The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie SantosDo you go on endless dates hoping to find the perfect partner only to be endlessly disappointed? Or have you stopped meeting people because you've decided that you're undateable? Maybe you need to start dating like a scientist.
Behavioural scientist Logan Ury has studied the common mistakes we make when looking for love - and thinks science can shows us a better way.
Logan is the director of relationship science at the dating app Hinge. She’s also the dating coach for the new Netflix showThe Later Daters and author of How to Not Die Alone.
Check out Logan's website at loganury.com
Pushkin.
Hey, doctor Laurie Santo's here here at the Happiness Lab. We spend a lot of time talking about the happiness benefits of being a fan, and it just so happens that another Pushkin podcast has gone deep into this topic. It's a show called Against the Rules, hosted by best selling author Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis is the brains behind books like Moneyball, The Big Shore, and Liar's Poker. This season of Against the Rules is all about sports fandom, but also sports gambling, which was legalized in the US just a few years ago. From a happiness perspective, this is a fascinating topic. Michael talks with gambling addicts, but also pro basketball stars, Vegas bookies, and even experts in casino design. I also get to make it appearance. I really enjoyed our conversation, So if you're a little bit curious, I urge you to check out Against the Rules and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to February.
It's a month of cold weather but warm hearts thanks to Valentine's Day. Love is in the air this time of year, so we're devoting two shows of our new how to season to the science of relationships, and we're kicking things off with dating. Many of us feel like we're getting dating all wrong. We chase the wrong people entirely, or we chase the right people in the wrong way. But what if we used science to find the ideal partner. That's what we'll be exploring today, how to date like a scientist, and we have the perfect expert to help us down those relationship lab codes. Logan Uri is the director of relationship science at the dating app Hinge. She's also the dating coach for the new Netflix show The Later Daters, and the author of an awesome book, How to Not Die Alone. With a CV like that, you might think Logan's been a dating with since high school, but you'd be wrong.
I haven't always been great at finding love for myself, but I think the fact that I was unlucky in love for many years actually makes me better at what I do, because I think for people who met the love of their life in high school or were just so beautiful that people were falling all over them their whole lives, I think it's harder to relate to the experience that most people go through, which is that finding a partner is really challenging. There's a lot of rejection involved. It's just a difficult thing that many of us go through. And I feel like, even though now I've been happily married and with my partner for a long time, I'm really glad that I had those experiences so that I can relate to the average daters experience.
Any dating was that you'd be willing to share for the show to give a sense of the fact that you had challenged it dating early on.
The thing that comes to mind for me is this story that in my book I referred to as burning Man Brian definitely not his real name, not Brian. It really has to do with my anxious attachment. And so I had a trend when I was dating where if somebody rejected me, instead of saying, oh, we're not a fit or that person's not interested in me, I would say, oh, well, if they rejected me, they must be better than me, and I should try to convince them to be with me. So when I met this person at Burning Man and we had this pretty epic love affair, and then I came back and I was like, Okay, well, now we're both back in San Francisco. Of course, we're just going to start dating because we had so much fun at Burning Man, and he was not interested in that at all. And so instead of just understanding that not only was he not interested, but also not really a good fit for real life, I set out on this goal to convince him to be with me. And so the more he pulled away with his avoidant attachment style, the more I pursued him. And that was really my definition of love. And I just remember sitting on my friend's couch, crying, why won't he be with me? Why is he rejecting me? Why am I not good enough? And really trying to apply all these lessons from other aspects of my life, like getting my dream job or getting the apartment I wanted, And you just can't do that with love. It's not the kind of thing where more effort always tell someone Okay, well then I should be with you. And so I was lucky enough to about a year later, find my now husband, Scott, who coincidentally worked in your lab when he was in college. But yes, really learning the lessons of what a secure partner looks like and understanding that a lot of the traits that this Burning man Brian guy had were red flags, but instead I was just like, how can I convince him to be with me?
It's always your this wonderful example, because I think when we see people who are experts on relationship were giving lots of relationship advice, you might assume that they were kind of born with those instincts. But you've argued that that's really not the case, that this is something we can learn.
Absolutely, that's a big part of my work is this idea that we're born knowing how to love but not how to date, and that dating is really challenging. But the good news is it's a skill and you can learn it. And so dating as we know it pre apps really was invented around eighteen nineties, so this was really when women started working outside of the house and meeting people on their own. So before that, marriages really came about through a matchmaker or through you know, my dad and your dad decided that we live next door to each other, we should combine our parcels of land, or my dad gave your dad twelve camels for your hand in marriage, and things like that. And so nowadays, in the days of dating apps and really the individualistic culture that we're in, it's a huge burden on the person to figure out who they should be with. And so when people feel like, you know, Logan, this is probably weird to say, but I just wish I had an arranged marriage. I feel like my mom or someone else could decide better than me. I don't think that that's crazy at all. I think the fact that we as individuals need to make this really hard choice that's going to have a huge impact on our overall health, happiness, and life satisfaction is actually something that we should think about. And for anyone who's having a hard time with dating, I hear you. It is hard, but it's also a skill and you can get better at it.
And one of the insights that you brought, which I love so much, is really resonates with this show, is that one of the kinds of things we can bring in is all the sites from behavioral science talk about how behavioral science can help us date better.
I feel like there's just so much great work in two fields, the fields of relationship science, which is the study of how we love, and the field of behavioral science, the study of how we make decisions. And so through my work, I really like to combine the best insights from both of those fields and use them to help people make better decisions in love. And so if you actually break down getting into a relationship, it's a series of decisions. Am I ready to date? Who should I date? Should we become exclusive, should we move in together? Should we get married? And if you really understand behavioral science and the things that get in our way around making decisions, then you can actually overcome some of the blind spots holding you back from finding love.
And in your book you've so nicely argued that we need to get over these blind spots if we really want to do better when it comes to dating. And one of the blind spots that you've brought up is our kind of urge to relationshop. What is relationshopping and how can we kind of deal with this challenge?
So researchers talk about this idea of relationshipping, which is the process of getting into a romantic relationship. But in the last decade or so, they've noticed this concept of relation shopping, shopping for a partner as if you would shop for a good And why that doesn't really work is because there's this really interesting concept talking about experiential goods versus searchable goods. So searchable goods are things like a new camera or getting a new speaker, something like that, where you can say what size do I want, what price am I willing to pay? How good is the battery life, how quickly can it be here? And you can really break it down into its parts. Experiential goods are things like wine or movies where you and I might experience them completely differently, and it's not about what they are, it's about the feelings that they bring out in us. And so it's really important when people are dating to understand that people are experiential goods, they're not searchable goods. And so when people come into my dating coaching practice and they say, Okay, I know exactly what I want. I want a skinny five foot six Jewish redhead, I'm like, no, you're not buying a pair of headphones. You're searching for a life partner. And so it's much less about those resume traits. It's much less about what you just see if you know someone two dimensionally, and much more about the experience of being with them and what side of you they bring out.
And I imagine that this kind of bias can get even more tripped up in the days of kind of dating apps and social media. You talk about how relationshopping can maybe get worse, or how it's even more of a challenge that we need to pay attention to if we're on apps like this.
So for a long time, I've noticed this idea of people on social media really having this feeling of compare and despair. So we all know that on Instagram people post the highlight reels of their life. Look at my child and her adorable Halloween costume, even though she was shrieking before and afterwards. Or look at this amazing sunset walk on the beach of my vacation. Meanwhile, you and your boyfriend are about to break up. And so I think for many people there's a feeling of I'm not good enough. Everyone else has found love except me, and Instagram gives them that feeling. But I've also seen something in the last two years crop up on TikTok, which is this idea of date entertainment. So people go on these dates and they cannot wait to get home to say, ladies and gentlemen, I had the worst possible date. You'll never guess he showed up twenty minutes late. He smelled like this. He ordered all this food, then I had to pay for it, And so there's a feeling of I want to go viral. One of the easiest ways to go viral is to share a really negative story. And so what I'm often dealing with is singles who are so negative on dating because the content that they're consuming on TikTok is really telling them there's no one out there and dating sucks.
And you could so see why this is a problem, right, because if your expectations are like, oh, this is going to go terrible, I imagine this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when you actually go on a date, right, is that you kind of change all your priors about how bad people are, So you might the normal negativity bias we bring to everything might be getting even worse when you're going dates.
Yeah, I feel like a couple things could be happening, definitely, the negativity bias. Then there's also a lot of people who are just not dating at all. And so this is something that I've noticed even in the last few months, is this idea of I've quit dating, and that's just not a term that I really heard before this summer. So it used to be like, oh, you know, I'm focusing on my graduate degree or I'm moving, so I'm gonna like be more into dating when I get there. But now it's this binarya of I'm dating or I've quit dating. And I think that there's something harmful about that, where people really are having an identity as someone who's not dating instead of I'm someone who's open to connections even though maybe it's not their priority right now.
And so another bias that you've talked about is what you've referred to as the Monet effect.
What's the Monee effect?
So the Monee effect is something that I named because I love the movie Clueless. And in the movie Clueless, who doesn't really yes, Oh it's amazing. In the movie Clueless, there's the popular girl named Cher, and Ty, who's the new girl, says, Hey, what do you think about our class made Amber? And Cher says, Oh, she's a full on Monet. It's like a painting. From far away, it's okay, but up close it's a big old mess. And so she's of course referring to the Impressionist painter Monet. And what happens is that when our brains lack information, they fill in the information in a positive way, hoping for a great outcome. And so this actually makes people seem more desirable than they are. So if somebody on Hinge says I love music, then in your brain you fill in, oh, I bet they must love the same music as me. And this is especially a problem when people pen pal talk to somebody on hinge for so long without meeting up with them, because even if when they meet up that person is fantastic, they're not going to match the fantasy of them that they created in their head. And so the point is to understand when you have less information, you fill in the gaps in an overly positive way. This creates a fantasy, and then it ultimately leads to disappointment that could have been avoided if you just met the person or talk to them on the phone sooner.
It's time for a quick break. But when we return, logan will.
Help us figure out how to avoid those problematic dating types, the romanticizer, the maximizer, or even the dreaded undatable. The happiness lab will be right back to date. Like a scientist, you got to start by being realistic, as that famous Bell curve might suggest, even in love, most things tend to be in the middle, and that means there probably isn't just one soule me for you on a planet of billions of people. Likewise, it's unlikely that you are the most awkward and unlovable person in existence. Dating expert logan Uri says a lot of people still fall for these false ideas, so much so that she uses a wee bit of adult language when she talks about it.
So I've categorized people into the three dating tendencies, and if people are interested, they can take the quiz on my website. And what they all have in common is unrealistic expectation. So first one the romanticizer. They have unrealistic expectations of relationships. So if you're listening and you're the kind of person who says things like there's one person out there for everyone, I'm single because I just haven't met my soulmate yet, I really want the happily ever after, well guess what you might be a romanticizer. And the ideas behind romanticizers come from a lot of different places in pop culture. They come from Disney movies, they come from rom comms, they come from what we just talked about social media and these perfect images that we project. But the issue is with the romanticizer that they don't understand a few things. One is that the person who might make you happiest long term may not come in the physical package that you're expecting, and so if you are only expecting you know, your Prince Eric or your Prince Charming, then you might miss out on a lot of great potential partners. The other thing is that we know from psychologists Renee Franniuk that people fit into either a soulmate mindset or a work it out mindset. The soulmate mindset is the idea that if you find the right person, everything will work out. That's where relationship satisfaction comes from. Instead, the work and out mindset is the belief that relationship success derives from putting in work. And So for the romanticizers out there who say, I don't want to be on a dating app because that's not romantic. I want to go to a farmer's market and reach for the tomato the same time as my soulmate and fall happily ever after, what I like to say to them is that what's romantic is that you met someone and you want to commit to them, and you're going to build a relationship. Who cares how you met. If you're together for fifty years, the day you met is point zero zero five to five percent of the relationship. And so get over that we met story and just focus on meeting someone.
You've also argued that we need to get over what you call the spark. In fact, I think you have a little bit of a strong motto about this. What's the spark and what's the big problem?
Okay, I don't know your rules over there about cursing, so I'll just say my motto around this is this idea of fuck the spark. And this is truly something that when I was writing the book I felt passionate about. Since the book has come out, it's kind of taken on a life of its own, which I feel great about. And fuck the spark is the idea that people will go on a really good first date, the person will be a great fit with them, there's a lot of reasons why they get along. But then this person will say to me, I'm not going to see them again. Logan, I just didn't feel the spark. And so the spark has become this all encompassing word that means instant chemistry, fireworks, butterflies, and people are giving up on a lot of great potential partners because they didn't initially feel that. But the research shows that only eleven percent of couples say that they fell in love at first sight, and actually a lot of couples take time to get together. So the first myth of the spark is that if you don't feel it in the beginning, it's never going to grow. That's absolutely not true. Over time, people like each other more because of the mere exposure of fact, where when something's more familiar, we like it more. So, yes, the spark can grow over time. The second myth of the spark is that if you feel it, it's necessarily a good thing. That is also not true. I can tell you I often meet people where I'm like, wow, did we have a little flirty dynamic there? And then three of my friends say the same thing about that person, and we're like, Oh, it's not us, it's that person in particular. They're very sparky. They give that feeling to many people, and sometimes it can actually be a sign of something negative. It can be a sign of somebody avoidant who makes you feel excited because they keep pulling away and you don't know how they feel about you, and that actually causes anxiety that you misinterpret as butterflies. It can also be a sign of narcissism or some negative behavior. The third myth of the spark is that if you have a spark in the beginning, the relationship is viable. That's also not true. Many unhappily married or now divorced couples once started with the spark. So it's enough to get you into a relationship, but not enough to keep you there. And that's really why I promote this idea of fuck the spark, go after the slow burn. And I feel like I married a slow burn myself. Slow burn is someone who may not be the sparkist. They may not be the person that shines on every first date or is the center of attention at a party, but they're a deeply good person. They're reliable, they would be an incredible life partner. And so I really try to train people to, yes, the spark is fun, enjoy it, it's real, but don't cement your whole life and your long term relationship about it, and really give these slow burn people a chance.
You argue that there's a second tendency we can fall into in that some people themselves often fall into, which is being a maximizer.
What's a maximizer.
Yes, So the second of the three dating tendencies is the maximizer. And living in Silicon Valley and having a lot of clients who are in the New York area, I feel like I coach a ton of maximizers. And so the story with the maximizer is that they have unrealistic expectations of their partner, and they're the kind of person who says, I can research my way into finding the perfect person. And so for them, if they want to find a really good vacuum, they're going to read fifty reviews on it and then feel like, yep, I analyze all of this, I can find the perfect vacuum. And then they think that they can do that with dating. But it's impossible in dating to date every possible person. And as we talked about with searchable versus experiential goods, it's just not the same thing. And so maximizers really struggle because they feel like, Okay, I've dated some great people. Now I just want to combine the best traits of all of them and find that person. And they always feel like I need to keep searching because then I'll find somebody else out there. And what ends up happening is that a lot of maximizers keep rejecting people or not accepting someone who might be great, and then at a certain age they look back and they say, Wow, I wish that I had married one of the great people I had met before.
So what's the solution to not kind of falling prey to maximizing. Is there another good strategy we should use?
Yes, So there's an excellent framework by the cognitive psychologist Herbert Simon who talks about maximizers and satisficers. And so we just talked about maximizers, but a satisficer, which is the portmanteau of satisfy and suffice. They have standard, but they're not overly concerned about finding something else out there. And so when I say to satisfies to people, they often hear a different s word, which is settle, and they get really defensive about this loogan. Everyone else found their love story. Why do you want me to settle? But satisficing is not about settling. It's about having a standard, which can be very high, and then when you meet someone who satisfies that standard, then you say, great, I'm going to build a relationship with them. I'm going to build a life with them instead of doing what maximizers do, which is fine, that amazing person, and then say, wow, well if they exist, what else might exist. And what people get wrong is that they think maximizers make better decisions, but that's not what we've found. We found that maximizers make good decisions and then feel bad about them. Satisfiers also make good decisions, but then they feel good about them, and so what's more important being right or being happy?
It also seems like this act of feeling good about your decision means you're going to do the work all long term relationships are going to need right where you're kind of investing in your partner a little bit more over time, you know, kind of working it through. If you're a maximizer and you quickly go to like, oh, I must have made the wrong decision because there's this perfect person out there, so if you mess up in this tiny way, you must not be that person. It seems like ultimately, satisfiers are doing something that really helps them invest in the relationship long term too.
Absolutely, And I think, you know, since doing the research for my book and learning about this, I've really tried to become a satisfy store in a lot more aspects of my life. So, for example, when I needed to buy a car during the pandemic, I understood that I wanted something used, I wanted a hybrid. I had a certain price in mind, and I went to two dealerships and when I found the car that I wanted, I just bought it and I felt great about it. Ever since, I think that there's a world where I had maximized that decision and I had spent much longer researching and either wound up with the same car or a different car, which I felt worse about. And so I truly think that this is a huge thing that people can do to feel happier in their lives, is to understand that you can set standards and satisfy them. You don't need to always wonder what else is out there, because that's the nagging question in your head that actually robs the joy from your life.
And so that's the problem of being too much of a maximizer. A final issue that you've brought up, which actually is one that I resonated with a lot when I think back to my old dating life. Is kind of a belief that we have in ourselves that can leave us astray. It's this idea that we are undatable. And you had a really interesting incident recently with a newsletter where you saw just how prevalent this bias was.
Tell me about it.
Yes. So the third tendency that I've identified is called the hesitator, and this is someone who has unrealistic expectations of themselves. So if you're listening and you're not even dating at all, and you're single and you might want to be in a relationship, then you are a hesitator. And so a hesitator is someone who feels like, I'm just not ready to be out there. I'll be ready when I lose ten pounds, when I have a more impressive job, when I clean up my apartment. There's always a future state where you will be lovable, not lovable right now. And what's so sad is that hesitators really miss out on a few things. They underestimate the opportunity cost of not dating, which is you don't get better at dating and you don't figure out who you want to be with.
And you also had an incident recently where I think you saw how prevalent this one type of this hesitator strategy is.
Yes. So I was working with a coaching client and they mentioned this idea of feeling undtable. They felt like there was something fundamentally wrong with them that meant that they weren't lovable and that they couldn't go out there and date because somebody would reject them. And it really stuck with me. So I wrote to my weekly newsletter and I said, do you feel like you're undtable? Right back to me with some of the reasons why you might feel this way, And out of every newsletter that I've ever sin so over two hundred and fifty newsletters, this one got the most responses because people just felt so seen by it, and they wrote back and they said things like, I'm undtable because I have an STI I'm undtable because I've never been in a romantic relationship before, because I've been in too many romantic relationships. I'm undatable because I have chronic health issues. I'm undtable because I had cancer in my twenties and I don't know how to talk about it, and just so many emails coming from a really deep place where people felt like there was something fundamentally wrong with them that meant that no one would ever love them. And then I put together some future newsletters that talked about how actually it's our vulnerability, it's our flaws that make us feel human and that other people can relate to. And I told the story of a good friend of mine who is a former alcoholic, and he used to not date because he didn't want to have to talk about why he was ordering juice instead of a drink, and he was really afraid of it. But at a certain point he just said, you know what, I'm actually really proud of my sobriety and I'm just going to talk about it from a place of strength. And so he really owned his narrative of Hey, I used to struggle with this, here's when I hit rock bottom. Now I actually have taken control of my life. I've been sober for seven years. And sometimes he would talk about it on dates and girls didn't like it. But at a certain point he talked to someone and she was like, oh, I also have a bunch of issues. You have baggage I have baggage. Our baggage matches and it made her much more comfortable. And now they are happily together. They own a house, they have a dog, they have two kids, and it really is the story of somebody who was willing to be vulnerable to share the thing that they thought made them undateable, and that actually made them easier to connect with and it led to an amazing relationship.
It reminds me of the psychological bias known as the beautiful mess effect, right that we think that our vulnerabilities are going to be awkward, everybody can see them as red flags or make us undatable, But in fact our messes are in some sense beautiful to other people like and it winds up in some weird way making us more attractive rather than less.
I haven't heard that term before, but I really like it because I feel like Brene Brown has been putting out this message for a long time. Your vulnerability is what attracts people to you. The thing that makes you think you're unlovable is actually making you very lovable. Who doesn't love a beautiful mess?
A beautiful mess can make a beautiful partner. But when we get back from the break Logan will share her cautionary tale of how pursuing a guy based on his looks and vibe almost caused her to miss out on mister Wright. The Happiness Lab will return in a moment. Dating expert logan URI's book is called How to Not Die Alone, and that sums up the focus of her work. She wants us to find not just a casual hookup, but a committed relationship. The problem is that we often confuse a great one night stand for the perfect life partner. It's an error that Logan herself experienced firsthand.
Okay, yes, let's talk about birdingman Bryan. And so he really was this prom date archetype. And what is a prom date. It's somebody who you're attracted to, somebody who's fun, somebody who you want to dance the night with, take pictures with, maybe you know, kiss at the end of the night. And so he really fulfilled that for me where I was very attracted to him. Was I thinking about what he would be like as a life partner. No, a life partner is the kind of person who's reliable. You can make hard decisions with them. You know that they will pick up your kid from the dentist and you're nodding to get a text five minutes before saying, oh, I totally forgot, can you do it? And So what I found is that when you're younger and you have crushes, it's totally fine to be interested in the prom date. I think that for the early years of our dating history, that's absolutely fine. But the mistake that people make is that they don't switch to the life partner mentality soon enough. And so that's like when I'm talking to women who are in their early forties and they're talking about dating a guy who lives in a basement with no windows and isn't ready for kids yet, I'm just like, well, you want kids, so I think you really need to start finding somebody who shares those values.
But you found a way to shift out of that with your current husband, Scott, my former research assistant. So, how is Scott like a better life partner? How did you get you away from sort of prom date model.
Yeah? So I really love the story that I have with Scott because I feel like it's something that can help be inspirational to other people because it's not the traditional love story where we just met day one, love at first sight and then have been happily ever after ever since. So we actually first met in college many years ago, and I just remember this because he added me on Facebook at the time, which of course was probably a little bit of flirtation. But I don't remember meeting him in college after that. And then seven years later, we were both working at Google and we had lunch together and we kind of hit it off, but nothing came out of it. And I even saw him on Tinder that summer and I swiped left because I was like, ah, he looks like a bro wearing a backwards hat. I just wasn't interested at all. But then I wanted to learn this statistical programming language R, which I'm sure you and your students use all the time. And Scott had just dropped out of a PhD program where he used R all the time, so he started tutoring me in R. So this was all happening while I was pursuing burning Man Bryant, and so I just wrote Scott off. I was like, he doesn't seem to like to travel, he's dismissive of people who go to Bernie Man. And I was really focused on this, you know, prom date crush of Bernie Man Brian. But I ended up seeing a dating coach myself, and that's something that was so critical for me because I was just sitting there saying, why am I repeating the same habits over and over again? Why am I chasing these guys who don't want me? And through that exercise, we really thought about how I wanted my future partner to make me feel, and it was things like appreciate it, desired, smart, funny and Bernieman Brian didn't make me feel any of those things. He made me feel insecure, self conscious, anxious, not good enough. But I reflected on the fact that this guy at work that was teaching me are did make me feel those things, and so it was seeing things through a new light, understanding actually how great relationships make you feel, which was different from what I'd thought it was before. That really helped me shift my attention to this guy at work, kind of convince him to ask me on a date, and then the rest is history.
Yay yay.
And that was in part because you are using relationship science to figure out what really mattered. Right in the case of Scott, you were kind of paying attention to the stuff that matters more But what I want to focus on now is like, what are some strategies that our listeners can use if they want to start dating in a happier, more evidence based way. Starting with this idea that no matter how you meet the person in the beginning, you should really get together in real life.
Why is that so important?
Yes, So we talked with this idea of pen paling and how people spend way too long talking before they meet up in person and they think, oh, well, I need to find out all this information and see if we have chemistry over text, and that's just misinformed. At Hinge, we actually found that the sweet spot is transitioning from the app to the date after three days, and so really you don't need a ton of information before you talk on the phone or do a FaceTime, and instead it's about meeting up in person and seeing what the chemistry is so that you avoid that monet effect of assuming all these qualities about the person that aren't there and then ultimately being disappointed.
And so I see why that could be really valuable. But my guess this is that one of the reasons people are pen paling is that like.
They're a little scared, right, there's something like friction.
About getting together in real life, and so any great tips for that first in real life date. Maybe what are some conversation tips that you might share.
Sure, So one of the conversation tips that I'm a big fan of is this idea of in mediaures, which is a Latin term that really means when you're watching a play and it starts in the middle of the action. And so far too often on first dates people are just in the shallow end of the pool. They're doing all the small talk, Oh, how did you get here, where do you live, when did you move to the city, what did you study in school? How many siblings you have? Stuff that is so boring that you've probably said a million times, and you're not really having an experience with somebody. So I love the idea of walking into a date and saying, I was listening to the most interesting episode of the Happiness Lab on my way here, and you'll never guess about this term that I learned about our psychological immune system. And then the person's like, okay, yeah, let's talk about that interesting thing. You can always backtrack later and ask about school and siblings and things like that, but just understanding that you're going to have such a better time if you have a real conversation about real things, and that the small talk can just lead to burnout because you feel like you're just repeating yourself over and over again. So that's one tip, is to start in the middle of things. And then another mistake that I see people making on first dates is they're so focused on being interesting that they talk a lot about themselves. But it's much more important to be interested, and so often the best conversationalists are the people who really just ask questions because they make the other person feel so interesting, and then that person likes being around them.
You've also described one technique we can use to do that better, what you call shift and support.
What do you mean?
So a lot of times when people are having a conversation and they mean well, somebody mentions something like, oh, I'm going to Lake Tahoe this summer, and then the person wants to add on to that and they say, oh, I've been to Lake Tahoe. Here's what happened on my trip, And so they feel like they're contributing to the conversation, but with they're really doing is shifting the focus back to themselves. What actually makes people feel really good is when you give a support response where you help them go deeper. So you say, wow, how did you choose like Tahoe? Have you ever been there before? What are you most excited about it? And that's really what a great journalist does, a great interviewer, a great conversationalist is they're asking questions that help you go deeper into your life experience, and that ends up making you feel really heard and seen and important, and that helps separate a great conversationalist from the rest.
And so that was tip number one. We need to get together in real life. We need to go deeper when we do get together in real life. Your tip number two is that we need to shift our dating mindset from the evaluative to the experiential.
So often when I either hear from my clients about their dates, or even just being next to a couple on a first date in a restaurant or a coffee shop, you can just really tell that people are in this evaluative mindset, almost as if they are interviewing somebody for a job or they themselves are on a job interview. So the evaluative mind set is that you have a mental checklist in your head where you say things like are they good enough for me? Do they have a good enough job? Do they seem to like their family enough? And it's almost like they're going through checking all these boxes seeing if that person fulfills their open role, their job description. Instead, I really want people to shift to the experiential mindset, where you're present in the moment, where you're really paying attention to how this person makes you feel, what side of you they bring out, because it doesn't really matter what the person is like on paper. There are people out there that have the perfect resume, the perfect biodata, but when you're with them, you don't feel good around them. And that's something that I teach my clients all the time is that I know you are really excited about that girl, but when you've gone out with her, every time, you come home feeling worse about yourself. So who cares that she had the perfect profile? Who cares that you always thought you would marry a lawyer? This girl isn't it? And that actually leads to my next tip, which is about the post state eight. So the post eight eight is a series of questions that I came up with for my client who is really struggling with this where she just could not let go of this mindset of a valuative dating. And so she had these a questions which I can tell you, and she would save them on her phone and on the uber. During her walk home from the date, she had to ask herself these questions, and the questions are things like what side of me did they bring out? How did my body feel during the date? Stiff, relax, or something in between. Do I feel more energized or de energized than I did before the date? Is there something about them that I'm curious about? Did they make me laugh? Did I feel heard? Did I feel attractive in their presence? And did I feel captivated, bored or something in between? And the research behind this is the same reason why gratitude journals work. So we use gratitude journals because if you know at the end of the day you have to write down three things that you feel grateful for, throughout the day, you're looking for those things and that's how the post date eight works as well. If you have to answer after the date, did they make me laugh? Did I feel heard? You're going to pay attention to that during the date and so this really is a technique that my clients use to really focus on their experience of being with the person, and that helps them a say no faster to dates that don't make them feel good about themselves, but also be say yes to those slow burn people where they think, yes, it wasn't the sparkiest person, but actually did feel really attractive in their presence. It actually brought out a very intellectual side of me that I love to explore, and so train your brain to look for the stuff that matters.
And in a way, this is like part of a broader idea, which is like we should sort of like treat ourselves like a scientist on a date rather than kind of like a lawyer across examiner. We're kind of really trying to pay attention to the data as we go through.
Yes, I've never put that thought together, but I do often like to say date like a scientist. And the reason why I'm so passionate about that is because what scientists do, of course, is they have a hypothesis and they test it and they're willing to be proven wrong. Far too often in dating, people have a hypothesis and they assume it's correct, and they never test it. So I've literally worked with people who say I need someone who has a graduate degree, but when I really talk to them, it's more that they need somebody who's intellectually curious versus having this specific form of an advanced degree. So then the way to test it is, can you go out with this guy who you know didn't even graduate college but actually is super smart, is self taught? Is reading a book a week? And does that give you the same feeling? And so I do that with people with height too, and they assume I need a really tall person or I need someone with this background. And so I love the idea of dating like a scientist because it's really a way of saying, my so called type may not be the person who makes me happiest long term, and it's a way to figure that out.
And so tip number four is one that I really like and resonates with other things we've talked about in the Happiness Lab, which is that to have a better, happier date, you need to add a bit more play.
Why is play so important for happier dates?
Yes, I love this one too, because I would say I'm at a point in my life now being a new mom where I am getting to play a lot more, and I realized that it's just the highlight of my day. It's so cheesy and cliche, but when I feel stressed, just giving my daughter a bath and just really being present in the moment and being silly with her, that is so much more fun, and that is such a break from the rest of my very work oriented daily life. And so when people are on a date and they can bring a sense of play, it's really a sense of we're in a small world and we're creating something together. We're having a novel experience. We're showing vulnerable sides of ourselves. So if you're listening and you're somebody out there who struggles because you come across as too serious, how can you actually design a date that really brings out your silly or playful side. So if you're not a good ice skater, maybe you should be going ice skating right now and you can fall and make fun of yourself and it'll help emphasize that side of yourself. Or even I had somebody who I interviewed for my book who liked to go on dates where they ate dumplings and they would have soy sauce, stripping from and there was just something about taking yourself less seriously that really allowed two people to have fun, to connect, and to really create those novel experiences that are memorable and that we're all seeking.
It also seems like this fits with your advice that we heard before the break about being a little bit more vulnerable, right if you get the soy sauce on your face, or you're flubbing, you know, your ice skating challenge, Like these are the kinds of things that could actually endear people to you rather than kind of make people question you.
Absolutely. I think that so many people out there, and I'm sure some part of me feels this way too, is like, the world will like me more if I seem perfect. The world will like me more if I weigh this certain amount that's conventionally attractive, if I always look perfectly put together, if I have this really fancy job title, and we just think that, oh, if we have this sense of achievement, if we really play into conventional levels of success, then people will like us. But actually, what most people like is somebody who makes them feel comfortable in their own skin, somebody who doesn't make them feel worse in comparison, and so really, how how can you foster that sense of this is who I am, warts and all, and I accept myself and I'm also willing to accept you, because at the end of the day, what is a relationship other than deciding I accept you for who you are, good and bad.
And that is a nice transition to tip number five, which is that you might think you know what you want, but the research kind of shows that you're wrong, and therefore we might need to get a little bit better about our permissible pet peeves. What do you mean by permissible pet peeves?
I really started thinking about this a few years ago when I met this woman who was like, Logan, I'm thirty six, I'm ready to find love. I'll go out with anyone who you recommend, unless he's a mouth breather. And I was like, what, what is even mouth breathing? And so I figured out what that was, but I just couldn't believe that she had decided that this idea of somebody who breathed through their mouth instead of their nose was a deal breaker, a reason why she definitely couldn't be with someone. And so that really led me to this idea of permissible pet peeves. So yes, a lot of us have pet peeves, something that annoys us, perhaps more than it annoys the average person. But of course it's not a fundamental incompatibility that means that she shouldn't be with this person long term. So she is confusing a permissible pet peeve for a deal breaker. And this has actually been pretty big in pop culture in the last year or so. People talk about this idea of the ick. So the ick is that you are on a date with someone, you're really into them, maybe you're thinking about going home with them, and then all of a sudden they go to pay for the bill and you hear shh, and that sound is the sound of a velcrow wallet opening up, and the person decides that velcrow wallet in the pocket of a thirty five year old man gives you the ick, and now you're going to run away. And I know these stories are funny and comedians are you know, getting a lot of sets out of this, but it's ridiculous. Who cares if somebody as a velcro wallet. Who cares if somebody wears socks with sandals. There's no way that that means that you can't be in a great long term relationship. We just know that those things are not correlated with long term relationship and success. So if you are somebody out there who has a lot of things like this, and I encourage you to make a list of all of your quote unquote deal breakers, the reason why you can't be with someone, and to move as many of them as possible into the permissible pet peeves category. And so if you have asthma and someone smokes, that's a real deal breaker. If you are Jewish and your partner is Christian and you both want to raise kids in your own religion, then yes, that's probably a deal breaker. But many of the things, including mouth breathing, are not deal breakers.
And this gets to something else you've talked about, which is that we have to get over this idea of finding the type right that we might just be wrong about the kinds of things that really matter.
Yeah, so that really goes back to my idea of date like a scientist. So so many people think I know exactly what I want, I just need to find them. That's a very common refrain with people that I work with. And so the problem there is they've decided, oh, well, I know my type and I need to find that person. And what they don't understand is that they've actually dated that type many times and it has worked out, and so maybe they're so called type is not actually the best fit for them long term. And so a lot of the work that I did myself that I do with my clients is helping them date like a scientist and see what type of person does make them happiest long term. So if you are the life of the party person and you think you are drawn to that too, well, guess what, it hasn't worked out for you so far. Maybe actually need someone who's a bit more of a homebody because they balance you out, they ground you, and they're not competing with you for space. And so often when people have been struggling with love for a while, I really like to investigate their so called type and encourage them to date like a scientist and see if there's another type that ends up making them happier long term.
It also seems to me that people have these like kind of ideas of deal breakers that like, when you really kind of look at them carefully, maybe seem like shallow. Like I know on the internet right now, there's a lot of like no short guys kind of vibe and like, that's just the kind of thing that you're talking about. When it comes to this stuff that we might want to see, is this really a deal breaker?
Might be more permissible than we think.
Yeah, so okay, going back to pet peeves, that is one of my pet peeves is when people are way too focused on height. And I can tell you as someone who is married to a short king, I highly recommend it. And what happens is that with dating apps you can set filters, for example height, So many women, when they're setting up their hinge profile, they just think, oh height, Yeah, it'd be great to be married to someone who's tall, So I'll set my height filter at six feet or higher. But what they don't understand is that in the United States only fourteen percent of men are six foot or higher, and so they are automatically filtering out eighty six percent of potential matches. Then they meet me at a party and they hold up their phone and they say, logan, where is he? Where's my husband? And it's like, yeah, well he's not even showing up because you filtered him out. So I think height is a great example of how people make superficial initial choices, and then they don't understand that they're actually preventing themselves from meeting great people. Whereas if that same woman were at a bar sitting across from a guy and had a fantastic conversation and then he stood up and he was fined nine, I don't think that she would be running for the hills. I think that she would understand that we, as we said, are experiential goods and if that guy made her feel good, who cares what the height is on his driver's license.
And so you've been coaching so many people with dating, do you have those strong sense that kind of using these behavioral science strategies really helps people.
Yes, absolutely, so I think this idea of dating blind spots is really powerful. So we all have things that we think are holding us back, but it's possible that the things that are actually holding us back are things that we don't have access to at all. And so when I first work with a client, we spend the first session doing a audit of their relationship history, and we really even start at middle school or high school. So were you a late bloomer, were you a serial monogamous? Were you a South Asian man at a majority white school. How did all these stories really add up to how you feel about yourself and how you've dated? And so what I'm looking for in these conversations is patterns that these people keep making. So, for example, somebody who ignores red flags, why are they ignoring those red flags? What are they getting out of those relationships that are not a good fit? And what I really try to do is not give them the advice that all their friends give them, which is you're perfect. There's just nobody great out there like Leve. Will happen to you when it happens. And I actually like to say to them, Hey, you're making a series of strategic errors. I can help you identify what they are. I can give you a plan for how to overcome them. I can give you accountability so that you actually show up and make these changes, and then I'm going to celebrate your successes with you.
I love that Logan is working so hard to help us overturn our relationship myths, and that she's bringing science to.
Our search for love.
We've covered a lot of ground, so let's quickly recap her top tips. Tip Number one, meet up in person if you've matched with a person on an app, try to get on a date as soon as you can, and on that date, ditch the small talk and get to know each other more deeply. Tip number two is to stop confusing a first date with a job interview. Don't rate yourspective partner's salary, career opportunities, and life goals. Those things aren't the important metrics you think. The third tip is what Logan calls the post day eight. Ask yourself her eight questions about how a date made you feel. If you're feeling relaxed and energized, that person's probably a keeper. Tip number four is to have fun and be goofy. You show off your best self when you're a little lighthearted and silly. And the final tip is to park those pet peeves. Don't write off a romantic partner just because they slurp their soup or laugh too loudly at the movies. Those are just insignificant poptholes and what could be a long, long road of lifetime love. As Valentine's Day draws closer, we'll be continuing are how to advice on relationships and will be joined by two psychologists who look for scientific clues to love In some unlikely research material, the plots of romcom movies.
That's all.
Next time on the Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos,
