Science of Attraction, Compatibility & Romance | Dr. Paul Eastwick

When you look at who gets the right swipes and who receives messages on the apps, it's the most popular people. I mean, folks have claimed that it's one of the most unequal markets in the world, but regular acquaintance is not nearly so dramatic. I don't think the influence of attractiveness ever goes away, right? There's always going to be an unlevel playing field to some extent, but the more that people spend time together getting to know each other, it reduces some of those market forces that give the desirable people all the advantages. Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Paul Eastwick, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. Today we discuss the science of attraction, mate selection, and relationships. And I promise you what you are going to hear will surprise you. Paul's research has discovered that much of what you've heard about how people select partners, date, form relationships, even break up or repartner is simply wrong. At least when you look at the actual data. For example, his data show that both men and women when given a choice select partners that are younger than them. Yes, you heard that right. It's not just men. Men and women equally select partners that are younger than them given the choice. His data also challenged the idea that financial status is more important to women when looking for male partners. Turns out that when men are looking for female partners, on average, financial status is as important as it is when women are looking for men. And somewhat less surprising, his work shows that indeed dating apps select for qualities that are not the ones that research shows builds lasting partnerships. But he also offers solutions to those that are using dating apps to try and find a partner. Today's discussion is not just about finding a partner. It's also about what solidifies and maintains healthy relationships over time. Again, what the data say about that. Things like physical intimacy being among the very strongest predictors of relationship stability. As well as both partners feeling that no matter who else might be attractive to them, that their partner has unique qualities that no one else can match. So whether you are in a relationship or not, looking for a relationship or not, today's discussion gets into social bonding of all sorts and repeatedly throughout today's episode both as it relates to single people looking for a partner, people who are already partnered, we talk about the importance of activities that are done with other people, could be other couples or other single people, etc. And that this is critical for those wanting to meet a partner and it turns out to be critical for maintaining a healthy long-term relationship. We'll talk about what the data say about that. Super interesting. So today is not just about the real data of how people rate attractiveness, find partners, and the glue that keeps people happily together. It's about the real life data and the actions that anyone can take that help you build and sustain excellent romantic and other types of relationships. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Paul Eastwick. Dr. Paul Eastwick, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. A lot of theories out there, a lot of speculation about attraction, dating, romance, and relationships, which are separable things. Of course, we'll talk about all of them. But one of the semi-dominant themes in the public narrative and indeed on many podcasts is is kind of anchoring to evolutionary theory which to put it really coarsely sort of a market-based theory. You know people even say I married up or uh you know and people but quantitative measures on people they're a six they're a seven they're a 10 in this but a four in that. You know, as a neuroscientist, I hear that and I immediately go to, and again, this is just purely theoretical. Oh, this sounds very limbic. This is very much of like the hypothalamus. This is very much like the kind of thing that you might expect under conditions of like um low food availability, low mate availability, a lot of weapons and a few and very few laws, you know, to to regulate violence or something. Meaning men will will harm each other in order to get access to mates. women will um be deceptive. This is the whole idea. And you step back and you go, well, that's not the world we live in now. We have a forebrain. We can make choices. We can be strategic in the direction of benevolence. We can think about kindness. And so to me, it seems we need a revision or at least a better understanding of what's actually true in 2026 and forward. So, if you would, what are your thoughts about what is not true based on the data and perhaps what is true about this quote unquote evolutionary model of dating relationships and so on. The marketplace ideas, I think they definitely have their place and it deres from a a sensible evolutionary perspective like what you're describing. I think it describes well what happens in initial attraction settings when people are really meeting for the first time. There's this class demo that I do in my undergraduate classes. A lot of people use this demo and what you do is you have a bunch of your students put a number on their foreheads and they sort of hold it up so that they can't see it but other people can. and you tell the students your goal is to pair up with the highest value person that you can and you don't know what your number is, but I'm going to count to five and then I want you all to stroll around the room and try to make mating offers to folks. And what you see is that the people who have been randomly assigned a low number, they start to panic because what happens is that nobody will talk to them. And this is random. uh you know otherwise it would be very unethical and also who would decide but but people don't like it. I mean if you get a low number it's not an enjoyable experience and I think there is a parallel to what people are experiencing as they're growing up or maybe even if they're a little older and they're going to a party and they haven't met anybody there. So this is an analogy for how people internalize and you know act upon something that we call mate value and it's it's like what you describe. It's supposedly linked to traits that reflect your core desiraability like maybe your physical attractiveness but it could be other related traits too. It could be things like the size of your bank account or your status. What we tend to see is that when people are meeting for the first time, this is um a reasonable faximile of how people behave. But interesting things tend to happen when people get to know each other over a little bit more time. What then tends to happen is that that agreement that is required for that study to work. That study only works because you can read the numbers on people's foreheads. But if I were to blur that number, we wouldn't see as much pairing up. It wouldn't be as sad and as difficult for the people with low numbers. And in real life, that's kind of what tends to happen. We stop agreeing about who the eights are and who the fives are. And people might on average say that you're a six, but if I've gotten to know you over time, it means there's a chance I think you're a nine. There's also a chance I think you're a three. And so that increase in idiosyncrasy and variability, I think, is a really fortunate thing. And it's the thing that's going to allow a lot of partners to find each other uh even if they're not consensually the most desirable people. Consensually meaning in the eyes of others. Right. Right. Right. Right. So even if on average people think uh you're kind of middling with enough time people are more likely to find okay but okay you all think I'm a five but she thinks I'm a 10. And then what you're kind of crossing your fingers for are these moments where and I think she's a 10 too. And it's this uh level of sort of disagreement or the emergence of what we might comp call compatibility that I think is it's been missing from the evolutionary narratives, but I think it plays a core part in explaining how couples get together as well. Wow. Um so many things come to mind. Uh the first thing that comes to mind is the question, you know, who and what are others looking at? Yeah, it seems like one of the more I want to use the word immature, but let's say less evolved, not in the evolutionary biology context, but kind of like life maturation sense, like less evolved aspects of self is when we are not thinking about what we actually like and don't like, but we're paying a lot of attention to what other people like and dislike as a barometer of what we should do or not do. Now, of course, that can be very informative in healthy ways, but when it really comes down to it, it's a potentially very toxic aspect of human nature, right? So, what I what I hear you saying is that at some point there's this kind of um dating, romance, and relational maturity that people come to where they're really able to sense what they actually like and they're able to put the blinders up to how other people are necessarily behaving. like are does everyone like this person? Do they not like this person? And the the words that come to mind, two words are junior high, like the junior high school dance for a number of reasons is kind of the first time, you know, most kids are starting to hit puberty or somewhere in puberty at that phase. And so there's a lot of recognition of others and kind of like who is cool, who's not cool, who's getting attention, who's not getting attention seems to surface first in junior high. Yeah. And admittedly, we're all pretty immature in junior high. Yeah. Exactly. So, has this been looked at in in a structured way? For instance, are there adults who are um good at ignoring what you you know what the consensus is? And are are they able to find mates and and set up relationships more readily than people who are paying a lot of attention to what other people like and don't like? Yes, I'm I am sure that there's considerable individual variability in how people react to what's going on around them. Sometimes you see this phenomenon called mate choice copying. But what that essentially means is that you know you kind of look to see who's attracted to somebody in my uh you know is everybody attracted to this person? Well, there must be some signal there. I'll sort of follow that. I totally agree. It it's a very junior high way of thinking about this whole process. But I think a lot of what is happening is that if people are spending time together and I I often go back to thinking about what is it like when we're hanging out in mixed gender groups if you're heterosexual. So we're spending time together and maybe for whatever reason I happen to spend more time with this person. we find something interesting to chat about. I see her reacting in situations that other people don't get to see. And so the particular time that I spend with her ends up being the material that I use that causes my opinion to diverge from everybody else's. So everybody else might be like, "She's not all that great." And I think, "But you weren't there when we were hanging out talking about, you know, some family challenges that I had. I'm trying to put myself back in like what were the things we would have been frustrated about in high school. But you know talking about like problems at school or problems with other friends like she was supportive and listened to me and then I was supportive and I listened to her and that reciprocity through a unique experience with another person. A lot of times this is where initial attraction comes from. It sounds a little squishy. It doesn't sound like the sexy form of attraction that we often think about, but what we see in our work is a lot of times this is how it happens. It it takes a little while, but attraction can form when two people spend that time together sort of pulling unique things out of each other. I'd like to take a quick break to acknowledge one of our sponsors, David. David makes protein bars unlike any other. 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But the fact is that metabolic health is shaping how your body functions every day, whether you feel it or not. Tracking your glucose with Lingo can help you see how food, activity, and stress impact your glucose throughout the day. I personally have used Lingo, and it's been an invaluable tool for improving my metabolic health. If you would like to try Lingo, Hubberman Lab listeners in the US and UK can save 10% on a 4-week plan. Just visit hellolingo.com/huberman for more information. Terms and conditions apply. Again, that's hellingo.com/huberman. It's interesting. I'm thinking about um movies. And um admittedly, I haven't seen that many romantic comedies, but there's some very there's some pretty awesome I've seen a few of them. Uh but there's some awesome movies about this issue. And I'll offer some examples that will date myself, but that seem to fall into at least three bins. One is you're awesome. I'm awesome. Let's get together. All right. Nowadays, I think regardless of music taste, I think the kind of uh like royally celebrated couple is not a royal couple. Incidentally, I would say it's like the Taylor Swift Kelsey couple. People like people are like they're both winners. They're both super attractive. They're both super successful. And you know whether you like the Chiefs or you don't, whether or not you like her music or you don't, you're like, you're like they're like badass winners pairing up and it's very hard to say anything except like, wow, they totally quote unquote belong together, right? There's a sort of So there's that pairing and you can find that in movies and uh all the like ' 80s like um uh John Hughes movies centered around this like um and then broke that model. We'll go back to that. The other one would be Yeah. the breaking of that model. the like the it's this is very 80s but the kind of like the athlete you know pairs up with the nerd right okay now we nowadays we have athlete nerds and so it doesn't work quite as well and then the third model is the like well you're screwed up and I'm screwed up but we're really good people like you get true romance the movie True Romance which is an amazing movie right you know she was a you know not by her own choice apparently like she she's like I've been a prostitute for three call girl for three days and he's Well, I you know, someone paid for you to be on this date with me. They fall in love. They leave their professions, right? And they go and they go on this sort of semi-rime spree um that really uh demonstrates their immense love and devotion to one another. And the whole notion is like you're so cool. They both think the other person is super cool, don't care about their past, and kind of enjoy the fact that they're both kind of from uh hard scrabble backgrounds. So then there's that. And what's so different about that kind of model compared to like today where I hear because I so I don't have a lot to offer about personal experience on apps many years ago but it's been a while is this notion that like everyone you hear this everyone's competing for the same small number of people. So it seems like even those those three cliche models that are presented in a number of movies they exist. It's like since when did is everyone thinking that they're supposed to pair up with the same small number of people? This is like ridiculous. That's like saying everyone's supposed to like the same top three songs even though you might not even like that genre of music. That's that's um insanity. Yeah, the apps absolutely pull for this. So when you look at who gets the right world. I mean, it's basically a kleptocracy. The extent to which Yeah, kleptocracy, right? The extent to which it's skewed, right? That there's like, you know, the rich, quote unquote, who have all the, you know, who who get all the all the the right swipes at the top. But regular acquaintance is not nearly so dramatic. So, you know, one example that I like to use is that if our job was just to evaluate whether somebody standing in front of us was hot or not, and it was somebody that we like interacted with briefly and we're making just simple binary judgments, you and I are going to agree about like 2/3 of the time. So that's that's better than 50/50, but it's far from 100%. I I think actually that would surprise a lot of people. There's a reasonable amount of disagreement there. That's already starting to set the stage for us not necessarily pursuing the most appealing person because if there's disagreement, that means there's a chance that, well, you're going to go for this person, I'm going to go for that person, and it it levels out the playing field somewhat. I don't think the influence of attractiveness ever goes away, right? There's always going to be an unlevel playing field to some extent, but the more that people spend time together getting to know each other, it reduces some of those, you know, uh th those market forces that Yeah. The reason junior high school seemed so dreadful in my memory. I mean, I had a good time in junior high school, but it it was largely, at least for me, the fact that people in my peer group, cuz it was a pretty broad age range, were were still um among the guys were hitting puberty at different rates. So, like a game of soccer that at one time was pretty even with respect to who could play well, like suddenly you're playing against what felt like a grown man. There's actually a kid in our town who I don't want to give up his name who I think he went on to I don't ever think he became a professional soccer player, but he was just he was like fully developed by the eighth grade. He was like facial hair and he was fast and he had like legs like tree trunks and he could move and I mean it was just completely dangerous to have him out on the field with the rest of us, right? And he was respected, adored, admired like and it was very context dependent. This was the other thing I was going to say. I think you and I are both scientists. So, coming up, you spent a lot of time in labs. I never forget there was a romance in a neighboring lab um that none of us understood. Like none of us understood. That's funny. And I remember asking my friend who was in this pairing and he said the attraction for him, although she was also attractive, but the the the hook was her prowess at aloquotting. So there's a thing you do with antibodies and labs where they come in and you have to put them into the little things so that you know you freeze out a little bit and apparent really hard. Yeah. You get good at it. But apparently like he walked in one day and she had a bunch of these little tubes stuffed between her fingers and she was just aloquotting really quickly while talking and from that moment he was just like smitten. That's beautiful. And I'll say they both never heard an example this good. I was like her aloquatting process like it or prowess and I thought to myself like is this like tapping into something? They they actually have children. He's his professor. They have children together. They seem very happy. I think anyone would say they're both attractive people. But their pairing seemed like not predictable by any other external metrics. And the fact that something so specific was the hook. And that opened up into what turned out to be a long-standing marriage with kids is kind of wild. It is. But is this uncommon? Because what you described before is kind of like this, like there's something unique that makes it feel like there's a special attraction that indicates something that opens up to a special discussion and then there's this kind of um intimacy, right, that they share around aloquading that was spawned by aloquading. I don't recommend folks run out and learn how to aloquat in order to like this is not a strategy. Um but that's the thing. Thematically it might be, but um so what are your thoughts on something like that? Okay, this is an incredible example and I think if if we're talking about couples, I think most people would find this idea intuitive that if you know I ask somebody what is what is it that you love about your wife or what is it that you love about your husband? You know, you're going to get a bunch of if you get them talking for long enough, you'll get some idiosyncratic details. You'll get some stories. I mean, maybe if they're really forthcoming, they'll give you the in jokes and they'll explain the moments that made them feel something special for this person. I think what I'm suggesting is that those moments, the the the creation of a narrative with another person, it goes back earlier than we think. And that a lot of times what we're doing when we're trying to figure out if we're into somebody, yes, we look at how they look visually and we we take in all that information and it matters a lot. But we're also talking with them, forming little stories. If you have a little bit of good banter, that means when I see you at the party next week, I'm going to want to sit next to you and see if we can recreate that moment. And that's often where attraction is coming from. I think that's why the apps are so hard because it turns it into an interview where you're trying to impress other people with your traits. And again, traits are important, but it's like it it's not the life of the thing. The life of the thing is the little stories and moments that two people are sharing and and that's I think something that that people can be doing more with. I'd like to divide this process that we call dating, romance, relationships, etc. into some pieces that may or may not be the right way to segment it. So, so please um change any of what I'm about to, you know, toss out. We're talking about impressions. That either seed or don't see desire for more time. So, interest and then that I'll just broadly separate with compatibility over time. So, let's spend some time on impressions that lead to desire. Which ones are meaningful? Which ones aren't? Which ones can be a bit misleading? I think most people are probably more intuitive about those if they're really honest, like what they find, who they find attractive, who they'd be willing to admit they find attractive if you remove all the other social inputs. And so on. But the compatibility over time piece is the one that is really hard. If you just look at the statistics on marriage, let alone the statistics on, you know, other relationships. It's not a bleak picture, but the numbers don't play out into if people get together and make the commitment. Most of the time it works out. It unfortunately doesn't seem to be that way or maybe who knows fortunately but so impressions leading to desire given that many of the people listening to this will they'll be thinking about their own history with their current partner or are seeking a partner or maybe not. What do the data say about what people are picking up on as really valid cues that drive real desire as opposed to the the BS about like, well, everyone else thought they were great or the great on paper kind of thing. The early phases especially are just naturally filled with a lot of uncertainty. And I think this is a bummer for a lot of people because it can feel like you're really into somebody or like they're really into me and then it turns on a dime. So part of that is about like searching for signals trying to resolve the uncertainty. And the problem is that it's not like, oh, if I get sufficient evidence that you're smart, that's going to do it. Or if I get sufficient evidence that you're really good at aloquotting, that's going to do it. What people are, I think, trying to do is they're trying to figure out like, do I feel enough of something for you that I want to continue this that I want to keep going? Yes. And but I don't want to act like cuz sometimes when people think about the spark, what they think is, "Oh, it's got to be there right away and I've already got to be feeling 100 for this person, right? I got to be at the top of the scale." That actually isn't what happens on average. Typically, if you if you look at what most relationships look like and you look back at the beginning, the the typical first impression is middling. That's how we feel at first. Middling. Just kind of I don't know, middle of the sky. That seemed all right. You know, it was fine. And then we interacted again. Not bad, not over the top. Not bad. Not Not over the top. And as we spend a little more time together, oh, like actually I find him pretty funny or I think he's really smart or um you know, I really like how good a listener he was. And I think what people are often trying to do is get enough moments that fit enough of these different trait categories that they think, well, you know, whatever other people say about this person, like with me, he seems like a pretty sensitive guy. with me, he seems pretty witty. With me, you know, like I actually think he's really hot when he does XYZ. And so if you accumulate enough of those, then you find yourself, you know, it's like you keep coming back. So that's how I think about it is this like slow accumulation of information. Sometimes people will encounter things like like the ick where there's one moment and then they tip over the edge the other way into feeling like I can't be with this person. Is that typically women who feel that about men? I mean do men describe that? I think yeah men have those experiences too. It is pretty underresarched. And one of the reasons why is because this whole phase I'm talking about is remarkably hard to study because we as researchers we're very good at how do you feel about somebody if you're looking at a picture or if you've hung out for like four minutes. I mean that's what a lot of the initial attraction paradigms look like. I like those paradigms. I study those paradigms myself. And then it's very easy to recruit couples and then see what happens to them. what explains why their relationships stay together and why they fall apart. But this period and it's it's my favorite thing to think about and it's also one of the most mysterious is Yeah, but what happened from like minute 10 to you know day 30 where now you were really determined to be in a relationship with this person and and that's a typical amount of time. it it usually doesn't happen instantaneously that people know right away, hey, no, this is it. I want to be with this person. It's that slow accumulation. And when we look at it, it's it's almost like you've got a window of uncertainty and it's slowly collapsing to a stable impression that people have of this person as they gather a little bit more information and a little bit more information. And what you just hope for is that as two people you're collapsing to a fairly stable impression that is both very positive of each other. And I think a large part that's how people get together and hopefully accurate too. Yeah. So the accuracy part is interesting because I mean you know I'm a psychologist. I'm a social psychologist and so social psychologists are big into well your perception is your reality and boy do you see a lot of evidence especially in relationships that people are biased when it comes to their romantic relationships in what sense it can happen in ways like you know everybody kind of agrees that your partner's a jerk but you genuinely don't think they're a jerk and when they're with you they don't seem like a jerk so any kind measure I would take your perception of, you know, your partner versus everybody else's perception. You would seem to be horribly positively biased for your partner. The question is whether you're wrong and I land on the side of I mean from your perspective you're not to argue that it would be better to listen to the consensus that your partner is a jerk kind it's sort of like um you're arguing for like a sleeper effect like there's wisdom in what other people know that you don't see. The evidence for that is actually not not great. It's it I'm it it could be and I'm sure it happens sometimes, but what usually happens in relationships is that people's own impressions and perceptions tend to be the major driver. Now, that can go in the other way, too, because we might all agree this person would be the most amazing partner to be with, and yet you've now gotten to the point in this relationship where you don't see it anymore, and you can't unsee the negative things you've seen. And so, that relationship can be very hard to salvage. The statement has been made by someone I know and trust about all things in life, all things in life, not just relationships, but certainly including them, that If people just treated their taste in people, in music, in art, in experiences the same way they treated their taste in food, everyone would be a lot better off. Meaning, if one has the impression that they really like something, they really like this person, then just go for it. I mean, unless there's some sort of danger they're not aware of, right? Okay. Okay. And which and we'll talk about consensus, communicating danger, separate separate issue, but it crosses into this online dating thing based on a lot of conversations I've had with young men and women. But music, you hear it, you either like it or you don't. We don't tend to have a hard time defending our stance on those things. But when it comes to relationships, it's almost like we're many people are walking around with a little or a lot of that junior high narrative in their in their mind. Not necessarily be with somebody that they can't stand because everyone else thinks they're great. I think that's pretty rare. Probably happens, but it's pretty rare. But at these early stages that you study, that they're navigating that process in a way where they're not in tune with their own taste. they're integrating all this other information in a way that's not helpful. It's not protecting them. In fact, it's it's just clouding the signal. It's noise, right? In the signal to noise model, like it's noise. It's just pure noise. And as a consequence, people are wasting their time and other people's time. And I don't believe everyone's trying to waste each other's time. It just seems that we're conditioned to do this. Yeah. And I will say it does take a pretty strong person to say, "Listen, I know that's what you see. I know that's what they say, but like this person's great. Like they're right for me." And when people do that in general, people tend to back off. And of course, there's Shakespeare about this, right? But that tends to be cultural pressure of like, "No, you two can't be together or the parents don't want her or one set of parents." I mean some of the greatest romances have been born out of that fu to the to the elders to the community but this is a little different. Yes. You know, it's a tricky thing to navigate because I I think one of the best situations to end up in is where you're in a relationship and let's say it's a new relationship and your friends around you basically think, you know, we're happy for you and we're going to celebrate you and, you know, we're going to celebrate this relationship. We support you. We just wouldn't be terribly interested in this person ourselves. That's the ideal, right? Where it's not exceptionally competitive. You're not worried about your friends trying to poach your partner away, but at the same time, they're supportive of the relationship because that support from friends and family, it is important. Like, it certainly shapes how people feel. there's a way to navigate that that doesn't make it a you know like I'm glad you I'm glad you like my girlfriend but like don't like her too much please. You want to kind of try to find that balance there. And that's a tricky thing. I mean I think this is a lot of what people are trying to navigate in adolescence. They're trying to figure out like how can I be part of a friend group and have a romantic relationship and navigate the complexities that come with that. I mean, I vividly remember these like junior high, early high school experiences of dating somebody, but also your friends are into this person. And actually, it was a relationship where my girlfriend at the time broke up with me, starts dating my best friend. We're all friends now. It's all fine now. And it's like at this moment that I discover evolutionary psychology, that I discover this narrative. And it just felt like such a double-edged sword cuz how wonderful is it to think about how people have been navigating these challenges, ex-girlfriends breaking up with you for your best friend. This has been happening for tens of thousands of years. Like I'm not alone. I'm not the first person to experience this. And then to also read at the same time, oh my god, this reflects something true about my deep underlying value. This is kind of scary. So those two things together, weirdly, were what got me hooked on this. The the feeling like evolutionary psychology is fascinating and really bleak at the same time. Yeah, I agree. Uh I was going to say brutal. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Although I'm glad you're all friends. I think it happens. It's all good. probably not to everyone, but I I can remember similar experiences where you're just like, "Oh man, what a gut punch." And part of the maturational process is um realizing like, okay, they might be better suited and they'll be someone for me. And honestly, they were better suited for each other. All right. All right. I have a question about the science or how to study these sorts of things. So, if I set aside my science hat and I say, "All right, you can study this stuff, but wait, if we're talking about a a kind of unique hook, like let's just assume the person the people are within the range of attractiveness. Again, I hate this quantitative thing, but they think the other person's attractive, they're they they're dating because they want to find someone, right? They're not resistant to commitment. They're looking for for a partner. And the number of histories that people are bringing to that is infinite or near infinite. So let's say the hook is listen one person had a hard past based on um an abusive household. The other person is really gentle. They had a great past and and the person feels very safe in that. Right? We always think about the trauma bond, right? Which is an unfortunate thing that does seem to happen. But it could also be both people had difficult pasts. you know, parents with addiction issues or mental health issues and they can relate. Okay, that's one example. The other is uh we both value X, we both value Y. And so the the unique glue, yeah, is near infinite, right? So the question I have and this isn't a challenge, it's just a genuine um curiosity is how do you study this process then? Because what are the universals of what is it what people define as some kind of um like lock and key that they didn't know they were looking for that that lock and key combination and then they go oh this feels unique and the reason I asked this is because I want to frame the the science but also I want to know to what extent being aware of what's critical to oneself is important in this process. Does that make sense? There's a lot of words there, but basically like how well one knows themselves can often help lead to better choices in in partner choice. And so people go know like gosh, I I really really would like someone that I could feel understood around this or feel really safe around this or make them feel really safe around that. With any relationship, it's almost like you have to hold these two seemingly contradictory truths at the same time. One is that no two people in the history of the world have experienced what we're experiencing right now. And yet there are broad general principles that we can point to that can explain some of the dynamics of every romantic relationship that has ever existed. So when it comes to broad principles, I love the attachment framework. I mean, what's fascinating about attachment is that this is just as evolutionary as all the other evolutionary theories you've heard about online. It's just a different evolutionary theory. But this perspective suggests that we are creatures that form bonds with each other. We essentially crave closeness, intimacy, support. We thrive when we get it. We're more likely to recover. We sleep better. We get all of these benefits from close attached relationships. But for some people or at some points in their lives, we can struggle to have those kinds of relationships sometimes because we become too anxious about them. We need them a little too much. We become uncomfortable in our own skin or we tip the other way. We become very avoidant. We become overly independent. We become convinced that we really don't need anybody else. These are broad attachment dynamics that people will go through their whole lives having to navigate. A lot of people have probably heard about like the you can have an anxious attachment style or an avoidant attachment style and all of that is true. But one thing we know today from studying more couples and getting better at studying couples over longer periods of time is you realize that boy people's attachment orientations really can change. So somebody can come into a relationship with an avoidant trauma-filled past, but with enough time with the right kind of person, again sharing their unique bond, which maybe science will never crack, but they know all about it. That person will start to become less and less avoidant with time. They'll become more secure. They'll get more of those physiological benefits out of the relationship. they'll get more of the support related benefits out of the relationship and that can in effect turn somebody into a more secure person. So the these are the attachment lessons that I often point to and I think they're they're useful for at least helping me remember that tension between like yeah anxiety and avoidance. Two very broad processes that are always happening behind the scenes and yet the way it unfolds for any one particular couple. It's always going to be this weird unique combination of stories and in jokes and little moments that scaffold up to hopefully, you know, help somebody become more secure eventually. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take it every day is because AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. AG1 is designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy. And it does so by helping to fill any gaps that you might have in your daily nutrition. I get asked pretty much all the time, "If I could only take one supplement, what should that supplement be?" And my answer is always AG1. It has just been so helpful for supporting all aspects of physical health, mental health, and performance. If you would like to try AG1, you can go to drink AG1.com/huberman to get a special offer. For a limited time, AG1 is giving away a free bottle of their new Omega-3 co-enzyme Q10 product. Omega-3 and co-enzyme Q10 are known to support cardiovascular health, cellular health, and energy, generally, brain health, and much more. I personally take them both every day. Again, go to drinkaga1.com/huberman to get a free bottle of the new Omega-3 co-enzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. Seems to me that barring um again like an emotional or physical safety issue, the less that couples are talking to other people besides a trained therapist, if they choose to do that, maybe not even doing that about their relationship, probably the more protected their relationship is. So that's interesting. The the darts of uh envious people. Um the unhelpful positive comments from people, right? Because there could be instances where a relationship is really flagging and and someone doesn't disclose that and they they don't really understand what's going on and were they not to share that then, you know, everyone's getting all this positive input and they think, well, I think this is just how it's supposed to go. So there's the suffering and silence piece. Y we want to I I don't think that's good. But there's the kind of um going out for external assessment piece. And as I say this, I you know it's it's funny because we the year at UC Davis and I did my PhD there. I was just remembering like when you pick projects in graduate school, you get some consensus about what's a good project. But so much of becoming a good scientist is kind of learning to put up the middle finger and just keep going as the the sort of pressure test of doing science is people going, "Well, that's is that really that interesting?" And you don't really know how much to pay attention to it. And it kind of pays to be a little bit bulldogish and just go, "Yeah, I don't know like and just ignore it and just keep going." I can say this is also true in any kind of creative endeavor or public facing life. Like it doesn't make good adaptive sense to pay too much attention but nobody wants to be the person that like steps in it or does something really stupid. But in relationships when if something feels good maybe we shouldn't be going out and getting you know putting our finger in the wind to get input. So it's fascinating because I mentioned earlier that right the the extent to which you feel at least like the people around you have your relationships back that's a useful thing but I think that probably isn't happening through a process of yeah like pseudotherapy I want to talk to my friends about my relationship or at least to the extent that that is happening I bet you're right that has some real risks. I think probably the good version of this process or the one that I would advocate for comes from research looking at like couple friends or like double date nights. So, I'm not asking you for input on my relationship, but in effect, I'm asking you and maybe your partner to experience our relationship in real time by hanging out together, the four of us. And so that can often feel like validation without explicitly asking for it. And I think that can often be a very good thing. And there's research showing that, you know, generally couples who feel like they have couple friends and are embedded in networks like that that that generally tends to go well on average. Um so yeah, I would think about it that way. It's like you can feel that you have the support of the people around you without directly asking for their assessment of your relationship because the reality is other people don't know. And this is hard as a judge because when I encounter couples and I have friends who are in relationships, it is so tempting to look at that relationship and think like, well, man, like she shouldn't have done that or I don't know if if I were her, I wouldn't stand for this. But I'm not in that relationship. So unless you are a therapist and they're coming to you for therapy, I find it useful to try to resist that impulse because a relationship is this vast deep store of information that two people have and often we're not privy to what's really going on there. I'm going back to junior high school again and I can remember at this one game I hope this isn't dramatic. No, no, it's not. Not at all. But we had this uh all girls school in our in our town, Castilea School, which was a boarding school. And so their dances were the best because they'd invite people from other schools, but all the guys were really excited to go, right? Cuz the numbers were really like worked out really well in our favorite women and and and boys and girls in our school, right? Would go to these dances. But that means you just have like an outsized pool of so everyone got someone to dance with at some point. This is what mattered in the seventh grade, right? But there were these people I had to say there were these individuals who were not going through the admittedly like tense challenge of first dance, first slow dance. This was before phones and it was tense then too. And they weren't doing any of that. What were they doing? They were running around telling people about who was doing what and who was doing that. And I remember thinking at the time, I mean, I'm no psychologist then or now, but thinking like they're avoiding the whole thing. Yeah, this is like going to a soccer game and instead of playing soccer, they're like critiquing people from the sidelines cuz it's a lot easier to do that than to actually get out there and risk and risk miss, you know, like being the goalie that lets the the winning shot through. And I remember thinking like these people are really uh really corrosive. Um, one or two in particular, I don't know what ever became of them. Hopefully, they're doing well in their lives. They got over this. But those people exist throughout life. Meaning they're rarely the people that are happy in their own relationship life. Now, I have to say it's probably a Y chromosome link disorder, but I assume that my friends who are in male friends who are in relationship. If they're still in the relationship that it's going great. There's not a lot of feedback. Like there's not a whole lot of feedback exchange. That said, if something were really like really off, I assume that they would bring it up, but probably not to me. like there's I do think that there's probably a sex difference here and these things are changing now, but I think that there's not a lot of sitting around talking about how well or poorly the relationship is going. And so like, you know, you ask about somebody's spouse like, "How are they doing?" And they go, "Yeah, great." Like we did this this weekend. There's not a whole lot of, "Yeah, we we had this one moment of exchange that was kind of sticky. Can I get your input on it?" Like that's not happening. That's just not happening. At least not in my life. I'm glad you brought up these gender differences because I think you're hitting on one that at least again as a relationships researcher I would sit here and say I think this is the big one. And the big one is that women generally are better at cultivating social support from all corners of their lives, not just their romantic partner. Whereas for men, it's largely their romantic partner. That's where they're getting most of their support, intimacy needs met. Probably the person who at least for a while is mostly in their corner. And this is why you see across the full range of the arc of a relationship that men are always a little bit more eager than women. Eager in what sense? Eager in in all the ways. I want to be in this relationship in the first place. I'm more likely to say I love you first. I'm more I'm more likely to want to be exclusive. I'm more likely to want to take things to the next level. Men are more willing to do that. Men's counter current to all this stuff about men being non-committal. Yeah. Right. So like I don't uh I don't this is what there's like new review papers on this that are really compelling and it's like kind of the same effect size across the board which is how we talk about you know how big is the sex difference? You know, it's it's mediumsiz, but it's just right there all the way through through breaking up. Who who wants who's more likely to want to break up? It's women who are more likely to want to break up. Men are more likely to be thinking about their exes. And the the not while they're in a relationship. Right. Right. Right. Not while they're in a relationship. Right. Now it's over. That's the meme. You know, I went online. The meme is like, who's he thinking about? Who's Okay. Yeah. Exactly. The reason put forward for this, and I find it very compelling, is that That's because men just don't quite have their social lives put together in the same way that women do. Meaning they don't have a lot of male friends or here. By the way, I want to put up a disclaimer at the beginning. I should have said this to make the conversation more fluid. We're framing everything in the context of heterosexual pairings, but I I think it's fair to assume that this would also extend to homosexual pairings. I think it would in in many ways. But men have friends. Yeah, I realize activity based friendships are, you know, kind of the the dominant theme. Men not getting having connection in other things. You know, is it could it be that the like the connection that I feel to my male friends and co-workers is is very deep. They're important to me. They're like family to me by now. We spend so much time together. So, it feels connected. It's just but it's a very different kind of um I don't ever think of the word intimacy. I think of trust. And I'm not trying to just, you know, like be, you know, put up a wall to my whatever feminine traits I happen to harbor, you know, like I I I'm I'm cool with that. I'm good with the idea that I have emotions and that I have needs and stuff, but I but I think it it just makes good intuitive sense to me that if I have something that I'm really that I want input on that's of a more like has a more of an emotional undercurrent that I would bring that to my romantic partner. So, here's the question I would pose and I would be clear. I'm not a therapist. I'm a scientist. But I would I would ask you this. If something went wrong, do you feel like you have a sense that there are other people in your life and not your partner but other people that you could go to if you needed to? Definitely. See, that is the essence of social support. It's actually not literally do you take people up on it. It's do you kind of have a vague sense that people are around and that's the part that matters. That's the part that gives us the health and well-being benefits. It's like a bank account you never have to dip into. It just gives you the sense to dip into it. Yeah. Right. Right. There you go. Luckily, it's a vast account. I try not to make too many withdrawals on it. So, just the feeling that it's there is really the core component. And I think there are a lot of men, not you and not me, but a lot of men out there that don't feel like they have that social support bank account, like a close male friend or female friend or female friendly platonic or family for that matter. I mean, you know, who's who's more likely to like lose touch with siblings? I I I'm willing to bet that that's more likely to be men, too. So, I think this is part of like the modern challenge of masculinity that that that worries me that I point to like I want to help men at least have that sense. I think they can cultivate it through all the activity- based things that you describe and like I did that myself throughout my 20s and 30s. Like I could not count the number of kickball and softball teams that I participated in. And I did that not because I wanted support. I don't think I ever got emotional and cried in front of any of those guys, but I knew they were there and that if I ever had to go to that, I I could. You I'm talking about memes and internet themes and I have to be careful doing that because I don't want to put too much weight on the uh the direction of those things and what they really mean. And the science is what I'm interested in. But, you know, I think um most guys would probably say that that scene in that movie, The Town, where uh Ben Affleck walks in and says, you know, listen, yep, we got to do something. People are going to get hurt. We got to do this. And you know, like, and you can't talk to anybody. And his friend's only response is who's driving. Is is kind of like the essence of what a lot of men want and kind of idealize male friendship as. Like, are we got to go bury a body or create one? And there's it's just that it's the loyalty. It's the trust. A lot's encapsulated in that. It's a bad quote unquote badass scene, right? But they're about to do something real bad. I recommend that, right? That's not the friend test you want. I know people have used that as the friend test and they paid dearly for it. Right. But the point is that friends who aren't going to ask too many questions that they can hold in the center of their um mind without any long preamble that your friend needs something and you'll do whatever it is that they need because you love them. I think that that's what's the deeper layer of it. I'm realizing there I have this like sense that there's a a big contradiction not in the scientific literature but in the public perception which is this I feel like one common narrative these days is look men failed they just failed like they didn't step up right they weren't committal you know we have to take care of them they live much longer in a relationship we die much earlier that's one narrative that you hear a lot about. It's a scary narrative, right? Because you also hear the narrative, yeah, like women are just uh very extractive. They'll trade up. You know how unfortunately your friend dated your uh then they you they broke up. She broke up with you first. Right. Right. But, you know, a lot of the things that come into play like the Coldplay concert affair that got went viral was about this woman and you know, and a lot of it was pointed at her, him too, but you know, it was like a lot was made of this thing that does happen. That there's this notion like, well, who would actually pair up with their, you know, their female friend? A woman pairing up with a female friend's husband or brother. There's a lot of that. And you never know how much of this is being these narratives are being fed. So, I feel like now we're at this point that seems to be resolving a little bit, but we've been at this point where there are these two camps and I saw something on um Twitter X some time ago and it just like stopped me in my tracks which said the way you destroy a society is to get the men and the women to hate each other and maybe I would just underwrite distrust each other. Right. And so we need to move through this. I'm not actually asking you to solve it but what do the data say? For instance, if we were to look at dating apps and I ask, do you think that the dynamics on dating apps, the algorithms, which are clearly designed to make the company's money? Do you think those are more femaledriven algorithms or maledriven algorithms? Not meaning who runs the companies. We know the answer to that for the most part. The question is, do you think that the apps are trying to optimize for more women to come to them or for more men to come to them and stay there? Because the theory is always kind of launch in the opposite direction. And if that wasn't clear, um I'm just wondering who's who's got the power. My understanding now again, the dating apps are hard to decipher because like these companies don't share data with us. I've worked with some matchmaking companies data. They're more interested in generally in collaborating with scientists because they've they got to make people on dates happy. They don't work on engagement, they work on happy dates, right? So, they're more interested in talking to scientists. But I think when your goal is getting users and getting engagement, what you're probably trying to do is bring more women in because my understanding is that there's more men on the apps. Yeah, I think so. I what I don't know and I don't know if anybody knows other than the people at these companies is like okay but how many of those apps are in use and how many people you know regular users I'm not sure. So you got to bring more women in but again engagement is the goal right I mean that's what the apps want you spending time on it and then they want you to get the fancier features. So is that going to be more geared toward men? It it might be, but I'm kind of speculating here. I expect that when you're trying to create an app for heterosexual men and women, you're going to have to somehow marry those two challenges. And look, one of the bigger gender differences that we see in the whole realm of sex and relationships is in swiping behavior. the fact that women will swipe yes on like 5% of the men they see, but men swipe yes at about 50/50. But that fits the kind of evolutionary quote unquote narrative like men being less selective, wanting to spread their their DNA, this kind of thing. I mean, to my mind, that whole thing around like men want to spread their DNA. Okay. Like I believe in in evolutionary biology, sure, but there's a lot of modern features that make like accountability for offspring and things like it's not like men can run around just having kids with anyone and and afford all of that, right? It's I mean, you know, we were talking earlier the sort of like two models. There's like the there's like the Genghask Khan ideal within this evolutionary biology model and then there's, you know, kind of like where are we now? I mean, I don't think anyone with the exception of some very wealthy people who who have kids with lots and lots of people and clearly can afford it, I don't think anyone's thinking they're going to go out and just have kids with as many people as they possibly can, right? And so what what's so interesting about these gendered dynamics is that from my perspective, they tend to get the largest the biggest gulf between men and women in the situations that are the weirdest. So, for example, we this is and this is a real study. You recruit confederates. So, that means it's somebody who's working for the experimentter. And then uh they go around campus and they ask people, "I've noticed you around and I find you very attractive. Would you like to go to bed with me?" And when you do this, you find that men are about 20 times more likely to say yes to that request than women. Very few women say yes to this request, but a reasonable number of men do. All right. But the thing about that experiment, and that experiment is very valuable, and it's very influential, and I love at least that it was real, that people were actually out in the world doing something, even if it's a little wild and uh probably a little scary, especially for the women. But if you do this one little tweak and you say, "Yeah, okay, but how about like the last time that happened to you in real life, like in a context where you knew people and then you look at the gender difference, it's not 20 times more, it's two times more." What do you mean? It's like the last time somebody you know, like among a group of friends like ask like, "Hey, do you want to go hook up?" How much more likely then are men to say yes than women? And men are still more likely, but they're only twice as likely rather than 20 times as likely. So, this is not my belief, but the cynical um incel types on the internet or the just cynical guys will say will say, "Oh, that's because women are sleeping around more than they used to when the first experiment was done." I don't believe that's true. But I can tell you that would be their reflexive response. Like like there's so there's this ammo there these arrows that each side holds. one side holds the guys aren't stepping up. They're not they're not managing their own lives, let alone making themselves somebody who would be attractive as a a partner who could listen and do and take help take care of somebody because the notion of taking care is something we can talk about. the guys are saying, "Well, they're just all extractive, you know, that and there's deceptiveness there, and they'll trade up in a at a moment's notice, you know, and and so I mean, I don't want to feed the flames of distrust, but the data you just provided, what do they what is the conclusion? Like, so that's the result, but but in that paper, what's the the authors, you know, we the authors therefore conclude that?" So I would I would conclude this that approaching strangers is especially in a romantic or sexual context is very very tricky, very challenging and it is a weird modern skill because we actually evolved in environments where you didn't actually meet that many strangers. So if some people are adept at that, God bless. But for most of us, we had to get to know people over time. We needed that long process to make a good impression on somebody because most of us are like not all that hot and not so appealing that people fall for us the moment we see them. And so that is what I would tell these hypothetical incels is I think part of the problem is that you're locked into a way of thinking about sex and romance that it's about a pickup line or it's about an initial impression. I think women are more interested in casual sex when it's somebody that they like kind of know and have been friendly with for a while and have had like some good banter with. And if you surround yourself with people, not just women, but also men, and you meet friends of friends, you're going to find more opportunities that way. So, it's like a shift in the mindset that we have about how it is we meet people and how it is we get to know them. and that hitting on strangers is like low yield, very difficult. Spending time with friends, it's time consuming, although it's enjoyable in and of itself. It's a timeconsuming approach, but it's ultimately going to be better for more people. Uh, you know, on on average, at least in light of the apps, social media, this divide, I I'm very grateful that you're bringing up this notion of spending time in small groups. Yeah, probably around certain activities. Could be pickle ball, could be a barbecue, could be I mean that's how people used to meet. You know, sometimes there's work adjacency. I mean, I think that one of the reasons the coal play thing went so viral is that the woman was head of HR. So there were a number of things that were ethical violations independent of like they tried to kind of rescue it like but they were in love and there were marriages were failing and people were like there are violations down the line on this right you know in laboratories many people cuddled up in laboratories you know my adviserss were always like really adamant that no one should do that I listen interesting oh yeah so they try to lock it down I mean in graduate school I I worked alone in the lab but my graduate adviser actually uh suggested I not even date within our graduate program this is peerto-peer I was a graduate student and for the most part I I obeyed but I was so focused on work and and I guess it happened with like you'd go to meetings you meet other graduate students so it was really peerto-peer in my post-doal laboratory my adviser was like vocal to everyone like no dating in the lab and of course there are certain married couples nowadays with kids several of them in fact that met in the lab just by proximity interest and who knows aloequading prowess who knows somebody out there an incredible aloquat that never got to attract somebody to my knowledge this by the way folks again this is not a way to attract a mate unless you're a molecular biologist perhaps but I think that there's real value in this in this because unlike our earlier discussion where other people's input um be can be kind of toxic to the process of understanding and really getting in touch with one's sense of taste I like this person I don't this feels safe it doesn't feel safe and I'm not using by the way the safe language to be politically correct like some people feel emotionally unsafe because it's just like like if there were a stressful circumstance, they would dissolve into a puddle of their own tears. That's a different version of it, right? I think we all kind of like flit to the the extremes. But that's that's another aspect. But this is a context in which you can get a read of how someone behaves, their values, their reflexive levels of kindness or lack thereof with other You get a lot of data. In a in a setting that you're hopefully enjoying yourself in any way. That seems very very valuable. So we're talking 80s movies and 90s movies already. So I'm gonna throw out Say Anything. Oh yeah. Do you remember Say Anything? Absolutely. So the John Cusack lead character um asks out the Ioni Sky character, but where they go on their first date is absolutely fascinating. They go to a party. So, they are clearly going together, but they don't spend the whole party like attached to each other and they're not interviewing each other like they met on an app. They're actually kind of watching each other as they float through these various groups. And sometimes they're talking to other folks about the fact that they're kind of on a date right now and how is it's going, but they're also talking to each other. And it's kind of a beautiful depiction of this old kind of lost art of you're dating, but you're also with other people seeing how uh they behave. And and one of the moments where I sky sort of you can see are starting to fall for John Cusack is when he's actually looking out for some of the other folks there like you know taking their keys away so they don't drive. And I I think that that idea of like watching how we behave around other people can be very powerful. So one of his unique qualities was that he's protective of other people and responsible and he put other people's safety ahead of his own desire to go out and drink that night or something. Yeah. I forgot that scene. I'm I I That's a perfect segue to what I was going to say next, but I'm brought to this mildly traumatic experience in high school where I didn't go any go to any high school dances early in high school. I was like really in the skateboard community, just really focused on that. And then uh it was my junior year of high school. Um the now woman, then young woman, girl, whatever, uh asked me that. It was the Satie Hawkins dance where the the girls asked the boys. This was very oldfashioned, right? Like I've heard this. It already assumes, right, that the guy that the guys always ask the girls, which was pretty much the standard. We go and um she was a year older and extremely beautiful, super kind. It ended up being a very long-term relationship. But I remember going and she had something back then where her hands would get really cold. She had this thing where it was a cold night. And so she went into the bathroom. She said, "I'd have to like warm my hands." She was in there a really long time. And I'm standing out there and people are coming up to me and they're like, "What are you doing here?" Like, "Why are you at a dance?" And I said, "So and so invited me." And no one believed me. They was like, "There's no chance." And I have to say, it was the most mortifying thing. And I kept waiting for this moment where she would come out of the bathroom and like vindicate me. And they all kept like dissipating before she came back. She eventually came back. And I just remember thinking like, oh man, like nobody even and I thinking like I'm either completely outclassed, like completely outclassed or like this is one of the best opportunities that ever landed uh in my lap and I'm going to I'm going to pursue this with everything I've got. So I went with the second thing and anyway, we uh this is John Cusack enter. It was it was brutal. Like I had to sit there and like you know and like no one believed me. They actually thought like I just like snuck in or something like that. Anyway, the John Cusack example is a really good one because his character in that movie is a little awkward along certain dimensions. He's certainly not as um quote unquote ambitious in the typical sense, although he wants to be a great kickboxer. Kickboxing sport of the future, right? It's a great scene between him and and her dad where he's explaining what he's going to do in life and and not in any kind of uh fluent way and her family clearly has other plans for her. But it gets to this thing that I had written down because I want to ask about next which is this notion of texting in particular. So not even apps but let's just say it's migrated off app or people meet they exchange number and there's some texting right and this notion of of the kind of unique um advantage at least early on that I think can be somewhat misleading of people who are hyperverbal. Oh, interesting. And in particular among men. And so here's what um I think years ago when I was on the job market for academic science, a really fantastic neurobiologist who actually read uh ran um let's just say a very famous school in Boston's brain science center. Um they never admit the name of their school anyway. um said to me, he said, "You know, the worst part about the job search process in uh neuroscience is that it selects for hyperverbal people where people can present their data, excite people about it, present their vision." And he said, "And there's so many amazing scientists that just don't know how to communicate their data and we're selecting for someone who can also teach, who can also do these things." And I realize he's absolutely right, you know, and some people can overcome this, but some of the best scientists in the world, speaking isn't their forte. Okay. So, in the realm of text communication, there's a kind of a bias toward can somebody like a good listener in a face to face interaction like a guy can just sit there, listen, not interrupt, nod, maybe reflect, maybe reflect, tell me more. Well, that must have been interesting, hard, whatever, you know, and can convey a lot of of genuine ability to uh to communicate and bond over text, just listening doesn't work. In fact, if it's just like, wow, that must have been hard to like a paragraph this long, like it starts to fall flat. And this is where I think some people might be screaming, no, no, no, that's what I want. you know, but there's a strong selection process now for people who can communicate quickly with their thumbs, be witty in writing. And so the hyperverbal thing has moved to text. Yeah, that's a challenge. And I do think even though some men are very hyperverbal, there is a sex difference here that we are well aware of. So do you think that that's skewing things? because the ability to to kind of keep to get and keep somebody's interest early on is strongly dependent on these days on texting, right? I think this is a really good point. You know, I was reminded of some work, this is early work in the like online interaction space that suggested that actually anxious people get a lot out of being able to communicate with a keyboard or with texting because they don't get so overwhelmed. So, this is probably going to be somebody who also on a first date would be having a bit of a tough time. So, it might be that actually texting for them has at least the advantage of reducing some of the anxiety because they can take a minute to think about what they want to say before they have to actually come out with it. But I also think you're right that the ability to be witty over text um as opposed to the kind of like nonverbal listening that you're describing that is going to be a special advantage for some people today. So it c it could very well be skewing things in the way that you describe. There's not great data on this either. I mean I mentioned earlier we don't have great data on like the arc of the But some of the the people that have tackled this question uh this is great researcher named Mimi Binberg at at Ohio State. And what she does is she gets couples who are together and then says, "Uh, let me uh let me see your texts." And then gets the whole text thread go with their permission all the way back to when they first started texting. And what you see are some cool things like essentially their styles of communicating start to like cohhere, right? It's like a pattern of mutual influence where they they get the similar cadence and they start using similar words and other things as they're talking to each other. Now, of course, those are the successful cases. So, what would it look like if we had the unsuccessful cases? And I think you're right. We would see that the people who can't match or can't be witty early on that those are the the text threads that never become couples. Um, so we just have to figure out how to recruit those folks to to be in our studies. Give us the last 10 threads of of uh, you know, dates that never went anywhere. acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance. 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So, if you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's to claim a free sample pack. Yeah, we're sort of veering towards compatibility when I say um you know, if I were to, you know, ask a close family member, you know, like what's great about the relationship you're in, uh this is a woman, and she'll be referring to her male partner in this case. She'll generally talk about the things that he does and the things that he is able to do in support that may or may not even require the ability to speak. Now, he's not aphasic, you know, um but you know, it's it's more about like what he does. And when we've had conversations on this podcast in the past about kind of relationship glue and things like that, it's like it's like, oh, that they always like, you know, one person always seems to like make the bed by the time I'm back from the bathroom in the morning and you're like, "No, my turn." And they they or the other person always sets out the coffee or some it's these the little thing phenomenon. Rarely is it like sometimes it's a note but rarely is it like yeah I love the way you know he strings together uh you know sentences or something like I love the way that I love the way that um you know she describes this thing you know so it's often about actions at least in the in the observing the qualities of the positive qualities of the male partner and that's very kind of stereotypical but I think that it just it's it's a kind of window in my mind into the difference between the quote unquote exploration and courting process, although the courting process, what people do arguably matters more than what they say, and the kind of long-term thing, the the consistency of of the stability of the relationship over time. So, I wish that, you know, it's it's a shame that these apps don't select for uh action. The only way to do that would would be something where you would say, "Okay, if you're going to sign up for this app, you know, we're going to ask you to go on at least three dates with, you know, anybody that you match with, and we want to see you dating in these very different circumstances where the point isn't always to just talk at each other. That also you like you got to do things together." I wish there were dates that were like assemble this IKEA furniture. Don't people still go for like a hike or go to a show? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that that's good, too, cuz at least it's it's talking and interacting, but a different kind of talking and interacting. I want I want like physical challenges. Get out of this escape room, stuff like that. Anyway, I'm not actually handle. Yeah, right. You're right. Yeah. So, you got to be witty, but also not panic. Do you suggest that? Is it is it like a first date? I don't know. Maybe third date. Okay. Third date sounds good for escape. I want to be clear. I've never I've only done the the escape room board games. You're just throwing people under the bus just to see what happens. Get to that date. Yeah. No, no, I'm just kidding. But like you know events that sporting events I mean things that are um uh that are exciting that you're doing together but also facilitate interaction I think can be really good. It is very very hard though to simulate the patterns of what would it be like to be in a long-term relationship with this person and the 4,000 daily responsibilities that come with that. And I think even when we are really crazy about somebody early on, we try to forecast what that's going to be like as best we can, but we really don't know. And I think the like the beautiful thing but also the challenge that a lot of relationships have is you know what you do is you know like you just described like okay it becomes my job to set out the coffee and it becomes your job to mow the lawn and we create this very elaborate structure that guides not just our day-to-day lives and the crap we have to do but it also guides how we communicate when we communicate what we communicate about. If we create a business together, that can create a relationship that starts to feel like more transactional, that's maybe less warm, has less opportunity for connection as opposed to creating a relationship that builds, you know, time for fun activities together, for fun experiences, or again, I recognize like people are stressed and often working multiple jobs, but at least when we are interacting, are we able to interact about the fun, silly things that brought us together in the first place. Um, I think it's it's very challenging to do these things. When people go to couples therapy and the couples therapy is effective, it's usually because therapists are able to help couples essentially like rewind all the bad patterns they've created and go back to when things were good. uh rediscover what it…

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