Plays Well with Others Quotes

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“We spend so much time chasing the shallow things in life. But when tragedy strikes, or late at night when your brain asks too many questions, we know it’s the relationships that matter most. Whom can I trust? Does anyone really know me? Does anyone really care? If you think of your happiest moments, they will be about people. The most painful moments will too. Our relationships to others make or break our lives.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong —Unveiling the Science Behind Building Human Connections and Overcoming Loneliness

“Empathy is when the line between you and another blurs. Closeness is when your vision of your “self” makes room for someone else to be in there too. And a true friend is “another self.” A part of you.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“people change only when they feel they don’t have to. There’s a healthy (and effective) way to help your partner move in the direction of positive change. But it starts with who they want to be, not who you want them to be.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong —Unveiling the Science Behind Building Human Connections and Overcoming Loneliness

“Sixty-nine percent of ongoing problems never get resolved. No, I'm not saying that to depress you. The point is that it's not what you talk about, it's how you talk about it. Everyone thinks the issue is clarity, but studies show that most couples (if they do talk) are actually pretty clear...

It's about regulation, not resolution of the conflict. War is inevitable, but you have to obey the Geneva Convention rules. No chemical warfare. No torturing prisoners. Maya Angelou once said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“We’ll see that the fundamental core of relationships is the stories our brains weave to create identity, agency, and community—and how those stories not only bind us together but can tear us apart if we’re not careful.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong —Unveiling the Science Behind Building Human Connections and Overcoming Loneliness

“That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong —Unveiling the Science Behind Building Human Connections and Overcoming Loneliness

“We have grown smarter, but less wise. And that’s not just a warm platitude, it’s science. Wisdom isn’t just raw IQ; it involves understanding others. And when researchers surveyed two thousand Americans from different income levels, they found wealthier meant less wise. No,”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong —Unveiling the Science Behind Building Human Connections and Overcoming Loneliness

“Most couples wait too long to go (to marriage counseling). There's an average six-year delay between the first cracks in a marriage and actually getting help...

When entropy decays the happiness of a marriage over time, it's not just a linear downward progression for everyone. Often, there's a phase change (like water to ice)... In marriage this goes by the appropriately intimidating term negative sentiment override.

Idealization hasn't faded-- it has flipped. If love is positive delusion, NSO is utter disillusionment. You are biased against, not toward, your partner. The facts haven't necessarily changed, just your interpretation of them. Rather than attributing problems to context, attributions now lie in someone's poor character traits.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“...the most wonderful form of crazy that love brings: idealization... A 1999 study showed that people in happy relationships spend five times as long talking about their sweetheart's good qualities as bad. As Robert Seidenberg said, "Love is a human religion in which another person is believed in."

...Realism may be accurate, but it's our illusions that foretell our happiness in love. And the more crazy, the better. People who idealized their partner the most felt no decline in relationship satisfaction over a study of the first three years in marriage.

...When researchers ask people in the throes of infatuation about their partner's downsides, they can recognize and identify the bad stuff... But they emotionally discount the negative: it's not a big deal. Or those flaws are even "charming." This attitude helps grease the wheels of a relationship”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“..."For the first time in history, the typical American now spends more years single than married." Marriage has gone from being a cornerstone to a capstone. It used to be something you did while young and on a path to adulthood. Now its demands seem so onerous that people want to make sure they have all their ducks in a row before attempting it -- if they choose to walk down the aisle at all...

Yes, the average marriage has been getting worse year after year without much hope, but there's something you should know about the best marriages right now...

They are better than any in the history of humanity. Period.

... it's winner takes all. And that's why Finkel calls wedlock in our era "the all or nothing marriage.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“We've all read a thousand articles that say marriage makes you healthier and happier. Umm, no. Many of these studies merely survey married people and single people, compare the happiness levels, find that the married people are doing better, and crow "See? Marriage makes you healthy and happy." But that's committing an error called "survivorship bias." If you want to determine if getting married makes you happier, you need to include separated, divorced, and widowed people in with the currently married, not with the unmarried...

A 2010 study from Australia even said previous research probably underestimated just how happy people in happy marriages are. But the flip side is even more damning than you may have guessed. A study of medical records of five thousand patients analyzed the most stressful life events people deal with. Divorce came in #2 (Death of a spouse was number one.) Divorce even beat going to prison.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“Jeff Hall's research found that it took as many as sixty hours to develop a light friendship, sometimes one hundred hours to get to full-fledged "friend" status, and two hundred or more hours to unlock the vaunted "best friend" achievement...

Hall also found that how people talked mattered. We've all hit that wall with a potential friend where the small talk starts to go in circles...

Want to make good friends without the dozens of hours?... Arthur Aron got strangers to feel like lifelong pals in just forty-five minutes. How? Well that leads us to our second costly signal: vulnerability.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“Edith Wharton in the 1800s? “There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not as a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self.”

… In psychology it’s called “self-expansion theory” —that we expand our notion of our self to include those we’re close to.

… When women heard the names of their close friends, their gray matter responded the same way it did when they heard their own name.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“To Aristotle, friends “are disposed toward each other as they are disposed to themselves: a friend is another self.”

… Your brain is like a clever lawyer, twisting the words in Darwin’s contract. Selfishness can actually be altruism— if I believe that you are me.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“Without institutional obligations, the upkeep of friendships require must be very deliberate...

However, the weakness of friendship is also the source of its immeasurable strength. Why do true friendships make us happier than spouses or children? Because they're always a deliberate choice, never an obligation...

Someone does not cease to be your parent, boss, or spouse because you stop liking them. Friendship is more real because either person can walk away at any time. Its fragility proves its purity.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

“Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman found that when you survey people in the moment, their happiness levels are highest while with friends...

To be fair, research by Beverley Fair shows that we're the absolute happiest when with both friends and spouses. But even within a marriage, friendship reigns. Work by Gallup found that 70 percent of marital satisfaction is due to the couple's friendship. Tom Rath says it's five times as critical to a good marriage as physical intimacy.”
― Eric Barker, Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong