpret the rest of the interaction.
6:14
[SPEAKER_03]: from this really positive rosy glow perspective and incorporate all the new information into this positive or perhaps into this not so positive earlier impression.
6:24
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, I don't ever want to have a relationship.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, that sounds amazing.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
6:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We both love this movie.
6:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We must be happy to be here.
6:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, listeners have been there.
6:35
[SPEAKER_03]: They've been on a date and within the first three minutes, they're like, okay, like how long until I can say, oh boy, would you look at the time?
6:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And at that point, they're mostly not forming new impressions.
6:46
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not engaging in any sort of careful assessment anymore.
6:49
[SPEAKER_03]: They know that this one isn't going to work, or they're very excited that it is going to work, and then they interpret the rest of the interaction and accord with those early impressions.
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So I remember I had a friend that was like really excited about the sky that she managed.
7:01
[SPEAKER_01]: She's like,
7:02
[SPEAKER_01]: He went to the same type of boarding school as me.
7:05
[SPEAKER_01]: He grew up on the knees coast.
7:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, what other surface level type similarity they had.
7:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like this whole list of things.
7:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, you've only known this guy for like 10 minutes, right?
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You met out at like a mar.
7:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how do you do it this person?
7:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you think our mind jumps there?
7:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it just like easier to like find those things because they're more tangible like whether like instead of like are they good person or are they reliable like what's kind of the reason we go there?
7:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So there is this sort of good on paper idea of like what we think will make a good fit for us.
7:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And in fact, if you ask people they have no difficulty.
7:43
[SPEAKER_03]: telling you what are the attributes they're looking for in a partner and it could be we went to the same sort of boarding school it could be I want somebody who's extroverted or somebody who's kind or somebody who's sexy right like we we've done a bunch of research in this space actually mostly spearheaded by Paul Eastwick your your good friend.
7:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Paul.
8:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, the assumption is that I know what I'm talking about.
8:06
[SPEAKER_03]: You ask me, like, what sorts of things appeal to you and a woman?
8:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'll tell you, I'll tell you confidently, like these are the sorts of things that really matter.
8:13
[SPEAKER_03]: But what you can do, these are actually empirical questions.
8:15
[SPEAKER_03]: You can actually test.
8:16
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
8:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So now you introduce me to a whole bunch of women.
8:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So for example, we've run speed dating events, right?
8:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And people in our studies report, like, what are the qualities that matter to you and a partner?
8:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Then we introduce you to 12 people of your preferred sex, and we know the extent to which those people actually match versus mismatch the characteristics that you said were particularly important.
8:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So how much does it matter that the man I introduced you to happens to align versus misaligned with the characteristics that you said were really important to you.
8:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It matters very little like it's more than zero having somebody match your preferences is better than like literally nothing.
8:49
[SPEAKER_03]: but it is a very small amount of what's going to make you feel a sense of connection together and what's going to make your relationship success.
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe that's the follow-up, like clearly like you can't have zero, right?
9:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you can't have no chemistry at all or no attraction or not they get covered, but we don't need a lot.
9:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what's kind of that line of like the tipping point of what matters?
9:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, so when you sort of summarize that, I see two different things in what you were saying.
9:15
[SPEAKER_03]: So you said in the front end like no attraction and then you said something like, you know, compatibility on paper attraction matters tremendously right like you could imagine that we lived in some other culture or in the you know middle ages when marriage was like about political alliances and like who grew the best maze or corn or something like that and but we don't live in that world.
9:35
[SPEAKER_03]: We live in a world where, to a very significant extent, we're going to require that we feel a sense of love for the person.
9:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And usually at least some level of a sense of passion.
9:45
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's absolutely crucial given the way we think about the way, for example, serious relationships or marriage should work, given our current cultural context.
9:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It's crucial that we have attraction.
9:55
[SPEAKER_03]: The question is, what predicts that attraction?
9:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Could you,
9:58
[SPEAKER_03]: no in advance, like if you were the smartest social scientist ever with the best measures ever, to what extent could you take, like self-reports or like body, odor, or whatever it is, and use all that information collectively to say, you, Julie, are going to be really into Dave and not really that into John, and the answer is mostly not.
10:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Not that you won't have a traction to one or the other, but the extent to which is predictable based on information that
10:26
[SPEAKER_03]: to be clear, especially on a first meeting, there is some amount of consensus about who's hot.
10:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
10:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, your audience knows, right?
10:35
[SPEAKER_03]: They know that some people are hotter than other people.
10:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, that doesn't mean there's total consensus.
10:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Some people are like, no, I think he's really good looking and your friends says, no, I don't think he's that good looking.
10:43
[SPEAKER_03]: That's obviously real, too.
10:44
[SPEAKER_03]: But on a first meeting, there's some amount of consensus about who's physically attractive.
10:47
[SPEAKER_03]: But remember, that's not really the problem that we're trying to solve.
10:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's certainly not the problem that, you know, online dating services are trying to solve is like finding the hot guy, right?
10:56
[SPEAKER_03]: What they're trying to say is like, who's compatible with you, Julie, more than with you, you wait.
11:02
[SPEAKER_03]: and that's the thing that's really hard to predict in advance, the compatibility, some aspect of the two of us together independent of who you are and who I am.
11:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think in principle, it is mostly unknowable because most of attraction, beyond the fact that some people are hot and you like like interacting with them in the first few minutes, most of attraction is due to something that emerges as we start chatting and interacting with each other.
11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't determine compatibility.
11:34
[SPEAKER_03]: It does not determine it, but I think the way I think about attraction is it is an early indicator of compatibility or another way to say it is compatibility when you're first interacting with somebody is attraction.
11:48
[SPEAKER_03]: that's basically what it is.
11:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I feel into you and that is special, right?
11:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm more into you at the speed dating event than I am into the other women and you're more into me at the speed dating event than you are with the other men.
12:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm happy for lack of a better word to call that, compatibility that there's some like unique connection that two of us have at the speed dating event.
12:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Separate from that is what has caused that compatibility and was it noable as a function of like my biography and personality and values and your background as well.
12:17
[SPEAKER_03]: There's it noable in advance.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, I have I have so many questions.
12:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I have one, okay.
12:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll go with this question.
12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll go with this question.
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's the case, do you think a traction is only determined by comparison?
12:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Like could I be attracted to someone in
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Or it is really in comparison to the other people I have as potential.
12:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Boy, this is another thought provoking question.
12:41
[SPEAKER_03]: So maybe an odd way to start answering this one is, I think we could be attracted to most people.
12:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And here I think you have to do the Desert Island experiment.
12:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So if she were the only person there.
12:58
[SPEAKER_03]: the bachelor the bachelor yeah yeah now there's people are pre-selected to be physically that's right but but if you sort of took a random draw from the population and let's imagine these were you know a heterosexual man and a heterosexual woman but just like a random draw from the population they speak the same language let's imagine you know how plausible is it that they could you know fall for each other and here I mean feel some level of sexual desire for each other some level of romantic connection for each other highly likely like I bet most of
13:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Not kind of into her.
13:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So in that sense, I suppose you could say it's comparative in that sense, like if it's the only person around who sort of make do.
13:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And remember, this like desert island example is crazy in one sense, but you don't have to go that far into the past before you get to the time when most people married somebody like on their block, right?
13:45
[SPEAKER_03]: So you know, go back 100 or 200 years and it was just standard to marry one of the, I don't know, five or 10 people who happened to be nearby.
13:51
[SPEAKER_03]: That was just a totally standard way this stuff happened.
13:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, what about this inherent comparison stuff in the age of the apps, in the age of urban living and romantic ideologies?
14:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what to say.
14:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I do think that we're in some calculating process of trying to figure out who's appealing for us.
14:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm more into this guy than I am into that guy.
14:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I think those things happen.
14:15
[SPEAKER_03]: One thing that makes me really happy that human psychology fixes this problem for most of us most of the time because we're when we're in love with a partner, when we're highly committed to a partner, we're not looking, right?
14:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to be polyannish.
14:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm aware that affairs happen.
14:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm aware that people who are happy can be seduced.
14:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm aware of all of those things, but if somebody is in a happy relationship, the fact that she could open Tinder and there's like thousands of guys there, is irrelevant.
14:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Not because those guys don't exist, but because when she's happy, she's not looking.
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so maybe this is a good time to define compatibility, because I think what I'm hearing is like short term compatibility is one thing.
14:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we have chemistry, we connect on the superficial like this.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: and then there's long-term compatibility of what sets us up for a relationship that could last for years and years and marriage or even life partner, whatever it may be.
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And is the word even compatibility for that?
15:14
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you define those two?
15:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, you are exactly right.
15:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I think of compatibility as what makes two people more into each other.
15:25
[SPEAKER_03]: So early on, that could be like,
15:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Craving a kiss and later on it could be like happily married or whatever above and beyond how happy I am with a given partner above and beyond how happy I would be with like some other partner and above and beyond How happy she would be with some other partner.
15:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think of compatibility is some unique specialness That makes us connect with each other above and beyond just like the way we would connect with some you know Random draw from the population or the second best option or something like that
15:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the way lots of people talk about compatibility and this might be the standard definition and it might be what you guys are using is what we sometimes talk about in terms of like gears or puzzle pieces that like fit or don't fit.
16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So you way you are a gear of a certain size and like the teeth on the edges of the gears are like a certain with their sharp.
16:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And they are sharp, and they are fierce, and you do not want to get cut.
16:20
[SPEAKER_03]: So you are looking for somebody who is also like the right size gear, and so that when you like start rotating, he sort of rotates right into those grooves.
16:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And it doesn't get cut by your sharp gears and that's that's one way of thinking about compatibility in the work that Paul Eastwick and I have done in this space and other people too we become skeptical that that's what compatibility is or at least that that's how it works if you're trying to predict relationship happiness.
16:51
[SPEAKER_03]: that most of what actually makes relationships good and in the definition that I'm using compatible is not finding the person who's like puzzle piece fits your puzzle piece or who's gear aligns with your gear.
17:05
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a way of thinking about compatibility and it could have been that that's really what predicts happiness.
17:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I was totally open to this
17:12
[SPEAKER_03]: that one times ago, I would have just assumed that the answer was yes.
17:15
[SPEAKER_03]: But what we are finding is that vastly larger influence on how happy people are in their relationship, I might call that also compatibility, is what they have cultivated together.
17:27
[SPEAKER_03]: That is the extent to which we have really chosen to like lean in to those parts of the possible compatibility that make us happy and happiest and the parts where we have the best strengths
17:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And we've down-regulated or down-graded the centrality of things that we might have thought were important to us, but that we always fight about.
17:48
[SPEAKER_03]: We've just decided, like, okay, we're not good at that.
17:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're going to stop fighting about those things.
17:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're going to lean in on these other things, like calling each other like cute pet names and having in jokes and looking across the party at each other and knowing like, oh, you want to leave or oh, you just picked up a good piece of gossip.
18:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Those aren't things that are noable.
18:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Those aren't things that
18:09
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, you just look at the gears on the shelf and like pick two gears that fit no.
18:13
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a process of getting acquainted and leaning into our strengths and leaning away from our limitations and working to become compatible over time.
18:21
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the way I think about compatibility.
18:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So sounds like they're really two phases of compatibility.
18:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have immediate compatibility with someone.
18:29
[SPEAKER_00]: just given your gear's fit.
18:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not something you work towards.
18:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just luck.
18:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there is efforted compatibility that is created and developed over time.
18:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a compatibility we should put more weight on.
18:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, but even that early stuff is not as much about gears.
18:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just like, we've looked, for example, the similarity stuff.
18:53
[SPEAKER_03]: So when I say to you or say in the air here that similarity is just not that big.
18:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And people are like, what the hell are you talking about?
19:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, of course it is.
19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me just be clear about what we mean.
19:05
[SPEAKER_03]: We're often talking about the initial compatibility stuff, the initial attraction stuff, you wait.
19:09
[SPEAKER_03]: We're actually talking about like, at a speed dating event, or
19:12
[SPEAKER_03]: after a first date, that you get set up on a blind date, how into people are you as a function of how similar are your big five personality attributes?
19:22
[SPEAKER_03]: What are your hobbies?
19:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Things that feel like that have to be, of course, these things would have to predict how well we got along, but that even that initial spark, again, is not nothing.
19:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a little bit more similarity is a little bit associated with better compatibility to find as like I was really into her when we first met and she was really into me when we first met but those effects even then are pretty small because already I tried the conversational gambit that's like hey like look at this we're at a speed dating event that's kind of goofy right and you're like I know like I've really I always thought speed dating was like the bottom of the bear
19:54
[SPEAKER_03]: But here I am like I laugh at that and then I say have you ever seen the 40-year-old virgin and you're like I know I was talking about that last night, but I might have said have you seen the 40-year-old virgin and you're like no Didn't see it and then you end up in this like meaty puddle of reboots Yeah, where you're just trying to find something and it's it's like the the conversational space is big enough That you could have hit on any number of things You too know that Paul Eastwick and I have this movie podcast love factually Which together
20:23
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a check it out.
20:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Good.
20:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
20:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
20:26
[SPEAKER_03]: But 500 days of summer, I think really drives home some of the absurdity of these ideas that feel so intuitive to us is he's convinced that he's in the summer, right?
20:37
[SPEAKER_03]: This is Tom, he's totally in love with summer, and his, you know, consigually airy basically is the person who trusts the most is his foot.
20:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I think 12-year-old sister, who's like, look, just because some girl likes the same crazy stuff, you like, doesn't mean you're compatible.
20:50
[SPEAKER_03]: But that part of it, I think, is already in the movie, but to ruin the end of the movie, turn the volume down for a second, if you don't want a spoiler here.
20:57
[SPEAKER_03]: At the end, he eventually, summer breaks up with him.
21:00
[SPEAKER_03]: He eventually meets autumn.
21:02
[SPEAKER_03]: What do they talk about?
21:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, what is it that they talk about that makes the feel like, oh my God.
21:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, the gods have sent us to each other.
21:08
[SPEAKER_03]: How could we be this compatible?
21:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's because they both have the same feeling about a parking lot.
21:12
[SPEAKER_03]: at a club, right?
21:13
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like, oh, that parking lot, it's terrible.
21:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And what do they conclude from that?
21:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you believe how much we have in common?
21:19
[SPEAKER_03]: You think any researcher could have assessed that in advance?
21:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, well, how do you feel about the parking lot at 3,800 Davis Street?
21:26
[SPEAKER_03]: These things are the vast, vast array of things we could talk about.
21:30
[SPEAKER_03]: We get lucky and we hit on some of them.
21:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And then when we do, we laugh and we bring out the best in each other and things go smoothly.
21:36
[SPEAKER_03]: But there's a lot of randomness in those openings.
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So in that example, though, is that because they've come up with this shared language and culture that you were talking about does help predict or is it really just happened still?
21:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, okay.
21:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, but they chose it.
21:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there was nothing special about that.
21:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
21:52
[SPEAKER_03]: That parking lot.
21:52
[SPEAKER_03]: That parking lot is in fact not special at all, but to them, it is hugely special.
21:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what I mean when I say compatibility is something you build.
22:01
[SPEAKER_03]: you decide.
22:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Also in that movie, there's another great example when he's still with summer, they go to the IKEA, walking around the IKEA.
22:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they actually like get on that bed.
22:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they like sort of act like it's their house or something.
22:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's adorable and it's great for their relationship.
22:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And the devastating moment or one of the devastating moments in that movie is they're back at IKEA and he's doing his half of their stick, their little micropulter, and she's not.
22:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's a
22:30
[SPEAKER_03]: for him in a devastating moment for the relationship because not because they're both IKEA lovers not because you could have looked at a bunch of gears in advance and like chosen like Tom, IKEA lover and summer, IKEA lover but because the two of them had these experiences together and chose to sort of lean in.
22:46
[SPEAKER_03]: to these special unique idiosyncratic things that they themselves do that are like the definition of us, the definition of who we are as a couple, and that to me is the compatibility that you develop even in those opening moments and you continue to earn over time to the degree that you continue to prioritise.
23:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You guys got to make fun of me, but I feel like this was something that was definitely different in my current relationship.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It was even from the early stages, like we had like these like, I don't know, stickers that we said to each other, like they were so cheesy.
23:20
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:22
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:24
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:27
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:28
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:29
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:29
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:30
[SPEAKER_01]: They were so cheesy.
23:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But they seem so like trivial at the time, but like looking back, I was like actually they did really like make this bond that like this kind of inside thing and I think that was actually very apparent from the early stages, which was different than other relationships.
23:48
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, it's interesting.
23:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Not only, like, as you look back, I said, like, I don't know why it was, you know, such a big deal.
23:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes these things are, like, incomprehensible from the outside.
23:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember with my wife, maybe like 10 or 15 years ago, we had my step sister and step brother-in-law over, you know, we adore them.
24:07
[SPEAKER_03]: They were over at her house, and as Allison, my wife did something, and I said something, oh, you fucked up.
24:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And he was like, his jaw dropped a little bit.
24:14
[SPEAKER_03]: He was like, oh my.
24:15
[SPEAKER_03]: God, like why would you sort of be so disrespectful?
24:18
[SPEAKER_03]: But, and she had to say, like, no, no, no, that's not what this is.
24:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't mean that at all like that, this isn't what we call it.
24:24
[SPEAKER_03]: It could not possibly be more affectionate.
24:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, like you fucked up.
24:29
[SPEAKER_03]: But it is inexplicable from the outside.
24:31
[SPEAKER_03]: But if I stop saying it, or my wife stopped saying it to me, it would be a bad sign for the last time.
24:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we have like catch phrases too, that's so, so funny, I mean, I guess this is like the part that I know you've done a ton of research on like online dating and dating apps and how like this stuff doesn't really come through there.
24:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why we're like focused on the similarities and the service level interest and like the stuff that maybe isn't this, but like how do you actually vet for this in the world that we're in today or is there no way
25:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I don't think you can vet for this, but before I throw the entire industry under the bus because I end up out of the bus, I'm brace yourself.
25:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me send them like a short love letter, like a short bunch of stickers, like something positive.
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
25:28
[SPEAKER_03]: That's exactly what I'm doing.
25:30
[SPEAKER_03]: they are the existence of the industry is tremendous.
25:35
[SPEAKER_03]: It is like the people who are complaining about it have a bunch of justifiable complaints, but they probably don't have much feel for what it was like to be single and sad about being single in like 1985, but it's long past the time when your friends are setting you up with people and it was like most of us most of the time can use the apps or whatever else to go on a date.
25:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is worth so much.
25:59
[SPEAKER_03]: When your immediate social environment isn't delivering you a bevy of options, there's other options.
26:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just can't praise them for that.
26:07
[SPEAKER_01]: A hundred.
26:07
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
26:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
26:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Here comes the middle of the sandwich.
26:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
26:11
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the big problems that the industry has had from the start is at least early on, like with early match or whatever else, it was like thousands.
26:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It was like how many people are within, you know, 25 miles of zip code, whatever, and like the human brain doesn't do that.
26:26
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not like we're good at looking at you know 3000 profiles and picking out who's like compatible with us.
26:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, you can look at photos and say that person's hotter or something that is like a fair photo of themselves.
26:38
[SPEAKER_03]: That you can do, but like who's going to be more compatible with me than with the next person?
26:41
[SPEAKER_03]: You cannot do it and and once you're above like five or ten, they all start to run together anyway.
26:47
[SPEAKER_03]: the second thing the industry did.
26:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, so I think this idea that you can like show people enough profiles and they can find someone compatible with you.
26:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It's false.
26:55
[SPEAKER_03]: The second thing that they tried to do, understanding that that's false, and this was mostly e-harmonie was the first to do this, is they said we've got an album.
27:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we, you don't have to do it because we've done it for you.
27:04
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to find the five people out of our thousands that are uniquely compatible with you.
27:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And look, I was excited about that.
27:10
[SPEAKER_03]: They were making those claims in two times.
27:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it seems like a good promise, right?
27:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems like a good promise.
27:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And if somebody who studies this and thinks like, I don't know, we sort of awesome to make millions on something.
27:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, yeah, we should be able to do this stuff.
27:22
[SPEAKER_03]: The problem is we can't.
27:23
[SPEAKER_03]: The problem is for the reasons that we've been talking about earlier, when they claim they can set you up with your soulmate, their lying, if they're claiming like we can eliminate the drug abusers, and then they can do that.
27:35
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's very different from we're going to find your soulmate.
27:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So why are online dating sites on the dating services more generally so useful because they provide opportunities to get across a cup of coffee or a pint of beer from somebody to find out is there anything here that would warrant me doing a second second opportunity, a second date together?
27:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think you can tell at least reasonably quickly whether there's any spark at all, which I think should be the threshold, not like tons of spark, but like
28:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And you spark it all, I think is a good threshold for like, yeah, that's where the second try.
28:09
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you do that?
28:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, look, I don't love how much emphasis the industry places on the graphs.
28:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's true that like what I like, what I like about the industry are places where it's a gallitarian.
28:20
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's really, really great for gay people.
28:23
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been better for gay people than for straight people, and especially for gay people in communities where it's not that easy to be gay.
28:28
[SPEAKER_03]: That's something I love about the...
28:29
[SPEAKER_03]: industry.
28:30
[SPEAKER_03]: One thing I don't love nearly as much is the people who are hot or at least the people who have hot photos on their profile, which mean it might not be exactly the same thing.
28:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Cleaning up.
28:42
[SPEAKER_03]: They're, yeah, they're exactly.
28:43
[SPEAKER_03]: They're much, they get much more attention.
28:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I don't love how much emphasis a place is on looks.
28:50
[SPEAKER_03]: The best thing to do is just figure out a way to get face to face with somebody for at least a brief check-in.
28:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And then see like if it's absolutely nothing there, then okay.
29:00
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you're like, I don't know, there's some non-zero shot, then try a second date and see how that plays out.
29:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, UA and I are probably among the few in this space that don't tell you to like spend a lot of time on a profile.
29:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We're actually like send 30 seconds yet it got fuel and it filtered through the conversation because you can tell nothing from the photo, like outside of it.
29:22
[SPEAKER_01]: here are a lot of people spending astronomical amount of time, micro analyzing every last thing in a profile and spending hours and hours on their own profile.
29:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And our motto is like if it's a maybe it's a guess, invite them to your house party and see if you guys have, and that house party like figuratively.
29:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But yes, that's kind of like we're on the same boat.
29:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's good to know your take on that alliance.
29:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe I just want to think about something actionable for our listeners because the challenge we always hear with dating apps is even taking the conversation off the apps.
29:54
[SPEAKER_00]: People feel like, oh, this conversation's going nowhere.
29:57
[SPEAKER_00]: We've had people who come to us and ask for a list of questions to ask through messaging because they don't know how to facilitate that conversation or just not feeling excited after a conversation.
30:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
30:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think what you two were saying with kind of a shared language and inside jokes.
30:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's an opportunity for connection and building compatibility, even in the earlier messaging stage.
30:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And what you said was interesting, Eli, it takes someone just leaning into that opportunity.
30:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I call it kind of like a bid for a connection of something that's been met bid.
30:31
[SPEAKER_00]: someone the other person can lean in.
30:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe for our listeners take those opportunities to lean in.
30:37
[SPEAKER_00]: One great example is my friend was messaging with someone on a dating app and he spelled fuck like duck, like many of us, you know, ought to correct do.
30:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So she said back this duck he
30:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's great and then he sent out sent a bunch of ducks and then after they started dating at they actually dated for a while.
30:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time they had a bad day or was feeling frustrated they sent a duck and that became their mutual language.
31:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But that really started in the messaging stages.
31:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So many for all of our listeners here's something to do today is find those bits for connection and lean into it.
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: See what happens.
31:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know this thing of like how do we make
31:18
[SPEAKER_03]: One is, nobody said a rule that you had to do the resume exchange.
31:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, I just like the resume exchange.
31:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I just described going, you know, for a cup of coffee or whatever, but there's no rule on that.
31:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you could do something that you would enjoy doing, even if it were by yourself.
31:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Or even if it were with somebody that were kind of a dud, right?
31:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's no rule that says you have to have the resume exchange dates.
31:37
[SPEAKER_03]: The other thing is not that many ideas from the academic literature on relationships go viral, but the 36 questions have gone viral.
31:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, at this point there's like no excuse to have a really boring first conversation like look up the 36 questions if you want it's funny Paul was in I told you guys to start
32:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So my first year as a professor at Northwestern, I'm finishing my 22nd year now, but my first year here as a professor was Paul Eastwick's first year as a graduate student, and I was teaching the PhD course on close relationships, and he was saying, well, how do people get into these relationships?
32:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, okay, great.
32:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, once you're in a relationship, like, here's how forgiveness works, and here's what commitment is and all those things that we were talking about, but like, how does initial attraction work, how does early relationship development work?
32:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And that kept coming up and so the students unbeknownst to me figured out that there was a speed dating event that was going to be coming to Chicago the next week and like this I didn't have this was pre iPhone like I didn't have anything with me to know about this so by the time I got homes like to in the morning I'd gone out that night by the time I got home they had it.
32:43
[SPEAKER_03]: found a date that we were all going to go speed dating and I actually brought a note card that had like high intimacy questions on one side of the note card and low intimacy questions on the other side of the note card and you could imagine doing something similar on your dates although only use the high intimacy questions on the note card.
33:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
33:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You know this is all like clicking for me too because we've talked about like the data view which is what you bet by like the resume like exchange.
33:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I've used this example before but like one of the best dates I had with a past partner was like when we just talked about pranks we pulled on each other for like the first hour.
33:19
[SPEAKER_01]: and it wasn't the resume exchange day review and it makes sense now like why that worked.
33:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think like I wasn't able to put that together before.
33:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're just like, yeah, we're at the day review.
33:30
[SPEAKER_01]: But now you're here.
33:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I straight from Eli that this is the science telling you to like actually focus on those shared moments in that mildly that microculture morning.
33:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And those questions, I mean, those are questions that are pretty intimate.
33:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So some of them might be like more intimate than those 36 questions, some of them might be more intimate than you want to be, but there's plenty plenty in there that should be well within the comfort zone for people on a first date and a given cultural context, there's not that much reason to spend that much time being like so where do you got a college and then right to do next.
34:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, maybe you'll get lucky and be like, oh my God, my best friend went to that same college.
34:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you pledge a fraternity?
34:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my God, my friend was in that great.
34:09
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
34:09
[SPEAKER_03]: You got lucky in the, you don't have to do the lucky puddle of reboots in the conversation world.
34:14
[SPEAKER_03]: But there's a bunch of things that people actually say something new and interesting.
34:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And it just puts an upper limit on how, you know what it does?
34:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It puts a lower limit on like a, like a boredom thing.
34:24
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just, you're having real conversation with a real person about real topics as opposed to fake conversations with a real person about fake topics.
34:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember one or two of the questions from the list?
34:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I, I'm okay.
34:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I remember like the highest intimacy questions.
34:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So these, these things go incremental.
34:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they start with things like, you know, what is one of your favorite hobbies?
34:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Which is frankly good enough.
34:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It's way better than being like to Holland if you lived in Chicago or whatever.
34:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
34:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and it ends with, oh, I think it's like, you know, which celebrity do you admire the most?
34:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it ends with things like, you know, of all the people you know who's death, what upset you the most.
35:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And by the way, just so you know, by the way, I'm not recommending that one necessarily.
35:06
[SPEAKER_03]: First date, you don't have to go to the group three, there's three groups that are it goes in increasing intimacy, but I will tell you that this is a research paradigm in my world.
35:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It's almost three decades old at this point and over the course of 45 minutes they run people through.
35:22
[SPEAKER_03]: These are sequence, these three sets of questions and people feel massively closer, massively massively closer.
35:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, that's a really cool research tool for us.
35:32
[SPEAKER_03]: because if you want to run experimental studies where some people are randomly assigned to the high-closiness condition and some people are randomly assigned to the low-closiness condition, we have tools for doing that.
35:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But if the only thing you want to do is have dates that are less boring, I blame you if you're going out in boring days, do like five minutes of sleuthing online to find out what the 36 questions are and you come equipped with a few interesting questions.
35:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the key to is not having this like predefined answer we're looking for, because I think that also happens in the data view.
36:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm just thinking of like, what's your hobby?
36:04
[SPEAKER_01]: What we were saying earlier, you don't need the hobby to be aligned with your hobby.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You just need to understand and like hear the person out and appreciate what they're bringing to the table and use it as a conversation starter.
36:16
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, again, I think about movies a lot and I think about relationships and movies a lot and one of the movies we've covered on love factually and one of my favorites is Lala land and and with regard to what you're saying the Ryan Gosling characters obsessed with jazz and the Emma Stone character they meet and they're like walking around and there's nothing yet but like kind of intrigued maybe and she says I need to get this out of the way right away I hate jazz
36:44
[SPEAKER_03]: like I dislike jazz, she says like Kenny G. Now we know earlier because Ryan Gosling's character was talking with his sister, his sister was trying to set him up with a girl and he said does she like jazz and the sister was like probably not and he said well what would we have to talk about?
36:57
[SPEAKER_03]: In your point and for anybody who's seen the movie, Ryan Gosling's character and Emma Stone's character never stopped talking.
37:04
[SPEAKER_03]: if endless stuff to talk about because it turns out that it doesn't matter to her whether the guy's interested in jazz.
37:09
[SPEAKER_03]: He thinks she's not into that but then he's into jazz and he's exciting about jazz and the way he talks about jazz is kind of thrilling and he takes her to a jazz show and he gets to see what she likes about it.
37:20
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't need somebody prepackaged with your interest.
37:22
[SPEAKER_03]: You need somebody with interest and you need to be excited about what they're excited about and that's not that hard to do as long as people actually are excited about something.
37:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, that's the red flag if someone doesn't have interest.
37:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I would be, it would be, it would be a hard one for me.
37:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
37:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd be like, look, I don't care.
37:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you interested in astronomy?
37:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you interested in bugs?
37:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I would be in different bugs.
37:44
[SPEAKER_03]: It has to be something.
37:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Sticker?
37:46
[SPEAKER_01]: What ever?
37:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Stickers.
37:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So I did have one person once that I talked to on a video call that basically said that he didn't think it was worth meeting up because I wasn't into sci-fi enough.
37:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think it's like cut a short side of it, but at the end of the day, like if that's like, all you do, like, is that important that you find someone like, what's the line?
38:07
[SPEAKER_03]: No.
38:08
[SPEAKER_03]: You're like, no, no, it's, I mean, look, he's welcome to limit his dating pool, however he wants.
38:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And if he feels like he's in a climate of abundance, and he can just toss out reasonable people because, you know, they don't know their, you know, Ray Bat Bradberries, that's,
38:23
[SPEAKER_03]: that's totally fine.
38:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not judging him.
38:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Do I think that the extent to which he will feel like initial attraction to somebody is particularly affected by whether she also likes sci-fi?
38:34
[SPEAKER_03]: No, that effect is almost certainly going to be small.
38:36
[SPEAKER_03]: We know this.
38:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, I'm not saying this is intuitive.
38:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I did not have this intuition.
38:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm based on 20 years of evidence.
38:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And do I think that he's going to need sci-fi to be happy with like a long-term partner?
38:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, no.
38:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
38:47
[SPEAKER_03]: This idea that it has to be your romantic partner that you share your primary hobby with.
38:53
[SPEAKER_03]: No, nobody ever decided that and I would ask him.
38:56
[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to advice from me, I would ask him, why do you think it's so important that your romantic partner, your primary romantic partner, whatever he's seeking, also be a sci-fi person.
39:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, couldn't it be totally reasonable that she's interested in other stuff?
39:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And you guys end up going to plays.
39:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And yet there's still plenty of time in your life where you do sci-fi conventions and you have sci-fi reading groups and it turns out that this person that you're with now is like a really good caregiver and a really good parent and really good in bed But like doesn't like Ray Bradbury.
39:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Seriously, you're going to rule that person out.
39:33
[SPEAKER_03]: It strikes me as shorts at it.
39:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess where it is the line though for lifestyle.
39:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we hear people say like I want someone with a compatible lifestyle and maybe they're awesome.
39:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess maybe there's a couple factors here.
39:46
[SPEAKER_01]: There's like socio-economic background, maybe how you spend your time like I'm thinking lifestyle like we have a friend that's obsessed with music festivals and she could not fathom being with someone that didn't go to music festivals because that's how she spends every weekend.
40:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Did she have kids?
40:04
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
40:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I just don't know what to say.
40:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what to say.
40:08
[SPEAKER_03]: If she thinks she's going to take her eight month old in music festival, I think she's probably wrong.
40:12
[SPEAKER_03]: If she thinks that her priorities right now are going to be the same as her priorities when she isn't getting enough sleep and it's probably going to be pretty important to her that she's with somebody who's like a a conscientious parent and a supportive partner, somebody who's really good for her career.
40:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Like if I had to guess for her, I don't know her, but if I had to guess,
40:30
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the problem, though, is everyone's looking at the moment right now, right?
40:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we go on dates, we're judging people through a date lens of like, was that fun?
40:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I enjoy having cocktails and tell you about travel stories?
40:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not thinking about like, are they going to comfort me with my parent passes?
40:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Or like, are they going to be a good parent?
40:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how do you start to like shift into that larger picture then?
40:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know that it's that easy to do.
40:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I share your diagnosis of the problem.
41:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me sort of summarize it in my own words.
41:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's like we sort of sample from life experience, like our life will have a certain array of experiences.
41:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're 27.
41:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And we meet somebody and there's a spark there and then the sex is good.
41:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we travel to Europe.
41:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, oh my god, like we just held hands and made out,
41:23
[SPEAKER_03]: How representative are those experiences of what it will be like to be married to somebody from say 30 to 85 low probably not very representative and for me I don't think it's an easy fix because at first of all, I don't know how easy it is to simulate what's it going to be like when we have a kid and able learning disabilities
41:44
[SPEAKER_03]: like you're probably gonna have some of those things in your future and I don't think they're easy to simulate.
41:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe there's some trial things you can try like a puppy or like traveling but not in fancy hotels like really going through some stressful things together you can get a sense of how people cope with very stressful circumstances but I look I'm married and I study marriage and I like like marriage I'm not saying everybody has to do it or anything like that but if you ask me like you know
42:10
[SPEAKER_03]: about the marriage decision, I mostly would call it a leap of faith.
42:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think you can really know.
42:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And for me, that's both scary and beautiful.
42:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Just decide.
42:24
[SPEAKER_03]: You just decide.
42:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I love you.
42:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to make a life with you.
42:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Do I have all the information I need to make an informed choice?
42:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I do not.
42:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Is one of us going to get a cancer diagnosis?
42:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we going to have a kid with a learning disability?
42:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Is somebody going to have like a totally gorgeous coworker who hits on her?
42:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
42:43
[SPEAKER_03]: We can't know these things.
42:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we take a flying leap.
42:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And we decide we're going to make this work.
42:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why when we were talking earlier about the nature of compatibility, for me, it's a whole lot of what we're building.
42:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a whole lot of are we creating a unique entity, not you plus me, but us.
43:00
[SPEAKER_03]: something that doesn't exist in you and doesn't exist in me, it only exists as the two of us, and then do we cultivate it?
43:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Do we water it?
43:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Do we nurture it?
43:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Do we feed it?
43:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Do we lean in to try to keep building it over time?
43:12
[SPEAKER_03]: That is the way.
43:14
[SPEAKER_03]: You have a successful marriage and at least the way in the way I use the term, that is what compatibility is.
43:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So to play devil's advocate, because I actually don't believe what I'm not saying I don't believe in, but I do want to, I do want to I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do want to, I do
43:44
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I agree.
43:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I agree.
43:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you remember, the language I used to talk about this is it's a good thing just not by much.
43:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I totally agree with you that all else equal, that guy should find a sci-fi partner.
43:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I totally agree that might make him an eighth of a percent point happier in his marriage.
44:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I totally agree with you.
44:04
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's no harm in finding somebody who has hobbies that align with the dangerous mentality comes
44:14
[SPEAKER_03]: We just limited the pool for ourselves in ways that we think are wise.
44:19
[SPEAKER_03]: We think we're saving ourselves time and energy, I doubt it.
44:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like you could find someone that likes to go to music festivals with you, but you have to have more than just that.
44:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It has to have that micro culture, and you have to be building together.
44:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It can't just be like solely we go to music festivals and that's like the basis of our connection.
44:36
[SPEAKER_03]: The large majority of people who go to music festivals are probably not a good partner for you.
44:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And yet, and yet, there's some people who go to music festivals who are, and there's a whole lot of people who don't go to music festivals who also are.
44:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So in your book, all or nothing, the all or nothing marriage, you reverse engineer, like kind of like the best marriages.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And clearly we talked about today, like a big piece of it is building in that culture.
45:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there other pieces that you feel like are actually the stuff that we really should be looking for?
45:06
[SPEAKER_01]: opposed to the stuff we've been talking about that maybe isn't as important that really does predict that great relationship.
45:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the all-or-nothing marriage, it was a book that I wrote when I had this realization that the average marriage has been getting worse over time over the last few generations.
45:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's say, but the best marriages have been getting better.
45:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And what is it that we are doing?
45:27
[SPEAKER_03]: What is it that the subset of us who are having some successes are doing that the rest of us can learn from?
45:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, so one of the things beyond this microculture thing that I think is valuable is a metaphor that I find very useful for thinking about relationships that are going well is this Michelangelo metaphor that I think both of you are familiar with that Michelangelo when when he was asked about sculpting like what is the sculpting process he didn't say well I'm creating this art he said he was revealing it right the statue the sculpture is inside the David Michelangelo's David is inside some block of
45:59
[SPEAKER_03]: marble and all he has to do was like buff and chisel and polish and then you have David and that's it.
46:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Now looking some sense that's true.
46:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It's also profoundly modest of probably the greatest sculptor ever to say about his art.
46:08
[SPEAKER_03]: But you could think about this also from the perspective of humans, right?
46:12
[SPEAKER_03]: So as a metaphor, of course, is not literal, but the ideas that all of us have are like actual self, the like unpolished marble, the un-chisel-done buffed marble.
46:20
[SPEAKER_03]: But we have within us the version that we aspire to be, the more patient version, the funnier version, the kinder version, the more successful version, some people will bring us closer to that person.
46:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And some people will push us further from that.
46:37
[SPEAKER_03]: So insofar as we have a sense of the version of us that we love the most, we can assess, like am I the best version of me around this guy?
46:47
[SPEAKER_03]: This guy?
46:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I actually ended up, I did end a relationship once in my 20s when I realized that the girl I was dating really liked about me, the part of me that's like sort of playful, right?
47:01
[SPEAKER_03]: The part that's like goofing around and, and I guess for lack of a better word, being very playful.
47:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I like that part of me too.
47:07
[SPEAKER_03]: She liked something nice about me that I also like, but I cared.
47:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I was just like trying to be an academic and I was, you know, it's getting, I was got my PhD and I was on the way to being a serious scholar and I wanted to be liked for that.
47:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And she liked me for something nice, something I liked about me.
47:22
[SPEAKER_03]: She clearly was trying to praise me, but she liked something about me that wasn't what I really cared about about myself.
47:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Was this a sufficient reason to break up?
47:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably not there were other issues as well, but I do think it's something to keep track of is Do I like me more around this person is it am I growing toward the person I want to be or is it not really happening that way?
47:41
[SPEAKER_03]: That's probably one of the good metrics we can use to evaluate how well the relationship is going
47:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
47:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's really interesting.
47:48
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really interesting.
47:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember dating this guy years and years ago and we went on this trip together and I was just so happy on this trip because we were like in this cabin we were just like by a lake and I started skipping and he said something like stopping a kid and this guy was 60 years younger than me and I remember just thinking like that's what I wanna be.
48:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanna be a kid in this sort of environment but he was like, no, you're the older one.
48:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
48:16
[SPEAKER_03]: He thought he was kidding probably, right?
48:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have first I thought so.
48:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And then if you saw him in the moment, you would be yeah, you would change your mind.
48:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, that that sounds a second red flag for me too.
48:30
[SPEAKER_03]: First of all, it's like, you were loving your little euphoria and then the stomp on it is no fun, but there's a second one too, which is it sounds like a controlling thing.
48:38
[SPEAKER_03]: This is very controlling.
48:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that would be a red flag for me.
48:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so, okay, clearly as you keep going in the relationship, you can see this, but early stages, I mean, obviously you can see how they, what side they bring out of you on, even a first date.
48:53
[SPEAKER_01]: But how do you like start to like scope this stuff early on?
48:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think it probably manifests early on in feeling funny is my guess, feeling, feeling heard, feeling intelligent, feeling funny.
49:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Like these are things that we feel to some greater or lesser extent on various first interactions, various first dates and so those are things that, you know, we also not only do we want to like the other person, we would like to like us with the other person and I think we can get an early sense of that.
49:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, I don't want to overstate how much assessment we should be doing in those opening moments because I'm pretty enthusiastic about people giving a second date as a general default only avoiding it when things were just really not at all there.
49:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I mean, I think like this conversation has been so incredible.
49:36
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many takeaways.
49:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think
49:38
[SPEAKER_01]: one piece is that we do need to give things more time because time does reveal you know we we talk about this in our book actually with this expectation of love on demand that's gonna happen immediately and when I'm hearing from you Eli is that the stuff that happens immediately is it always the right predictors so we do need the time to like actually see what can be built.
49:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love this concept of like give that second date or third date or fourth date, chase that curiosity until you're like, no, this is a no.
50:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this piece around the building, the micro culture, like this is what we need to do more of.
50:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what's lacking today.
50:15
[SPEAKER_01]: because dating has become so transactional.
50:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it's the right questions to find the right partner, to sniff out all the red flags ahead of time, and find all the dealbreakers.
50:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not saying, like, put yourself in bad situations, but when we're so, yeah, like, you're so conscientious, though, about the stuff.
50:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It loses just the organic connection.
50:35
[SPEAKER_01]: When you go out with friends, you're not like, oh my god, is this red flag happening?
50:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they going to be this like narcissistic, terrible person?
50:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You're enjoying the company in like seeing what evolves.
50:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think bringing more of that energy is now scientifically backed up, not just UA and I say this, so that makes me happy to hear that from this conversation.
50:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel so validated.
50:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
50:59
[SPEAKER_00]: If anything, I'm delighted.
51:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
51:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Great therapy session for both of us.
51:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So it feels so validated.
51:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in the similar vein, Julie, I feel the same way as a takeaway in dating right now.
51:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We see each other as like,
51:12
[SPEAKER_00]: you're here to entertain me and impress me, dance monkey dance.
51:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I don't like your dance, I'm going to find the next monkey.
51:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But what we're talking about here is building even if the relationship or the date doesn't last pass of her state.
51:28
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we still lean in to these conversations to build some sort of connection and maybe compatibility?
51:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So dance monkey dance.
51:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
51:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to now bring out a keyboard and then you bring out you start singing and now we're going to make this into a whole production that's even better than it was before and it was something we never even imagined from the beginning.
51:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
51:50
[SPEAKER_00]: If we can all start just leaning in a little bit more and at the end of your dates, if you're still feeling like, oh, there wasn't much, you have to ask, did I try my best in leaning in to these connections?
52:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you did, then you have your answer.
52:05
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you really didn't, we have to take accountability for that.
52:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
52:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I love to putting this gut check of like how did I feel around this person was I showing the best self of me or the type of person.
52:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to be the person that comes alive with friends and trusted people like was that coming out on a date that's so much more important than the resume that this person might have.
52:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you Eli for another wonderful discussion.
52:30
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of thought provoking thoughts in there.
52:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So no worries.
52:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So much for having us.
52:35
[SPEAKER_00]: If people want to find out more
52:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, they could go to uh, elyfinkl.com or they could check out the podcast at lovefactually pod.com where we talk about these ideas as they relate to popular romance movies.
52:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Love it.
52:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Super.
52:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you haven't done so yet, subscribe to the psychology of relationships today.
52:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't miss an episode.
52:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye.