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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
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The art functioned as a “third object,” something both people could comment on. A third object takes the pressure off. It makes awkward silence a bit less awkward.
When you walk into a date, instead of starting with the awkward “So, how’s your day going?” or “Where do you live?” jump right into the middle of things: “You’ll never guess what happened on my way over here!” or “I just got off the phone with my sister, and she told me about this battle she’s in with her landlord over the recycling bins.” By skipping the getting-to-know-you small talk and diving straight into the type of conversation that friends (or lovers!) might have, you take a shortcut to intimacy.
couples form during freshman year among students who live across the hall from each other or take the same premed classes? That’s because the more we see something, the more we like it. Psychologists call this the mere exposure effect. Exposure breeds familiarity. We’re attracted to (and feel safe around) familiar things and people.
People often confuse anxiety for chemistry
It wasn’t Jonathan’s fault that he tended to focus on the negative. Our brain evolved to do just that.
We can train our mind to look for the positive and follow the dating version of the Golden Rule: Do not judge others the way you would not want to be judged.
One such bias is the fundamental-attribution error, our tendency to believe someone’s actions reflect who they are rather than the circumstances. When someone makes a mistake, we interpret the misstep as revealing something essential, and essentially bad, about that person’s character. We don’t look for external reasons to explain the behavior.
“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.”
Moving in together makes it harder to be honest with yourself about the quality of the relationship because the cost of separating goes up significantly.
“What’s the point of rushing if you’re not headed in the same direction?”
when we estimate how something will feel in the future, we tend to focus on the initial impact.
Behavioral economist Amos Tversky used to go to the movies, and if he didn’t enjoy the first five minutes of the film, he’d leave. “They’ve already taken my money,” he explained. “Should I give them my time, too?”
the shift is more or less inevitable. You can keep chasing the new-relationship high, but the dynamic always changes eventually.
“The shoemaker’s children go barefoot.”
If you find yourself put on the spot, say something about the fact that you respect them, and you don’t think this will work long term, so you don’t want to waste their time.
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.
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.
You can speed up the healing process by giving your brain what it’s craving: reasons why the breakup was actually for the best.
But those who participated in rediscovery activities saw even better results. Those participants regained a part of their identity that had been lost in the relationship. Lewandoskwi explained that “for those people, it was like the dawn of a new day.” They felt happier, less lonely, and more self-accepting.
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron,
If you don’t feel as upset as you expected after a relationship ends, don’t be alarmed. You’re not a heartless demon. You did the grieving while still dating, and now you’re ready to move on.
meaning-making allows us to move from suffering to growth:
“In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”
Couples who wait one to two years before getting engaged are 20 percent less likely to get divorced than those who wait under a year before putting a ring on it. Couples who wait at least three years before engagement are 39 percent less likely to get divorced than those who get engaged before a year.
