Dr Laurie Talks Romance, Parents and Stalking on 'Love Factually'

Love Factually is a new podcast looking at what "rom com" movies get right and wrong about relationships. Dr Laurie Santos joined the hosts Eli Finkel of Northwestern University and Paul Eastwick from UC Davis to talk about her favorite 80s teen movie, Say Anything.

In this episode, they discuss what Cameron Crowe's 1989 film tells us about what constitutes stalking; and the transition when romantic partners supplant our parents as our closest relationships.   

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Happy Valentine's Day. As promised, I have a lovely
little treat for you on this most romantic of days.
In the last episode of The Happiness Lab, I chatted
with relationship experts Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick to explore

(00:35):
what rom coms get right and wrong about romance. But
Eli and Paul have their own fabulous podcast. It's called
Love Factually, and it just so happens that I recently
joined them as a guest. So here's me and Eli
and Paul talking about the science of one of my
favorite ever rom coms, the movie Say Anything. I hope
you enjoy our conversation, and if you do, be sure

(00:56):
to check out Love Factually wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Welcome to Love Factually, podcast that analyzes rom coms and
romantic films using the science of close relationships. We're your hosts,
Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel. Welcoming in guest hosts of
the Happiness Lab podcast, Doctor Laurie Santos, thank you for
joining us today.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
So Laurie, tell us what are we talking about today?

Speaker 1 (01:32):
So today we're talking about Say Anything. Cameron Crow's nineteen
eighty nine rom com starting Hi John Cusack and Iomi Sky,
which Entertainment Weekly ranked in two thousand and two as
the number one romance movie of the past twenty five years.
Some of the themes we'll explore are how attachment bonds
transfer from appearent to a romantic partner, the benefits of optimism,

(01:54):
and what exactly counts as stalking.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
And fair warning, we'll be spoiling this movie today, So
if you don't know how many songs one woman can
write about Joe and they're all about pain, then go
ahead and wats this movie and come back, okay? Eli
tell us who are the key characters and couples in
this movie.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
The movie explores the love triangle involving Diane, her father Jim,
and her boyfriend Lloyd. The story takes place during the
summer after the young lovers graduate from high school. Diane,
played by Ione Sky, is the unassuming valedictorian who will
be leaving for a prestigious fellowship abroad at the end
of the summer. Her peers view her as pretty and kind,

(02:36):
but she's always been so busy that nobody really knows her. Jim,
played by John Mulaney is Diane's father. He and Diane's
mother divorced five years earlier, after which Diane chose to
live with him. His devotion to his daughter is boundless,
but the methods underlying that devotion are sometimes dubious. Lloyd,
played by cy John Cusack, is a principled slacker and

(03:02):
a devoted brother and uncle. His best friends are Corey
and DC, both girls, and his primary passions are kickboxing
and Diane. So, Paul, those are the chess pieces? Are
you ready to give us one minute on how the
film moves them across the board?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Red dye? Count me down. Here we go.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
On your mark, Get set and go superachiever.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Diane Court delivers a graduation speech as Lloyd Dobbler plots
how to ask her out on a bona fide date.
He wins her over by asking her to go with
him to a graduation party and promising to give her
all his English tips because she's moving to England in
the fall for school. At the party, they orbit each
other as Diane meets all the people she never got
to know in high school, while Lloyd acts as key master.
They become friends with potential and plan to hang out

(03:50):
as much as they can. Over the next sixteen weeks,
Lloyd survives a family dinner at Diane's house. He visits
the retirement home run by her father. He teaches her
how to drive stick They have sex in the backseat,
listening to Peter Gabriel. Diane's father becomes more and more
disapproving of her relationship with Lloyd, and Diane ultimately relents.
She breaks it off with Lloyd, leading to eight unreturned
phone messages in a boom box Peter Gabriel serenade outside

(04:10):
her bedroom window. All this time, Diane's father has been
lying to her about evating taxes, but the i RS
closes in and she discovers her father's piles of cash.
Dan confronts her father, she makes up with Lloyd, Her
father goes to prison, and Diane Lloyd fly to England together.
As you promised here that everything will be okay once
the smoking sign goes down. Ah, you did it, amazing.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
I was never going to pull that off. I was
going to get so stuck on my new details of
this film. Yes, amazing job pop.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
It very challenging. Okay, Well, Laurie, why don't you kick
it up by telling us, what is your relationship to
this movie?

Speaker 1 (04:40):
So I saw this movie back in the nineteen eighties
when I was a kid myself, and interestingly, I just
rewatched this movie with a friend from grad school and
his now two thirteen year old kids, and it was
fascinating to kind of rewatch the film because probably I
probably watched it around the time I was thirteen, if
it kind of came out around nineteen eighty eight, So

(05:00):
it was like a very strange full circle. But I
kind of both identified with Lloyd as being this sort
of like kind but clueless, don't really I know where
you're going type person, and also Diane in the sense
that she was like smart, not the pretty part. So
I was kind of the like, kind of unfortunate, not
very cool, but also smart person. So I like really
wanted this couple to get together. And then I think,

(05:22):
like all women who watch this film back of the day,
I just absolutely fell in love with Lloyd Dobbler. Everyone
wants their own Lloyd Dobbler, everyone wants the know, and this,
you know, Peter Gabriel serenade just the whole thing. So
for me, when I think of like eighties rom coms
that make me smile and honestly that still hold up today.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
This is really one of them that's really cool. I
do think that it felt like a permission structure to
be a sensitive dude and that it but that you
could also kind of be admired for it at the
same time. And I also really liked too how he
seems to really be taken with Diane for many different reasons,

(06:00):
but also in part that she's like a badass and
killing it out there, right. I mean, she's, you know,
very smart and successful, and it's very clear that from
the beginning he's like, Wow.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, I mean Lloyd Dobbler was like the og like
husband that's going to support the women's career, right like
in the eighties when that wasn't so much of a thing.
So I mean he's going to give up, you know,
his permanent kickboxing kind of teaching ship to fly to
England with her to help her out in her studies. Right,
So yeah, aspirational.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, it's cool. Well, Eli, what about you?

Speaker 3 (06:29):
I had you know, I connected a lot of different ways,
So this one of them is is when I mentioned
on this podcast a couple of times that I acted
in high school, and there's something in Evanston called the
Piven piv E n known like Jerry Pivens parents, Jeremy
Pinen's parents Theater Workshop. So I took that when I
was sixteen and even then, so this was nineteen ninety one,
and you know famous alumni John and Joan Cusack, Jeremy

(06:53):
Piven himself, like a whole bunch of stuff like that.
And when I took it, I took it with you know,
Martin Scorsese's daughter. And then I sort of had my
first you know, serious sort of girlfriend situation there.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
And was it Martin Scorsese's daughter.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
You could say, no, oh no, no, I did not do.
That would have been quite the story. It was not.
But but what's interesting is just proving that I never
did grow up. I currently live one block from where
that that theater workshop is held.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Oh look, kidding. Yeah, Well, let's transition to talking about
what this movie gets right about the nature of close
relationships but also, you know, about the nature of happiness
and optimism more generally. So, Laurie, do you want to
kick it off for us.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah. So one of the reasons I love this film
is I think it really does a nice job of
showing the power of optimism, right, So Lloyd is this
like underachiever, like Diane, core has no idea who he is,
but he tells his friends, like his two girlfriends, Hey,
I'm just gonna like ask her out. And so Corey
and DC are just like, no, like, are you crazy?

(07:56):
It's beautiful?

Speaker 2 (07:57):
What is it?

Speaker 1 (07:58):
She's the brain with the body of a game show
host and she doesn't know it right, and so they're like,
she's just going to destroy you. Lloyd, like, don't do this.
But Lloyd is just like, I'm gonna go for it.
I'm just going to ask her how And as we
see in the film, ultimately this works. And so this
raises this interesting question about like, is kind of believing
you can succeed at something that seems incredibly unlikely good

(08:21):
for you? Like does it make it more likely that
you're going to succeed at the thing. And it turns
out that there's some interesting psychology on this. There's this
famous effect in psychology called the Roger Banister effect, which
for you runners out there, you might know that Roger
Banister is a famous British runner who originally it was
the first guy to run the four minute mile back
in the day and they deal with the four minute mile.

(08:43):
I mean, I can't even barely run like a ten
twenty minute forty minute miles.

Speaker 4 (08:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, So like nobody had run the four minute mile
before Roger Banister, but but importantly, no one thought anyone
could was actually believed to be beyond like human capacity, right,
And so Roger's like, I'm going to run the four
minute mile, and everyone's like that seems crazy. But then
there's one thing, it's raised in nineteen fifty four, he
ran it. But instantly what happened after that is people say, like, oh,

(09:14):
it is humanly possible, we can run it, and like,
just like over a month later, somebody else ran the
four minute mile, and now subsequently a four minute mile
is like not even anything for somebody who's a real
runner to like super brag about, because so many people
have kind of done this at this point. And so
what does this mean. This means that Roger believing that
it was possible to run the four minute while when
everyone else thought it was impossible. The idea is that

(09:34):
his mental model of this made it easier for him
to actually physically achieve this, Like it allowed him to
engage in whatever behavior is he needed to do this,
like you know, practicing or sort of pushing himself or whatever.
Believing he could do it meant it made it easier
for him to do it. And I think this is
true for Lloyd too, right to believe he had to
do it, he had to call her up and you know,
just be his normal kind of jovial, kind funny, self

(09:58):
like little self effacing, but like he just went for
it and ultimately it worked.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
That's great. I mean what I love about the Roger
Banister idea of Visa VI this movie is that we
also see the inspiration for other people. And so there's
this point at the at the party where where Lloyd
goes up to one of his friends, Mike Cameron, and
he's talking to him, and Mike Cameron says.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
I wanted to ask you, how did you get Diane
Court to go out with you?

Speaker 2 (10:26):
I called her up?

Speaker 3 (10:28):
But how come it worked? I mean, like, what are you?

Speaker 2 (10:32):
I'm like dobblers?

Speaker 3 (10:36):
This is great? Excuse me, Hope?

Speaker 4 (10:38):
Thanks all right?

Speaker 1 (10:40):
So yeah, right that quote and Mike is basically every
other runner, like in the late nineteen fifties who were like,
oh well, if your Roger Banister can do it, you know,
then the rest of us can do it too.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Eli, what do you got?

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Oh my god, Laurie, I'm so psyched you mentioned this movie.
I had forgotten just how much is in here, and
watching it from the perspective of relationship science was deeply enlightening.
I'm going to start by talking about something that's a
little obscure in the movie, and it points to this
idea that I put a lot of stock in that
in a sense, social reality is reality, right, that basically

(11:17):
things exist within our social consensus. And the line Diane
says this to her dad, she says, it always feels
good to tell you the truth, because if I can't
share it with you, it's almost like it didn't happen.
It's such a great line. And going back into the sixties,
these sociologists Peter Berger and Hansfried Kellner had this paper

(11:40):
where they talked about the microsociology of knowledge, and really
what they're talking about is this idea that the reality
of the world is sustained in conversations with significant others. Now,
this is one with her dad, but more recently Maya Rassen,
yach Malone and Tory Higgins have done research on this
shared reality idea, and they talked about partners as making

(12:01):
sense of the world together, and they have this line
in one of their papers that I love, which is
that humans are truth cartographers, searching for epistemic companions with
whom to map out the bounds of reality. And the movie, again,
it focuses on a lot of things, but I think
one of the lesser noticed aspects of what they're doing
is they're playing in this space that that yes, you

(12:23):
can have these experiences, but until you've shared them with someone,
they are not fully real. And I love that about
this film.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Oh gay Eli, But that raises an interesting question that's
like shown in the title of the film, this idea
of say anything, like should we share all our realities
with people? I have to say again, rewatching this film
with thirteen year olds, the scene where Diane is telling
her dad about having sex because she's like she comes
home lay after the whole like sex in the car thing,

(12:51):
and then she's like, Okay, I just feel so sad
I can't share this with you, so I'm just going
to go through it dad, And she's just like, I
attacked him. It was so great, you know. It's sex
and Eilbu and the dad's face, and even these thirteen
year olds were like something major has been violated there.
This is a new This is a new, very much
more sharing generation. I think that the generation like Diane
came from. And so what does this science say there?

(13:13):
Is that right? Should we really be able to share anything?
Is honesty and shared reality about every truth important for relation? Sure?

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, look so I think there's two ways of engaging
with that, Laurie, I love this question. The first one
is about the shared reality aspect. And yes, I do
think there's something realer about her having sex with Lloyd
because she shared it with her dad. So in that sense,
I think this classic shared reality literature is correct. This
question of discretion. Are there circumstances under which we shouldn't

(13:41):
be sharing everything with everybody, even our close partners. I
don't think the field has gotten into this enough, but
I am persuaded that there are certain sorts of discretion,
certain sorts of things that are probably best not shared
in certain relationships. And it's true that Diane and her
dad had a very close and special bond, but in general,

(14:02):
like details about one's sex life, sharing those with one's parents,
might be a little dubious on average, that would be
my guess.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, I mean, and even in the movie, right, I mean,
there is this moment of like, oh my gosh, she's
telling her dad that she just had sex, but I
think it was in the context of her just saying, look,
I'm willing to share everything with you, even the tough things.
And I feel like that is actually an interesting message
that like with if we can't share our tough things
with close others, or controversial things or you know, sensitive things, like,

(14:29):
couldn't we share them with so So, Paul.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
I'm gonna throw it to you in a seconcause I
know you also must have identified a million things. But Laurie,
on this idea of say anything and share everything, I
think part of the title of the movie is really
about her dad's lie. We haven't talked too much about it,
but the whole conceit of their relationship is say anything.
But meanwhile, he's been involved in this embezzlement fraud and

(14:55):
you know, his motives are probably good. Maybe we'll touch
on that, but she's deeply shaken by it. And on
this idea of like social relationship partners as truth cartographers,
I find it interesting what happens to her when she
finds out she's deeply shaken and what she says. She
goes to Lloyd at that point, and she says, my
father's guilty. He lied to me, He lied to everybody.

(15:18):
I just left home. I need you. And I think
really what she needs is her reality. Her sense of
reality is kind of shaken, and she's looking to him
to find some sort of stability about the world. And
I do think part of why she went back to
him is this epistemic the world isn't making sense, Please
help motivation.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
I think that actually leads into one of the other
things that I think this movie gets pretty correct, and
it is the attachment transfer that takes place as people age,
as people grow up. Typically for most adolescents, they will
tell you that the people that they have the strongest
attachment fonds with are their parents, and that includes various

(16:02):
behaviors like who do you want to be around? We
call it proximity seeking, right, but it's like who do
you want to be around? Who do you go to?
You for support when you're feeling down, we call that
safe haven? And then who do you go to for
advice or to celebrate and that we call the secure base,
and usually the transfer kind of goes in that order

(16:23):
as people move from having parents be their closest confidants
to having romantic partners be their closest confidants. So first
you want to spend all this time with a romantic party,
but you might still go to the parent for advice
or for support, and then the support transfers, and finally
it's that advice component that moves over to the romantic partner.

(16:44):
And I kind of see we I think we witness
her go through that process, and any lie that scene
you were just describing, I think is is the moment,
the final moment where she has the transfer is complete, although.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
In her case I worry that like the she kind
of does that transfer, but it really is like the
only person that she ever talked to because she kind
of have friends in high school was the dead and
now it seems like the only person that she's talking
to now is Lloyd, which bracket it might be a
great prison talk to because Lloyd is kind and consider
it and the best significant other they're out there, ever,
but it's still it's risky, is still not really good,

(17:18):
and I think even Lloyd Woyd recognizes this at one
point in the film. He asks this question when she
comes back to him. He says, do you need me
or do you just need somebody else? Right? And I
think there's kind of a open He doesn't actually even
let her answer. He's like, never mind, I don't care,
and he just kisses her.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
And this is really good.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Reunion is perfect, but I think it raises this question
of like, is this healthy that Diane is kind of
transferring this attachment but maybe not seeking out kind of
help support, safe haven's all these other things from just
like other humans in her life.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
I mean, generally speaking, having a thin rather than a
more developed social network is not great for people. You
want to feel like your little diad is embedded in
a set of other people who are all invested in
helping your relationship to work, and so you know, people

(18:09):
going off on their own. It's very romantic, but it's
it's a little risky in.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
The grand and it's an interesting contrast with like how
Lloyd Dobbler does it right. He's got Corey and DJ
his like close female friends to go to. He's got
this close relationship with his sister who's his actual sister
in real life, Joan Cusack right, and her son. He's
just like has this. He even has his like bevy
of dude friends at the sip and Go that he
goes to to talk to and get like relationship advice from.

(18:38):
But I think there's there's a sense in which, like,
Lloyd is healthier in part just because he has these
other support systems to go to.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah. Cool, Well, Laurie, what else do you have about
this movie? The other things this movie gets right?

Speaker 1 (18:51):
So so another thing I think this movie gets right,
or at least I really hope the relationship science fears
out and I hope it gets right right is this
question of like, who do you find attractive?

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Right?

Speaker 1 (19:01):
You know, Lloyd is this kind of like you know, underachiever.
He just likes his kickboxing. He's kind of unremarkable, so
unremarkable that when and he first calls Diane, she she
pulls out her yearbook and starts flipping through to try
to look at him and like look at his sort
of just he's just not known to her, right, It's
really funny he's but he's kind She sees that kindness later,

(19:22):
even on that short phone call when he's asking her out.
He kind of makes her laugh and she's into that,
and it kind of raises us question, like, do we
pick people based on, you know, just their looks, just
their success criteria, what they're going to achieve in life,
whether they're going to get some huge fellowship and be valedictorian,
or do we pick people based just on how they
make us feel? Right, They're kind to us, they make

(19:43):
us laugh, they make us feel positive. And so my
sense is that this movie is winning out according to
the relationship science. But you two are the experts. What
is a science all?

Speaker 3 (19:52):
You might have a thought or two on this one.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
I'm glad you brought that up, Laurie. In fact, your
your hopes for the way attraction works are indeed true.
That is very close to how people actually experience initial attraction,
which is what I think is happening in that scene
that you're described. So there's this classic study by Elaine
Walster than Wallster now Elaine Hatfield, connected in the nineteen sixties,

(20:18):
and it's affectionately called the computer Dance Study. The idea
was that these researchers, they brought a number of college
freshmen together, set them up with each other, looked to
see who like whom. The lore of this study is that, ah,
only attractiveness mattered, nothing else really mattered. The reality is
they didn't like have great measures of the other stuff,

(20:40):
and even the measures they did have, it like kind
of worked. It's just I think everybody was surprised that
physical attractiveness was so potent. So when you look at
contemporary speed dating data sets, yes, the appeal of attractiveness
is very much present. It's very powerful, But so is confidence.
That's also a huge effect size, right, and then that's

(21:02):
Lloyd in a nutshell. So is being funny, so is
being nice and responsive. These are all positive, meaningful predictors.
It is not the case that only attractiveness matters. All
of those other features end up being important to So
I think you're spot on there.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
And I love how the movie just develops Lloyd's moral
character over time. One of my favorite you mentioned it
in your quick summary. I was surprised they got in
their polity especially effective stro a summary was one of
the first things that Diane learns about Lloyd is, at
least at this party, he's the so called key master.
For those of you who may not remember eighties parties
is the person that gets to hold everybody's car keys

(21:42):
and so that they don't necessarily drive home drunk. So
Lloyd is sort of the evaluator of whether or not
somebody is ready to drive home. And we see in
the movie that this kind of comes to a head
with one of the friends who comes up to it
is screaming at him, and Lloyd is just like, you
must Joe, Joe can't you know, he doesn't give him
the keys, right. But I think that's a moment for
Diane to realize, like, oh, this person is responsible. It

(22:04):
can be responsible outside of your academic pursuits. But this
person is also kind of compassionate and kind Like she's
seeing all these like great strengths that he has not
in the context of her relationship, but just kind of
generally right. And I think that that must be a
huge I mean, it's a huge factor in why every
teenage girl who watched this movie in the eighties fell
in love with Lloyd Dobbler. Yeah, so must be good
for Diane too.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
So on this like does the movie get the attraction right?
It does so many different ways. So it also plays
with some false myths that you know, she might be
out of his league. She's the brains with the body
of what did you say, the body of the game
show hostess. Yeah, so she's also brains. Stay with brains.

(22:48):
So one is this idea of the other is like, no,
some like likes attract like like what would she want
with you? You sort of burn out, you know, kickboxer,
And the movie basically puts the lie to all those
sorts of things. Of course, they're compatible because he's got
these other qualities and they're attentive to each other and
he makes her laugh. But one of the things that's
interesting is is we talk a lot about attraction on

(23:12):
this show, especially with regard to similarity. Right, So there's
this conventional view widespread that we're attracted to people who
are similar to us. Turns out if you study that,
we're attracted to people whom we think are similar to us.
And you see this here a little bit because you
see one of the reasons why this might emerge because
there's this scene where she works at an old person's

(23:34):
home retirement home, I'm not sure what they call it
at that time, and she says to Lloyd, do you
want to come by? And he's like, eh, And she says, like,
you seem to have something against old people, and then
he sort of says, well, no, I don't, but I
kind of do, because you know, I used to work
at a Shmorgos board and the old people would flock
there and they love to eat, and they just jam
their mouths, you know, they with their mouths open. And

(23:56):
she says, I think that's agism, and that's being prejudiced
against people because they're old. Maybe their mouths don't work
as well as yours. And he says, really, I, well,
you're really turning me around here. I was looking at
it the wrong way, I think. And there is research
on this concept called attitude alignment in close relationships, and
this has work than my advisor, Carol Ruspolt, was doing

(24:17):
in collaboration with a student who was there with me
named Jody Davis when I was in graduate school in
the late nineties. But what they find in that space
is that alignment is stronger to the extent that the
issue is central to the other person. And clearly Lloyd's
happy to recognize that Diane cares more about this than
he does, and it's stronger to the degree that the
relationship is important, and so what we see here is

(24:39):
this will masquerade as look how much they have in
common they both love old people, but only because he
basically tuned to her over time into it feels like
they have these things in common, but in reality they
developed them together over time.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, I love that idea. It's also connected to one
of the things that I really appreciated about this movie,
which again sort of this nice guy manifesto idea for
how it can work. And I think it highlights the
importance of having fe female platonic friends if you are
a heterosexual man. And this is everywhere in the literature.

(25:16):
So if you look, for example, at correlations between like
hostile sexism and if you're a man having female friends,
that's a meaningful negative correlation there. The more female friends
you have, the less likely you are to endorse hostile sexism.
These ideas like oh, women are out to get men,
women are out to take advantage of men. Right, things

(25:37):
like this, and it's a simple inner group contact story.
We spend more time with people just getting to know
them as people, and we have less of those really
pernicious beliefs. Furthermore, having a bigger other gender network and
this is true for both men and women. Heterosexual men
and women, they're more likely to form relationships over a

(25:58):
few year period. This is also done on high school students.
So I think we're really seeing that here that these
are good ways to be in the world. If you
are a heterosexual man, so you're interested in women and
you want to actually get to know women and ultimately
date somebody that you're really into, this movie is pointing

(26:21):
out the one of the more effective ways to do that.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Plus, the female friends are sometimes incredible songstressing. That's right,
we'll get to that later.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Honestly, those songs were stuck in my head all day. Joes.
They're so catchy. Why no idea?

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, she should have went on to write commercial jingos.
I hope that she did well in life. When you
get that definition, it kind of sounds a little bit
like the kinds of things that Lloyd's kind of male
friends he seeks out right after Diane breaks up with him.
Some of the views they expressed about women, I think
the most succinct one was the youngest member of the
Sip and Go crew, which is just this little kid
who was like.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
You, O, my god, oh my god. But another reason
that I totally I love that scene because again, it's
all bearing down on exposing the lie of the of
keeping the genders separate. And it's when Lloyd asked them,
I got.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
A question, if you guys know so much about women,
how come you here at like a gass and sip
on Saturday night, completely lone drinking beers.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
No women anywhere, and they really have choice? Yeah? Right,
uh huh. So anyway, there it points out.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
I mean, I wish Lloyd Dobbler could like walk around
and like go to Embury and sell Reddit like thread
and just walk in and ask the same Loyd Dobbler
question to kind of break.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
This up seriously. All right, so tell us about some
things that this movie gets wrong about the nature of
close relationships. Either of you, what do you? What do
you have?

Speaker 1 (28:01):
I just said some of the movie gets wrong generally,
which is that kickboxing does not seem to be the
sports It was close, but a little bit that's not
really relationships. That's not really relationships. One of the things
I wanted to look at was this question of stocking,

(28:21):
because I think this movie portrays a kind of strange
version of it. It was definitely a version that you know,
I think based on all the memes that still exist now,
like like thirty years later, like the holding up the
boom box, which I was able to look up and
is in fact a sharp GF seventy six thousand.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Boom bombs, just like old schools.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
Like holding that up, and that is the purely romantic boombox.
I think you like, it's really hard to find them now.
I mean in part because it's like not the eighties anymore.
But I think people have bought them for the specific
act of sort of copying White Dollar. That's a move
that like is iconic. It's on T shirts and memes,
but it's also like border Light Stocker. And so Paul,

(29:06):
what is the movie kind of saying about Stocker?

Speaker 2 (29:10):
And so I felt that the movie kind of gives
a pass to certain stalking behaviors. It treats it kind
of romantically, kind of I don't want to say how
to manual, but there's there's there's a couple of things happening.

(29:30):
One and I'll start with this, even though this really
seems benign. Are the eight phone messages right, eight left messages.
So there are studies that look at different forms of
stalking and Leaving messages or unwanted phone calls are some
of the most common ones. Those show the biggest discrepancy

(29:52):
between what the person who is being left feels is
likely to be unpleasant, and what the person who is
being stalked feels. People who are being stocked hate the
phone messages, they really want them to stop, and the
people leaving the messages or like, oh whatever, I'm sure
it didn't really bother them. They're really really unpleasant, and

(30:15):
so is showing up at somebody's house uninvited. Also not
the kind of thing that most people look upon very
favorably if they've broken up with somebody. I think that
I think that whole meme, the whole idea, Like rewatching it,
I was like, oh, this is not what I remembered.
I remembered something inspiring, not like triumphant, but like like

(30:40):
let's go like let's defy your father. That is not
what that scene is it at all.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yeah, all the adults that I watched this film with
remember the boombox scene as ending with Diane kind of
rushing out and that's when they made up, and like
it kind of worked, And I was like, first it
didn't work. He's just like creepily showing up with spoo
box in the middle of the night.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah, it would have been It would have been better
if they had the scene where he got back into
his car and drove home. That scene never made it into.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
The Yes, right, So he thought really carefully and was like,
maybe that was a little too much, like I should.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Really respect And so I want to actually want to
give the movie credit for that, that it actually didn't
show that working right, and that it and that a
number of other things have to transpire before she changes
her mind. So it's more I think that I'm critiquing
the way the movie lodged itself in our collective memories.

(31:36):
Contained some things that I think the movie didn't intend
but aren't a very good idea.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Laurie, you're gonna regret that you ever chose to be
on our show. But I have a question for you
about this. So what does it mean to seduce someone?

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Like?

Speaker 3 (31:52):
What does seduction mean if we stipulate that it isn't
stuff like this, right, if it isn't stuff like well,
she wasn't sure, So I tried to be more charming.
I did something innovative. I left a funny phone message
or ate, and I agree that, like, I don't think
we really want these behaviors. Again, the movie gets away

(32:15):
with it in a way a lot of these old
movies get away with it because she actually did want it, right,
That's the thing that he can't know, And certainly she's
not giving him reason to believe that she really wants it,
but she did, and so it's sort of okay from
our perspective, from the viewer's perspective. But Laurie, do you
have an opinion, like what would it mean to be
interested in somebody, be unsure whether that person is interested

(32:37):
in you, and to try to persuade them that, you know,
give me a try, like it'll be fun? And is
it if it isn't this, if it isn't what Lloyd
Dobbler did in this movie, Like what does it look like?

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yeah, well, I think it is kind of what Lloyd
Dobbler does, not with the boombox part, but with the
other parts. Right, it's really thinking from the other person's
perspective about how to help them and what they need. Right.
One of the scenes in the beginning that Diane Court
actually comments on to her dad later when she's like, well,
you is why I fell in love with Dloyd was
that they're just kind of walking around and Lloyd notices
some broken glass on the ground and you know, it's

(33:15):
post parties, so she's kind of walking around barefoot. He's like, no, no,
let me just move that out of the way for you.
Like he's thinking about it from her perspective. He's kind
of perspective taking in that case, hopefully accurately about what
she really needs. And I think that's the spot where
it kind of seduction works best, like when we're kind
of perspective taking about what would help another person, but
then looking for signs of consent, right, And that's the

(33:38):
spot where I think the boom Box is kind of
on the borderline. But even Lloyd, again, I'm kind of
defending him because he's just Sizemoy Lloyd Dobbler, and you know,
how can I, like, you know, regret all the things
I watched in the eighties and those things. But even
then he has this sign where people are trying to
convince him to call her some more. I think it
was his girlfriends or trying to convince him to call
him some more, and he says, I draw the line

(33:59):
at eight. You know, answer messages, and to be fair bracketed,
I do think that, like maybe it was okay to
do a little more in the eighties just because like
sometimes if you were running for the.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
Phone, like you didn't know that's a good point. And
the cell phone.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Goes to the message they don't want to talk to you,
But the answer machine sometimes is like the chords really
far away. They don't have any pocket, you know. So,
but but but Lloyd is saying, I'm setting a boundary, right,
I'm giving her a chance, but I'm drawing the line
a home.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yeah, he's persuaded to do that one last one, and
then we see right that she almost picks it up.
So he gets an out from our perspective because we
know what's going on a little bit behind the scenes.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
I hope you're enjoying my appearance on the new podcast Love. Factually,
it's time for a quick break, but Paul Eli and
I will be back soon to explain what other things
say anything gets wrong about relationship science?

Speaker 2 (34:56):
So anything else about what this movie gets wrong about?
Close relationships? Eli?

Speaker 3 (35:01):
What do you have? Look? It mostly gets stuff right,
but you know it makes some errors, like every movie,
and one of them is you know, a very forgivable error.
But generally it's risky to make forever promises in the
first weeks and months of a new relationship. And so
the letter that he writes to her, Lloyd writes this
letter to Diane after they have sex and he's really

(35:23):
into her, and the letter in its entirety is Dear Diane,
I'll always be there for you all the love in
my heart Lloyd. Now I don't have a problem with
dear Diane or all the love in my heart or Lloyd,
but I think the part when he says I'll always
be there for.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
You it's always, is probably.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
A bold commitment that he's actually he's making a vow
that he really is probably not in a position to make.
And we do this. We do this a lot, and
it's desirable and we like it, and we want to
feel this way. We stand up at our wedding vows
and say I will love you forever. These seem like
high risk choices for somebody who takes seriously what the

(36:06):
definition of a vow is. But I do think this
is one of the cases where I just felt a
little sheepish about suggesting that the really romantic thing to
do is to tell somebody something that you really cannot
you probably cannot promise you're gonna be able to deliver overtime.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, you forget when you see the movie because it
seems like it's built over this whole, you know, to
our period. It's a little ROBYO or Juliet, right. You know,
they've only really kind of hung out with each other
for like a couple of days really, you know.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Right, and you and even you know, it's over sixteen
weeks and now they are going to a foreign country
together to presumably to live together. And that is pretty
fast to jump into that level of commitment. And the
movie clearly wants us to feel that we are witnessing
a success story. I mean, you know, the ending, I

(36:58):
love it, and I love the contrast with the graduate
right that it's you know, here are these two people
embarking on this adventure and this one. We're supposed to
be rooting for them and feeling like they've got it.
But the reality is sixteen weeks. That is quite a
leap of faith to think that they've got it figured
out at this point.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
You know, Paul, It's interesting because I actually think this
is the other thing that maybe the movie doesn't get
right and this depends on interpretation, but like, what is
the point of the ding on the airport, Like this
is literally the last thing that happens in the entire movie.
It's obvious that this is supposed to be really significant.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Good though it's good.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
Reading, there is a reading where you're basically like, the
early parts of a relationship are turbulent. So again just
a reminder for people who haven't seen the movie. This
early Diana is scared of flying and Lloyd is with
her on this flight, literally the last scene of the movie.
They're going to England for this fellowship that she has,
and he says, like, if anything goes wrong, it's going

(37:59):
to be within the first five minutes, So you just
have to make it to the ding the airport, the
take off your seat belt ding. I think it was
the no smoking ding in.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
The no smoking ding speaking because everybody else on the
plane is like holding their parettes, wait till they get
light what up?

Speaker 2 (38:15):
I think right, the ding is light up.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
It is basically like but either way it could have
been the seatbuilting. And so one reading is that now
they're through the turbulent time and we're witnessing like the
ding is like and now it's smooth sailing. And if
that is what Cameron Crow intended, I think he's really
guilty of the and they all lived happily ever after

(38:39):
sort of things. Yeah, I think that is My other
concern about the movie is that if he was implying
something like that in the closing scene, that strikes me
as wildly incorrect about what the next sixty years of
that relationship might look.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Like, or the next like, you know, four months and
she starts studying and there's no kickboxing and all of London.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
And right, and what exactly is he going to do
with himself? I think that's right. I think compared to
some movies where they get together at the end and
then we don't see anything about them encountering challenges, I
think those versions are worse because we do see them
overcoming some stuff here. But I hear you. As much
as I love the way that whole ending is done,

(39:22):
I get it that you know that there are trials
to come.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Can I just can I just like, can I try
out a like a more empirically sane version. Yes, what
if that whole plane flight where there's a lot of turbulence,
like an unusual amount of turbulence for like a plane
taking off before the seatbeltding goes off. What if that
is kind of a metaphor for like, we're gonna go
on this, you know, trip together, the long version of

(39:47):
our life together is gonna have a lot of turbulence,
but by holding each other's hand, we'll get through it,
and you know, we'll kind of wait for the day.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
You know it's fair.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
You know what's funny about that, LORI, is that that
reminds me of the point you made earlier about the
social network. Because his friends, he's got these two really
close women friends, girl friends, I guess, and they have
also packed some stuff for this for them, right, They've
packed some things to make sure, like I think they
know that she's nervous about flying and they're having this
adventure together as a couple for the first time, and

(40:16):
so those friends who are really invested in the relationship
have packed for them some nice things for the trip.
And that is I think hearkens back to Wow, they
seem to have a pretty good foundation for a lot
of what they might be going through next.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
That's cool. It's like a wedding thing, right, It's like,
you know, you get everybody together to sort of give you,
you know, well, wishes on your way. I object, So
are we okay with this? Anything in this movie raised
moral quandaries or other concern to other things? Age badly?

(40:51):
What does it everybody have here?

Speaker 4 (40:52):
Well?

Speaker 1 (40:52):
I could say. What was interesting was that, as I mentioned,
I watched it with twenty twenty four thirteen year old
and they genuinely really liked the film. They had two
things that were kind of funny, and maybe this is
that they were a little young. One was that, well,
first of all, we were watching with their dad, and
so they really did and like the sexy's like, oh god,
they're kissing, why are they under the blanket?

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Why is he shaky?

Speaker 1 (41:13):
Like they just literally couldn't handle that. But the second
thing was that they were really confused when Diane broke
up with BOYD, where they're like, but she doesn't think that?
Why is she saying that she doesn't think that? And
they kind of just like couldn't get it, Like they
kind of couldn't handle her kind of confusion based on
what was going on with her dad of sort of
stepping away and they're like, but she doesn't think that right,

(41:34):
they're going to get back together, right, like they kind
of were seeing And so maybe this is the current
generation having a hard time with like, you know, tough
emotions or complicated conflict in the film. But they had
a really tough time.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
That's really interesting.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
You know.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
One of the things that was really eye opening about
watching it again and here, Laurie, thank you again for
recommending this one. It was just a delight. Is it's
not just a move for kids that was that was
something that I think you're describing here, like the thirteen
year olds didn't get it, but also as somebody who
is now a dad, I'm actually a dad of a
teen girl, and I just thought a whole lot more

(42:08):
about the dad daughter or dynamic. And the truth is
I at the top called this like a love triangle.
I don't think that's the standard way people think about
this movie, but I do think that's what's happening, is
that these are two men who are deeply in love
with obviously there's nothing sexual with her dad, of course,
but deeply in love with her that she is going
to be somewhat or to a significant degree, the center

(42:30):
of their lives, and she's trying to balance that, and
she feels awkward about this time that she's spending with Lloyd,
given that she's going away, and she feels like maybe
she should be with her dad. And so I think
there is like a sophistication, an adultness of this teen
romance that you almost never get in a teen romance.
And I think that's why. Part of the reason why

(42:51):
I think the thirteen year olds didn't get it is
she feels this strong sense of obligation to her dad
and doesn't know how to fit Lloyd into that schema,
and therefore ends up playing around for a while with
breaking up with him in a way that doesn't make
sense for her feelings for Lloyd, but isn't crazy from
the perspective of the various emotional forces that are buffeting her.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
One of the things that I flagged as being a
little bit that sort of age badly or aged strangely
about this movie is in this same category. And I'll
pose this in the form of a question, did did
some gen xers think this was a parenting manual that
the way to parent is to really push your kid

(43:36):
as much as possible, cut them off from socialization when
they are when they are in high school. Again, I
think this is sometimes a stereotype of Gen X contemporary
parenting rather than the reality. But I do think there
is much more pressure today to achieve, achieve, achieve for

(43:57):
people in high school that people like Diane Court are
very common these days. Right, you know, she was the
one person in her high school and now like this
is a thing, and so how many people saw this
movie thought like that's how I'm going to treat my
dad and tax fraud.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
But I mean, apart apart from the text r No,
I mean, Paul, I think you're really oddto something, right, Like,
if we look at the current generation of teenagers, right
the thirteen year olds I were watching as with, this
is the loneliest generation in history since we've been measuring
loneliness and teenagers. They're also the most academically busy, like
the most academically stribe. If we just like look at

(44:35):
just sheer amounts of homework, those things have gone up
since the making of this film. And beyond that, we
see like the seeds of the fact that they're kind
of like Diane, like shifting away from these sort of
dating relationships, right Like the fact that, like, modern teenagers
are having less sex than teenagers have ever had back
in the day, and so you might be kind of
onto something where the sort of Diane Court school of

(44:57):
child bearing was like kind of coming up a little bit.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Another thing that the kiddo has picked up on is that,
you know, Lloyd does this lovely thing where he's the
key master and he's taken everyone's keys, but then when
his job is over, he's like, hand me a beer,
and he then goat proceeds to drive home away to beer.
And even the thirteen year olds were like, wait a minute,
Like I thought we were drinking and driving.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Good point. Yeah, that's great relationship quotes. We've hit a
few good ones already. But do either of you have
any other quotes that we should clip in here and
talk about.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
So mine is kind of a funny one, and it
gets back to this idea that like, these are teenagers
who are acting in the film that were trying to
identify with, but the film is actually written by adults,
and in a few points, I think you hear the
adult voice kicking. And so this was a quote that
happened just after Lloyd has sex with Diane and he's
meeting up with his friends and they're trying to suss out, Oh,

(45:57):
did you have sex or did you have sex?

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Look at his face, he did the deed. You're an
inflation lady should go on the seven hundred club or
some saying, all right, calmed downright, calm down, nothing's different, Lloyd.

Speaker 4 (46:09):
Listen to me. Everything has changed. You've had sex. No
matter what you might think, nothing will ever be the
same between you two. You might be sixty, you might
be walking down the street and you'll talk to her
about something whatever, But what you'll really be thinking is
we had sex.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
And that struck me as like interestingly, like it struck
me as the kind of case that you couldn't know
that unless you were, like, you know, in your forties
or fifties, like like, I just didn't think any nineteen
year old will be thinking back.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah, that's that.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Sometimes sometimes Corey in particular has a wisdom beyond her years,
beyond her years.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
There was somewhere between the fifty third and the fifty
fourth songs she wrote for Joe that she just developed
life's wisdom.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
I think I wonder if that tape is like on
the internet somewhere else if we can buy like if
somebody has like cobbled together all of those clips and
somehow created something.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
And then we can ultimately play on a sharp GF.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
So I love it all right? Any other any other quotes?

Speaker 3 (47:14):
Yeah, there's one other thing I love. He left those
seven voicemails, and then on the eighth and final voicemail,
he says, I've been thinking maybe I didn't know you,
maybe your mirage. Maybe the world is a blur of
food and sex and spectacle and everyone was just hurtling
towards the Kropos. So which case is not your fault?
You know, maybe it's a good side all this.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
I've been thinking about this thing. The reason I love
that is because it ties back a little bit to
this like truth cartographers. He's like really thrown at the
dissolution of the relationship, and he doesn't really make he's
not really able to make sense of things. Maybe you
were just a mirage. It's all sort of confusing. And
this is a pretty common reaction in the wake of
a breakup, is we lose a little bit of our

(47:54):
sense of order, our sense of structure, our sense of
who we are. And I think this quote, this last
eighth and final voicemail he leaves for her, I think
really captures the essence of this idea that it can
be bewildering, it can be confusing to end a meaningful relationship,
and he's just struggling to make sense of it.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
That is one of the hardest things that people have
to do to get over a breakup is to make
sense of it and develop that narrative. So what do
we wish we knew about close relationships or any other
psychological phenomenon, you know, questions that this movie poses that
we don't have great answers to.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yet, How should we act when we are suspicious of
a loved one? So at first, Diana is convinced that
there's no way her father did anything wrong. She goes
to the irs and says, stop it, you've got the
wrong guy, and he's like, no, we don't. He's guilty
as sin, and then gives her enough reason to believe like,
uh oh, maybe he did this. So what does she do?

(48:53):
She snoops, she looks through his drawers. She eventually unlocks
something private and then eventually discovers uh, oh, there's a
bunch of like one hundred dollars bills here that shouldn't
be here. And I just don't have a sense of
how people generally when they become a little suspicious. I
don't know, is he getting text messages from that girl?
I sort of think maybe is that an excuse? Is

(49:17):
that something that people use to say, Okay, well I'm
going to break into his email or his texts and
try to find out what's going on. When do people
do that? When do they start acting like private detectives?
Under what circumstances is it ethical to do those things?
I just don't think we know that much about that.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
Well, this is as well where I, at least in
twenty twenty four, I feel like people crowdsource this a lot.
I'm not sure if you all are fans of am
I overreacting on Reddit? Good, but I think this would
be like a classic am I overreacting on Reddit where
it's like my dad, you know, the IRIS is investigating
my dad or you know, nursing home text fraud and
you know I saw some money like in his private chamber.

(49:53):
Am I erecting? But I think that is something we
can do, right, I mean, I think not necessarily on
Reddit but we can go to our close others and
ask the question, like can you give me some advice here?
Like does this make sense? And again this gets back
to the kind of thing you were talking about earlier, Eli,
right where we're looking for truth seeking. Right, we're trying
to figure out is my like if you have that
reality just privately? It's hard to kind of know, but

(50:15):
we're getting some other folks's opinions on things. All of
a sudden we can know, am I just being paranoid?
Or is this kind of a real situation that we
need to pay attention to?

Speaker 2 (50:24):
And more to Youtao, I feel like one thing we
talk about a lot on this show is the like
motivated reasoning and close relationships, and we have all these
biases about our close others. We just want to believe
what we want to believe, and it is also important
to realize that sometimes those beliefs cannot be sustained in
light of reality. Reality is still a thing and at

(50:46):
some point you have to confront that. And so going
to other relationships, I mean that kind of social proof
is a good way to do that. For me. The
thing that this movie pointed out that I loved but
also thought like, Oh, I wish we studied attraction like
this more. And it is the nature of their first date,

(51:06):
right that they go to this I'm not talking about that.
Whatever the thing was them, all of those who count
right that doesn't go when they go to the party
and they're like kind of interacting, but they're also watching
each other interact with other people, right that. This is
in many ways what dating kind of used to be.

(51:28):
It was about social networks. You're getting to know each other,
but other people are floating in and out of the
conversations at the same time. And this is how we
see if there's a connection with somebody else. And I
wonder if we've really lost something as we transition to
the resume version of dating, where you sit down across

(51:48):
from somebody and I talk and you talk, and I
talk and you talk and we exchange statistics and we
hope that something clicks. And I think we really miss
something by not having these kinds of dates. There was
something really special about this idea that they are on
a date and they're only interacting for a fraction of
the time. Like, what a cool idea this is, And
you know, I I wish this wasn't so much a

(52:11):
bygone era totally.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
Okay, here's one that I got interested in. But it
might just be how the Lloyd Dobbler relationship situation maps
on to my own love life right now.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
Oh it's good.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
And so there's this open question about whether or not
Lloyd and Diane got together at the right time. Right.
Clearly they went to high school for three years together. Yeah,
they had this weird three year.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
High school where they had this oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, so that was another thing of thirteen years liked
went to school for thirty years, was like, oh yeah,
it's a big mind blowing for them. But clearly died
and Lloyd overlapped for three whole years. Clearly there was
lots of parties who could have invited her to it's
after graduation. She's only got like a couple of weeks
left before she skidaddles off to the UK for her fellowship.
Was that the right time to kind of get together?

Speaker 3 (52:56):
You know?

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Should he have done it sooner? Is there something special
about a relationship that begins when it doesn't have much time?
And the reason I like this question is that my
husband and I got together right after I found doubt
that I was getting a job at Yale, and I
was about to move there in a couple of weeks time.
We had almost exactly the sixteen weeks the diet and
Lloyd had and.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
We found I've always wanted to be a New Haven.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
I think he super didn't think that.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Maybe yeah, yeah, he didn't think that. He didn't like that,
but you know, I think that in some ways it was.
In some ways at the time it felt like, oh,
there's no pressure to this. We just kind of get
to know each other and enjoy it, because it would
be silly to think that the end of this has
to result in, you know, him hopping on a plane
to New Haven until you know the turbulence caused a

(53:45):
ding or I guess a car version of that or whatever.
And I've wondered, like, is there data on that. Was
that a good thing? It was a good thing for me.
It seems like it was a good thing for Lloyd
and Diana, though as we've talked about, we don't know
what happened afterwards. Is the preciousness of the little time
and the fact that we can't think of this as
a long term thing as there's some other constraint. Does
that help things or hurt things.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
It's fascinating. You know, we don't study this all that well.
You're right, this is phenomenon of on again, off again relationships,
and the general idea is that some relationships have more
of this turbulence, this turnover than other relationships do, and
they generally tend to have a number of other features

(54:27):
that are less than optimal. But I don't think there's
good work looking at the situational forces that might set
people up well when they start a relationship or set
people up poorly. Other than some of the social network stuff,
there really isn't that much out there. But it'd be

(54:48):
really interesting to look at something as simple as how
much time will we be in the same place and
to see what kind of effect that has.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Yeah, you know, there's not much in terms of the
situations that set you up well. But it occurs to
me there's another way of thinking about this question, which is,
are there circumstances that will supercharge the pace of a
romantic connection regardless of the long term future. And Paul,
you and I talk sometimes about our errand's fast friends procedure. Yeah,

(55:16):
you're asking crazy intimate questions, or you look into each
other's eyes, for three consecutive minutes. Right, there's there's these procedures.
My guess, Lorie, is that the what I think of
is like the summer camp romance thing, this idea that
there's an end date. My guess is that that is
in some ways a disinhibitor, and I wish the field
knew more. My guess is that there is probably like

(55:38):
a hypology or a category of disinhibitors, things that make
us willing to get vulnerable and intimate quickly. And so yes,
my guess is that is that knowing that we've only
got X number of weeks or X numbers of months
will do that. And then the interesting question is, okay, well,
if you have supercharged the intimacy, under what circumstances does

(55:58):
that intimacy last for a long time, possibly even forever?
And that is something that I'm I'm pretty sure we
know nothing about.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
That's really cool. So it's like, well, this relationship has
a certain amount of intimacy potential. And if you give us,
you know, four days, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna
get it off, we're gonna fast it all. Yeah, that's
really cool.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
And you all have talked about cases like this, like
before Sunrise and before Sunset, these other movies where you
have these kind of short periods of supercharging relationships. I wonder,
if these factors.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Play right, that the ticking clock could in fact be
an accelerant in some cases. And I think we see
it in those movies, And yeah, you're right, I think
we see it here too in some ways, in a
more realistic way, sixteen weeks would be a more common
hypercharged romance than those movies where it's happening in a
matter of hours. Yeah. So we rate movies on this

(56:52):
podcast from one to five stars. So let's all go
through and talk about how many stars we give this movie. Laurie,
I will throw to you first. How many stars do
you give?

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Say anything, one hundred million? Stuff Like I chose this
one because it's a favorite Lloyd Dobbler swoon, Swood. Wait,
what's my top stars?

Speaker 2 (57:15):
For five?

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Five?

Speaker 2 (57:16):
You can go as I as five stars?

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Yeah, yeah, so I love this movie Lloyd Doubler's swoon.
It's got to be five stars for me?

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Okay, and Eli, how many stars for saying it five?

Speaker 3 (57:28):
And only because I can't take all the five hundred
million or whatever it was I. I knew that I
liked this movie, I didn't really remember just how great
it was.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
We're gonna make this a hat trick. Five stars for
me as well. What a man to have as a
role model, John Cusack, Thank you, right? I mean, we
talk about the bad messages from eighties movies, and this
was the antidote came along in nineteen eighty nine and
cleaned the slate. We also rate movies on Russbolts now.
The russ Bold is named after Eli's advisor, the late

(58:01):
great Carol Rusbold, pioneer of close relationships research, with five
stars indicating a near perfect depiction of the nature of
close relationships. I'll go first on this one. This movie
gets four rouss bolts from me. I think it got
a lot of things right, a lot of the things
that we covered here today. A few things that I
thought were the reason it doesn't go all the way

(58:24):
to five russ bolts for me, is really just that
stalking component. I think it somehow lodged in our memories
as endorsing or maybe excusing some things that we'd call
stocking today. But overall, four ross bolts from me, Eli,
What about you?

Speaker 3 (58:41):
I have this at five Roussbolts too. I mean I
had a list of I think eleven different things that
I thought the movie got right. We talked about some
of the bigger ones, but I was floored by the
level of insight that Cameron Crow had when writing this,
and also by the delivery from these particular actors. I

(59:01):
thought it was just great and illustrated exactly. I think
a lot of how relationships work.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Yeah, and Laurie, what about you? What do you think?

Speaker 1 (59:09):
Yeah, I gotta go with like four and a half bustle.
It's like, Paul, I share your I share your intuition
that the stocking stuff just had me a little bit
more skewed out when I rewatched it. That was probably
because one of the thirteen year olds I watched with
the boy, Dave max uh just at the end of
the film, took his iPhone on speaker phone and played
Peter Gabriel's in your Eyes like standing there looking for Lord,

(59:30):
and I was like, no, that wasn't it was.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
It was a desperate, desperate moment.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
So I'm gonna knock it down point five. But yeah,
I mean, I share Eli's intuition too, that like this
movie that a whole lot of stuff right for the eighties.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
It really did well. This is all the time we
have for today. This has been the Love Actually Podcast
and we have been delighted to have as our special
guest doctor Lorie Sandris, host of this Happiness Lab podcast. So, Laurie,
thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Anytime, I'm ready to come back.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Whenever you need, we are likely to take it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
Whenever you need an expert on bad eighties movies, I
am here.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Let's do it. Let's do it. Were good ones for
that matter. All right, Well, that is all we have
for you today and I look forward to doing this
with both of you at some time in the future.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
The Love Factually podcast is produced and edited by Paul
Eustwick and Eli Finkel, featuring music from Andrew frakerin Size