Valentine’s Day has a way of pressuring couples into impersonal, default choices: an overpriced (and crowded) dinner, a last-minute card from Walgreens, a box of chocolates grabbed on the way home. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that, but if you want the day to actually mean something, it helps to be a little more intentional.

Over the years, we’ve published a wide range of posts on dating, gift-giving, and building strong relationships. Below, we’ve rounded up some of our best Valentine’s-related and adjacent guides, from creative date ideas and thoughtful gifts to deeper relationship check-ins. With a little bit of forethought, you can break through the shallow, commercial nature of the holiday and plan a day (or even just a conversation) that feels personal, memorable, and genuinely worthwhile.

Date Ideas

Going out to a nice restaurant is standard protocol for a Valentine’s Day date, but it isn’t very original and dining out on such a busy night isn’t always that enjoyable, anyway. Why not mix it up by planning an out-of-the-box date — a novel activity out on the town or in the intimate atmosphere of your own home? Whatever you end up doing, make sure you dress nicer than usual to make the occasion feel special!

• Cheap Date Ideas She’ll Actually Love
• 15 Creative Date Ideas
• At-Home Date Night Ideas
• How to Create the Ultimate At-Home Fondue Date
• Take Her Around the World for Valentine’s Day . . . Without Leaving the Kitchen
• The Perfect Valentine’s Day Menu 
• A Man’s Guide to Smart Casual Dress

Gifts & Gestures

While a woman will often say she doesn’t want anything for Valentine’s Day, what she often means is that she doesn’t need anything expensive and elaborate. But, she’s probably still hoping for a love note and/or flowers at the least. You can’t go wrong with giving her both, and we’ve got some tips for making these gestures more meaningful below. If you want to also give a gift, that will likely be appreciated, too. Extra points if it’s homemade.

• How to Write a Love Letter
• How to Give Flowers Like a Victorian Gentleman
• 7 Romantic, Non-Lame DIY Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas
• How to Give a Gift to a Woman
• Huckberry’s “Gifts for Her” shop 

Relationship Check-In

The approach of Valentine’s Day is a good time to assess the status of your relationship. Are there things you can do to improve it? Should you even still be dating this person?

• How Do You Know When She’s the One?
• Podcast: How to Keep a Happy Relationship Happy
• The Yearly Marriage Checkup
• 10 Ways to Be a Better Husband Today
• Look Before You Leap: Questions to Ask to Avoid Falling in Love With the Wrong Person
• Podcast: How to Avoid Falling in Love With the Wrong Person
• 14 Red Flags to Look Out for in a Relationship

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

A few weeks ago, I came across an article about how young people these days are tired of dating apps and want to meet romantic partners in real life. You know — the way people developed relationships in the good old days of the former millennium.  

The only problem? The kids today don’t know how to take part in the dynamic that kickstarts the in-person development of romantic relationships: flirting.

The Death of Real-World Flirting

Several factors have contributed to the lack of flirting ability among young adults.

The biggest one is smartphones. Because Gen Z and Gen Alpha have lived in a world where they could mediate all their communication through a device, many haven’t developed the social skills necessary for adept, in-person flirting. This has resulted in increased social anxiety when striking up conversations with potential romantic interests.

Dating apps have also exacerbated the decline in flirting ability. The nice thing about dating apps is that they guarantee initial, mutual romantic interest. You can only chat with someone on an app if they’ve also expressed interest. It takes the uncertainty and risk out of shooting your shot. When you flirt in real life, you don’t have the same guarantee. The person you approach may or may not be interested, and the only way to find out is by chatting them up and engaging in flirty banter.

COVID lockdowns didn’t help flirting skill development either. When I spoke with Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies and the author of The Five Flirting Styles, he observed: “Post pandemic, there’s a lot of young folks who kind of missed out on some key developmental stages where you fall in love for the first time and interact with the opposite sex. A lot of young adults in their twenties right now, because of the pandemic, missed out on what it felt like to have those experiences.”

A final factor in the demise of flirting is the increased skittishness modern men feel as to what’s appropriate in terms of making romantic overtures towards women and what might come off as creepy or as sexual harassment.

To help young dudes who want to revive flirting and strike up relationships with women in real life, I took a deep dive into the research around this timeless skill. Here’s what I learned.

What Is Flirting?

Researchers define flirting as a mix of verbal and nonverbal behaviors that express attraction and gauge the other person’s receptivity to a romantic relationship. A coy smile, a playful tease, a casual lean forward, a compliment — all are flirtatious signals across cultures.

Here’s an important thing about flirting: it’s usually ambiguous. When you’re interested in a woman, you typically don’t just blurt out: “I think you’re hot and want you to be my girlfriend!” You’d risk immediate rejection from unrequited attraction. It would really weird the gal out. And it would be super ineffective: ambiguity is what makes flirting work and builds attraction; certainty is boring, while uncertainty turns our brains on and makes a situation or a person compelling.

The ambiguity of flirting allows you to show your interest without outright declaring it. It’s a way to test the waters in a low-pressure way. If the other person responds positively (smiles back, laughs, touches your arm), the flirtation can escalate; if not, both can save face by pretending it was just friendly banter.

There’s a thrill in trying to figure out if someone is picking up what you’re laying down. But because the uncertainty inherent to flirting is not just exciting but confusing, young people often want to avoid it. For those used to the security of dating apps, engaging in this dicey dynamic can feel too socially risky.

The 5 Flirting Styles

When we typically think of flirting, we think of it as something extroverted that you do in bars and clubs where you throw out pick-up lines with sexual innuendos.

Jeffrey Hall has found that’s actually just one type of flirting style among many.

Hall has identified five distinct flirting styles that people naturally tend toward. Understanding these styles can help you recognize your own approach and read others’ signals better:

1. Traditional: Follows conventional gender roles where men initiate and women respond. Values courtesy but can lead to missed opportunities.
2. Physical: Openly expresses sexual attraction through body language and touch. Great for quickly establishing chemistry but can come on too strong.
3. Sincere: Creates emotional connections through meaningful conversation. Most effective for starting long-term relationships but can be mistaken for mere friendliness.
4. Playful: Treats flirting as a fun game or confidence boost. Creates excitement but can send mixed signals about serious intent.
5. Polite: Emphasizes courtesy, respect, and subtlety. Comfortable for everyone involved but often so subtle that interest goes unnoticed.

Based on Hall’s research, there’s no best way to flirt. All the different styles can lead to romantic relationships. The best thing to do is to lean into the flirting style that’s most natural for you. Doing so will not only allow you to be more authentic, which is attractive, but help ensure you find someone who’s compatible with you. If you have a sincere flirting style, you’re probably not going to get along with someone who’s a more extroverted, physical flirt. And that’s okay! “I wrote this book [The Five Flirting Styles] to my younger self because I wanted to know that the way that I communicated attraction was okay,” Hall told me. “You don’t have to be some suave, dashing guy to flirt effectively.”

These styles aren’t mutually exclusive. You might be mostly sincere with a dash of playfulness, or mostly polite but become physical once you feel more secure with someone.

If you want to know what your flirting style is, you can take Hall’s flirting inventory here.

Science-Backed Tips to Improve Your Real-World Flirting

Research shows that flirting is a learnable skill. Here are evidence-based tips to help improve your game:

Have fun and keep it light! This is the most important tip. Studies suggest a lighthearted attitude makes flirting more effective because it puts both people at ease. “When you have a mentality of being interested and excited about another person and just having fun with them, it shifts your perception and your behavior,” Hall explains. “Being present for the moment and enjoying the excitement of meeting someone who has romantic potential actually changes your nonverbal behavior. You can become more attractive in the eyes of the other person.”

Make her feel good about herself. Flirting is about expressing attraction, and it feels good to feel attractive! If you approach a flirtatious encounter with the mindset of helping someone feel good about herself, you’ll do well.

Start with basics. Smile and make (non-creepy) eye contact. Studies consistently show these simple signals indicate approachability and interest.

Use humor. Both men and women rate humor as highly effective in sparking attraction. Telling a funny story or offering a little gentle teasing creates rapport. Equally important: laughing at her jokes shows you appreciate her sense of humor.

Be a good social dance partner. Flirting is a social dance. Ask questions and show genuine curiosity. When she asks you a question, answer her and then throw the social ball back to her.

Mind your body language and create light touch when appropriate. Uncross your arms, face the person, and lean in slightly. If the situation allows, brief touches — like a tap on the arm when making a point — can enhance connection.

Show clear intent and follow up. If things are going well, you should segue into making your romantic interest more explicit. Hall’s research has found that “when you make very direct requests like, ‘I enjoyed our time together, I want to see you again, can I get a way to contact you?’ and the other person says yes,” it clearly shows that the flirting between you and the other person was indeed flirting, and not just friendly banter. “It says, ‘I’m interested in you as a person for romantic reasons, not just having a nice conversation.’ Showing clear intent can help you avoid the friend-zone.”

Also, make sure to follow up if there’s mutual attraction. “Lots of young women’s complaints about men’s behavior on flirting is men don’t follow up,” Hall says. While men often think they need to increase their allure by playing it cool and making a woman wait to hear from them, this isn’t the case: “There’s very clear research that being consistently available, showing clear interest repeatedly in a woman when there’s mutual attraction is key to creating a romantic relationship.”

Will a Man Come Off as Creepy If He Tries to Flirt With a Woman in Real Life?

A lot of young men hesitate to flirt in real life because they’re afraid they’ll come off as creepy. Hall says this worry is unfounded:

“If you’re worried about coming off as creepy, then you’re probably not the creep. Creeps don’t think that they’re being creepy. If you’re concerned about whether you’re coming on too strong, that’s okay. It means that you’re actually aware that how you treat another person matters. You’ll be fine.”

Just observe how your overtures are received, reading a woman’s signals as to whether your advances are welcome or not, and proceed accordingly.

How to Tell if a Woman Is Flirting With You

Flirting is a social dance, but how do you know if someone wants to flirt with you? It’s hard! Research found that men correctly spotted flirting only 36% of the time.

Signs a woman might be flirting with you include: frequent smiling and laughing (especially at your jokes), maintaining eye contact or making coy glances, finding reasons to be physically close or lightly touching you, playful teasing, asking personal questions, and offering compliments.

The key is looking for multiple signals appearing together over and over again. One smile doesn’t mean much, but if someone is laughing, leaning in, making eye contact, AND asking about your weekend plans — that’s strong evidence of flirting.

Make sure to check out our detailed article on how to tell if a woman is interested in you.

Conclusion

If you’re a young dude wanting to meet women out in the real world, you’ll need to up your flirting game.

As Hall advises, “This is truly some of the best stuff you’re ever gonna do in life. So prioritize it — even when you’re like, ‘I could go out to this party and there’s new people and it could be uncomfortable.’ Go to the party anyway. Everyone feels uncomfortable when they’re talking to new people. Do it anyway. The stakes aren’t nearly as high as you’ve imagined them to be. And it’s fun!”

So get out there and practice. Strike up conversations at coffee shops, bookstores, or social events. Start small with a simple smile and hello and see where it goes from there. Keep your flirting light and fun and don’t worry about the outcome. By doing so, you’ll paradoxically find that romantic success naturally follows.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Your friends saw the red flags. Your family voiced their concerns. But you were so caught up in the excitement of new love that you missed all the warning signs. Now you’re stuck in a relationship that’s making you absolutely miserable.

Why does this happen? According to researchers at University College London, “feelings of love lead to a suppression of activity in the areas of the brain controlling critical thought.” In other words, love can not only make you blind, but stupid.

So, how can you keep your brain switched on while dating and dodge potential bullets in the realm of romance? According to relationship expert Dr. John Van Epp, author of How to Avoid Falling in Love With a Jerk, it’s about using both your head and your heart by taking the time to understand your partner’s F.A.C.E.S.

F.A.C.E.S. — The 5 Key Areas You Should Know About Someone Before Making Romantic Commitments

Over decades of clinical experience working with couples as well as decades of research, Van Epp found that there are five areas — represented by the acronym F.A.C.E.S. — that a couple should know about each other before making romantic commitments: 1) family dynamics and background, 2) attitudes and action of a mature conscience, 3) compatibility potential, 4) examples of previous friendship or relationship patterns, and 5) skills for relationships. These five areas can give you an idea of the individual and relational character of the person you’re dating to help you decide whether you want to get more involved with them or not.

Below, we offer some questions, including ones recommended by Van Epp, that can help you more objectively view what your significant other is like in these key areas, spot potential red flags, and assess your compatibility.

(F)amily Dynamics and Background

Family experiences strongly influence our attitudes and behaviors in romantic relationships. Gender role expectations, communication patterns, and approaches for dealing with conflict or stress are all shaped by the experiences we had in our families of origin. So in the beginning of a relationship, ask someone about her family. As it gets more serious, meet her parents and other family members and observe the dynamics that exist between them.

Just because a dynamic exists in her family, doesn’t mean she’s bound to repeat it; while patterns do tend to carry over from generation to generation, sometimes the apple does, in fact, fall very far from the tree. But seeing a dynamic in her family may help you recognize it in her behavior and can simply prompt revealing conversations as to what she wants out of life and how she imagines her future family.

 As you’re figuring out the dynamics that exist in someone’s family, explore questions like:

• What’s the state of her parents’ marriage? Even if they’re still married, are they happily married?
• Did both her parents work, or did one stay home with the kids?
• What was her parents’ parenting style?
• How did her parents split household tasks and childcare responsibilities?
• How were finances handled between her parents?
• What was her relationship like with her father? Her mother?
• Is her family affectionate or more stand-off-ish?
• If she has siblings, does she get along with them? Does she still stay in touch with them? Why or why not?
• Was her extended family highly involved in her life?
• What family traditions were important in her family growing up? Does she want to continue them?
• Has there been any family cut-offs or estrangements?
• What was the mood or atmosphere of her home growing up?
• Were there any addictions in the family?
• How similar or dissimilar are your families?
• Does she like to spend time with her family? Does her family like to spend time with her?

(A)ttitudes and Actions of a Mature Conscience 

This is all about figuring out if the person you’re dating is a healthy, mature adult. Unlike the family-related questions above, which are more neutrally exploratory, these are questions where you’re looking for a certain kind of answer: one that indicates that the person you’re dating is more mature, rather than less.

• Does she have a personal code or set of principles? What is her sense of right and wrong, and where does it come from?
• Does she make wise and kind choices or just consider her own needs and wants?
• Does she show that she has a sense of how her words and actions affect others?
• Does she try to see the perspectives of others?
• How does she handle stress and setbacks? Is she resilient?
• How does she handle being in the wrong? Does she get defensive, or is she open to feedback?
• How stable versus moody is she?
• Is she impulsive?
• Is she neurotic? (Neuroticism is the personality trait most correlated with unhappiness in relationships.)
• Does she respect boundaries?
• Does she take the initiative or wait until someone tells her to do something to take action?
• Does she set goals for herself and work to achieve them?

(C)ompatibility Potential

According to Van Epp, the strongest relationships have both similarities and differences. What matters most is alignment on the big things — values, life goals, and lifestyle preferences, especially around family, religion, and money. While you don’t need identical interests, sharing some leisure activities strengthens bonds, too. And when differences exist (like one partner being more spontaneous, the other more organized), they should complement rather than clash. The key is finding someone different enough to help you grow but similar enough to build a stable, harmonious life together.

Here are some questions to explore as you figure out your compatibility potential; the more questions you can say yes to, the more likely you are to be a good match:

• Do you share the same values?
• Do you share the same religious beliefs?
• Do you share similar political positions?
• Are your long-term goals compatible?
• Do you have similar ideas on how many kids you want?
• Do you have similar ideas on family roles?
• Do you share a similar sense of humor?
• Do you have similar ideas about how to spend and save money?
• Do you have hobbies or activities that you share in common?
• Do you have a similar level of interest in travel?
• Do you have a similar level of interest in health and fitness?
• Do you have similar energy levels?
• Do you have a similar inclination toward socializing?
• Do you desire a similar level of physical affection?

(E)xamples of Previous Friendship or Relationship Patterns

How we act in one relationship typically demonstrates how we’ll show up in others. Healthy relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers suggest that an individual has developed the skills to maintain a strong, respectful, and fulfilling connection with a romantic partner.

Here are some questions to explore as you figure out if the person you’re dating exhibits healthy relationship patterns:

• How does she treat service people—restaurant servers, cashiers, attendants, and so on?
• Does she have road rage?
• How does she get along with people at work? How does she treat subordinates? Her boss?
• Has she been fired from a job before?
• Does she have close friends? How does she treat them? Do you like her friends?
• Does she gossip about others and criticize them beyond their backs?
• Did she date others seriously before you? Why did those relationships end? Were the breakups acrimonious?

(S)kills for Relationships

Relationship skills are connected with the attitudes of a mature conscience. You’re looking to see if your partner has the ability to navigate the ups and downs of a relationship maturely. Relationship skills include communication, conflict resolution, empathy, and emotional regulation.

Look for the following when assessing your partner’s relationship skills:

• When you’re talking, does she pay attention to you or check her phone?
• Does she interrupt you when you’re talking?
• When you speak with her, does she ask follow-up questions to ensure she fully understands you?
• Does she show compassion and genuine concern for others’ feelings?
• Does she open up to you when you sense she’s got something on her mind or does she clam up?
• When she has a problem, can she talk to you calmly, or does she blow up or get passive-aggressive?
• Does she stay composed when you have disagreements?
• Does she take responsibility for managing her emotions rather than blaming others?
• Does she make compromises and seek win-win solutions?
• Does she apologize when she’s in the wrong?
• Does she respect others’ needs, time, and autonomy?
• Does she communicate her boundaries without being aggressive about it?
• Does she express gratitude?
• Does she lie?

Know Someone Through Talk, Togetherness, and Time

That’s a lot of stuff to learn about someone you’re dating. And we just scratched the surface of what Van Epp talks about in How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk.

So what does this getting to know each other process actually look like?

According to Van Epp, you get to know someone through talk, togetherness, and time.

As you’re dating, ask thoughtful questions about your potential partner’s life, values, and character. These conversations shouldn’t feel like an interrogation but should emerge naturally as the relationship progresses.

Van Epp also encourages couples to spend time together outside the traditional date. You want to see how you handle different situations, particularly when stressed or overwhelmed. Also spend time with her friends and family to observe her existing relationship patterns.

We often don’t reveal our real selves right away. People are usually on their best behavior during the early stages of a relationship, so that someone’s true patterns and behaviors don’t manifest themselves for three or more months. That’s why Van Epp encourages couples to take their time before escalating a relationship. You need time to have those crucial conversations and to see how each of you behaves in different situations.

Love needn’t be blind, or stupid. By taking time to understand someone’s F.A.C.E.S., you can make a clear-eyed choice about whether they’re right for you. This doesn’t mean finding someone perfect (we’re all works in progress) but finding someone whose habits, values, and character align with what you need in a partner. Remember, it’s all about loving with your heart and your head.

For more insights on how to avoid falling in love with the wrong person, listen to our podcast with Dr. Van Epp:

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

A friend recently sent us a post from Cup of Jo, a women’s lifestyle site that was founded close to the time Art of Manliness was, and like AoM, is one of the few blogs from blogging’s heyday that’s still around and kicking. Cup of Jo is known for its engaged readership (its mantra is “come for the blog, stay for the comments”), and that dynamic was on full display in the post in question. In it, Cup of Jo’s founder, Joanna Goddard, asked readers for their “random turn-ons.” Readers responded with over 400 comments sharing the little things in men that make them swoon. 

I found reading through the comments pretty charming and interesting. I think most guys are fairly clueless about what women find attractive, so this was a fascinating inside view of things. Some of the qualities offered were expected, like kindness, a nice smile, and a pair of broad shoulders. Masculine competence and capability — as one reader put it, “Knowing a little about a lot of things (change a tire, fix a sink, how to cook, etc.)” — were highly rated. Other entries were more surprising, like how sexy women find it for men to back up the car with one arm (mentioned multiple times), and the sheer fact that the thing mentioned the most by far was . . . forearms. The ladies love forearms, guys. (Perhaps the backing-up-the-car thing makes sense, then; as one reader observed, it involves competence and forearms.)

It’s also sort of heartening that a lot of the entries are pretty attainable and don’t require hitting the genetic lottery. Highly-rated things like skills and intelligence can be readily developed, and traits some men might think are drawbacks, like salt-and-pepper hair and a big nose, plenty of women actually find very attractive.

Below you’ll find a selection of the turn-ons that were shared, along with a selection of some of the comments that accompanied them. 

1. Forearms (“forearms omg swoon!”; “every woman is a goddamn freak for forearms”; “Totally into forearms especially if they are muscled from some kind of physical activity!”)
2. Rolled-up sleeves (because forearms) 
3. Salt-and-pepper hair
4. Intelligence (“I like it when a guy rants about something he is passionate and knowledgeable about!”; “Seeing my boyfriend do math in his head”)
5. Biceps
6. Easy confidence
7. Good with kids (“a man who loves to play with kids and can get them to laugh”)
8. Cooking skills (“I love when he throws a dish towel over his shoulder and shakes around the cast-iron pan”; “love it when they have their mise en place out!”) 
9. Flannel shirts
10. Good dancer
11. Manual competence/skills (“My husband once picked a lock, and when it clicked open I spontaneously flushed with arousal!”; “building a fire in a wood burning fireplace”; “A man who can fix things and make things happen”)
12. Parallel parking (“When we were still newly dating my bf pulled off a really impressive parallel parking job – unexpected major turn on!”)
13. Backing up the car using one hand (“When a guy reverses a car and puts his hand on the passenger seat back and looks over his shoulder…why is it so hot??”; that thing when men back up the car using ONE hand on the steering wheel. It is so hot, I can barely breathe. Something about their casual confidence—’I got this’”)
14. Crinkles around the eyes when smiling
15. Natural scent (“the smell of his neck when we hug”; “There’s a scent, like a natural pheromone something, like he’s been working all day and didn’t shower and didn’t plan on seeing anyone today but here we are, and I catch it as he moves and it triggers something instinctual that catches me off guard.”)
16. Sweaters 
17. Strong hands
18. Deep voice
19. Wearing Old Spice
20. Good posture
21. Chivalry/courtesy (“hold the door for you, if it is dark/unfamiliar/possibly unsafe…make sure you see the step, walk you to your car or destination”; “I was recently on a work trip with a lot of people, but I really hit it off (in a friendly way, not a romantic way) with one of my colleagues, so we walked between meetings a lot together talking. In the third or fourth day of this trip, I realized he always walked on the outside of the sidewalk. I thought it was a coincidence but when it occurred to me that it always happened, I realized he was doing it on purpose in a chivalrous way without ever planning to mention it, and I was touched!”; “Unexpectedly jolted by an unassuming man a little my senior. I was standing back to let him ascend the narrow stairs and said ‘after you’ and the tone of his voice as he said ‘Thank you & good morning’ woke me up in a way that coffee never does.”)
22. Reads books 
23. Tailored woolen coats
24. Classy sunglasses (“especially brown ones”)
25. Ability to speak a foreign language
26. Quiet dependability
27. Dimples
28. Wearing a baseball cap backwards (“I live by this tenet — Backwards baseball hats make babies.”)
29. A neatly trimmed back of the neck
30. Skateboarding
31. Work boots
32. Defined deltoid muscles
33. White t-shirts
34. Good conversationalist (“Being able to go somewhere without knowing anyone but fit right in instantly”)
35. Chest hair
36. Chopping wood 
37. Button-down shirts with the top button undone
38. Stubble
39. Wearing a tool belt
40. Henley shirts (“and henleys WITH forearms, of course”)
41. Fitted sweatpants or joggers 
42. Sports jackets and jeans
43. Broad shoulders
44. Hoodies
45. Big nose
46. Sense of humor
47. Suits (“Wearing a well cut navy blue suit, white shirt that has been professionally laundered and still has that hot iron smell, a classic silk tie, big feet in cap toes dress shoes. Feeling that warm muscled bod when you go in for a hug putting your arms between the shirt and the jacket!”) 
48. Glasses
49. Good in a crisis
50. Uniforms (“I’m talking firefighters, military, UPS worker…If you’re in a fitted head-to-toe uniform (usually with a well-kempt haircut) sign me up.”)

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Dating is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Given that, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many people aren’t sure of the best way to go about it, especially since the rise of modern technology and dating apps has made an already murky landscape even more confusing.

If you feel like you could use some expert, research-backed guidance to navigating this world, enter today’s guest, Logan Ury. Logan is a behavioral scientist turned dating coach, the Director of Relationship Science for the Hinge dating app, and the author of How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love. Today on the show, Logan explains the three dating tendencies and the three types of attachment styles that can influence, and potentially sabotage, your ability to get into a healthy relationship. She shares the easiest thing you can do to be more successful in making connections on the dating apps, and the criteria to use for figuring out how to best meet people in person. Logan then gets into how to design a good first date, and what to tell the other person if the date doesn’t go well, rather than ghosting them. She also makes the case for why you shouldn’t be over reliant on feeling the proverbial spark when deciding whether to see someone again. We end our conversation with tips on breaking up with someone you’ve been dating for awhile.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Logan’s 3 dating tendencies quiz
• Optimal stopping
• Peak-end rule
• AoM Podcast #707: Did You Pick the Right Partner?
• AoM Podcast #584: How to Avoid Falling in Love With the Wrong Person
• AoM Podcast #474: The Surprises of Romantic Attraction
• AoM Podcast #559: How to Handle Difficult Conversations
• AoM Article: How to Make a Great Last Impression
• AoM Article: How to Ask Better Questions on a First Date

Connect With Logan Ury

• Logan’s Website
• Logan on Instagram
• Logan on Twitter

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Listen ad-free on Stitcher Premium; get a free month when you use code “manliness” at checkout.

Podcast Sponsors

Click here to see a full list of our podcast sponsors.

Read the Transcript!

If you appreciate the full text transcript, please consider donating to AoM. It will help cover the costs of transcription and allow other to enjoy it. Thank you!

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Dating is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Given that, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many people aren’t sure of the best way to go about it, especially since the rise of modern technology and dating apps has made an already murky landscape even more confusing. If you feel like you can use an expert research-backed guidance to navigate this world, enter today’s guest, Logan Ury. Logan is a behavioral scientist turned dating coach, the Director of relationship science for the Hinge dating app, and the author of How Not to Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love.

Today on the show, Logan explains the three dating tendencies and the three types of attachment styles that can influence and potentially sabotage your ability to get to healthy relationships. Logan then gets into how to design a good first date, what to tell the other person if the date doesn’t go well, rather than ghosting them. She also makes the case for why you shouldn’t be over-reliant on feeling the proverbial spark when deciding whether to see someone again. We end our conversation with tips on breaking up with someone you’ve been dating for a while. After the show’s over, check at our show notes at aom.is/dating.

Alright, Logan Ury, welcome to the show.

Logan Ury: Thank you so much for having me.

Brett McKay: So you got a book called How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Signs that will help you find love. So, you are a behavioral scientist who became a dating coach. I think you’re the first behavioral scientist/dating coach I’ve met. How did that happen?

Logan Ury: Oh, thank you. Yes, I like to defy expectations. Well, I’ve always had these two interests, I’ve had this interest in psychology, behavioral science, which is the study of how we make decisions, and then I’ve had this second interest in sex, dating, love, relationships. And so, at different points in my life, I’ve been able to pursue them in different ways, but I had the opportunity to take what I’ve done in the field of behavioral science and apply it to love and dating, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last, I don’t know, almost a decade, approaching a decade. And so, it’s basically like, why are people not getting into relationships? It’s because they’re making poor decisions along the way, they’re not putting themselves out there, they’re dating the wrong people, they’re prioritizing the wrong things, they are not going on the second date when they should, they’re marrying the wrong person.

And so, how can I break relationships down into these tiny decisions… Well, they’re not tiny, but these decisions that occur over a lifetime, and then how can I actually help people make better decisions by telling them what their blind spots are, what’s affecting their decision-making and how they should consider that decision instead?

Brett McKay: Fantastic. So you started the book talking about the fact that a lot of people today are lamenting that dating is harder than ever. I’ve got friends… Or I talk to kids who are in their 20s, they’re in college, they’re out of college, and they describe the dating scene, and I’m like, Wow, that’s… I don’t know anything about that, that sounds terrible. Why does dating feel harder than ever? I mean, what’s changed in the past, say, 20 years that makes it more difficult?

Logan Ury: Yeah, so dating as we know it is actually a pretty new concept. So dating in terms of I as an individual find the person who I wanna be with, that concept has only been around since around the 1890s. Before that, either there was a match maker or your parents would arrange your marriage, you know, you would marry the person with the land next door, so that your parcels of land could be connected. And so, my first thought I really wanna leave people with is, if you feel like dating is unnatural, that’s because it is. We are not born knowing how to date. Yes, we are born knowing how to love, yes, love is natural, but dating is relatively new in the span of human history. Then you think about online dating and online dating, even just using a basic website, started around 1994 and 1995, and then the swiping apps started about 10 years ago. And so, everything that we’re experiencing is really a seismic shift in the span of human history.

So, some things about dating right now are easier. If you are in what’s called a thin market, where it’s hard for you to find someone… So this could be over 50 LGBTQ+ community, or living in a rural area, online dating has definitely helped you, because you don’t have to go to a bar and say, Who here is looking for someone like me, you just know who those people are. But in other ways, dating has become really hard, one of the reasons is this idea of the paradox of choice. And this is a concept from the professor Barry Schwartz, who says that while we’re drawn to choice, many times having too many options is actually really stressful for us, because we don’t know what to choose, we fear we’re making the wrong choice, and then even when we choose, we feel regret, Oh, did I mess that one up?

And so there are many options in modern dating. There’s also a lot of pressure on us to get it right. I wonder if this is what you hear with your listeners, but there’s this feeling of, this is the most important decision I’ll ever make. I really only get one shot at choosing the right partner. I don’t get support from a religious figure or a matchmaker or my family, this is something that falls on me, and so we have more freedom, we have more chance to express ourselves as individuals, but that also means that when you’re writing your own story and you don’t like that story, you only have yourself to blame.

Brett McKay: Okay, so it sounds like the… Why dating is hard? It all comes down to choice. And this is where Behavioral Science comes in, ’cause behavioral science is all about making choices.

Logan Ury: Exactly.

Brett McKay: Alright, so when you first sit down with a client, dating coach client, the first step you do is you help them figure out what their dating tendency is, and there’s three types, you list out in the book, what are these dating tendencies, and how can knowing your dating tendency help you become more effective in your romantic life?

Logan Ury: This is something that I developed through working with clients where I was like, Okay, I’m having all these clients from different countries, different walks of life, different ages, but they have this thing in common, they all have these unrealistic expectations. And so, I took that knowledge of working with clients, I developed it into this framework, which is also a quiz called The Three Dating Tendencies, and now I use that to help people who read my book, and I still use it with clients. So the first tendency is the romanticizer, and they have unrealistic expectations of relationships. So, this is the friend of yours, or maybe it’s you, who says, I love love, I really want that romantic how we met story. I don’t wanna meet someone online, that’s not romantic. And they have this view in their head that there’s a soulmate, one person out there for them, when they meet them, they’ll just know if it clicks, and if it’s the right person, then the relationship will be easy. And if the relationship is hard, well then, clearly it’s not the right person.

And so for the romanticizer, the work is really around demystifying relationships. Look, I don’t believe there’s one person out there for you, I think there’s a lot of different person… Different people who you can have a great relationship with. Some have certain pros and cons, others have certain pros and cons, you get to decide what matters to you, and you can make different good choices with a number of people. And so for them, it’s about getting rid of this idea of the one or the soul mate and helping them understand, who cares how you met, that’s not what makes a relationship romantic. What makes a relationship romantic is putting in the work, seeing results, growing with someone, building a family, designing the life you like, learning how to have hard conversations, continuing to have sex with a person, and hopefully the sex gets better. All of that is what’s romantic.

So the next one is the maximizer, and I have to say this is many of the clients that I have, and I bet it’s many of the people who listen to the show. So, the maximizer is the person who has unrealistic expectations of their partner. And so, they have this idea in their head that they can find the perfect person, they just have to keep looking. And so, this person is obsessed with research, if they’re going on a trip, they’re gonna read the Yelp reviews and the Trip Advisor reviews. If they’re buying camping gear, they’re gonna go to Wirecutter and find the perfect ultralight tent that can fit one person or 10 person, whatever it is. And so, when they apply that concept to dating, they feel like, Oh, I just haven’t met the perfect person yet, I have to keep looking.

And so my work with the Maximizer is helping them understand that it’s not about finding the perfect person. It’s about finding a great person and then building a relationship with them. And that this story in their head that if they just keep looking one day that person will appear isn’t true, they likely have already dated someone who would make a great partner, and the work is actually finding that person, committing to them and building something, not waiting around for someone who could be 5% hotter or 5% more ambitious.

Brett McKay: And a point you make with a maximizer is the solution isn’t to settle. A lot of people think why he’s gotta settle, you’re not saying that, you don’t need to settle and just kind of just accept whatever. It’s just don’t try to over-optimize, ’cause then you’ll never find somebody.

Logan Ury: Yeah, that’s said really well. It’s not about settling. I feel like settling has become this toxic word in our society where if you’re somebody who cares or someone who’s passionate or someone with goals, settling is the opposite of what you wanna do. And no, I don’t like settling either. So there’s this really great word called satisficing, and this is also coined by Barry Schwartz, the professor that I mentioned before. And what I love about this word is, I think, it does something really smart to shift our mindset from, Oh, settling equals bad to satisficing equals good. And so, what satisficing is it’s, I set a bar, I set a benchmark, and it can be a high bar, but when I achieve that bar, I stop looking. And so, for example, if you’re looking for a car, you could say, I wanna find a used hybrid with no more than 20,000 miles, that doesn’t cost more than $20,000, and I wanna be able to get it in the next month.

And then, you look, and when you find that car, you say, Great, I found it, now I’m gonna buy it. You don’t sit around maximizing, saying, well, 20,000 miles might be too much, or well, should I just wait until the 2023 models are out here? You said, I had a standard, I met it, now I’m going to take this opportunity and move forward with it. And so, satisficers do have high bars, but when they achieve that high bar, they commit to it, whereas maximizers, even when they make a choice, they’re always wondering, what else could I have done? And so, how this applies to dating is that you can have high standards, but when you meet someone like that, invest in the relationship, commit to them, don’t find that person and then say, You know, I really like trail running, and she’s just not into it. Could I find someone just like her except… Plus trail running?

Brett McKay: Well, you also… You’re bringing this idea of optimal stopping theory to help you overcome maximizing.

Logan Ury: There’s a concept called the secretary problem, and I learned about this through the book Algorithms to Live By. The secretary problem is based on this line of mathematical inquiry called optimal stop theory. And so, basically that’s a fancy way of saying, when you’re making a decision, what’s the right point where you should actually choose and stop looking? And so, the example that they give is, imagine that you’re hiring a secretary and you have 100 possible candidates, and you have to go through them one at a time, and after each one, say yes or no. And you don’t wanna go through all 100, because what if the last person isn’t very good and that’s the only person you can hire? And it takes time, every person that you interview is, you not having that admin who starts working for you. But you also don’t wanna choose too early because you haven’t seen what’s out there.

And so, there is a mathematically correct answer to this, which is that you should interview one-third of the candidates, so 33 of the candidates. Then you say, who was the single best person from this first third? That person is now your benchmark. The next time that you find someone who’s as good or better than that first best candidate from the first third, you hire that person. And so you go through a third, you see who’s out there, create a benchmark, and then you hire the next person who’s like that. And with dating, you can say, Alright, well, I definitely don’t know how many people in my life I’m gonna date, there’s nothing like a hundred candidates, but you might say, I think I’m gonna date from the age of 18 to 40, and so, what would be a third of my way through that age range? And you would say, it’s about 26.1 years old.

So you say by the time I’m 26, I would have already met someone who’s my meaningful benchmark. The next time I find someone who’s as good or better than that person in terms of how much I like them, I will commit to that person. And so, when people hear me say this, they get stressed because they say, I’m older than 26 and have I missed out and should I go tell my ex-girlfriend that I love her and it’s… No, it’s not so literal. It’s a concept that says, You’ve likely already met someone great, and the next time you find someone great, invest in them, don’t keep looking, because there are so many people that knock on my door at 43, 44, or 45, who are like, I just kept looking and I thought the person person would appear, but it turns out I did date a lot of great people, I just didn’t commit to them, and now it’s even harder to find someone.

Brett McKay: Alright, so we talked about romanticizer, maximizer, what’s the third one?

Logan Ury: Sure, the third one is a hesitater, and there are many hesitaters right now during the pandemic. And hesitaters are people who say, I’m just not ready to date. They have unrealistic expectations of themselves, they think I’ll be eligible to date, I’ll be lovable when, you know, I lose 10 pounds, I get a better job, I clean up my apartment, I finally move cities. And so, they’re always creating this excuse why they’re just not datable yet. When the truth is that no one’s ever 100% ready for anything including dating. And so for the hesitater, it’s about the idea of stop waiting and start dating. Set a deadline for when you’re gonna start dating, maybe three weeks from now and hold yourself accountable to it or get a friend to do that. Take some pictures for your online dating profile, get some feedback, think of some good first date questions, some first date activities, and just get out there. And there’s really two reasons why it’s so critical to start this. One is, the only way to get better at dating is by dating, and two, the only way to figure out who you wanna be with, what kinda person makes you happiest long-term is by actually dating different people and seeing what side of you they bring out.

Brett McKay: And you can also see hesitaters within a relationship, there’s like, couples who have been dating for years, and they’ve been talking about marriage, but then it’s like, Well, we gotta wait until we both have jobs and we can have a house, and then they end up never getting married even though that is something they want.

Logan Ury: Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I think the concept of a hesitater can really apply in many places. I’ve done some interviews with entrepreneurs where I apply the three dating tendencies to business, and the hesitater is the person who says, Well, I wanna start a clean energy startup, but first, I have to get a Master’s degree in Energy, then I have to interview a hundred people who work in the space. Then I have to network with this, and it’s like, instead of just starting and learning by going and being willing to make mistakes, they create this perfect future scenario in which they’ll be ready, and it’s much better to be the person who’s in the arena practicing, making mistakes and learning, than the person who’s always creating an excuse about why doing something in the future will be better.

Brett McKay: So those are the three dating tendencies, another thing you do with your clients is you try to figure… Help them figure out their attachment style. And this is from the world of psychology or social psychology, how can understanding your attachment style help you in your relationships?

Logan Ury: So, this is something that’s really, really based in research, this is not something that somebody made up. This is based on years of developmental psychology research, going back to a professor named John Bowlby. And the idea here is that in our childhood we develop different attachment styles to our primary caregiver, and they’ve been able to trace those attachment styles to actually adult romantic relationships, and that’s what I’ll focus on right now. And so, there’s three styles. One of them is the anxiously attached dater. This is the person who fears that they’re going to be abandoned. So, they feel like, if you go to a bar and you don’t text them, you must have met someone else and you’re not interested, and they get very triggered and they get very worried that you’re going to leave them. And so, they go into this kind of danger zone, and once they’re in that danger zone, they do something called protest behavior. So they might call you a hundred times, send you 15 angry texts, they might threaten to leave.

They are basically acting out because they feel activated or triggered, and they want you to make them feel better and say, No, no, no, no, I was just… There was bad Wi-Fi or bad service at the bar and da-da-da-da. This person always wants to be in touch, because they’re afraid that you’re gonna leave them. Then there’s somebody called the avoidant attachment style. These are people who are afraid that they’re gonna be smothered, they feel like whenever they’re dating someone, that person takes up all their free time, takes up their space, they don’t have time to be an individual. And so the avoidant attached person is constantly concerned with pushing people away, this is the person who says, I just don’t have time to date, I need to focus on work, and she slept over, but she wouldn’t leave in the morning, and I just wanted her out of my apartment, right? It’s like they are just… Feel constricted and they wanna push that person away.

And then a securely attached person, they’re sort of the heroes of this, they are the best of both, so they’re comfortable with intimacy, but they’re also comfortable with independence. And they know how to have boundaries, but they also know how to get close to someone. And so, when you look at the numbers, around 50% of daters are securely attached, but when you’re out there dating, it doesn’t feel like that. And the reason is that securely attached people are really good at getting into partnerships, and so, they’re actually out of the dating pool, and they’re in relationships. And what you have are the anxious and avoidant people dating each other.

And this is really problematic because they reinforce each other’s worst habits. The anxiously attached person thinks whenever I date someone, they pull away, and the avoidant attached person thinks whenever I date someone, they smother me. And so they are actually doing those exact things to each other, in what we call the anxious-avoidant loop, and often the work that I do with people is help them understand, Oh, you are anxiously attached, you are obsessed with the chase, you get angry when someone’s not in touch, and you worry that they’re going to abandon you. Once you decide you like someone, you put them on a pedestal and you think that they’re perfect and you avoid red flags, and by helping them understand these habits, they can stop dating avoidant people, they can start looking for a securely attached partner, and they can work on their own triggers, so that next time something like this happens, they can actually help themselves before they go into that danger zone and start with all that protest behavior.

Brett McKay: Yeah. Just, yeah, it’s good to know your attachment style, ’cause then you can figure out if I need to go to therapy to help me be less neurotic about people I’m connected with, or to be less avoidant. That can go a long way.

Logan Ury: Yeah. I mean, I’m talking about a lot of frameworks here, but the whole point is know who you are, know where you thrive, know where you tend to get caught up, understand the premise, it’s helpful to have a term for it and then do something about it, so if you know that you’re an anxiously attached dater who loves the chase, who tends to date avoidant people, then learn what an avoidant person looks like, and next time that happens, say No, I’m not going down this path again, I am not making the same decision. I know where this ends, I am going to make a different choice, which is hanging up that relationship and pursuing somebody who’s more securely attached.

Brett McKay: Okay, so one of the problems that people have when they’re dating is that they think they know what they want in a partner, and I think this applies to other domains too, Oftentimes, we think we know what we want in a job or even a car or a house, but when we find that partner that has those qualities that we think we want, sometimes we still feel dissatisfied with the relationship, so the question is like, Do we really know what we want, and how do we figure out what we actually will like in a partner or in a relationship?

Logan Ury: Yeah, so I love the way you explained that premise, which is that, in general, people think that their preferences are consistent, so they think if you showed me any number of menus that had the same items on them, even if they were displayed in different ways, I would choose the same thing, or I would always get this bottle of wine, or I would always prefer this movie, and we just know from behavioral science research that that’s not true. Our decisions are heavily impacted by the environment in which we make them, and so what that means is you could make a different choice about food, if the menu present it differently, you can make a different choice about wine if you’re in a different type of grocery store, and when it comes to dating, you make different choices based on how the app presents the person how the person presents themselves, etcetera.

And so when people come to me for dating coaching, sometimes they say, Oh, I actually don’t need help figuring out what I want. I know exactly what I want, I just need your help finding this person. And then they tell me about their spreadsheets of all the different people they have dated, and they figured out exactly what they want, and it’s usually some combination of height, weight, certain type of graduate degree, certain income, it depends on who I’m talking to, but they have this very precise image of their head, and they feel like the only thing holding them back is that they haven’t met that person yet, and so I really like to switch things up and say it’s possible that the kind of person who’s going to make you happiest long-term is not like this person, and you could meet someone exactly like this, and it wouldn’t work out because they could bring out a sad side of you, they could not be that supportive.

They could make you feel self-conscious because they’re so accomplished. You have this image in your head of who you should be with, but it doesn’t mean that that’s actually who will make you happy long-term, and so I try to encourage people to really be more open-minded and date like a scientist, and that means dating different types of people, seeing what side of you that person brings out and actually be willing to embrace a different type of person.

Brett McKay: No, you make the point that I like how you describe it, is like you wanna look for a life partner not a prom date, but typically when we we’re asked, what do we want in a potential romantic partner, we describe the prom date. So they’re good looking, they’re popular, they’ve got a lot of status, they have a lot of money, but that might give you some satisfaction in the short term, might be a great date, but it might not be a great long-term partner. Instead, you should be looking at things like, do you get along well? Are they kind? Are they emotionally stable? Can you have the discussion about hard things? Those are the things that will give you long-term satisfaction in a relationship.

Logan Ury: Exactly, and I feel like somebody listening could be like, Yeah, that’s obvious. Of course, you should do that, but no, I’m telling you, when I work with people and they bring relationships to me or tell me about people they’ve dated in the past, they really are prioritizing the wrong thing. And so this is the idea that a lot of us are dating the “prom date” and think back to who you went to prom with, or who you wanted to go to prom with, and I can tell you for myself, it’s somebody who’s attractive, would be fun, would dance the night away with, and maybe you wanna hook up with them at the end of the night. You’re not thinking about are they reliable, are they gonna pick our kids up from the dentist? Can I depend on them? No, you’re just thinking about fun in the moment, and it’s fine to go to the prom with someone like that, but when you’re 35 years old and you’re dating, you need to move past the prom date and you need to move to what I call the life partner, and this is someone who’s going to be reliable, who you can make hard decisions with, who you trust, who you can take turns having issues and the other person is going to take care of you. And so if you are listening to this and you’re still dating the prom date, it’s time to make a conscious shift towards finding a long-term partner and not just a person who you wanna dance the night away with.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for words from our sponsors.

And now back to the show. And along the lines of this idea that you think you know what you want in a romantic partner in the abstract versus who you actually pick and end up with, you highlight research in your book from Paul Eastwick, and we’ve had him on the podcast before, and he did this study with students, where on the first day of class, they all gave each other ratings as to attractiveness, and those scores are really consistent, pretty much everyone said the same people were the most attractive or the least attractive, but then he re-did the survey at the end of the semester. And people’s scores had changed, and it really varied, it was all over the place. So someone who so someone who thought one person was not attractive at the beginning of the semester, now they found them more attractive, and then someone they thought that was attractive at the beginning of the semester, now they found them less attractive, so I was like their classmates attractiveness had risen and fallen as they had gotten to know them more throughout the semester.

Logan Ury: Yeah, I’m so glad you brought up that research, and one way that I would explain it is, one of my favorite ways to spend time pre-pandemic, etcetera, is going to these retreat weekends. So one of my friends organizes 50 people, you stay in this amazing house in Lake Tahoe, you cook meals together, you eat together. You have presentations. It’s kind of an un-conference. And if you lined up all 50 people the first day of the conference and you had to rank them in order of attractiveness, people would probably have similar answers. We all would say, this type of person is more attractive than that. Luckily, we don’t do anything like this, but theoretically, by the end of the weekend, if I said to you, Who did you find the most attractive or who did you like the most, the answers would differ because it would be based on, Oh, did we cook a meal together and talk about how actually both of our fathers passed away and we have that in common, or did you lead a hike with that person? And do did you admire them? And so, yes, there’s generally agreement on attractiveness, but that’s just based on first impressions of physical attractiveness. As you get to know people over time, different people stand out to you, and so the idea there is it’s not consistent, and it’s super impacted by the experience of being around a person.

And so this is a good thing to keep in mind. There’s a concept called relationshipping, which is the process of dating and getting into a relationship. Unfortunately, many of us are now doing what’s called relation-shopping, which is shopping for someone as if they were a Bluetooth headset that you’re getting on Amazon. But the truth is that humans are not searchable goods, they are not items that you can put into the specs and say, Well, this Bluetooth speaker is a little lighter, but this one’s a little cheaper, but this one has higher volume, no, humans are what’s called experiential goods. You have to be around us to see what it’s really like, and experiential goods are things like movies or wine where one person could love it, the other person could hate it. So if you actually think about, Oh, people are different, they have to be experienced to be understood, and I can’t just look at one image of them and decide if I like them or not, I actually have to spend time with them and see what side of me they bring out.

Brett McKay: And this is the problem of dating apps, because whenever you download a dating app, you… First thing you’re asked are is like what are your preferences and potential matches, and it’s typically focused on those really superficial things, height, weight, attractiveness, college, degree, job, etcetera. And so as soon as you set those preferences, you are immediately just eliminating potentially thousands or tens of thousands of what could have been great romantic matches.

Logan Ury: Yeah, so I work at Hinge, my title is the Director of relationship science, and I am constantly doing research into dating trends, understanding what works, what doesn’t, giving tips about dating to the press and to users, and it’s so interesting that I get to do this work because with my dating coaching clients, I say I’ve worked with hundreds of people. Now, at Hinge, I’m getting to look at millions of people’s dating habits and really seeing what the trends are, and so one of the things that I push is expanding your filters, and so that might mean, if you have really strict age filters, maybe you don’t wanna turn it off and have any age, but could you make the maximum a little higher and the minimum, a little bit lower. If your geography is set for one mile or five miles, could you make it a little broader? And it’s sort of metaphorical, but it’s also literal, it’s, can you be more open-minded and can you also open up the gates a little bit so that more people will show up on your app?

Brett McKay: And Then how can people use the apps more effectively? So Okay, first off, broaden your filters a little more, but how can you make sure you’re not just eternally swiping?

Logan Ury: So my first tip is just to really invest in your profile. I know that that sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised. People create a dating app profile, and they’re like, Okay, I’m gonna do it, I’m finally doing the apps, and they just rush through the profile, and they might just use the last six photos on their phone, even though they’re not very good. This is a huge mistake. Imagine that your profile is like a billboard in Times Square, and it’s your first impression, and it’s really what people are gonna judge you on, you would spend time on that, and so when people make changes and improve their profiles, they see immediate results, and so those are things like having a really good first photo, something that’s clear, we can see your face, the lighting is good, you’re not wearing sunglasses or using a filter, this is just a clear picture of your face, having photos that show what your body is like, so some sort of full body photo, and then using your photos to tell a story, Oh, this is me with my family or me with my friends. I have an active social life. This is me cooking; I love it. This is me speaking in front of an audience, that’s what I do for a living, whatever it is. It’s storytelling and having variety, and so really spending time investing in your profile, that’s the first major tip that I would give.

Brett McKay: Okay, so be picky with your pics, and you also give great advice, like get good friends involved, you wanna pick your six best pics to put on there, and then also write a thoughtful profile. Let’s say you do get a match, how do you get the conversation going, so you actually get on a date with this person? I know a lot of people, at least what I’ve heard… Again, this is all new to me because I dated… I met my wife in 2001. So this is complete… This is all new territory. I’m trying to learn about this. My kids, they’re 11, 8, and so in a couple of 10 years, gonna be dating, I have no advice for them really, I have some, but let’s say you get into a conversation going, I know a lot of people they just get stuck in the app, just talking to someone, never actually going on a date. How do you go from app to in-person date?

Logan Ury: Yeah, so one big thing that I wanna leave our listeners with is this idea of asking questions. It sounds so obvious, it’s like… Yeah, of course, but so many people that I speak to about dating tell me about people who are ZQ, zero questions. And so one person, oftentimes in a heterosexual coupling, the woman feels like she’s asking all the questions. Oh, you have an interesting job. How did you choose it? Oh, how did you wind up living in Michigan? What did you do? And the guy’s answering the questions, but he’s not asking them questions back, and they’re just like, What is this, this isn’t therapy, this isn’t a job interview, like Why are you not asking me questions back? And then when I talk to guys who are ZQ, they say, Oh, I just thought if she had something to say, she would say it, or… She must have found me so interesting because she just kept asking me questions, and it’s like, No, everybody wants to talk about themselves and everybody wants to be asked questions, and this is the number one easiest thing that you can do, is whoever you are, whatever kind of person you’re interested in, ask questions. And so on a dating app, I would say the goal of chatting is to gut-check the person, make sure they’re someone you wanna meet, and then actually get to the date as soon as possible.

And so you don’t wanna get into what I call pen-palling, which is when you’re going back and forth, texting a bunch, but then when you try to meet up, the person is… It’s not about the date, it’s just about texting back and forth, and so you wanna chat for a while, maybe you wanna do a phone call or a video chat, just to get a sense of who they are, the sound of their voice, can you banter back and forth, and then you wanna move to a date, and so I would ask questions, I would say to them, Hey, I’m really enjoying getting to know you. Do you wanna meet up in person or… I’m really getting… Enjoying getting to know you. Do you wanna talk on the phone tonight? Something like that. You wanna create momentum, escalate it, and move off of the app and onto texting, and then onto in-person dating, really, as quickly as you can.

Brett McKay: Okay. And I wanna talk to you… You have some great tips on how to craft a good date, first date, based on behavioral science, but you’re also… Besides, even though you work at Hinge, you’re a big fan of people in meeting potential romantic partners in real life. In your research, what are the best places to meet potential mates in real life?

Logan Ury: Yeah, I think the best combination is for people to be on an app and also be looking for people out and about. There’s no reason why doing one of those doesn’t mean that you can’t do the other. So one of the ideas in my book is called The events decision matrix, and this is basically a way of saying what event should you go to and how do you prioritize them, how do you figure out what’s a good use of your time? And so you basically think about any potential events and you plot them on two dimensions. So one dimension is how much would you enjoy this event, and the other one is, how likely are you to interact with someone at this event? And so you want to really prioritize events that fall in this corner of high likelihood of interacting with someone and high likelihood you’ll enjoy it, and here’s why. If you really like horror movies and you go to a horror movie marathon, high likelihood you’ll enjoy it, low likelihood of interaction. People don’t usually talk at the movies, or at least they probably shouldn’t. If you think about a workshop of learning how to bake, but you don’t like baking, low likelihood of you enjoying it, but high likelihood of interaction, people usually talk at workshops.

And so you really wanna find one that you’ll enjoy because even if you don’t meet someone, it won’t feel like a waste and interaction, because that’s what these events are for, you either are meeting someone and talking to them or you’re not. And so that’s why first big tip, is meeting people at events strategically. The next ones are getting people to set you up by asking them explicitly, making it easy for them and maybe even offering an incentive, like If they introduce you to someone and you go on a few dates with them, you’re gonna take them up for dinner, whatever it is.

Then other ones are looking around your friend group, is there someone that you’re friends with who actually could be a great partner, how can you approach that topic, just meeting people when you’re out and about, meeting people at an airport in a coffee shop, really just thinking about the world as having a lot of opportunities to interact and not just saying, Oh, dating is something that only happens on my phone.

Brett McKay: No, I think it’s a good point, ’cause when I talk to a lot of young people, it seems like they only do dating on the phone, and I’m like, man, you’re in college, you’re in… In a class, there’s gotta be people in there that you could talk to, that could be a potential date, why don’t you… Oh, I can’t believe. I would never do that. It’s like, Oh no, you should do that, it would totally just broaden your choices or broaden your potential romantic partners.

Logan Ury: Yeah, totally. I like to read a lot of the dating subreddits, and I saw one this weekend that was talking about, this guy went to a meet-up and it was a bonfire and he met all these people and he was like… It was amazing, like I could tell right away if someone was interested in me, if I like their smile, if I like the sound of their voice, I ended up making out with this girl at the end of the night, and this person was talking as if he’d never been to an event in person where you could potentially meet someone and people in the comments were like, Where is this event? How do I do more meet-ups? It was seen as so revelatory and it’s like no meeting in-person is a great strategy because it’s basically solving a lot of problems that you have to solve more slowly on the app, which is, do we have good chemistry? Do we feel attracted to each other, can we make conversation? It’s almost like that meeting is the first date or the half of a first date, and so I think strategically, people should be doing a combination of everything, you should be on a dating app because it helps you meet more people, it helps you get practice, you could meet someone great there. You should also be looking around you and seeing, who am I in the same room with, and how can I find a way to talk to them?

Brett McKay: Okay, so let’s say you meet someone, there’s a spark, there’s chemistry, you wanna ask them on a date, you ask them on the date, any tips on your experience as a coach and also from behavioral science to craft a really good first date?

Logan Ury: Yes. So, I will tell you that, but then you also mentioned the park, which I hope you’ll ask me about.

Brett McKay: Yeah, okay, sure.

Logan Ury: Yeah, a few quick tips for designing a great date. So one is you really wanna show the person that you’re putting effort in, so asking them, Oh, where do you live? Is there a certain place you wanna go or finding a place near them, just showing that you’re really prioritizing them and putting effort in. Another big one is skipping the small talk, so people have these first date conversations that are like job interviews, where are you from? Where did you go to school? What did you study? How many siblings do you have? And it’s like collecting information, but it’s not really having an experience. And look, you have plenty of time to get that information from them later, but that’s not actually what creates connection or helps you have a good time, instead you should be focusing on being in the moment with them, maybe being playful, can you go to a certain part of your city and try five different taco stands and get a little silly and you have salsa dripping down your face, how can you actually just be more playful and more open, more into being present and having an experience with them versus sitting across from somebody in a coffee shop, just exchanging information.

That’s not what leads to connection. And then another tip is be interested, not interesting. So, so often my clients are like, oh, I need to tell this story on a date, ’cause it makes me look cool, and I want them to know that I have this fancy job, blah, blah, blah, but having a fancy job is not what’s gonna make that person have fun with you. What’s gonna make that person have fun with you is you asking them questions, you being curious, you making them feel interesting, and so instead of focusing on being interesting and how you’re coming across, focus on being a good listener and a good question asker and making them feel interesting.

Brett McKay: One way I’ve heard of that put is interesting people are interested.

Logan Ury: Oh, I like that. That’s really great. Yeah, interesting people are interested, and I totally agree with that from my experience. And then the last one is this idea of ending on a high note, so there’s really great research from the behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman, that looks at people getting colonoscopies. And so, of course, the colonoscopy is an uncomfortable situation, but what he found is that people would actually rather have a colonoscopy that’s slightly longer, but ends in a less painful way than a shorter colonoscopy that’s consistently painful throughout, and that’s because our brains disproportionately remember things based on the peak moment, and based on the ending, and this is called the peak end rule, and so you can take advantage of it by saving a bad or mediocre date by really ending on a high note, and so you can order dessert, you can give someone a meaningful compliment, you can say, oh, I actually have one more surprise for you and take them to a cool secret bar that they’ve never heard about, because people remember the ends of things more, you can save the moment with the great ending.

Brett McKay: What happen, let’s say you go on the date and you didn’t think it was great, and then it’s just like you just… There’s no match there for whatever reason. How do you handle that? Because the typical response a lot people do is ghost, but you make people take a, I will never ghost pledge in your book. [chuckle]

Logan Ury: Yeah. It’s funny…

Brett McKay: So, Why shouldn’t people ghost and then what do you do I think… I think a lot of people ghost ’cause they just don’t know what to say when they think of potential… When a date just didn’t go well, and they don’t think there is a match.

Logan Ury: Yeah, I’ve done tons of research on this thing, and I think there’s a big disconnect around ghosting, so when you ask people who ghost why they ghost, they say it’s really awkward to reject someone, and I don’t wanna hurt their feelings, and then when you ask people who’ve been ghosted they say, I would rather that you tell me I’ll feel a moment of pain and rejection, but then I can move on. And so it’s like somebody doesn’t wanna pull off the band-aid and hurt the person, but that person is saying, please do that. I want clarity. I don’t wanna swim in this ambiguous sea of not knowing if you’re gonna ever text me again. And so if two people go on a day, they don’t like each other, they never text each other again, I don’t think that’s a big deal. I call that a mutual opt-out, but if we go on a date, and I text you, and I say, hey, I loved meeting you, when do you wanna hang out again? And you never respond. I just think that’s hurtful and unnecessary, and why not take two minutes to send a kind but firm text, and so that could sound like, hey, I also enjoyed meeting you. Thanks for introducing me to that cool place, I don’t think we’re a good romantic match, but I enjoyed spending time with you, and I wish you the best of luck with dating. Look, you’re not promising that you’re gonna become friends, you’re not saying, hey, let’s hang out again, in a platonic capacity you’re just saying, I liked meeting you. Thank you. I’m not interested.

Brett McKay: And I think most people will accept and be like okay, yeah, fine, what happens if people continue to escalate, why, what can I do? What can I change? How can we make this work? I think that’s what people worry about with ghosting, its like I don’t… They might be able to do that initial text, but then they don’t know to do the potentially awkward rare follow-up.

Logan Ury: Yeah, I have done studies on this, and I would just say what you owe the person is clarity around how you feel about them, you don’t know them anything else, you don’t owe them a phone call to explain what they did wrong, you don’t owe them feedback, that’s just likely not gonna work out well, and I am talking about early dating. Obviously, if you’re in a relationship with someone, it should be a more intense sort of decoupling, but I don’t think you have to get into it with them. If someone’s like, What did I do wrong? And was it when I said this, I just kind of think that’s a no-win situation, and so in that case I would just not write back or… I don’t know, I don’t have the exact language, which is something about like… I don’t feel comfortable getting into it, but that’s how I feel about seeing each other again, something like that. And so I think the most important thing is to not leave someone hanging, but I think beyond that, you don’t owe them deep feedback or an explanation, and that usually doesn’t work out well.

Brett McKay: So you mentioned the spark thing, what would you wanna say about the spark thing?

Logan Ury: My philosophy is that our society is way too anchored on initial chemistry, fireworks feeling like you show up to a date and you love this person, you feel like you’ve known them your whole life, and people say to me, Oh, I went on a date, she was great, I really liked her. She was fun. She was interesting, I’m not gonna see her again. I’m like, what are you talking about? And the person says, Oh, I just didn’t feel the spark. And so it’s become this all-encompassing word that means I didn’t feel instant chemistry. And so I have this concept of the three myths of the spark, and so the first one is, this spark can’t grow over time, and that’s just absolutely not true, a lot of people develop feelings for each other after a while. That’s why you might end up marrying someone you work with or someone who lives in your apartment building. The more you see someone, the more you appreciate them, and so this part can definitely grow over time. The second myth is that if you have the spark, it’s definitely a good thing. That’s also not true. Some people are just very sparky, they might be charismatic, and are super good-looking, magnetic, and so you think, Oh, there’s a special spark between the two of us, but the truth is that they give many people the spark and it doesn’t mean anything about the two of you.

In fact, a lot of people who give the spark or are sparky are actually sort of narcissistic, and then the third one is that if you have a spark, the relationship is viable. That’s also not true. Many couples that are now divorced or unhappily married once had the spark, and so it’s enough to maybe get into a relationship, but it’s not enough to keep the relationship going.

Brett McKay: Gotcha. Okay, so the spark is nice, but don’t be misled by it, ’cause it could take you down bad paths.

Logan Ury: Exactly.

Brett McKay: Or misguided paths. So we mentioned how to end a relationship early on, the first date, second date, you decide this is not a good fit. You mentioned if you’re in a more intense relationship, a long-term relationship, that conversation you have in ending the relationship needs to be a little more intense. Any advice from behavioral science on how to end the relationship that you just think is not going anywhere?

Logan Ury: Yeah, it’s been a very unexpected and surprising part of my job over the last few years to do what I call break up consulting, which is just… People come to me and they say, I have this huge decision to make, something doesn’t feel right, should I stay with this person or not, and it’s a huge responsibility, it’s advising someone on a big decision, and it’s not just them, it’s also the person that they’re with, and I have an impact on that. And so I have a series of questions that I ask them. We have this thing, are you a hitcher or a ditcher? A hitcher tends to stay in relationships too long, a ditcher tends to stay in relationships too short. I ask people if your partner were a piece of clothing in your closet, what would they be. And that helps me gauge, do you admire this person? Do you like being around them? Are you actually sort of sick of them and taking them for granted. When it comes to actually breaking up, a big part is just holding yourself accountable and so setting a deadline, being clear about when and where you’re gonna do it.

Thinking in advance about what you’re gonna say. Not having sex with that person because that can really make things regress and make it hard to leave, and then not communicating with them after the break-up, because so many people try to be “the nice break up guy” and be in touch, but that actually makes it harder for either person to move on.

Brett McKay: So you give, yeah… You give a script, you can… It’s sort of like the ghosting script, but you can continue to have that conversation when people ask, what’s going on, what happens? Is there anything I… You owe that person some explanation or some conversation, but at the same thing, you gotta be loving but firm with the break up.

Logan Ury: Absolutely, yes. And yeah, I like how you called it a script. I think that’s really true because so often we don’t have hard conversations because we don’t know how to start, or we don’t know how to end, or we don’t know what to say. But if you can get some basic templates or practice with a friend or role play, it becomes way less scary, and I would really recommend that people keep a copy of that anti-ghosting, I’m not interested text on their phone and their notes folder, and they can just copy and paste it, or in my book, I have something called the Conversation planning document, and this is something I use all the time, not just in relationship conversations. And so the more that we can demystify Crucial Conversations and instead of avoiding them, actually tackle them head-on, the better.

Brett McKay: In your experience working with people, is it good to get right back into the dating scene after a break-up?

Logan Ury: It depends. So, some people have actually been over their relationship for a long time while they were in it, and so then the relationship ends, and they’re like, I don’t feel that sad. Am I a monster? Why am I not sadder? And it’s like, no, you actually mourn the relationship while you were in it, and so they might be ready to get out there. Some people are not ready for a while, and so I’d say give yourself some time to grieve, figure out how you feel, put yourself back out there, and you’ll see how you feel on that first date, and that will give you a sense of whether or not you’re ready.

Brett McKay: Well, Logan this has been a great conversation. Is there any place else people can go to learn more about the book and the work and your work?

Logan Ury: Yes, absolutely. So I teach a class, it’s a six-week interactive workshop called Date Smarter, and people can find out about that on my website. I also send out a weekly newsletter with research and tips on dating, and people can find that on my website. And people can follow me on Instagram and Twitter @LoganUry.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Logan Ury, thanks for the time. It’s been a pleasure.

Logan Ury: Thank you so much.

Brett McKay: My guest here is Logan Ury. She’s the author of the book, How Not To Die alone. It’s available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Make sure you check at her website, loganury.com, where you can learn more information about her work. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/dating, where you can find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website, artofmanlinesss.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you’d like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast, you could do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com, sign up, use code, manliness, to check out for a free month trial. Once you are signed up, download the Stitcher app on android and IOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate if you’d take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps that a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member, who you would think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to this podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Across animal species males typically initiate mating, while women decide to accept or reject those advances.

While we share this prototypical mating arrangement with other mammals, it’s a bit more nuanced with us humans.

Men are expected to make the overt first move like saying hello, striking up a conversation, asking a woman out on a date, etc. But women in fact typically initiate this contact by subtly providing cues that such contact is welcome. In other words, women decide if and when men can initiate romantic advances.

Men who don’t understand this dynamic at best find themselves labeled as an awkward weirdo, and at worst become known as the creep who makes unwanted advances.

Even when a man understands this dynamic, however, there’s a good chance he just doesn’t have a knack for picking up on the subtle social cues that indicate female interest. Rather than initiating unwanted sexual interest, this fella fails to make a move when a lady wants him to! Many a man out there has had the experience of a woman telling him, “I gave you so many signals! How did you not know I liked you?!” Sometimes a guy gets lucky and finally clues into this interest because the gal is patient and persistent. But sometimes, someone who could have been your one and only, ends up being the one who got away.

If you’ve had a hard time sussing out whether or not women are attracted to you and open to your advances, below we provide research-backed signs to look for.

Signs a Girl Is Attracted to You

You’ve probably read articles online where the author gives you a list of body language signals that women give off to let you know they’re attracted to you. While it’s easy to roll your eyes at lists like these, research suggests there’s actually something to them.

Psychologist Monica Moore spent a few months observing over 200 single women at parties, bars, clubs, and restaurants. From her observations, she found over 52 things women do when they’re attracted to a man. They don’t have to do all of them or in any particular order to indicate interest; some women have their go-to flirty moves. Though, the more of these signals you see and the more often you see a woman display them, the more likely it is that she’s attracted to you and would welcome your advances.

Of the 52 signals, Moore saw these 12 the most frequently:

• Smiling at you
• Shooting short glances your way
• Darting her eyes away when you look at her
• Making prolonged eye contact with you
• Running fingers through her hair
• Licking her lips
• Exposing her neck
• Tilting her heads towards you
• Turning in her seat towards you
• Lightly touching you on the arm or shoulder
• Laughing when you talk
• Caressing an object in her hands

Among the dozen above, the most common signals of female interest are smiles, direct eye contact, and/or repeated glances towards and away from you.

Important Caveat: Put These Signals In Context

Now a socially inept boob of a guy will memorize a list like this, and anytime he sees a woman display any of these signals he’ll immediately assume that she’s attracted to him sexually. Indeed, studies have shown that many men have a hard time interpreting social cues, particularly sexual ones.

Such cues are complex and subtle. You have to make sure you interpret them within the context of a given situation. It’s very similar to the way you achieve situational awareness in a tactical situation, which involves establishing baselines of what’s normal and then looking for anomalies. What’s true in war, is true in love as well.

If an attractive lady bank teller looks you in the eye and smiles at you, she’s probably doing that because she’s trying to show good customer service and not because she’s open to you hitting on her. The baseline behavior in this situation is that all bank tellers look people in the eye, smile, and make friendly chitchat. An anomaly would be if the bank teller lady displayed lots of flirty behavior like touching her hair or touching your wrist nonchalantly. That would indicate possible interest.

Likewise, if a woman at work touches your arm, don’t automatically assume she wants to have your babies. She could just be super friendly and touchy-feely. That’s her baseline behavior. But let’s say a woman isn’t super friendly and touchy-feely with people, but she is with you. Well, that’s an anomaly that indicates possible attraction.

Another Important Caveat: A One-Time Signal Isn’t an Indefinite Green Light — Keep Following the Trail

Just as observing an anomaly in a tactical situation doesn’t automatically mean there’s a threat, an anomaly in the world of romantic social cues doesn’t automatically mean a woman wants to sleep with you, marry you, or even go on a date with you. All it means is she has an initial attraction to you and is open to your making a first move. That could be a conversation, a dance, or you asking her out on a date. Nothing more.

So you ask her for her phone number and ask her out on a date. On the date, you and she will get to know more about each other through conversation. If she likes what she hears and feels a rapport and attraction building, she’ll continue to give you the signals above. She’ll also signal that she’s open to a second date, and she may not even be subtle about it; she’ll more than likely say (or text), “That was fun. I really had a good time tonight.”

So you take her on another date. If that date goes well, she might offer signals that she’s open to a bit of physical intimacy by getting physically close to you as much as possible without actually making physical contact. So you initiate this contact by reaching for her hand and going in for the kiss at the end of the date.

On and on this dance goes with escalating signals from her and overt initiation by you until you’re married with 2.5 kids. Or you break up by the fifth date because she’s cute, but dang, you’ve noticed like 11 of the 14 red flags in a relationship.

How to Tell if She’s Not Interested

Just as important as knowing what signs a woman displays when she’s interested in you is knowing the body language cues that mean she’s not interested in you. You don’t want to be the guy who couldn’t take the hint and is now being tweeted about with #MeToo.

In addition to documenting the signs that a woman was interested in a man, Moore’s study also recorded the signs that she wasn’t. If you approach a woman and she won’t make any eye contact with you while you’re trying to engage in polite small talk, she’s not interested. If she turns away from you, rolls her eyes, yawns, or starts talking to somebody else, not interested.

Don’t assume she’s playing hard to get. She’s just not into you. And don’t think you can sway her by talking yourself up or negging her or doing whatever other dumb PUA technique you read about from some blog post written in 2009. It won’t work, and you’ll just come off as a desperate, creepy dude.

When You’re on the Fence: Revisiting the Brad Pitt Rule

Let’s say you’re on the fence as to whether or not a woman is interested in you. Maybe there’s a woman in one of your classes you’d like to take on a date. She flirts with you . . . you think. And she hasn’t given you any signals she’s not open to you asking her out. But you’re really not sure how she feels.

In that case, just ask her out on a date. Follow these best practices for making the invitation, and make it for something low stakes like a coffee date. If she says “yes,” then she likes you or is at least open to the possibility of a romantic relationship with you.

If she gives an excuse for why she can’t have a latte with you, then use the Brad Pitt rule to determine if she’s interested in you or not.

For those not familiar with the Brad Pitt Rule, here’s a summary:

Imagine that instead of you, Brad Pitt had asked this same woman out. Would she use the same excuse with him? If Brad Pitt asked her on a date, would she still say she had to study or was going to the movies with friends that night? Nope. She would have dropped pretty much anything and everything to be able to accept a date with Brad.

Now you’re not Pitt obviously. But if a woman is interested in you, she will drop her other plans to be available to go out with you.

Of course, there are exceptions; the woman may have a legitimate reason she cannot make the date. Perhaps she has to work or go to a funeral. But, and here is the real clincher, she will suggest a different time for the date. She will say something along the lines of “I can’t do it this Saturday morning, but I could next Saturday.”

If she makes up an excuse and she doesn’t suggest an alternative plan, you have been shut out.

So if you get an excuse from a woman when you ask her on a date, and she doesn’t provide an alternative time for the date, it’s almost certain she’s not interested. If you’re feeling persistent, it’s okay to ask one more time in a couple weeks. But if you still get a no, then definitely move on. There are plenty of other fish in the sea.

Conclusion

Figuring out if a woman likes you is a tricky business. You’ll likely make some faux pas in the process. As long as you act like a gentleman (not the weird, m’lady kind) when making those initial dating moves, you shouldn’t experience too much social awkwardness when you face rejection. Be aware of the social cues women give off if they’re attracted to you, but keep them in context. Finally, don’t assume she’s ready to go back to her place just because she signals attraction. Assume that her initial attraction simply means that she’s open to you asking her out so she can get to know you better. Keep following the trail of signals to determine if/when to make your next move.

Further Reading

• Podcast: The Surprises of Romantic Attraction
• The 3 Elements of Charisma: Warmth
• Podcast: Is This a Date or Not?
• Dating Archives
• Podcast: Love Factually

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2009. It has since been updated and republished. 

We’ve previously discussed the idea that every man should strive to be a romantic lover, and how the date is one of a man’s best tools for wooing a lady. A man’s other major tool in the romance department is the love letter. As long as love (and writing utensils) has existed, so has the love letter. It has been the go-to way for millions of men throughout history to confess or reiterate their feelings of love for another.

Plenty of women, of course, have and will continue to write love letters. But as the sex that has historically been the “pursuer” in the relationship and often has trouble vocally expressing their feelings, writing love letters has traditionally been the purview of men.

It’s not always easy to express our feelings to our significant others. We’d rather show our love through actions. We feel that our love for someone is manifestly obvious, because after all, don’t we vacuum the house, and mow the lawn, and make them their favorite pancakes every Sunday morning? Our actions show that we’re faithful and true, and to us it feels like this should be enough.

But it’s not quite that way for a woman. Women definitely appreciate our acts of love, but their brains are also quite a bit more language oriented than ours. They want to hear the words behind the actions. They want to know exactly what’s in our hearts.

But it’s hard to not only find the right words to express how we feel about someone, but to also make it flow and sound real purty. It’s especially difficult when you’re sitting down with someone and trying to remember exactly what you wanted to say. Enter the love letter.

Why Write a Love Letter

Love letters were definitely more popular in the past when soldiers were off fighting the Big One and men left on trips that took them away from their love for months or even years at a time. With the rise of modern means of communication, love letters, and letters generally, have fallen into disfavor.

But as we talked about in our letter writing post, letters have special properties that no modern form of communication can duplicate. A handwritten letter is something tangible that we touch and hold and then pass to another to touch and hold. And they are preserved and cherished in a way that text messages or email never will be.

The love letters you give your wife or girlfriend are testaments in the history of your love. They constitute a record of your relationship that she’ll hold onto for the rest of her life (unless of course you break her heart and then the letters will give her the satisfaction of having something to burn or line the bird cage with).

Your love doesn’t have to be far away for you to write a letter to her. A love letter is appropriate even when you’re sleeping alongside your special someone every night. It’s a chance to express your feelings in a more ardent way than you do on a day-to-day basis.

A woman cannot hear too many times that’s she beautiful and that you love her. They’ll never get sick of it. They want to know that you still feel the same way as you did when you first met, heck, the same way you felt last Monday. When high-profile cases of infidelity are so often in the news, a lady can be forgiven for wanting regular reassurance that she’s still the only one for you.

How to Write a Love Letter

If you’re particularly in touch with your feelings and a great writer, then love letters may come easily to you. In that case, just sit down with pen and paper and let it rip. If you’re someone who has problems formulating a romantic love letter, we offer the following tips to guide the process.

1. Start off by stating the purpose of your letter. You want your love to know right away that this is a love letter and not a note to give her the brush off or to voice some kind of displeasure with the relationship. Begin with something like, “I was thinking today about how very much I love you, and how I really don’t tell you that enough. So I wanted to sit down and let you know how truly in love with you I really am.”

2. Recall a romantic memory. What’s special about couplehood is that the two of you have a shared history, a history that is unique to you and your love. Thus the best way to start a love letter is to refer to a shared memory; this conjures up feelings of your history together and scores you points for remembering details of your past. For example, begin by saying, “I still remember clearly the moment when you walked into Rob’s party, wearing that stunning red dress. You were smiling ear-to-ear and absolutely lit up the room. I knew immediately that I had to meet you. I went to the bathroom to try to summon up my courage and think of what to say. But it was no use; I was totally tongue tied when I approached you. I was smitten from the very start.”

3. Now transition to a section about the things you love about her. Move from your memory to the present with a line like, “And here we are more than a decade later, and you still leave me weak in the knees.”

4. Tell her all the things you love about her. Before you write this section, make a list on a separate sheet of paper of all the things you that you love about your significant other. Think about her physical characteristics, her personality, her character, and all the wonderful things she does for you. Then, turn the things you listed into sentences. “I truly think you are the most beautiful women in the world. I love the feeling of your legs intertwined with mine and the smell of your hair and skin. Your smile lifts my spirits on even my worst days. I love your laugh and your ability to find humor in every situation. I’m so grateful for everything you do for me, from your delicious dinners to your magnificent backrubs.”

5. Tell her how your life has changed since meeting her. “You truly complete me. These last few years have been the happiest of my life. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to always have my best friend by my side.”

6. Reaffirm your love and commitment. “I will always love you, no matter what happens, through thick and thin. I will be absolutely true and faithful to you forever.”

7. End with a line that sums up your love. “I can’t wait to grow old with you.” “My love for you will never end.” “You are my best friend and soul mate and I will love you until the end of our lives.”

It’s okay to err on the side of cheesiness. The most important rule is to be completely authentic. Write only those things that you truly feel. This will prevent the letter from seeming over the top or incongruous with your personality and relationship.

If you need some inspiration before you start writing, read this letter and watch this video that we originally posted in our article about “How to Write a Love Letter Like a Soldier.” The letter was written in 1861 by Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah, a week before the Battle of Bull Run. The clip gives a shortened verison of the letter which appeared in Ken Burn’s Civil War documentary. It is set to the achingly beautiful “Ashokan Farewell” and definitely worth a listen.

July the 14th, 1861

Washington D.C.

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days-perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure-and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine O God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing-perfectly willing-to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.

But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows-when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it as their only sustenance to my dear little children-is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country?

I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death-and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country, and thee.

I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my breast, for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness of those I loved and I could not find one. A pure love of my country and of the principles have often advocated before the people and “the name of honor that I love more than I fear death” have called upon me, and I have obeyed.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me-perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar-that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night-amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours-always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father’s love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue-eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers his and hers I call God’s blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.

Sullivan

Hopefully, you are now fully inspired to write your lady a romantic love letter. One need not wait until they are nigh unto death to make their feelings known. Each day could be your last; tell her how you feel right now.

And if you are single, write a love poem to hone your romantic writing skills.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Why do people sometimes fall in love with someone who is all kinds of wrong for them? Their friends and family see lots of red flags about their partner, but they themselves miss these warnings entirely, sometimes to catastrophic consequences. 

My guest today argues that these kinds of errors in relational decision-making happen when someone lets his heart rule without also heeding his head. His name is John Van Epp, and he’s a therapist and the author of the book How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk. We begin our conversation discussing what society’s default template for creating a successful relationship looks like, and how it leads people astray. John then defines what makes a jerk, a jerk, and the signs that you’re dating a jerk. He then explains why it is that people so often miss these signs, by using a model of how attachment develops in a relationship; I think this model is super useful in understanding relational dynamics and you don’t want to miss it. We then discuss why men need to do a better job in helping to pace relationships, instead of only letting women set the tempo. We end our conversation discussing the things you need to know about a person that you’re forming a relationship with, including their relationship skills, family life, and values, before you escalate your commitment to them.

Show Highlights

• What’s the template people often fall back on when it comes to dating and marriage?
• How John defines a “jerk” in a relationship 
• What happens if you find out only later (even much later) that your significant other is a jerk?
• How relationships get too intimate too quickly 
• The stages of how a relationship should progress (yes, there’s a lot of research on this!) 
• What roles do men and women play in this pacing?
• Is it true that “happy wife = happy life”?
• What does it mean to really know someone? 
• Why is it harder in our modern world to get to know people?
• What are the 5 key areas in which you should get to know someone?
• What Seinfeld can teach you about conscientiousness

Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast

• How Do You Know When She’s the One?
• Should You Live Together Before Marriage?
• Why Every Man Should Read Jane Austen
• The 14 Red Flags of Dating
• How to Spot Red Flags in a Relationship
• How Delaying Intimacy Can Benefit Your Relationship
• The All-or-Nothing Marriage by Eli Finkel
• How to Avoid a 3-Car Pile-Up In Your 30s
• The 10 Commandments of Clean Communication
• The Best Ways to Fund Your Relationship Bank Account
• How to Test Your Relationship Without Moving In Together
• DIY Marriage Counseling
• Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
• How and Why to Hold a Weekly Marriage Meeting

Connect With John 

Love Thinks website (use code “artofman” to get a 20% discount on courses) 

Love Thinks on Instagram

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Listen ad-free on Stitcher Premium; get a free month when you use code “manliness” at checkout.

Podcast Sponsors

The Strenuous Life. A platform designed to take your intentions and turn them into reality. There are 50 merit badges to earn, weekly challenges, and daily check-ins that provide accountability in your becoming a man of action. The next enrollment is coming up in the April. Sign up at strenuouslife.co.

Click here to see a full list of our podcast sponsors.

Read the Transcript

Brett McKay:

Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast. Why do people sometimes fall in love with someone who is all kinds of wrong for them? Their friends and family see lots of red flags about their partner, but they themselves miss these warnings entirely sometimes to catastrophic consequences. I guess they argue that these kinds of errors in relational decision making happen when someone lets his heart rule without also heeding his head. His name is John Van Epp, he’s a counselor and the author of the book How To Avoid Falling in Love With a Jerk. We begin our conversation discussing what society’s default template for creating a successful relationship looks like and how it leads people astray. John then defines what makes a jerk a jerk and the signs you’re dating a jerk. He then explains why it is that people so often miss these signs by using the model, how attachment develops in a relationship and I think this model is super useful in understanding relational dynamics and don’t want to miss it.

We then discuss why men need to do a better job in helping pace relationships instead of only letting women set the tempo and we end our conversation discussing the things you didn’t know about a person that you’re forming relationship with, including the relationship skills, family life and values before you escalate your commitment to them. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/love things. All right, John Van Epp, welcome to the show.

John Van Epp:

It’s very exciting. Thank you so much for having me.

Brett McKay:

So you are a counselor and you’ve written a book called How To Avoid Falling in Love With a Jerk: The Foolproof Way to Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind. So this book, How To Avoid Falling in Love With a Jerk, it’s based on a marriage program or a premarital program you developed called PICK. What is PICK and what issues are you trying to address in this program?

John Van Epp:

Yeah, so way back in the mid ’90s, I developed the concepts, worked it through and put it in a certification course where people could get certified to actually go out, get our workbooks, get this training and facilitate it in their own respective locations. So that was multiplying my efforts. So it’s not me doing all the work and it really took off. We started to have singles organizations, the military grabbed it as we headed into the 2000s, social agencies, community initiatives that had federal and state grant money, and by the time we reached the end of 2000s and hit 2010, 2011, we had over a million people having gone through the program being taught by all these certified instructors. And in the middle of that, McGraw-Hill published the book. So the content of the book and then the course itself has a lot of overlap.

Brett McKay:

And with the PICK program, is this for people like couples who are thinking about getting married or about to get married or even people who marriage isn’t on the radar yet, but it’s a plan later on in life?

John Van Epp:

Well, sure, so I think if somebody is in a serious relationship, I think this would be really great material for them to go through, but I really, to be honest, it was designed to go what I call upstream. I wanted to reach pre-relational people. People that were just maybe had been in a relationship or young people even or divorced people that came out of relationship and they were just kind of saying, “Hey, we need a better template of what to get to know about somebody and how to build a healthy relationship because the template we’ve used or the template we’ve learned just isn’t really effective or it’s not worked.”

And so that was really my target audience and it’s been that way. We’ve had over a hundred thousand kids in public schools go through the PICK program with instructors coming into the school systems and teaching it. And that’s been pretty cool. So it’s pretty far upstream. And then we’ve worked a lot with adult singles of all ages. So I think that that’s really the primary place where I’d really like to see your listeners say, “Hey, let’s look into this even more. I’m not interested in a serious relationship right now.” Okay, good, you are the very person that I want to look into this material and think about it and take it because now is the best time pre-relationally.

Brett McKay:

Well, I think it’s interesting you’re teaching this stuff to high school students because this is like important stuff. Your marriage, your relationship, is one of the biggest things that have the biggest impact on your life yet we don’t really teach kids like what they should look for in a partner. So you mentioned we have a template that we fall back to because we don’t get this sort of intentional instruction. What does that template look like and why isn’t it not effective?

John Van Epp:

Yeah, so the template that people fall back on is usually what I consider to be several different unanalyzed beliefs that tend to drive the culture at large. One is intuition. I’ll know when I know. When I’m in with somebody, it’s kind of the click factor. As soon as things click with me and this person and… I’ll just know when I know I. Nobody needs to teach me anything, I just figure it out and I know it intuitively. The second, and that doesn’t work, there are some people that perhaps do have that innate ability, but the vast majority people don’t have that good of judgment or you might say they haven’t been trained to have their intuition function at such a high level of really knowing and being able to predict longterm relationship potential of an individual that they have some kind of chemistry or attraction to.

A second, I would say template that’s used is the belief that relationships that are healthy or good or… It’s kind of a dichotomy. It’s either healthy or unhealthy, good or bad, functional or dysfunctional. And they have this dichotomy and they believe that if it’s on the positive side of the dichotomy, they’re good, they’re healthy, they’re functioning, then a relationship just runs itself. If I have to work at it, that must mean something’s wrong with it. And that concept, anybody that has ever had a longterm relationship, a friendship even, knows that unless you have some kind of concerted effort, ongoing energy investment into the relationship, the relationship tends to start deflating. But still we believe that more about a romantic relationship than any other. I’ll just know when I know, the click factor, it’s in my intuition and if it’s really good, it just goes at its own pace and it runs itself.

And I don’t have to have any kind of training, information, involvement. And it’s kind of like asking people, “When do you feel is the right time to have sex?” A lot of people would just say, “Well, I’ll just know when I know and when it feels right.” And it’s that intuition and the relationship will just go there when it’s the right time to go there as if the relationship is this thing outside of myself and the other person and I don’t have any involvement in pacing how this relationship develops. Those two things I found were extremely detrimental and they left lots of burned, crashed relationships in people’s histories. And actually then all of those hardship experiences get brought into the next relationship and complicate things even more. So we came up with a different way of getting to know somebody and building a relationship and actually being more informed and intentional, and we found it to be way more successful of all ages, by the way.

Brett McKay:

So you mentioned that intuition can result in people if they’re not lucky, they might look out, but typically they don’t. Just relying on intuition leads you to end up falling for a jerk. So for definitions, how do you define a jerk? What makes a jerk a jerk in a marriage or relationship?

John Van Epp:

Well, I think the starting point, Brett, is all of us at one time or another act like jerks, right? Can you admit that as well?

Brett McKay:

Yes.

John Van Epp:

Okay, but you didn’t elaborate on it. Probably everybody would like to hear a story too from you, but we’ll go on.

Brett McKay:

I’m sure they would.

John Van Epp:

We’ll let you off the hook. But I’ll say for myself, I’ve made very jerk decisions over the… I’m in my 60s now and so been married for 40 years. And in my relationship with my kids, my wife, we all make mistakes and errors. So the word is not trying to say first of all that you got to find a person that is perfect. The second thing I would say about what the word is not saying, these are kind of disclaimers, is that the word is not saying that the jerks are a particular gender. We all gender neutral. No matter what you are or how you define yourself as a human being, everybody can act like a jerk. But I would say there is a marked difference between acting like a jerk and what we will say is being a jerk.

So a couple things. First I’ll just say some simple signs of jerkiness is lack of clear insight into how their behavior is impacting other people that they’re in a relationship with. That makes people a little jerky. Some people have that insight but they don’t have any real care about how they’re… They’re like, “Wow, you made somebody really feel bad. Well, that’s their problem. I’m not responsible for their feelings.” So there’s either lack of insight or care about how my words or my actions impact others. I think a second sign or warning flashing signal that this person could be a bit jerky is if they’re really lacking, woefully lacking, some relationships skills like the skill of empathy or the skill of apology, how to admit their faults and they talk things through, woefully lacking communication or how to handle conflicts.

And so there’s these warning signals, but I would say we could probably spend this entire time making a list of all of the things that people can do that would throw them in a category of acting like a jerk, but the bottom line of being a jerk is they have a persistent resistance to addressing and actually changing whatever gets put on the table is bothering others. So in other words, when you’re in a relationship with somebody, one of the key areas to look for, I call it a global characteristic of a person, is do they have the change factor? Do they have the ability to have insight into themselves, see something that keeps repeating as a pattern and bothering you? And when it gets put on the table and you talk about it, they actually take it to heart, they take responsibility and they do something to make a change.

That sounds simple, but there are a lot of people in relationships that are unwilling to address issues that a person’s put on the table or maybe multiple people put on the table that, “Hey, this is something about you that offends others, bothers others. I really like to try to change this.” Well, and they have a defense resistance to that. So I would just start with a very simple definition of the difference between acting like a jerk versus being a jerk is whether a person has the change factor. They have a willingness to be open and receptive to something about themselves that needs to be addressed and change and they put in some concerted effort to do it.

Brett McKay:

Well, and the problem you highlight in the book is that people don’t typically realize they’re in a relationship with a jerk, someone who’s has jerkiness qualities till it’s too late, and by then they’re so entwined in the relationship that it’s hard to get out and you’re like, “Man, how did I get into this? How did I miss this when I first started dating this person?”

John Van Epp:

I call it the head and the heart need to work together and accelerated bonds. So when you get into a relationship, there’s something that is attracting you. It could be a kind of a sexual chemistry, you could be really attracted to the person. If it’s got some romantic aspect to it, then you would expect that there’s some kind of a attraction and hopefully it’s mutual attraction, and that is like a magnet pulling you toward each other. But then there are bonds, major bonds that I say exist in every relationship, whether it’s romantic or not, that I put together in a tool that we call the Relationship Attachment Model.

It’s this kind of graphic that’s going to date me if I call it a graphic equalizer, but if you think of a soundboard with sliders that go up and down, it is depicted, these bonds that occur in all of our relationships are depicted as a slider. And they can have a very low level and they can move up to a very high level. And what I say is there’s somewhat of a progression. It lies which bonding factor, which aspect of the relationship is going up really high, but they get into a relationship and some of those areas of connection in the relationship, what I call these bonds, some of them go up super fast almost superficially, and they don’t fully know the person. So the know is actually the first of the five sliders, how much I know this person or they know me, and that might be actually very low, but their trust or their reliance or even their touch in terms of just attraction and so forth or even getting involved sexually, those things can go up super fast, create premature feelings of bond and closeness.

Why are they premature? Well, they’re premature because my bond is greater than what I truly know about this person. So I don’t know if they’re a jerk or not a jerk. I don’t know what the patterns are of how this person’s going to act. I know how they’ve treated me, I know what we’ve experienced together in the six weeks we’ve been seeing each other and now we’re sleeping together, and I dropped my friends and I’m spending bulk of my time. So another slider in this model I developed is called rely. How much I depend on this person or how much I’ve put into a sense of them depending on me or me depending on them, how we’re meeting each other’s needs. So a lot of my needs are now all getting funneled into this relationship with this person of six weeks.

And if you go to my trust, which is another level, that is like all the way up because everything’s been good so far. For six weeks, everything’s been good. But my know is locked into actually time. And you can’t get to know the patterns of a person until there’s been enough time for certain things to surface. And then a pattern by definition is something that keeps repeating. So there has to be additional time beyond it surfacing for something to actually repeat. Well, six weeks, a lot of times is not enough time for even somebody in a relationship to get mad at you. So you don’t even know how they’re going to treat you if they’re mad at you. So here you are sleeping with them, channeling a lot of your needs and the reliance and your belief in them, your trust belief is way up and yet your know is really low.

And that is the norm for how many, many people today are building relationships and it really is a recipe. It’s a a potential recipe for catastrophe because as your know goes up a little more and you’re round the corner of what we call the 90 day probation period rate, when things are really starting to surface that didn’t surface in the beginning and maybe some things are starting to repeat. So you’re starting to see a few patterns, all of a sudden you hit this three month mark, this 90 day, and all of a sudden you’d be like, “I thought I knew this person, but I’m really wondering, do I really know them?” And people are shocked as if they thought they fully knew them but they’re their knowing wasn’t high on that level. It was their trust, it was their rely, independence and meeting each other’s needs and it was their touch was super high.

So I can explain that model a little more and in a more organized way, but just answering your question, why do people get involved, all of a sudden realize, “I thought I knew this person, they seemed great, but now they look like a jerk,” it’s because our definition of a jerk was they’re not acting like a jerk 24/7, it’s that there is a repeating pattern that doesn’t surface typically in the beginning of a relationship, but over time begins to surface and when addressed does not change and starts to have major defenses on it changing.

So accelerated relationships are the norm. They’ve been the norm for a long, long time. I was growing up in the ’70s and accelerated relationships were happening when I was in high school back in the ’70s. And so over those decades ever since, accelerated relationships have just become more and more the norm. But I think that they are a very unwise way and a very risky way that we do relationships. And we need to talk about guys for a minute. So I’ll let you keep asking questions but I do want to speak directly to guys as stepping up, being pacemakers of relationships rather than saying guys will just do whatever women let them do.

Brett McKay:

Well, yeah, so let’s summarize this Relationship Attachment Model because I thought it was a very useful tool for people. So the idea is that there’s these five sliders which you call bonding areas, and the first one is know, then you said trust, rely, commit and touch. And the way you talk about in the book is that in a relationship you have to go through these in a progression. You can’t go too fast like you said. You can’t accelerate to touch before you get to know the person because that’s just going to lead to disaster or commit. Like there’s a lot of people who end up living, moving in with somebody, but they don’t really know that and they find out the person has lots of debt and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know yet.” Or like, “You’ve been in jail? I did not know you’ve been in jail.”

And so that’s why you want to make sure you know. And I think the big takeaway I got from that is that you never want to go further in one bonding area than you have gone in the previous. So like you never want to go say if you’re still in the know period of a relationship, you don’t want to over commit or over rely or over trust before you get to know that person better.

John Van Epp:

That’s a very, very perfect description of it. So if people are imaginative, they can imagine in their mind this image of five sliders going up and down and what you just said is know. Starting from the left, it would be know and then trust and then rely and then commit and then touch. And exactly what you said, they’re representative of a piece of the whole of what a relationship is. A relationship is the interaction of these five areas. How much I know somebody, how it interacts with how I trust them, how that interacts with how they meet my needs or I meet their needs and how we rely. And these things are like two way streets, so you could get a little more complicated with a model and say it’s not just how I know them, but how I have let them get to know me or how they trust me and I trust them.

So they do have a little more complications. We start thinking of them as two way streets, but they are pieces of the whole. And when you think of a brand new relationship, any relationship, there’s just an intuitive wisdom to not let a level go higher or faster or develop in a greater way than any of the levels to the left. So you’re right. If the know is low, then I shouldn’t have my trust go significantly higher than what I know somebody. If I’m trusting somebody way beyond what I know them, it definitely puts me at risk. But even if my know is up a little bit, if my trust isn’t fully developed and I step into, like you said, moving in with them, that makes my commitment really high. We have lots of interesting research. Literally, I don’t know if everyone knows this, but there have been over a thousand research studies on moving in together outside of marriage.

These are, I’m talking about in academic journals, they don’t have any particular religious… They’re almost always out of university settings, and then because there’s so many research studies that have been done, there have been what they call meta studies, which then take all of the research that was done from like 1980 to 2015 and let’s take all of the research and group it on cohabitation in unmarried relationships, so unmarried people moving in together. Let’s take all of that research for those last 15 or 20 years, whatever, the metastatic is looking at. Basically a summary of it confirms this logic, this intuitive logic of my model that the people that move in together are forming a reliance way higher than their trust typically and way higher than what they know somebody.

So the know, trust, rely, commit, touch progression, their rely is really high, their touch is really high, their commitment is kind of skewed. They don’t want to go to a full commitment of marriage which truly is historically the greatest commitment. We are going to commit together, to be together as a union for life. That’s been the historic definition of what marriage is. And they’re not ready for that but their rely is really high, their commitment is a little bit crooked you might say, and mid range, their touch is all the way to the top. Their trust is mid range because they’re not quite sure if they can believe everything good about this person but they have enough to move in together, and they’re know, even though they might say their know is really high, there’s a ton of things that they don’t know about each other.

What all the research in the meta analysis as well as most of the individual studies, you can’t really find any good research that says this approach of moving in and then eventually getting married is producing better marriages. But there is a lot of research that says the breakup rates are significantly higher than the breakup rates in marriage. And you might be like, “Well, that’s good.” So they move in together, they realize it’s not going to work out and they break up. But we also find the after effects of those breakups can be more similar to the after effects of divorce than ever realized. And so people are thinking this is like a no fault, no risk approach to checking out a relationship and they move in and their hearts are bonded and they’re living together and their rely is really high and maybe they see problems and because their reliance is so high and they bought a house together, they’re living together and they both put money out and bought a house, now their dependence, their co-interdependency has just moved significantly up.

Or they bought a dog together. Even that. Or in the millennial generation, which is, what? Maybe 22, 23 years old to 38 years old now, having a kid when you’re not married, and that generation is now over 50%. It’s 55%. And just a quick stat, they looked at these moms that are having kids when they’re not married and they asked them, “How many of you are going to eventually marry the father of your child?” Well, it was around 70% said, “Yeah, we’re going to marry the father of our child.” They did a five year follow up with these millennial moms and only 16% five years later had married the dads and over 50, it was actually 65% plus had moved on to another guy. So just think how complicated life is becoming.

So I’m elaborating on what you said, but there is an intuitive logic that says as you get to know somebody, and we can talk, Brett, about what does it mean to get to know somebody, what are the key areas, but as you get to know somebody, let the ceiling of how much you truly know them, let that set the ceiling of your trust. And as you are getting to know them and checking out your trust based on that, we call it the three T’s by the way, you’ve got to talk. So that’s good to get to know them and build trust, but second T is you’ve got to be together in various situations and moods and states of life. When they’re stressed or when they’re angry or when they’re, we already said when they’re mad at you, this togetherness and diverse moods and settings takes the third T, it takes a lot of time.

So if you let your know set the ceiling for your trust and how you know and believe in them as that’s getting tested out, you keep pulling back your reliance to keep a little bit of a balanced life, not overly investing. The same with your commitment. And if you pace it that way and then you do everything you can to hold your physical involvement with them in check, I know everybody’s like, “Man, just you got to jump in the sack and check things out right away.” But all research from biological to psychological and social finds that jumping into sack with somebody, even in a hookup, creates chemicals in the brain that prompt a sense of connection and bond. And so we’re creating bonds that don’t match the other areas of the relationship.

And this skewed sense of I’m bonded to them, I can’t stop thinking about them, I’m spending my time with them, but this other area is not fully developed like how much I know them, whether I can fully trust them. These areas are not fully developed, whether they really will meet my needs in responsible ways or whether they will be more self running and self focused and I didn’t realize that for the first few months. Doing a relationship with the logic of the Relationship Attachment Model, that intuitive logic, don’t let a level go higher than the previous to the left, that has saved a ton of people heartache and decisions and helped them to use it as, I call it, a relationship GPS system to help them navigate their relationship in a way that is wise and safe and actually very rewarding.

Brett McKay:

So earlier you mentioned you want to talk about guys taking charge and being a part of this pacing of it. So talk to that. What role does a guy have in a relationship and pacing the relationship?

John Van Epp:

Yeah, this has been… So I had a counseling practice if I back up, in Northern Ohio for 25 years and it was something that just bothered me so much. And then after designing programs, so we have a lot of programs now. I don’t have a private practice anymore, but we have a lot of programs that have been trying to do more preventative than remedial work. Obviously a counseling practice does a lot of remedial work. Trying to fix something that broken. Like now I want to just help people try to avoid things breaking down by making better decisions on the front end.

One of the things that always just got me was this sense that respecting what a woman wants and what she’s willing to do in a relationship is the role of the man. He is just to be thoughtful and respectful and not pressure her in any kind of way. And if he does that, then that is enough to be an outstanding art of manliness guy, okay? And I’m like, “Okay, that is all good, but that’s not good enough.” The man should be selective about who he’s getting involved with. He should have some criteria of what he wants from a female and what he doesn’t like in a female, and he should definitely have some kind of a value system about how to intentionally pace the acceleration of the relationship.

And if she is like on the third time they’re hanging out together, she’s like, “Hey, why don’t you come up to my apartment?” He’s like, “Are you sure? Is that okay with you? That’s great with me.” That permission that she is giving doesn’t remove the responsibility he has of saying, “Hey, I’m pacing this relationship.” And I’m going to tell her, “I think this is early to be jumping in together and you know I’d like to. Man, I’m attracted you, I find it’s an exciting conversation to even talk about this, but I’m going to hold back because I really think that if we do this relationship differently, we might be able to either develop a really great relationship and see where it’s going. And that’s going to be a totally different landscape if we do this relationship a little differently. And I’d love to talk why that’s important to me.”

I just found even parents didn’t teach their boys that this is a responsibility of a young man or an older man, a middle aged man. It doesn’t matter. This is the responsibility of the man in the relationship, not just the woman. And so forever, it seems like women were the gatekeepers of any kind of sexual involvement and it wouldn’t be on that. They were actually not just the gatekeepers, but the relationship managers. This is a big problem in marriage. A lot of wives want their husbands to join with them and be relationship managers. “Hey, why don’t you plan a date? Why don’t you think about something that’d be fun to do? Why don’t you look at what we need in our relationship? Why don’t you come to me and say, we’ve got to improve our communication? Why am I always the one doing all this?”

Well, it goes all the way back to how boys are raised. And boys are raised to not be relationship managers and to not be the gatekeepers of the physical, sexual area of a relationship. And so I say we’ve got to up the responsibility and the empowerment of men in relationships. Men should be much more engaged and they should be much more positive about taking this on. Like, “Hey, this is a good thing. I want to have some involvement.” When my wife and I dated back at the end of the ’70s, we met in college and we dated in college before we got married for a couple of years, and I’m thankful looking back. I was very much a relationship manager meaning, what do I mean by that? I was thinking about, “Hey, what is going on in our relationship? Where are we? What are things we need to talk about?”

I would bring up topics, I would prompt things. It was a mutual… We both did it, but I can remember even as a 19, 20 year old being very engaged in that way. And I definitely was thoughtful and we talked about what we were going to do in our physical relationship and what boundaries we were going to set and not do. And that that helped us to establish a best friend relationship that has been foundational now for, like I said, over 40 years. So I just think that there’s no way to get around that. And if we help men develop that sense of role in relationships, it empowers men and gives them way more sense of thoughtfulness and involvement than I think a lot of times they’ve had in the past.

Brett McKay:

And women will appreciate it too.

John Van Epp:

I think so. And what I would say, if a guy’s doing this well, so we’re not talking about control freaks. So just to put a couple of disclaimers out there, we’re not talking about control freaks, we’re not talking about interrogation, we’re not talking about authoritarian approaches. None of those things I’m talking about. I’m talking about just upping their involvement and being thoughtful about the relationship and actually engaging in the relationship on a regular basis from the very beginning all the way on into longterm committed relationships. And absolutely, the partner will be very, very appreciative about it. And if not, then that guy ought to really step back and think about what does it say about this partner that doesn’t like me getting involved and taking some charge of this pole arena of what we do together, what we talk about and what our physical relationship is like. Why is she like this? What does that mean about her? Because I would say that’s a red flag.

Brett McKay:

So yeah, that idea that happy wife, happy life, no, that’s not good. It’s probably going to lead to a lot of heartache and just not having a good time.

John Van Epp:

Well, if that is interpreted to be happy wife, happy life, so all that means is I can be totally passive. If that’s the interpretation, then I agree that that’s not a good, but if happy wife means, “Hey, if I engage, if I’m involved, if I’m helping to pace the relationship, if I’m managing it in a mutual way, if I’m thinking about what she needs as well as what I need and we’re putting those things on the table and I’m an initiator, not just a responder.” If I am doing those things, I would say you’re going to have a much happier wife and a happier life as well because those are the things, if you read all the books, they’ll all be saying the same thing. Guys need to step into that kind of involvement. And I’m just putting it upstream at the very beginning of a relationship. Guys need to be stepping in and they need to be told this is a good thing for you to do.

Brett McKay:

So let’s delve deep into the know factor because in the book, you spend a lot of time in this know area of bonding because I think it’s hard in the dating arena today. Oftentimes people are dating complete strangers. Like they meet at college, they’re potential partners from Detroit, they’re from California. It used to be like way back in the 19th century, like you grew up in the same home town, families knew each other generations. You knew the person. Not so anymore. So what does it mean to know somebody in a relationship?

John Van Epp:

Yeah, you’re so right. I came across this book written right on the edge of the 1950s. So it was coming out of the ’40s which was, if you think back to history, that’s the World War II, when came out of the Depression and all those things, and it was also the era where we had not quite yet stepped into the 1950s of suburbs. People lived in the cities. And anyway, it was the Burgess, the leading sociologists of that time period, and it was a book called, I think, Love, Marriage and Courtship. It was a great little book I found and I came across this study that in the 70 percentile, I don’t remember exactly if it’s 73% or 74%, but of the people in a study in the city of Philadelphia, people that got married, married somebody that they had lived within six blocks off. So 70 people will say that up at the 75%. So three out of four people were marrying somebody that was in their neighborhood.

And you’re absolutely right. That is not really what’s going on in this day and age. People are meeting online and building long distance relationships on a very, very regular basis and meeting in different settings where they have come from. Backgrounds that are very diverse. And the diversity is great. I love diversity, but understand diversity makes figuring out compatibility much more complicated. It’s not that relationships have become simpler, they’ve become more complicated and yet the relationship information for what we’re talking about being upstream has, I think, really been depleted. So the people guiding the process and friends and relatives and family. It has just all dropped off and people are marrying much later, so they’re more independent and on their own, and they almost become dependent on like assessments online. Like I’ll take eharmony and then I’ll do this assessment and it will start helping me connect with people. And okay, so this is where wisdom is found is in some kind of an online assessment.

And I like things like that, but I think we need to go way, way beyond that. So empowering singles with key target areas to explore and talk about in their relationship. These are the most important areas to get to know and we want you to understand them, to have some in depth information about them because you are the one running your relationship, not some online assessment. You’re the one that is ultimately making the decisions, not some algorithm. And so we want you to be empowered with this so you can go into it. This really came out of, Brett, when I was in my private practice in the mid 90s, I was also teaching marriage and family coursework in graduate school, and I came across some research that had to do with characteristics of people before marriage and how they predict some kind of outcome after marriage.

So some of them were individual characteristics, some of them were relationship characteristics, but they were things basically that you could get to know about somebody before marriage that predicted how that person seemed to function after marriage and what the outcomes would be. And I thought, “I wonder how many research studies have been conducted on something about a person, like unmarried characteristics that predict marriage outcomes.” So I set myself, and that’s really how this book came about, I set myself on the journey of collecting all of the research I could find that was about that. And I found hundreds of research studies that nobody had ever organized or cataloged, and I began to put them in categories and found that there were really five key areas that covered the vast majority, almost all of this research. And so I put them in a little acronym and they became five core chapters of my book.

And they are also in the PICK program and we have an online version, so people can… They don’t have to go to a live class. They could just jump online. We call it Head Meets Heart and it goes through the same areas. It goes through that Relationship Attachment Model we’ve talked about, it goes more in depth into those five areas and then it goes very in depth into the five key areas to get to know about somebody that we’re talking about right now.

Brett McKay:

And what are those five key areas? Just as a summary.

John Van Epp:

Okay, so I’ll put them in the order of the book. So there are a little different order in the programs but in the book, they start with what I thought would be the logic. Like you meet somebody and you start hanging out together. We use the word dating as we’ve been talking, but I don’t know who uses that word anymore. Relationships have become so undefined, which is like a whole nother topic. But when I go on college campuses now and everything, they say if somebody is dating, they don’t call it dating more, they call it talking. So what do you guys do when you’re talking? So that’s what it is. So I just tried to be like, “Okay, what would be the logical progression of these five areas?” And it’s not cutting stone and they’re not like finish one and go to the other, but usually the first thing that you begin to see is what I call compatibility potential. So you see like you’re talking to somebody and it’s that click factor that I mentioned earlier. It’s that sense of chemistry. It’s some commonality.

And so I define three major areas of compatibility that I think go a lot deeper than just that initial, but I think that’s kind of it. Do we feel a little bit compatible with this person? And then the second major area is relationships skills. And so you figure that out. How does the person talk? How does the person handle themselves with me? How do they interact with me in terms of their skill level? If you think of a relationship skill, if we wanted to find that, just think in relationships, there are activities that we do. We talk, we share, open up. That’s all parts of talking. We plan things to do together. So there’s activities, whether it’s recreation, whether it’s a project, whether it’s work, we support each other, we make priorities, we meet each other’s needs.

That takes a lot. We can figure out what the person needs. I call it being a kind of sore of another person. How much am I an expert? I want this other person needs, right? So these are activities. The proficiency of how good you are at a particular activity is your skill level. So skills are not some separate category of the activities that make up what we do in relationship, skills are just the measure of proficiency that we have at doing that. So how good am I at talking and listening would start to fall into what we call a communications skill. So obviously you start hanging with somebody, you not only initially see this first category they said it’s how are we clicking? What’s our compatibility? What’s our chemistry? But then you also are doing activities together and you start to see how good they are at these particular activities.

Those two things by the way, are not enough to really tell you what this person is like. They’re important areas, but there are other areas that don’t surface so quickly. And the third one is what I called a relationship scripts. How a person treats everybody else. Forget about how they treat you. Think about how they treat a co-worker or an authority figure or their family or extended family or how they treated an ex or how they broke up with that ex or how they talk about people. A lot of times, how they’re treating me doesn’t really match how they treat some other significant people in their life, even maybe a stranger or somebody that is a waiter or a waitress, a service person. Sometimes how they treat these other people in other arenas is starkly different than how they treat me.

But I like how they treat me, but also that’s their business. But a lot of times, those scripts over time start to get turned into the relationship and they start surfacing in the relationship. So they’re not a good friend, they don’t pay a lot of attention to a person that they’re friends with or maybe certain family members. They tune them out. They don’t look very conscientious toward those people and they never like pursue… Like shouldn’t you call your brother or, yeah, whatever. Or your friend always reaches out to you, but you never really reach out to them. And you see this kind of passivity in how they treat others but they’re so involved with me and they’re constantly with me and they’re constantly talking to me and we’ve been together now two and a half months. And man, I don’t even pay attention to their relationships scripts with others.

Huge red flag because it’s really likely that as you round the corner from three months into maybe 13 months passing your first year, all of a sudden, or maybe even second year, you start to see some of those relationships scripts are starting to become normative in how they relate to me. And that was, I could see it in the first couple months of our relationship, but I minimized it because I didn’t think it had any significance. Compatibility, their actual skill level of relationship activities in things that they do, the scripts of how they treat others, their relationship patterns with others, that’s number three, now we start to get into the really deep stuff. The fourth one is what they learned and have taken out of their family upbringing.

This is not easy to get to know in the beginning of a relationship because usually if we hear anything about family, we just hear some easygoing stories about families, but you have to look really hard. Family upbringing, whether it was adopted family, a biological parent family, a single parent family, whether it was an institutional or a foster family or they group home, whatever everybody grew up in during those 18 years, whatever period of time you want to say, they were experiencing and internalizing things from those family dynamics. From how the family related, how they retreated and they become some of the strongest predictors of what they’re going to then take out and re-establish in the families they establish or the relationships that they establish in their adulthood. So the fourth area is what I would say, what they learned and took out of their family. It’s not always what happened, but it’s what they took out.

And the final one, which is extremely important, and I haven’t found anybody to talk about it but me, and that’s the conscience. People have a conscience. It’s the dynamic value system that operates in them. But there’s a relationship conscience. There is a sense of not just right and wrong but empathy is prompted by the conscience. The conscience is like that internal voice that monitors you as you are living life. It tells you stop, slow down, don’t do that. I’ll just mention a show. A lot of people when Seinfeld was on and now they watch all the reruns but going to some of the writer, not just Jerry Seinfeld but then Larry David and then the Larry David show. Well, if you want to see someone that depicts what good old Sigmund Freud called a Swiss cheese conscience, I think Larry David is like the perfect example where sometimes he’s super conscientious and then other times he’s like so, in your space, he’s so inappropriate with somebody but we all laugh at it if you like to show. If you don’t like to show, please don’t be offended.

But there’s a lot of humor there but he is showing kind of that conscience that some things stick, some things just go right through and he seems so uninsightful, unempathetic and so forth. This doesn’t always reveal itself right away. These five areas, how you and I clicked together, the key here is of a compatibility. How skilled you are in some of the most important areas of relationship activities like communication, problem solving, conflict, empathy, apologies, things like that. The third is how do you treat other people because that’s such a strong predictor of how you act in relationships in general and it’s probably going to come into our relationship? And then let’s get deeper into our family stuff. What did you take out of your family? And then finally, deep inside of you, what is the maturity and the functioning of that conscience that is such a strong influence on how you live your life and then how you’re going to ultimately relate to me in a relationship?n

Brett McKay:

Ad this like you said, it takes talking, it takes being together and it takes time. A lot of time. What more time do you think it’s going to take?

John Van Epp:

It does. And if I put those five areas back into that Relationship Attachment Model, going from left to right is know, and then as I dropdown box, just think about these five areas. What am I getting to know about compatibility? What am I getting to know about skills? What am I getting to know about their relation scripts? What am I getting to know on a deeper level about their family and what they took out of it and how those experiences have shaped them and what am I getting to ultimately know about their character and conscience in this inner sight?

And as I get to know those key areas, which definitely take time, you can’t sit down with somebody and pull out 101 questions and say, “While we’re waiting for dinner to come, I thought I would just ask some questions here that came from this podcast that was really interesting on how to avoid getting involved with a jerk. No, I’m not saying you’re a jerk but let’s go through these questions. I have 20 for each of five categories.

Larry David would do that of course, but if you know these areas, and in my book I do have about 20, 25 questions for each of these five areas, so over a hundred questions. If you know the target areas and the questions, then as time goes on and it feels comfortable, these things can just become part of the fabric of how you’re talking together. And as your know slowly goes up, it tells you how you can trust and believe in them and it tells you how much you can look to them and depend on them. And these three actually all interact. How they meet my needs, how I trust them, how they come through for me, what they share, what we talk about. And as they interact, they inform how invested I should become in my commitment and where I should set some boundaries and our physical relationship to touch.

Brett McKay:

Well, John, we’ve talked about a lot right now, but there’s so much more we could talk about. I think we’ve got to have you back on the show to discuss this more. But in the meantime, where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

John Van Epp:

Oh, that’d be great. Well, first of all, I would love to come back on anytime. Just let me know. I’d be glad to. And we have some free things and then we have some things that can be purchased. And so let me just start with the book. So they can just jump on Amazon and find the book that way. That’s no problem. Again, it’s published by McGraw-Hill and it’s called How To Avoid Falling in Love With a Jerk. But if they also go to My Love Thinks like, love, L-O-V-E, thinks, T-H-I N-K-S, not stinks and it’s my. My Love Thinks because we say love should think. It shouldn’t just be intuitive. The head and the heart should work together. So if they go to My Love Thinks, they can get a lot of free resources. We have a whole library of free resources and we have a blog that’s free that is always giving information.

There is also, we have online courses and right there from My Love Thinks they can click online courses and if they use the code artofman, A-R-T-O-F-M-A-N, artofman, they can get a 20% discount on any of our online courses. And the online course that goes with the content we’ve been talking about is called Head Meets Heart. So it’s about the head and heart working together obviously. And then finally Dr. Morgan Cutlip, who happens to be my daughter. We work closely together. She’s very involved in all of this. She has an Instagram, My Love Thinks, where she puts out daily relationship tips. She also does the blog that I mentioned on My Love Thinks, but if you go to @mylovethinks on Instagram, you can sign in and get these free resources just from her daily tips. And they really are good. I think they’re helpful. She goes through the spectrum of singles on into committed relationships and marriage.

Brett McKay:

Well, fantastic. Well, John Van Epp, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

John Van Epp:

It’s been great talking to you.

Brett McKay:

My guest there is John Van Epp, he’s the author of the book, How To Avoid Falling in Love With a Jerk. It’s available at amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his website, lovethinks.com, not lovestinks.com. Lovethinks.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/lovethinks where you find links to resources where we delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives wells, thousands of articles we’ve written over the years. A lot of things about relationships on there. Check that out. And if you’d like to enjoy add free episodes of the AOM Podcast, you can do so and state your premium. Head over to stateyourpremium.com, sign up. Use code manliness at checkout to get free trials to premium. Once you’re signed up, download the Stitcher app on Android or iOS and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast. And if you haven’t done so already I’d appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple podcast or Stitcher, whatever platform you use to listen to podcast. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think we have something out of it. Shoot him a text. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you not only to listen to AOM Podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Over the last few decades, it’s become more and more common for couples to move in together while they’re dating. They often opt for this living arrangement because it feels convenient, and also because they want to “test” the relationship before deciding whether or not to get married. Couples figure that by experiencing what it’s like to live in close proximity and do day-to-day routines together, they can make a better decision about their compatibility and long-term prospects, in order to avoid someday getting a divorce.

While the idea makes a great deal of sense in the abstract, numerous research studies have definitively shown that living together before marriage does not reduce a couple’s chances of divorce. At all. How can that be?

There are likely a few factors at play, but a big one is that those who cohabitate often end up sliding further into their relationship, rather than deliberating deciding to make progressively deepening commitments. They just kind of slide into living together with a casual “Why not?” feeling; then slide into staying together out of a sense of comfort and complacency; and then slide into getting married, figuring, “Well, we’ve been together this long; I guess this is the next step to take.” In living together, their lives — pets, bills, friends, routines — get so intertwined that it becomes easier to stick with the arrangement — even if the relationship is less than ideal — than to break things off. They may therefore ultimately marry someone out of sheer familiarity, rather than ardent love. “Do you, Rob, take Sunk Cost Fallacy to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

It seems that whatever positive benefit comes from getting to know someone by way of living with them, it is outweighed by the danger of staying together because of inertia rather than brilliant connection.

Are there then other ways to “test” the strength of your relationship, without at the same time significantly increasing the difficulty of breaking up? To make a better-informed decision about your future with someone, while still maintaining more of your independence before you do?

Fortunately, there are. To get some ideas on this front, I talked to Dr. Scott Stanley, a professor of psychology at the University of Denver, who coined the “sliding vs. deciding” paradigm, and has spent his career researching cohabitation, relationships, and commitment.

How to Test Your Relationship Without Moving in Together

Really, “testing” isn’t the best word here; if you’re in a mindset where you’re literally wanting to test a relationship, you probably already have doubts about it, which probably means it’s already on shaky grounds, and actively putting it on trial, so to speak, is probably going to make things worse.

We’re using “test” here not as an encouragement to pin down your relationship for dissection — snuffing out its life in the process — but simply as a way of deepening and expanding the natural course of getting to know someone. To take the relationship out of confined, greenhouse-like conditions and expose it to more elements. Testing your relationship shouldn’t be about placing it under a cynical, hypercritical microscope, but simply being more explorative — seeing if, as a couple, you’re suited for tackling life’s great adventure together.

To that end, below you’ll find ways of turning over more rocks in your relationship, so you can observe what you find there — whether red flags or endearing qualities — and gain a greater perspective as to who your partner really is.

1. Interact With Your Respective Friends and Family

Stanley observes that when two people start dating, they can often cordon themselves off into an isolated bubble. This may be especially true in the age of dating apps, where the relationship may not grow out of a preexistent, shared social scene; rather, two discrete individuals, perhaps new to a city and lacking a real friend or family group, pair up through the digital ether. They then spend all their time one-on-one, only interacting with each other. But engaging exclusively within a dyadic, romantic, chemistry-driven context will only elicit a relatively narrow range of behaviors, giving each partner a limited view of one another. As Stanley explained to me: 

Let’s say two people meet online, they’re communicating, they’re messaging a lot, and then maybe they start having a lot of phone calls, and then they’re dating, and they’re spending every moment together. That’s all great. But there’s a lot of things you don’t learn about a person when you don’t see how they treat other people. Yeah, they’re excited about you. They’re sexually attracted to you. [But] they’re not always gonna be as sexually attracted to you, so how do they treat people that are just people that are important in their life? Because that might be how you’re gonna get treated.

Observing how your girlfriend interacts with her friends, and your friends; her family, and your family; is going to offer a lot more insight into who she really is, than just how she interacts with you. So resist the cliché of being that couple who gets so into each other, that they ghost everyone else in their lives.

It is arguably especially important to see how your girlfriend engages with her own family. Being back with the people she grew up with will often trigger behaviors she may otherwise be good at keeping under control around you. As a satirical headline on The Onion hilariously put it: Woman Nervous for Boyfriend to Meet the Person She Becomes Around Parents.

Of course, how someone treats their family may not be indicative of exactly how she’ll treat you (people have particular hang-ups with family members that are largely context specific), but there will invariably be broad, underlying patterns in her behavior towards them that will almost certainly manifest themselves in your relationship as well.

2. Interact in a Wide Variety of Situations 

Building on the point above, new(ish) couples often only see each other in a limited range of structured, sort of scripted situations — going to dinner, going to the movies, watching tv at each other’s apartments, etc. These predictable scenarios produce fairly predictable sets of behavior.

To get to know someone to a greater extent, it’s helpful to see how she personally handles the unexpected — how she deals with stress and being outside her comfort zone — and the extent to which you are able to work through curveballs together. 

So don’t just stick to a “climate controlled” circuit of dating life; go camping, do a service project, attend a worship service, and so on together. Navigate new kinds of experiences and interact with different types of people.

The fact that the longer you’re in a relationship, the more and more varied situations you’ll end up in as a couple, is part of the reason Stanley recommends taking your time when dating someone and not rushing into things.

3. Get Clear on Your Values and Expectations 

Two people don’t have to be clones of each other to make a good go at marriage, but sharing core values certainly increases a couple’s chances of lasting happiness, while conflicts in these areas become highly corrosive over time.

Conversations about your values, beliefs, and expectations for your future life together should begin fairly early in a relationship, obviously getting progressively deeper and more detailed as it becomes clearer that a future together is a realistic possibility.

Is religion important to you? Where do you want to live? Do you want to live near your parents? Would you move for your job? Do you want to have kids? How dedicated are you to your career? Would you have a problem with me working long hours or being on the road a lot? Do you believe in budgeting? What’s your spending philosophy?

On the topic of having kids — which can become a big sticking point for married couples — Stanley said: “You can’t believe the number of marriage counselors” who’ve worked with couples where “they’re struggling over this very issue and they’ve been married for a few years and they knew it beforehand or they didn’t know it. Either way, it’s like you guys could’ve talked about this.”

Realize there are a couple of limitations to these value-uncovering conversations, however.

First, even if you’re talking about your beliefs and expectations, the high-inducing, mind-altering chemistry of love can lead partners to gloss over differences that arise. They’re so giddy, that the potential source of conflict doesn’t seem like that big a deal; “love conquers all,” they think, or they figure their partner will change their mind on that issue once they’re hitched. But people rarely change their core values and beliefs.

Because the cocktail of love is so heady, it’s important to know — to be radically clear — on what your non-negotiables are before you get in a relationship; then once you fall head over heels, your old self can hopefully talk some sense into your punch-drunk self.

The second caveat, is that while it can be helpful to talk about hypotheticals, it’s hard from the position of the present to know with surety the decisions you’ll actually make in the future.   

It’s thus important not only to listen to what your significant other says, but to also watch what she does. She’s of course not going to act out in the present every scenario you may face in the future, but her behavior in various situations will reveal her real values — the underlying beliefs that may not be able to predict exactly what decisions she’ll make down the road, but will give you an idea of what direction she, and your shared lives, will go.

4. Travel Together 

Travel could be filed under “Interact in a Wide Variety of Situations”; it will certainly often help you see how your significant other handles new people and places and deals with unexpected curveballs. But travel deserves its own entry because it also includes a unique relationship-testing element of its own: planning. Plotting out a significant trip takes some real effort and is a good chance to see how you work together as a team — if you’re able to sacrifice and compromise and communicate. As Stanley observed, it’s a chance you might not otherwise get before you’re prepping to walk down the aisle:

You probably would learn some things in traveling with the person, but you might learn a whole lot in planning to travel with the person. Because planning’s a big thing in life. And a lot of couples actually don’t get into a serious mode of developing a plan together until it’s their wedding. And that’s a pretty weird, intense thing to sort of practice on.

5. Do Premarital Training/Counseling

Taking a premarital preparation/counseling course isn’t something to just mindlessly check off to fulfill a minister’s requirement for officiating your wedding, or to get a discount on a marriage license. Earnestly engaging in such a program can help facilitate the key value-disclosing discussions described above, identify potential issues and disagreements, and teach relationship-strengthening tools. As Stanley argues here:

While marital experts debate everything, there is solid evidence that completing premarital training (education, counseling, whatever it’s called) together can improve your odds in marriage. Although this does not guarantee marital bliss, there is much more potential upside than downside. The one downside I sometimes think about is actually an upside: you could learn something concerning about your partner or relationship that you didn’t fully appreciate before — something that could lead you to get more help or go slower. Because of this, I recommend that you seek premarital training as far before a wedding date as possible. Why? Because the further in advance you complete it, the more you have a chance to find out something that could lead you to change your mind about marrying each other.

Premarital preparation courses are available in the form of church-sponsored events and local workshops. If you don’t know of one, ask a marriage counselor/therapist for a recommendation. While doing an in-person workshop will help keep you accountable, if you’re dedicated to working through the process, you can also try reading a marriage prep book or doing an online program together; Stanley recommends this one, this one, and this one (he’s involved with the latter).

For more insights on the harms of “sliding vs. deciding” and the importance of seeking clarity over ambiguity in relationships, be sure to listen to my podcast with Dr. Stanley:

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

According to the popular, evolutionary theory of human attraction, people select romantic partners based on objective assessments of what’s called their “mate value” — the extent to which an individual possesses traits like good looks and status. But is that really all that’s behind the way people pair up?

My guest today has done a series of studies which add greater nuance to the mysteries of romantic attraction. His name is Paul Eastwick and he’s a professor of psychology at UC Davis. We begin our conversation unpacking the fact that there’s sometimes a gap between the sexual and romantic partners people say they prefer in the abstract, and the partners they actually choose in real life. We then turn to whether or not the popular idea that men value physical attractiveness more than women, and that women value status and resources more than men, is really true. We also talk about how people’s consensus over who is and isn’t attractive changes over time, and whether it’s true that people of equal attractiveness generally end up together. We end our conversation discussing how these research-based insights can be applied to the real world of dating, and why less attractive people may have better luck meeting people offline than on.

Some interesting insights in this show that lend credence to the old adage that there’s someone for everyone.

Show Highlights

• What’s the accepted theory of how men and women are attracted to each other?
• How “mate value” is calculated 
• Is it true that men value physical appearance more than women?
• The self-insight gap that plagues daters 
• Why trait-based compatibility doesn’t give the full picture of a relationship’s potential
• The importance of “fit” when it comes to compatibility
• How physical attractiveness changes over time as we get to know people
• Do equally attractive people always end up with each other?
• What does modern science say about pick-up artist techniques?
• Tips for how to think about modern dating apps 

Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast

• The Best Relationship Episodes of the AoM Podcast
• Mate value
• Is Love Overrated?
• The Problem With Ambiguity in Relationships
• What’s Causing the Sex Recession?
• How Do You Know When She’s the One?
• Assortative mating
• How to Know If a Woman Likes You
• How to REALLY Be Alpha Like the Wolf
• Paul’s website

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Recorded on ClearCast.io

Podcast Sponsors

The Strenuous Life. A platform designed to take your intentions and turn them into reality. There are 50 merit badges to earn, weekly challenges, and daily check-ins that provide accountability in your becoming a man of action. The next enrollment is in March. Sign up at strenuouslife.co. 

Squarespace. Creating a website has never been different. Start your free trial today at Squarespace.com/manliness and enter code “manliness” at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

The Great Courses Plus. Better yourself this year by learning new things. I’m doing that by watching and listening to ​The Great Courses Plus. Get a free trial by visiting thegreatcoursesplus.com/manliness.

Click here to see a full list of our podcast sponsors.

Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. According to the popular evolutionary theory of human attraction, people select romantic partners based on objective assessments of what’s called their mate value, the extent to which individual possesses traits like good looks and status. What does that really all that’s behind the way people pair up? My guest today has done a series of studies which add greater nuance to the mysteries romantic attraction. His name is Paul Eastwick, he’s a professor of psychology at UC Davis. We begin a conversation unpacking the fact there’s sometimes a gap between the sexual romantic partners people say they prefer the abstract, and the partners they actually choose in real life.

We then turned to whether or not the popular idea that men value physical attraction more than women and that women value status and resources more than men is really true. We also talk about how people’s consensus over who is and isn’t attractive changes over time and whether it’s true that people of equal attractiveness generally end up. We end our conversation discussing how these research based insights can be applied to the real world of dating and why if you’re not Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Cary Grant, 1980s Tom Selleck and whatever famous, handsome man you want, you’re not any of those guys may have better luck meeting people offline than online in an app. Some interesting insights in the show that lend credence to the old adage that there’s someone for everyone. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/eastwick. Paul joins me now via clearcast.io.

Paul Eastwick, welcome to the show.

Paul Eastwick: Thanks so much for having me.

Brett McKay: So you are a professor of psychology and you’ve spent your career researching human attraction. And what I think is interesting about your research is that it, it goes a different direction from what the sort of the popular and accepted ideas that are out there about what makes humans attracted to one another. So before we get to your research and how it adds to that theory, what is, can you walk us through like what the popular and accepted theory of what makes men and women attracted to each other is? I guess it’s based on evolutionary theory.

Paul Eastwick: Yeah. So there’s a lot of work out there that takes what I would call a trait based approach to understanding what makes men and women attractive and this is a very simple idea. It’s that we possess particular desirable qualities, or we don’t, and the extent to which you have those desirable qualities is what makes you appealing in a mate. And we can talk about things that you can see on the surface, like physical attractiveness. We can talk about status and resources, we can also talk about traits like intelligence, but the presumption here is that there is some sort of objective reality about a person and the extent to which they have those desirable traits and that a person’s desirability as a mate or their mate value, that’s often the term that’s used, can be sort of calculated based on the extent to which they possess those sorts of traits.

Brett McKay: And also the research has shown there’s differences between the sexes on what’s attractive and not attractive. Like men find certain things attractive in women, but women find other traits attractive and men.

Paul Eastwick: That’s right. So the calculus for mate value classically differs between men and women. You know, intelligence is very appealing to both men and women in a partner, but when you ask men and women, how much do you care about traits like attractiveness, men will tend to rate it higher than women, although women like it too. You see the reverse for traits like resources, right? With women rating it higher than men, but in general these findings sort of fit into this, what I would call this trait based mate value sort of approach where the idea is that there’s some sort of reality about the traits that you possess and your job if you’re looking for a mate from this perspective is to size up whether or not somebody has these qualities and then make your choice accordingly.

Brett McKay: And it’s also a very market driven, right? Approach to relationships, right? You have certain values and you kinda have to make trade offs on what you have and what the other person has.

Paul Eastwick: Exactly. Exactly. And that’s why it’s, you know, evolutionary theory touches on these ideas. But yeah, it’s based on these very classic market based ideas about marriage, this pervade sociology going back 70 years or more. These are very influential important ideas that have long pervaded how people think about the way relationships form and are maintained.

Brett McKay: And how have evolutionary psychologist come to this conclusion that men find physical attractiveness more important than women find physical attractiveness in men. What are the studies look like where they’ve come to this conclusion?

Paul Eastwick: It’s interesting because humans can do this really funny thing which is you can put rating scales in front of us and we can fill them out with a pen or a pencil. And what that means is that instead of, if you were studying animals in the wild, you’d have to set up these really complex designs and sort of see which of the mates the females would pursue or see which mates the males would pursue. But in humans you can sort of throw a scale in front of them and be done in 30 seconds. And so much of the research supporting these sex differences tends to use that ladder approach that is, you asked men and women to rate physical attractiveness on a rating scale from one to 10. How much do you like this trait? And that’s where you see men say they care about it more than women. You see the reverse with things like status and resources. So a lot of the research is pretty straightforward and questionnaire based along those lines. It’s sort of this neat thing that you can get humans to do that you can’t get other nonhuman animals to do.

Brett McKay: So basically what these surveys ask is like what you would want in a hypothetical potential mate, not an actual mate, correct?

Paul Eastwick: Right. I mean, you know, they’re asking people to think about what would you want an ideal mate to have and people can do this. When you give people questionnaires like that, they’re like, they’re not thinking I have never pondered such a thing before. People are definitely … They can call to mind what their ideal partner looks like. But I’d also argue that that requires a level of self insight that is under appreciated. That is, we can ask whether or not people really know the extent to which attractiveness appeals to them. And is that captured by a rating on a rating scale? It’s one of the questions that we’ve tried to pursue in our research.

Brett McKay: So in addition to what this idea of trait based attraction, there’s this idea of a sort of meeting that comes up that attractive people end up with other attractive people. High status people end up with other high status people. So, there’s that aspect to this trait based theory as well.

Paul Eastwick: Yes, that’s right. And it is certainly true that you see assorted of mating on many qualities, qualities like attractiveness, traits that people generally say they really like in a partner, both men and women rate attractiveness quite highly. And indeed the attractive men and the attractive women tend to pair up. Now that association is far from perfect, right? So there are plenty of matched couples and plenty of mismatched couples out there too. And so we need our explanations just to be able to account for the existence of both the matches and the mismatches, if you will.

Brett McKay: So there’s been mountains of research for the past 20, 30 years that reinforced this idea that, they’ve done this across cultures too, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in Japan or America or England, men tend to rate physical attractiveness more important on the list of wanted traits in women than women do. And women put an emphasis on resources and status. So despite the mountains of research that has shown this over and over again, what led you to think that there was something else going on in how people decide who they pair up with?

Paul Eastwick: So we noticed that much of this research had sort of used these questionnaire type approaches where you’re asking people what they’re looking for. The better studies would do something a little bit more clever. They would say, introduce you, usually in the form of an online dating profile or something like that, to a series of people who very in attractiveness. And then you could ask the question, well, does the attractiveness of these various people that you’re looking at predict who you like, who you choose? And there were a few studies that had conceptualized the appeal of attractiveness that way. Not my theory about how much attraction this appeals to me, but sort of this enacted preference, something we actually call a functional preference, right?

If you present me with a series of mates that vary in attractiveness, to what extent am I likely to take the attractive ones relative to the unattractive ones? That’s like a more live in the moment way of capturing the extent to which attractiveness appeals to me. So there’ve been a few studies out there that had used that sort of approach but almost none that had used that kind of approach with people actually meeting face to face. And we thought well gee, ancestrally, certainly, and even in the modern day for the most part, people meet face to face before they start seeing where this thing is going. And so we wanted to see what did people’s functional preferences look like once these face to face meetings had taken place?

Brett McKay: So tell me about a story that you did to look into that idea a bit more.

Paul Eastwick: So one of the first studies that we conducted along these lines was a study with speed daters. So, we brought a number of men and women together who were single and looking to potentially date new people, but these folks hadn’t met each other before and these were heterosexual speed dating events. So, all of the men have a chance to meet all of the women. And so you’re meeting this array of people who are varying in attractiveness and then we look to see how much does attractiveness appeal to me as I go about selecting these people saying, oh, I’d like to meet you again and not you. You know, when rating how much I liked these various people. And sure enough physical attractiveness was a very strong predictor of the extent to which people liked their speed dating partners. But that association, the power of attractiveness was identical for men and women. Physical attractiveness as instantiated in these real people was just as powerful a predictor of initial attraction for men as it was for women. There was no sex difference there whatsoever.

Brett McKay: Interesting. So what do you think that says about the theory that’s out there that women prefer, you know, status and resources more, they rate that higher than men do? What’s going on there then?

Paul Eastwick: So it’s interesting. I mean, you know, one thing we’ve been trying to figure out is that it looks like there is some sort of self insight gap that is plaguing people, right? People aren’t totally off when you ask them sort of kinds of qualities and attributes they like in general, there’s often a little bit of an association there, especially when people are in very simple environments. Right? So if I asked you how much do you like sweetness when it comes to your breakfast cereals, you will actually give me an answer that reflects pretty good self insight. But as the domain gets more and more complicated and when we get into the really complicated domain of romantic attraction, people’s insight just seems to fade. And the kinds of qualities they think are really appealing to them when you ask them in the abstract end up having very little relation to what actually appeals to them in the moment. So we do think there is this self insight gap there and what that means is that when you ask people about the kinds of qualities that they care about in a partner, you’re getting a lot of other stuff in those reports that don’t necessarily reflect strong self insight. Right? People might be reporting their sense of what desirable members of the opposite sex generally are like, right? As opposed to, you know, what are the traits that are really going to appeal to me specifically?

Brett McKay: Well, another interesting thing about speed dating is that it’s very, it’s all about initial attraction. Like the idea in evolutionary theory is that women put an emphasis on resources more than men because they’re looking for a longterm companion. Does the short duration of speed dating, does that change things like how women evaluate or do you think just like no, women actually put emphasis on attraction more than they think they do?

Paul Eastwick: That’s a great question. I think that, and then when we ran those first studies, that was sort of the next question for us was, well, okay, is this limited to initial attraction? Maybe some of these sex differences start to emerge later and we actually conducted a very large scale study a few years later. It’s called a meta analysis and in a meta analysis, you just bring many different data sets together that can all address a similar question. And so we had data from tens of thousands of participants that look across the full span of people’s relationships. So not just initial attraction, but also what happens in dating relationships. What happens in married relationships. Do you see these sex differences playing out? Now we can look at these same kinds of associations in these datasets. So generally, when women are married to men who have more versus fewer resources, do they tend to be happier in those relationships?

And importantly, if we asked the same question of men, are men happier when they’re in relationships with women who have status on resources, are they happier? So when we look at all of those effects and all of those associations across all of these datasets, we end up seeing, again, no evidence for these sex differences. So to go back to the status and resources example, there’s a small effect that people tend to be happier in their relationships when their partner has more status and more resources. It’s not nearly as large as physical attractiveness and initial attraction, but that effect is just as strong for men as it is for women, which frankly we found a little mind blowing, right? The idea that that men are a little bit happier in their relationships when their women have status and resources. That was not intuitive to us going into this study, but this was a pretty large swath of evidence that seemed to suggest that you know what? The status resources effect, when you look across datasets in this aggregated way, you don’t see much of a sex difference there.

Brett McKay: Okay. So meta analysis shows that men and women are actually, there’s not that much of a difference. When you look at things at a broad view. You also did some interesting research to that show that whether you find someone attractive or not depends on a lot on how long we’ve known them. Can you talk about that? Walk us through that research?

Paul Eastwick: Yes, definitely. So this goes back to this sort of classic trait based approach, right? I mean, the reason we’re asking questions about why we think physical attractiveness is more appealing to men or women. Same thing with status and resources is because classically the field has treated mating and mate selection in this trait based way, right? There’s a reality that you possess that’s determined by your traits. And like again, my job as a mate selector is to assess those traits and then make my selections accordingly. I think what that perspective misses, at least with respect to humans, is that part of the mate selection process in humans ancestrally wouldn’t have been about finding the objectively best mate, or even the objectively best mate that you could get given your own mate value, it would be about this ephemeral thing called compatibility.

And that’s because a lot of what mate selection was about in our ancestral past was about coordination and interdependence, right? So in order to raise these very costly offspring, I have to essentially set up an effective coordinated system with you and not just you, but also your family members and my family members. Right? But the pair bonding process and then what it takes to raise these costly offspring is not something that’s just about your traits and my traits. It’s also about how well we fit together and how well we work together. And so another of the main mate selection tasks that people have to solve is this assessment of compatibility. And that’s a lot trickier than assessing whether or not somebody has desirable traits.

Brett McKay: Gotcha. So this is what you’d call it, I guess you’d call it relational attributes of-

Paul Eastwick: Yes. Right. It’s a way of thinking about the concept of mate value, but in a relational way. Right? The idea is simply that, you know, somebody might not have the most desirable traits in the world, but because of the way we fit together, this person has tremendous mate value for me specifically. And I think that’s a useful way of thinking about the compatibility concept. Now what it suggests is that, you know, when we all get together and rate each other’s traits, sure there’s bound to be some agreement. We’re going to agree on who is attractive and who isn’t. But what’s going on with the disagreements that we have? Is it just random error? Are we guessing or is there something systematic and important about those disagreements that also tell us something about the way mate selection works?

Brett McKay: Well, walk us through the study you did with college students where you had them rate each other’s attractiveness the first day of class and then done the same thing three months later.

Paul Eastwick: Right, so that’s exactly what we did. So we had these students in a class, they had just met each other and all of the opposite sex pairs in the class are rating each other in terms of their attractiveness, but other traits classically related to mate selection, things like intelligence, things like status and what you see at the beginning of the academic semester is that there’s pretty strong agreement there about who is attractive and who isn’t. Now there’s also a lot of idiosyncratic variance as well and in fact you can compare these things to each other mathematically and you see about as much consensus as you do idiosyncratic variability. So there’s a healthy amount of agreement about who’s attractive and who isn’t, but also important, real disagreement, right? I think this person is more attractive than you do, right? That doesn’t mean that I’m right and you’re wrong, or vice versa. That’s legitimate disagreement there on top of the existing consensus, but then we followed them up at the end of the semester and what we found at that point was that things had started to shift. But it shifted in a way that’s a little bit counterintuitive. People’s consensus about who was attractive in the class actually went down relative to the beginning of the semester and that idiosyncratic variability, the disagreements and you know, sort of in parallel increased.

So in other words, as I get to know you better, we start agreeing less about whether or not you’re attractive, right? The people who you know especially well start to agree less and less about how desirable you are and we think this is reflective of this idiosyncratic nature of the way mate value Works. As I get to know you better and better, you make a joke that I think is particularly unfunny, but somebody else thinks that’s quite funny. That feeds into your attractiveness judgments of the person. You make other remarks in class. I witnessed you doing something really nice for somebody, but somebody else doesn’t witness that. That feeds into your attractiveness judgment, so because when we form impressions of each other over time, the meaning of those different behavioral nuggets can be interpreted so differently by the people who are observing you and sort of judging you and considering you as a potential mate. That’s what causes that consensus to decline and what causes this increase in idiosyncratic judgments of who is desirable and who’s not.

Brett McKay: That’s really interesting. So let’s unpack some things here. So when you did the initial evaluation, there was a consensus not only on physical attractiveness but also things like character, humor. There was a consensus there as well?

Paul Eastwick: Right. So we also asked people questions like if you were in a relationship with this person, how good would the relationship be? Right? Again, these people have not met for all that long and yet they’re still reaching some consensus about judgements like that too. It’s not nearly as high as the consensus they reach when it comes to judgments of physical attractiveness, but you know, they are sort of looking at these folks around them saying like, oh, maybe being in a relationship with this person would be good. This person, they seem to have good character, but you know, people at the beginning, they’re drawing from stereotypes. They’re drawing from snap judgments as they sort of make these determinations.

Brett McKay: I imagine like the halo effect is also going on like, you know, typically attractive people are seen as, you know, more honest, trustworthy, high status, etc, etc.

Paul Eastwick: Exactly, exactly. I mean it’s just, you know, some people at the beginning of the semester they’ve got this glow about them and that’s what’s sort of producing the consensus on all of these sorts of judgments certainly.

Brett McKay: Okay. And then as you went on, you get to know people more and more. That’s when things started, the consensus just basically went away completely.

Paul Eastwick: Yeah. I mean for judgments of things like this person is going to be a good relationship partner. I’d like to be in a relationship with this person. The consensus went down on those measures substantially. There’s still a little bit there, but it definitely goes down over time. We also ran a similar study among people who had known each other for a few years on average. Right? So this is as if we’re tapping into your network, right? If you’re a heterosexual man, we’re tapping into your network of female friends and acquaintances, right? So if you think about those women in your life that your friends, your acquaintances, you know, maybe there’s an ex in there, what do these women think of you? Did they agree about how desirable you are as a partner? About how attractive you are. And those folks exhibited the least consensus out of anybody.

So the people who know you the best are the people who agree that least on what you are like when it comes to these romantic sorts of judgments. And that’s another important caveat too, because usually we think like, well, the more somebody gets to know me, people should agree on what I am really like. There’s a reality to who I am as a person and you know that’s true for things like what your personality is like, but when it comes to these romantic judgments, the fact that we see this increasing disagreement as people get to know each other, suggest to us that you know what ever the mate value truth is about a person seems to be quite ephemeral. It seems to disappear the better you get to know somebody and you’re left with these very idiosyncratic impressions that some person is really great for me and this person is really not so great for me.

Brett McKay: So this can go back to, we were talking about a sort of mating, right? So there’s this idea that attractive people end up with attractive people, but what this research suggests that the longer someone knows you, they might initially not have found you physically attractive or attractive, but they got to know you and you end up in a relationship with them. Right? And so you’re less attractive than she is. I guess that can sort of put a wrench in this idea that equally attractive people always end up with each other.

Paul Eastwick: Right. Exactly. And so that was, you know, as we conducted this research, the assorted of mating question loomed large because it suggested, well, okay, if we all disagree about who is attractive and who’s not, then why is it that you see assortative mating out there in the world? And so the way we resolve this is by thinking, well, okay, when some relationships form, they form relatively quickly after two people initially meet each other, but other relationships, people know each other for months or even years before they ultimately get together. And what if that distinction, that dimension explains where some of the variability on assortative mating comes from. That is what if the people who get together quickly, that’s where you see the matches, right? Because these people are largely operating based on consensus, but the mismatches come as people get to know each other better over time. That opens up the opportunity for, maybe he or she is not the most attractive person on the planet, but as you get to know him or her, you start see this person as being quite attractive. That can then start to create some of those mismatches.

Brett McKay: So, there’s the stereotype of like the more attractive women ending up with a lesser attractive guy, like the guy dates up or whatever they talk about. Does it also work the other way around too? Like sometimes really attractive guys end up with women who would be objectively rated not as attractive?

Paul Eastwick: Yes. So the flip side of that definitely does happen. But the caveat, I think, what my guess is that if most of your listeners try to call to mind one example or the other, it is going to be easier for them to call to mind the schlubby guy with the attractive woman. But part of that is caused by the fact that on average women are more attractive than men. So that’s a little wrinkle in there that produces this. And usually when we talk about assortative mating, what we miss is that we’ll actually in all of these relationships on average, the woman is more attractive than the guy by about a half of a standard deviation. That’s a pretty reasonably sized effect. And so that’s an important component of this as well, that women generally tend to be rated as more attractive than men on average when you look at a reasonably sized swaths of real life men and women.

Brett McKay: But how do you think your research compliments or doesn’t compliment, this evolutionary approach of human mating because like, I mean, a lot of people will have, there’s whole industries, the pickup artist stuff that are based around this evolutionary approach to human mating where you have to like, you know, they tell guys how to increase their mate value on these specific traits. What do you think your research does that idea that’s out there?

Paul Eastwick: Yeah, I mean, you know, I only know a little bit about sort of the pickup artist techniques and the pickup artist scene and certainly a lot of those techniques and tactics are designed to be effective in initial attraction settings, right? Where you’re meeting people for the first time and those are certainly settings where you know you’re going to cue into these traits that are very easy to pick up very quickly. It takes some time to really get a sense of whether or not you know, there’s something about, like a unique fit between us and often that’s sort of not exactly what the pickup artists are going for necessarily. So sort of looking for makes you idiosyncratically desirable to somebody else is you know, probably a technique that’s going to be more useful to people who are cultivating the possibility of forming relationships over a longer period of time.

That being said, I think it would be really interesting to sort of clearly hone and define what these effective pickup tactics are and then train both male and female confederates to use these tactics in initial attraction settings and see how effective they are. Now, maybe they’ll only be effective for the men using these tactics and women who sort of dress with the fancy hats and sort of use these clever lines, maybe they won’t be appealing, but I don’t know. I’d like to see the data. I wonder if those sorts of tactics, if women used them, would also be pretty appealing.

Brett McKay: And how do you think your research complements the more classic evolutionary approach to human mating?

Paul Eastwick: I think in some ways it’s very complimentary, right? We aren’t saying that people don’t care about traits like physical attractiveness. Of course they do, but we’re saying that the relative amount of sort of consensus going for the popular person, that there’s a truth to how desirable you are, that’s true in some settings, but not all settings relative to mate selection. Right? And settings where people get to know each other better, people start, whether they know it or not, making judgements that have this more idiosyncratic compatibility element to it. I think with respect to some of the sex differences in the appeal of attractiveness or the appeal of status resources, you know, I do think our perspective is harder to reconcile with the evolutionary perspective on that front in the sense that I think when we look at people’s impressions of real people, when we look at how people are actually acting in their relationships, I think those sorts of studies get closer to tapping the kinds of judgments that really would have mattered in a functional way when people were evolving as opposed to what people’s circle on rating scales. So, I think some elements are that we present are very complimentary, some are more challenging.

Brett McKay: And what do you think are some practical takeaways from this research? For people who are in the dating game?

Paul Eastwick: And that’s a good question. So I do think that there is a tendency to think about the mating and dating as being about a game of first impressions, a game of how does it go when you meet somebody else? Do you sufficiently impress them that they want to hook up with you or they want to give you their number, etc. And another really important thing that we find that some of our research is that the vast majority of relationships, whether short term or long term, do not form this way. People’s hookups and longterm relationships are usually come out of their networks of friends and acquaintances that these, as I talked about before, people have networks of their heterosexual opposite sex individuals that sort of float in and out of their lives. And that’s where most of these romantic experiences come from. So I think what’s often hard for people, let’s say they moved to a new city and their social network is pretty thin. It can get very frustrating to be out there dating and trying to meet new people and not having a lot of success.

But in some ways the problem is that getting out there and meeting people with initial impressions is always a very tough way to go regardless of what kind of relationship you’re looking for. It’s the thinness of your social network that is often the real problem. So if I were to give anybody advice who’s struggling with dating, it’s the more effort you can put into just sort of building your network, gradually building the people that you know and spend time with getting to meet new people without immediate expectations of something becoming romantic or sexual right away, that’s ultimately going to be a more fulfilling process. Right? It’s like diversify your portfolio and give it time to grow and expand rather than, you know, like keep hitting the same bars over and over again. I think it’s likely to be a much more fulfilling experience to do the former rather than the ladder.

Brett McKay: And what do you think your research says about dating apps? Because these things like Tinder, they’re all based on initial physical attraction or you swipe right because you just see a picture of someone who’s attractive or not.

Paul Eastwick: Right, exactly, and it is interesting how online dating has in some ways up ended this sort of traditional way of forming relationships where relationships, again, sexual hookups or longterm grow out of the networks that people have and with online dating sites and with apps give certainly the sense that there are all these options out there, right? As you’re sort of looking at all the various possibilities in front of you and you’re swiping right and swiping left, you get the sense that there are many possibilities out there and people are often effective at leveraging these sorts of encounters into immediate sexual hookups and things like that. So there’s nothing wrong with that and that’s often a very good way to go for people. I think for people who get, who are starting to get a little burned out on the apps or feeling like, oh my God, I’m spending a lot of time on these.

Again, thinking about these apps as ways of expanding your social network, not you know, solely a means of immediate sexual gratification could also be very, very useful. That, you know, that is, you might go on a Tinder date with somebody and it might just be okay, but you did have this one interest in common and you start spending time with the person and get to know some of their friends and your friends meet their friends and that starts to snowball and expand that way. So I think if we don’t, you know, dichotomize our relationship so much into, you know, these are the people I have sex with, these are my friends, but we sort of again think about a network of people that we know and we allow that network to grow and change over time. I think that ends up sort of giving people the best possible options.

Brett McKay: So you use the apps as a tool to increase your network. Not necessarily to get a romantic relationship.

Paul Eastwick: Right. I mean you can use it for that too, but again, my sense from people that use these apps and I confess, I have not done online dating in a very long time, well before there were the apps. But you know, my sense is that people start to burn out, right? Because they go on a lot of coffee dates before they find somebody that they even remotely like and sometimes it’s useful to find ways of even turning those meh coffee dates into a win. And again, if we don’t think about Tinder and other apps as an immediate road to a hookup that it’s really more about expanding your social network. That I think tends to go better for people.

Brett McKay: And we had Kate Julian, the Atlantic writer, she wrote that article about the sex recession she talked about people getting burnt out and then also people just not having any luck with the apps. So say you’re a guy, you’re not super physically attractive. So they never get a match because you know, women just like swipe left on them and they found that, okay, if I just start dating in person, I actually have better luck there because people get to know that I’m funny and charming and I’m kind, etc, etc.

Paul Eastwick: Right, right. Exactly. I mean, the apps do put many people at a substantial disadvantage.

Brett McKay: So, I think it sounds like the big takeaway here is, you know, physical attractiveness, those play a role, but there’s much more nuance to human relationships than what we think there is.

Paul Eastwick: Yeah. I think that’s right and that the humans evolved in relatively small groups where we got to know each other over long stretches of time and the possible mates that you are going to have over the course of your life, it was a pretty small group and it was probably a group of people that you tended to know pretty well and that is an evolved reality that’s tough to reconcile with the fact that many young people today are very mobile. They move from place to place and they also often live in large cities where there is vast swathes of people out there. So I think to create a community of people is often the thing that helps people as they negotiate the romantic landscape.

Brett McKay: Well Paul, it’s been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?

Paul Eastwick: They can go to my website. It’s PaulEastwick.com. Very straightforward, and there we have our publications and links to videos and things that explain the kind of work that we do.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I love it. You have all your PDFs, your research and PDFs there, which I really appreciate. So, so thanks for making that available. Paul Eastwick. Thanks so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Paul Eastwick: Yes. Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed this.

Brett McKay: My guest, it was Paul Eastwick. He’s professor of psychology at UC Davis. You can find out all the research he’s done. He’s got them all in PDFs for free at his website. PaulEastwick.com. Go check that out. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/eastwick where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the podcast. Check out our website at artofmanliness.com. You can find thousands of well-researched, thorough articles and just about anything, relationships, personal finances, health and fitness. You name it. We’ve got it. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate if you’d take one minute to give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot and if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member if you think they could get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay, encouraging you to not only listen to the podcast, but put what you’ve learned into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.