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

by Logan Ury

Prioritize what actually matters long term. Do not let yourself get off track because of small distractions. You may be using these distractions as a defense mechanism—a way of staying single while still giving the appearance of dating, to avoid, for whatever reason, taking the leap into a relationship.

Push yourself to make two different lists: What are critical dealbreakers for you? And what are just preferences or nice-to-haves?

Take a look at what unfolds when you two hang out: Do you enjoy spending time with this person? Do they make you happy? Do you like who you are with them? Do you want to kiss them? Is your interest in them growing, waning, or just kind of trudging along? 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.

“I ghost because I don’t know how to explain why I don’t want to see them again.” “I ghost because it’s uncomfortable to reject people.” “I ghost because it’s less hurtful to just disappear than to straight-out reject someone.”

But that’s just not true. Ghosting is awkward. Plus, it’s hurtful and leaves the other person in limbo.

help explain why this happens: first, our poor ability to make affective forecasts. In other words, we’re lousy at predicting how situations will make us feel in the future, like how we’ll feel after we’ve ghosted someone.

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!

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.

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you why you shouldn’t ghost. But sometimes it’s difficult to compose that “Thank you, next” text. Make it easy on yourself. Go to the Notes folder on your phone or save a copy of the Mad Libs–style goodbye text I gave you above. Commit to sending it as soon as you realize you’re not interested in someone.

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!)

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.

Have you ever polished off an entire tub of movie theater popcorn by yourself, not realizing how much you were eating until your hand grazed the cardboard bottom? If you’re anything like me, probably. What about eating a whole package of snack-size bags in one sitting? Probably not. That’s because reaching the end of a container—however big or small—creates a decision point: a moment that interrupts our automatic behavior and gives us an opportunity to make a conscious choice. In this case: “Do I want to keep eating popcorn?”

Research by behavioral scientists Amar Cheema and Dilip Soman demonstrated the power of decision points in a clever (and, I assume, delicious) study. They gave each participant a package of twenty cookies to snack on while completing a series of tasks. They packaged the cookies in three different ways: all twenty stacked in one column; divided up into smaller sections with white waxed paper; or divided up with pieces of colored waxed paper. The tasks themselves didn’t matter. What the researchers really cared about was whether the packaging affected how many cookies the participants ate and how quickly they ate them. They found that the participants whose cookies were separated by colored paper ate fewer cookies

That’s because the colored waxed paper created more obvious decision points, chances to shift their brains from unconscious thinking (or, in this case...

But relationship decision points are never as obvious as the colored pieces of paper that divided the cookies. They can be easy to miss, especially when we’re being carried along by the momentum of life.

Psychologists describe two ways couples transition into the next stage of a relationship: deciding or sliding. Deciding means making intentional choices about relationship transitions, like becoming exclusive or having children. Sliding entails slipping into the next stage without giving it much thought.

One trick for tough talks is to start by announcing how awkward you feel. This alerts the person to the fact that you feel vulnerable, which helps elicit a more empathetic response. Try an opener like “I feel awkward bringing this up, but…” or “It’s always hard to ask this, but…”

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 secondhand West Elm rug.

What does the tale of Ethan and Jamie teach us? First, cohabitation can lead to marriages (and subsequent divorces) that wouldn’t have occurred if the couple hadn’t moved in together.

Forty-two percent of couples who decided their way into living together enjoyed a happy marriage, compared to 28 percent of those who slid.

“Now we handle every decision like that,” Priya told me. “What’s the point of rushing if you’re not headed in the same direction?”

They end relationships too early because of a cognitive error called the transition rule. As behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky explained, when we estimate how something will feel in the future, we tend to focus on the initial impact. For example, you might imagine that lottery winners end up extremely happy, but it turns out that’s incorrect: As I mentioned earlier in the book, a year after they win, lottery winners are about as happy (or unhappy) as non–lottery winners.

Ditchers make the same mistake with love. Thanks to the transition rule, they confuse falling in love with the state of being in love, and they expect the whole relationship to offer that initial excitement.

Let’s say you go on a hundred first dates. You might develop excellent first-date skills. You discover the perfect cozy wine bar. Or you perfect the story of that time you got lost backpacking in Nepal. But what happens on dates five through seven? Or date twenty-five? Or fifty-five? You don’t know, because you haven’t gotten there. And if you keep dating people for three months and breaking up with them, you’ll never get your reps in. You’ll lack the experience of truly getting to know someone, of seeing the face of the person you love lit up by birthday candles or streaked with tears because of a parent’s illness. And you’ll continue to hold false expectations of how relationships feel over time. You won’t learn that how you feel on day one differs from how you feel on day one thousand.

EXERCISE: Take the Wardrobe Test If your partner were a piece of clothing that you own—something in your closet—what piece of clothing would they be?

“Mateo is like that kind of scrubby old sweatshirt that you have that you love but maybe wouldn’t wear to an important meeting,” she said. “When you put it on, you’re like, ‘Ahhhh, yes. I’m in my element.’ But at the same time, ‘I’m not going to go anywhere looking like this.’ ”

Tversky understood—and therefore tried to avoid—the sunk-cost fallacy. It’s the feeling that once you invest in something, you should see it through. It explains why most people force themselves to sit through a bad improv show.

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.

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 we could date instead.

Breaking up is a major decision, with major consequences, a decision you might be tempted to delay. But what you don’t realize is that by staying in the relationship, you are already making a decision.

But here’s the worst thing: You’re not alone in the car. Your partner is with you. If you’re planning on ending the relationship, every day you wait, you’re wasting their time, too. You should be especially sensitive if you’re dating a woman who is hoping to give birth to her own kids. You’re underestimating her opportunity cost of being with you. The longer you put off breaking up with her, the less time she has to find a new partner and build a family. The kindest thing is to give her a clear answer so she can move on and find someone else.

First, understand that no one is perfect, including you, so stop being so freakin’ picky about tiny character flaws! Those are pet peeves and not dealbreakers. Don’t be like the character Jerry on Seinfeld, the perpetual bachelor who breaks up with women because they have “man hands,” “shush” him, eat their peas one at a time, or enjoy a khakis commercial he dislikes.

Our brain is on this drug of love for the first few years of a relationship. The next phase is more familiar, less intense. More “What can I pick you up from the grocery store?” and less “Let’s do it on the kitchen floor.” That change can feel disappointing; some people try to recapture the rapture by starting over with someone else. However, if your goal is to be in a long-term relationship with a committed partner, understand that the shift is more or less inevitable. You can keep chasing the new-relationship high, but the dynamic always changes eventually.

As my dad says, “I’m part of the welcoming committee, not the hiring committee.” But our friends and family can see things that we’re blind to.

A friend of mine called off her wedding a few weeks before the big day. At that point, several people confessed they’d had doubts about her ex-fiancé but didn’t want to offer unsolicited advice. Don’t let that happen to you. Ask a trusted friend or family member what they really think about your relationship. Choose your adviser wisely. This should be someone who knows you and your partner well, has your best interests at heart, and is good at helping you think through decisions.

A woman I know named Meredith has a contract with her best friend that if either of them is dating someone the other thinks is not a good match, they will call it out, no matter how hard it is to have that conversation.

How did you feel when they shared their thoughts? Relieved? Panicked? Use this experience to tune in to your own feelings about what to do next.

Relationships go through natural ups and downs over time. The longer the relationship, the more likely it is that there will be periods—perhaps even several years—when relationship satisfaction dips. It’s

While some marriage experts might tell you that when things are rough in your relationship, you need to invest more time and energy to make it work, that’s often unrealistic. When you’re depleted, there’s not much left to give. Instead, ask less from your relationship—temporarily—while you sort out other parts of your life.

Focus on yourself first. We’re most able to love when we feel complete. The more confident and comfortable we feel about ourselves, the easier it is to give and share with others.

We even went to a terrible couples therapist who quoted his own lame Facebook posts and suggested that we, neurotic Jews, should start doing extreme sports together to reconnect. Ironically, we bonded over our mutual dislike of him.

Prior to that dinner, I’d spent many hours alone and with friends, wondering if we should break up. I’d gone through all of the exercises and anguish I described above. But that night, when I really reflected on my behavior, I realized how much I’d asked him to change for our relationship without being willing to put in the work myself.

What followed was one of the best conversations of our relationship.

I see that dinner as the turning point in our partnership, the moment when I realized I’d been taking him for granted and prioritizing my work, emails, and dating coaching clients over him.

I nodded. I was proud to hear that she’d made a decision and stuck to it.

Write yourself a letter about why you’ve chosen to end things. 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 exactly why you made this difficult decision.

Merely being prompted to make a plan made a difference!