Latest / The Psychology of Relationships / Love Factually: Debunking the Biggest Lies We’re Told About Finding Love w/ Paul Eastwick & Eli Finkel

Transcript

Love Factually: Debunking the Biggest Lies We’re Told About Finding Love w/ Paul Eastwick & Eli Finkel · The Psychology of Relationships

0:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Julie Craftscheck, and I'm U.S.U.A.S.U.
0:03
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the psychology of relationships.
0:07
[SPEAKER_02]: We've all grown up absorbing messages about love for rom-coms.
0:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Believing that if you find the right person, everything should feel easy, effortless, and meant to be.
0:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But how much of what we believe about relationships is actually true, and how much is just a story we've been taught to buy into.
0:25
[SPEAKER_02]: We're joined by two leading voices in relationship science.
0:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel.
0:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Paul's a professor of psychology at UC Davis, director of their attraction and relationships research lab, an author of bonded by evolution, the new science of loving connection.
0:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Eli is a professor at Northwestern University, director of their relationships and motivation lab, an author of the all-or-nothing marriage.
0:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Together, they are co-hosts of the podcast Love Factually, where they analyze romantic films through scientific lens.
1:01
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to unpack what romcoms get right and wrong about love.
1:05
[SPEAKER_02]: The miss shaping our beliefs about compatibility and why modern expectations may be setting us up for disappointment.
1:12
[SPEAKER_02]: From the spark to the idea of the perfect match, we explore the science behind attraction and what actually builds lasting relationships.
1:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember to subscribe to the Psychology of Relationships on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
1:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And if this episode shifted how you think about love or compatibility, we'd love a rating or review.
1:34
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the psychology of relationships in your listening to an episode that just might change the way you shop for love.
1:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And you've been quoting our book, and I think Julie and I have had hours long discussions about the takeaways from that episode we did with you.
1:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh cool.
1:51
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a lot of stats that I think had implications that we want to break down again for our listeners because it was just such a great podcast.
2:00
[SPEAKER_03]: But today you get to bring your friend to work day.
2:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we can go even deeper.
2:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
2:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody, to be clear, Eli was my graduate advisor.
2:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm definitely enjoying this joke and we can continue with it.
2:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And the two of you have a new podcast that's called Love Factsually, which I just love the name, and it's all about, you know, analyzing Rob Cubs at Romantic Films.
2:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of debunking a lot with the science of close relationships.
2:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're excited to bring that.
2:31
[SPEAKER_02]: We went from science of attraction to science of relationships
2:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Love actually is one of the worst rom-coms ever made.
2:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
2:40
[SPEAKER_03]: For the record.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: We have not covered it yet to be clear.
2:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're going to do it at some point.
2:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to talk about it.
2:48
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll be so much.
2:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so bewildering.
2:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like there's like a good movie hiding in there.
2:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But actually Eli is a different take than me.
2:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
2:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fun.
2:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a fun movie.
2:59
[SPEAKER_03]: It's already starting your episode on our show.
3:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to save it for the last time.
3:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to save it for the last time.
3:06
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll save it.
3:06
[SPEAKER_03]: But I just want to save that for the record.
3:08
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the work from cost.
3:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It is divisive.
3:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
3:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess maybe that's a good starting point.
3:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what got you into this in the first place?
3:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Like why do you think it could be fun to break down these movies to reveal what's factual or not?
3:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, Eli and I spend most of our time talking about scientific stuff.
3:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, we should run a study to look at XYZ.
3:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, how is this paper coming up?
3:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
3:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people would not be interested in listening in on those conversations.
3:37
[SPEAKER_01]: But sometimes we bore ourselves.
3:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And instead we...
3:41
[SPEAKER_01]: We talk about movies and we talk a lot about like one thing you think about a lot of scientists is like, how can I, you know, make this work more accessible for a general audience?
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: There are many different ways scientists can do that.
3:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But we'd sort of realize that we were kind of in a rut when it came to communicating the science more broadly.
4:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was basically like, well, I think actually we should just like talk about movies, but like kind of sneak in the science
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then we were kind of off to the races from there, I guess, but Eli, what's your memory?
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that's basically it.
4:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It just goes on to run you in California, me just outside of Chicago, and we talk about all this stuff.
4:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the things we talk about a lot is movies, and it turns out there's lots of movies about relationships, and those movies about relationships have messages that they send to the public about how relationships work.
4:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of those messages are spot on, that is aligned with the scientific evidence, and some really are not.
4:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So we thought this podcast would be a very fun way to provide a public service that basically
4:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I'm thinking about all the movies, I think they've all gotten relationships wrong.
4:49
[SPEAKER_03]: So now let's start with who do you think has gotten it right name one or two of your favorite movies that you think they got it right?
4:57
[SPEAKER_00]: we've reviewed a bunch and every movie we give two ratings to.
5:02
[SPEAKER_00]: One is like how good the movie was from one to five stars, but we also give it a second rating called the Rust Boltz.
5:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's named after my advisor and it basically is a way of assessing the extent to which the messages in the relationship align with the evidence.
5:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So I submit to you Lala Land.
5:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is obviously, it's wonderful, but independent of being a wonderful movie, we can consider how realistic it is in terms of the message it's sending.
5:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, let's be clear that that it's a musical where people do like dance routines, because they're stuck in LA traffic.
5:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So the movie itself is of course a fantasy and a fiction, but nonetheless, there are messages underneath those fantasy fictional elements.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And both of us, I think Paul gave that one five russ bolts.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we thought that it basically got the messages about how relationships work pretty much spot on.
5:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what I said I love that movie, I think that is what I love, how realistic it is that love isn't enough all the time and with so many movies it's like this big blowout fight and conflict and then they get together and then the curtains roll we don't see after and I think that's the part that, you know, in lawland they like hit the mark so well and you see that like both of them are still okay even if they're not together and I think that part is just so realistic.
6:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's some other movies too that do a realistic job of capturing part of the process.
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So even if they don't capture the full arc of the relationship, like La La Land does, they do good at what they set out to do.
6:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just thinking about like the before trilogy, right?
6:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Like each of those is a snapshot of a relationship at a particular moment in time.
6:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We've covered before sunrise, and that's a beautiful portrayal of what it's like to do the rare thing which is fall deeply for somebody in a span of about 24 hours.
6:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like the premise is very, very, very uncommon, but the experiences within that, I think, are spot on.
7:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We're watching this thing that doesn't happen in real life very often, but it's capturing that thing realistically.
7:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And you only do films, not TV shows, right?
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's where we are at this point.
7:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you like, would like us to do TV shows, I'm like, oh my god.
7:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I would normally say TV shows, but I just keep thinking about nobody wants this and how realistic that show is in portrayal of real adult relationships.
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, a lot of what I liked about that show is that it shows us that a lot of the conflict is coming from outside the pair.
7:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
7:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right.
7:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like all of these other forces are impinging on us.
7:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You get that in some movies too.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the notebook was one example where we see that theme over and over again.
7:48
[SPEAKER_02]: What about the ones that really don't meet the mark that like completely business and just really give us unrealistic expectations?
7:56
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a great question and I'm happy to throw some movies into the bus right now.
8:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Please, I do want to say that pretty much every movie, at least every movie that we've seen this far, get some stuff right in some stuff wrong.
8:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's built into our podcast.
8:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Every episode of the podcast has a certain structure.
8:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And the meat of it is, what did the movie get right?
8:14
[SPEAKER_00]: What did the movie get wrong?
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: We also talk about ideas in the movie that we wish relationships scientists actually studied.
8:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But nonetheless, on average, movies can get it more right or more wrong.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to say that so far, I've been a little disappointed in the teen romance genre.
8:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, so some of what you see, so for example, in 10 things I hate about you, the Joseph Gordon love it character just instantaneously falls in love, right?
8:39
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the girl across the room and he is just completely smitten and pretty much stays that way the whole time.
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this conceit that love it for sight is the way these things happen.
8:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a theme that you see in these movies, a trope that you see in some of these movies and it is not false.
8:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like it can never happen.
8:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not usually the way these things happen.
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: More often than not,
8:58
[SPEAKER_00]: we fall in love with people that we have already known, people that emerged from our social network or when we met through friends or friends, and even in the era of online dating and the apps, that's still true.
9:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the tropes that you see in some movies, especially sort of the teen romance movie that I think doesn't align especially well with the science.
9:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, what about love at first sight?
9:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Are there stats around that?
9:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Load first sight is definitely a thing that can happen.
9:22
[SPEAKER_01]: My guess is that a substantial proportion of people will have experienced it at some point in their lives.
9:30
[SPEAKER_01]: At least the experience of like, in factuation at first sight.
9:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I looked at this person and I knew I just had to talk to them.
9:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, let's take instead the subset of pairings that actually become romantic or sexual in some way shape or form.
9:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So now we're going to look at the things that are successful.
9:51
[SPEAKER_01]: When you look at that grouping, it's something like 70%.
9:56
[SPEAKER_01]: of people will say that they were friends first, that they were friends before that relationship formed.
10:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've seen similar kinds of stats if you kind of just look at sexual relationships too, right?
10:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Things that maybe weren't like a full-blown romantic relationship, but it was like a hook-up or a fling.
10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, what is usually happening is that these relationships are growing out of people's social networks gradually.
10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: The fascinating thing is that online dating has changed this somewhat, but I think what people often miss is that even a typical online dating sequence, you'd be getting to know that person over a course of maybe weeks or a month before, like, finally it feels like the relationship is in gear.
10:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's not super uncommon that people in that situation would be like, oh, you're like, this is somebody that I am friends with and I'm getting to know them.
10:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And I am intrigued, but we're not at like full blown romantic relationship yet.
10:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a launching period for the vast majority of romantic relationships.
10:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you say friends it doesn't mean that it necessarily needs to be like your childhood friends since like elementary school that you fall for but someone that you've just built that like rapport with that you don't just see immediately or you go on one date with and you're like I know right friends can have a lot of me at
11:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And to some extent, this is something the Eli and I argue about from time to time because I find this idea very intuitive that you can know somebody for a very long time before falling for them, but I feel like Eli you have a different take on some of this.
11:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, the discussions we've had about this have been more personal than scientific and it is true that I find it difficult to Fathom speaking from a personal point of view here.
11:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that there would be someone in my life that I had no interest or attraction to at all.
11:48
[SPEAKER_00]: and then over time had a series of experiences together that then led to attraction.
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But I am aware that there are weirdos in the world like a little like I don't know.
11:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the light hits them just so and sure.
12:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if it's a thing like that.
12:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like that was like all of you as experiences, but yeah, with you Eli, I've never really had that happen or like I can think of one instance that never went anywhere, wasn't like a relationship.
12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's like either happens or it doesn't.
12:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I never thought it would happen.
12:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I can say my current partner I've known him for eight years now never had a traction towards him because we met in a professional setting too, so contextually it was like not right, but it just
12:28
[SPEAKER_03]: through a series of events, through a series of different angles of seeing him and through a series of conversations that showed a different side of him.
12:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm very much in love with him, but if you told me this eight years ago, I'd been like, oh hell no, there's no way.
12:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
12:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do feel like some of these friends first relationships are the experience of
12:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there something here?
12:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there something here?
12:50
[SPEAKER_02]: What's going on here?
12:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Over the course of a month or two.
12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And some of them are more like what you had just described, right?
12:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a heterogeneous grouping.
12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But the thing that's uncommon is like nice to meet you.
13:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go.
13:04
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing that's not common.
13:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's actually one of the biggest problems we see with dating apps.
13:10
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the expectation that you show up and you're going to know, like, is this going to be my life partner or God?
13:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just not realistic.
13:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I know like, I'm at my partner on a dating app.
13:20
[SPEAKER_02]: But I will say it was kind of like what you're talking about, Paul.
13:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I was it like, Oh, my God.
13:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I know this is the one, but I'm like, I like this person.
13:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to get to know the board.
13:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wouldn't say like, we had a deep friendship.
13:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Clearly, we met on a dating app.
13:32
[SPEAKER_02]: But a friendship was building.
13:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
13:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So I see the difference.
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the reasons why Paul and I wanted to do love factually, right?
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: That is these messages are in the movies.
13:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And if what the movies are telling us is love is something that you feel right away or it's hopeless.
13:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the sort of love at first sight conceit that we see in some of these movies.
13:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a consequence of that.
13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We go on a date with somebody we met on one of the apps.
13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And after about 45 minutes, we've had our coffee and now we go home.
14:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And often what's going to happen is you're going to be like,
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: He was kind of nice, and there was maybe whatever, but I don't feel this thing and my finger tips, and that's really not the way it's supposed to be, and so I'm not going to go on the second date.
14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul, you've dealt deep into the evidence, right?
14:17
[SPEAKER_00]: In terms of how likely is it that if you are kind of wishy-washy on somebody at first, that you ultimately could be attracted to them on a second-day-device versa.
14:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is some data what we're tracking is people's crushes over time.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not in an online dating context exactly, but we're kind of kind of extrapolated that.
14:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So these are people they're getting to know potential partners over a series of weeks.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you see is something that I think we'd all find pretty intuitive, which is that the first impression is a little bit unstable, okay?
14:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So you first meet somebody, what are the odds that that's going to carry over to your second third fourth fifth impression?
14:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And the answer is like a little.
15:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But by the time you get to like the third impression, things are getting now pretty stable.
15:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Boy does it pay to like stick around for date three, yeah, because after date one, it really could go dramatically in the other direction.
15:21
[SPEAKER_01]: By the time you get to date three, it's diminishing returns for a while, okay?
15:26
[SPEAKER_01]: People's opinions can of course change later.
15:30
[SPEAKER_01]: They often do.
15:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But by the time you get to a third date, you've kind of hit this plateau of stability.
15:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's a nice moment to assess, okay?
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: do I want to keep investing into this one or do I want to try a different direction here?
15:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so glad you brought this up because we get this question all the time and you know we've been kind of saying like at least do the second date deep on like his people are inherently awkward on the first date.
15:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I
15:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I love about this as one, it pushes it one more.
15:57
[SPEAKER_02]: But then it also gives people tangible research because you hear a lot of dating advice being like, go on one day, go on two, go on three, but now we know like the science behind it.
16:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we actually get this question out, we're gonna be like, look, we have scientific evidence that you need to go on three dates.
16:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
16:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanna be clear too.
16:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like, what nobody has done, is the truth.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: really random assignment, you know, which is like gold standard in the science to try to understand whether something is really having a causal impact.
16:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I'd want to do is be like, you must go on five dates with this person and with this person, right?
16:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you really say where it starts to tip.
16:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is our best inference from I think the closest data that we have.
16:41
[SPEAKER_02]: We hear this a lot like there's just nothing there and our advice typically has been like okay don't waste either of your time if like there is like you are not having a good time at all or there is zero attraction like have you seen evidence that that can turn around or is that more of like okay stick to that.
16:57
[SPEAKER_01]: These are all cases where there's at least like a middleing level of interest to start, and yeah, so if you get people totally crashing after the first one, although Eli, I feel like that would be in there.
17:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that would be caught by it.
17:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, for that study, I think to be included, they had to sort of list the person as a possible crush, right?
17:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I see.
17:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But they had to keep reporting.
17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to listen.
17:20
[SPEAKER_01]: The ones in crash, you're still in the data set, right?
17:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
17:23
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
17:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But it means that was at least some level of interest at some point.
17:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we don't have an answer to this one.
17:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wouldn't object if I heard that you folks were offering feedback to people that said, look, if it's just flatlined.
17:37
[SPEAKER_00]: after the first date, go and find a different person, just because, you know, time and resources are finite and it seems likely to me that that could be a long shot.
17:47
[SPEAKER_01]: but you know what I wish existed and was a thing that was easier for people to do and to bring it back to the movies here for a second.
17:53
[SPEAKER_01]: We can learn a lot from when Harry met Sally because when they aren't really into each other, what do they do?
17:58
[SPEAKER_01]: They try to set each other up with their friends.
18:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, okay.
18:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So how cool would it be if we were able to better take the lackluster dating updates, the things that didn't go that great and be like, okay, but I got a friend for you to meet here.
18:13
[SPEAKER_03]: You made it that.
18:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I did that with my first serious boyfriend.
18:18
[SPEAKER_03]: We met on match.
18:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't feel like there was an attraction, but I thought he was a great guy.
18:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Try to set him up with my best friend.
18:24
[SPEAKER_03]: But in the process of setting him up with my best friend, I fell for him.
18:28
[SPEAKER_03]: What?
18:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So then we, yes.
18:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we have dating for five years.
18:37
[SPEAKER_03]: It's crazy because I think in me describing him to her, in that process, it made me realize what an amazing partner he would be.
18:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That was your moment of clueless, you were butt crazy and love with Josh.
18:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, he was my Josh.
18:51
[SPEAKER_02]: But what's in your brother?
18:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, maybe half, and she went away for a week, and that's when it was so clear to me, I missed him, and so then that week, I told my best friend, I was like, I don't think this is going to happen because I think I'm keeping him for me, and she's like, all right.
19:12
[SPEAKER_03]: What ever?
19:13
[SPEAKER_03]: You're still there.
19:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, she's like okay.
19:17
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
19:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's, yeah, what is this about?
19:20
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, we end up dating for five years and I still think it's crazy.
19:23
[SPEAKER_03]: But in the time of me trying to set him up with her, I had to hang out with him a lot to really suck him out.
19:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And I can't really count how many times we hung out.
19:34
[SPEAKER_03]: But I did do.
19:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I was part of this MTV pilot like 15 years ago called 12 dates.
19:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was some research backing that it takes 12 dates to fall in love with someone.
19:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there anything like that that you've come across?
19:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't even know where this research came from.
19:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Paul's face.
19:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what that is.
19:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it sounds like a good entertainment spin.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, if it works for a reality show, then why not, you know, to bring up the before trilogy again, so I don't know if all your listeners will be familiar with before sunrise and before sunset and before midnight, but
20:06
[SPEAKER_00]: We've already covered the first of those, and we'll be recovering the second one soon, and then eventually the third one.
20:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And that depict something that seems plausible.
20:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I think to both of us, that is, they meet on a train.
20:16
[SPEAKER_00]: There's this urgent external time constraint because he has to get to flight the next morning out of Vienna, so they just walk around the city and basically get to know each other.
20:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the movie, right?
20:26
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just a very talky movie and they're just getting to know each other and basically falling in love with each other over that period of time.
20:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And nothing seems false about that.
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So that for sure is something that happens.
20:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It is in fact rare.
20:40
[SPEAKER_00]: As we've been talking about earlier, this is not the normative thing.
20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And really would take unusual circumstances.
20:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we met and then we have to like leave town tomorrow sort of thing.
20:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Would suit
20:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Overchard some of this emotional intimacy stuff that would usually happen on the order of weeks and months into a relatively small number of hours.
20:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't see any reason why you'd have to assume that it takes a certain number of dates to fall in love.
21:01
[SPEAKER_00]: 12 seems shockingly arbitrary to me.
21:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I doubt there's a whole science behind this.
21:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But the growth of intimacy over time is real and some of the movies do a great job of depicting how over time I disclose a little bit more, I'm willing to make myself a little bit more vulnerable to you.
21:18
[SPEAKER_00]: As a response, you face a choice.
21:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you willing to sort of meet me there?
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: If I just disclose something private, are you willing to disclose something private or intimate back to me?
21:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And this escalation process where each of us is just like
21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: increasing the amount of intimacy that the two of us have is really how relationships grow on average.
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You can put that in the supercharger in a case like before sunrise, but that's not the typical time frame.
21:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think a lot of our listeners can say like, okay, I don't believe in love with first sight.
21:47
[SPEAKER_02]: This is something that's in the movies like I get that.
21:50
[SPEAKER_02]: But then, a lot of times, I think these consequence of its seeps through, like we were talking about earlier, people, go on that first date and expect the fireworks, they expect the spark and then if it doesn't happen, they question everything.
22:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what you are saying Eli is like, it needs to build.
22:07
[SPEAKER_02]: There needs to be some momentum and maybe that could happen in the first night, but it doesn't always happen that way.
22:13
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you like, I guess what does relationship science tell us about compatibility being built over time?
22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: this is one of our favorite topics.
22:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So we are big believers in compatibility.
22:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We think compatibility is very important for explaining why some pairings work and some pairings don't.
22:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is a common misconception that compatibility derives from the stable features of one person and the other person.
22:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
22:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That Eli and my, you know, our relationship is what it is because of stable things that are true about me and stable things that are true about him.
22:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that were true, boy wouldn't that be convenient because then we could just like fill out some questionnaires and do some magic hoax focus and we could figure out who all the great pairs are at some science fiction and we're off to the races.
23:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey Paul, before you get to the alternative, I should say, like a useful metaphor here is the think of yourself as a puzzle piece, right?
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So really, you're a piece with a certain shape.
23:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And really what the job is is to date around until you find somebody that has a shape that fits you.
23:15
[SPEAKER_00]: That's this.
23:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that.
23:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's this model of what compatibility is.
23:20
[SPEAKER_00]: That is intuitive.
23:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's underlying a lot of the matte-making algorithms, e-harmony, most famously talked about, well, you just need to find people that are similar to you.
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know that based on information that exists before the two of you have ever met.
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But Paul, I interrupted.
23:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we now have a whole lot of evidence related to this.
23:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And it looks like that's not in general how compatibility does work.
23:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yes, please.
23:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
23:40
[SPEAKER_03]: What is compatibility?
23:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
23:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So compatibility comes more from what two people create and or discover together over a stretch of time.
23:53
[SPEAKER_01]: There are many different ways you can think about how that process unfolds.
23:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I often talk about two people creating patterns in their relationships, right?
24:02
[SPEAKER_01]: The things that they do together that build closeness that actually would not have made any sense in any prior relationship,
24:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It can also be things as small as like in jokes, pet names, other kinds of like weird norms or customs that people build together.
24:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Nice, good throw.
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
24:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So in my world, I talk about this as the micro culture of the relationship and this is huge.
24:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the little stuff that we build together, right?
24:31
[SPEAKER_00]: The jokes that we refer back to, how is it that we sort of initiate intimacy together?
24:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, very few of us are like, I'm kind of in the move for sex.
24:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you feeling in a sexy mood?
24:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, it's usually some sort of subtle thing that we have.
24:45
[SPEAKER_00]: You probably don't transfer the exact same thing from, you know, your last girlfriend to this new girlfriend.
24:50
[SPEAKER_00]: There's these norms and rituals that you develop in the course of the relationship.
24:57
[SPEAKER_00]: compatibility, and it speaks to another issue that some of the movies really get wrong.
25:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Clueless, for example, is among the movies that get this idea wrong, which is that some people have good mate value and others don't, that there are tens and there are twos.
25:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, it's not that there's no truth whatsoever to this.
25:17
[SPEAKER_00]: There is some truth to this idea, especially on a first meeting that is we can have a reasonably high agreement that like John is hotter than Davis, for example.
25:24
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But the question is, and Paul, you're the one who talks about people being able to dull out good relationships, right?
25:31
[SPEAKER_00]: If you write one of those people, like John's just somebody like anybody who can get John will have a happy marriage.
25:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And
25:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole lot about compatibility.
25:43
[SPEAKER_00]: John is going to be able to build this sort of compatibility and make wife A happy, but wife B would never have been happy with him.
25:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why that is is because people aren't over time tens and twos.
25:56
[SPEAKER_00]: The important thing is not to find somebody who is a catch.
26:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But to build between the two of you, something where regardless of what the next person thinks about your partner, you feel like your partner is in the eight, nine, ten range, and that's a message that you really don't find much in these movies, but is the state of the evidence for how compatibility really works.
26:16
[SPEAKER_03]: So, if we were to translate that into online dating, can you gauge compatibility before you even meet up?
26:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, something that might be interesting to your listeners is to put online dating in some sort of historical context and Paul and I did a lot of work on this stuff back in the day.
26:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But broadly, we can think of three generations of online dating.
26:35
[SPEAKER_00]: The first one is basically once the internet launches, basically 1995, and NetScape Navigator comes out, and finally you have Web 1.0, and then right at right around the time.
26:46
[SPEAKER_00]: that people are able to get online, you get match.com, right?
26:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And the basic idea from match.com at first was, oh my goodness, how amazing would it be if you could browse through hundreds or thousands of profiles and just find the one or the ones that are appealing to you and go on dates with those people.
27:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And literally when I say thousands of people, that was what you'd get.
27:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I want, you know, within 25 miles of this zip code and you'd have all these options, there was an assumption there that you can actually tell, not just like who has an attractive photo that we can tell.
27:13
[SPEAKER_00]: We can tell that.
27:14
[SPEAKER_00]: that person has an attractive photo, there's some amount of agreement about that, but who's compatible with me?
27:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a better fit for me than for somebody else, nothing.
27:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, nothing, and it's not like whoever said showing people thousands of profiles is a good way of helping them make decisions, clearly knew nothing about decision science, because humans,
27:31
[SPEAKER_00]: cognition is really not meant to do that.
27:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So then you get this second wave, only five years later, really it launches with the harmony in 2000.
27:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And instead of pitching themselves, it's like the supermarkets of love come and browse the where as they pitch themselves as the real estate agents of love.
27:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they say is like, while the terrain is fraught and it's unfamiliar, what you need is a guide and an expert and they claimed the sites that they could build an algorithm that would select among these several thousand people and show you the 5 or 10 potential matches that that would be uniquely compatible with you based on some information usually in the form of a survey.
28:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Now look, that's a terrific idea.
28:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it were true,
28:10
[SPEAKER_00]: that that stuff were accessible in advance.
28:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Things that seem likely to be true.
28:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we like people who are more similar to us.
28:16
[SPEAKER_00]: We like people who have personalities that complement our own.
28:19
[SPEAKER_00]: If those ideas turned out to be true, then those algorithms would have worked.
28:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But those ideas are not true and those algorithms did not work.
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And so then you got this third generation pretty much with the advent of the App Store, the second generation iPhone in 2008, and then people are our swiping left and right that was Tinder's innovation really, but they're swiping left and right, and it adds back a level of spontaneity at least in principle.
28:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So some people can use this to say like, okay, I'm out and it's a Saturday and like, who's around?
28:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And at least in principle, you could actually meet up with someone spontaneously, which is not the normative way to do it, but for me, the most exciting
28:52
[SPEAKER_00]: the whole conceit was, let's just make this part as fast as possible so that you can get face to face and figure out what the algorithm between your ears is.
29:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there something here that you'd be willing to consider?
29:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, with regard to what we were discussing earlier, even if your algorithm between your ears is saying, like, I'm feeling iffy, it would be reasonable to default to feeling iffy equals, yes, second date.
29:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so glad you said this, because it backs up a lot of the stuff we could say for a while, and we look at it very similarly of like, it's an intro, maybe as a yes.
29:23
[SPEAKER_02]: You really can't tell through the profile of me from the conversation we have with YouTube all last time.
29:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember you talking about those stats, and they stuck with us, but I'm glad that like people can hear this again, and then from a scientific lens, because we hear all the time, like, oh, we grew up in the same area.
29:39
[SPEAKER_02]: We both like tennis, and that's just
29:41
[SPEAKER_02]: not compatibility.
29:42
[SPEAKER_02]: But if we want to take it like the next level, like the other side of it, and I think like in romcoms this happens a lot, opposites attract.
29:51
[SPEAKER_02]: What's your take on that side?
29:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Because like I guess is there a line?
29:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Like do you need some similarities in terms of lifestyle and upbringing again?
29:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess hobbies and ways of being or is it like your polar opposite?
30:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that good too?
30:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, here, you can line people up based on their similarities with the hope that the more similarities you find, the more two people will hit it off, right?
30:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
30:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was an assumption for a very long time.
30:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And it turned out similarity attraction doesn't really work that way.
30:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, complementarity attraction, the idea that, oh, but if I meet my opposite, then I'll fall for them.
30:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That also doesn't work.
30:28
[SPEAKER_01]: There's basically no ability to predict what's so ever from the amount that two people match.
30:34
[SPEAKER_01]: On the things that they could describe about themselves, right?
30:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Their personality, their interests, their preferences, it's not going to do that much.
30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I see.
30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But what people can do is convert almost anything.
30:47
[SPEAKER_01]: they have in common into something that they could build a relationship around.
30:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, you mentioned like the tennis example earlier, it would be very possible for two people to then perceive that that is an important similarity that they happen to share.
31:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And then build a culture of their relationship around that.
31:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it could become very important if you imagine me then taking the tennis away, that could be absolutely tragic for the relationship.
31:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But there would have been no way to predict a priori before you two had met that tennis was going to be the thing that was going to connect you.
31:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
31:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is why any relationship building requires some amount of exploration.
31:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not what do we have in common.
31:30
[SPEAKER_01]: But what do we have in common that we're kind of motivated to like build something around this?
31:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just kind of got to get in there and try.
31:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's remarkably hard to forecast.
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We do see this also, I think, depicted pretty well in some of the movies, so 500 days of summer.
31:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that movie.
31:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Here we have Gordon Leather again.
31:52
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just obsessed with summer, and he just sort of can't believe how much stuff they have in common.
31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And his main confinant is his like 12 year old sister.
32:01
[SPEAKER_00]: She says something like, look, just because you and some girl have a bunch of stupid stuff in common, like, why does that mean you have to be compatible?
32:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's wild about that movie at the risk of spoiling it is, there is a second girl for Tom named Autumn, who, of course, as in our seasonal calendar, follows summer.
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And they meet very briefly, but they sort of can't believe that they have the same view about this annoying parking lot for this place that they both like to go to.
32:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And they feel like, oh my God.
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Fate just delivered my dream girl that you hear her talk about the parking lot.
32:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what I think another way of characterizing what Paul is saying is that we have a tremendous amount of freedom in how we choose to define whether we are similar or dissimilar to somebody.
32:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And when people hear a scientist say, look, similarity is not a big predictor, that will be shocking to them.
32:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you ask people, how similar did you feel to John and then how much did you like John, that is a huge effect?
32:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Perceived similarity, the belief that we have tons in common is a huge predictor of how attracted we are to people.
33:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But thus far, when you look at values, at personality, at hobbies, at background, at demographics, social scientists have not been able to find compelling evidence that any of these things, things that were noble in advance of two people actually meeting each other, that any of these things actually predicts attraction.
33:24
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it about similarity that predicts attraction that we just decide to focus on those things about our first date or our first month together where the similarities were big and then tell ourselves a story about how fate delivered us somebody who's just like us but we easily could have interpreted it a different way.
33:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess like maybe the shift gear is a little though.
33:44
[SPEAKER_02]: What about the fixer upper?
33:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Like where this dramatic change or transformation or makeover occurs?
33:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause I feel like that happens a lot in these movies where someone thinks that you can change someone.
33:56
[SPEAKER_02]: What's your take on this with the science?
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
33:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So on the one hand, you've got all of this potential for growth.
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I think LaLa Land shows this well.
34:04
[SPEAKER_01]: because they're both like helping each other grow into their career ambitions, you know, he loves jazz and rather than seeing it as a deal breaker that she doesn't know anything about jazz, like she comes to like jazz by seeing it through his eyes.
34:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So all of that kind of change is a totally realistic depiction of what happens in real relationships.
34:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But then you've got the idea that is I need to make you over to make you hot enough to date the other suitable people.
34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the clueless idea, that's the pigmalion idea.
34:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, that idea's been around for a very long time that, you know, I can turn you into this other ideal that I have.
34:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that a place is way too much weight on this market idea.
34:54
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea, like, oh, you're not going to be able to date somebody who's good enough who's going to make you happy
35:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, that is essentially what shares doing in that movie and as funny as it is.
35:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually in the end not really enticed.
35:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Interest and probably wasn't necessary for Tidah have a happy healthy relationship.
35:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I think with Travis the skater.
35:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey Paul, I have a question for you about that.
35:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So some people might think if only I could build up some musculature or drop 10 pounds or fill in where my hair is balding or whatever it is, that I would have more success on the dating market, there is some truth to that idea, right?
35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to totally discount all of these like self-improvement ideas.
35:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Like these things are going to be useful.
35:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They are exceptionally useful when all you get is a first impression.
35:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
35:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the part that's unfortunate about the dating app culture is that we have fewer places where we are forced for lack of a better word to spend time with people.
36:00
[SPEAKER_01]: in the context that's not necessarily romantic, because you might be a little ball thing, but with a little bit of time, some people are eventually going to look past that if you are all spending time together.
36:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the absence of those kinds of social situations that extend forward in time, if all you're getting is first impressions, then yeah, it does play a role.
36:19
[SPEAKER_02]: What about, because this is something I feel like I felt victim to for a while, is that I felt like I could change someone but they told me they weren't fully ready for relationship and commitments.
36:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had this like love conquerors all the utility and I think, you know, I had it on again, off again relationship where the person was like, I love you, but like my mental health and other stuff going on, I can't be all in.
36:43
[SPEAKER_02]: How would you, like, look at that for a science perspective?
36:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I call this fostering.
36:47
[SPEAKER_03]: She's fostering these old stray puppies.
36:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, my God.
36:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Social scientists have tried to answer this.
36:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they've made some headway, but it's hard to do well.
36:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are researchers that are studying this idea of commitment readiness.
37:01
[SPEAKER_00]: That is, if you only caught people at the right time, then it might have worked.
37:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But because you caught them at the wrong time, it didn't work out, right?
37:08
[SPEAKER_00]: There's definitely evidence consistent with that idea that there's individual differences and how ready people are, there's differences across time and how ready an individual is to get involved in something serious.
37:17
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why it's hard to interpret some of those findings is that readiness is sometimes confounded with the people who exist in your social network.
37:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You might have thought you weren't very ready, but then like you started to see as you did like Dave in a new light and suddenly you're like maybe I am ready and so there's like a reverse causality problem of you think that you became ready in there for an interest in David.
37:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But really David started to hit you in a different light and therefore you were like I guess I am ready.
37:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But there is truth to this idea that there is fluctuation and readiness, there's individual differences and readiness.
37:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Here I'm totally speculating, but I think it's probably hard to convince somebody that they're ready or than they think they are.
37:58
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm being very sober about this and Julia, you asked it from a personal perspective, readiness is confounded with the options on the table.
38:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if this is someone current for you.
38:08
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, I'm not.
38:09
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a little bit extra.
38:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I found a prayer hall.
38:13
[UNKNOWN]: No.
38:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So my guess, based on the information I have, which is not really precisely relevant to this question, is if somebody's really dragging feet, that's a pretty important signal to listen to, and it may be that they are not ready for anybody, it may be that they're not quite ready for you, but trying to convince them, like, no, no, no, you really are ready, seems like a very risky
38:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I have some numbers that I can toss behind this, so this comes from some work by Dr. Hadden in his colleagues where they look at relationship readiness.
38:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You can think of it like this.
38:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Here are 100 people in front of you.
38:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Half of them say they're ready and half of them say they're not.
38:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to follow up with them in a few months and see how they're doing.
38:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Of the ones who said they were ready about 22% will be in a relationship a few months later.
39:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And about
39:02
[SPEAKER_01]: 14% of the ones who said they weren't ready.
39:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So 22 versus 14.
39:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the space that makes that difference.
39:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And it explains why people often have this sense of like, you said you weren't ready.
39:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not, it's in the field like that biggest space, right?
39:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
39:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, so it like it matters what people are saying, what am I 14%.
39:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of these people that said they're not ready.
39:28
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to find themselves ready when they come across the right person.
39:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
39:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's really no such thing as right person wrong time.
39:35
[SPEAKER_03]: The right person comes at the right time, right?
39:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we can take that difference to mean something.
39:40
[SPEAKER_01]: That there is a subset of people who were more open to something, maybe casting a wider net, maybe, you know, they had more of the blinders off and they did see something.
39:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But yes, many people who say, I'm not ready, will react differently when presented with the option that they want.
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: For what it's worth, the movies are hit and miss on this stuff.
40:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the notebook, for example, Ryan Gosling's character gets heartbroken by Rachel McAdams's character and then he starts dating this lovely other woman and he says like, I'm not going to be able to give you what you want.
40:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm basically broken that this breakup with Rachel McAdams has ruined me forever and I will never be ready.
40:21
[SPEAKER_00]: for any sort of relationship.
40:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a theme that's in there, of course, it's done in the Nicholas Sparks service of trying to make it even more romantic relationship when he gets back together with the Rachel McAdams character.
40:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But that strikes me as not that it couldn't ever happen, but is extremely uncharacteristic of how the human psyche works.
40:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And even if it feels in the opening hours and weeks and maybe months of a new heartbreak that you could never love anybody again, the large majority of us will somehow find our hearts
40:51
[SPEAKER_00]: softening to a new person in the future.
40:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can make this stuff work when the connection is deep enough.
40:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And look, if you haven't just emerged from a trauma, right?
41:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be that for some number of months after a trauma, you really just can't be there for anyone.
41:04
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the exception rather than the rule.
41:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm tossing one other important exception here, which is like one very important factor in readiness is, are you dating somebody else?
41:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that actually is not factoring into the stuff we're talking about, but like,
41:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That's enormous, right?
41:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And the water of the timing is people happen to be single at the same moment.
41:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm tired, right?
41:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the form of readiness.
41:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like, okay, that has a really big, yes, really big.
41:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And kind of related to that readiness, in a lot of times in these rom-coms, what culminates, then, it's this grand gesture when someone is ready, running to the airport when it's raining outside, holding a boom box, declarations of love.
41:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's like love actually,
41:44
[SPEAKER_03]: It shouldn't have been called grand gestures of love.
41:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You're right.
41:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just grand gestures.
41:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
41:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Thoughts on that.
41:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Research around due grand gestures actually work.
41:53
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no evidence that anything like that is a good idea.
41:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That's for really good cinema.
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I will watch Heath Ledger Cronen stand.
42:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, daily if I could.
42:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's really no evidence that these things are a good idea and often what's actually happening in those months in these movies is that somebody is said They don't want a thing somebody is tried to break something off.
42:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and the person doing the grand gesture is like, oh, but really though and generally speaking in real life That's probably not a great idea
42:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And look, you know, one of the things that, again, comes up in the episodes of Love Actually on Purpose we talk about like, are we okay with this and we deal with some of the sort of ethical issues confronting the characters or in the messages that these films are sending?
42:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And look, it's almost always that the woman or the girl has said no and the man or the boy has like not taken that for an answer.
42:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, that's what precedes the grand romantic gesture.
42:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And in ten things I hate about you, it's very explicit where the Heath Ledger character is saying to the Joseph Gordon-Levit character.
43:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, do you love the girl or not?
43:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's just been rejected.
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, well, I thought I did.
43:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Heath Ledger says, well, don't tell anybody that you don't deserve what you want or something like that.
43:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, oh, my Lord.
43:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We have just told a generation of girls and boys that what romance is is when she says no,
43:18
[SPEAKER_00]: even bigger, and whether that involves hanging from a ferris wheel like in the notebook or with a bookbox, like in say anything, you're seeing this again and again and again, and the science supporting the idea that grand romantic gestures in response to somebody saying no to you, there's very little science supporting that idea, so it's one of the messages that we find disconcerting in a lot of these movies.
43:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, of so glad that we were able to factor our souls off this episode because I mean, I feel like so much of what we've been ingrained in by society.
43:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of it's just wrong expectations that hurts ourselves.
43:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's other stuff like we're just talking about that's actually like a huge problem with consent culture and all of the things that have gone even further.
44:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So regardless of it's something micro or macro, it's time that we really re-evaluate the messages
44:14
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not huge fans of like finding love.
44:16
[SPEAKER_02]: That's saying even though in our subtitle that is part of it, and I think part of it is that like Creating love just sounds so weird like it doesn't have the same ring Does it have like the same ring to it right like it's not like
44:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You're finding love, creating love, but I do think we really need to like change the way we think about love and I love to the conversation we had about compatibility that it's not just like A plus B equals work compatible Like we have to really like build those micro cultures that we were talking about that star really hit me because I know when with my partner when we first started dating
44:53
[SPEAKER_02]: we would send like these like and this sounds so stupid saying this out loud but like we'd send like every night a kissy face emoji before bed or like these yeah and it's like when it's these little things that like builds up over time though and it made you feel like you had a connection and I loved what we're talking about too about like
45:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You can find the similarities, so it's more about like are you going to commit to building something with this person and look at like what that is and how your relationship can grow.
45:23
[SPEAKER_02]: That's way more important than if you have the on paper qualities that you think are so important.
45:28
[SPEAKER_00]: When we get to have our next conversation, I'll be really interested in hearing about how these cute emojis you send to each other right before bed, how you a witness them.
45:42
[SPEAKER_03]: We're in a thruffle.
45:42
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why.
45:43
[SPEAKER_00]: There you go.
45:44
[SPEAKER_00]: God bless.
45:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And that was my takeaway.
45:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, no.
45:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But the takeaway is really following up on what Julie was saying too.
45:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Compatibility is built and created.
45:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And we put so much emphasis on compatibility being something already given to us like through the apps that we're able to gauge through photos and profiles or through how someone describes a person.
46:08
[SPEAKER_03]: but you don't know to you meet them and start relating to them in some extent.
46:14
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's one aspect of it and the other aspect what I'm hearing is there has to be some commitment to to see where things go.
46:22
[SPEAKER_03]: It can't just be let's build compatibility and if it works, maybe it works, but at some point, maybe like when both people say, okay, there is compatibility.
46:30
[SPEAKER_03]: It has to be commitment to, like, let's see this through.
46:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's something we're really missing in modern dating.
46:35
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, people just don't see it through.
46:37
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like, okay, okay, on to the next.
46:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just see where it goes onto the next and the kind of just free-for-all feeling, we don't end up building anything because we don't end up committing to anything.
46:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
46:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's no structures holding us together.
46:51
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing that's going to make us interact.
46:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I use that in sort of the nicest way possible.
46:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
46:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
46:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So if people want to learn more about you too, where can they go?
47:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Check us out at lovefactuallypod.com.
47:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also find us at the Lovefactually Substack and subscribe to us on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.
47:11
[SPEAKER_01]: That's Lovefactually featuring me, Paul, and Eli.
47:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Fantastic!
47:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for being on our show, and if you haven't done so yet, subscribe to the psychology of relationships today, so you don't miss an episode.
47:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye!