Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Logan Jurie, author of the book
Speaker 1: How To Not Die Alone, and director of Relationship Science
Speaker 1: at Hinge. Logan, good to have you on the podcast. Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Okay, first question, is there
Speaker 1: a lid for every pot? I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: think so necessarily. I feel like maybe there's a few
Speaker 1: lids for one pot, and I don't really believe in
Speaker 1: the one. I don't believe in soulmates. I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that we could make a
Speaker 1: life with, and it's really up to us what kind
Speaker 1: of life we want to live, and we can choose
Speaker 1: different people for that. I'm actually looking for the reverse, uh,
Speaker 1: not the person who's necessarily looking for the best match,
Speaker 1: but people who believe there's they're never gonna fine love,
Speaker 1: there's not somebody out there for them. It's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: I just sent out my email newsletter today and it
Speaker 1: was about finding a penthouse person or a basement person.
Speaker 1: So a penthouse person is somebody who lifts you up,
Speaker 1: they energize you, they make you feel your best. A
Speaker 1: basement person is somebody who brings you down? And it
Speaker 1: was basically saying, instead of dating with the checklist, he
Speaker 1: must be this tall, he must make this much money.
Speaker 1: Think about the person in your life who's your penthouse person.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's your best friend, maybe it's your cousin, and
Speaker 1: date for somebody with those qualities. And a woman wrote
Speaker 1: back to me and said, what if I'm a basement person?
Speaker 1: What do I do about that? And I thought it
Speaker 1: was so interesting because oftentimes we think about how can
Speaker 1: I choose the right person? And rarely we think am
Speaker 1: I the right person? And I think that actually is
Speaker 1: a lot of it. Maybe there's nobody out there for
Speaker 1: you because you are not allowing yourself to be loved,
Speaker 1: or you are not allowing yourself to connect. And so
Speaker 1: for someone like that, I might say, maybe you right
Speaker 1: now need to do some work on yourself. But I
Speaker 1: do feel like people who are open to connection and
Speaker 1: are willing to compromise on the things that don't matter
Speaker 1: and double down on the things that do, I feel
Speaker 1: like there there is love for them. Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: there's the threshold. There are many people, especially in today's
Speaker 1: era of dating apps, who view it as like getting
Speaker 1: a job. Very scientifically, But there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other people who just cannot get over the threshold, even
Speaker 1: though these people might to those who know them be
Speaker 1: very desirable and if they just played, they would certainly
Speaker 1: be inundated with those who want to interact with them. Now,
Speaker 1: you may not see that many of those people because
Speaker 1: they don't come to you. But what do you tell
Speaker 1: those people to get engaged in the game. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I actually do see a lot of those people. I
Speaker 1: call them hesitators. There are people that are just not
Speaker 1: putting themselves out there at all, and they're not in
Speaker 1: the game, and they oftentimes feel like they're just not
Speaker 1: datable yet. They're just not ready for love. And they
Speaker 1: tell me these things like if I lose weight, if
Speaker 1: I get a more impressive job, if I finally unpack
Speaker 1: those boxes in my apartment. So they're not even dating
Speaker 1: because they feel like they're not lovable yet, and the
Speaker 1: work that I do with them is helping them understand. Look,
Speaker 1: the only way to get better at dating is by
Speaker 1: actually dating. And it's kind of like stand up comedy.
Speaker 1: If you just sit in your house writing jokes, you're
Speaker 1: just writing. It's not until you're in front of an
Speaker 1: audience that you're actually doing stand up. And similarly, these
Speaker 1: people read self help books, so they think about how
Speaker 1: they want to date one day. But you can really
Speaker 1: only get better at dating by actually dating. And also
Speaker 1: you only see what kind of person you want to
Speaker 1: be with by actually going on dates. And so for
Speaker 1: some of those people, it's just about getting out there
Speaker 1: and dating. In terms of people that are just not
Speaker 1: getting any matches or not seeing any success, I usually
Speaker 1: like to talk to them and just look at their
Speaker 1: past and look at their patterns and say, Okay, when
Speaker 1: you have met somebody in the past, was it on
Speaker 1: an app or was it at a dog park? When
Speaker 1: you have connected with somebody, was it actually a friend
Speaker 1: that turned into a relationship? And so some people maybe
Speaker 1: are not actually the best fit for online dating, and
Speaker 1: I'd rather look back and help them understand what are
Speaker 1: the situations that set them up for success, and then
Speaker 1: how can they do more of that. Now, the nature
Speaker 1: of life is as you get older, there's attrition. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about a couple of specific examples.
Speaker 1: I have a couple of friends who spouses have passed away,
Speaker 1: and they're in their sixties, and you know, some of
Speaker 1: them married a few times, but they just didn't envision
Speaker 1: this happening, and they're so reluctant to get into the game.
Speaker 1: Is there any advice you have for them? I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say I'm necessarily an expert on dating at that stage
Speaker 1: of life. I have worked a lot with millennials and
Speaker 1: gen z. I do get a lot of emails every
Speaker 1: week from people who are like, you know, I'm in
Speaker 1: my six season seventies and I read your book and
Speaker 1: I didn't think it would be for me, but I
Speaker 1: learned a lot. But I just want to start by
Speaker 1: saying I'm not necessarily the most experienced with this. But
Speaker 1: what I would say is for some people, they actually
Speaker 1: aren't looking for someone. I hear from people all the
Speaker 1: time they're like, I'm way happier being alone than being
Speaker 1: in an unhappy relationship. And I think for some people
Speaker 1: that's the right answer. For other people, when they have
Speaker 1: been out of the dating game for years, trying to
Speaker 1: date online feels really forced and not necessarily comfortable for them.
Speaker 1: They feel like they're learning a brand new language. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: how I dated in the eighties is not relevant anymore.
Speaker 1: But for those people, I would say just think about
Speaker 1: the apps or think about online dating as the modern matchmaker.
Speaker 1: That's just where the connection happens. But once you go
Speaker 1: on that first date, it's the same experience. It's what
Speaker 1: are you about? What am I about? What are you
Speaker 1: looking for? Let's go have fun, Let's go on a hike,
Speaker 1: Let's really get to know each other. And then the
Speaker 1: last thing might be you know, speaking of attrition at
Speaker 1: a certain age, are there other people in your life
Speaker 1: that maybe you had a connection with and they've also
Speaker 1: lost their spouse, and is there an opportunity to turn
Speaker 1: some of those friendships or companionships into something more. Now,
Speaker 1: in the Tinder era, more than ever, attractiveness is a
Speaker 1: key element. And certainly those of us who live for
Speaker 1: a while, there are certain people they're fighting off the
Speaker 1: other sex or maybe same sex, if they are of
Speaker 1: that ilk persuasion. You know today you gotta worry about
Speaker 1: every word you use. You're gonna get canceled. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, if they're gay or whatever. But then there
Speaker 1: are people who say, well, I'm not high on the
Speaker 1: attractiveness scale. So if I go on Tinder, j s
Speaker 1: wipe all these other things, you know, my opportunities are
Speaker 1: going to be limited, So what do you tell those people? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think about this a lot. There's this kind stup
Speaker 1: called relations shopping. So we used to go relationshipping, which
Speaker 1: is looking for a relationship, and now we go relations shopping,
Speaker 1: which is shopping for somebody as if they were a
Speaker 1: product that we're going to purchase. And so let's say
Speaker 1: somebody was like, Bob, I need a new pair of
Speaker 1: wireless headphones. You might think about, okay, well, how much
Speaker 1: do you want to spend, what quality do you want?
Speaker 1: What kind of charging? You might think about all the
Speaker 1: specs and break the product down and then say, okay,
Speaker 1: these are the single best pair of wireless headphones for
Speaker 1: what I want. Unfortunately, people are also doing that with dating,
Speaker 1: where they're breaking people down into their parts and saying height, attractiveness, education, job,
Speaker 1: quality of photos, etcetera. And the issue with relation shopping
Speaker 1: is that people are not what we call searchable goods.
Speaker 1: People cannot be broken down into these parts. People are
Speaker 1: what's known as experience goods, which is something like wine
Speaker 1: or a movie. I might love this wine and you
Speaker 1: hate it. I might really not enjoy this movie, but
Speaker 1: it age you cry, and you thought it was triumphant,
Speaker 1: and so people are really not something that can be
Speaker 1: broken down into their parts. There are people that have
Speaker 1: to be experienced to be understood, and so I do
Speaker 1: think it's a shame when people feel like they can't
Speaker 1: represent themselves because they'll just be you know, swipe left
Speaker 1: on because of their attraction. That being said, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of ways to shine on the apps. That's
Speaker 1: not just how you look. And so, for example, with Hinge,
Speaker 1: they have audio prompts, so you can record something in
Speaker 1: your voice and you can tell a joke, you can
Speaker 1: do an impression of a movie, you can say something silly.
Speaker 1: My friend Joe, for example, he uses the voice prompt
Speaker 1: how to pronounce my name, which is obviously there for
Speaker 1: people who have hard to pronounce names, but he just
Speaker 1: says Joe. And this factor's people out right. If you
Speaker 1: think that's funny, you have the dry sense of humor
Speaker 1: that he has. If you right back, do you really
Speaker 1: think I don't know how to say Joe, then he
Speaker 1: just knows that you're not for him. And so there
Speaker 1: are these things that are happening right now that are
Speaker 1: limiting that space between who you are on this two
Speaker 1: dimensional app and who you are three D in real life,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to make it easier to understand from
Speaker 1: the app what that person is really like, and so
Speaker 1: things like being silly, being funny, using correct grammar, expressing
Speaker 1: yourself in a specific way, showing that you can be
Speaker 1: silly and serious, and so yes, I do think in
Speaker 1: general it's not just an app problem. People are very visual,
Speaker 1: they're very focused on attraction, but there are these other
Speaker 1: parts of your personality that you can make shine. And
Speaker 1: I especially think that's true as people get older, because
Speaker 1: in general, nobody in the sixties and seventies market is
Speaker 1: as attractive as the person in the twenties market, and
Speaker 1: so I would hope that the emphasis on attraction goes
Speaker 1: down somewhat because it's just a different pool of people
Speaker 1: that you're looking at. Well. As I say, I'm not
Speaker 1: solely by audience, is not solely people of that age,
Speaker 1: but just BEng In with one specific example, I have
Speaker 1: a friend in his forties, makes seven figures a year,
Speaker 1: very attractive, very in shape, never been married, says he
Speaker 1: wants to be in a relationship. If that person came
Speaker 1: to you, what would be the question you would ask him?
Speaker 1: How would you you know, approach getting this person into
Speaker 1: a reasonable relationship that might lead to marriage. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: I think you gave me a good lay up there
Speaker 1: by saying he says he wants to be in a relationship, Um,
Speaker 1: but you seem to doubt it. And so I would
Speaker 1: probably dig into that too. And so let's say I
Speaker 1: was working with him in a coaching capacity. In the
Speaker 1: first session, i'd really ask him to tell me his
Speaker 1: dating history, probably starting in high school. People really like
Speaker 1: to start in that time. A lot of people say
Speaker 1: to me, I was a late bloomer. Nobody really looked
Speaker 1: at me. Um, I didn't have high self confidence. This
Speaker 1: is when I lost my virginity. People really like to
Speaker 1: start pretty early on and telling me who they are.
Speaker 1: And it's very interesting to hear their narrative. Some people
Speaker 1: focused on the number of partners they've had. Some people
Speaker 1: focus on how they were always so job or school
Speaker 1: oriented and that's why it didn't happen for them. But
Speaker 1: I would really listen to what he chooses to include
Speaker 1: in that narrative and then dig in and ask certain
Speaker 1: questions about, you know, why did you break up with
Speaker 1: this person, or what did you like or not like
Speaker 1: about them, and for him being in his forties and
Speaker 1: it sounds like you think he's an eligible bachelor. I
Speaker 1: would ask him, why do you think you're single? I
Speaker 1: would have him text his friends and family and say,
Speaker 1: why do you think I'm single? I would really start
Speaker 1: to get some data points on what's going on with
Speaker 1: this person, and then I would reflect and say do
Speaker 1: I believe this? Sometimes people say, oh, I'm just too picky.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, maybe you're picky, but about the wrong things.
Speaker 1: Maybe you actually never got over the fact that you
Speaker 1: were a late bloomer and you really enjoy just dating
Speaker 1: around and you're not looking for something. I would try
Speaker 1: to dig in and say, what's your long term old
Speaker 1: Do you want to have a family? Do you want
Speaker 1: to grow old with someone? If you do, you have
Speaker 1: to change your behavior because where you're headed now is
Speaker 1: not leading towards a path of doing that, and so
Speaker 1: you need to be on board with making a behavioral change.
Speaker 1: And sometimes people aren't. Sometimes people actually are just happy
Speaker 1: or not happy where they are, but they are not
Speaker 1: willing to change their behavior. And you can't just do
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over again and expect a
Speaker 1: different outcome. How about you know with this same gentleman,
Speaker 1: he gets in relationships which those of us who are
Speaker 1: his friends might say are inappropriate. Is that an age thing?
Speaker 1: Let's be these women be in their twenties, but I
Speaker 1: am I'm referring that sort of a different These are
Speaker 1: people who are self supporting, okay, and these are people
Speaker 1: who are not is intelligent worldly that you know, one
Speaker 1: wonders whether he can pick them by virtually the fact
Speaker 1: that he can control them, and is fearful that he's
Speaker 1: someone who's more established he might not be able to
Speaker 1: control any thoughts about that. Yeah, I've definitely encountered people
Speaker 1: like this, and I sometimes think that they create a
Speaker 1: mentor mentee dynamic where, similar to what you said, they
Speaker 1: want to feel like they're in control. They want to
Speaker 1: feel like that person comes to them for guidance. There's
Speaker 1: a sense of a power and balance that they seem
Speaker 1: to benefit from. What I talked to them about that
Speaker 1: is that mentor mentee relationships tend not to work out.
Speaker 1: The mentor gets bored and the mentee gets resentful. And
Speaker 1: as that person gets older and more independent, they start
Speaker 1: to resent the older person for feeling like, um, they
Speaker 1: need to ask them from permission or things, or they
Speaker 1: just don't you know, they want to be in an
Speaker 1: equal relationship. The other thing that I would say to
Speaker 1: your friend is who are some of the relationships in
Speaker 1: your life that you admire. Tell me about some of
Speaker 1: your friends that have great marriages, great partnerships. I would
Speaker 1: listen to what that person says, and I imagine that
Speaker 1: he would say something like, I really like this couple.
Speaker 1: They seem to have fun together, they have a great dynamic,
Speaker 1: um they like traveling in the same way, and they're
Speaker 1: just really pushing each other and they have fun. Or
Speaker 1: he telling me about another couple where it just seems
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of passion and they're really romantic
Speaker 1: and they're not sick of each other. And then I
Speaker 1: would talk to him about these what you called inappropriate
Speaker 1: relationships and say do they have that dynamic and just
Speaker 1: start to help him understand that obviously this is very hypothetical,
Speaker 1: but that likely the relationships he's pursuing are about those
Speaker 1: people's physical attraction or about the fact that if he
Speaker 1: has more power, maybe they won't leave him. Maybe he
Speaker 1: feels like he's trying to live out some high school
Speaker 1: fantasy that he never got to have because he wasn't
Speaker 1: cool in high school, and that it's time to grow
Speaker 1: up and look for the life part NERD instead of
Speaker 1: the promptdate. Okay, So I was on the phone with
Speaker 1: somebody yesterday and we were talking about potential partners and
Speaker 1: this is a big thing amongst guys, the issue of attractiveness.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, in this demo, whatever, what percentage
Speaker 1: of the people you want to carve out that don't
Speaker 1: meet your qualifications? He go se but professing that he
Speaker 1: would like to have a relationship, What would you tell
Speaker 1: someone like that? Yeah, I've thought about this a lot.
Speaker 1: I've thought about what matters more and less than people
Speaker 1: think for long term relationships. And so some of the
Speaker 1: things that matter less than people think include attractive attractiveness, money,
Speaker 1: having the same personality, and shared hobbies. In general, people
Speaker 1: tend to overestimate the importance of those. The reason why
Speaker 1: it looks matter but matter lesson we think, is because
Speaker 1: of this idea of adaptation. Over time, we just get
Speaker 1: used to whatever's around us. And so I think I
Speaker 1: said some in my book, like even halle Berry's husband
Speaker 1: cheated on her, right, you can have like the most
Speaker 1: attractive partner in the world. But if you see them
Speaker 1: every day, you just get used to them and sort
Speaker 1: of that initial joy or initial spark of that person's
Speaker 1: level of attraction just you just get used to it
Speaker 1: over time, and it's less exciting. So I wouldn't put
Speaker 1: all my eggs in the attraction basket because you're just
Speaker 1: gonna get used to it. Plus looks fade. Another thing
Speaker 1: is money. It's the same idea. Yeah, it's great to
Speaker 1: have money. It makes life easier. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: research that shows up to a certain amount money matters,
Speaker 1: but over that amount, it just tends to fade into
Speaker 1: the background. Your house, it matters more how big your
Speaker 1: house is compared to your neighbor's house than how big
Speaker 1: your house is. Over time, and so even if you
Speaker 1: have a ton of money, you start comparing yourself to
Speaker 1: people who have even more than you. You just get
Speaker 1: used to that amount. That's why lottery winners tend to
Speaker 1: be as happy as they were a year after winning
Speaker 1: the lottery, because they just get used to having money.
Speaker 1: Similar personality, you don't have to be a personality twin
Speaker 1: with your partner. Maybe you compliment each other, maybe you're
Speaker 1: really outgoing but you're you're also a little spacey and
Speaker 1: you need somebody to ground you. And then shared hobbies.
Speaker 1: I think people talk way too much about I love
Speaker 1: music and this person needs to love music and Bob,
Speaker 1: you might be an exception to this because music is
Speaker 1: a huge part of your life. But for the average person,
Speaker 1: you can have a hobby that you embrace with your
Speaker 1: friends or that you do on the weekends, and your
Speaker 1: partner doesn't need to have the same level of passion
Speaker 1: for it. So I think people get really distracted by
Speaker 1: some of those things and they are just not what
Speaker 1: the research tells us matters for long term relationship success.
Speaker 1: Do you think someone you might not be physically attracted
Speaker 1: to initially you can grow to be physically attracted to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think above a certain threshold. So if you meet
Speaker 1: someone and you are just grossed out by them, or
Speaker 1: what the kids call these days the ick factor, if
Speaker 1: you're feeling the ig factor, you're probably not going to
Speaker 1: overcome that. But there's tons of examples of people who
Speaker 1: met somebody in their apartment building, met somebody at work
Speaker 1: who they didn't really feel an attraction to, but over time,
Speaker 1: as they get to know that person as they see
Speaker 1: how beautiful they look when they are talking about their family,
Speaker 1: or how fun they are to be around when they're
Speaker 1: doing a crossrood puzzle with them, that attraction grows. And
Speaker 1: there's some really cool research on this. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: know how much research you want me to get into today,
Speaker 1: but UM, basically, if you just look at a group
Speaker 1: of people and you say who are the hottest people,
Speaker 1: we're all going to agree. But if we spend six
Speaker 1: months with them and I get to know some people
Speaker 1: and you get to know some people, at the end
Speaker 1: of the six months, I'm going to think the people
Speaker 1: that I got to know are most attractive, and you're
Speaker 1: going to think the people that you got to know
Speaker 1: are most attractive. And so attraction definitely grows over time
Speaker 1: through what's known as the mere exposure effect, and also
Speaker 1: just the more that you see different sides of someone,
Speaker 1: the more they can grow on you. Okay, one of
Speaker 1: the fascinating things that I read about you is you say,
Speaker 1: or something you said, was people find those in therapy
Speaker 1: very attractive. I'm a big believer in therapy, been going
Speaker 1: for decades, etcetera. I've gotten a lot of ship for that,
Speaker 1: and I know a lot of people who won't go
Speaker 1: to therapy. So is it just a small subset of
Speaker 1: people or generations different? What's going on there? So this
Speaker 1: is research that we conducted it hand over the last year. Basically,
Speaker 1: I was inspired to do this because I was talking
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who said, to me, look,
Speaker 1: the pandemic was really hard. It was really tough. It
Speaker 1: pushed me to my limits. I went to therapy to
Speaker 1: quote unquote do the work. Now I'm meeting these people
Speaker 1: who haven't done any of that and they basically come
Speaker 1: to me and I have to be their therapists, And like,
Speaker 1: I'm not willing to do that. I've done the work.
Speaker 1: I want to be with someone who's done the work.
Speaker 1: It really felt like there was this cultural shift away
Speaker 1: from therapy being this stigmatized thing that means there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with you, to being this very healthy thing that means, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm prioritizing my mental health. And so what we found
Speaker 1: it hinge was that over of people said I want
Speaker 1: to be with someone who actively takes care of their
Speaker 1: mental health. And then they also said if somebody mentioned
Speaker 1: on the first date that they go to therapy, I
Speaker 1: would be more likely to want to go on a
Speaker 1: second date with them, and so I do think this
Speaker 1: is a cultural shift. Uh, Millennials and gen z tend
Speaker 1: to be way more focused on self help. They follow
Speaker 1: a bunch of therapists and coaches on Instagram, they consume
Speaker 1: a lot of self help podcast that's just part of
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist. But I also think that the pandemic really
Speaker 1: pushed this because people were so challenged that they were
Speaker 1: forced to deal with some of their stuff, and in
Speaker 1: doing that, they were like, Wow, this is really valuable.
Speaker 1: I wish I had done this before. I wish my
Speaker 1: parents did it, and I absolutely want my partner to
Speaker 1: do it. What's your therapy experience? Yeah, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish, I'm from South Florida. I feel like therapy
Speaker 1: is just something I'm very comfortable with. I've seen a
Speaker 1: series of therapists in my life. I feel like some
Speaker 1: people have had really magical therapy experiences. I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: I've had one particular therapist that was life changing, but
Speaker 1: I think it's just really healthy at different stages to
Speaker 1: have somebody to confess things to and to talk to.
Speaker 1: And it's basically a space where you put a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that's messy that you don't want to bring
Speaker 1: anywhere else. I also feel like one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why my husband and I are married is because his
Speaker 1: mom is a therapist. And he has this joke he
Speaker 1: likes to say, which is, I didn't talk to my
Speaker 1: mom that much growing up. She didn't take my insurance.
Speaker 1: That is funny. He's really funny, But I feel like
Speaker 1: his mom is one of the major reasons we're married.
Speaker 1: A lot of people these days like to say that
Speaker 1: they're feminine us, but I think my husband actually is
Speaker 1: a feminist, Like he reads books by women about the
Speaker 1: women experience. He liked The Show Girls. It's not like
Speaker 1: a showy thing for him. It's not about protesting or marching.
Speaker 1: It's that he actually is very interested in what women
Speaker 1: think and feels like men and women are equal. And
Speaker 1: I think that just came from having a very sassy, opinionated, strong,
Speaker 1: emotionally intelligent mom. And I feel really lucky to be
Speaker 1: married to the son of a therapist, and as he
Speaker 1: had individual therapy himself. Yeah, I mean, I think we're
Speaker 1: both just of the Yeah. For us, therapy is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have something going on, like you probably need to
Speaker 1: go to a therapist. That there's I would say, it's
Speaker 1: not stigmatized at all. And yeah, I would say I'm
Speaker 1: lucky to be in a community where most people I
Speaker 1: know have probably been to therapy at some point. Okay,
Speaker 1: I had a free subscription to a o L and
Speaker 1: I'm dating myself when people had to pay by the minute.
Speaker 1: So literally I lived on that service and it benefited
Speaker 1: me professionally. But I would like to explore all those things.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was love at a o well, never
Speaker 1: mind the chat groups, chat rooms, and then match dot com.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been in a one on one relationship
Speaker 1: for decades, but I still have a free subscription if
Speaker 1: I could find the log in, because those of us
Speaker 1: were grandfathered in. But when two interesting things. One I
Speaker 1: found that I could say the same thing to two
Speaker 1: different women get wildly divergent reactions when you're moving too fast,
Speaker 1: the other one would say, this is just too slow,
Speaker 1: I have to abandon you. The other thing I found
Speaker 1: was that it really got my chops up for interacting
Speaker 1: people with in regular life. So to what degree do
Speaker 1: you believe just being in the game is working on
Speaker 1: your own games? Such you're open to love or really
Speaker 1: if you want to get in a serious relationship, the
Speaker 1: apps themselves can do this for you. Oh this is
Speaker 1: this is funny to think about. It takes me back.
Speaker 1: So I also had the free A O L subscription,
Speaker 1: and then I spent much of my middle school in
Speaker 1: high school years on a I am right, I am right,
Speaker 1: of course, the predecessor of my message, of course. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I like to think about, you know, the Malcolm
Speaker 1: Gladwell ten hours thing. I'm like, my ten hours is
Speaker 1: chatting day. Well, believe me, I feel the same way.
Speaker 1: People say, you know, you know, I'll just go a
Speaker 1: little left field here. People say, oh, chat rooms I
Speaker 1: don't understand, say you don't understand how to play the game.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a chat room for every sexual predilection.
Speaker 1: I said, I don't want to know what your sexual
Speaker 1: predilection is. But in the user created rooms, it's there,
Speaker 1: and there's it was thirteen or fourteen people in every
Speaker 1: chat room, and then you click and get their profile
Speaker 1: and then you connect, you contact them via aim. You know,
Speaker 1: to this day, what's interesting because older generations are much
Speaker 1: less tech savvy than they say, and same thing with
Speaker 1: younger generations. The old cliche used to be, well, if
Speaker 1: you got a tech problem mass somebody who's twelve. That's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the case anymore. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: experience to be gained there. So you gain that experience.
Speaker 1: And now that I've gone off on my own, little Hahira, there,
Speaker 1: give me continue the story you were telling. Oh sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't spend a ton of time and chat rooms,
Speaker 1: but I definitely it was a kind of thing where
Speaker 1: maybe you sat next to a cute boy in class
Speaker 1: and you never spoke, but when you would go home
Speaker 1: at night, you would talk on a I AM for
Speaker 1: three hours, and I feel like you, I really did
Speaker 1: get my flirty writing style down. I usually think about
Speaker 1: it as a waste where I'm like, I could have
Speaker 1: learned Spanish, I could have learned how to code, Like
Speaker 1: why did I spend so much of my time there?
Speaker 1: But then I'm also like, I'm a pretty good written communicator,
Speaker 1: and I think some of it was honed using that service,
Speaker 1: And so I agree with you. And so in terms
Speaker 1: of being in the game, I absolutely agree with that idea.
Speaker 1: It's kind of what I was talking about before with hesitators,
Speaker 1: where some people are just not dating at all, and
Speaker 1: maybe they are afraid of dating. They feel like they're
Speaker 1: out of practice, they're afraid to get out there. But
Speaker 1: so much research on how to achieve your goals has
Speaker 1: to do with identity. Right. There's this great book Atomic
Speaker 1: Habits where he talks about how his friend lost a
Speaker 1: hundred pounds by saying every time she had to make
Speaker 1: a decision, she would say what would a healthy person do?
Speaker 1: And she basically adopted the identity of a healthy person
Speaker 1: and then was able to make decisions like taking the
Speaker 1: stairs instead of the elevator, ordering a salad instead of
Speaker 1: the fries, whatever it was. And so the dating analogy
Speaker 1: here is how can you adopt the identity of a
Speaker 1: data and say I am a data? I am somebody
Speaker 1: who goes on dates. That means that I save this
Speaker 1: many nights a week for dating. It means that I
Speaker 1: respond to messages on the app. I really feel like
Speaker 1: you have to think of yourself as somebody who's in
Speaker 1: the game. And if you just think of yourself as
Speaker 1: somebody who will eventually be in the game, who who's
Speaker 1: occasionally in the game, I don't find that those people
Speaker 1: really make progress. You know. One of the things my
Speaker 1: psychiatrist said early in the game, this is the nineties.
Speaker 1: With this particular psychiatrist would say, yeah, certain things attract.
Speaker 1: Physical attractedness is one thing, would attract love partner. But
Speaker 1: also if you're a man, uh status, whether it be
Speaker 1: fame or a certain job, money, you know, so many
Speaker 1: people might say forget the people who are not playing
Speaker 1: at all. Well, I'm playing at this level, but I
Speaker 1: hope to play at a higher level when I got
Speaker 1: further in my career. What might you say to someone
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I do a lot of work with
Speaker 1: people where we say, okay, where are you now, where
Speaker 1: do you want to get to? And what are the
Speaker 1: steps along the way, and then I might walk them
Speaker 1: through a checklist of you know, the bare minimum. So
Speaker 1: at the bare minimum, you need a great profile with
Speaker 1: attractive pictures and showing you in a flattering but accurate light,
Speaker 1: something that tells a story. All right. You need to
Speaker 1: be logging in pretty consistently, because if you just log
Speaker 1: into the app every Sunday and then you let those
Speaker 1: conversations die, you don't go on dates. You need to
Speaker 1: be going on first dates that actually have good conversation
Speaker 1: and leads to connection and maybe a kiss at the
Speaker 1: end of the night. If your first dates aren't turning
Speaker 1: into second dates, let's zoom in there, what's the problem?
Speaker 1: How do we get you to second dates? And just
Speaker 1: really working with people and seeing are you doing the
Speaker 1: must have steps? And then where are you getting stuck?
Speaker 1: And how can we fix that? And so I could
Speaker 1: imagine maybe somebody listening to our conversation and being like, oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds, you know, so technical, that sounds like you're
Speaker 1: trying to apply maybe business techniques or thing to dating.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are single, they don't want to be they want help,
Speaker 1: and we have blind spots that make it hard for
Speaker 1: us to see what we're doing wrong. And so I
Speaker 1: really like to be that third party that sits there
Speaker 1: with them and says, well, if you're going on a
Speaker 1: ton of first dates and no second dates, you're doing
Speaker 1: something wrong in the first date, and let's figure out
Speaker 1: what's going wrong. Now. I know from personal experience more
Speaker 1: than once you're in a long term relationship, you hit
Speaker 1: a point where the other person wants to get married. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's say someone comes to you said we'll have
Speaker 1: a long term relationship. But really, I'm just in my twenties.
Speaker 1: I don't really want to get married till they're till
Speaker 1: I'm in my thirties, and then gets you know, starts
Speaker 1: to get traction with someone. You know, what do you
Speaker 1: tell someone like that. I've found that people change their
Speaker 1: minds more often than they think. So I know so
Speaker 1: many people who in their twenties said I don't want
Speaker 1: to have kids, and then in their thirties all their
Speaker 1: friends had kids, and they're like, I guess this is
Speaker 1: the thing to do. And so part of that is
Speaker 1: just an acknowledgment that people change over time way more
Speaker 1: than we think we will. There's this really cool research
Speaker 1: from Dan Gilbert out of Harvard called the end of
Speaker 1: history illusion, where people think, oh, i'm twenty, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to change. Oh i'm thirty, I'm not going to change.
Speaker 1: I'm forty, I'm not going to change. We keep thinking
Speaker 1: that we're done changing, but when you look back on
Speaker 1: the previous ten years, you've changed a lot. And so
Speaker 1: part of it is just helping people acknowledge and understand
Speaker 1: that your desires may change. Another thing is that sometimes
Speaker 1: your timeline doesn't match up with somebody else's if you're
Speaker 1: dating someone who's older, who's ready to get married now,
Speaker 1: and that's not your exact preferred time, could you compromise,
Speaker 1: Could you be ready a little bit earlier? And then
Speaker 1: something else might be is it that you don't want
Speaker 1: to get married or is it that you don't want
Speaker 1: to be with this person? And maybe they're actually conflating
Speaker 1: those ideas, and so I would dig in with them
Speaker 1: and say, is this actually is it of timing or
Speaker 1: is this not the right person? You know, the entertainment
Speaker 1: business is littered with people who walked in in marriages
Speaker 1: or had early marriages, had a lot of success, fire
Speaker 1: the spouse and got somebody else. So you know, what
Speaker 1: do you tell those people that really, you're not going
Speaker 1: to find what you're looking for when you have something
Speaker 1: established or now you have a better cv, you're really
Speaker 1: going to find someone better. Yeah, it's funny. I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of personal experience with the entertainment industry,
Speaker 1: but it reminds me of lots of friends who have
Speaker 1: gone to business school, where you walk into business school
Speaker 1: with the partner and then you meet someone who you
Speaker 1: think is more on your level or you have more
Speaker 1: in common with and suddenly there's a lot of divorces
Speaker 1: happening that first year of business school, and so there
Speaker 1: is a tendency in our culture. I think too. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's like have a starter spouse or to trade up.
Speaker 1: And the question I would ask this person is on
Speaker 1: what dimensions are you trading up? Is it that you
Speaker 1: think that you could have someone more attractive and so
Speaker 1: you're you're leaving your first partner behind. I would really
Speaker 1: question for those people where the decision is coming from.
Speaker 1: And some of the celebrities and people I admire the
Speaker 1: most are people who have their O G relationship and
Speaker 1: their O G friends and basically have realized that that
Speaker 1: person loved them even before they were Mark Zuckerberg world
Speaker 1: billionaire and things like that. Right he's he's been dating
Speaker 1: his partner for a long time, and so there of
Speaker 1: course there's going to be divorces. And that's not the problem.
Speaker 1: I think the issue is when people feel like they
Speaker 1: need an upgrade to represent where they are right now,
Speaker 1: and they might not realize realize the sacrifices they're making
Speaker 1: because that person is drawn to who you are now
Speaker 1: and maybe not who you were when you were a
Speaker 1: more humble version of yourself. Okay uh. There was a
Speaker 1: song in the eighties by Paula abdual Opposites Attract, and
Speaker 1: I always use that as my mantra when it comes
Speaker 1: to relationships. People are looking for someone who's identical to them,
Speaker 1: and as the couple therapists we see says, you know,
Speaker 1: you would absolutely hate that. So what's been your experience?
Speaker 1: I completely agree. I I just I think you said
Speaker 1: it very well. It's like people think that they are
Speaker 1: so great that they need to find someone just like them.
Speaker 1: And I can remember a client of mine who came
Speaker 1: in and said, I'm the life of the party. I'm
Speaker 1: so much fun. I I literally do event planning for
Speaker 1: a living. And I just don't know if I can
Speaker 1: be with my girlfriend. She's such a homebody, and she's quiet,
Speaker 1: and she wants to go home at eleven PM and
Speaker 1: not sail till three am. And then I say, this person,
Speaker 1: two of you in a relationship would be way too much.
Speaker 1: You would be competing to be the center of attention.
Speaker 1: Neither of you would be the grounding force that reminds
Speaker 1: you to spend time together. I don't think that relationship
Speaker 1: would work, and so I often recommend to people that
Speaker 1: they find their compliment, and I can say, in terms
Speaker 1: of my own experience, my husband and I are really
Speaker 1: a different He's introverted, he's a scientist, he's doesn't care
Speaker 1: what people think about him. He's vegan, he works out
Speaker 1: every day. There's just sort of a private, self assured
Speaker 1: nous to him, and I think I'm the opposite of that.
Speaker 1: And sometimes he really frustrates me. And for example, we've
Speaker 1: been married for two years, but we just had our
Speaker 1: wedding celebration two weeks ago, and the first line of
Speaker 1: my vows is when I look at your face, I
Speaker 1: see the person who drives me crazy and the person
Speaker 1: who keeps me sane. And that's exactly how I feel
Speaker 1: about him. He annoys me so much. She's so frustrating.
Speaker 1: Why won't he do anything I ask him to do?
Speaker 1: And then I'm like, oh, yeah, this is why we've
Speaker 1: been together for seven years because I love that he
Speaker 1: doesn't do what I asked him to do, because it
Speaker 1: keeps things interesting and he always surprises me. And I
Speaker 1: can't just mold the world around I can't mold him
Speaker 1: to my liking like I can do with other people.
Speaker 1: And so I feel like it's that tension that keeps
Speaker 1: you together. Okay, let's go through the varying dating apps,
Speaker 1: because it's certainly changed from the era of just Match.
Speaker 1: Then we have a Harmony, we have Bumble where you
Speaker 1: work for Hinge Tender, explain the landscape. Yeah, So one
Speaker 1: of the big changes that happened was prior to ten
Speaker 1: years ago, most of these dating most most of the
Speaker 1: online dating was on a desktop, right. So I remember
Speaker 1: using okay Cupid in two thousand eleven and you could
Speaker 1: search for different people and you could have these long
Speaker 1: conversations and it was a very desktop focused experienced. And
Speaker 1: then the big game changer was Grinder, where Grinder was
Speaker 1: location based and you would see, oh, turns out my
Speaker 1: neighbor is gay, and you know, down for some fun,
Speaker 1: and it was really based on your phone and who
Speaker 1: was around you. And then the next big technological change
Speaker 1: was Tinder, which was ten years ago now inventing the
Speaker 1: swipe and the fact that you could just right swipe
Speaker 1: like someone or left swipe reject someone. And so those
Speaker 1: were the big changes in terms of the scene. Now
Speaker 1: almost everything is very app focused. There's apps that are
Speaker 1: more focused for older folks. So things like our time
Speaker 1: in general, e Harmony and match are tend to be
Speaker 1: a little bit older, and then you have Bumble, you
Speaker 1: have Hinge and Tinder in general exkews a little bit
Speaker 1: younger or a little bit less focused on relationships. What
Speaker 1: about I believe it's Rya. You know they have these
Speaker 1: uh dating apps there have some level of exclusivity. What
Speaker 1: has your experience been with that? I really only know
Speaker 1: two couples that have come out of Riya. In general,
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing where people want you didn't
Speaker 1: know that they're on Riya, but they're not necessarily using it.
Speaker 1: Often are looking for a relationship, and so Rya is
Speaker 1: one that I'm curious about because it definitely has that
Speaker 1: prestige factor. But I haven't necessarily heard about a ton
Speaker 1: of relationships coming out of it. Okay, I come to
Speaker 1: see you. I'm you know, somewhere between twenty four and
Speaker 1: thirty eight, and I want to have a relationship. How
Speaker 1: do you choose which app you direct your client too? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Some people are just on way too many
Speaker 1: and then they get burned out or they feel like
Speaker 1: they have to check too many of them, and so
Speaker 1: I would just say, hey, let's pick maybe one or
Speaker 1: two that you're on. Obviously I'm biased towards Hinge. I
Speaker 1: really like it. I feel like I liked it before
Speaker 1: I worked there. That's why I chose to work there. Um,
Speaker 1: this is going to sound very salthy for Hinge, But
Speaker 1: before I worked there, I was interviewing people from my
Speaker 1: book and I had the chance to eat interview the CEO,
Speaker 1: and I said to him, your tagline is designed to
Speaker 1: be deleted, and I just don't believe it. I've worked
Speaker 1: at tech companies. The biggest thing is you want to
Speaker 1: avoid chre earn. You want to avoid having users join
Speaker 1: and then leave. How could you be designed to be deleted?
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense. And he said, ever since
Speaker 1: we shifted towards that, we've had way more success because
Speaker 1: if your brother meets somebody on Hinge, he's going to
Speaker 1: tell everyone about it. If you read in the New
Speaker 1: York Times in the vows section that somebody met on Hinge,
Speaker 1: you're going to sign up for it. And so focusing
Speaker 1: on actually getting people into relationships and not making the
Speaker 1: app fun or a place to just you know, play
Speaker 1: a game, and you know it's not gamified. It's not
Speaker 1: about making the app fun. It's about meeting somebody and
Speaker 1: then getting onto the data as soon as possible. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go to very specific. Some of these are more
Speaker 1: pass like Okay, Cupid and plenty of Fish. To me,
Speaker 1: those that didn't charge, let me put it in a
Speaker 1: different way. Those that did charge got rid of a
Speaker 1: lot of the detritus, people who were not serious or
Speaker 1: not worthy partners. Is that reasonable or is that just
Speaker 1: a bias. I would say it depends on your age
Speaker 1: and your intention. Maybe you're just online to have fun
Speaker 1: and you just graduated from college, and you meet people
Speaker 1: at work, you meet people at bars, and you also
Speaker 1: meet people online. I think what you're looking for is
Speaker 1: totally different than somebody who's divorced with the kid, doesn't
Speaker 1: have a ton of time and really only wants to
Speaker 1: meet people who also want to get remarried and have
Speaker 1: a family. And so I think it's almost like saying
Speaker 1: is expensive food overrated? Well, you know, it depends what
Speaker 1: can you afford and what are you looking for and
Speaker 1: what are your expectations for food? And so I think
Speaker 1: it's like the dating journey really really depends on your
Speaker 1: age and how serious you are and what you're looking for. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go to another extreme and your experience. Is Craigslist
Speaker 1: still a thing. I don't hear about craigslist hookups anymore.
Speaker 1: I know there were casual encounters and things like that,
Speaker 1: but I haven't heard about that in a long time. Okay,
Speaker 1: so has someone you know it's a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Someone who's certainly been on dates as a result of
Speaker 1: online you know those places. I always tell people two things,
Speaker 1: Get face to face as soon as possible, and then
Speaker 1: make it so that it can be brief, because frequently
Speaker 1: you know very quickly. What do you tell your clients?
Speaker 1: I totally agree with the first point. I have found
Speaker 1: that people spend way too long talking online before they
Speaker 1: meet up in person. And I call it the Monet effect,
Speaker 1: which is that our brains have a tendency to fill
Speaker 1: in the gaps of information we don't know with positive information.
Speaker 1: And so let's say somebody puts on their app I
Speaker 1: love music. Your brain is going to go, oh, she
Speaker 1: loves music. I bet she loves the same music as me,
Speaker 1: And we basically create a fantasy in our minds of
Speaker 1: what this person is like. So the longer we talk
Speaker 1: the longer the fantasy builds. So let's say three or
Speaker 1: four weeks into talking, we finally meet up. Suddenly that
Speaker 1: person doesn't match your fantasy, even if they're independently great,
Speaker 1: they are different than what you've built up in their mind,
Speaker 1: and that feels disappointing. It's much healthier, it's much more
Speaker 1: effective to meet. Make sure you have some stuff to
Speaker 1: talk about, make sure you're enjoying the conversation. They're asking
Speaker 1: you questions, you're asking them questions. Get to the date,
Speaker 1: and then see do we have chemistry in person? Do
Speaker 1: we enjoy the sound of each other's voices, are we
Speaker 1: curious to spend more time together? And so I really
Speaker 1: think the much better strategy is meeting on the app,
Speaker 1: talking on the phone or video chat as soon as possible,
Speaker 1: meeting up in person quickly, and then making decisions based
Speaker 1: on that, not based on text communication. Now the second half,
Speaker 1: which would be meet somewhere where it can be brief
Speaker 1: me for coffee as opposed to dinner or your take there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've I've changed my view on this over time,
Speaker 1: But it might just be that I live in Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley and people here are obsessed with productivity and effectiveness
Speaker 1: and to do list. And I've worked with clients that
Speaker 1: treat dating like something on there to do list between
Speaker 1: going to the gym and picking up their dry cleaning,
Speaker 1: and so they'll save twenty minutes for a coffee date
Speaker 1: in between two meetings. And then they do this over
Speaker 1: a year, and they wonder why it never works out,
Speaker 1: and they think that this is must must just be
Speaker 1: the people that they're meeting. But in that situation, I
Speaker 1: would say, there's something about the way that you're dating
Speaker 1: that's not leading to connection. You're in between two meetings,
Speaker 1: You're probably in work mode, You're probably not being very flirtatious,
Speaker 1: you might be stressed out, you might not be open,
Speaker 1: you might be not vulnerable, because why would you become
Speaker 1: vulnerable for twenty minutes in between two business meetings. And
Speaker 1: so for some people, I feel like what they need
Speaker 1: to do is actually go on fewer dates, but give
Speaker 1: each date more time and say, I'm going to meet
Speaker 1: this person for drinks after work, and if it goes well,
Speaker 1: I don't have anything later, so we can extend it
Speaker 1: to dinner, we can extend it to going to another bar.
Speaker 1: Um For some people, they just really are so burned
Speaker 1: out that they're trying to make the date short, and
Speaker 1: I think sometimes it does take a moment for you
Speaker 1: to get to know someone. That being said, I also
Speaker 1: work with clients and these tend to be female clients
Speaker 1: who say, oh, I went on this five hour date
Speaker 1: with this guy, but I'm not interested in him. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, why did you give him five hours? And
Speaker 1: she's like, well, he seemed to be having fun and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be rude, And in that situation,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you don't owe someone five hours. You don't
Speaker 1: owe someone five drinks. You should give them a chance.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's ninety minutes, but at that point, if you're
Speaker 1: not feeling it, you also need to respect your own time,
Speaker 1: because going on five hour dates with people that you're
Speaker 1: not interested in, it's just going to lead to you
Speaker 1: feeling burned out. Okay, going to the other extreme, which
Speaker 1: is the harmony, you don't really hear that much about
Speaker 1: it anymore, but I know a number of people who
Speaker 1: were married as a result of the harmony, which is
Speaker 1: the opposite paradigm, which is you communicate a lot before
Speaker 1: you do meet. Is what are your thoughts on that
Speaker 1: in general? I would say that the pandemic change the
Speaker 1: way that people dated, and the pandemic force people to
Speaker 1: get more creative about what a date is. And so
Speaker 1: I heard way more people going on video dates, going
Speaker 1: on phone calls. People were basically doing this step in
Speaker 1: between chatting online and meeting up in person, And so
Speaker 1: I'm hearing more and more and more about that, And
Speaker 1: so in general, I think people are getting offline sooner,
Speaker 1: and even if it's just a phone call, They're seeing
Speaker 1: do we have something to talk about? Do I like
Speaker 1: the sound of your voice? Is there some chemistry? And
Speaker 1: so I'm just in general, across different generally sations seeing
Speaker 1: a shift of talking less online and getting to the
Speaker 1: in person date or the phone call date sooner. How
Speaker 1: much is it getting your chops up? Like you talk
Speaker 1: about the issue, I'm not in the dating game right now,
Speaker 1: but I respecting your own time. How do you teach
Speaker 1: people to cut it short, as you say, we're not
Speaker 1: talking twenty minutes, but to not give five hours and
Speaker 1: respect their own time and ultimately feel good about ending it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I would say the more that I do
Speaker 1: this work, the more I see that different people need
Speaker 1: different advice. So some people are way too picky and
Speaker 1: nobody is good enough for them. And some people are
Speaker 1: not picky enough and they need to respect themselves more.
Speaker 1: And so my advice for each of those people would
Speaker 1: not only vary, but perhaps be the opposite. And so
Speaker 1: for the two picky people, I would say, what are
Speaker 1: the good qualities in this person? What is something that
Speaker 1: you admire about them? Could you imagine yourself having fun
Speaker 1: with them? For the person who's not picky enough, I
Speaker 1: would say, realistically, is this person you're equal? Is this
Speaker 1: a person that you feel could create the lifestyle that
Speaker 1: you want? Is this person on your level? And so
Speaker 1: I would give them opposite advice, And so for the
Speaker 1: time thing, the same thing holds true. For some people.
Speaker 1: I would say, give people enough of a chance, don't
Speaker 1: just judge them for the first few minutes. And for
Speaker 1: the other people, I would say, look, you don't owe
Speaker 1: anyone anything. What you owe them is to show up
Speaker 1: when you say you will, to be open minded and
Speaker 1: give them a chance. But you certainly don't owe them
Speaker 1: a certain number of drinks, and you certainly don't owe them,
Speaker 1: you know, over an hour. We'll let me be a
Speaker 1: little bit more specific I know, so these people who
Speaker 1: run a hedge fund and they started cold calling people.
Speaker 1: That was their first gig okay, and they experienced an
Speaker 1: unbelievable amount of rejection. The average person, from my experience,
Speaker 1: is so fearful of rejection or the other person feeling
Speaker 1: bad about them that it inhibits them both to be
Speaker 1: in the game. And then say this isn't working for me,
Speaker 1: I'm going to pull back. Yes, that's definitely what I
Speaker 1: am hearing. I had this idea for an art project
Speaker 1: a few years ago called the Rejection Room, where you
Speaker 1: would walk into a tunnel and on the side would
Speaker 1: be all of these um screenshots of people rejecting each
Speaker 1: other online or maybe a voice of somebody reading it
Speaker 1: out loud. And I started to talk to my friends
Speaker 1: and say, oh, can you send me screenshots of your
Speaker 1: rejection And what I would hear most often is oh,
Speaker 1: nobody really outright rejects you. They just ghost you. And
Speaker 1: so the modern epidemic and dating is ghosting, where you
Speaker 1: basically could be dating someone for literally months and then
Speaker 1: they just stopped responding to And it's when I hear
Speaker 1: these stories they feel so unbelievable, like you get home
Speaker 1: from a trip and your your partners moved out. But
Speaker 1: there really are extreme versions of ghosting happening. And I've
Speaker 1: done research into this and very clear how people feel
Speaker 1: in terms of getting ghosted. People say, I'd rather you
Speaker 1: reject me outright. It hurts in the moment, but at
Speaker 1: least I know where we stand. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to the behavior, people say, oh, I would rather ghost
Speaker 1: it's less awkward than having that direct confrontation. And so
Speaker 1: I think you could attribute this to changes in digital communication,
Speaker 1: people not seeing the results of their action when they
Speaker 1: reject someone online instead of to their face. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think ghosting really represents what you're talking about, which
Speaker 1: is people are afraid to outright reject someone. So what
Speaker 1: do you tell your clients. I say, just let them know.
Speaker 1: I say, in your notes app on your phone, save
Speaker 1: a template and it could say, hey, blank, I enjoyed
Speaker 1: getting to know you. I don't think we are a
Speaker 1: romantic match, thanks for thanks for the drink, thanks for
Speaker 1: a fun night, whatever you want to say, and you
Speaker 1: just you don't have to overthink it. You just send
Speaker 1: that message and it lets the person know we're not
Speaker 1: going to move forward. The worst thing is when you
Speaker 1: leave somebody in this ambiguous space where they're saying, oh
Speaker 1: am I ever going to hear from Bob again? Is
Speaker 1: Loogan going to ask me out again? And it's in
Speaker 1: that space that you're really wasting someone's time. And so
Speaker 1: the research is very clear that the average person would
Speaker 1: rather be rejected. We just don't do it because it
Speaker 1: feels awkward. Okay, let's dive into hinge. You know, made
Speaker 1: to be deleted. So what's so great about Hinge? Yeah,
Speaker 1: first of all, I think Hinge is just really designed
Speaker 1: to get people into relationships. And so it's not about
Speaker 1: how do we make the app as fun as possible,
Speaker 1: how do we keep you on their swiping. It's really
Speaker 1: about how do we design something that's going to lead
Speaker 1: you to connect. So a couple of things that are cool.
Speaker 1: One is we talked about those audio prompts, so you
Speaker 1: could do an impression of of famous movie and say, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, name the movie. You could talk about how
Speaker 1: to pronounce your name, You could say, you know, this
Speaker 1: is what dating me sounds like. Whatever it is, I
Speaker 1: think that parts really fun. There's something called most Compatible,
Speaker 1: where every day they say here's one person that's a
Speaker 1: particularly good match for you. There's also Hinge was the
Speaker 1: first to create these things called prompts, which are kind
Speaker 1: of like icebreakers, so something like my typical Sunday or
Speaker 1: we're the same kind of weird if and it's really
Speaker 1: a chance to show off your personality. And then in general,
Speaker 1: I just think Hinge tends to attract people who are
Speaker 1: actually looking to have a conversation, connect and go on
Speaker 1: a date. Okay, bumble the woman gets to choose. That's
Speaker 1: attractive to a lot of men. So what do you
Speaker 1: say to both men and women about bumble? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean clients that I've worked with have used all kind
Speaker 1: of dating apps. I'm definitely more familiar with Hinge. I
Speaker 1: think it's also about seeing in your city which one
Speaker 1: works best for you, and so I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: you can give a few of them to try see
Speaker 1: where you have the most success, and then from there
Speaker 1: really invest in the one that seems to be working
Speaker 1: for you. So what exactly do you do it? Hinge?
Speaker 1: So I have this fancy title Director of Relationship Science,
Speaker 1: and what I get to do, which is a dream job,
Speaker 1: is conduct research into modern dating. And so, for example,
Speaker 1: let's say six months ago, I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I keep hearing about people who say I want to
Speaker 1: date someone who's done the work. Let's investigate how are
Speaker 1: people feeling about dating someone who's been in therapy. And
Speaker 1: that's where we came out with this concept that the
Speaker 1: biggest deal breaker for two would be if somebody doesn't
Speaker 1: go to therapy or somebody doesn't invest in their mental health.
Speaker 1: And then a few months ago, I was hearing more
Speaker 1: and more about how gen Z is just not that
Speaker 1: into drinking. They drink less than millennials did at the
Speaker 1: same age. There's a huge rise and nonalcoholic beverage is.
Speaker 1: It just really feels like there's a cultural shift away
Speaker 1: from drinking. And so I spent the last few months
Speaker 1: doing drink doing research into sober dates, and we found
Speaker 1: that there's been that date or is this summer would
Speaker 1: rather go on a date where they're not drinking, and
Speaker 1: that's twice as much for gen Z. Gen Z is, like,
Speaker 1: I really care about my mental health. I hate having
Speaker 1: a hangover. It makes me feel anxious. I want to
Speaker 1: be in the right state of mind when I date.
Speaker 1: And so now there's this big push towards sober dates.
Speaker 1: So I basically look at what's going on in culture,
Speaker 1: whether it's drinking, inflation, the pandemic, and then conduct research
Speaker 1: to see what impact is this having on dating? How
Speaker 1: exactly do you do it? Yeah, so we have a
Speaker 1: research team, really great researchers with a combination of qualitative
Speaker 1: research though talking to users, talking to people who don't
Speaker 1: use hinge, talking to Gen Z, millennials, boomers, Gen X, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And then we also conduct surveys that give us a
Speaker 1: sense of what's going on with our users in the US,
Speaker 1: around the world, people who don't use Hinge yet, And
Speaker 1: so it's really just hearing those voices and getting those
Speaker 1: survey results to get a sense of what's happening in
Speaker 1: dating now with those people that you're surveying, be Hinge
Speaker 1: customers or just the public in general. So mostly we
Speaker 1: survey Hinge customers. Um, it's just kind of one of
Speaker 1: those things where it's a lot easier to reach them,
Speaker 1: but we have conducted surveys where we're talking to a
Speaker 1: broader population and it sort of just depends on what's
Speaker 1: the question that we're investigating. Okay, one other thing that
Speaker 1: struck me in your book was you said not to lie,
Speaker 1: and certainly when it comes to age, everybody I know
Speaker 1: on the app, unless they're very young in their twenties
Speaker 1: mid twenties, they all lie about their age, and they
Speaker 1: and then there's a usue of what kind of picture
Speaker 1: to put up? Talk about that. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: that trend has actually changed a bit. So I think
Speaker 1: there was a point where it was assumed, oh, everyone's
Speaker 1: adding two inches to their height. Everyone's subtracting five years
Speaker 1: from their age. I have found and I think this
Speaker 1: really just represents our culture that there's sort of an
Speaker 1: expectation that there's so much information about you online that
Speaker 1: it's not really worth it to lie. Somebody can google
Speaker 1: you and see what year you graduated high school or
Speaker 1: what year you graduated college. Somebody can put together the
Speaker 1: pieces based on your LinkedIn and so in general I
Speaker 1: see people not lying about their age. The hype thing
Speaker 1: is hard to tell. Um. I know that people feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: if I'm this hight, you know women are going to
Speaker 1: filter me out. But my opinion on this is that
Speaker 1: you don't want to show up on a date starting
Speaker 1: from a place of deception. You don't want to start
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I'm actually fifty two. But if I
Speaker 1: put forty eight, I'm more likely to get matches, and
Speaker 1: so I did that. I think it just starts from
Speaker 1: a weird place. I think you want to start from
Speaker 1: a place of confidence and a place of honesty and
Speaker 1: build from there. I think this is going to change,
Speaker 1: or I'm interested to see what happens in our society
Speaker 1: with the proliferation of egg phrasing, because part of dating
Speaker 1: is that you want to date somebody who maybe you
Speaker 1: could have a kid with. And men start doing the
Speaker 1: calculation in their head, right, they think, oh, she's thirty five,
Speaker 1: we would meet, we would date for two years, we'd
Speaker 1: get married when we're thirty seven. Um, you know, she
Speaker 1: can only have a kid until this age. And people
Speaker 1: start doing this fertility math. But as people do egg
Speaker 1: freezing and things like that, they're actually sort of changing
Speaker 1: their biological age and changing their fertility calculation. And so
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that would be incorporated into an app,
Speaker 1: but I can see a world where people are thinking
Speaker 1: differently about age because of some of the scientific advancements
Speaker 1: that come along. Have you frozen your eggs? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so in a perfect world, since you're now in control
Speaker 1: old But as you say, people change when would you
Speaker 1: like to have children? Yeah, it's an interesting thing. So
Speaker 1: my husband worked at Google and he got egg freezing
Speaker 1: as a benefit, and so I really like yeah. I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I'm not gonna say no to a
Speaker 1: very expensive benefit. And so four years ago we did
Speaker 1: embryo freezing. So you know what means, it's my eggs
Speaker 1: and then they're fertilized by his sperm. And so now
Speaker 1: I'm thirty four. But it makes me feel like I
Speaker 1: have these thirty year old eggs, and so I'm not
Speaker 1: sure when we're going to have kids, but I feel
Speaker 1: a little less pressure because if we decide to use them,
Speaker 1: we have these very nice thirty year old eggs. The
Speaker 1: other thing is that my husband went through cancer treatment
Speaker 1: for the last two years, and so I don't know
Speaker 1: the deal with his sperm, but it might just be
Speaker 1: that the embryos that we froze when we were both
Speaker 1: thirty are in better shape than his sperm is now,
Speaker 1: and so I just feel really grateful that we did that. So,
Speaker 1: since you're in the Ellia the Beast, is this really
Speaker 1: just upper middle class and wealthy people freezing the rags
Speaker 1: or is it promeating the whole socioeconomic strata. For now,
Speaker 1: it's definitely a very privileged thing. It's really expensive. It's
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's a benefit at high paying tech companies.
Speaker 1: I think over time, as it becomes more common, more
Speaker 1: insurers will pay for it, more employers will pay for it.
Speaker 1: For now, I would say it's definitely in the upper
Speaker 1: middle class, privileged sector. But if you're thinking ahead ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen years, what happens when maybe women at just say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of grad school, or you know, instead
Speaker 1: of instead of giving me some money for grad school,
Speaker 1: I would love if I could get money towards egg
Speaker 1: freezing or things like that. I'm not sure where our
Speaker 1: culture is going on that, but if you just think
Speaker 1: about the fact that dating decisions in your twenties and
Speaker 1: thirties are often based on assumptions about fertility. If that
Speaker 1: fertility number shifts back five or ten years, how will
Speaker 1: that change dating? Okay, so you have this gig it
Speaker 1: hinge and you're also a dating coach. How do you
Speaker 1: split your time? How much time you're working on either one? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So Hinge has been really understanding about the fact that
Speaker 1: I love to do this one on one work and
Speaker 1: it informs the work that I do there. So it
Speaker 1: might be like a client of mine says something about
Speaker 1: being sober, and then I end up thinking about that
Speaker 1: and turning it into a research project. And so I
Speaker 1: do my hinge job during the day. It's based on
Speaker 1: the East Coast, and I live on the West Coast,
Speaker 1: so I start pretty early and I do my hinge job,
Speaker 1: and then I coach people in the evenings after work,
Speaker 1: and I also teach a dating class called Dates Smarter.
Speaker 1: And I'm really moving in some ways away from the
Speaker 1: one on one coaching and more towards this class because
Speaker 1: I feel like there's something about learning information in a
Speaker 1: community that's way more powerful than any individual thing that
Speaker 1: I could say in a session. Okay, so what came first,
Speaker 1: the book or the coaching. The coaching came first. The
Speaker 1: coaching was basically I was like, all right, I am
Speaker 1: extremely interested in this topic. I've been doing research on it.
Speaker 1: I've been doing interviews with people who are experts in
Speaker 1: the field, I've been reading books. I went to a
Speaker 1: dating coach, and now I was like, how can I
Speaker 1: share what I know with people? Time out? Tell us
Speaker 1: about you going to the dating chare. Yeah, So basically,
Speaker 1: I mean, how many years ago is this? Maybe eight
Speaker 1: or nine years ago? I was dating lots of people,
Speaker 1: I was using apps, and I met this guy at
Speaker 1: Burning Man and I was just very crazy about him.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if attachment theory and that whole
Speaker 1: genre has come across your desk, but basically I was
Speaker 1: very anxiously attached. I would find someone and kind of
Speaker 1: glob onto them and try to convince them to like me.
Speaker 1: And I really thought it was like achieving a goal,
Speaker 1: you know, you just have to prove your value to
Speaker 1: somebody and eventually they'll like you. And this guy had
Speaker 1: the opposite attachment style. He was avoidantly attached and basically
Speaker 1: as somebody got too close, he would push them away.
Speaker 1: And so we met at Bernie Man, and when we
Speaker 1: came back to the Bay Area, I thought that we
Speaker 1: would date, and we were in this cycle where I
Speaker 1: would smother him and he would pull away, and it
Speaker 1: was just going back and forth, and I felt very
Speaker 1: hurt by it. I felt out of control. I felt confused,
Speaker 1: and someone that I know recommended a dating coach, which
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that that existed at the time,
Speaker 1: and I went to see this woman and through seeing
Speaker 1: this woman, I learned to focus on the things that mattered.
Speaker 1: And so, for example, she made me do an exercise
Speaker 1: where I thought about how I wanted my partner to
Speaker 1: make me feel. I said, I wanted my partner to
Speaker 1: make me feel desired, attractive, inspired, confident, happy, all of
Speaker 1: these great emotions. And when I thought about how this
Speaker 1: guy from Bernie Man made me feel, it was the opposite.
Speaker 1: That he made me feel like I wasn't good enough,
Speaker 1: like I was insecure. Was he going to call me?
Speaker 1: Was he not going to call me? I never knew
Speaker 1: where I stood. And I realized that this guy at
Speaker 1: work that I had been spending time with as a
Speaker 1: friend made me feel exactly the way that I wanted
Speaker 1: somebody to feel. But I had written him off for
Speaker 1: a number of reasons, and I basically realized that that
Speaker 1: was the kind of person that I should be with.
Speaker 1: And now I'm married to that person. Okay, so then
Speaker 1: talk about starting your own coaching business. Yeah, so in
Speaker 1: the beginning, I coached people for free. And there is
Speaker 1: some research that came out about ten years ago from
Speaker 1: okay Cupid about what a hard time black women have
Speaker 1: on the apps. And so two groups that have a
Speaker 1: really hard time, or black women and Asian men. And
Speaker 1: so I actually started off my coaching business by coaching
Speaker 1: for free a couple of my black female friends who
Speaker 1: were having trouble, and I would develop some of the
Speaker 1: techniques that I still think are some of my my
Speaker 1: best things. Like I have this thing called the post
Speaker 1: date eight. It's a questions that you ask yourself after
Speaker 1: a date to tune into how the person made you
Speaker 1: feel and if you should see them again. I have
Speaker 1: this concept called the events decision matrix, which is really
Speaker 1: paying attention to what types of events you should go
Speaker 1: to to meet people, with the insight being events where
Speaker 1: you're likely to interact with people and you're likely to
Speaker 1: have a good time. And I moved from doing free coaching,
Speaker 1: was charging people, you know, a small rate, and then
Speaker 1: just it became friends and then friends of friends, and
Speaker 1: through that I what happened next, Yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: was really enjoying coaching and people were really benefiting from it,
Speaker 1: and so I continued to do it. And then I
Speaker 1: was working at Airbnb at the time, and I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I want to turn this dating thing into
Speaker 1: a full time job, but I don't know how to
Speaker 1: do that, and so I took a three month sabbatical
Speaker 1: from Airbnb and I worked for a professor. And what
Speaker 1: I found was that this professor was brilliant and I
Speaker 1: loved his research, but it wasn't necessarily designed for lay audience.
Speaker 1: It was more for academics. And so I was like,
Speaker 1: how can I take the amazing research that's happening in
Speaker 1: all of these labs and how can I be the
Speaker 1: translator that brings it to the average person to help
Speaker 1: them date. And so that really became my goal. And
Speaker 1: so then I left my job at Airbnb. I did
Speaker 1: a program at TED where I basically worked from the
Speaker 1: TED office. I conducted research on breakups and then I
Speaker 1: gave a TED talk and then through that experience, I
Speaker 1: got my book deal. And the book was amazing because
Speaker 1: I think we all need deadlines, we all need containers,
Speaker 1: and so I was like, all right, I have to
Speaker 1: write whatever it wasn't eighty thousand or ninety thousand page
Speaker 1: word book. And during that time I did more coaching,
Speaker 1: which was research. I did more interviews. I had dinners
Speaker 1: where I would discuss big topics with people, and then
Speaker 1: through my book, that's how I got the job at HINGE. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at the New York Times article, it
Speaker 1: looks like at the present time, coaching is quite lucrative. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like dating and finding love is
Speaker 1: pretty recession proof. If you are single and looking for love,
Speaker 1: that is probably the biggest motivator in your life is
Speaker 1: to find someone. And I feel like I'm offering something
Speaker 1: that's different. I'm offering very realistic advice. I'm offering advice
Speaker 1: that changes your behavior and helps you overcome bad patterns.
Speaker 1: And I also think by the time somebody's coming to me,
Speaker 1: they've tried other things. They've tried dating by themselves, they've
Speaker 1: tried asking for help from their friends, and they really
Speaker 1: need to work with somebody who's going to completely shift
Speaker 1: the way that they show up and dating. Okay, So
Speaker 1: another therapist I saw for a long time, he gave
Speaker 1: he would tell me what to do. And anybody has
Speaker 1: had a lot of therapy know they don't literally tell
Speaker 1: you what to do your It's a very subtle hint
Speaker 1: and made the biggest mistake of my life. The present
Speaker 1: therapist I see never in a million years would tell
Speaker 1: me anything what to do. You know, you wouldn't call him.
Speaker 1: You would just say, well, we'll talk about the next session. So,
Speaker 1: thinking about your business, people are working with you, they're
Speaker 1: doing what you tell them to, they're having success. Then
Speaker 1: do they say, Okay, I'm in a relationship I need
Speaker 1: I can't break away, I need your advice. I gotta
Speaker 1: call you to sustain the relationship. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: that's a great problem for me to have. I like
Speaker 1: to say that I help people find love and I
Speaker 1: help people not fuck it up, and so so okay,
Speaker 1: so let's see my found love and let's sue I
Speaker 1: get I'm moving towards marriage or I might even have marriage.
Speaker 1: To what percentage of your clients stay connected during that phase?
Speaker 1: It depends you know. Some people I see over a
Speaker 1: period of time. I had a guy who started with
Speaker 1: me when he was single. Then once he found a relationship,
Speaker 1: I started working with him and his girlfriend and we
Speaker 1: would meet the three of us who I would meet
Speaker 1: with each of them one on one. Then I coached
Speaker 1: them through getting married, and now I've coached them through
Speaker 1: having their first kid. And so there's people where it's
Speaker 1: like we just have a really good dynamic. I feel
Speaker 1: so invested in them and we just keep working together.
Speaker 1: There's people where we work together for a year and
Speaker 1: by the end maybe they've been in a relationship while
Speaker 1: we're together, but they've broken up. It really depends on
Speaker 1: the person. By the time people find me, they've often
Speaker 1: had a lot of struggles, and so I never say
Speaker 1: to someone, you know you're going to meet the love
Speaker 1: of your life in three months, like, I can't control you.
Speaker 1: I can't control the people you're meeting. What I can
Speaker 1: do is making sure that you're aware of your behavior
Speaker 1: and that you have a plan for how to act differently. Okay,
Speaker 1: so all your clients come from word of mouth? No,
Speaker 1: now that now that the book came out, I would
Speaker 1: say most of my clients come through the book or
Speaker 1: podcast that I have been on. And so that's been
Speaker 1: really fun because it's really changed the range of people
Speaker 1: I work with. I now work with people around the world,
Speaker 1: people probably from you know, twenties to seventies. Um. I
Speaker 1: I feel like there's just a lot more diversity and
Speaker 1: who I work with because people are hearing about me.
Speaker 1: They're not just one or two degrees removed from my community.
Speaker 1: So presently, how many individual clients do you have honestly,
Speaker 1: I would have to look it up. I feel like
Speaker 1: there are people who maybe have one session left as
Speaker 1: part of a package and are saving that for one
Speaker 1: big final conversation. And so it's not an exact number
Speaker 1: because there are people who sort of still have like
Speaker 1: an hour with me that they can cash in it sometime. Okay,
Speaker 1: well let me put a different way. I see that
Speaker 1: you have an assistant. How many people were in your
Speaker 1: organization just the two of you? Oh yeah, that was funny.
Speaker 1: They called through the assistant in the article and I
Speaker 1: was like, she's really not my assistant. She's smarter than
Speaker 1: I am. She does all of the operations. I feel
Speaker 1: so lucky that she works for me. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you have somebody like this, or if you've worked
Speaker 1: with someone like this where you're just like you keep
Speaker 1: me like, I can't imagine working without her. And so
Speaker 1: I have her who works for me full time basically
Speaker 1: running the class that we teach, um doing a lot
Speaker 1: of the operations. She's just like on top of the
Speaker 1: website and everything else. She is fantastic. And then I
Speaker 1: also have somebody who works with me doing social media,
Speaker 1: and so that's helping me with whether the visual design
Speaker 1: or responding to comments or editing videos. And that's something
Speaker 1: where it's like, how do I take a three hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty page book and turn one small concept into
Speaker 1: a video that people can then understand even if they're
Speaker 1: never going to buy the book. Well, there's only so
Speaker 1: many hours in a week, and you say you're trans
Speaker 1: transitioning into a more group, but how much can you handle?
Speaker 1: How many people can you are quote service at one time? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I think about the scale. So with Hinge,
Speaker 1: I'm doing research that represents millions of Hinge users around
Speaker 1: the world, right, and then with my writing, you know,
Speaker 1: many thousands of people have bought my book. With a podcast,
Speaker 1: you can have thousands of people, right. So it's like
Speaker 1: going from the highest, biggest scale down to the one
Speaker 1: on one coaching. And I feel like where I am
Speaker 1: really enjoying right now is these classes. So the last
Speaker 1: class I had had a dred and twenty people in it.
Speaker 1: I think the age ranges from seventy four, oh sorry,
Speaker 1: from to seventy four. And I think it's so great
Speaker 1: is that I can give people advice and I can
Speaker 1: give people information. But there's something special about learning in
Speaker 1: a community where you hear somebody else express a problem
Speaker 1: that you used to have and you no longer have,
Speaker 1: and hearing that person talk about their issue makes you
Speaker 1: realize how far you've come. Or maybe you advise somebody
Speaker 1: else who's where you where five years ago, and things
Speaker 1: like that. Um, there's these affinity groups right, dating over fifty,
Speaker 1: dating as a single parent, um, dating as a queer
Speaker 1: person in a rural community, dating with chronic illness. And
Speaker 1: so I'm creating this community of vetted single people and
Speaker 1: then allowing them to connect to help each other. And
Speaker 1: they spend so much time. They start texting each other,
Speaker 1: they meet up in person, they form What's app groups,
Speaker 1: and so I feel like I'm really designing this container
Speaker 1: for all these amazing people to meet. I give them information,
Speaker 1: I teach them, I give them feedback. But I think
Speaker 1: they're learning just as much or more from each other.
Speaker 1: And what I've really done is brought them all together. Okay,
Speaker 1: at this point in time, and I realized it's changing.
Speaker 1: What percentage of your time is one on one, what
Speaker 1: percentage your time is group? Huh? You know it depends
Speaker 1: for the classes. Like I would say, let's say I
Speaker 1: teach four or five live sessions, I might spend fifty
Speaker 1: hours or more preparing the material for the one or
Speaker 1: one and a half hour session, and so it's sort
Speaker 1: of like, I know, that's kind of a sidestepping the question,
Speaker 1: but I guess I would maybe say fifty fifty right now.
Speaker 1: But it really depends because the classes are only in
Speaker 1: session a few times a year, but there's a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of prep that goes into them. So what's the
Speaker 1: dream I'm figuring that out. I mean, I love being
Speaker 1: in conversation with people, like I'm really enjoyed talking to
Speaker 1: you right now. I have had the chance to do
Speaker 1: some TV interviews and I I really like that. I
Speaker 1: feel like there's an adrenaline rush to being live and
Speaker 1: you have to make your points and say the right
Speaker 1: thing and banter. Um. I enjoyed writing my book, but
Speaker 1: it's also really hard, and it's really like quite a
Speaker 1: solo task for me as someone who's so social, and
Speaker 1: so I'm just trying to figure it out. How do
Speaker 1: I get at the information that I really care about
Speaker 1: out there? How do I keep it elevated so I'm
Speaker 1: not just you know, engaging in the days TikTok trend.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think I'm just really trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how do I keep on top of what's going
Speaker 1: on in dating and help as many people as possible. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to talk about things that
Speaker 1: veered towards cults, but if you certainly look in the past,
Speaker 1: they are all these organizations, some of which still exists,
Speaker 1: which have really grown exponentially. It's a big business, Okay.
Speaker 1: Is that your goal to be like the dating coach
Speaker 1: of you know, of America. I realize your worldwide, but
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you want to go everybody knows that's where
Speaker 1: you go to go. You go to Logan's place. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I think the way that I think about
Speaker 1: my life is how you spend your day days, and
Speaker 1: how you spend your weeks, and how you spend your years. Right,
Speaker 1: So I could tell you, oh, I want to make
Speaker 1: this many millions of dollars a year by this date,
Speaker 1: and I'll figure out a way to get there, But
Speaker 1: that's not really what motivates me. I want to spend
Speaker 1: my time on Earth doing things I like. And so
Speaker 1: if I had to spend the next two years alone
Speaker 1: writing a book that doesn't sound fun to me. I
Speaker 1: don't really enjoy being alone thinking in front of a
Speaker 1: blinking cursor. What I really enjoy is being in conversation
Speaker 1: with people. And so I would say, right now, I
Speaker 1: feel really lucky. I've been able to figure out a
Speaker 1: job that I can live the lifestyle that I want.
Speaker 1: I can work with interesting people. I can pay for
Speaker 1: Kimberly to work for me full time. I can do
Speaker 1: research at Hinge. Like right now, I'm getting a lot
Speaker 1: of those needs met. I think. I think that, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just like a deeper conversation that I need
Speaker 1: to have, probably with myself or with my husband. That's
Speaker 1: just like, how do I make sure that I'm spending
Speaker 1: my time in a way that makes me happy and
Speaker 1: not just in pursuit of some big your goal that
Speaker 1: maybe is actually kind of egotistical or empty. So let's
Speaker 1: assume someone listening to this podcast is interested in your services.
Speaker 1: The most of the people come through, uh, connecting via
Speaker 1: your website or social media. How do they find you
Speaker 1: to connect? Yeah, so the two biggest ways are following
Speaker 1: me on Instagram or subscribing to my newsletter. I have
Speaker 1: a weekly newsletter called Logan's Love letter, and every week
Speaker 1: I post dating advice or the latest trends in dating.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll talk about a piece of writing that I've done.
Speaker 1: People respond I write back, it's it's fifty people right now,
Speaker 1: and it's a pretty engaged community, and that's the best
Speaker 1: way to kind of follow along with what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: And then, as we talked about a lot of my
Speaker 1: work is trending towards the State Smarter class and some
Speaker 1: people are like, no, no, no, I'm so unique. I
Speaker 1: need to meet with you one on one. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: give this chance, give this class a chance. I feel
Speaker 1: like you will get your needs at and you'll probably
Speaker 1: have more fun than you think you could have on
Speaker 1: a on a zoom class. Okay, so I'm interested. What's
Speaker 1: the nexus they connect with you or they connect with
Speaker 1: Kimberly in terms of putting them in lane. You know
Speaker 1: I'm playing, I'm I'm ready to play. Yeah, they would
Speaker 1: just email me or sign up. They could email me
Speaker 1: it's logan at logan eari dot com, or they could
Speaker 1: sign up for the Date Smarter waiting list on my website.
Speaker 1: And then when the next class is announced, which I
Speaker 1: think it's going to happen in September. We would just
Speaker 1: let them know, like applications are open um, but I
Speaker 1: do get emails from people around the world asking specific questions.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I can help. Sometimes I'm just like, this isn't
Speaker 1: you know a question that's a good fit for me,
Speaker 1: Or I don't feel like I have enough context to
Speaker 1: give you an appropriate answer. But yeah, I would say,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm reachable online. Okay, I'm excited and I want
Speaker 1: to and I contact you and I want to have
Speaker 1: one on one. What then happens? Yeah, I would just
Speaker 1: send you an email letting you know when I have
Speaker 1: a spot available and what it costs, and seeing if
Speaker 1: that's something that fits with you. Okay, So let's assume
Speaker 1: I'm interested and uh, you know, I'm ready to play.
Speaker 1: When might a spot be available? And what is the
Speaker 1: pay package? Is it? Okay? If we don't talk about
Speaker 1: the pay okay, but the pay the pay is not
Speaker 1: cheap in any event. Okay, So let's start with when
Speaker 1: might I you be available? Yeah, I have some spots
Speaker 1: opening up in the next few months. People who I
Speaker 1: started with around six months ago are starting to wrap up,
Speaker 1: and so I have some of those spots and then
Speaker 1: usually what happens is I meet with somebody, we do
Speaker 1: an initial assessment, right, you know, I asked them about
Speaker 1: the relationship history. I have some homework that they do
Speaker 1: before we meet. We really talked about like what's been
Speaker 1: going on? Okay, what's really going on? What? What? What? Well,
Speaker 1: a little bit slower so I'm into one on one coaching.
Speaker 1: First thing is I say, I'm into it. Next thing
Speaker 1: you say is I have to have a time. So
Speaker 1: how often do you have a time available or does
Speaker 1: that person have to wait? Yeah? So you know the
Speaker 1: system Calendarly, I do not. Yeah. Anyway, it's so just
Speaker 1: a calendar booking system. So I would say to them like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's the price. Um, if you want to move forward,
Speaker 1: you can book your first session through Calendarly. They can
Speaker 1: just like look ahead at the openings that I have
Speaker 1: and then send me the payment and then we would
Speaker 1: get started. However far out the first session is, so
Speaker 1: maybe it would be six weeks? Okay, So what are
Speaker 1: the options irrelevant of price which you'd rather not get into.
Speaker 1: Can you buy two sessions? Do you have to buy ten?
Speaker 1: How does it work? Right now? People are buying six sessions.
Speaker 1: That's something that I've changed over time. I found like
Speaker 1: I found that six sessions is enough where the first
Speaker 1: few I can really understand who you are here, your backstory,
Speaker 1: give you some assignments, send you out into the world
Speaker 1: with some experiments to run. Then you come back to
Speaker 1: me and you say how those are working, and then
Speaker 1: we tweaked them, so you might say, I'm actually going
Speaker 1: on lots of first dates, but no second dates, and
Speaker 1: then we try to figure out what's preventing you from that,
Speaker 1: and then you can use the six sessions whenever you
Speaker 1: want over a year, and what you really try to
Speaker 1: do is run, you know, try as many things as
Speaker 1: you can, and then come back to me and we
Speaker 1: we tweaked the plan. And so it's not like therapy
Speaker 1: where we're meeting once a week and you may not
Speaker 1: have anything in your mind. And sometimes the sessions are
Speaker 1: great and sometimes they're not. Each session is supposed to
Speaker 1: be very juicy and you have a lot to talk
Speaker 1: about with me, and how long is this session? Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm in, I've signed up, I've bought six things.
Speaker 1: You say, you send me up. You send me a
Speaker 1: package which is to go a little deeper. What you're
Speaker 1: sending to me and what that experience is. Oh, I
Speaker 1: just mean I sell a package of sex. No no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, I maybe loose language on my part. You
Speaker 1: send self tests and questionnaires. Didn't I get that? Tell
Speaker 1: me about that, That's what I'm sure. Yeah, So before
Speaker 1: we meet, there's a few things that you do. So
Speaker 1: one thing is you journal about, um, what's your greatest
Speaker 1: wish for yourself in dating and relationships. So, for example,
Speaker 1: earlier in our conversation, we talked about your friend who's
Speaker 1: in his forties dating people who you don't think are
Speaker 1: the right fit and you're not sure what he really wants.
Speaker 1: And so that's an opportunity for me to dig deep
Speaker 1: with someone and say, what are you really looking for?
Speaker 1: The next question is something around their greatest fears in dating.
Speaker 1: So maybe this is a chance for them to tell
Speaker 1: me they feel like they're not lovable, or they feel
Speaker 1: like because their parents were divorced, they don't have a
Speaker 1: relationship role model and they don't know what healthy relationships
Speaker 1: look like. That's a chance for me to really get
Speaker 1: to know what's holding them back. And then I also
Speaker 1: do this assignment where they asked their friends and family,
Speaker 1: why do you think I'm single. And this works for
Speaker 1: a few reasons. One is I talk a lot in
Speaker 1: my book about dating blind spots, these patterns of behavior
Speaker 1: or ways of thinking that hold people back from finding love,
Speaker 1: but that they can't identify on their own. And that's
Speaker 1: the thing. If it was so obvious, people could do
Speaker 1: it on their own. They could say, I know my issue,
Speaker 1: I'm too picky. I just have to be less picky.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't magically work. A lot of times we
Speaker 1: can't see the truth of our own actions. And so
Speaker 1: in sending this question to their friends and family, they
Speaker 1: get a bunch of responses back. They can start to
Speaker 1: see patterns. I can start to see patterns. The second
Speaker 1: reason it works well is because it's leaning into that
Speaker 1: identity piece. You're saying to your friends and family, this
Speaker 1: is something that I'm tackling right now. This is something
Speaker 1: that I'm really working on and working with this woman
Speaker 1: Logan and um investing in this and in adopting that
Speaker 1: public persona as a data and someone who's working on it,
Speaker 1: people take you more seriously, and you take yourself more seriously.
Speaker 1: So I do all this prep work, I send it
Speaker 1: to you. What happens in my first hour. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: our first session, we talked through your answers, and so
Speaker 1: you're telling me what you really want, You're telling me
Speaker 1: your fears, and then you're sharing with me the answers
Speaker 1: to that question. And so we're talking about all right,
Speaker 1: it sounds like what your friends and family think is
Speaker 1: that you never got over your boyfriend from ten years
Speaker 1: ago and that you compare everyone to him. Or I'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, your friends seem to think one thing and
Speaker 1: your family seems to think another. Who do you think
Speaker 1: is correct? And so some of it is just understanding
Speaker 1: where they are. Then we do that thing where we
Speaker 1: talk about their relationship history, and we really go into
Speaker 1: what are their stories, what's their narrative? Who are they?
Speaker 1: Do they believe that love is waiting for them? Do
Speaker 1: they believe that there's a perfect person out there for them?
Speaker 1: And this is where I start to use some path
Speaker 1: and recognition, and so I have this framework I've developed
Speaker 1: called the three dating tendencies, which is three of the
Speaker 1: most common types of daters that I've seen in my
Speaker 1: coaching practice. And so what they all have in common
Speaker 1: is unrealistic expectations. The first type is the romanticizer, and
Speaker 1: they have unrealistic expectations of relationships. This is the person
Speaker 1: who thinks there's a soul mate, there's one person out
Speaker 1: there for me. They're gonna come in this package that
Speaker 1: I recognize, and dating should be effortless and if it
Speaker 1: ever gets hard, then this must just not be the
Speaker 1: right person for me. And these are people who want
Speaker 1: to have the romantic meat cute, and they're very focused
Speaker 1: on this person's physical appearance and how the relationship is
Speaker 1: going to be easy. And the work I do with
Speaker 1: those people is saying to them, hey, this is not
Speaker 1: about Disney movies, This is not about rom comms. What
Speaker 1: really matters and love is working problems, doing small things,
Speaker 1: often making the most of the relationship, building together. It's
Speaker 1: not about how you met, right if you date somebody
Speaker 1: for fifty years, the day you met is point zero
Speaker 1: zero five of your whole relationship, and kind of taking
Speaker 1: them away from the romcom paradigm and really moving them
Speaker 1: towards a realistic view of love and dating. The second
Speaker 1: type is the maximizer, and they have unrealistic expectations of
Speaker 1: their partner. And this is a type I see a lot,
Speaker 1: especially in New York and San Francisco. And this is
Speaker 1: the person who says, I love doing research. Anytime I
Speaker 1: have a problem, I analyze it. I'm just gonna keep
Speaker 1: dating and keep swiping and keep doing more and more
Speaker 1: research because the perfect person is just one swipe away.
Speaker 1: And so they reject everyone because they feel like somebody
Speaker 1: out there has all the qualities that they're looking for.
Speaker 1: And they just get older and older and pickier and
Speaker 1: pickier and just rejecting everyone. And they don't understand that
Speaker 1: they're not perfect. No one is perfect, and eventually you
Speaker 1: have to choose someone and build a relationship. You don't
Speaker 1: just find the perfect person and that's the perfect relationship.
Speaker 1: And this is hard for people because they feel like
Speaker 1: I'm telling them to settle, but I'm not. I'm telling
Speaker 1: them to be realistic and to understand that they can
Speaker 1: build a relationship they want. And then the last one,
Speaker 1: which we talked about is the hesitator, and they have
Speaker 1: unrealistic expectations of themselves. They think that they're just not
Speaker 1: lovable yet, and so they're not even dating. They're waiting
Speaker 1: for something to happen, like losing weight or getting a
Speaker 1: more impressive job. And for them the work is just
Speaker 1: saying stop hesitating, start dating, put yourself out there. That's
Speaker 1: how you're going to get better at dating. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we cover all these ground in the first session. What's
Speaker 1: the assignment after the first session the assignment completely. It
Speaker 1: depends on the person. There's a lot of therapy, you know,
Speaker 1: called programmatic therapy, where I'm walking you through a certain
Speaker 1: thing every session, and I do that a little bit
Speaker 1: in terms of the first homework and asking you about relationships,
Speaker 1: but it just it could be a hundred different things
Speaker 1: for a hundred different people. And I really enjoy making
Speaker 1: up homework assignments on the spot. And so for somebody
Speaker 1: who has fear of rejection, maybe for them it's sending
Speaker 1: a lot of personalized comments and just putting themselves out
Speaker 1: there and kind of what we call rejection therapy. Just
Speaker 1: get used to getting rejected so that it doesn't bother
Speaker 1: you as much anymore. For somebody who it feels like
Speaker 1: they don't have anything to talk about on dates, maybe
Speaker 1: it's actually okay, how can you invest in the hobby,
Speaker 1: How can you go read some books, How can you
Speaker 1: feel more interesting so that on dates you can actually
Speaker 1: share some of those things more, and so it's really
Speaker 1: seeing what is the thing in this person's life that's
Speaker 1: holding them back from taking the next step, and how
Speaker 1: can we break that down and help them tackle it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've paid, I've had my session, and do I start
Speaker 1: to go on dates after the first session. It's completely
Speaker 1: depends on the person. For some people, I say to them, Hey, um,
Speaker 1: we need to work on your profile, So send me
Speaker 1: sixty photos of yourself and I'm going to help you
Speaker 1: pick the top six photos and I'm going to help
Speaker 1: you rewrite your profile. So for some people they really
Speaker 1: need help with that. For other people, they already have
Speaker 1: a ton of dates and the issue is not starting
Speaker 1: to date, it's starting to pick different people or show
Speaker 1: up differently, and so there's so many different types of
Speaker 1: daters with so many different problems. That's really about understanding
Speaker 1: what is the thing that's holding that person back and
Speaker 1: then coming up with a homework assignment that's within their
Speaker 1: stretch zone but not within the danger zone. So what
Speaker 1: does work on a profile? Yeah, there's a ton of
Speaker 1: research that we've done in this at hinge. So one
Speaker 1: thing is thinking about your profile is storytelling who are you?
Speaker 1: What would it be like to date you. What are
Speaker 1: you looking for and how can you answer that in
Speaker 1: your profile? And so your potos should be accurate but flattering.
Speaker 1: So there's a picture of myself that I really like
Speaker 1: from two thousand nine, but I should not put that
Speaker 1: in my profile because that is not how I look right.
Speaker 1: That was a long time ago, So that is not
Speaker 1: being the accurate a flattering category. You want to have
Speaker 1: photos that clearly show what you look like, no filters,
Speaker 1: no sunglasses. You want to show yourself with some friends
Speaker 1: and family to show you have a social life. It's
Speaker 1: great to have pictures of you doing something that you love.
Speaker 1: You also want to respond to those hinge prompts very
Speaker 1: carefully and show um in some you know your hobbies.
Speaker 1: So you could say typical Sunday, Maybe you say, wake up,
Speaker 1: make myself fancy coffee, go for a walk with my dog,
Speaker 1: maybe go to a bookstore, um, have lunch with friends,
Speaker 1: and then spend the evening you know, watching movies. Something
Speaker 1: like that, Like give me a sense of what your
Speaker 1: life is like. Talk to me about what you're looking for.
Speaker 1: Say I'm looking for a long term adventure partner. I'm
Speaker 1: just looking for fun. I'm looking for someone to sail
Speaker 1: the world with whatever it is, And so people just
Speaker 1: rushed through making their profile, and it's actually a huge
Speaker 1: opportunity to really express who you are. And people I've
Speaker 1: worked with have gone from getting almost no matches to
Speaker 1: getting a lot of matches just by something like changing
Speaker 1: out their pictures. Okay, at some point I'm engaging in
Speaker 1: dates and I realize every person is different. But what
Speaker 1: might the coaching look like it Maybe someone who merely
Speaker 1: jumps into relationship, Maybe someone who meets for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: You know, once I'm started in the field, what are
Speaker 1: the issues that arise. One of the issues is states
Speaker 1: that feel like job interviews. People show up and they say,
Speaker 1: where are you from, where did you go to school,
Speaker 1: what did you study? How many siblings do you have?
Speaker 1: What's your five year plan? And it's like an exchange
Speaker 1: of information, and then they say to me, oh, I
Speaker 1: just didn't feel the spark. And so I try to
Speaker 1: deep program people away from that and say, how would
Speaker 1: you want to converse with somebody? Maybe you want to
Speaker 1: talk about somebody at work who's driving you crazy and
Speaker 1: get their advice. Maybe you want to talk about the
Speaker 1: crazy phone call that you got on the weight of
Speaker 1: the date. How can you actually show up and have fun,
Speaker 1: have a connection, be playful, have some flirtatious energy, and
Speaker 1: moving people away from that interview date mindset is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things that I do. Something you mentioned
Speaker 1: on social media which really cracked me up is going
Speaker 1: on dates with people who don't ask questions. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought this up, because I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: part of your job is that you ask questions for
Speaker 1: a living, and you're you're very good at it. But
Speaker 1: I get so many complaints about these people, and I
Speaker 1: started calling them z Q zero questions. And so what
Speaker 1: happens is somebody will say to me, I went on
Speaker 1: a date with this woman. I feel like I could
Speaker 1: write her biography. I know everything about her, and she
Speaker 1: didn't ask a single question about me. And it makes
Speaker 1: people feel like the other person is just so rude
Speaker 1: or not into did And so I did research where
Speaker 1: I asked my you know, fifty thousand newsletters subscribers, what
Speaker 1: do you do in this situation and what do you
Speaker 1: think it means? And some people said, I'm actually very awkward.
Speaker 1: I sometimes forget to ask questions. I don't mean to
Speaker 1: you know, I hope somebody will give me a second chance.
Speaker 1: This is really something I'm working on. So some people say, like,
Speaker 1: I'm actually just awkward. Other people say, this is a
Speaker 1: sign that this person isn't interested in me, and they're
Speaker 1: just interested themselves, and so I move on. But where
Speaker 1: I've wound up is just telling people here's how to
Speaker 1: let the other person know that you want to be
Speaker 1: asked questions. And you could say something like, wow, I've
Speaker 1: asked you so much. What do you want to know
Speaker 1: about me? Or what can I tell you about myself?
Speaker 1: And so sort of just quietly or or suddenly nudging
Speaker 1: them to ask you questions. You can also sort of
Speaker 1: poke fun at them. So, for example, a woman said
Speaker 1: that a guy complained about his sister in law for
Speaker 1: a now and a half, and so at the end
Speaker 1: of that she said, how do you feel about your
Speaker 1: sister in law? I can't tell. And you know, the
Speaker 1: best case, of course, is using humor to let someone
Speaker 1: know that they're breaking a social norm. But I think
Speaker 1: it's just fascinating how much this comes up, and it's
Speaker 1: everyone thinks, oh, it's just women don't ask men, or
Speaker 1: men don't ask women, But I get emails about this
Speaker 1: from everyone, and I think the takeaway is the best
Speaker 1: way to make someone think you're charming is asking good questions.
Speaker 1: It is much more important to be interested than interesting.
Speaker 1: The more that you can get somebody to open up
Speaker 1: and talk about themselves, the more they enjoy talking to
Speaker 1: you and learning how to ask interesting questions, Questions that
Speaker 1: help people explore who they are, that help them go deep.
Speaker 1: Is one of the best ways to get a second date. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have this, Well, it's a mathematical equation. They hit
Speaker 1: thirty seven percent, and then you date someone who's explain
Speaker 1: that yea. So this comes from a book called Algorithms
Speaker 1: to Live By and the concept is called the secretary problem.
Speaker 1: And basically what it is is, imagine you're hiring a
Speaker 1: secretary and admin whatever, and you have a hundred candidates.
Speaker 1: You have to go through each candidate one by one
Speaker 1: and say yes or no, so you can't go back
Speaker 1: and get somebody from earlier on. And so the mathematical
Speaker 1: question is at what point should you stop. If you
Speaker 1: wait until the end, maybe all the good people are gone.
Speaker 1: If you hire somebody too early, maybe you don't know
Speaker 1: who's out there. And So the mathematically correct answer is
Speaker 1: that you go through thirty seven percent of the candidates,
Speaker 1: and you've met thirty seven of them, and you say
Speaker 1: who was the single best person from that group, and
Speaker 1: that person is now your benchmark. The next time that
Speaker 1: you interview somebody who's better than that benchmark, you hire
Speaker 1: them on the spot. And so the point is that
Speaker 1: you get a sense of who's out there, make a benchmark,
Speaker 1: and then select the next person. With dating, what they
Speaker 1: do in this book, algorithms live by as they say,
Speaker 1: imagine you're going to date from eighteen to forty. We
Speaker 1: don't know how many people you're gonna date, but we
Speaker 1: can say maybe you'll date for those ages. So what
Speaker 1: is thirty seven percent of the way through? It's twenty
Speaker 1: six point one years old. So by the time you're
Speaker 1: twenty six, you say, who is my single best person
Speaker 1: I've dated so far? That's now my benchmark. The next
Speaker 1: time I find someone who I like as much or
Speaker 1: more than them, I'm going to commit to that person.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I love to use this example
Speaker 1: is because for those maximizers, the people who are always
Speaker 1: thinking the next best person is out there, and I
Speaker 1: just have to keep swiping. It helps them understand you
Speaker 1: likely have already dated somebody who would make a great partner,
Speaker 1: and it's about choosing somebody and committing to them. It's
Speaker 1: not about this infinite search and infinite research. So what's
Speaker 1: your hit to ship ratio? What does that mean? That
Speaker 1: means your success ratio? I realize it depends on the clients.
Speaker 1: Hundred people come in, how many have a long term
Speaker 1: relationship after working with you? I honestly don't have a
Speaker 1: great answer for that, because for some people, what success
Speaker 1: looks like for them is that they haven't dated in
Speaker 1: ten years and they start dating again. And so maybe
Speaker 1: they don't find a partner in the time we're working together,
Speaker 1: but they overcame their fear of dating. For some people,
Speaker 1: they might meet the person that they marry. For some
Speaker 1: people's success is that they exited toxic relationship or run
Speaker 1: in the other direction when they see red flags. And
Speaker 1: so I would say all of my clients experience a
Speaker 1: lot of success in overcoming their behavior. That doesn't always
Speaker 1: mean that they find a partner right away. Okay, so
Speaker 1: tell me about the group D sessions. How often are
Speaker 1: they in a year, and how many people in a
Speaker 1: group yeah, So Kimberly and I are are figuring this out.
Speaker 1: We've done a bunch of experiments where we've had classes
Speaker 1: of thirties, sixty, hundred and twenty and we're basically like,
Speaker 1: how big is too big? When is this going to break?
Speaker 1: And right now it hasn't broken. And in fact, I
Speaker 1: think our class with a hundred and twenty was maybe
Speaker 1: the most fun because you were very likely to have
Speaker 1: somebody else in that class who was experiencing the quirky
Speaker 1: dating problem that you were experiencing. Um the Neck class
Speaker 1: is probably going to be in September and it's either
Speaker 1: going to run for between three to six weeks. And
Speaker 1: how it works is you meet once a week with
Speaker 1: me and I teach a live workshop with slides and exercises,
Speaker 1: and it's very high energy. It's kind of trying to
Speaker 1: be like you've ever been to a Tony Robbins experience
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, like every few minutes something is changing.
Speaker 1: It's it's very engaging, it's not like your average zoom meeting.
Speaker 1: And then you also have homework that you're doing in
Speaker 1: between classes, you're getting feedback on it. You're also meeting
Speaker 1: in small groups with people who might share some qualities
Speaker 1: with you, and then there is a slack community, so
Speaker 1: people are constantly asking each other questions, getting feedback, getting
Speaker 1: first aid ideas, getting advice on their profiles. And so
Speaker 1: it's like whether the last one was six weeks, and
Speaker 1: so for this six week period, you're basically all in
Speaker 1: on dating. You're going through this boot camp, You're creating
Speaker 1: this identity around dating, and people really seem to get
Speaker 1: very transformative results from that. You know, I remember listening
Speaker 1: to talk radio and learning certain things and going to
Speaker 1: my shrink and saying, yeah, in reality, you're just the opposite.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like if you read my number one bitches,
Speaker 1: these billionaires and other very successful people giving advice that
Speaker 1: worked for them, and unless you are literally them, it's
Speaker 1: never going to work for you. Never mind, Look, you
Speaker 1: have to find out what your strengths are. So irrelevantive
Speaker 1: cost I find if it's one on one, even though
Speaker 1: as I say, maybe much more expensive, my uh odds
Speaker 1: of positive results are much higher. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: I thought that for a long time too, And I
Speaker 1: think many people come to my website and are like
Speaker 1: a group class. I'm not interested in that. This is
Speaker 1: really private. I don't want to talk about it publicly.
Speaker 1: I want the one on one help. But I've had
Speaker 1: clients that worked with me one on one and then
Speaker 1: took the class, and when they took the class, I
Speaker 1: feel like they just started moving faster. And so I've
Speaker 1: just seen that learning in a group setting is different.
Speaker 1: If you meet with me once a month, you have
Speaker 1: a homework assignment, you have insights, but it's up to
Speaker 1: you whether or not to change. When you are part
Speaker 1: of a community, it's so powerful. There's social norms. Everyone
Speaker 1: is doing this. Everyone is going on dates on Thursday nights.
Speaker 1: Everyone's talking about those dates on Friday. Everybody's sharing this.
Speaker 1: I I am a really huge proponent of the power
Speaker 1: of community and the power of social norms. And sometimes
Speaker 1: when you want to change your behavior, information on it
Speaker 1: gets you so far right. There's this concept called the
Speaker 1: information action gap. I can tell you how many calories
Speaker 1: are in a donut, but if you're walking into Dunkin Donuts,
Speaker 1: you don't care. You're there to buy a donut. And
Speaker 1: so information is helpful, but you also need exercises, environment
Speaker 1: activities to actually get you to change your behavior. And
Speaker 1: the class seems to be that immersive experience that causes
Speaker 1: people to not just know the right thing to do,
Speaker 1: but actually do it. Okay, let's assume I'm in a relationship.
Speaker 1: In your book, you talk about a number of things,
Speaker 1: one having a weekly check in, so my I would
Speaker 1: like you to talk about that, and also how you
Speaker 1: evaluate that you should get married, and also how you
Speaker 1: should evaluate that you should get divorced. Yeah. So a
Speaker 1: lot of my thinking about relationships comes from John and
Speaker 1: Julie Gottman. Are you familiar with them the Goatman Institute
Speaker 1: only from your book? Okay, Yeah, So anyway, I'm I
Speaker 1: think their research is amazing. I feel like it's so helpful.
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest things that they talk about
Speaker 1: is just the fact that you need to constantly be
Speaker 1: investing in your relationship. They have this expression small things
Speaker 1: often and so people think, oh, I can just put
Speaker 1: my relationship into maintenance mode and once a year going
Speaker 1: a romantic vacation and relight the pilot light. But that's
Speaker 1: actually not what works. What we find is that relationships
Speaker 1: where people are unhappy or they break up, our relationships
Speaker 1: where you basically stop investing in them. And so part
Speaker 1: of the weekly check in ritual, which can be a
Speaker 1: series of questions that you ask your partner, let's say
Speaker 1: every Sunday. They help you tackle problems before they start.
Speaker 1: I just read a stat that said I found a
Speaker 1: little hard to believe, but it said, you know, couples
Speaker 1: weights seven years before they go to a couple of therapy.
Speaker 1: Couples have problems and problems and problems, and it's to
Speaker 1: the point where they're about to break up that they
Speaker 1: finally go. And maybe in some cases it's too late,
Speaker 1: but if they had gone earlier, they could have said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of resentment around this, like I, um,
Speaker 1: I feel like you don't split the child care evenly
Speaker 1: with me, or I resent the way that you spend
Speaker 1: money and don't save. And so part of the check
Speaker 1: in ritual is tackling problems before they start by saying,
Speaker 1: how am I showing up for you? What can I
Speaker 1: do differently? What do you need from me? And so
Speaker 1: it's really a mindset of relationships or something to constantly
Speaker 1: be working on, not something that you once a year,
Speaker 1: you know, go on a sexy anniversary date, okay, and
Speaker 1: evaluating whether to get married or divorce. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: have a surprising number. I'm doing this a little bit
Speaker 1: less now, but for several years I would have these
Speaker 1: ninety minute decision making conversations with people, and so it
Speaker 1: was a one time session and they basically would give
Speaker 1: me the context. I would ask some a bunch of
Speaker 1: questions and then we try to figure out what they
Speaker 1: should do next. And some of these were should I
Speaker 1: get married? And some of these were should we break up?
Speaker 1: For the should we break up? Once, I asked them
Speaker 1: a series of questions that helped me understand is the
Speaker 1: problem something that has been there for a while, or
Speaker 1: is there some external factors? So maybe that person lost
Speaker 1: their jobs, so they're feeling down on themselves, so they
Speaker 1: lost their sex drive. Is that going to go away
Speaker 1: at any point? Sometimes it's a situation where you know
Speaker 1: they haven't been investing in the relationship and they both
Speaker 1: need to show up for each other more and maybe
Speaker 1: there's an opportunity there. Um. I have this question that
Speaker 1: I asked people called the wardrobe test, where I say
Speaker 1: to them, if your partner were a piece of clothing
Speaker 1: something in your closet, what would that piece of clothing be.
Speaker 1: Give me your gut reaction? And so sometimes people say,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend is my favorite pair of pants. I would
Speaker 1: never have bought them, but I love them and I
Speaker 1: feel really cool and alternative when I wear them. And
Speaker 1: sometimes they'll say things like my boyfriend is a scrubby
Speaker 1: sweatshirt that I would wear to the gym, but I
Speaker 1: hope nobody sees me in. And even though the question
Speaker 1: is a little silly, that's actually the point. It's almost
Speaker 1: like this roor shock test where you just say what
Speaker 1: comes to mind, and that helps me understand where you are.
Speaker 1: And so we could talk for three hours about the
Speaker 1: pros and cons of your relationship, but it might not
Speaker 1: be until that moment where you really say, wow, I've
Speaker 1: outgrown this, or well, if I could just get out
Speaker 1: of this without hurting them, I would do it tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And so I really help people explore what's going on,
Speaker 1: is it permanent or impermanent, and how do they really
Speaker 1: feel in terms of should we get married? Sometimes people
Speaker 1: get married and they haven't even talked about the hard problems.
Speaker 1: They haven't talked about what you know, what are our
Speaker 1: goals around finances, what happens if one of us gets sick?
Speaker 1: Where do we want to live long term? And it's
Speaker 1: like you're so in love and you're feeling so connected,
Speaker 1: you just assume, Oh, I'm sure Bob feels the same
Speaker 1: way I feel about this. Because we love each other
Speaker 1: so much, we must agree. And so sometimes it's about
Speaker 1: having those hard conversations first. And I have a series
Speaker 1: of questions in my book that people can ask each
Speaker 1: other things like, um, you know, what are our values
Speaker 1: around this? What was the history and your family around fighting,
Speaker 1: What was history and your family around money? Just having
Speaker 1: those hard, practical conversations to make sure that you're on
Speaker 1: the same page. Also making sure that this person has
Speaker 1: the same views that you have on monogamy, fidelity, having
Speaker 1: a family. And it seems so obvious. It's like, who
Speaker 1: doesn't get married without talking about that? But the answer
Speaker 1: is many people. And it's really important to have those
Speaker 1: conversations before you are committed, and I would say especially
Speaker 1: before you have kids, because at that point you're entangled
Speaker 1: with that person for the rest of your life. Okay,
Speaker 1: so prior to graduating from college, you talked about your
Speaker 1: aim connection with this person. In high school, what was
Speaker 1: your dating experience, Yeah, I mean I definitely dated a lot.
Speaker 1: I feel like I was just one of those people
Speaker 1: that found it really fun to connect with people. I
Speaker 1: dated people that were nerds. I dated people that were athletes.
Speaker 1: I dated people that I met online, I dated people
Speaker 1: I met at work. I feel like I I feel
Speaker 1: lucky that I've had these different experiences because it makes
Speaker 1: me feel like I know that my husband is a
Speaker 1: great match for me, because I've dated all these different
Speaker 1: permutations of humans, and I'm like, well, I couldn't have
Speaker 1: predicted it, but this is the one who really makes
Speaker 1: me happy and keeps things interesting. You went to Harvard.
Speaker 1: What was that experience? Like? I loved Harvard. It was
Speaker 1: so fun. I think in some ways it is the
Speaker 1: happiest four years of my life. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: such a good fit for my personality. You live with
Speaker 1: your best friends, you go to classes, you're constantly learning
Speaker 1: your writing, and somebody's job is to read your writing
Speaker 1: and give feedback on it. I thought it was really fun.
Speaker 1: You know, not everybody at Harvard likes to party, but
Speaker 1: if you're in the group that does, people are excited
Speaker 1: to meet you. And it was just really, really fun.
Speaker 1: It felt so lucky to get to go there. I
Speaker 1: think it makes you feel like the first eighteen years
Speaker 1: of your life, we're building towards something. For the four
Speaker 1: years I was there, I didn't worry that much about
Speaker 1: the future because I was just like, I am a
Speaker 1: exactly where I should be right now, and so I
Speaker 1: really loved the experience. Now, when you go to an
Speaker 1: elite institution, a lot of it is what you learn
Speaker 1: from the people and the relationships you make. Have those
Speaker 1: relationships paid dividends subsequent to graduation. Absolutely, yeah. I feel
Speaker 1: like I absolutely invested in relationships while I was there,
Speaker 1: in part just because I'm super social and I loved,
Speaker 1: you know, having lunch in the dining hall with one
Speaker 1: person and dinner in the dining hall with somebody else.
Speaker 1: But years later, those people are now running media companies
Speaker 1: and working as publicists and book agents and developing TV
Speaker 1: shows and you know, working in the White House. And
Speaker 1: so I feel like a lot of people I know,
Speaker 1: even if they were tangential connections, have super interesting jobs.
Speaker 1: And I have had moments, whether it was you know,
Speaker 1: seeking out healthcare for my husband or you know, just
Speaker 1: visiting another country where I feel really lucky to have
Speaker 1: onto school with a bunch of interesting people who are
Speaker 1: now doing especially interesting stuff. So you graduate from college,
Speaker 1: what are the moves? How do you end up here? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I had this vision in my mind that I wanted
Speaker 1: to live in San Francisco. I had never lived there,
Speaker 1: but I really loved learning about the sixties. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite classes in college was about youth culture in
Speaker 1: the nineties sixties, and of course San Francisco was a
Speaker 1: big player. And so I did a summer internship in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and then I only applied to jobs in
Speaker 1: San Francisco and I ended up working at Google right
Speaker 1: out of college. And what was that like? Yeah? It
Speaker 1: was crazy. I had this very surprising first job out
Speaker 1: of college. I ran the porn Pod, which was a
Speaker 1: team and we managed the Google advertising, so the Google
Speaker 1: ads for sex toy operators and porn sites, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just really interesting. I definitely don't think my
Speaker 1: parents expected that. Over Thanksgiving, I would tell them that
Speaker 1: I was putting my Harvard diploma to use helping porn advertisers.
Speaker 1: And what was your Google history from there? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, I did that job, but it definitely didn't
Speaker 1: have a ton of upward trajectory. Google is not investing
Speaker 1: in porn, and in fact, I think that team doesn't
Speaker 1: even exist anymore, and the rules have gotten a lot
Speaker 1: stricter since then. And so I eventually moved into this
Speaker 1: amazing team called the Irrational Lab, And basically I had
Speaker 1: an academic counterpart named Dan R. Yelie, who I had
Speaker 1: been a big fan of before I went to Google.
Speaker 1: He wrote this amazing book called Predictably Irrational. And Dan
Speaker 1: is a professor at Duke and he's one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting creative thinkers that I've ever met. He really
Speaker 1: just lives life very experimentally, where he's thinking, how can
Speaker 1: I help as many people as possible, how can I
Speaker 1: teach my kids how to be great humans? How can
Speaker 1: I run a lab that does interesting experiments? And so
Speaker 1: he was working part time at Google and we worked
Speaker 1: in this lab where we basically applied these very academic
Speaker 1: lessons of psychology and decision making into Google. Right, so,
Speaker 1: how do you get employees to go on more walks
Speaker 1: instead of just sitting in a meeting? How can you
Speaker 1: get somebody to log in and improve their ad Words accounts?
Speaker 1: And so it was this amazing opportunity to basically work
Speaker 1: in a lab like grad school, but instead of being
Speaker 1: in grad school, and getting into debt. I was working
Speaker 1: at Google and making a living, and so that was
Speaker 1: a life changing experience because I learned directly from Dan
Speaker 1: about this field of behavioral science, the study of how
Speaker 1: we make decisions. And now my work applies a lot
Speaker 1: of behavioral science to get people to change their behavior
Speaker 1: and continue from Google to today. Sure, so when I
Speaker 1: was at Google, I was single, I was online dating.
Speaker 1: I was swiping men hours a day, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this whole online dating thing is crazy. I feel lost,
Speaker 1: the people around me feel lost. Let me create a
Speaker 1: series where I get to interview experts on this. And
Speaker 1: so I started this talk interview series called Toxic Google
Speaker 1: Modern Romance, and I invited in some of the foremost experts.
Speaker 1: So I invited in John and Julie gott mem, I
Speaker 1: invited in Dan Savage, I invited in as Stare Parrel,
Speaker 1: And through this I made some of the connections that
Speaker 1: ended up being really helpful for me later on, but
Speaker 1: also just helped me see, wow, this is a thing.
Speaker 1: Thousands of people signed up for the email list in
Speaker 1: a few days, people were coming to the events. The
Speaker 1: YouTube videos were getting a ton of views, and that
Speaker 1: just made me feel like, all right, I'm onto something.
Speaker 1: People are really struggling and they need help, and I
Speaker 1: can help produce events, produce content whatever to help people
Speaker 1: answer these questions. And so I ended up leaving Google
Speaker 1: and going to Airbnb. And I liked working at Airbnb.
Speaker 1: It was really design focused, the company was has an
Speaker 1: amazing product that I love. The office was beautiful. I
Speaker 1: got to know all three of the founders. It was
Speaker 1: really fun to be there. But I just kept saying
Speaker 1: to myself, I have this passion for dating and relationships,
Speaker 1: and let me really see what I can do to
Speaker 1: invest in that. And I had this freak accident where
Speaker 1: I was walking in Golden Gate Park and a tree
Speaker 1: fell on me and it was a huge eucalyptus tree.
Speaker 1: Several people each year die from accidents involving trees falling
Speaker 1: on them in Golden Gate Park, and I was I
Speaker 1: missed work for a few weeks. It was really really scary,
Speaker 1: and I think through that I was just like, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, life is short. Nobody just comes up to
Speaker 1: you and says now is the time to quit your
Speaker 1: job and pursue your dreams. And I just felt like
Speaker 1: all right, like this is what I need to take
Speaker 1: a risk, and that was the year that I left
Speaker 1: Airbnb and started doing this stuff full time. So what
Speaker 1: was your injury and if you're fully recovered, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I had some back issues. I have a kind
Speaker 1: of gnarly scar on my leg um. But it was
Speaker 1: one of those things where a police officer happened to
Speaker 1: observe it was like a few inches in any one
Speaker 1: direction and you would have been gone. And so the
Speaker 1: injuries were tough, but it was more the brush with
Speaker 1: death that I think really lit a fire under me
Speaker 1: and made me feel like you're never gonna wake up
Speaker 1: one day and be ready to do your own thing.
Speaker 1: It's always going to be scary, and it just felt
Speaker 1: like this opportunity to take a risk. And then every
Speaker 1: year on the anniversary of that accident, I have a
Speaker 1: party called an obituary party, where I make people come
Speaker 1: over and write their obituaries. And in doing that exercise,
Speaker 1: it really helped me understand what I wanted to be
Speaker 1: remembered for in the legacy I wanted to leave, and
Speaker 1: that also helped me quit my job. So do you
Speaker 1: go back to Golden Gate Park? I do, but I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, I live there's a eucalyptus tree
Speaker 1: near where I live, and I still feel a little
Speaker 1: bit of panic when when I'm under certain huge treets. Okay,
Speaker 1: your parents divorced when you were in high school. How
Speaker 1: did that affect your view of relationships? I think about
Speaker 1: that a lot. And what I believe is that when
Speaker 1: my parents got divorced, it was very surprising to me,
Speaker 1: and so I stopped taking relationships for granted and I
Speaker 1: felt like, Okay, this happily ever after thing, it's not
Speaker 1: a guarantee. Just because you get married doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you stay married. And so it really encouraged me to
Speaker 1: take an anegal analytical look at relationships and say, what's
Speaker 1: happening in these good ones, what's happening in these bad ones?
Speaker 1: How do you choose the right person? How do you
Speaker 1: date enough people that you know who's out there, but
Speaker 1: not date so many people that you end up never
Speaker 1: finding somebody? And so I think it was just this
Speaker 1: kind of Spider Man getting bitten by the spider moment
Speaker 1: where it just really made me feel like this is
Speaker 1: something that I want to learn more about. It gave
Speaker 1: me this curiosity, and it gave me this almost humbling
Speaker 1: feeling of you can't take it for granted. Okay, So
Speaker 1: what would it take you to get divorced in my
Speaker 1: current relationship? Yeah, yeah, it's funny. My husband likes a
Speaker 1: joke that I'm not somebody he'd want to be divorced
Speaker 1: from because I don't know. I think he thinks I would.
Speaker 1: I would be tough in the in the divorce litigation moment. Okay,
Speaker 1: well you live in California's anyway, unless somebody, unless somebody
Speaker 1: brought assets to the marriage. But it, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is funny that he thinks I'm scary in that regard.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been with my husband for seven years.
Speaker 1: We've definitely had super strong moments and moments where we're disconnected.
Speaker 1: I think if I had to imagine a world where
Speaker 1: we got divorced, it would be because we don't invest
Speaker 1: time in each other like we spend. You know, we're
Speaker 1: in the same room, but we're on our phones or
Speaker 1: we talk, but we only talk about logistics. And so
Speaker 1: I think it's really about practicing what I preach and
Speaker 1: investing that daily effort. Okay, So reading your book, you know,
Speaker 1: this Sunday night check in certainly hit me and needle said,
Speaker 1: I don't do that. And you talk about your husband
Speaker 1: being fearful about a divorce with you, it seems you're
Speaker 1: certainly very verbal, personable, and intelligent. The question we become
Speaker 1: people might say, well, is she controlling him in the
Speaker 1: relationship or does he pushed back and say I don't
Speaker 1: want to do this or I don't want to do that. Oh,
Speaker 1: my husband is extremely stubborn and he does not let
Speaker 1: me get away with anything. That's kind of what I
Speaker 1: was saying before about keeps me saying and drives me crazy.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I wish he was more appliable and he would say, sure,
Speaker 1: whatever you want, but that's not his personality. He's extremely
Speaker 1: intelligent and extremely skeptical, and he does not do anything
Speaker 1: unless he's bought into the value of it. And so
Speaker 1: he's I'm lucky in that he lets me talk about
Speaker 1: him on podcasts like this and talk about him in
Speaker 1: my book, But he really only participates in these relationship
Speaker 1: things because he thinks that there's value in them. Okay,
Speaker 1: So another big thing you talk about, and you referenced
Speaker 1: it earlier, is don't expect your partner to provide to
Speaker 1: check everything in the list. So you talk about having
Speaker 1: activity partners. So okay, I'll talk about my own relationship.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been to a lot of exotic places.
Speaker 1: I'd like to go more. There's certain ones that my
Speaker 1: girlfriend says she doesn't want to go there. She doesn't
Speaker 1: want to go to Shanghai, Beijing. I'd really I have
Speaker 1: not been there. I've only been to Hong Kong and China.
Speaker 1: So do I just say hey, get somebody else to go,
Speaker 1: or do I say go? Because usually when you do go,
Speaker 1: you end up having a good time. Yeah? So um,
Speaker 1: I talked about this idea of other significance others, and
Speaker 1: this is an idea from Eli Finkel and Elaine Chung.
Speaker 1: And the idea is that in modern society, we expect
Speaker 1: to get our needs met by every We expect to
Speaker 1: get all of our needs met by one person. And
Speaker 1: we think you're going to be my lover and my
Speaker 1: best friend and my co parent and my business coach
Speaker 1: and my tennis partner. And it puts way too much
Speaker 1: pressure on one person, and that person is unlikely be
Speaker 1: able to meet all those needs. And so how can
Speaker 1: you have these o s os, these other significant others
Speaker 1: that play different roles in your life. And so it
Speaker 1: might be that with your girlfriend, she might have an
Speaker 1: OsO who's her travel buddy, and that might work out fine.
Speaker 1: But if you feel like well, you just might be
Speaker 1: stubborn about going. But once you go, you have a
Speaker 1: good time, then that's up to you. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's less important like, you know, do you travel
Speaker 1: with her or not? And more this big idea of
Speaker 1: we should be in grain in a community where we
Speaker 1: have different people that we go to for different things,
Speaker 1: and that we take some of the pressure off our
Speaker 1: relationship and we still invest in it, but we don't
Speaker 1: expect our partner to be our everything. And what about jealousy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I live in the Bay Area and there's
Speaker 1: a huge movement around relationship anarchy and ethical nonmonogamy. And
Speaker 1: one of the big ideas in ethical nonmonogamy is that
Speaker 1: instead of feeling jealous when your partners with somebody else,
Speaker 1: you actually feel what's called compulsion, which is joy for
Speaker 1: them at their pleasure. And so I'm in a monogamous relationship,
Speaker 1: but I have clients and friends and acquaintances, etcetera that
Speaker 1: are in these polyamorous or ethical nonmonogamy relationships and it's
Speaker 1: been really amazing to see them tackle jealousy, and so
Speaker 1: I would say in general, sometimes jealousy is helpful. It's
Speaker 1: a sign of what we want. I'm jealous of you
Speaker 1: because you've achieved this, and that's a sign for me
Speaker 1: that I want to achieve that. But other times, in relationships,
Speaker 1: I think it's a sign of insecurity. So okay, let's
Speaker 1: choose the example of the guy who likes to be
Speaker 1: out late at night for his business and the woman
Speaker 1: wants to be in bed at eleven PM. Let's just
Speaker 1: assume they do things separately. The guy is going to
Speaker 1: be meeting a lot of people. How does the person
Speaker 1: who goes to bed at eleven feel comfortable that these
Speaker 1: he's not going to meet somebody and leave her because
Speaker 1: this person is closer to his lifestyle. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: there's a few levels there. So one is for that
Speaker 1: person to understand that they're not making a sacrifice by
Speaker 1: being with their partner who wants to go to bed
Speaker 1: at eleven. That partner is a great fit for them
Speaker 1: and helps them build a balance life, and so they're
Speaker 1: not settling for that person while going out and hoping
Speaker 1: to find somebody else at two am, and I think
Speaker 1: that in situations like that, you have to trust your partner.
Speaker 1: I feel like one of the things I love most
Speaker 1: about my husband is that I really really trust him.
Speaker 1: He's extremely honest, even sometimes when I don't want him
Speaker 1: to be, and I really trust his behavior. We each
Speaker 1: have plenty of friends of the opposite sex, and it's
Speaker 1: not a problem for us. And so I would say,
Speaker 1: if you're really worried about your partner going out and
Speaker 1: meeting other people, then that's a sign of some fundamental
Speaker 1: insecurity that needs to be tackled, and not just you
Speaker 1: being like, well, I'm going to force myself to go
Speaker 1: out because they might meet someone else, Like you can
Speaker 1: meet someone in an app, you can meet someone on
Speaker 1: the street. Like. You can't control somebody's behavior. What you
Speaker 1: can try to work on is a foundation of trust
Speaker 1: between the two of you. Now, your husband, you were
Speaker 1: involved with him and after a number of years he
Speaker 1: got cancer and had to have essentially half of his
Speaker 1: leg removed. You know what was that like? And did
Speaker 1: you would ever question your involvement with him? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean what was it like? It was fucking crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: my husband is one of the healthiest people I've ever met.
Speaker 1: He's vegan, he works out every day, he reads books
Speaker 1: called how to Not Die. He's very very smart, and
Speaker 1: he's focused on longevity and really just interested in that
Speaker 1: kind of research. And so this was just a freak
Speaker 1: thing where he got bone cancer. And another reason it
Speaker 1: was so crazy is because he really started getting his
Speaker 1: diagnosis in March, just as the pandemic was starting, and
Speaker 1: so when he was going to get the m r I,
Speaker 1: I was like, don't go to a medical institution. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: You could get COVID right now. And so luckily he
Speaker 1: ignored me and got the m r I. But we
Speaker 1: just couldn't believe the diagnosis because imagining imagine a really
Speaker 1: healthy person in their early thirties. You just don't think
Speaker 1: it's going to be cancer. In terms of the amputation,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very slow process of recovery. It
Speaker 1: obviously changes your body forever um and he's had some
Speaker 1: other major surgeries as well. But I never questioned the relationship.
Speaker 1: I felt like I felt even more serious about him.
Speaker 1: I was like, I can really stand up and support him.
Speaker 1: I felt very capable. I think I'm good in emergencies.
Speaker 1: We have an amazing community that supported us. We had
Speaker 1: our friends throw us a last minute wedding. Um we
Speaker 1: got married in Golden Gate Park the day before his amputation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like it just made us more
Speaker 1: serious about each other. And it makes me feel like
Speaker 1: whatever comes down the road, we know that we can
Speaker 1: handle it because we've handled such a freak challenging thing.
Speaker 1: Now you live what in what the New York Times
Speaker 1: labeled a commune? What do you what's your actual living environment? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you could call it a commune. They called
Speaker 1: it a luxury commune, which now the people I live
Speaker 1: with quote all the time as a joke because this
Speaker 1: place is not luxury. I mean it's nice and we
Speaker 1: love living here, but I don't think you would call
Speaker 1: it luxury. Basically, during the pandemic, when my husband got
Speaker 1: this diagnosis, I was like, this sucks. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to do this alone. He's spending three out of
Speaker 1: five weeks in the hospital. I'm coming home to Pepperoni
Speaker 1: pizza on the floor, or this sucks. I I don't
Speaker 1: want to do this by myself. And so our friends
Speaker 1: had bought and developed this communal living situation in Oakland,
Speaker 1: and we visited them for dinner one night, and I
Speaker 1: was like, they're having the time of their lives. They're
Speaker 1: doing Camp Radish. This is the way to do the pandemic.
Speaker 1: And so they luckily had a one bedroom apartment open
Speaker 1: for us. We moved in a few weeks later, and
Speaker 1: I think it's the best thing in my life. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have dinner with friends every night. It's like living
Speaker 1: on a group trip. Everyone is creative, generous, open minded, interesting.
Speaker 1: It's really a group of people that I think are
Speaker 1: are living in a really joyful way. Okay, is this
Speaker 1: one of a kind or there are multiple Radishes. There's
Speaker 1: only one place called Radish, but we're part of a
Speaker 1: community of other communal living situations and it's somewhat popular
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area. I think once you start tapping
Speaker 1: into the network, there's other ones. And some are moral tternatives,
Speaker 1: some are less alternatives. Some have people in their twenties,
Speaker 1: some have people with kids, and I would say ours
Speaker 1: is in the middle. It's starting to have its first kids.
Speaker 1: But it's just it's really functional. I mean, there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of drama. We have a house meeting once
Speaker 1: a month. We share all of our food and cooking expenses,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's just a really functional, happy place to live. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how big a building is in So there's one
Speaker 1: building with six bedrooms, there's another unit that has four apartments,
Speaker 1: and then there's um a building that has a communal
Speaker 1: kitchen and a communal living room. But then people are
Speaker 1: buying the houses next door, so it seems to be growing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So every night it's dinner together. Yeah, there's seven thirty dinner.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely not required. If you didn't come because you
Speaker 1: were traveling or you just didn't feel like being with
Speaker 1: the group, that would be fine. There's no expectation. But
Speaker 1: people we happen to have a lot of people right
Speaker 1: now who are either uh there's one guy who's a
Speaker 1: professional chef. There's people who are just really into cooking.
Speaker 1: And you know, it turns out cooking for fourteen people
Speaker 1: every fourteen days is a lot more fun and easier
Speaker 1: than cooking for yourself every day. So if everybody comes,
Speaker 1: it's fourteen people. Yeah, it's about that. As I was saying,
Speaker 1: you know, some people have gotten pregnant and bought houses
Speaker 1: nearby and they still come over a lot. And what
Speaker 1: we you know, it's called Radish, and we have these
Speaker 1: people called Ratillites that are kind of satellite members of
Speaker 1: the community. And sometimes people have guests and it can
Speaker 1: be you know, it could be as small as five
Speaker 1: or maybe as much as twenty people. And you own
Speaker 1: your unit, No, we just rent you rent. That Is
Speaker 1: it comparable to the price of a one bedroom elsewhere? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you know, I haven't looked for an apartment
Speaker 1: in a while, and I know stuff has changed during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. But I would say people are here not
Speaker 1: to live extravagantly and not to live cheaply. They're basically
Speaker 1: here because they feel like this is a better way
Speaker 1: to live. And so it's not about eating ramen and
Speaker 1: saving money. It's really about like life is better when
Speaker 1: you live amount among people that you respect and admire
Speaker 1: and have fun with. Well, somebody cooks dinner, and let's
Speaker 1: say I don't want to eat carbs or I don't
Speaker 1: know more, I don't need meat. What what goes on there?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you can. I I don't think
Speaker 1: this will surprise you. But there's a long list of
Speaker 1: different people's eating restrictions. And so there's this person is
Speaker 1: low carb, this person's vegan, this person is pscytarian, this
Speaker 1: person is trying to be dairy free, And in general
Speaker 1: people just accommodate it and it's not that hard. It's
Speaker 1: like put the cheese on the salad on the side
Speaker 1: and make one vegan dish. And some people are really
Speaker 1: experienced that cooking and some people are not as experienced.
Speaker 1: But in general, people just try to accommodate different food requirements. Okay,
Speaker 1: if I go to dinner at seven thirty, how long
Speaker 1: I'm mighty sit there bullshitting? It depends. I mean, I
Speaker 1: love bullshitting. I feel like I wake up and I'm happy,
Speaker 1: and then I sort of crash around three, and then
Speaker 1: I get in a worse and worse mood until seven thirty,
Speaker 1: and then I have this huge boost of positivity and
Speaker 1: energy and I might, you know, go and eat dinner
Speaker 1: from seven thirty to eight thirty and then do dishes
Speaker 1: with people till nine and come back to my apartment.
Speaker 1: I might put on a TV show and watch Sometimes
Speaker 1: we just listen to music and hang out. It's it's
Speaker 1: really like this dinner party that you get to attend
Speaker 1: every night. If you're around and you want to go. Okay,
Speaker 1: any people you don't like no. I actually am surprised.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a pretty strict policy where people
Speaker 1: are sub letters and then we kind of get to
Speaker 1: know them for two months and figure it out. But
Speaker 1: we're lucky enough that we have so many people that
Speaker 1: want to live here that we really get to pick
Speaker 1: and shoes. And most people have been living here since
Speaker 1: before me, so there's very little turnover. And I think
Speaker 1: it's basically like an an opt in self selection thing.
Speaker 1: Like if you're someone who's going to get so stressed
Speaker 1: that somebody used your knife in the kitchen, you're probably
Speaker 1: not a good fit and you probably will choose not
Speaker 1: to stay. And what if I'm working late and I
Speaker 1: come home at nine I missed dinner, Yeah, you would
Speaker 1: just go to the leftovers fridge or ask somebody to
Speaker 1: make you a plate, or you ate dinner before you
Speaker 1: got home. Okay, but let's say I want to buy
Speaker 1: my own personal crap, whether it be yogurt chips or whatever,
Speaker 1: when I keep those in my own apartment. Um, the
Speaker 1: cool thing is that you're paying into a food system,
Speaker 1: so you would just we actually have this system where
Speaker 1: you know, somebody's in charge of finances, somebody's in charge
Speaker 1: of ordering the food, and we basically have a slack
Speaker 1: channel called make It Appear, where you would put the
Speaker 1: name of the potato chips that you want and put
Speaker 1: it on there, and it would get ordered for you
Speaker 1: and a few days later it would arrive. And so
Speaker 1: if you really felt strongly that you wanted to pay
Speaker 1: for your own chips and keep it in your room,
Speaker 1: you could, But that's pretty rare. People are just like
Speaker 1: we have an abundance mindset. I get the groceries I
Speaker 1: want and if they get finished, then I'll just order
Speaker 1: them again. And so how many activities are there beyond dinner?
Speaker 1: It depends. We have these things called rad talks where
Speaker 1: people give a short lecture about something. So somebody works
Speaker 1: in climate VC and it's going to be talking about
Speaker 1: her climate fund. Somebody is giving a talk next week
Speaker 1: about her relationship history over the last five years. Somebody
Speaker 1: is giving a talk about the future of cities, and
Speaker 1: so it depends. Sometimes we have parties. I think we're
Speaker 1: having a stand up comedy show next Friday. It really depends.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's like NonStop activities, which would probably
Speaker 1: be overwhelming, but if people choose to put something on.
Speaker 1: They just put it on the calendar, and then people
Speaker 1: show up, and what about trips and other activities outside
Speaker 1: the compound. We don't leave the compound that much. It's
Speaker 1: kind of funny. I went to a comedy show with
Speaker 1: people last Friday, and it was like weird being with
Speaker 1: them outside. I think there's kind of a gravitational pull
Speaker 1: to being here. It's like it's all the food that
Speaker 1: we want. It's super physically comfortable. We have a hot tub,
Speaker 1: we have a sauna, we have a fire pit. It's
Speaker 1: really really a nice space. And so we mostly hang
Speaker 1: out here together. And what pretendage that people are in
Speaker 1: relationships and what percentage you're single? Most people are in relationships,
Speaker 1: But I do like having the single people around. I
Speaker 1: feel like it mixes things up and they're bringing new
Speaker 1: people in and so, you know, it depends. Sometimes people
Speaker 1: come and go, and sometimes people are here and there
Speaker 1: in relationships and they break up. But maybe it's sevent
Speaker 1: in relationships and you frozen your eggs. You're married. During
Speaker 1: the you know, throws of your career, do you feel
Speaker 1: you're either going to time out or age out of
Speaker 1: radish or theoretically be there for a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something I'm actively thinking about right now because I
Speaker 1: feel like the apartment I'm in is probably not the
Speaker 1: physical space that i'd want to have a family, and
Speaker 1: it just feels like a little bit small. But I'm
Speaker 1: seeing what other people are doing, and somebody who lives
Speaker 1: in the same apartment upstairs just had a kid and
Speaker 1: seems to be making it work. Um, somebody bought the
Speaker 1: house next door and is into graded with Radish, and
Speaker 1: so I feel like it makes sense to me that
Speaker 1: we are not meant to have families in these small,
Speaker 1: concrete little boxes. I think that leads to isolation, resentment, loneliness,
Speaker 1: and so I'd love to find a way to stay
Speaker 1: incorporated with Radish for a long time, as long as
Speaker 1: I feel like I have the physical space to be comfortable. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a nice Jewish girl. I assume you went to
Speaker 1: summer camp. Is that a correct assumption? Yeah? So to
Speaker 1: what because I said, you know, if I could go
Speaker 1: somewhere for summer camp, I'd sign up for that on
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. So to what degree
Speaker 1: is Radish resemble summer camp? Yeah? So I went to
Speaker 1: a few summer camps. One was like a performing arts one,
Speaker 1: one was a Jewish one, and honestly I didn't really
Speaker 1: love it. And then I went to these nerdier summer
Speaker 1: camps that happened at UH it was called Saint Mark's
Speaker 1: in Boston or Wellesley, where it was basically nerdy kids
Speaker 1: from around the country who would take kind of like
Speaker 1: pseudo college classes like politics of the Simpsons and sushi making.
Speaker 1: And that was one of the happiest periods of my life.
Speaker 1: And I think Radish is like that. It's basically nerdy,
Speaker 1: passionate people coming together designing their definition of fun. Well, look,
Speaker 1: and I want to thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: this time. I mean, I'd rather talk about this than
Speaker 1: almost anything because it's all about people, and you found
Speaker 1: a niche. You know, if I was single, I would
Speaker 1: sign up, you know, I like to do everything once
Speaker 1: just to see what it's about. But if I was single,
Speaker 1: I would certainly, you know, at least by the group package,
Speaker 1: just to see what it's like. You know. So I
Speaker 1: think you're really onto something. And there are too many
Speaker 1: self professed experts who have no CV. It's really thin
Speaker 1: and that's obviously not you. So once again I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for taking this time. Thank you, it
Speaker 1: was so much fun. I was really honored to see
Speaker 1: your email and several folks sent it to me in
Speaker 1: and they're like, I don't know if you know who
Speaker 1: Bob is, but he's a really big deal. And the
Speaker 1: fact that you read that article did a deep dive
Speaker 1: into my life. Wanted to talk. It's incredibly validating and
Speaker 1: it was really fun to talk to you and talk
Speaker 1: about myself for the last two hours. And thanks for
Speaker 1: the opportunity you bet until next time. This is Bob
Speaker 1: Left Thash