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

by Logan Ury

Whether we’re selecting the most authentic taco place or the best-performing vacuum cleaner, we can consult endless rankings and reviews. 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? No amount of Googling will reveal if James or Jillian will make a good spouse. We can’t achieve complete certainty before any big relationship decision—and luckily, we don’t have to in order to be happy. Great relationships are built, not discovered. But our minds are often stuck in a trap, thinking that by combing through hundreds of options, we’ll be closer to knowing whether the one in front of us is “right.”

Many people suffer from dating blind spots—patterns of behavior that hold them back from finding love, but which they can’t identify on their own. I’ve categorized the most common blind spots into a framework called The Three Dating Tendencies. Each group struggles with unrealistic expectations. The Romanticizer has unrealistic expectations of relationships. They want the soul mate, the happily ever after—the whole fairy tale. The Maximizer has unrealistic expectations of their partner. They love to explore their options and want to feel absolutely confident they’re making the right decision. The Hesitater has unrealistic expectations of themselves. They feel like they’re not ready to date. Understanding your dating tendency helps you discover what’s holding you back and how you can overcome these blind spots.

Maximizers obsess over making the best possible decision. American economist, political scientist, and cognitive psychologist Herbert A. Simon first described this personality profile in a 1956 paper. According to Simon, 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. On the other end of the spectrum are 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 evidence and identified a satisfactory option. Imagine you’re on a two-hour flight. The plane takes off and you begin scrolling through the movie options. Do you A) select the first movie that appeals to you? Within five minutes, you’re reclining in your seat, eyes glued to Good Will Hunting. Or do you B) spend twenty-five minutes scrolling through every single new release, comedy, drama, documentary, and foreign film, as well as all the TV shows, before committing to the absolute best option? If you chose A, you’re likely a Satisficer. If you selected B, you’re clearly a Maximizer. (You can fall on the spectrum between these extremes, or you may be...

Damn. I go over it even before the flight.

WHY ARE MAXIMIZERS LIKE THIS? Anxiety plagues Maximizers. It’s not just FOMO (fear of missing out). They also suffer from the less catchy FOMTWD (fear of making the wrong decision). They think maximizing will help them make the perfect choice and alleviate their anxiety. But FOMTWD creates an immense amount of pressure. Anything less than perfection feels like failure. This happens to me when I travel. Even if a trip unfolds almost perfectly, when I make a mistake—like booking a hotel far away from the center of town—I can’t help but feel like I failed. I think, If only I’d done just a little more research. I have to fight to prevent this feeling from ruining the trip. Hardly anything exacerbates the Maximizer tendency more than choosing a long-term partner. Maximizers fear making a mistake. What if I get divorced and have to raise my children on my own? What if I dread coming home after work because I have nothing to say to my wife? What if I’m so bored that I have an affair?

Ahhh.. I can totally relate.

Although it’s expensive, you may want to consider egg freezing. While it’s certainly not a guarantee that you can have kids later, it may buy you some time. I froze embryos, fertilized by my partner’s sperm, the month I turned thirty-one because we weren’t ready to have kids and wanted to put the decision on ice. Pun intended.

😄

KEY TAKEAWAYS 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. Maximizers assume there is a right answer for whom to be with. And there’s not. We can apply lessons from the Secretary Problem to see that we likely already have enough dating experience to select a great partner. This knowledge can help us commit without worrying about what else is out there. The power of rationalization can also help us embrace our decisions.

Dating is a bit like stand-up comedy (though hopefully with less heckling from strangers). They’re both an audience-based art. Comics often say that if they’re at home coming up with jokes, that’s just writing. It’s not until they’re in front of a crowd that they’re truly performing stand-up. Stand-up comics know that no one brings the house down the first time they step up to the mic; they need to learn by doing. That’s one of the reasons up-and-coming comedians work so hard to get stage time. Before her breakout Netflix comedy special, Baby Cobra, Ali Wong went to multiple open mics every night, practicing her set over and over in small clubs. It’s the same with dating. You need to practice asking interesting questions, expressing yourself in a compelling way, and going in for a first kiss. Those are your reps. And you can’t work on any of these skills if you’re sitting around by yourself, “preparing.” The only way to get better at it is to actually date.

Good tip both for stand-up and for dating.

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. Your intention is to start dating. But you may get stuck in the gap between wanting to date and doing it. To help you get started, here are some techniques from the behavioral science toolkit. They worked for Jing, who, after a number of bumbling first dates and a handful of slightly less awkward second, third, and fourth ones, entered into a relationship with her first boyfriend.

"Intention-action gap" seems like a key term, not just for dating.

Researchers have studied the effects of the well-timed deadline—short while still doable. Behavioral scientists Suzanne Shu and Ayelet Gneezy looked at how often people redeemed gift certificates to a bakery. When the certificate was good for two months, fewer than 10 percent of people redeemed it for a pastry. (The rest were too flaky!) But when the certificate was good for only three weeks, suddenly, more than 30 percent of people redeemed the coupon. In the first scenario, people held off on taking the action because they figured they could do it later. With the shorter deadline, people were more aware that they could miss the window, so they took more immediate action. Hesitaters, it’s time to set a deadline for when you’re going to start dating. I suggest three weeks from now. That’s enough time to do what you need to do first—the pre-dating work I’ve listed below—but not so long that you lose momentum.

Sharing a deadline with others makes it more likely to be meant.

And for those of you who are avoidantly attached, pay attention to your feelings when you sense yourself withdrawing. Learn to ask for space instead of disappearing into space.

KEY TAKEAWAYS Attachment theory is a popular framework for understanding relationships. It can help explain why you’re attracted to certain people, why past relationships haven’t worked out, and why you’re trapped in a pattern of bad habits. 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. You may be avoidantly attached if you feel uncomfortable with intimacy and value independence over connection. You may be securely attached if you are comfortable with intimacy, spending time alone, and drawing clear boundaries. Securely attached folks make up 50 percent of the population but not the dating pool, since they tend to get into relationships and stay in them. Anxiously attached and avoidantly attached people often date each other, reinforcing their worst tendencies. If you’re anxiously attached or avoidantly attached, you can help yourself develop better relationship skills by looking for a secure partner and learning to self-regulate—managing disruptive impulses and emotions.

WHAT MATTERS LESS THAN WE THINK Not only do we undervalue the qualities that matter for long-term relationships, we overvalue irrelevant ones. In part, we can blame a cognitive error called the focusing illusion—our tendency to overestimate the importance of certain factors when anticipating outcomes, like our future happiness. Behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and David Schkade explored this phenomenon. They asked people attending college in Michigan and Ohio who they thought were happier—Midwestern students, like themselves, or students in California. They asked students in Southern California the same questions. Both groups predicted that the California students were happier. Yet researchers found the overall life satisfaction for Californian and Midwestern students was nearly identical. It turned out that both sets of students overestimated the impact that living in a warmer climate has on daily satisfaction. That’s because the climate is an “easily observable and distinctive” difference between these two places. They ignored all the other factors that contribute to happiness, which both sets of students shared: concerns about grades, social status, family issues, money, career prospects, and more. Those things are the same no matter the weather. However, when asked to compare life in those two places, the students focused on the weather and assumed it had a greater impact than it really does.

This can be generalized to comparing products online and then focusing on the differences. You pay more attention to aspects that are presented to you even though they might not be that important.

focusing on attractiveness to the exclusion of other traits ignores the fact that lust inevitably fades over time (and remember, we’re going for long-term success here). In his book The Science of Happily Ever After, psychologist Ty Tashiro analyzed a fourteen-year longitudinal study of satisfaction in marriages over time. He found that over the course of seven years, “lust” (sexual desire) for a partner declined twice as fast as “liking” (friendship characterized by loyalty and kindness). Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher helps explain why that happens. Lust is incredibly intense in the beginning and then fades. When we fall in love, it feels like we’re addicted to the other person, as if they’re a drug. Fisher found that cocaine and falling in love light up the same regions of the brain.

The fading of our lust is also a strategic evolutionary move. Our “addiction” to our partner keeps us around long enough to have a baby and raise him or her together until the child is around four years old, old enough to be somewhat independent (at least on the ancient savanna) and survive. Once our work there is done, lust fades, and our brain frees us to create new children with new partners, increasing the chance that at least one of our children will live to adulthood and carry on our DNA.

Key tip for your dating search Find someone who complements you, not your personality twin.

Here’s the key: It’s fine to have different interests, so long as the time you spend pursuing your favorite activities doesn’t preclude you from investing in the relationship. If you love wine and your partner couldn’t care less about it, that’s okay; you don’t need to marry a sommelier. What matters is that when you drink wine, or go on a trip to Napa to try a new prized cabernet sauvignon, your partner doesn’t try to make you feel guilty or say something like “Why do you always have to drink?” A good relationship has space for different people with different hobbies. Key tip for your dating search Don’t worry about finding someone with the same hobbies. It’s fine to enjoy different activities as long as you give each other the space and freedom to explore those hobbies on your own.

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. In his 2017 TED Talk, Tashiro notes that “Kind partners are awesome. They’re generous, they’re empathic, and they want to be supportive of you.” Kindness and emotional stability also allow us to treat our partner with care and compassion, which research from John and Julie Gottman suggests is the key to long-term relationship success. Key tip for your dating search You can get a sense of how kind someone is by paying attention to how they treat people from whom they don’t need anything. Are they nice to the waiter? Do they give up their seat on the subway? Are they patient with new team members who are learning the ropes at work? Do they treat their friends and parents with compassion? One way to get a sense of someone’s emotional stability is to pay attention to how they respond to stressful situations. Do they freak out or keep their cool? Emotionally stable partners are measured in their responses. They take time to thoughtfully respond rather than impulsively react. When I explain this concept to my clients, I...

Key tip for your dating search You can spot people with a growth mindset by paying attention to how they handle themselves in different situations. HOW TO SPOT A GROWTH MINDSET Situation Fixed Growth How they approach challenges Avoid them Embrace them How they respond to setbacks Give up Persist How they view learning new skills As a chance to embarrass themselves As a chance to grow How they respond to someone else’s accomplishments Feel threatened Feel inspired How they speak to themselves With condemnation from a loud inner critic With self-compassion

Key tip for your dating search Pay attention to how you feel when you’re around this person or right after you finish spending time together. Energized? Deflated? Bored? Challenged? Happy? Desired? Smart? Stupid? Select someone who brings out the best side of you. It could also be helpful to get a third-party view by going out with a group of friends. Instead of asking, “What did you think of him?” ask, “What did you think of me around him?”

Key tip for your dating search Remember that you’ll inevitably have disagreements with whomever you choose. Pay attention to how you fight. Are you able to get your point across? Do you feel heard? Does your partner make repair attempts to de-escalate the disagreement? The goal is to fight well, not to avoid fights altogether.

Key tip for your dating search The best way to know what it will be like to make decisions with someone is to actually make decisions together. Real decisions (read: not whether to order Chinese or Thai food). It’s critical to stress-test your relationship. I am not recommending that you artificially create a crisis (such as texting: “HELP! Grandma’s been kidnapped!”), but I am recommending you pay attention during shared experiences that challenge both of you. For example, what happens when you try to cook a complicated meal or travel internationally? Or when you’re driving together and your car breaks down in the middle of the road? What do you do when you’re each invited to a different wedding on the same weekend? How do you react when you’re stuck deciding between two equally good (or equally bad) options? Dan Ariely offers something called “the canoe test.” Share a canoe. Yes, an actual canoe. Can you find a rhythm together? Is one of you comfortable leading and the other following, or do you both want to be in charge at all times? Most important, how much do you blame your partner when things go awry? Pay attention to how you literally navigate choppy water together as a team.

University of Chicago professor Chris Hsee writes about a related concept called evaluability: The easier it is to compare certain traits, the more important those traits seem. Imagine this scenario (and for the sake of this thought experiment, imagine you’re interested in men). I walk up to you on the street and say: “You can go on a date with one of these two single men. One guy is five-nine and one is five-ten, but the shorter one makes more money. Who do you want to go out with?” Most likely, you’d walk away slowly, confused why a stranger was asking you such a weird question. If you decided to stick around, I’d follow up with another question: “How much more money per year would a shorter guy have to make for you to find him as attractive as a taller man?” At that point, you might laugh awkwardly and tell me it was impossible to come up with such a number. But thanks to research from Dan Ariely, we know it’s not. He discovered that there is, in fact, a quantifiable correlation between height, income, and finding success on the dating apps. And it’s not small. Using data from a popular dating website, Ariely found that a man has to earn $40,000 more each year to be as desirable as a man one inch taller. Yes: $40,000.

You may be asking yourselves, how much does a woman’s income affect her desirability? Turns out it doesn’t. High earners don’t inspire single men on that dating website the way they inspire single women. Instead, the quality that men cared about most when evaluating attractiveness was body mass index (BMI). They preferred a woman whose BMI was 18.5—slightly underweight—and didn’t care about her salary or her level of education. Again, it’s not that men actually value thinness in potential life partners above all else—they’re just stuck working with a limited set of comparable qualities. (Also, ughhhhh.)

Issue #5: When we see only a rough sketch of someone, we fill in the gaps with flattering details. We create an unrealistic fantasy of this person, which ultimately leaves us disappointed. 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.” I call this error in judgment the Monet Effect. When we have only a rough perception of someone, our brain, hoping for a great outcome, fills in all the gaps optimistically. People seem way more desirable than they actually are. It’s only later, when they transform into real people standing in front of us, that we see the flaws. We can see this play out in the corporate world. When companies search for a new CEO, they can choose between promoting an internal candidate or hiring an external one. Research into these decisions found that companies who decide to hire externally have sky-high expectations of the candidates. When you evaluate external candidates, you know only the broad details about them. They tell you about their wins. Internal candidates, you know more intimately; you are familiar with their successes and their failures. The Monet Effect helps explain why, when compared to internal candidates, external CEOs are often paid more but perform worse.

Select Great Photos Duh, photos matter. They take up the most real estate on most apps. People will often swipe on someone based on a photo alone and scroll down to see more information only if they like the first photo. Hinge researchers studied which types of photos elicited the most positive responses from its users, which it shared in a 2017 blog post. For this analysis, they randomly selected profile photos of a thousand members, tagged them based on their qualities (such as candid versus posed, smiling with or without teeth), and evaluated their performance. Here are practical tips based on their findings: Don’t create any guessing games about what you look like or if you’re single. Pictures that feature filters or possible significant others received 90 percent fewer likes than those without. That means no sunglasses and no pics in which you’re posing with someone people may think you’re dating. Potentially worse? A group photo with no clear indication of which person you are. I call these Where’s Waldo? shots. Select at most one group pic and clearly mark which face is yours. 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. Similarly, men see a boost in their chances of getting a like by standing alone, smiling without teeth, and looking straight toward the camera. Candids seriously outperform posed photos. While about 80 percent of posted pics are po...

To spark conversations be specific. The point of a profile is to spark conversation, not come across as overly clever. Make sure your profile creates opportunities for people to follow up and connect. Let’s take the Hinge prompt: “Qualities I’m looking for in a plus-one wedding date.” If you write, “Someone who’s not married,” that’s funny, but it doesn’t really open the door to conversation. Instead, if you put “Knowing all the words to ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls,” that could spark a chat around nineties music or who will sing the Scary Spice part when you do karaoke. If you write, “Someone who will challenge me to a dance-off,” that’s a great opener for a chat about signature go-to moves. The best way to spark conversation is to be specific. Include quirky things that make you stand out. If you say, “I like music,” that doesn’t really tell me anything about you. Cool, who doesn’t? Same with writing that you like travel, food, and laughter. That’s like saying you like Tom Hanks. Yeah, dude, he’s an American hero. Don’t tell me you like to cook; describe to me your signature dish and what makes your Vietnamese soup pho-nomenal. The more specific you are, the more opportunities you give potential matches to connect by commenting on that quirk.

Stay in Touch You have a life to live. Don’t stare at your screen all hours of the day and night. Even if you have a super-busy day, try to set aside fifteen minutes to respond to messages, maybe during your commute or when you’re procrastinating at work. You want to keep the momentum going.

Get to the actual date as quickly as possible. The point of the apps is to meet people face-to-face, not to gain a pen pal. I’ve seen over and over the negative consequences of messaging too much before a date. When people text nonstop before a date, they end up creating a fantasy of each other in their minds (#themoneteffect). When they meet up, the person is inevitably unlike the fantasy, which leads to disappointment, even if they would’ve been a good match otherwise. Great text chemistry doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll vibe in person. Wouldn’t you rather figure that out sooner? A good transition from texting to a date might sound like this: “I’m really enjoying this conversation. Want to continue it over a walk on Sunday afternoon?” Make it easy to meet up. One way to do this is to propose a specific day and time for your date. “If you’re as charming in real life as you are over text, we may be onto something. Drinks Thursday? Seven p.m.?” You may have to go back and forth to find a time that works for both of you, but this way, you start to narrow down your options. It kills the excitement and momentum when you spend so much time scheduling. And sometimes that happens. It’s not necessarily from lack of interest; people are often just busy. What’s the best way to move from an online chat to an in-person date after a lot of back-and-forth texts? I recommend calling out the situation, but in a kind and playful manner. “I really enjoy our text banter and would love to see...

KEY TAKEAWAYS We think we know what we want when it comes to a partner, but our intuition about what will lead to long-term happiness is often wrong. Dating apps may cause us to focus on the wrong things. We value what gets measured. Because apps can only measure superficial traits, they exacerbate our shallowness. Apps can make us more indecisive by overwhelming us with choices. They’ve created a habit of relationshopping—comparing and contrasting people as if they’re potential purchases. We can learn to swipe smarter by expanding our settings to see more people, being less judgmental when we swipe, dating fewer people at a time, and transitioning to the date faster.

Our instinct to avoid conversations with strangers is wrong. We only think we want solitude. We underestimate how much joy social connection can bring. Open your eyes and look around. Say hi to a stranger! But don’t take this as blanket advice to harass strangers in public. Test the waters. When you approach someone, see if they are open to chatting by commenting on something around you or asking a question. If they’re not picking up what you’re putting down, leave them alone. (Please don’t get maced! That’s bad publicity for me.) But you’ll probably be surprised—in a good way—by what happens when you smile at a fellow traveler or start a conversation with someone who elbowed to the front of the same concert as you. The world is full of great potential matches, or people who know great potential matches.

KEY TAKEAWAYS 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, making the process easy for them, saying yes to dates, and giving feedback (and gratitude). You can even offer incentives. 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 lines.

Choose the time and place of the date thoughtfully. Time and place matter. When do you tend to feel most relaxed and like yourself? Plan your dates in those time slots. No seven a.m. dates, please. Stop going on dates in well-lit coffee bars. If you’re thinking: If this date sucks, at least I got some caffeine out of it. Don’t. You don’t want your dates to feel like a networking meeting. Choose something sexier, like a candlelit wine bar. And try sitting next to—rather than across from—your date. Have you ever opened up to someone on a long drive? Or noticed that it feels easier to talk to a friend while walking side by side, when you’re not making direct eye contact? That’s because it’s easier to talk when we’re not looking someone in the eyes. Psychologists Shogo Kajimura and Michio Nomura at Kyoto University in Japan explored this phenomenon in a 2016 study. When participants stared into the eyes of a face on a screen looking at them (as opposed to one looking off to the side), they struggled to complete a simple word-matching game. Kajimura and Nomura attributed that difficulty to biology: Eye contact and processing language rely on the same neural circuitry. You can use this insight to your advantage on dates. Why not suggest going for a walk? This will help the date feel less like a job interview, protect your brain from overloading, and promote connection.

You can find a whole list of creative date ideas on my website (loganury.com). Here are some outside-the-box dates that my clients and I have come up with: Visit a farmers’ market and then cook brunch. Go roller-skating. Create a two-person hot-sauce-tasting contest. Watch YouTube to learn a dance from a favorite childhood music video. Do karaoke. See an old movie and then discuss it over a walk. Take a cooking class. Go for a bike ride and bring a picnic. Try swing dancing. Check out the stars at the local observatory. Rent scooters and explore the city. (Bring helmets!) Play games at a local arcade. (Bring quarters!) Bring watercolors to the park and paint pictures of the same tree (or each other!).

This is why Domino’s Pizza lets you follow along as your pizza is “fired up,” “in the oven,” and “double-checked for perfection.” We all know how pizza delivery works. But when you see effort, you appreciate value. 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. One great way to show your effort is to offer to plan the date, or to choose a place near the other person’s home or work. I’ve found that my clients who live in big cities like New York or Los Angeles often get trapped in a back-and-forth over whose neighborhood they’ll meet in. You can show effort by making the date convenient for the other person. Message them something like: “Hey, what area do you live in? I can plan something near there.” During the date, mention the thought that you put into particular decisions. Say: “I chose this Peruvian place because you wrote on your profile that it was your dream to visit Machu Picchu.” People will appreciate the effort, and your thoughtfulness will help you stand out.

Have fun. Be silly. Make a joke. Humor is a great tool to create a sense of play. When we laugh, our brains release a happy cocktail of hormones, changing our psychology. Laughing releases oxytocin—the same bonding hormone released during breast-feeding—and makes us trust the other person more. (And if it’s oxytocin we’re after, laughing is a more socially appropriate activity on a first date than breast-feeding.) Laughter lowers levels of the stress hormone cortisol, allowing us to relax. Laughter also creates a dopamine hit, activating our brain’s pleasure centers. It reinforces our behavior and makes us want to go back for more. All good things for a first date: more bonding, less stress, and an improved chance of a second date.

In a famous experiment, behavioral economists including Daniel Kahneman compared the experiences of patients undergoing a colonoscopy. (Don’t worry, these were all people who needed this exam, not just psych experiment volunteers.) Some patients endured thirty minutes of unpleasantness, while others experienced thirty minutes of unpleasantness with an additional five minutes of slightly less discomfort tacked onto the end. Perhaps counterintuitively, people preferred the latter experience, even though the whole thing lasted longer. That’s because of a phenomenon called the peak-end rule: When assessing an experience, people judge it based largely on how they felt at the most intense moment and at the end. Their memory isn’t an average of their minute-by-minute experiences. So order dessert at the end of the meal. Give the other person a meaningful compliment before you head your separate ways. Take advantage of the peak-end rule.

Here’s how Eastwick and Hunt explained why the scores changed: When we first meet people, we evaluate them on their mate value—their overall attractiveness and how they carry themselves. As we get to know and share experiences with them, we discover their unique value—who they are on the inside. In the classroom study, the first time the students evaluated one another, their answers reflected mate value—basically how hot they found their peers—and most people found the same people hot. But by the end of the semester, they judged them on their unique value, which depended on whom they’d gotten to know. In many cases, likely because of the mere exposure effect, the students liked their peers more than they had on the first day of class. The importance of mate value disappears over time. What matters is how you feel about someone as you get to know them. This phenomenon occurs outside of the classroom, too. When we first meet someone, we form an initial impression, based mostly on appearance. But as we get to know the person more, they often grow on us, and we start to see them differently. That same lesson applies to sex, too. Good sex often doesn’t magically happen right away. As anyone who’s had a lousy one-night stand can tell you, it takes time to develop a rhythm and learn about someone else’s body and preferences (and your own!).

KEY TAKEAWAYS F**k the spark! Fireworks and instant chemistry are often absent at the beginning of a relationship. Chemistry can build over time. Context matters. You may not feel the spark with someone, simply because of the environment in which you meet. The spark is not always a good thing. That feeling of chemistry may actually be anxiety because the person doesn’t make it clear how they feel about you. Sometimes the presence of a spark is more an indication of how charming someone is—or how narcissistic—and less a sign of a shared connection. If you feel the spark, that doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship is viable. Even if it leads you into a long-term relationship, it’s not nearly enough to keep the relationship going; nor is it a sign that you’re meant to be together. Ditch the spark and go after the slow burn—someone who may not be particularly charming but would make a great long-term partner.

EXERCISE: Look for the Positives Look for the positives in people, whether you’re evaluating them on a dating app or they’re across the table from you at a restaurant. It will be easy to see their flaws—the way our brain has evolved practically guarantees it. But force yourself to look for the good. After your next date, text a friend five things you liked about your date. Heck, if it helps, you can even email them to me (5goodthings@loganury.com).

I told half the group to rank their happiness on that same one-to-five scale the next time they ghosted. I asked the other half not to ghost. If they met someone they didn’t want to see again, I instructed them to send this message afterward: “Hey [insert name]. I really enjoyed talking about [insert conversation topic]. I don’t think we’re a romantic match, but I enjoyed meeting you.” I asked these people to send me screenshots of what they sent and the responses (if any) they received. What do you think happened? Most of the ghosters who did not send a message reported feeling neutral to not very happy about their behavior. In follow-up interviews, they said they felt guilty and that when the person checked in multiple times after the first date to see if they wanted to go out again, it made them want to avoid their phones altogether. Those who sent the straightforward message indicating that they weren’t interested received positive reinforcement from the other person almost two-thirds of the time. In the other cases, the person didn’t write back at all. There was only one incident in which the person wrote back and requested more information about what was wrong, and that escalated into a fight.

REJECTION DOS AND DON’TS Do: Be polite. Be clear. You can use some combination of “I don’t think we’re a romantic fit” or “I don’t think we’re the right match.” Make it short and sweet. You’re writing a polite heads-up note, not a manifesto on the perils of modern dating. (That’s my job, not yours!) Don’t: Say you want to be friends if you don’t mean it. Someone might take you up on it, and if you’re not genuine about that, it will just hurt more. Criticize the person or give feedback. That’s unsolicited, and it’s not your place to judge. Get into a long back-and-forth if they want more details. It’s nice to be clear, but you don’t owe them a drawn-out conversation. Let’s start a Ghostbusters Pledge where we all commit to being up front and honest with how we’re feeling. Stop ghosting. It’s hurting you.

They think of moving in together as the ideal way to test their relationship. The Pew Research Center surveyed a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. Two thirds of respondents between the ages of eighteen to twenty-nine agreed that couples who live together before marriage are more likely to have a successful marriage. However, the research into living together before marriage tells a different story: Married couples who move in together before they get married tend to be less satisfied and more likely to divorce than those who don’t. This association is known as the cohabitation effect. When researchers first investigated the cohabitation effect, they figured only a certain kind of couple moved in together before marriage. These couples, the researchers assumed, were laxer about marriage and thus more open to the idea of getting divorced. However, as more and more people choose to cohabitate before marriage, it’s much harder to say that only a particular type of couple is choosing this path. Researchers have a new theory. They now blame living together itself. Consider two hypothetical couples: Ethan and Jamie and Adam and Emily. Ethan and Jamie move in together because Jamie’s lease is up. Adam and Emily discuss moving in together but decide they’re not ready yet. Both relationships deteriorate over time. Adam and Emily end their relationship, but Ethan and Jamie do not. That’s because they now share a dog, a rubber tree plant, and a secondha...

Hitchers are also impacted by loss aversion. Behavioral economists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman identified this phenomenon in a seminal paper. They explained that “losses loom larger than gains.” Let’s say you walk into a store to buy a new phone that costs $500. The salesperson hands you a coupon for $100 off your purchase. You’d be pretty pumped, right? Now imagine a different scenario, where you walk into the store and the salesperson says they were running a $100 off promotion, but it just ended the day before. You’d feel some pain at that loss. In one situation, you’re gaining $100, because the phone now costs $400 instead of $500. In the other situation, you’re losing $100, because you know you just missed out on that coupon. Both involved $100, so you might expect to experience equal amounts of pleasure and pain. But that’s not the case. Remember, losses loom larger than gains. Because of loss aversion, we experience twice as much psychological pain from losing that $100 as we experience pleasure from gaining $100. In other words, to feel the intensity of losing $100, you’d have to gain $200. We’ve learned to adapt our behavior to this cognitive bias: We do what we can to avoid losses. For our clothes, that means holding on to old T-shirts that we’d never buy if we encountered them in a store today. In dating, that means holding on to a bad relationship. We’re more terrified of the potential loss of our partner than intrigued by the potential gain of the person ...

Once you’ve decided when and where you’ll initiate the breakup, you’ll want to make a plan for what you’re going to say. How do you want to start? I suggest you emphasize that you’ve given this decision deep consideration and you want to end the relationship. Be compassionate but direct. You could say something like: “I really care about you, and I don’t want to hurt you, but I think we need to break up. We both know this relationship hasn’t been working for a while. We tried to make it better, but at this point, I don’t think we can make the changes we need to. I want us to both find love and be happy, but I don’t think this relationship is going to give us that.” Another example of an opener: “I need to talk to you. I love you, and I love so many aspects of our relationship, but I’m not happy, and I don’t know that you are, either. This is insanely hard to say, because I don’t want to hurt you. I’m so grateful for the time we’ve had together, but after giving it a lot of thought, I don’t think we should be together.” Obviously your partner will be hurt. That’s unavoidable. Do your best to make them feel better. But if they say, “What’s wrong with me?” don’t answer. Here’s why: They’re the wrong person for you, but there’s nothing inherently “wrong” with them, and even if there is, you’re not in a position to say that. You’re a very biased source at this point. You’ve just convinced yourself to dump this person. You can share reasons why you don’t want to stay together—fo...

Create a social accountability system with a friend. You’ve got a specific deadline in mind, and now you know what you’re going to say, and when and where you’re going to say it. How do you make sure you go through with it? Increase your chances of following through by setting up a social accountability system. With this technique, you ask others to hold you responsible to the goal you’ve set for yourself. Accountability works so well because many of us are what best-selling author Gretchen Rubin calls “obligers.” We easily meet expectations set by others but struggle to uphold our own. That’s why you may often miss goals you set for yourself (like exercising more) but don’t miss appointments for someone else (like picking up a friend’s child from school). If you involve a friend, you make this goal about committing to them, not just to yourself. Find a trusted friend (someone who doesn’t like your current partner may be especially enthusiastic about helping you). Make a commitment to contact them after your breakup conversation. If you want to take your accountability system to the next level, incorporate incentives. Behavioral scientists love to use positive incentives or negative incentives to change how people act. For example, one of my clients wrote a check for $10,000 to the presidential campaign of a candidate he strongly opposed. He gave his friend permission to mail it in if he missed the deadline to break up with his girlfriend. He broke up with her later that day.

Framing, I believe, is the key to getting over breakups. In fact, you can speed up your recovery process by changing your frame. For example, you can focus on all of the activities that you used to love but paused because your partner wasn’t a fan. More on that later in the chapter. The point is that, rather than viewing the experience as a devastating loss, you can see it as a gain, something empowering that will improve your life in the long run. So turn off that Bridget Jones TV marathon, put on some rose-colored glasses, and let’s turn this pity party into a joy fest. In this chapter, I’ll give you four different reframes for your breakup and help you see that overcoming heartbreak is all about perspective.

According to Gary Lewandowski, a professor and former chair in the department of psychology at Monmouth University, we’re more resilient than we think. He studied a group that you might anticipate would be the saddest in the wake of a breakup: people who had been in a long-term relationship for at least a few years, had been broken up within the last few months, and hadn’t found a new partner. Instinctually, we’d expect the majority of them to view the breakup as a terrible experience. Yet, when Lewandowski and his colleagues talked to this group, they learned that only a third of them saw the breakup as negative. Around 25 percent saw it as neutral, and 41 percent saw it as positive. So allow me this cliché: This too shall pass. What you’re feeling now is temporary. Your weird bodily reactions (goodbye, immune system and sleep!) will end, the pain will fade, and you will overcome this terrible stage.

Reframe #1: Focus on the positives of the breakup. While you can’t wish away your pain, you can write your way to a less painful story. Remember, your brain is your friend, and it’s really quite good at helping you rationalize and get over things. It’s time to feed the beast! You can speed up the healing process by giving your brain what it’s craving: reasons why the breakup was actually for the best.

Reframe #2: Focus on the negatives of the relationship. Okay, okay. So maybe you’re not ready to “think positively” just yet. There’s another way forward. In a study similar to the one I described above, clinical psychologists Sandra Langeslag and Michelle Sanchez asked participants experiencing a breakup to do one of three things: Think negatively about the relationship that ended; read statements about how it’s normal to experience strong feelings after a breakup; or do something entirely different—like eating. They found that those who were asked to think about the negative elements of the relationship ultimately felt less infatuated with their ex than people in the other two groups.