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

by Logan Ury

There is no “right answer” to questions like Who should I be with? and How much should I compromise? and Will they ever change?

and about 4 percent of married people report feeling miserable in their relationships.

That’s so much lower than I’d expect!!!

If you’re a Maximizer, that idea might make you nervous. What if you aren’t happy with what you pick? Here’s the good news: We have an incredible tool working on our behalf to make us happy—our brain! Once we commit to something, our brain helps us rationalize why it was the right choice.

Behavioral science warns us of the dreaded intention-action gap, when we intend to do something but don’t take the steps to make it happen.

Step 1: Make a deadline. Deadlines are one of the most efficient ways to motivate someone to take action. Short deadlines work especially well. Imagine you get an email from your bank telling you to change your password. They don’t provide a deadline. How likely are you to do it? You might intend to change it, but since it seems like you can do it anytime, you’ll likely forget about it before taking action. You’ll fall into the intention-action gap.

Step 2: Prep. Once you’ve set the deadline, start doing the pre-dating work. Download the apps. Assemble a few solid date outfits. Consider going to an improv class to learn how to listen carefully and play well with others. Pay attention the next time you’re having dinner with a friend: How much are you focusing inward (How am I coming across?) versus really listening and being curious (What is this person trying to communicate?)?

Step 3: Tell others. If you publicly announce your goals to others, you’re more likely to stay focused on them. A team of researchers led by social psychologist Kevin McCaul demonstrated this in a fascinating experiment. They took students who had a particularly hard test coming up and divided them into different groups. They asked one set of students to share their target test score with their group. They instructed a different group of students to keep their goal private. They found those who had shared with others felt more committed to the goal, spent more time studying for the test, and were 20 percent more likely to reach their goal and earn their target score. Tell two to three of your closest friends or family members that you’re going to start dating. Share your deadline with them. You’ll feel more motivated to act once you’ve made this public pronouncement because now your reputation is on the line. (Bonus benefit: Sharing your dating goals with your community opens the door for people to set you up on dates. In Chapter 9, you’ll find practical tips on asking to be set up.) Step 4: Commit to your new identity. We all have different identities: daughter, friend, Beyoncé fan, runner, and so on. We act differently depending on which of those identities we lean into at any given moment. A group of Stanford and Harvard researchers found that we can actually shift people’s behavior

Reinforce your own identity as a dater, not just someone who goes on dates. Stand in front of a mirror and say out loud: “I am looking for love. I am a dater.” Does this seem ridiculous, especially before you’ve been on a date? Of course! But you should do it anyway.

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.

Kahneman summarized this research finding perfectly: “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” Merely thinking about something accentuates the differences.

Research from social psychologists Elaine Cheung, Wendi Gardner, and Jason Anderson supports this idea. They found that having multiple people you can turn to for emotional needs—rather than just one or two—leads to an increase in your overall well-being. For example, you might talk to your roommate when you’re angry and depend on your sister when you’re sad.

1) Emotional Stability and Kindness In his book The Science of Happily Ever After, psychologist Ty Tashiro digs into the existing research on what matters when choosing a partner. He found that emotional stability and kindness are two of the most important and yet underrated characteristics. He defines emotional stability as being able to self-regulate and not give in to anger or impulsivity. The combined emotional stability of a couple predicts the satisfaction and stability of their relationship.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Someone who is emotionally stable takes advantage of that space.

One easy way to estimate someone’s loyalty is to see if they have friends from different stages of their lives. How many old friendships have they carried with them over the years? Did they ditch their college bestie when they got depressed, or do they still meet up for monthly movie matinees? Do people from their past seem to rely on them for companionship and support? Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, since some people have moved around a lot or lived in places where they didn’t fit in. But in general, old friendships indicate loyalty.

This is a major point! Underline this next sentence, please: Most of us have no idea what kind of partner will fulfill us long term.

In Clueless, one of my all-time favorite movies, Tai, the new girl, asks Cher, the most popular girl in school, what she thinks about their classmate Amber. Cher says, “She’s a full-on Monet. It’s like a painting, see. From far away, it’s okay, but up close it’s a big ol’ mess.”

Women see around a 70 percent boost in their chances of getting a like simply by including photos where they’re standing alone, looking away, or smiling with teeth.

Candids seriously outperform posed photos. While about 80 percent of posted pics are posed, candid shots are 15 percent more likely to receive a like.

Selfies perform poorly, especially bathroom selfies, which decrease your chance of getting a like by 90 percent. (Pro tip: When meeting new love prospects, try not to associate yourself with the toilet.) Show us that you have a friend who can take a photo of you.

Black-and-white photos kill. Despite making up only 3 percent of posted photos, they see a 106 percent boost in likes. Consider going monochrome for your next pic.

EXERCISE: Select Better Photos Collect ten to twenty photos of yourself (ideally a combination of photos of your face, your full body, and you doing an activity you love, like cooking or hiking) and send them to several friends. Ask which pictures they’d include, which they’d delete, and which they’d use as the first photo. Or run your own experiment on the apps: Swap out different photos to see which ones lead to the most matches.

I pulled out my notebook and showed her a chart I’d designed called the Event Decision Matrix. It helps busy people strategically choose the best events. Every time you hear about a new event, you plot it on the matrix using these two dimensions: How likely is it that I’ll interact with other people at this event? How likely is it that I’ll enjoy myself at this event?

So I asked Alicia, “Do you think you can attend two upper-right-quadrant events per month?”

I gave Alicia a deadline, since deadlines help people take action and avoid the natural tendency to procrastinate: “By this weekend, can you text me the two events you’ve chosen?”

And your mother really said it best: “You only get one chance to make a first impression.” Wear something that makes you feel confident. Don’t forget to flirt. Make eye contact with the people around you, smile, and then take your gaze elsewhere.

While apps are the most common way people meet one another these days, you can still strategize ways to meet people IRL (in real life). Go to events. Use the Event Decision Matrix to figure out the most promising ones to attend, based on how likely you are to enjoy the activity and how likely you are to interact with other people. Get your friends and family to set you up on dates by letting them know this is something you’re interested in,

Connect with people you already know. Your person may be hidden in plain sight. All you have to do is change your frame of mind. Introduce yourself to people when you’re out and about. Improve your chances by taking off your headphones and interacting with the world around you. If you’re at an event and you don’t know what to say, get in a line and start commenting on it! People in lines love to discuss

Many of my clients, desperate to find love but also busy with other commitments, have managed to drain all the flirtation and fun out of the experience of dating. Instead, they tend to engage in what I call evaluative dating (or “evaludating,” if you want to be cute about it).

Here’s my version: Whether you believe the date will go well or poorly, you are right. You’re self-sabotaging if your pre-date

Fortunately, we can change our mindset. Wiseman created a program called the “luck school,” where he taught unlucky and lucky volunteers to think like a lucky person. He focused on four things: listening to their intuition; expecting to be lucky; spotting chance opportunities; and rebounding more quickly when bad things happen. Assignments ranged from keeping a diary of lucky occurrences, to “visualizing good fortune,” to verbally declaring their intentions: “I am willing to put time and effort into changing my luck.” After a month, 80 percent of the luck school’s “graduating class” felt happier, more satisfied with their lives, and most important, luckier.

want you to put yourself through your own version of luck school, shifting your mindset to expect great dates. To help you do this, design a pre-date ritual. This is something you’ll do before every date to get you in the right headspace.

We can apply the same lessons to planning dates. Act more like that second travel search engine by letting your date know about the things you’ve done to make the experience special. It’s not about bragging or exaggerating; it’s about making your efforts apparent so your date can appreciate them more.

Research from MIT professor Sherry Turkle found two negative impacts of having a phone on the table when you’re talking to someone: One, it decreases the quality of the conversation. People naturally tend to discuss more shallow topics, because there’s a fear that at any moment the phone will interrupt them. Two, it weakens the empathetic connection that forms between the two people.

The Post-Date Eight What side of me did they bring out? How did my body feel during the date? Stiff, relaxed, or something in between? Do I feel more energized or de-energized than I did before the date? Is there something about them I’m curious about? Did they make me laugh? Did I feel heard? Did I feel attractive in their presence? Did I feel captivated, bored, or something in between?

Use this for time with myself!

If your date is rude or disrespectful—to you or anyone else—don’t see that person again. Ditto if your date made you feel uncomfortable, anxious, or sad.

Second, our views about ourselves change over time, depending on how we behave. According to psychologist Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory, this happens because we don’t have access to our inner thoughts and feelings. We look to our actions to tell us who we are. This helps explain why research shows that volunteering is one of the most reliable ways to boost our happiness. Volunteers consistently see higher levels of happiness and self-esteem than non-volunteers, because when they’re done, they look at their actions and think, I’m spending my time helping people. I must be pretty generous after all!

(Don’t forget! I’m waiting for your email with the list of five things you liked about your date: 5goodthings@loganury.com.)

Motivation isn’t constant. We experience what behavioral scientist and Stanford professor BJ Fogg calls “motivation waves”—our motivation ebbs and flows. During moments of peak motivation, we’re able to do really hard things we couldn’t have accomplished otherwise. The trick is to take action at this time. For example, if there’s a hurricane scare in your town, it may give you the motivation you need to get storm shutters for your home.

If you’re feeling ready to break up with someone, you’re likely experiencing peak motivation. It’s going to get you through the first bit—actually breaking up—but your motivation will likely decline later, when you might wonder if you’ve made a huge mistake. With that in mind, I want you to capture your feelings during this peak so you can steel yourself later on, when motivation drops.

Write yourself a letter about why you’ve chose...

In a few weeks, when you’re horny or lonely (or, in extreme cases, “hornly”) or want someone to feed your rabbit during a trip, you’ll remember exac...

EXERCISE: Record Your Reasons for the Breakup In a notebook, write yourself a letter explaining why you’re making the decision.

Choose a quiet location, preferably your home or your partner’s. Don’t break up with someone in public. I see that as a weaselly attempt to ensure the other person doesn’t make a scene. You know what? Maybe they will! It’s your right to break up with them, and it’s their right to have a strong emotional response to that action.

But a good idea if there’s a risk of a violent reaction. Which might be always?

Know that whatever you say is likely what they’ll fixate on after the breakup because of something called the narrative fallacy. Our brain tries to create a cause-and-effect story to explain the events we witness and experience, even when that story is false. Any breakup is likely a response to a whole number of situations and dynamics, but when you end things with someone and give a specific reason for doing it, they’ll obsess over that reason. Don’t plant that unhelpful seed in their mind.

You consult your research and see short-term survival rates: 90 percent for surgery and 100 percent for radiation. What would you pick? What about if, instead, you read about short-term mortality rates—10 percent for surgery and 0 percent for radiation? In a now-famous study, health care researcher Barbara McNeil asked physicians to make that exact hypothetical choice. And she asked one group of doctors to choose based on survival rates and the other group on death rates. Perhaps alarmingly, the exact same information, presented in two different ways, resulted in vastly different decisions. When she described the surgical option in terms of the chance of survival, 84 percent of physicians chose this option. When she discussed surgery in terms of the chance of dying, only half of them opted for this treatment.

Choose to decide, not slide. In the Appendix, I’ve included a two-part exercise for writing your own Relationship Contract. These materials have been created in partnership with my friend and collaborator Hannah Hughes. First you’ll see the Self-Reflection Worksheet, which you should fill out on your own. It asks questions about how much alone time you need, what your love languages are, what rituals you value in the relationship, and more. Then you’ll see a blank copy of the Relationship Contract,

How often does she mean? I’m a fan of the weekly Check-In Ritual, a short conversation in which you and your partner discuss what’s on your mind. The Relationship Contract helps you set the direction for your partnership—and the Check-In Ritual ensures that you keep it on track.

We ask each other these three questions: How was your last week? Did you feel supported by me? How can I support you in the coming week?

EXERCISE: Design Your Own Check-In Ritual Sit with your partner and answer these questions together: When do you want to have this weekly ritual? Where do you want your Check-In to take place? Think of a spot where you’re both comfortable. The couch? A favorite bench at a nearby park? What questions do you want to ask each other each week? How can you make this ritual special? For example, could you eat your favorite dessert while answering the questions, or give each other a foot massage? What will you do to check in if you’re not physically together?