“Everything you’ve been told about dating is wrong” | Dr Paul Eastwick

Chris Williamson 0:00 we were talking before we got started, uh, many of the past guests that have been on my show and much of my education, I think, into the world of mating dynamics, understanding relationship science, uh, has been informed by an evolutionary perspective.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 0:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:14 I think it's fair to say that your new book takes somewhat of an opposing perspective-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 0:21 Yeah

Chris Williamson 0:21 ... to much of the evolutionary psychology position. Is that a, a fair assessment?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 0:26 I think that's fair. I am not using the standard like, this is not a standard nature-nurture thing. [chuckles] Uh, that's not where I'm coming from. I'm coming from a place of, actually, there's a different way of talking about human nature, a different way of talking about the way that humans evolve to form relationships, that I think is kind of missing out there, and that's more or less why I wrote the book.

Chris Williamson 0:50 What's your background? Because most people, when we talk about relationship science in the modern world, are going to be coming out of some kind of EP-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 0:58 Yeah

Chris Williamson 0:58 ... mating research lab. What are you?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:02 Yeah. So I would say I'm a scholar of close relationships. There's a whole field, and we call ourselves relationship science. We're largely in the social and personality psychological tradition, but there are threads that connect to things like clinical psychology, family, uh, family studies, things like that. So we are informed by an evolutionary perspective, too. It's just a different one. So, for example, we talk about attachment perspectives a lot, and attachment has very deep evolutionary roots, going back to Bowlby and so forth, but it's just a little different from the standard evolutionary psychological perspective.

Chris Williamson 1:43 That's interesting. Okay, so [clears throat] what is your problem with the sort of classic Evo script-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:53 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:53 ... as you see it?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:54 Yeah. I think it overestimates a few things. It exaggerates some features of human mating, and it's only in a few cases where I'm like, "Oh, it's totally off the mark," but I think there's a big emphasis on things like mate value, the idea that some people are more desirable than others. There's an emphasis on gender differences, right? Like, men and women are really, really different in the mating realm. I also think there's this emphasis on, like, the short-term versus long-term mating distinction, and, like, some people are good at one or the other. Um, I think these ideas, uh, we've got a lot of misconceptions, to put it mildly, about [chuckles] those three things. Um, and I think once we kind of pick those things apart, we can, uh, put the pieces back together in a way that fits what I'd call the relationship science view, which is more about attachment, compatibility, and forming relationships through small networks.

Chris Williamson 2:56 Okay. Yeah, I, I think a lot of conversations that I would have would be about short term versus long term.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 3:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:02 A lot would be related to sex differences, preferences. I think the world of EP a lot of the time is talking about this, uh, sex differences, e-especially in terms of preferences for life, not just preferences in another parta- partner. Um, yeah, I, I, I think that's fair. I guess, right up top, the words mating market, probably one of the most ubiquitously used in all of the world of evolutionary psychology mating research.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 3:29 Exactly right. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 3:31 What is your problem with the term mating market?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 3:35 Um, I think the mating market, it's a way of thinking about how humans form relationships, like it's a competition, right? And the competition follows from the idea that some people are really desirable, they've got lots of attributes that will make them very popular, and they'll be great partners if you can get in a relationship with them. Um, I think this idea, it is true to some extent, but I think it's true in a more limited way than we realize, and specifically, I think it describes initial attraction markets among strangers pretty well. So that's a context where we can think about mating markets, like you're meeting people at a bar, you're going to a party and meeting people for the first time.

Chris Williamson 4:22 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 4:23 And in those contexts, people are gonna agree about who the other desirable people are, and it's gonna feel competitive. It's gonna feel like the tens get all the attention, and the twos just kind of, you know, hang out [chuckles] over in the corner. Um, but what we find through a lot of our research is that that period of time, that, uh, segment of what it's like to form a relationship, is actually kind of short-lived, especially if people are getting to know other people in groups over time. It's, like, become a little bit of a lost art, but when we conduct studies like that, we find that even though people tend to agree pretty strongly, who are the tens and who are the twos when they're first meeting-

Chris Williamson 5:09 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 5:10 ... that tendency to agree actually fades over time, and that has really big implications for whether mating feels competitive, whether it feels like a market.

Chris Williamson 5:20 When you say it fades over time, what do you mean?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 5:22 Yeah. So let's think about it this way. If you're meeting people for the first time, and let's just make this really simple, um, I'm gonna... You and me, and, you know, we're gonna evaluate a woman, and the question is: hot or not? We're just gonna make simple, binary judgments.

Chris Williamson 5:37 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 5:38 We probably agree, like, seventy, seventy-five percent of the time, okay? As opposed to fifty-fifty chance. That's, that's pretty good, okay? That is where the sense comes from, that when people are meeting each other or I'm being evaluated, I mean, maybe people are just looking at my photo online and swiping left or right.

Chris Williamson 5:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 5:58 That's where that sense comes from, that there are tens and twos. But a funny thing starts to happen as people meet each other multiple times, and we've shown this in a variety of studies. If you have us [chuckles] do that task again, after a little while, the agreement would go down to sixty-five percent and then sixty percent.... and if I do these studies among, like, friends and acquaintances who've known each other for months or years, they're agreeing, like, fifty-three percent of the time about who's hot and who's not, about who you'd want to date and who you wouldn't want to date. It's sort of shocking, but it makes sense when you realize a couple things. Once we get to know people over time, what happens is that some people seem more appealing to us as we get to know them, right? Maybe we learn, like, "Oh, eh, I didn't think much of them at first, then I realized they have a great sense of humor," so everything about them becomes more appealing. But with other people, it's gonna go the other way, and the issue is that different perceivers sort of go along those tracks differently for the same target. So you might find that somebody gets more appealing; I find that they get less appealing.

Chris Williamson 7:11 Mm-hmm. Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 7:11 That leads us to diverge more over time. I think it is really, really lucky [chuckles] that people do this because what this means is that, "Okay, I'm a six. I'm not gonna date a ten. Ah, but I might get to date somebody who I think is a ten, and maybe ho- you know, she might be a six, too, but she thinks I'm a ten," and that's where the magic is. That's how people form stable, committed relationships because they're able to get in a relationship where they aren't really thinking that much about trading up 'cause they think they won the lottery, even if other people don't agree.

Chris Williamson 7:47 Okay, so it seems like the word consensus is pretty important here.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 7:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:52 That if you were to take a, a hundred people in a room and get everybody to do the... A- and I'm gonna guess you've done this, hot or not, is that your criteria?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 7:59 Yeah, I mean, it's easiest when we're discussing it like this to talk about hot or not. We're always doing it on scales. It's like variants shared, so-

Chris Williamson 8:07 But what do you tend to do?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 8:07 The stats, yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:07 You tend to ra- get people to rank order out of ten?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 8:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:10 Or do you tend to get people to rate out of ten? What, what is the metric?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 8:13 Yeah, like, l- like, rate out of ten is usually how it would be.

Chris Williamson 8:17 Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 8:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:17 So the first thing that comes to mind is, in order for us to get past, let's say, the front door of attraction or the, the, the front door of potential attachment, in your language, you need to have the hot button pressed, typically. Like, if the not button gets pressed at the front door, the likelihood of you getting to date, even to date one, you've already either in person or virtually the equivalent of swiped left.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 8:44 Yep.

Chris Williamson 8:45 So in order for you to get to your particular perspective, which is these consensuses diverge-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 8:52 Yep

Chris Williamson 8:52 ... over time because people's compatibility and how they find the other person to be attractive, alluring, beguiling, in a manner that means that they see the beauty in them that wasn't immediately re- sort of present, uh, uh, presented.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 9:06 Yep.

Chris Williamson 9:07 In order for you to get to that, you need to kind of tick yes on the very first thing. So presumably, this doesn't mean that someone's immediately presentable, broad shoulders on a guy, waist-to-hip ratio on a woman, long hair, good teeth, good skin. Like, these things still matter because-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 9:26 Yeah

Chris Williamson 9:26 ... they are the selection criteria by which you get through the door to the party to actually be able to do your second stage of assessment.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 9:33 In the form of dating. Absolutely, in the form of dating, where you have those cut-offs that you just described. So online dating is a perfect example, but even if we're in the mindset of, the way I date is I approach strangers, parties, bars, with, on the street, [chuckles] I mean, you know, God bless, however people wanna do it-

Chris Williamson 9:54 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 9:55 ... yes, but historically, [chuckles] we have found other ways. There are many, many contexts where we interact with other people, and, like, you don't have a choice whether to opt out or not, you're gonna be interacting with them again next week, and then the week after that, and then the week after that. I mean, school and work are kind of obvious examples where we meet the same people over time, and we get to know them, we end up chatting with them, but we're not, like, selecting into it in the same way. And, you know, online dating is very popular these days, but these other methods of meeting partners have been around for a very long time, and they're still out there. So what I'm usually inclined to say is that, look, for people who do not initially present [chuckles] as a nine or a ten, don't forget the other ways of meeting people. I mean, I don't know, like, like, join a sports league, uh, intramural sports league, you know, t- take a couple of dance classes or a couple of cooking classes, things where you would get to meet people over time. These things pull for that idiosyncrasy and gives more people opportunities, and I think that's the thing that we've kind of lost a bit in our, like, you know, online dating deluge.

Chris Williamson 11:12 Well, I think, what is it? Sixty percent of relationships or more now begin online in one form or another.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:18 I think that sounds high. I've s- I mean, I've seen, like, thirty-something. I haven't seen sixty.

Chris Williamson 11:24 It's at least...

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:24 It's at, it's at least forty, but I think when you account for social media, uh, I think it's-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:29 Oh, got it

Chris Williamson 11:29 ... online dating, which is forty, but I think when you account for social media as well, it wouldn't surprise me if it was above fifty. So anyway-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:35 Yeah

Chris Williamson 11:35 ... it's, it's, it's a significant portion.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:37 Yeah, it's big. It's big.

Chris Williamson 11:37 And then-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:37 Yeah

Chris Williamson 11:38 ... okay, add on to that, bars-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:41 Yeah

Chris Williamson 11:41 ... and even introductions from friends-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:43 Yep

Chris Williamson 11:43 ... the repeat exposure that you're talking about doesn't necessarily have chance to blossom. Now, I get what you mean. If we're looking at this from a strictly sort of evolutionary perspective, we would have been in our pod of thirty from our Dunbar number-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:58 Yeah

Chris Williamson 11:58 ... of one fifty, and-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 11:59 Yep

Chris Williamson 11:59 ... you're seeing this person every morning as you get up-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:01 That's right

Chris Williamson 12:01 ... you go and-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:02 That's right!

Chris Williamson 12:02 ... refill the bucket. So I understand what you're talking about there-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:04 Yeah

Chris Williamson 12:04 ... but I do think that that certainly is mismatched with what our current mating environment looks like.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:11 Another, a- another perspective, I'm gonna guess you've never heard of this. It's called an office plus two.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:17 No!

Chris Williamson 12:17 So an office, an office-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:18 Okay

Chris Williamson 12:18 ... office plus two is, [clears throat] ... it was used by me and a bunch of my friends, and it's a, a term in the UK that describes someone that you work with regularly-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:28 Yep.

Chris Williamson 12:28 -who might be a six out of 10, but because-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:31 Yep

Chris Williamson 12:31 -they're in the office-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:31 Yeah!

Chris Williamson 12:31 -and you see them every day-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:32 That's right

Chris Williamson 12:33 ... for a couple of months, they seem to be an eight.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:35 You ab-

Chris Williamson 12:35 So it's called the office plus two.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:37 That's absolutely right. And, and the only thing I'm adding to that is that [chuckles] sorry to make it more complicated, 'cause that is, that's, that's really perfect. But you also have got a lot of office minus twos.

Chris Williamson 12:49 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 12:49 You probably aren't talking about them, but they're out there, too. And, um, I don't know, if you're at that company for 10 years, uh, now you're gonna have some office plus threes and plus fours.

Chris Williamson 13:00 Yep.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 13:00 That is-

Chris Williamson 13:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Paul Eastwick 13:00 ... the spread will increase. But that's exactly right. And, and I think that the, the, the problem with the modern dating environment is that if we expect people to knock us out right away, if we're expecting to be [chuckles] absolutely swept off our feet at moment one, that just doesn't cater to a lot of people's strengths. But, and again, I sound like an old man, but, like, the old ways [chuckles] used to allow for this. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 13:27 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 13:27 When we got to meet people through, you know, organically, through everyday life, it gave more people a chance.

Chris Williamson 13:33 I-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 13:33 And, and that's kind of the thing I want to remind people of.

Chris Williamson 13:36 I understand. Uh, unfortunately, saying that the modern environment is not-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 13:41 And-

Chris Williamson 13:41 -inducive to a more-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 13:42 Yeah

Chris Williamson 13:42 ... egalitarian type of mating-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 13:43 I know, yeah

Chris Williamson 13:44 ... doesn't necessarily, uh, stop the issue from happening. Like I-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 13:48 Yeah

Chris Williamson 13:48 ... I totally get it. I- i- if you're-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 13:50 Yeah

Chris Williamson 13:50 ... somebody who doesn't immediately present in the manner that would be successful in online dating or in a bar or at a one-off meetup, that does put you on the back foot in a manner that maybe it wouldn't have done 50 years ago. Um, but, you know, uh, coming along for the ride with that are all of these stories like, "You know, Granddad said that he went to the dance hall-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:10 [chuckles] Yep

Chris Williamson 14:10 ... every Friday for three months until Grandma finally said yes." And in that, you-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:14 I am really trying not to be that guy. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 14:16 But you know what I mean?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:16 Like, we've got-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:17 Yeah

Chris Williamson 14:17 ... we've got these sort of-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:18 Yep

Chris Williamson 14:18 ... uh, complex challenges. Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:20 So-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:20 Look

Chris Williamson 14:20 ... that's, that's-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:21 Let me add one, one quick thing-

Chris Williamson 14:22 Yeah

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:22 ... which is that even when people meet for the first time, okay, and, and this I'm getting from speed dating, the power of consensus is about as strong, i- if anything, a little weaker, than the power of compatibility. So even if we're, if we're meeting, okay, if we're at least meeting face-to-face, so things like speed dating, things like parties, there's a lot of compatibility there, and it's gonna be way better than dating online.

Chris Williamson 14:46 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 14:46 So, so even if we're trapped in these modern urban environments [chuckles] where there are a lot of people around and a lot of competition, at least start by meeting people face to face, rather than just the swiping. I would just add that.

Chris Williamson 14:59 Okay. Um,

Chris Williamson 15:01 so is it your perspective then that the evolutionary approach sees mating as a hierarchy of romantic inequality?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 15:10 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. Uh, and I think, a- and you know, like we're talking about, I do think online dating exacerbates that inequality, but I think that it... Now, if we're talking about like theory, what's the story of human mating? The story, I mean, as I've understood it since the '90s, was really about like, well, you sort of do the best you can, and, you know, maybe things go well for you, and you improve your attributes, and so you might be able to, like, trade up eventually.

Chris Williamson 15:43 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 15:43 And this is why people give advice to things like, "Well, if you're a six, you should really try to get with somebody else who's a six, because otherwise, like, [chuckles] if you don't trade up on them, like, they're gonna trade up on you." And so it sure would be ideal, you know, the most stable relationships come from a match in mate value. We look at that kind of stuff. [chuckles] We can look at close relationships over time and how matched people are in mate value. You get matches, you get mismatches, none of it matters-

Chris Williamson 16:12 But on a-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 16:13 ... on average-

Chris Williamson 16:13 Uh, uh-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 16:15 Yeah

Chris Williamson 16:15 ... I certainly agree. Who you click on doesn't necessarily correlate with who you click with.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 16:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:21 We- we're not necessarily great judges of our own-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 16:24 Yeah

Chris Williamson 16:24 ... type.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 16:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:25 And everybody that's ever fallen for someone who they wouldn't have picked at first knows that. However, is it not the case that assortative mating for IQ, for education level, for height, for income, for, uh, attractiveness level, at... And, and, th- these include things that aren't just objective, but stuff that's subjectively consensus, that if you were to pick that, like, on average, sevens get with sevens, and those sevens that look like sevens will gravitate towards sevens, and that occurs over time, and if you were to look at them in five years' time, people would say, "Yeah, that..." Th- there has to be a bulge in the compatibility because the likelihood of 10 with two can't simply be the same as eight with eight.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 17:15 S- sorta, kinda. Let me try to unpack this. I mean, this is, this is great. I mean, I love talking about this stuff. I, I like to put these two- these attributes in two buckets because a lot of the things you mentioned, whether it's, like, income, education, and stuff, a lot of that is just, like, who people are meeting in the first place. So that, there's, like, sorting on demographics, a lot of that is about proximity and who people are meeting in the first place. But, but let's talk about the stuff that's, that [chuckles] is less sorted, like attractiveness, for example. So yes, it is more likely that you'll see a seven paired with a seven. Again, if you had two people in front of you, uh, it, it... H- here's, here's a useful thought experiment. You got a guy and two women, and you're trying to guess which one is his partner. If you pick the woman that is closer to him in attractiveness, you're gonna be right about 70% of the time, okay? So that- that's about how powerful that effect is, notably higher than 50/50. Um, a lot of that effect can be explained by some of this competition in mating market stuff that we're talking about, right? People initially meeting-... getting to know each other. When relationships form out of that milieu, out of parties, e- out of online dating, that's where the matching comes from. What we also see is that if you want to explain the mismatched couples, look at how long they knew each other before they got together. Quite commonly, what, what we see in some of our work is that those were people who knew each other for a long time before they formed a relationship. Again, that gave them time for those idiosyncrasies to form. But here's the key thing: I've got a set of matched couples and a set of mismatched couples. The matched couples formed-

Chris Williamson 19:00 What does mis- mismatched is-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 19:02 Uh, l-

Chris Williamson 19:02 ... their mate value on the attractiveness scale is not close.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 19:06 Yeah, an, an eight and a five.

Chris Williamson 19:07 Right.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 19:07 Okay. Something like that. Okay? So, so I got, I got a seven and a seven, and I got an eight and a five, okay? Um, there is no indication whatsoever that the eight and the five are gonna break up sooner, be more miserable, be more likely to cheat, relative to the seven and the seven. It doesn't predict a thing.

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Dr. Paul Eastwick 22:13 Yep

Chris Williamson 22:13 ... in a manner that the one whose, uh, values are more subtle and get revealed over time is not going to.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 22:20 Yeah. So, um, I, I, with respect to the attractiveness, uh, satisfaction data in the long run-

Chris Williamson 22:29 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 22:29 ... uh, that is not what I have seen, and, and we've done meta-analyses of, of exactly that, using objective measures of attractiveness to predict long-term relationship satisfaction. In men and women, it just doesn't do much of anything. Hot people can be great partners; hot people can be terrible partners, o- o- on average. If there's, if there's new data out there, I, I'd, I'd love to see that, but that's what we've seen for, for a long time there. But on the mismatch, I think the, the way that I can help this land for people [chuckles] is to remind them that when a relationship has actually formed, these two people are in it, this eight and this five, [chuckles] are gen- genuinely in a relationship together. What ends up happening is that in order to sustain any kind of relationship, a whole bunch of motivated biases have to come online, okay? If they don't come online, the relationship is not gonna last. Th- th- this always needs to happen. Those biases include things like: What the hell do these other people know about our relationship? I... Yeah, like, "Okay, you're not as attractive as my last boyfriend. You know what? He was, you know, terrible in all these ways, but I can tell you, I love you for reasons X, Y, Z," okay?

Chris Williamson 23:47 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 23:47 Now, are these reasons real? Are they not real? It doesn't matter if the person believes it, like [chuckles] that's the nature of motivated reasoning. Um, so a lot of that has to do with how we defend against alternatives as well. So, uh, people seem to be able to defend against those kinds of threats, the things you're describing, regardless of the level of mate value mismatch. I, I get it. Like, if somebody's an eight and they're paired with a five, it seems like they've probably got more people coming up to them, more people thinking that they might be eager to trade up. But I've never seen any data to suggest that that poses a unique problem, right? Everybody's gotta deal with threats. Everybody's gotta deal with temptations.

Chris Williamson 24:32 Would that not be an additional problem, whether it's unique or not?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 24:36 ... Right. Well, uh, no, but, um, just, just the idea that, that a mismatch might have more of those like interloper threats, I, I have not seen that data. But what we do see time and time again is that if people have those biases activated, if they think their partner is more wonderful than everybody else, regardless of what everybody else thinks-

Chris Williamson 24:58 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 24:58 ... those are the relationships that are more likely to last.

Chris Williamson 25:01 Okay. Uh, in the first few lines of the book, you sort of push back against this nerd, improve thyself-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 25:07 Yeah [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 25:07 - advice that your friend gave you. Uh, basically, uh, maybe you were single at the time and were looking to find a partner, and your friend said, "Well, you need to go to the gym, and you need to sort your clothes out, and God, your hair sucks-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 25:19 Yeah [laughing]

Chris Williamson 25:19 - and you need to do these things."

Dr. Paul Eastwick 25:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:21 "Become more funny," or whatever it is. Um, I understand that using your current conception, uh, the mating market plays into that, that there is a, a kind of value number above your head, and as you do things, you're able to accumulate experience points, and that number is going to increase, and the people around you are going to be, uh, they're going to be able to detect the work that you put into yourself as your mate value goes up. Is that a, a, a fair sort of way? Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 25:51 Exactly. It's, it's very gamified. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 25:53 Right. But are you saying then that it is not possible or advisable to work on yourself to become more attractive on the front end?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 26:02 Um, I, I think there is some limited amount of that, that's a good idea, right? There's, like, some really basic stuff, right? I mean, working out's a really good idea. Eating healthy is a really good idea. Not just because [chuckles] it's gonna make you desirable, but because it's gonna make you happier about yourself, your life in general.

Chris Williamson 26:20 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 26:20 So these things are a good idea. I just think we get locked into those solutions, locked into the self-improvement solutions, as opposed to the social network-related solutions, that maybe what would be good for me is like, okay, yes, I should go to the gym more. Yes, it would help if I s- stopped, you know, eating Domino's at 11:00 PM. But I also need to remember to, like, actually hang out with people in person and maybe try out some new hobbies and meet some new people if my current social networks aren't really doing it for me. So I just wanna turn down [chuckles] the emphasis on the self-improvement stuff, uh, because my suspicion is that though it helps some people a lot, either it only helps, uh, you know, somewhat for other people, and, and, and when those solutions stop changing people's fortunes, they get frustrated. So I really just wanna remind people that there's another avenue out here.

Chris Williamson 27:26 Let's say that you're, y- I, I guess, are you suggesting that you compete by taking yourself out? Because you are still the only one person, presuming that we're in a monogamous society, only one person can be with one person. And if that's the case, by taking yourself out of one mating strategy, let's say it's online, and instead using friend referral networks or going to church or starting a hobby and meeting people there, uh, there is still a degree of competition even if you're competing from one bucket to another bucket, right? You have taken yourself out of a red ocean and put yourself into a blue one.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 28:02 Yeah. Yeah, right. [chuckles] I mean, that's a, an apt metaphor there. But, um, I think that's right, but keeping in mind that, look, i- improving your attributes is, is going to have some value, but remember, it's gonna have actually less value in a context where people are getting to know you over time. I mean, this is y- going back to some of the mate value consensus stuff we were talking about earlier.

Chris Williamson 28:28 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 28:29 There's a funny implication of all of this, which is that if you're exceptionally hot, okay? If everybody can see your good qualities right there on the surface, you're actually best served [chuckles] by hopping from bar to bar or party to party.

Chris Williamson 28:42 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 28:42 Because the only thing that's gonna happen as people get to know you, is that some subset of folks are gonna think you're less appealing, okay? So if we're talking about church, for example, yes, it can help to improve your attributes a little bit, but remember, that's gonna start to matter less after you've been going for a month or three months or six months, or a year.

Chris Williamson 29:03 I, I don't know whether I... It, it might be worth you restating sort of your, your position against the thing that keeps coming to mind for me, which is: the front end of your funnel is wider, the, the further up the objective, consensus-driven, obvious front window attractiveness you go. If you are 10, there are more people that you're going to have the opportunity to, and that means over time, that you are going to be able to have your hopefully wonderful f- personality flourish and, and blossom and, and, and go through, and you turn into a 12 or something like that.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 29:38 But not if the other sevens in your midst don't get to opt out of hanging out with the fives. If they don't get to opt out of hanging out with the fives, some of those fives are gonna increase in their appeal-

Chris Williamson 29:55 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 29:56 ... to the sevens-

Chris Williamson 29:57 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 29:57 ... and, and your appeal might go down. So, so you, you are thinking about it exactly correctly in an environment where it- where, you know, im- imagine, like, dating somebody sequentially, and you drop off after they seem sufficiently unappealing. Yes, exactly. But if we're, you know, forced, for lack of a better word, [chuckles] -

Chris Williamson 30:20 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 30:20 - to interact with people, which happens in a lot of contexts, then again, there's gonna be some amount of increase in opportunity, but it's not so dramatic.

Chris Williamson 30:31 Well, it certainly did ancestrally, right? You were forced because where are you gonna go? You live in this valley, and this is the group of people that are around you.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 30:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:40 ... trying to take an evolutionary perspective to what you're suggesting here, it would make sense that our bonding and attachment systems would be m- market specific in that way, that certain people would have certain preferences and other people would have other preferences, because that allows as much, uh, m- mating to occur as possible in a mixed group. Is that a fair way to look at it?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 31:08 Exactly. That is perfect. Uh, it, it's, it's like we over-indexed on, like, oh, mating success was getting with the most desirable people. Mm, instead, we could think about mating success was about forming an interdependent relationship [chuckles] that was effective at raising these extremely costly offspring. So it's not really about getting somebody with the best traits, it's about forming the best relationship that allows us to work together over time, doing this, like, impossibly difficult task [chuckles] of raising children.

Chris Williamson 31:42 So are you saying-- Uh,

Chris Williamson 31:43 l- let's look at something else then, that isn't just attractiveness, that might be a little bit more kind of evolutionarily apt. Something like, something like resources in men, r- resource provisioning, the, the ability for a, a man to be able to provide for you and your potential future offspring. That would be, regardless of how nice or not nice he is, that would be a long-term payoff that would benefit both you and your kids. No?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 32:12 Yes. It's complicated by the fact that in a lot of hunter-gatherer groups, the spoils that these men would be able to provide are shared widely. So in some ways, like, a- again, all of these things get very mushy, because what you're actually getting, if you get with, like, a great hunter, for example, is you're getting some prestige from the community. You're also getting a, a little bit of assurance that if something happens-

Chris Williamson 32:37 Protection

Dr. Paul Eastwick 32:37 ... the rest of the community is going to be looking out for you. Right. Exactly, stuff like that. Um, but there can be other forms of provisioning that matter, too. So this guy, let's say [chuckles] he's not the best hunter in the world, but you know what he does? He knows where the honey's at, okay? I'm talking about, like, literal honey.

Chris Williamson 32:52 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 32:53 And he goes and finds the honey and brings that back for you. Honey is something-

Chris Williamson 32:58 Well, we're still talking about another-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 32:59 Yeah

Chris Williamson 32:59 ... another sort of competence or resource provisioning thing here-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 33:02 Yeah

Chris Williamson 33:02 ... right? We're picking a different-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 33:03 Right

Chris Williamson 33:03 ... bucket, but it's still the same overall level of competence in a partner. And I think if we were to look at something like competence as a good example of this, you could use whatever proxy you want for this: agency, conscientiousness, industriousness, maybe IQ. Like, if someone, a male, let's just say that, again, resource provisioning, ancestral environment, yeah, yeah, yeah, women can earn for themselves now. Um, if we have that, if you have a guy who is able to be an eight out of ten provider, provisioner, resource acq- a- acquirer, with the status and, and the renown of the group, and people like him, and he's pro-social, and then you have somebody else who does not have those traits but is equal, like, that is just a raw... Even though that might not be to do with compatibility, their humor, their commitment, all the rest of this stuff, one just brings more to the table. Does that not suggest that there is a kind of objective market when it comes to mate value because of usefulness? How you can... The, the utility of trading this in.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 34:04 Um, I, I think there's some, but I think, again, what that sidelines is the fact that a lot of what these guys would, would have been needed for is, are, are things surrounding, like, protection of, like, my offspring. Like, why was it in the first place that a couple of million years ago, women seemed to start wanting men to be around? I mean, they started selecting for the men that were less aggressive around kids, right? That they could trust around their own kids.

Chris Williamson 34:36 Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 34:37 And this is why we start to see-- Like, we don't have the sharp canines anymore. [chuckles] We're, we- men, human men are pretty docile compared to, you know, what you see in our closest ape relatives, and that's because we were being selected to be good caregivers as well. I mean, it's weird to think about today. We don't think about that as being a particularly manly activity, but it is, in fact, one of the primary things that we were selected to do by the women, to be able to be around young children, to teach them things, to show them the skills of, of hunting, provisioning, and everything else. And a lot of that was gonna depend on the, uh, compatibility of that relationship. So, so we just have to imagine these things existing in tandem. Yes, there are gonna be some men in ancestral contexts who were better providers and were more well-respected by the group, at least at a given moment in time. A lot of those things were fluid and shifted and changed as well.

Chris Williamson 35:39 Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 35:39 But yes, there's gonna be some amount of hierarchy there, but that is complemented by both sort of having a sense of belonging to a group, contributing to a group, and having a compatible relationship, where two people can function well in an interdependent way. You know, not only that dyad relative to the rest of the group, but that dyad and how they raise offspring, et cetera.

Chris Williamson 36:02 Okay, so your perspective, that's an alternative to seeing mating as a marketplace is compatibility-driven bonding?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 36:08 Yes, exactly.

Chris Williamson 36:09 Right.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 36:09 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 36:10 Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 36:10 That, the, right, that the, that the, the attachment bonds that human mating partners form, this is not some weird new phenomenon, [chuckles] that this is also absolutely key to understanding human evolution. And in fact, if we want to focus on the particulars of the way humans evolved, that's where I would point. Again, as I mentioned earlier, this idea that human males got smaller, gentler, we lost the sharp canines-

Chris Williamson 36:36 Hmm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 36:36 ... dimorphism decreased because we were being selected to be gentle and kind, especially around offspring.

Chris Williamson 36:44 ... Right, because male parental investment went up.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 36:47 Yes.

Chris Williamson 36:47 MPI, MPI went up because kids were more Neutonic and blobby.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 36:50 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 36:51 That meant that, okay, well, I, I, you know, there are other sides of this, too. You would get more alloparenting. I would imagine-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 36:57 Absolutely

Chris Williamson 36:57 ... that you would see, I, I, I don't know if this is the case, but I'm gonna guess that in other close primates that have, uh, more competent, capable infants that are less useless, you would see less alloparenting and less male parental investment, because the demand for child-rearing doesn't require a supply of grandmother and local cousin to help the baby, which isn't the case when it comes to, uh, human females. Okay, what is wrong, what is wrong with the gender differences point?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 37:34 Okay, this is fun.

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Dr. Paul Eastwick 38:35 Gender differences are exciting. Um, and look, evolutionary psychology was born [chuckles] in explaining a lot of these gender differences. I, I get it. I get the- [chuckles] I get their importance, but, um, once again, I think we have overestimated some of them. Let's talk about the mate preferences first. And, you know, I know you're familiar with the concepts of stated and revealed preferences, right? There's a distinction between what people say they want in a partner and what they actually want a partner. Their preferences as they are revealed through interactions with real people. And, and this was one of the first things we studied twenty years ago. We knew that the men in our sample would say they cared about attractiveness more than women, and we knew that the women in our sample would say they cared about ambition more than men. But when we sent them speed dating, what you saw was like, oh, ambition is a mild aphrodisiac. They like the ambitious guys more than the non-ambitious guys, but the men like the ambitious women a little bit more than the unambitious women, and there was no gender differences. And that was the first thing that clued us in that, like, whoa, maybe when men say they want these things, they're misunderstanding their own preferences in some ways, and, and same thing for women, too.

Chris Williamson 39:59 Okay, what has your lab discovered that people find as attractive that an evolutionary lens doesn't typically notice when it comes to gender differences that are either proven or disproven?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 40:11 Um, I would say that p- probably the thing that has stood out the most is, you know, what I just mentioned, so ambition, earning potential. These are... You know, they inspire romantic desire a little bit. [chuckles] People are like a little bit happier in their ongoing relationships if they think their partner is ambitious and successful, for example. But that's really one where we've seen there's no gender difference in that overall effect. Again, people find this a little shocking, like, well, what about the findings where, oh, like, relationships were more likely to break up when the woman earned more? A lot of those things haven't held up [chuckles] to various confounds, so even if you look in the macro trends, you basically see this as well, that, like, the mismatched pairings, you know, mismatch from a gendered perspective, so women earning more than their partners, there's really no costs to that, at least, you know, uh, that, that we see in the, in the contemporary data. So I think all of this-

Chris Williamson 41:09 That's interesting. I mean, I, I've seen-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 41:10 Yeah

Chris Williamson 41:11 ... as I'm sure you have, too, when a man loses his job, the likelihood of divorce goes up by, I think, thirty percent or maybe even fifty percent. When a woman loses her job, the likelihood of divorce doesn't go up at all.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 41:23 Um, I confess, I... The, the divorce data are kinda thorny because a lot of times, yeah, they're not predicting divorce, they're, like, asking people to reflect back on a divorce and asking them why it ended. So I, I am, I'm familiar with, uh, with those data that you're talking about. Um, but generally speaking, um, the- these gender differences are very, very small. And we can get into, like, the contemporary education stuff, too, 'cause that's also, uh, interesting along these lines.

Chris Williamson 41:54 Yeah, hit me.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 41:54 But, yeah. Well, so now we see, right, that women are earning more degrees than men, okay? And I think some people are really worried that this is a contributor to the rise in singledom. I think, I think this is a red herring. Um, from the data that I have seen, there aren't, there aren't costs to women being more educated than men. That nowadays, when couples who are mismatched in education form, it's very- it's more common that the woman has more education than the man, and there's, again, there's no risk to these relationships. These relationships are not at any greater risk than if they had been matched in education or if the man was more educated. So I do think there is a rise in singles, and I do think that, you know, there are challenges there, [chuckles] but, but I don't think it has to do with the men's education level. I think that is unlikely to be the explanation.

Chris Williamson 42:54 ... Hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:56 Explain to me then-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 42:58 Yeah

Chris Williamson 42:58 -what you think women mean, modern women, when they say, "Men need to up their game."

Dr. Paul Eastwick 43:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:07 Uh, there's a million ways that I can put it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 43:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:09 Improve their standards, pick themselves up by their bootstraps, sort themselves out.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 43:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:13 Men need to up their game, which I think is what a lot of the young female-- like, if I look at mid-20s, classic dating advice from wo- whatever the female equivalent of the manosphere is, like dating commentators that are female in their 20s, much of the advice, much of, much of the justification given is, "We're not putting up with men who don't meet our standards anymore."

Dr. Paul Eastwick 43:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:39 What do you think they mean by that?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 43:43 I think what they mean is that what they're seeing online is disappointing, and-

Chris Williamson 43:49 On online dating?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 43:50 Yeah. Um, I think that they're probably not actually meeting many of these guys, and that could be on the guys. That could be because some men have retreated from traditional modes of social in- interaction.

Chris Williamson 44:08 Do you know if they've done that more than women?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 44:11 That, I don't know. It's plausible. I mean, it, you know, it's happening at all ages, [chuckles] that I can tell you. I mean, we're, we're often very eager to blame this on, like, Gen Z, or we want to, like, blame the kids these days for being-

Chris Williamson 44:24 Well, I know that the, the American Time Use Survey recently found out that the average female pet owner spends more time with her pet than all humans combined.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 44:32 Oh, wow! [laughing] That's... Good Lord. But, but look, I, I do think, um, spending time that, you know, phones, screens, I mean, w- whatever it is that's not out there interacting with real people in the world, um, if... Uh, so I haven't seen the data, but I would certainly buy the idea that that's happened to men more than women. That I, I would suggest very well could be the problem. So if we engaged [chuckles] as a society in a large, like, loneliness intervention that got men off the couch and out into the world again, meeting these women, I think things are gonna go a lot better. I'm not saying that women aren't gonna be disappointed in these guys from time to time.

Chris Williamson 45:18 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 45:18 I h- I hope that if they're not as educated, that they've developed some other attributes instead. [chuckles] I hope they're dynamite in the kitchen. But, um, uh, but I think the real problem is people not meeting. I mean, I almost always go back to that, these-

Chris Williamson 45:32 You think that, you think that a guy who has a high school diploma trying to date a woman who has a master's, if he can make a good rigatoni, that would offset his, the delta?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 45:43 Uh, yeah. I mean, um, m- maybe, like, fix the sink. [chuckles] Like, you know, there's, there's lots of useful things that people can do to make themselves appealing. Education is just one among many, but the problem is that w- if you're dating online and you're swiping, it's all being used as a screening criterion, so you're not even getting to the first date, much less interacting with somebody for-

Chris Williamson 46:04 Does this not play, does this not play into the mating market justification, though?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 46:09 No, no, I know it does. No, but this is the problem. Th- this is, uh, it... This is why, like, online dating makes it all worse, right? O- o- online dating means like, oh, not only are the tens gonna do way better than the sevens, who are gonna do way better than the fours-

Chris Williamson 46:24 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 46:24 ... but I don't even need to bother interacting with you in the first place if you don't check all the boxes.

Chris Williamson 46:31 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 46:31 And to me, that's a bummer, because what, what I know and what w- I've seen time and time again is that the boxes that you think are so important, and again, it does- gender doesn't matter, uh, who on this. Men do this, too. The boxes that you think are so important, I can tell you, they go right out the window once you meet face to face, for good or for ill.

Chris Williamson 46:54 Yeah, okay. Uh, I mean, this was our first conversation from a couple of years ago. People should go back and watch that. I think the, the, the research that you did, looking at stated and revealed preferences and, and how that sort of percolates, was really fascinating.

Chris Williamson 47:07 Do me a 30,000-foot view. What is it that men and women think that they're going to find appealing in the opposite sex, and what is it that actually matters?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 47:17 Um, I think, I think, look, in broad strokes, they do get some of these things right. I mean, they think they want somebody that, that they find i- intelligent, and somebody that they think has got a good sense of humor, and, and somebody who's gonna be loyal to them, and indeed, like, these are qualities that matter. It's really important that we feel that our partners have these things. If anything, both men and women underestimate how much attractiveness is important. And, and here, what I'm really talking about is the feeling you have that somebody else i- is attractive. I think sometimes both, uh, women and even men, to some extent, think it's a little shallow [chuckles] if I put attractiveness at the top of my must-have attributes.

Chris Williamson 47:59 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 48:00 Um, but it is important to think that your partner is sexy. It's especially important to think your partner is a good lover. I mean, we found that that was number one in terms of what actually mattered, in terms of pr- predicting how happy people were in their relationships. If you ask people to rate that on a scale, it's not quite so high. So those are a few of the examples, but I think in large part, what makes people happy in relationships is, is, yeah, you wanna think your partner has all those things, but let's also don't forget about the dyadic stuff. It's like, if I had a crappy day, do I feel like I can talk to you about it, and you're gonna listen to what went wrong with, you know, with my day? You're gonna try to, try to, you know, bolster me back up. If something good happened to me, are you more excited about it than I am, right? Those are-

Chris Williamson 48:50 So what are we talking about there? Patience, attentiveness to detail?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 48:54 Um, it's, it's supportiveness-... but it gets, um, to a, it- it's like supportiveness, but supportive in a way that isn't like, oh, like you're a supportive friend. Like, oh, you're the kind of person everybody goes to-

Chris Williamson 49:08 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 49:08 -when something's gone wrong. I want you, as a partner, to be exceptionally attuned to, like, my goals, my dreams. I mean, this is kind of what we've done to [chuckles] to marriage recently. We expect our partner to do all these things, but indeed, people tend to be much happier in their relationships if they feel like their partner has their back and is, like, supporting them as they pursue the things that they want to pursue. It can be a tall order, but these generally tend to be the things that matter the most for people.

Chris Williamson 49:40 What- if you were to give people advice, and you were to say, "Here are a couple of traits that you can usually detect within the first few dates, or maybe even online," um, what are the ones that you wish you could advise people to dispense with and put in the bin? What are people overestimating on, and what are people underestimating on?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 50:04 [inhales] That's a good question. I think they underestimate the importance of, uh, vulnerability, their own vulnerability, and the other person's. And again, like, you're describing it like a trait, but that isn't totally how I think about it. It's not like I want to find a vulnerable person. I want to find somebody who's willing to be vulnerable with me, who's willing to disclose things to me. I mean, I don't know if you've ever had this experience of, like, getting to know somebody, but the first time they tell you something deeply personal about themselves, you get the sense they haven't told this to many people.

Chris Williamson 50:40 Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 50:40 That's kind of an aphrodisiac in and of itself. It's like, this person is really opening up to me. They must really trust me.

Chris Williamson 50:47 Feel chosen and special. Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 50:50 Exactly. So, so there's something at the intersection of vulnerability that I think people don't quite get. I think when people think about dating, they think about self-promotion, they think about putting the best version of themselves out there.

Chris Williamson 51:01 Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 51:01 But a lot of times, coming across-- A- again, this is gonna shock a lot of [chuckles] people, but there, there really is research on this. Like, coming across as a little bit vulnerable, a little bit like you kind of are, uh... like, needy is too strong, but, like, just a touch of openness to having somebody else do, [chuckles] do things for you, to learning from another person, that's maybe a good way of thinking about it.

Chris Williamson 51:27 You know what, you know what it makes me think of? It makes me think of kind of like emotional reciprocal altruism in that way. I'm going to give you a little thing, and in the giving of that... What's that psychological study where people prefer you to ask them for a favor than to do a favor for them? Because inherent in that is this reciprocal, "At some point in future, you think that maybe I could do this back to you, and I feel helpful." Um, [exhales] an interesting, like, wrinkle in that, I guess, would be I'd love to have this broken down by age. I get the sense that younger people are going to be- they're going to find a m- a tougher time to work out what the emotional complexity of this person means. Does this vulnerability signal a lack of resilience and revot- resource provisioning a- at 22, when at 32 you actually realize, wow, this person's been very brave in order to get themselves to the stage where they can open up? I'm looking for different sorts of things. I understand this in the gr- in the broader context. And the reason I say this is I know all of my single friends in their 30s, if they post something that is like a dog photo, or them holding a nephew, or them-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 52:51 Yeah. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 52:52 - talking in a kind of mindful way, those sorts of posts get way more engagement from women than they would have done in their 20s. And also, they get way more engagement from women than posting their car, or their Rolex, or their new deadlift. Like, the, the bottom line is, I think a lot of the, like, alpha posturing stuff that guys think is attractive to women st- m- might be in kind of like an ancillary way, but it also says a lot about what you value-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 53:25 Yeah

Chris Williamson 53:25 ... and what would be a better place to start. A- and controversial fucking take:

Dr. Paul Eastwick 53:30 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 53:30 If you po- if you post pro-family stuff as a guy who's trying to get a partner, I think that you are swimming immediately into a blue ocean.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 53:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:39 Whereas if you try and post- if you try and post a Lamborghini photo, i- i- it's not even a red ocean. You haven't even jumped in. I don't think that girls care. Um, like I, I, I may be wrong, I may be- there may be floods of women in the comments who are saying, "I, I love seeing it when guys post their new car on their Instagram. Like, it makes me so attracted to them." Something tells me-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 54:01 I'm sure there are a few [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 54:03 ... that's not how many it is.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 54:03 [chuckles] No, but I, I, I love this idea. Um, I think the age idea is interesting, or at least the idea that, um, that as people age and, you know, they have more experience dating, that they kind of learn from their past experiences and grow and change. I think there's something to be said for that sort of maturation, although-

Chris Williamson 54:21 Ooh, ooh, sorry, I need to interrupt. Think about, you-- so you've got your idea of, um, over time, the compatibility-driven bonding, and that is within an interaction with a s- with a single individual, you work out that you like them more, therefore, you rate them more highly. That's kind of the way that it works. I think that you have this longitudinally across someone's dating career.... that over time-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 54:51 Oh, that's cool.

Chris Williamson 54:51 You know, does that make sense?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 54:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:52 Do you understand what I'm getting at?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 54:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, I, I'm quite sure that study has never been done, because it's very, very hard to track people across their dating career. I could, I could kind of, one hand-

Chris Williamson 55:02 What did you used to like? What did you like five years ago? What do you like now? How are you optimizing on the front end for different things? And this would explain our little theory about why vulnerability, perhaps in your 30s, means something different than vulnerability in your 20s. That maybe the 22-year-old that's got the Lambo is different to the 39-year-old who's posting the Lambo.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 55:24 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and there's, there's a tricky thing, too [chuckles] about dating over time, which is that, like, what people are trying to do as they date, and, and this even goes, you know, in your 30s, you get a divorce or two, like, this is, this is all part of the process-

Chris Williamson 55:39 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 55:39 ... is that each next relationship is, like, a little different than the one that came before, but it's also gonna have some similarities. It's actually very challenging to know: how can I be a new person in this relationship that's gonna make this one work and not fall into the, the same pitfalls of the prior relationship? It's a tricky dance because there are some things that you were doing in that prior relationship that actually worked well, and you should do those again, and there are other things that you should totally scrap and go in a different direction. And of course, all of this ends up being a, a dyadic give and take with another person.

Chris Williamson 56:15 How-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 56:16 We are really at the vanguard right now. Like, research doesn't study things as well as the conversation [chuckles] we're having.

Chris Williamson 56:22 This episode is brought to you by Whoop. I have been wearing Whoop for over five years now, way before they were a partner on the show. I've actually tracked over 1,600 days of my life with it, according to the app, which is insane, and it's the only wearable I've ever stuck with because it tracks everything that matters: sleep, workouts, recovery, breathing, heart rate, even your steps. And the new 5.0 is the best version. You get all the benefits that make Whoop indispensable, 7% smaller, but now it's also got a 14-day battery life and has Health Span to track your habits, how they affect your pace of aging. It's got hormonal insights for ladies. I'm a huge, huge fan of Whoop. That's why it's the only wearable that I've ever stuck with, and best of all, you can join for free. Pay nothing for the brand-new Whoop 5.0 strap, plus you get your first month for free, and there's a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can buy it for free. Try it for free. If you do not like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand-new Whoop 5.0 and that 30-day trial by going to the link in the description below, or heading to join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. That's join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. I think that's a cool idea, dude. Well, I... Even if it can never be studied, I think that-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 57:39 Yeah

Chris Williamson 57:39 ... looking at the increasing dexterity with which you're able to discern your preferences over time and how they move, um, learning yourself and learning other people, I think is fucking fascinating, and I think that that's- I think that's really cool. And I don't think... You know, I'm very much kind of the, the token idiot representative for the evolutionary world here, a- at least on this side of the fence, but I, uh, I, I would argue that I think that perspective is going to be something that would be difficult for, uh, evolutionary psychology to, to do the research into, but maybe something that relationship science might be, might, might be better at. So I,

Chris Williamson 58:20 I, I guess the, the question that comes to mind is: How much of attraction is just a matter of taste and timing, then? What's the role of taste and timing when it comes to attraction?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 58:31 I think it's a lot of it. Um, if we look at, at people who are meeting for the first time, I alluded to this earlier, but if you look at that consensus component, it's totally there, but compatibility, what we might call taste and timing, I mean, [chuckles] that's sort of wrapped up in the, in the term compatibility, but, um, that's gonna be a little bigger, and it ends up growing more over time. Now, the tricky thing about taste and timing is that it is remarkably hard to predict, 'cause you might think, like, "Well, I can sort of make use of this whole compatibility component by, I don't know, like, if I really wanna be with somebody who's tall," for example, "if I just, like... You know, okay, let's line up the tall guys, and I can- you know, I'm more likely to find somebody who's gonna especially appeal to me." And this is just another one of those challenges. It doesn't quite work that way. Like, we know compatibility is important, but it's remarkably hard to predict, and a lot of it comes through conversation, but it's often, like, the random, like, sidetracks that we get onto in conversations, where two people find that, oh, like, whoa, we w- you know, uh, had the same, like, uh, you know, elementary school teacher three years apart, or something like that, right? You find those little nuggets, those little moments of serendipity while you're talking with somebody else. That's where a lot of the magic comes from, but it's just remarkably hard to predict that stuff.

Chris Williamson 1:00:03 Okay, what about short-term versus long-term distinctions? Is it alpha chads versus beta dads or sort of hookup material versus relationship material? Are these things true?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:00:13 Not exactly. Uh, what is true is, as we've talked about, some people are better in the initial attraction realm, and so what that means is that if you're somebody that's a 10, you're gonna have more hookup opportunities. You're gonna have more sex partners over the course of your life. Um, you know, these sorts of short-term successes, you'll have more of those. The issue is that, and this is, again, this is like, wait, what? These guys, um, they actually-

Chris Williamson 1:00:46 And girls.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:00:46 aren't... And girls. [chuckles] Um, there's no real long-term-... cost to that. In other words, the attributes that make somebody desirable in the short term, they're just irrelevant to a person's long-term desirability. Attractiveness makes people-

Chris Williamson 1:01:05 Not irrelevant.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:01:06 No, truly, it, the correlation of zero with, uh, they, uh, you know, how good their partners will ultimately rate them. In fact, if anything, some of this stuff goes in the opposite direction.

Chris Williamson 1:01:20 Okay, question-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:01:21 So if you-

Chris Williamson 1:01:21 Question.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:01:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:21 Just a, a question on that. If over time, a husband or a wife was to gain a lot of weight, which is probably a reliable way to decrease your attractiveness, most people would rather be of a healthy weight than, than, than not. Very few people look good, better fat than look g- better at a, a fit body weight.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:01:41 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:01:43 Are you saying that that would have no predictive power over whether or not their partner would still be attracted to them?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:01:48 I, I'm, I'm, I- you know, all the data I've seen, all the attractiveness data I've seen, I mean, you're d- you're describing a trend over time, and I'm pretty sure that study hasn't been done. But just straight up, what is the attractiveness level of these people? And I'm going to correlate that with the romantic satisfaction of their partners, how happy they are, or do I want to continue this relationship into the future? Correlation is near zero. It just doesn't-

Chris Williamson 1:02:13 Okay

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:02:13 ... predict much of anything.

Chris Williamson 1:02:14 I, I, I understand what the data may suggest, even though we don't have data around this specifically, but I think we can all use intuition, and that can be sufficiently powerful here, that if your husband gains 50 pounds over the space of three years, the likelihood that you see him in the exact same way-- or, uh, take it to an, do reductio ad absurdum, 150 pounds. Like, y- y- you're, you're talking about attractiveness can't be zero. It simply can't be zero.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:02:41 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, look, I, I t- I totally get it, and people will have... people will have experiences like what you're talking about, and, [chuckles] and, and be like: "Well, then I don't buy the data." A- and, and I absolutely get it. I'm just... like, I gotta work with, [chuckles] with what's in front of me. I will note this, um, it is true that, like, as people go through changes and as they age, like, we can look at things like age, what does that do over time? As people age, especially, like, into middle age and all of the things that come with that, there is an overall decrease in people's satisfaction, right? So and, and, and look, some of that is related to the fact that challenges emerge as you have kids. Like, jobs are often really hard when you [chuckles] get into your 40s and 50s. So you do s- and, and, and probably people get more out of shape, too. So I totally buy that that can be part of that broader age-related trend. Um, so, uh, so, so I do think there is something to that. But if we're thinking about, like, you know, differences between people, and a lot of the way these studies are done, it's like I get some attributes on you at baseline, and then I use that to predict how your partner feels about you, you know, three months later, six months later. You know, w- we're not talking about the kinds of time frames that, that i- in your example. But with those kinds of studies, the attributes that make somebody more desirable, the confident guys, uh, and, and, and women, [chuckles] um, the attractive men and women, just, uh, when you use that to predict long-term relationship success, um, it just doesn't do all that much.

Chris Williamson 1:04:22 Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:04:22 And, and actually, this is... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:23 And so going back to the short-term versus long-term distinction-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:04:28 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:04:29 ... you're talking about, uh, some people signal in the way that they look, a, um, alpha or maybe easy or kind of tarty, flirty energy from the female side, um, that suggests: "I am up for short-term mating," and that people then bucket them into categories. What you're suggesting is that this doesn't necessarily seem to be true. Is it not the case, though, that people's behavior, like if you give up sex on the first date, does that not suggest something different about your motivations? Does- is there not an implication in the same way as if I turn up to the first date wearing joggers-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:05:10 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:05:10 ... as opposed to wearing a two-piece suit-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:05:12 Right

Chris Williamson 1:05:12 ... that suggests something about my character? If I give up sex or if I push for sex on the first date as a man, does that not also suggest something about my personality?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:05:24 Um, I, I think it does suggest things about your, about your personality, and I'm certainly not going to s- suggest that it's necessarily a good idea, or at least certainly not a good idea in all contexts. But I think the, the easiest step for people to make is to think of sh- short term, long term. It's not a single dimension. Let's talk about it as two dimensions, okay? So some people are, you know, willing to have sex on the first date, and some people are not, and maybe those people will be good long-term partners, or maybe they won't be. Do you see what I mean? Like, think about it as, uh, independent ways of measuring differences between people rather than as a single dimension that we're putting people on. It actually gets more complicated than that, but we can sort of start there with the idea that, like, somebody... like, the, the n- the notches that somebody has on their bed post, it just ultimately doesn't predict that much about how happy they'll be in their relationships. Like, you know, you'll see people- you get this in, like, the family studies community. Sometimes we'll talk about, like, oh, like, having premarital sex is, like, bad for your marriage. Like, barely. Those correlations are absolutely tiny. I would not worry about that at all. So it's stuff like that. It is not the case that people who are more likely to have sex or eager to have sex early ultimately have worse relationships.

Chris Williamson 1:06:50 I don't think that they would have worse relationships. What I think is-... the, what that tells the other person, whether it's accurate or not, whether it's correct that this person who gives up sex on the first date or doesn't, is going to be a different sort of a partner, your interpretation of them is what matters. Like, this is your entire point, right? Your entire point is that the objective metrics, the kind of truth, doesn't necessarily matter. What matters is compatibility-driven pair bonding, which also means if part of my compatibility, which I would say for a lot of women, is if this guy takes me out on five dates and treats me really nicely and only then asks for a kiss, I would consider him to be, uh, sort of sexually disciplined. I would consider him to be quite withheld. It seems like he's really treating me nicely. That would be a different sort of interpretation, right or wrong, and because your interpretation is all that matters, which is the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:07:45 Right

Chris Williamson 1:07:45 ... entirety of your thesis-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:07:47 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:07:47 If you do that, whether it's true in the data about what that means for long-term relationship satisfaction, if you were to stick with them or not, the fact that you have had your perspective of this person changed by their behavior means that it's true. Is that a fair conception?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:08:05 I love it. I absolutely love it. And so what you'd want, [chuckles] if you're trying to date effectively in this world, is you'd wanna know, like, as I'm going on a first date with you, w- what exactly would it mean if I, you know, made it clear I wanted to have sex with you tonight, versus on date three, versus on date five?

Chris Williamson 1:08:22 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:08:23 And to kind of play into the script that that person was wanting or expecting. Again, also kind of depending on what it is that you want. You know, maybe you're only like this person enough to wanna have sex with them; you're not really interested in something long.

Chris Williamson 1:08:39 But that, uh, uh, so perfect example there. Um, that is exactly what I think the signal is. That is w- w- one of them, is: Is this person serious? Do they see me as a real, like, investment opportunity? Um, and, it, that's, we're more talking, I think, about the female side, but on the male side, it's: What's this woman's level of chastity like? Scarcity, for better or for worse, whether it shows up in the data as an accurate representation or not, scarcity is seen as a store of value. Something which is rarer is often seen as more valuable, whether it's true or not. And I, I can tell you, if you were to, if you were to go and survey, um, 100 men that are in long-term relationships, and then another 100 men that are in marriages, and then another 100 men that were single, and to the guys that were in relationships, you were to say, "With your partner, what was the amount of time that it took from the first date until you had sex?" And with the guys that were single, or in fact, you could just do it across all of the guys that are partnered, "In previous, uh, with previous women who you didn't end up in a relationship with, what was the amount of time?" I would be very surprised if you don't see a longer duration from first date until they got physically intimate in the relationships that they are currently in now, or the one that they stay in for the rest of their life, compared with the ones that did not graduate-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:10:03 It didn't go anywhere

Chris Williamson 1:10:04 ... Correct.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:10:04 I, I get this intuition. We have some data that can speak to this, and what I can tell you is that when you look at the trajectory of relationships that will become short-term or long-term, and I, and I think this is how I like to think about short-term, long-term. Short-term is, "Um, I liked you enough to, like, hook up, but, mm, that was kind of it." Versus long-term is like: "I liked you enough to hook up, and, like, also, like, please stay for breakfast, 'cause you're great and I love hanging out with you." So when you line those things up, the first, like, you know, several events that happen: I meet you, I talk, maybe I meet your friends, we hang out one-on-one. Even through, like, the first, like, hookup, make out, even first sexual experience, boy, do those trajectories look similar. People don't necessarily know where this thing is go- is going. And what we actually find... This doesn't get to your, your time frame hypothesis exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:11:05 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:11:06 But what we do see is that if you look at first sex, the first sexual experience, people rate as far more positively in l- relationships that become long-term than relationships that become short-term. As if the good sex catapults relationships even higher, catapults them into the long term.

Chris Williamson 1:11:27 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:11:27 The short-term relationships are the ones that are kind of like, "Eh," like-

Chris Williamson 1:11:31 There wasn't, there wasn't compatibility there.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:11:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:32 Well, I, like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:11:33 Yeah, like, this is okay

Chris Williamson 1:11:34 ... Well, I, I would say, I would say that sexual compatibility being, uh, judged early or not early is unsurprising. Like, this is just another one of the levels at which, uh, it's a gate that you need to get through, and you either did or didn't get through that gate. What would be... And you can't do this, you would l- I would love to run it back and have somebody who did have good sex, but it was two dates in, and somebody who did have good sex, but it was five dates in, and then-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:12:01 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:12:01 ... the same couple-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:12:02 And look at that

Chris Williamson 1:12:02 ... and see what happened over time, because that's really what we're getting at. What we're getting at is what is the, w- what is the impact of the duration of waiting? And I think this is easier to me to talk about than objective metrics of, like, alpha presentation. Does the guy have a high shoulder-to-waist ratio?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:12:22 [chuckles] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:22 Does the woman wear revealing clothing? But, I mean, that would be something you could do, too. Like, how much skin-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:12:26 Yep

Chris Williamson 1:12:26 ... is on display in the first few dates?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:12:28 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:12:28 And what does that signal? Because that does signal more availability, higher sociosexuality. Has she got a choker necklace on?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:12:34 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:12:35 Is he wearing a low-cut top? Did he, did he sort of touch your arm as you go? I- all of these-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:12:39 Yep

Chris Williamson 1:12:39 ... different elements, I think, can be reliable cues into how-... how good of a long-term prospect is this person, and how much are they invested in me? And how much are they-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:12:52 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:12:52 -thinking about this way out into the future versus just for now?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:12:56 Yes. Now, and what I love about all of this is that, like it or not, uh, th- through this conversation, I think I've got you thinking like a relationship scientist. Not that you have dropped [chuckles] your evolutionary bona fides-

Chris Williamson 1:13:08 Mm-hmm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:13:08 ... but you're thinking about, "Okay, I want to see these two people meeting and interacting on multiple occasions, and see- seeing how these different behaviors and these different features affect what happens." That is how a relationship psychologist thinks. Show me these two people together.

Chris Williamson 1:13:24 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:13:24 Let's try to follow them over time, and we'll see what happens. But I can tell you that these kinds of studies, especially at the timeframe that we're talking about, people initially meeting, are we going to have sex or not? There are so few studies that look at this-

Chris Williamson 1:13:38 Yeah

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:13:38 ... 'cause this is hard work to do, and really only the close relationships folks are, are doing it. This is not how things are done in the Evo Psych scientific literature.

Chris Williamson 1:13:49 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:13:50 But, but we agree, these would be the best data.

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Chris Williamson 1:14:54 Well, look, uh, to, to counterbalance my evolutionary psychology bona fides, um, I, I, I started off an episode maybe with Tai Tashiro, maybe with somebody else, and I was explaining... Oh, no, it was, uh, Gay Hendricks, actually. So, um, I do this episode, and I basically started off explaining my journey, and I think that this is what a lot of guys, mindful guys that try to understand human mating will go through. I started off, and I said: I want to understand human nature, so I went to evolutionary psychology, and I under- uh, began to understand adaptive explanations for behavior, proximate and ultimate, sc- male parental uncertainty, et cetera, et cetera. And then I thought, "Okay, but that doesn't necessarily explain what's happening now, so then I'm going to look at the mismatch in the modern world," and that was the next stage. So it's, okay, how do these predispositions come into contact with the real world at the moment? And that's when you start to learn about sort of tall girl problem, and manosphere, and red pill dating, and-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:15:57 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:15:57 ... uh, uh, uh, sex ratio hypothesis on campuses, and so on and so forth. But that still isn't how we experience relationships. The way that we experience relationships is through our nervous system, one-on-one with another person.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:16:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:12 And sure, there are objective metrics. This person is this tall, this person earns this much, this woman's g- this is her age.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:16:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:21 But ultimately, the experience of our relationships occurs, like, in union with another person, and it's just how do we feel when we're around them? Ultimately, it all comes down to that. So I've said for a good while, I think that the evolutionary psychology world, as fantastic as it is, and as much as it's unearthed lots of cool, interesting insights, what it doesn't do is actually explain what the experience of being in a relationship is like.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:16:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:49 And I'm not convinced that this is even the realm of relationship science either. This is much closer to the realm of philosophy and psychotherapy.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:16:57 Yeah. No, it's a- it, it, it is, I think, an astute observation that people go through [chuckles] those stages that you're describing, and I would say that one thing that I try to do in the book is make the case that a lot of this, the human connection, right, how we feel about somebody else, it gets away from a lot of the, you know, tens will beat the twos kind of material pretty early on. One of the things [chuckles] that people can do in an initial interaction that will- it will shock you how much this can build closeness, how much this can get somebody to like you-

Chris Williamson 1:17:33 Hmm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:17:33 ... is ask a deeper question than you think. Something like: What is something you're worried about that you've never told anybody? And if you're willing to disclose that back, like, that is magic right there. I mean, that is the best experimental manipulation we have ever come up with in our science for getting people to like each other. It's disclose more than you naturally would by get- you know, in getting to know somebody over the course of an hour.

Chris Williamson 1:17:59 Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:17:59 So all of this stuff is important, and you don't have to wait until day 10 [chuckles] to get into this stuff. You can do it earlier than you think.

Chris Williamson 1:18:08 What's your, uh, definition of attachment in adulthood, then? Like, what, what is it that they're providing?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:18:16 [inhales] Um, I think a lot of it is around support. A lot of what attachment is, is feeling like I need to be around this person, if not literally, at least in your mind, at least through, [chuckles] you know, various forms of communication. But being in touch, uh, having somebody who's gonna be there for me when things go badly, and having them- somebody that's gonna be there for me when things go right, these are really the, the critical things that people need to feel. A lot of that ends up getting wrapped up... You know, if you're in a relationship, it gets wrapped up in, like, your daily goals, and like, how do I support you with the things you want to do, but are my needs being met? These things get very complicated very, very quickly.

Chris Williamson 1:18:55 Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:18:55 But the essence of attachment is essentially this sense, like, I am here for you, I trust that you're here for me, and, like, I'm kind of willing to do everything in my power, you know, within reason, to support you.

Chris Williamson 1:19:08 Right. So it's support in adversity and support in growth.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:19:12 ... Yeah, exactly. The, it, it, thinking about it in those sort of twin forms of support is very, very helpful.

Chris Williamson 1:19:17 Okay. Why are breakups so psychologically destabilizing with this perspective, then?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:19:22 Yeah. I mean, breakups are tough because not only have you lost something valuable to you, lost something that you cared about, you have also probably lost the person that you would normally go to in the cases where you had lost something that you cared about. So it's like this double whammy of stress, and this is why, like, when people go through breakups, they can't sleep, they don't eat p- maybe at all, [chuckles] or they, they certainly aren't eating well. Um, their immune systems are kind of a mess. Like, your body goes into fight or flight, but there's nothing to fight or flee, and so, you know, people end up... You know, you kinda get sick. So it's really a mess for people, and that, that is tied to these attachment processes. Because people don't have the sense, to the same extent, that there's somebody who's got their back, they kind of fall apart. And this is why I'm always tempted to tell people, like, "If you've got friends going through a breakup, and they're gonna wanna go through the story with you five, 10 times," like, uh, you don't really wanna hear it again, but it sure is kind [chuckles] -

Chris Williamson 1:20:31 Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:20:31 ... to, to listen to them an extra time. 'Cause remember, it's not just that they've had a bad thing happen, they've also lost their support structure that would have helped them with other bad things.

Chris Williamson 1:20:44 What... Have you looked at the evidence of how people can recover from breakups more or less effectively?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:20:50 Yeah, there, I mean, there are a few things people can do. Um, one thing is to, [exhales] uh, form another relationship. It's kinda cliche, but, like, this one's kinda true. [chuckles] Like, uh, like, when people form relationships, they kinda get over the prior one. I'm not commenting on the wisdom of [chuckles] repeatedly forming relationships without taking any time off for yourself. In fact, there is evidence that the longer time people have between relationships, the happier the next one will be. These are small effects, but, but they're real. Um, another thing that really matters for people, though, is having support in other people and, and forming a coherent story about what happened. And it really just matters that that story is coherent. [chuckles] Maybe that story is, "Your ex is a jackass," maybe that story is, like, "You're gonna do better next time," but y- you gotta have a, a coherent tale for how things went wrong. Uh, otherwise, it's very hard for people to get over.

Chris Williamson 1:21:48 Mm. Okay, so you need to construct a narrative that makes sense?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:21:53 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that, that, that's really key, and like, in part, that's why people [chuckles] keep wanting to rehash the story, right? That's why they want friends around to, [chuckles] to tell the story to over, and over, and over again. I mean, this can be really hard in cases where there's deception involved, and it's like you feel like you gotta, like, sift through the pieces, right? 'Cause you really need the story of, of what actually happened.

Chris Williamson 1:22:17 Why do you need-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:22:17 This is, yeah-

Chris Williamson 1:22:18 Why do you need the story?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:22:20 Well, [chuckles] it's really, you need a story, and I think it's... I think in part, the reason why is that, I mean, in general, narratives are very helpful for people. I mean, whether it's a narrative about, like, the course of my life or what I'm doing with myself this year, and people love narratives. But it's especially true in breakups, too, I think because people need to feel like, "Okay, I've gone through the, the challenge part of this story, and now I'm coming out the other side, and there's reason for hope because I have learned something. I won't make that mistake again."

Chris Williamson 1:22:56 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:22:57 "Or I have grown, I, I have, you know, new skills and abilities that are gonna help me next time." So when you feel those things, you have some sense of optimism for the future, and, and things just don't totally feel chaotic.

Chris Williamson 1:23:12 Mm. How much of this do you think is sort of an open-loop, closed-loop thing as well?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:23:17 Um-

Chris Williamson 1:23:18 Like a relationship-based zeigarnik effect type?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:23:21 Yeah, that's interesting. Uh, uh, yeah, I, I think that probably is part of it, that like, you need to feel like the prior thing has closed down before you can move on to the next thing.

Chris Williamson 1:23:34 I think-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:23:34 And, and that can be, too, why, like, getting in a new relationship helps because if you're spending all your time thinking about this new person, then you're not thinking about-

Chris Williamson 1:23:42 You're not thinking about the old one.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:23:43 No.

Chris Williamson 1:23:43 I suppose the problem-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:23:43 Exactly

Chris Williamson 1:23:44 ... the problem that you encounter there is, if you move on and you are, you haven't closed the loops in the previous one, those, the ghosts of those previous relationships are bleeding in as you're trying to form a new bond. And you're like, "Well, I, uh, this, the previous one isn't severed, really. Like, that, that loop is still open to me."

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:24:03 Yeah, right, exactly. There is... Okay, so, so, uh, I, I think I've told you this before, but I've got this movie podcast where, with Eli Finkel, where we talk. It's called Love, Factually, and we talk about movies. And we just covered, um, My Best Friend's Wedding, and that's an incredible example of this because I think, like, the main guy that the two women are fighting over in that movie, um, he's not quite over the Jules- the Julia Roberts character. And he keeps trying to, like, bring aspects of that relationship into his new one. That's a disaster. Like, people don't wanna feel like you are retreading your old relationship with them now that you've started a new relationship. They wanna feel like this relationship is new and special, and we're carving something out together.

Chris Williamson 1:24:50 Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:24:50 You can't just, like, borrow the pieces from the old relationship. That is a, a disastrous [chuckles] idea.

Chris Williamson 1:24:55 Well, I think the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:24:56 So, you know... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:24:57 The, the interesting thing about relationships in general, Vesa Karbersemie's got this idea where he says, "A relationship is a microculture," and it is. You, you, you and your partner have this weird, uh, like, subculture that only you two know, what, things that you expect to do before you get into bed, the words that you use to refer to that building over there, the in-joke that nobody else would get, the clothing that you wear when you go to breakfast on a Sunday. Like, all of these things are this, this unique culture of two-... And then if the relationship breaks down, it's not just the loss of the person, it's the loss of this microculture also. And that means that you can't, every time that you see that lip salve that you used to wear on an evening time, or that squirrel that was the joke about the squirrel that you used to make, or those items of clothing that somebody else wears, which is similar to the thing that you guys used to wear when you went for breakfast.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:25:54 Yep. I mean, these microcultures, they're, they're beautiful things to behold. We've only recently started studying how these cultures work, how they're formed, why they matter. One thing is clear, is that people who experience their little unique microculture with their partners on a more regular basis tend to be happier in their relationships. Um, whether that's like sharing-- it- and we ask people like, "What are these things?" And they give us, like, pet names that make no sense. [chuckles] They give us the, you know, names of rituals and stories that are absolutely bizarre, like sequet- a secret squirrel root. What does that mean? I don't know, but it's really meaningful to these two people.

Chris Williamson 1:26:37 Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:26:37 Um, so this is in many-- these are in many ways like, you know, the, the, the things that make relationships have life for people. And yeah, when they're gone, they feel... It feels absolutely devastating to have lost that. This is al- in large part, like, why compatibility is also tied to history. Like, the history you have with another person is just a huge part of why we end up, you know, loving this person rather than somebody else. Like, in some ways, that's not that romantic. It's like, "What? I just could've loved anybody if they'd been nearby?"

Chris Williamson 1:27:11 Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:27:12 Like, yeah, kinda, but also, isn't it beautiful that people create these things together over time, and that this can really be something, the goofy in-jokes, whatever, that, that really sustains them?

Chris Williamson 1:27:23 What are the pro-relationship biases at play then?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:27:28 Yeah. So luckily, we've got all of these wonderful pro-relationship biases that help us to maintain relationships over time. I would say probably the main one is that people tend to derogate alternative partners. This is important. I mean, it gets back to our earlier discussion. How can an eight be with a five? Well, when there are attractive partners coming up to that eight, those attractive alternative partners are already operating at a disadvantage, because if they're eights too, she sees them as sixes. It's like an automatic bias that's built in right off the top, that downgrades anybody else who's gonna come along. At least this is what the average person does in a relationship. This is an important defense mechanism. It means that, you know, when the person in the cubicle next to me is kind of flirting with me, I, like, literally don't notice.

Chris Williamson 1:28:21 Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:28:21 I don't encode it as flirting, [chuckles] and I certainly wouldn't care if they were, because they seem less appealing to me than they would if I were single. It's this really critical bias that people have.

Chris Williamson 1:28:32 Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah, the idealization thing, the perceived superiority of your partner is really fascinating. I mean, that's, you know, that's an evolutionary, uh, theory too. The, the, the, the fact that your attachment to one person kind of makes you blind to other potential partners.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:28:53 Exactly. And look, I often talk about this like it's a good thing, okay? That we need that to sustain our relationships, 'cause relationships are hard, and there often are temptations out there. And so if we didn't have these biases, it would be the horror show of, of always feeling like you're trading up. But luckily, we got these biases that tend to keep relationships moving. Okay, but at the same time, sometimes relationships are actually toxic, [chuckles] they're actually bad for people, and this also explains why it can be really hard for people to snap out of this, why it can be really hard for people to see that they should probably get out of this relationship and look for something better-

Chris Williamson 1:29:35 Hmm

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:29:35 ... because they've got these biases in place. So it, it really does cut both ways. It's really important that we have these biases for sustaining our relationships, but sometimes they make relationships, like, last longer than they

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:29:47 should.

Chris Williamson 1:29:48 What is the relationship science perspective on humans' set point mating system? Are we monogamous? Are we serially monogamous? Are we monogamish? Are we polygynous? What do you think?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:30:02 Yeah, it's a good question. I think we're definitely, we're creatures that attach, right? I, like, I- I'm very careful in the book not to talk about monogamy, right? Having one sex partner, 'cause I don't... I think that's, it's, like, a little bit of a distraction. So we're creatures who at- uh, attach, and we form attachment bonds. Okay, when it comes to sex specifically, I'd describe us as serial monogamists, in the sense that we often move from partner to partner. I think you can design a system that allows for attachments between people and also allows sex with multiple people, right? I think you can look at contemporary polyamorous communities and make a case that like, "Hey, here's a situation where I'm attached to you, and I have sex with you, and I'm also attached to this person, and I have sex with this person, and these relationships don't threaten each other." Humans are, are-- some humans [chuckles] are-

Chris Williamson 1:31:02 It's a rare-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:31:03 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:31:03 It's a fucking rare breed-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:31:05 Yeah, yeah

Chris Williamson 1:31:05 ... dude.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:31:05 No, no, no. I, I tot- I totally get it, because a lot of times, when you're attached to somebody, you wanna feel special, and many times, feeling special means they wanna have sex with me, and they only wanna have sex with me.

Chris Williamson 1:31:16 Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:31:17 But, um, but, but yes, I do think of, of humans as creatures, we form serial relationships over time. Um, if we wanna sort of p- put ourselves in the serial monogamy bucket, that makes sense.... but, um, but, but I really think attachment is the key thing. Like, we have to have attachments in our lives, whether they're romantic or not, or we just completely fall apart.

Chris Williamson 1:31:40 So it would suggest that some of these pro-relationship biases have a life cycle to them, and they sort of build and then wane over time?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:31:48 Yeah, I mean, that is the sad truth of most [chuckles] relationships, is that people, on average, feel worse about their partners 10 years in than they did at five years, than they did at one year in. I mean, just-

Chris Williamson 1:32:00 Wow

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:32:01 ... people kind of sour a little bit over time. Um, but it's not true for everybody. In fact, you know, probably a good chunk, maybe even the majority of relationships, people start high and stay high over time. But relationships, um, they're not all built to last forever, and building one that lasts forever is really, really hard. Like, my perspective on relationships, and, you know, I talk about these fuzzy topics, right? You know, relationship biases, attachments, you know, loving and support, blah, blah, blah. I believe in all this stuff, but I don't mean to make it sound easy. [chuckles] Like, it's really hard, and it's really easy for people to screw up, too, and when you do, the heartbreak is really, really tough. So mating markets are tough, [chuckles] maintaining relationships are tough. It's all tough, but there are, I think, helpful ways in thinking about us as creatures who search for compatibility. We care about attachment. When you come at it that way, you realize there are other avenues, and I think that can be helpful for people who are struggling.

Chris Williamson 1:33:04 Mm. I actually got the studies sent through about attractiveness and relationship longevity, so I'm going to read these to you.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:33:10 Okay. Okay, do you wanna-

Chris Williamson 1:33:11 So this is, uh, Christine McCallum's, uh, f- February 2017 study.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:33:16 Oh.

Chris Williamson 1:33:16 "Across four studies, we examined the relational repercussions of physical attractiveness."

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:33:20 Yeah, I, I, I do know this study.

Chris Williamson 1:33:21 Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:33:22 I, I, I, I think I was a reviewer on it. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:33:25 Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:33:25 I don't know what to say other than this is the only study of its kind that shows, that shows this. I, I, I don't know how to explain it. Their data are, are a little unusual. It's like the attractiveness of yearbook photos predicting whether these folks ultimately get divorced. I just, um, I, um... I'm, I'm glad it's out there. I'm glad it's published. Um, I would love to see a pre-registered replication of this, 'cause all the data I've seen are not this. But, but, yes, I, I am familiar with this. Uh, to me, this one's an outlier.

Chris Williamson 1:33:56 All right. Okay, interesting.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:33:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:33:58 Cool.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:33:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:33:59 Uh, look, dude, I think it's, I think it's an interesting alternative perspective to this stuff, and-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:34:06 That's all I wanted. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 1:34:07 ... Uh, no, uh, look, I, I, I hope I've done the evolutionary-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:34:11 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:34:11 ... side of the fence and also maybe sharpened your eye in a little bit as well.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:34:15 I love it.

Chris Williamson 1:34:15 Um-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:34:15 I love it. It's been great.

Chris Williamson 1:34:17 It's... I've, I've really, really enjoyed it, and it's, it's cool to have a, a, a good-natured challenge that's a different sort of perspective because-

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:34:24 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:34:26 ... there certainly is, uh, there is a dearth of alternative perspectives when it comes to relationships, and I'm not saying... I, I actually think that people should be using more of an evolutionary explanation for a lot of things. But for the most part, it's like pop psychology, pulled-it-out-of-my-ass explanations.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:34:44 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:34:44 That's what's coming out in most of the mainstream press.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:34:46 I know.

Chris Williamson 1:34:46 So if you've got stuff that's data-driven on your side and data-driven on the

Chris Williamson 1:34:49 other side, uh, I appreciate you, mate. Where should people go to check out everything you've got going on?

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:34:53 Um, you can buy the book. The book comes out, uh, in February, uh, right around Valentine's Day. The book's called Bonded by Evolution. You get it wherever you buy books, and find me talking about movies with Eli Finkel on the Love, Factually podcast. Uh, we release an episode every couple weeks. We cover all sorts of movies, uh, and we talk about these topics.

Chris Williamson 1:35:12 Heck yeah. I appreciate you, man. Until next time.

Dr. Paul Eastwick 1:35:14 All right. Thanks so much for having me. [upbeat music]

Chris Williamson 1:35:16 Congratulations, you made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you should watch. Come on.