How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science of Finding Love

by Logan Ury

Maybe that’s because we think love is a magical phenomenon that defies scientific analysis.

but that freedom comes at the cost of certainty. Late at night, our faces lit by the blue glow of our smartphones, we wonder, Who am I? and What am I doing with my life?

The dark side of all this freedom and endless choice is the crippling fear that we’ll screw up our lifelong pursuit of happiness.

Psychologists, including Barry Schwartz, professor emeritus at Swarthmore, have shown that while people crave choice, too many options can make us feel less happy and more doubtful of our decisions. They call this the paradox of choice.

It feels like if we can research all our choices, then we can select the right one. We’ve gotten hooked on this feeling of certainty, and we crave it in our romantic lives. But when it comes to relationships, that kind of assurance doesn’t exist. There is no “right answer” to questions like Who should I be with? and How much should I compromise? and Will they ever change?

Today our primary view into other people’s relationships is staged, curated, Instagram-filtered social media feeds—excited

We define our own identities, unlike our ancestors, whose lives were defined by their communities.

The Romanticizer You want the soul mate, the happily ever after—the whole fairy tale. You love love. You believe you are single because you haven’t met the right person yet. Your motto: It’ll happen when it’s meant to happen.

The Maximizer You love doing research, exploring all of your options, turning over every stone until you’re confident you’ve found the right one. You make decisions carefully. And you want to be 100 percent certain about something before you make your choice. Your motto: Why settle?

The Romanticizer has unrealistic expectations of relationships.

The Maximizer has unrealistic expectations of their partner.

My tendency is (circle one):

The Romanticizer The Maximizer The

mindset matters. Our attitudes and expectations create the context for our experience, which in turn affects how we interpret information and make decisions.

When it comes to romantic relationships, psychologist Renae Franiuk found that people have either a soul mate mindset, the belief that relationship satisfaction comes from finding the right person; or a work-it-out mindset, the belief that relationship success derives from putting in effort.

First, it affects the way they approach finding a partner.

(I once worked with a woman who would dress up for every flight in case her “future husband” was on the same plane, but then refused to approach anyone lest she be perceived as trying too hard.)

Second, this mindset influences whom you’re willing to go out with.

Since Romanticizers are confident they know what their future partner will look like, when they meet someone who doesn’t match that image, they won’t give that person a chance. They end up missing out on great potential matches.

When they start dating someone they believe is “the one,” their sky-high expectations can propel the relationship forward. But when the couple hits an inevitable obstacle—say, for instance, a particularly heated fight—they give up on the relationship rather than trying to overcome it.

“In all my relationships, I end up thinking, Wait a minute. Why is this so hard?” she said. “Love is supposed to be effortless, right? This can’t possibly be ‘the one.’ ”

In comparison, those with the work-it-out mindset believe that relationships take effort, that love is an action you take, not something that happens to you. People with the work-it-out mindset tend to fare better in relationships because when they stumble, they put in the work needed to get the relationship back on track, rather than giving up.

It wasn’t until around 1750 that the idea of marrying for love took hold. It all dates back to the age of Romanticism, an ideological movement that began in Europe, with philosophers waxing poetic about love, and eventually took over the world.

The magic of a relationship doesn’t depend on a serendipitous or cinematic meeting. The magic lies in the fact that two strangers come together and create a life. It’s not important where or how they met.

People with soul mate beliefs reject promising partners because they don’t match their vision for what love should look and feel like. They think that love will just happen to them. They expect love to be effortless. If it’s not, they must be with the wrong person.

He couldn’t stop himself from asking, Could I be 5 percent happier with someone else?

Maximizers obsess over making the best possible decision.

Maximizers are a special type of perfectionist. They’re compelled to explore every possible option before they feel like they can choose. Yet this compulsion becomes daunting, and ultimately unfeasible, when they face a vast number of possibilities.

Satisficers (a portmanteau of “satisfy” and “suffice”). They have standards, but they aren’t overly concerned that there might be something better out there.

They know their criteria, and they hunt until they find the “good enough” option. It’s not that they settle; they’re simply fine making a decision once they’ve gathered some...

Maximizers obsess over their decision-making. They trust that careful analysis will ultimately make their life better. But that’s not true. Not only are Satisficers able to make good decisions, they tend to wind up happier about them. That’s because—and it’s worth repeating—satisficing is not about settling. Satisficers may have very high standards and stop only after those standards have been met. The difference is, once they stop, they don’t worry about what else is out there. Maximizers, on the other hand, may find an option that meets their standards, but they feel compelled to explore all possibilities.

Satisficers report feeling happier with their choices, even when they select an objectively worse option.

That’s because Maximizers constantly second-guess themselves. They suffer doubly: first in the agony leading up to the decision, and again every time they worry they’ve made the wrong one.

Psychologist and The Paradox of Choice author Barry Schwartz explains that what separates Maximizers and Satisficers is not the quality of their decisions, it’s how these decisions make them feel: “Maximizers make good decisions and end up feeling bad about them. Satisficers make good decisions and end up feeling good.”

world. If you hope to get married or commit to a long-term relationship, eventually, you’ll need to make a decision with the information you have.

Maximizers obsess over making the right decision. They want to explore every possible option before they make a choice. Even when they decide, they constantly wonder what they’re missing out on. Satisficers figure out what they want and stop looking once they’ve met their criteria. They don’t settle, they merely stop worrying what else is out there once they’ve made a decision.

Research shows that Satisficers tend to be happier, because in the end, satisfaction comes from how you feel about your decision, not the decision itself.

The current dating climate creates Maximizers out of many of us. No one ever seems good enough, and we wonder if we could be happier with someone else. Maximizing tendencies in relationships can lead to mental anguish, costly delays in decision-making, and missed opportunities.

Economists often refer to the opportunity cost of decisions—the price you pay when you choose one option over another. If you’re facing two mutually exclusive choices, Option A and Option B, your opportunity cost is what you give up from Option A if you choose Option B, and vice versa.

While we instinctively prefer reversible decisions to irreversible ones, this flexibility often make us less happy in the long run. We’d rather be able to change our minds—return our new phone, switch our flight to a different day, reply “maybe” to an event. But it turns out, just like the students who could switch their pictures, we’re less committed to choices we think we can reverse, and commitment is crucial for happiness.

As we discussed earlier, once you commit to something, your brain starts the magical process of rationalization, convincing you that you made a good choice. You retroactively ascribe more positive traits to things you chose and more negative traits to things you didn’t.

In other words, we want reversible decisions, but irrevocable ones make us happier in the long term. Keeping your ex around as a potential love interest turns your breakup into a changeable decision. Allow yourself to move on by making it an unchangeable one.

When people are anxiously attached, their brains flood with “activating strategies,” thoughts that compel them to regain closeness.

People with anxious-attachment styles often act out in order to get their partner’s attention. They might call or text an excessive number of times, threaten to leave to make the other person jealous, or withdraw and ignore phone calls to underscore a point.

The problem is that while securely attached people make up 50 percent of the general population, there are far fewer in the single population. That’s because secure people tend to get snatched up quickly. They’re good at building healthy relationships, so they tend to stay in them. That’s why the dating pool is full of anxious and avoidant daters.

She started looking for secure partners. It took time. She’d go out with someone new and complain that they were “boring.” When I dug deeper, I discovered this usually meant the person was being nice to her.

Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone you find boring is secretly secure. They might actually be boring. But it’s time to stop pursuing the chase. That was the challenge I gave Vivian: Try to date secure partners. The ones who text when they say they will. Who let you know what’s on their mind. Who don’t play games and avoid or even de-escalate drama.

You may be anxiously attached if you crave a lot of closeness but are insecure about your relationship’s future and your partner’s interest in you.

present bias, an error in judgment that causes us to place a disproportionately high value on the here and now and an inappropriately low value on the future.

A client once told me she’d gone on several dates with a guy who lived alone. When she visited his apartment and used the bathroom, she was met with a sink full of beard hair trimmings, an overflowing trash can, and no toilet paper. This woman is a successful, talented professional. She’s thirty-four, and she told me she wants to have “many kids.” I’m not saying that a guy with a filthy bathroom couldn’t make a great husband and father. But if she’s thirty-four and wants to give birth to a brood of children, she realistically needs to start soon. And who’s more likely to be ready to start a family—a guy with a clean bathroom or a man who still acts like he lives in a dorm? I advised her to say goodbye to this Prom Date and focus her energy on finding a Life Partner.