February 10, 2025 • 45 mins
In the absence of better advice, we learn a lot about love and dating from rom com movies - but is the depiction of relationships in these films leading us in the wrong direction? Let's find out.
Eli Finkel of Northwestern University and Paul Eastwick from UC Davis are both accomplished relationship experts - but for fun they’ve launched a podcast called Love Factually exploring what the makers of rom coms get right and wrong about how humans really find love.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, Where did you learn the dues and don'ts of
dating from your high school friends, an older sibling, your mom.
Many of us long for a happy romantic relationship, but
we don't always get reliable advice about how to meet
and bond with a potential life partner. You might have
(00:37):
learned about the birds and the bees in biology class,
but I bet you didn't get much instruction about how
to navigate a first date or diffuse your first big
narrative fight. If we're being honest, a lot of our
relationship advice comes from Taylor Swift songs and the research
material my expert guest in this episode focus on a
lot rom com movies, but.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We'll probably talk about like initiating relationships but also maintaining them.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
We'll just like cover the whole gamut.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Kind of yeah, Okay, Okay, great, all right.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Eli Finkel of Northwestern University and Paul Eastwick from UC
Davis are both world renowned relationship experts. They've recently launched
a podcast called Love Factually, which explores what rom comms
get right and wrong about how humans really find love.
Eli and Paul turned to films like Clueless, La La
Land and When Harry met Sally to compare their plots
(01:26):
to the actual scientific research on love. Their goal is
to figure out the facts from the fiction. So, in
honor of Valentine's Day, I just had to include Eli
and Paul in this episode in our how to season,
which we are calling how to Learn.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
From a rom Com Movie.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Now I know Eli and Paul's academic credentials are top notch,
what are they really experts on rom cam movies? There's
only one way to find out. So, having found out
that you all were both into this stuff, my producer
decided to make an impromptu quiz surprise rom com quiz,
Who nice best quiz? Most famous quotes? Oh wow, So
I'm going to read you a rom com or rom
(02:05):
drum quote, and I just want to see if you
know which movie it's from.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Should we buzz in?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Like?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Should we compete to see who gets it first?
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Okay, number one, I'm just a girl stitch in front
of a boy nodding hill.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Thank you very much, I'm the puzzer. Doesn't even count.
What about the buzzer? Oh? I am playing the rest
of this game under protest?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yes, okay, Well, I think we got one for Paul
that because we didn't finish it, I'll give the whole quote.
It was, I'm just a girl standing in front of
a boy asking him to love her. You know, I
do want to give context for that quote since you also.
Speaker 5 (02:39):
Yeah, it's a lovely scene. I mean not nodding Hill right.
A lot of people will remember this. It's something between
a drama and a calm in the rom category. It's
a rom drama com. I guess she's famous American actress
and she's in love with someone like everyday English guy
and there's you know, some consternation about whether she's out
of his league and so forth, and at the end
you get this really vulnerable open moment where she shows
(03:02):
back up at his door, and you know, it's not
really a story about her being out of his league
or what their status is in the broader world. It's
she's a vulnerable person just like the rest of us,
and she's in love with him and it's just hopeful
that he returns the love. And it's beautiful, of course,
because she's Julia Roberts and that's kind of awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Okay, moving on to number two, and I guess we'll
use Paul rules where you just jump in and say
it if you know it as quickly.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Number two.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Number two, you see how picky I am about my
shoes and they only go on my feet.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
We did this one, Paul. This is ten things I
hate about you? Right? No, this is clueless.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Ding ding ding, Yes, clueless.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Okay, sorry, okay, moving on, moving on, moving on. Number three.
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Oh am, I not remembering what this is from Originally,
I have to be honest, I don't think I've ever
seen this.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
This is old school.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, this is love story.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Right yeah, ding ding ding very good, nice.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Job, but I've actually I've actually never seen it. I'm here,
I am admitting this.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Okay, that'll be a new episode.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Number four, nobody puts baby in a corner.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
All right, I'll take it. This is dirty dancing. It's
a great one, a totally adorable movie. I carried the watermelon.
All sorts of great moments in that one.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Okay, So we're talking about rom coms and it seems
kind of silly, but you all in this new podcast
have really argued that we can learn something really.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Important from rom coms. You like, explain why that is.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
Well, what we realized is that rom coms are fun,
they're entertainment, and the dramas too, right, they're entertainment. And
the fact is that these movies contain messages. They contain
implicitly or explicitly, messages about how relationships work. And due
to the fact that films are so influential, we can
think of them as messages that are injected into the
(05:00):
cultural psyche. And some of these messages are accurate. That is,
some of these messages when we consider them, we say, like,
is that true? Is that an accurate way of thinking
about how relationships actually work? Most people in the world
don't realize there's a field called relationship science where people
collect evidence on these things. So we thought it would
be fun to fact check Hollywood and to say, these
(05:21):
are the messages that the movies are are sending and
to what degree through these messages actually align with the evidence.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And I think too that sometimes it's really exciting when
the movies are getting it wrong, because many times that's
a great way to set up a contrast between something
that feels very intuitive when you see it on screen.
Often it's these tropes that we've seen many, many times,
but it's kind of handy to be able to say,
you know, we know from these kinds of studies that
(05:51):
it doesn't actually work this way or it doesn't usually
work this way. And there was something about the realization
that we could do both point out what they're doing
well but also point out what they're getting wrong that
seemed pretty exciting.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
So I know there's some kinds of TV shows, like
historically those shows like Survivor have had the like psychology
consultants that come in, you know, and even some movies
like Inside Out that franchise definitely has lots of famous
psychologists that consult Do.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
You know if like rom comms and rom drums do.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
This, I'm not aware of it, Paul.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
I think there was one episode where we joked that
like it almost seemed like they had a great advisor
on set, and then both of us were jealous of
that hypothetical job.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, I mean it was. I think it was with
her episode.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Spike Jones, the writer director, really had these sharp insights
about how people build intimacy, and well, what if you
just made that person not have a body, couldn't you
do it just as well? Just as seamlessly. But I
don't think anybody is necessarily going to scientists for this.
I think a lot of times they're generating these insights
(06:55):
on their own.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And talk to me about what we know about our
own insights when it comes to love and romance. You know,
if you had to guess kind of how much we're
accurate versus how much we're inaccurate, you know, what would
the finding show.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You know, it's a fifty to fifty proposition. I think
there are some times when people have really good insights
and instincts when it comes to relationships. I think generally speaking,
most people recognize that relationships require a certain amount of
vulnerability and a certain amount of self disclosure and give
(07:28):
and take. And that's going to be required to build
a relationship in the first place, and it's going to
be required to sustain closeness over time. So this is
one area. And we see this in the films too.
They do a pretty good job of making this clear. Right,
whether you're talking about people initiating relationships with each other
(07:49):
or you're talking about people maintaining a relationship, that is
a message that comes through fairly well.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Yeah, I mean there's a bunch of movies that do
this really effectively, And one of the movies that we
had in season one is Before Sunrise, which is basically
a movie that's about, again, your audience may be familiar
with this, but two people we'll meet on a train
on a url pass basically in Europe and spontaneously get
up the train and then spend the evening together in Vienna,
(08:16):
And basically it's a film about them walking around the
city and talking to each other. And what the film
captures beautifully, among other things, is this process through which
people confide intimate information with each other. How we start
as strangers and then I get to know a little
bit about you, you get to know a little bit
about me. And the beautiful thing about that movie in
(08:36):
particular is that it puts that whole relationship initiation process,
this process of getting to know each other, including really
intimate information, in a turbocharger. And again, that's something that
I think people do have decent instincts about this, and
the films generally get right the process through which intimacy
generally develops in relationships.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And so let's dive into that franchise, because this actually
is one of the kind of if you had to
pick a few tips that you've learned from rom comms
and rom doms that really get relationship science right. It
seems like the Before Sunrise, Before Sunset franchise is one
of those eli do you want to do a quick
plot summary on Before Sunset?
Speaker 5 (09:12):
I love this movie. It's not something that we did
in season one. We just did Before Sunrise in season one,
but I did watch all three in advance of our episode,
and in brief In the first movie, they get to
know each other and they spend the night together and
then they make this plan to meet up again, and
that's basically where the first movie ends. Second movie and
he Jesse played by Ethan Hawk, is on a book
tour and he's on a book tour in Paris, and
(09:34):
then while he's doing an event at a bookstore, Selene
walks in, and what we discover is he had arrived
six months later when he was supposed to and she
couldn't because her grandmother had passed away, and so he
had written a book about their experience, and now he's
on this tour, and then the rest of that movie,
now they're walking around a different European city and you know,
(09:55):
I don't want to ruin the end. But the tension
in the movie is that he has a flight back
to the States that leaves that evening right before sunset
is the second movie, and she keeps saying, you're about
to miss your plane. You're about to miss your plane.
And they're having these amazing conversations and these amazing settings.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And reconsidering and revisiting many of their major life decisions
in the process. And to watch again a process that
when people are going to upend their lives, they usually
take I don't know, a few months to do it.
But now we're going to see that whole thing happen
in a very compressed period of time. So it's in
many ways the same conceit, but now we're seeing this
(10:30):
whole different relationship process happening very very fast.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Okay, So I'm trying to guess what the major correct
relationship insight I'm supposed to take from this, right, you know,
visit European cities with Ethan hawk, Like apend your life
in twenty four hours.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
That's it. I mean, that would be a good one.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
Like if if you know it is an opportunity that's
available to you, I'd recommend it, or Julie delp would
be great too. I mean, that movie's tricky. This is
again the second movie in the series, the Before Sunset film,
and the reason why it's tricky is that has this
really interesting moral complication is that he by this point
has gotten married and has a son, and so when
(11:06):
Paul talks about how these major like decisions are happening quickly,
Jesse didn't realize that Selene was going to show up
at this reading. He thought you was gone forever, and
he built this alternative life, and then over a course
of a few hours of walking around Paris has basically
uprooted all of it now for a second time in
a really different sort of way from the first movie,
(11:27):
and the third movie engages with something different when they're
now in their forties and have a family together, and
all three of the films deal with those sorts of things.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Okay, so what's the relationship insight here though?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
So, I think if one is going to take a
lesson from these movies, it's that any amount of intense
self disclosure that you're going to get into with somebody
is going to build a lot of intimacy and has
the potential to build a connection. Although again, if you're
in a relationship that you'd like to keep, then be
careful who you're doing that with because it might seem like, oh,
(11:58):
we're just like harmlessly getting to know each other, strolling
around this gorgeous European city, and before you know it,
you are now really questioning some of your life choices.
There are a really fastudy by Art Aaron back in
the nineties, often called the thirty six question Study. But
what he does is he takes unacquainted pairs, gives them
these questions would escalate in intensity, escalate in the degree
(12:22):
to which they elicit intimacy and vulnerability. And what he
shows with enormous effect sizes is you can get two
people to really like each other if they go through
this sixteen to ninety minute process. So again, that's great
if you're looking to build a relationship. Those are good tips.
You know, if you're not looking to build a new relationship,
(12:42):
be really careful with how you do that.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
So one of the things I love about the Aaron
study is that you forget that you can continue building
that relationship with a long term partner. I mean, I
think one of the reasons relationships kind of often fall
into kind of boringness, is that we're not doing that vulnerability,
that sort of morements of disclosure, They kind of fall
by the wayside when you've been with somebody five years,
ten years, twenty years. Do you think we can use
(13:05):
that same kind of technique eli for kind of building
current relationships.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
The brief answer is I think so, But the full
answer is I don't think we know, because the question
is why do people stop doing this as much? I
share your premise people don't do this as much later on.
One possibility is what you're suggesting that you know, they
get distracted or they just don't prioritize it to the
same degree. Another possibility is we know quite a bit
about each other after twenty years, and so this idea
(13:32):
that there's some like big well of discovery to start
exploring makes it tricky. But nonetheless, there's always more to know,
there's always more sort of new perspectives on things, or
you know, going for example, to a thought provoking film
and discussing that these options are always always always available
to us. So I think it's a little bit in
the column of it's easier to have big discovery before
(13:55):
you really know each other, and also we get into
ruts and sort of lazy habits and don't bother to
try to rekindle some of these high intensity, high emotion
sorts of experiences.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I think another great thing that we learned from this
study is the fact that that kind of self disclosure
is actually positive. I think so many of us have
the misconception that like kind of sharing our messiness might
be yucky. But of course social scientists have talked about
this beautiful mess effect, right, Paul, what's that effect?
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And Kin, how does it play out here?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
So people often when they're trying to make an initial
impression on somebody, they want that impression to be good.
They want to come across perfectly, they want to self promote,
and often those instincts are really misguided. What people really
find appealing in those early moments is, like you put it,
(14:45):
a little bit of messiness, a little bit of vulnerability.
You know, old classic study, right, the person who's kind
of a klutz ends up being more appealing than the
person who's fully put together. And these are examples of
how we can make ourselves open and seem approachable to
another person, and it also makes us interesting. I mean,
(15:07):
there actually isn't a lot that's very interesting about somebody
who's fully put together. You know, it's not clear why
they would be interested in us because they're fully put together.
So having a little bit of vulnerability opens up an
opportunity for more connection in a way that the movies
often get right and sometimes we kind of miss when
(15:28):
we get into resume exchange mode on dates. I got
to come off as good as I can because I
know there are all these other competitors out there, and
I got to be the best.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
It's time for a quick break, but Paul Eli and
I will be back soon.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
So that was first insight that we get from rom
COM's positive insight that self disclosure often a good thing.
Try to promote more of it. Now we're going to
get to big tip number two, which comes from a
classic rom Com one that I've seen, although very very
long time ago. When Harry met Sally. Who wants to
do the When Harry met Sally two second plot twist?
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Paul, here's the arc.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
When Harry met Sally, they first meet, they don't like
each other very much. Five years past, they meet again,
they don't like each other very much. Five years pass again,
and now they kind of hit it off. They form
this genuine friendship that goes on for a few years,
and they go to each other as confidants. They try
(16:29):
to set each other up on dates with some of
their friends. It doesn't really work out, but it's a
genuine friendship that we see for the majority of that movie.
And of course, you know, there is the rom com
trouble if they do get together at the end in
a romantic way. Okay, But what this movie nails is
what's often called the friends to lovers pathway, the idea
(16:50):
that people are commonly good friends before they form a
relationship with each other. And it's often underappreciated just how
common that pathway is. Some re search by Danie Stinson
and colleagues suggests that it's something on the order of
seventy percent of relationships forms through that route. So that's
(17:10):
reflected in the movie.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Really well, I'm glad you explained what it was about,
because I was like, does it have to do with
the orgasms scene?
Speaker 4 (17:16):
That's all I remember from them?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Is there any other scene in that movie?
Speaker 4 (17:19):
We're supposed to fake our orgasms, and we're supposed to
not fake our orgasoms.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
So I think this idea that the arc of the
relationship matters is really important.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
You know, what kind of advice do we get? Are there?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Kind of obviously this sort of friends to partners arc
is a pretty good one.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Are there other good arcs that we should think about?
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Eli Sometimes when we're single and looking, it can feel like,
how are we going to meet new people? You know,
where are we going to go to try to meet
new people? And luckily, now we can just swipe left
and right. Well, luckily and unluckily you can do all
that stuff. And one of the things that we I
think underutilize is that that's not the way, at least historically,
(17:56):
at least until very recently, that relationships have really begun,
and to a significant degree, they still emerge from our
existing social networks, from people that we already know.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
And Paul, you've studied this bit.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
But there's this like view that there's the one night
stand or that we met and we've never met before
and we started a relationship, and that is just a
vast oversimplification of how relationship initiation works.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Right, Yeah, I think people often think that the way
you start a relationship is you like arm yourself with
some really good pickup lines, and you know who to approach,
and you know, thirty minutes start to finish, I did it.
I started a relationship. And it's just those skills. The
ability to approach somebody and make them experience desire for
(18:41):
you in minutes or even hours is a rare and
rather unnecessary skill. Historically speaking, that wasn't how most people
did it. You get to know people, some people grow
on you, some people don't, but you're within these networks
that shift and grow and change, and that's where most.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Relationships come from. It's very easy to lose.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Sight of that in the modern world of online dating,
and I think online dating pushes us to think we
need these skills that most of us historically have not
really needed.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So that's for people who are kind of starting out
relationships and just sort of dating, the sort of arc
kind of matters. It doesn't work the way we think,
what can people who've been in relationships for a long
time tape from the movie.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I think in a lot of ongoing relationships, people develop
these narratives about who we are as a couple, how
we came to be this way, and these narratives are
really important. I mean, having a coherent and positive narrative
definitely predicts things like relationship satisfaction, right, how stable people's
relationships are. And it's also important to keep in mind
(19:46):
that relationships often change.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
With the seasons too.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Somebody takes a new job, right, Maybe there are kids
that come into the relationship.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Somebody just comes by and like, lose them. I don't
know how to show up.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Yeah, I drop off, Yes, hey.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Go, I got this kid for you.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
But relationships go through these dramatic changes too, and I
think it's very easy for people to remember and stay
locked into their early narratives and patterns about who we are. Right,
we are the fun couple, we are the couple that
stays out late, and now we have a two year old.
And does that make it feel like you're losing yourself,
(20:23):
You're losing your identity for who you are as a couple.
Or can you try to reinvent who you are as
a couple to fit the new reality. These are also
places where people have challenges and how they adapt to
those circumstances can be really important.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
You know, we saw that in Lalla Land. Right.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
This is one of the things that I think was
not obvious in La La Land, but was an interesting
aspect which is so Sebastian played by the ever gorgeous
Ryan Gosling, he is a very, very traditional jazz enthusiast.
He's like, on this crusade to save traditional jazz. He
then ends up in like a jazz fusion band and
(21:03):
it's pretty popular, but because of how much he's always
cared about traditional jazz, his girlfriend Mia played by the
Oscar winning Emma Stone, can't really understand what he's doing.
So even though now he's in this other band and
he's kind of enjoying it, she's like, this isn't you
and I don't get it, And so, you know, one
of the interpretations of what happens in that film is
(21:23):
that he changed, that his goals changed in ways that
she didn't really track, and therefore she's supporting one of
his goals that's no longer what his current goal is.
And they're narrative about who each other is is no
longer fitting the changed version of who they are now.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
And so any advice for how to kind of update
those narratives and kind of understand I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
A good relationships therapists, right, A good couples therapists will
come in and will try to get people to unpack
all of the unspoken assumptions that people have about why
we're doing this thing and why it works best that
we interact like this, and why it's best that we're
pursuing these goals. So to unpack it all, put it
on the table, and then identify, Look, these things seem
(22:05):
to be conflicting with the new reality. What can we
take away, what can we change, what can we alter
in order to make these pieces fit again? So this
is what couples therapists are really good at. But you
don't have to have a couples therapists in order to
be able to do some of that rearranging of the pieces.
But it's not easy because we're often very defensive about
(22:28):
you know, why we behave this way, or why we
have this goal, or you know, but you had said this,
and we hold people to things that they said years earlier,
and so having some amount of humility and flexibility and
the ability to reflect in this meta way about what
exactly are we fighting about? Is it really about you know,
(22:48):
you stayed out late, but I was expecting you to
come home, or is it about these broader goals that
we once had that kind of don't fit our current reality,
and is there anything here that we can change to
make this work better.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Now we get to tip number three that rom comms
get right, and this one is from a kind of
oddball movie. I think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
which I saw many many years ago but totally don't remember,
except they're like lying on some beach in Montalk or something.
That's like the whole memory I have of this film.
Who wants to do the thirty seconds on it?
Speaker 5 (23:20):
Well, I'm delighted that the main experience you have of
this movie is failing to remember it, because that is
of course what the movie is, right. They erase their
memories of each other. This is Clementine and Joel. They
release their they erase their memories of each other. And
one of the messages that this movie gets to it
is related to what we were talking about a little
(23:40):
bit ago, which is that relationships are tied to a
specific person. That is, it's not just that you know,
if you find somebody who matches me on certain dimensions,
we're going to get along. No, it's the sculpting and
the building of relationships over time. That's what we mean
(24:01):
when we talk about relationships as microcultures. And the reason
why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind gets this so
right is that one of the characters has access to
like weirdly intimate information about something that happened in somebody
else's relationship and then tries to do the same thing
and fails. So let me be specific about this. They're
(24:23):
erasing Joel Barris's memory. He's the one played against type
by Jim Carrey. He's trying to forget his memories of Clementine,
who's played by Kate Winslet. But in this process of
having a memories erased by the company named Lacuna Ink
who does the memory eraser, one of the really creepy
guys who works there now knows everything Joel did with
(24:46):
Clementine to get him to like her so much, the
things that he did that were just incredibly effective, including
nicknames and including which gifts he gave her and when,
and he knows that her memory has been erased too.
That is, this creeper played by Elijah Wood knows that
both of them have had their memories erased, so he
tries to go and basically get Clementine doing the things
(25:06):
that he knows full well she really dug when Joel
did it, and they are colossal fails. And the lesson here,
which I think is really crucial and illustrated perfectly in
this movie, is that it's not a copy paste way
to relationship success. It's not like you can say everything
that I did with Alice was effective, and therefore I'm
(25:27):
going to do the exact same things with you know, Janita,
and that'll be effective. No, we have to track and
tailor what it is we're doing to the like authentic
growth of this particular relationship. It's not a story about
finding people who do the things we like in general.
It's finding people who adapt with us in ways that
make our own little unique microculture effective rather than like venomous.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Sometimes people use the term strategic or strategy when it
comes to all aspects of relationships, whether it's initiating, whether
it's maintaining relationships, like, oh, you've got to find the
right strategies to make yourself appealing, to make part happy,
et cetera. And I don't want to throw out that
concept entirely, but I do think it is misleading for
(26:15):
exactly this reason, because a strategy for most people implies,
I'm going to learn how to do this skill, and
then wherever I take this skill, it's going to be effective.
And the lesson we get from Eternal Sunshine, and the
lesson that we get from the science too, is that
that's not really how it works. That what makes one
person appeal to us is going to be totally different
(26:37):
from the reasons that somebody else appeals to us. What's
going to make this relationship satisfying and fulfilling. The things
we're gonna do to make that happen are jointly co constructed.
And if I try to take those ideas and copy
paste them onto the next relationship, it's not really gonna work.
You know, maybe you can sort of start with that
and then alter it and try to make it work
(26:57):
with this new person. But the idea that you can
develop a set of strategies that's going to be universally
effective across partners this is this is not a good
way to think about it, and Sunshine seems to know this.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I like this advice because it also seems like if
you had some strategy that you kind of liked or
maybe part of a relationship microculture that really resonated with you,
and maybe a former partner wasn't that into it. It
doesn't mean it's never going to work again. You might
find somebody else who kind of really gets that either
your humor or your goofy is or whatever it has
to be.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
So hang tight. Your Kate win Slant might be out
there waiting for you.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
And people often have core things that they want a
relationship to be built around, and I do think that's
a useful way of thinking about like what your deal
breakers might be or whether this relationship doesn't work for
you that you really want to be able to connect
with this person over X, y Z, and if you're
(27:59):
having trouble making that happen, that could be something that
you can't get past with this particular person.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
But my advice is often try not to go into
it with very strong assumptions about what you need that
person to do and assume that there's going to be
some joint construction that's going to happen along the way.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
All right. So those were our positive tips from rom coms.
So when we get back from the break, we're going
to turn to what rom coms get wrong, Happiness Lab.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Oh yeah, So I'm curious as we start this section
with your relationship science background, are you ever like, you know,
in the middle of some new rom com and watching
it and then just the characters do something and just
(28:47):
from a scientific perspective.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
You're just like no, like, no, oh, you're both nodding.
This seems like this comes up a lot from the
nods I'm seeing.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Eli, Yes, I do this.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
I kind of wish I didn't, right, Like, I there's
sometimes that I want to watch something in the role
of critic and sometimes I just want to like bask
in the enjoyment of it. But yeah, it's hard to
unknow the things that we know about what's effective and
what's ineffective in general, as at least for me as
I watch something on the screen.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
So let's get into some of the kind of misleading
messages that we get from rom coms, starting with one
that breaks my heart because it's one of my only
favorite rom coms out there. Clueless. I like already like,
don't believe this premise. I don't think share Horowitz can
do anything wrong. But maybe it was the movie. It
wasn't it wasn't Share herself.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
So you're right.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
For all the folks out there that don't know clueless,
sad folks, you are go see it right now. Who
wants to do the thirty thirty second on Clueless?
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Maybe I'll do it.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
I'll do it the product.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Way Clueless is share Horowitz.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Alicia Silverstone, very popular girl in high school, decides she's
going to use her powers to like match everybody up together.
I think she starts with a teacher, but then she
takes her kind of slightly dumpy friend, kind.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Of teen Britney Murphy.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
It hooks her up with somebody, but then the dumby
friend tie I think, becomes even more popular. She realizes,
oh my gosh, I've been using my powers poorly and
realizes that this was an insight that she's heard from
her stepbrother, amazingly cute looking Paul Rudd, and she figures out,
oh my gosh, I'm in love with Paul Rudd, and
then magic of rom com makes everything work out.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I think the phrase is she's but crazy.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Crazy, Yes, exactly, So how is this misleading us when
it comes to the science of relationships?
Speaker 4 (30:34):
What is this movie getting wrong?
Speaker 5 (30:35):
Paul I'm happy for you to do it, but can
we just acknowledge that we're just bad people and that
really this movie has done nothing wrong and that everybody
who loves this movie is one hundred percent correct.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I completely endorse that statement, and Share is my personal hero.
That being said, there is an important assumption that she articulates,
which is that there are popular people and the unpopular people,
and her goal is to turn Tie into one of
the quote unquote popular girls so she can date one
(31:08):
of the very few acceptable boys at this high school
in SHARE's eyes. And in order for her to do
her magical work, she has to do a couple of
things related to messages that lead us astray. One is
that she plays the game of desirability as a project.
So you need to boost your attributes in various ways
(31:31):
in order to make yourself appealing to other people. Right, So,
when Tie comes in, we are to understand that she
is not desirable and she must have things done to
her to make her appealing and acceptable. Now, the movie
actually knows that this is silly, because the reality is
that she was always meant to be with skater boy Travis,
and that could have happened in minute two of the movie.
(31:52):
But we have to wait for a minute eighty eight
and that's fine, and that's great. So the movie knows
that this is an idea that leads us astray. But
the second thing, and this is the one that is
really tied to some of the complexities in the science,
has to do with agreement about who is desirable and
who is not.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Because this movie is playing.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
With ideas that I think take for granted that there
is a clear hierarchy of desirability, with popular people and
middlingly popular people and unpopular people, and people must date
within their sphere. The reality is that much of the
time dating doesn't actually work this way, especially in environments
(32:34):
where people are getting to know each other over time.
Speaker 5 (32:37):
I'd love to reinforce this. I mean, first, I just
want to ask Paul, did you use the phrase boost
your attributes? Yes, it seems like there was some subtle
meaning there that. But I would love LORI, if you'll
indulge me, to drive this home forcefully. What Paul is
saying is that this widespread view that pretty much all
(32:59):
of us seem to adopt, that you know, some people
are tens and some people are threes. He's basically saying
that's false, and to a significant degree, he's predicating that
conclusion in the evidence. He's not saying that there's no
individual differences at who's conventionally attractive, or that we wouldn't
agree on that on first meeting. That's for sure true.
(33:19):
But in terms of who's going to be a good
relationship partner, almost all of that is driven by who
is uniquely compatible with us, that is, with whom have
we built an effective relationship, And almost none of that
is figuring out that you're a seven and then making
sure you don't date anybody who's like lower than a seven.
And the reason why this is such a big deal
(33:40):
is that it ends up being such a corrosive story
in the broader marketplace of ideas that you might conclude
that you're a three, and like, what a catastrophe that
would be to walk through the world being like, I'm
a three. I'm just not very datable. People aren't going
to like me. There's a truer version of reality that
you're at least an eight for someone, and you know,
going out there and trying to make it work with
(34:02):
various people that is totally available to you, and that
is what I think is the messages that clueless ten
things I hate about you. They're sending this message that
there really is a hierarchy and who's objectively awesome to date,
And there's a little bit of truth in that, but
there's much more truth to the idea of building something
compatible and being tens for each other.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
I think this is so important because it's one thing
when this kind of idea of like your three and
that's it kind of plays out in sort of nineties culture,
like you know, you got to go out to the
mall and get the new skater pants or something. Yeah,
but I think there's a much more insidious version of
it that exists now and sort of in cell culture
and online, where people really have these categories and it's
(34:42):
really fueling some incredibly nasty behavior.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Paul, you're nodding a lot. Is this the kind of
thing that you've sort of seen?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
No, And I worry about this too. I mean, honestly,
this has been a journey for me over the last
ten years because the idea that there are tens and
there are threes goes to some pretty grim places online.
If you look at things like the red pill ideologies
or even worse. Black pill ideologygies. And it is not
(35:10):
lost on me that the people who are talking about
these ideologies are often talking about other aspects of the science.
It's actually not usually relationship science that they're pointing towards.
They're looking at some of the classics. Sometimes it's evolutionary
inspired research on what people find attractive, And over the
last ten years it's gone to some pretty depressing places.
(35:33):
And this point is exactly the one where I want
to jump up and down and be like, but you're
misunderstanding the science. All of those studies showing the high
agreement about who's attractive. We're done with photographs and people
who are meeting each other for the first time. When
you put people in situations where they're getting to know
each other over time, consensus goes down, agreement goes down.
(35:55):
Some people grow on you and some people don't, and
this is how most people end up getting relationships. But
if you're not in social networks that are morphing and
changing and you're getting to know people over time, and
you'll miss out on that whole process. And so I
worry that there are all these forces in society today
(36:16):
taking us in this terrible direction where the reality is
much more hopeful as long as you are out there
meeting people and not relying on your you know, your
photograph on an online dating site to carry you through
to a relationship.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
So that one seems pretty harmful.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Now we get into bromcom rom dram relationship advice.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
It's pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
And this one comes I think from five Hundred Days
of Summer. And so, Eli, do you want to do
my five hundred Days of Summer real quickly?
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (36:44):
So plot summary of five hundred Days of Summer. We
meet Tom played by Gordon Levitt, Thomas something something, Okay,
what's his name?
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Levit dde again? Do it again? Start over?
Speaker 5 (36:58):
We track Tom played by Joseph Gordon Levitt and his
relationship with Summer played by Zoey Deschanel. And the movie
plays with this idea that there are soulmates, right, And
at first he's convinced that there are soulmates, and she's
convinced that that's ridiculous, and she has a much more
cynical view. By the end of the movie, I think
(37:18):
you've more or less decided that there are soulmates. She's
come to the view that there are soulmates. He's wavered
a bit, but then at the very end it's like, no,
the fates really did bring this to us.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Now it's above the pay grade of a.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Scientist, of any sort of relationship scientist or otherwise to
say is the universe determined by fate? So let's set
acide that issue to ask a more empirically tractable question,
which is, what are the consequences of believing that people
are either meant to be or not meant to be?
And here, you know this will sound familiar to you, Laurie,
because you'ren't familiar with Carol Dweck's work on incremental and
(37:52):
entity beliefs and all those things. But there's a lot
of work in the relationship space, some of it from
my lab, that looks at this question of what is
it like to believe that there are soulmates? And the
answer is, if the relationship is going well, then believing
that you know, we are meant to be in some
cosmic sense is just fine. The problem really is if
(38:14):
the relationship is going through a difficult time, which is
basically the over under on that is, one hundred percent
of relationships will eventually go through hard times. Once that happens,
what is the story we tell ourselves about why we're
going through hard times. If you don't really believe the
soulmate story, then you talk about, well, we're going to
try to work through this and figure it out. But
(38:35):
if you do believe in the soulmate story, what you
might be seeing is evidence that we weren't meant for
each other anyway, And the conflict isn't really like, yeah,
but we're going to learn and grow from working through
this together. It's evidence that, wow, maybe we're not meant
to be and therefore we are less forgiving, at greater
risk for breakup and so forth. So it is risky
(38:55):
to hold the sorts of beliefs that movies like Five
Hundred Days of Summer inject into the cultural bloodstream, which
is that really what you want to do is find
your soulmate.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
I think it's also problematic just because it causes you
to do something real bad when relationship troubles come up, right, which,
as you say, oh, this is just a sign that
everything's wrong. This is the kind of thing we see
in the Happiness work a lot. Right, Someone experiences like
a mild negative emotion and it's like oh, everything's wrong, right,
It's supposed to be good vibes only. But I think
(39:25):
when we kind of mistakenly assume that their relationships are
good vibes only, then we just don't do the stuff
that we need to do to fix relationships.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
The fixing part is really important because I think many
times these caustic beliefs are somehow linked to and there's
nothing I can do about it. So another kind of
belief that comes up from time to time is this
idea that men and women are fundamentally different. And look,
(39:52):
you know, we see this in Before Sunrise. This is
one of the fun things that they debate throughout that movie,
and they're really interesting conversations. And the belief that men
and women are very different are, at least in heterosexual
mixed couples, those beliefs are linked to relationship difficulties. And
(40:13):
part of the reason why is because eventually couples do
encounter conflict, they do encounter differences of opinion, and if
you are someone who believes that that is linked to
something deep and essential about your gender, that often comes
with the unfounded assumption that there's nothing we can do
about it. So these ideas that like gender is essentialized
(40:39):
that our behaviors are determined by gender. Right, there's no
way to intervene and stop those things that could be
sort of fun to chat about as you're getting to
know people. But if you really carry those beliefs with
you into a mixed gender relationship, that's another place where
people are going to be headed for trouble.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
So, finally, since we are running out of time, which
I knew what had happened, because you all are both
so fun and so awesome, and this is why I
love listening to love. Factually, the last movie that gives
us some bad ideas about relationship is a very recent one.
This is the movie Challengers. Paul, do you want to
do it? Thirty seconds on Challengers?
Speaker 3 (41:11):
So in this movie is and Dea.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Her character Tashi is interested in these two guys, Patrick
and Art. And Patrick and Art have these very different
depictions in the movie, but one thing it sets up
very clearly is the distinction between the good dad in
the character Art versus the cad right, the like hot
but a little bit skeezy.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Guy in this case played by Patrick.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
And This is a dichotomy that we commonly think is
out there and explains differences between people that there are
the people you sleep with and the people that you marry,
And this again applies across gender as well.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Right, So we have this stereotype.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
And this is a very misleading idea about people's interests
and the abilities when it comes to short term and
long term relationships, because the reality is that people's interest
in having short term and long term relationship chips tends
to be pretty weakly correlated. You can be into both,
you can be into neither. But more importantly, somebody's attractiveness
(42:18):
or appeal as a short term partner truly has nothing
to do with their appeal as a long term partner.
So just because somebody has had a lot of fun
hookups in the past as zero implications for whether or
not that person could be a good partner with you.
And when people carry those assumptions around, boy do they
(42:38):
make some nasty, unfortunate inferences.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
About other people.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yeah, it just becomes a sort of interesting self fulfilling prophecy.
It seems like if you're sort of carrying these beliefs
and also might make you kind of feel nasty about
your own history, depending on what it's like.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Too, Right, right, why are you looking.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
At me now, So justice we're winding down. I mean,
what seems tricky is that we both can't get these
really good, scientifically based insights from rom coms and also
some really terrible strategies too. What should we take away,
like what's the sort of health warning that should go
with romcom z Ela?
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Mostly, I just.
Speaker 5 (43:13):
Want people to enjoy the films, Like there's a cost
to you know, being in your head all the time
that said films send messages whether we know it or not,
and we internalize these messages to a significant degree. And
so I am delighted that we started the podcast. I
think some idea that there might be like a fact
check for this stuff that we can look up somewhere.
(43:34):
I don't think that exists anywhere. So I would advise
people enjoy the movies and then if you want to
check out Love Factually.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Yeah, seriously, you really should check out Love Factually. It's
a great show and you can find it wherever you
get your podcasts. Plus, I was a guest on a
recent episode which I'm going to drop in this feed
on Valentine's Day as a special treat for you.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
But before we wrap up, let's go.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Over Eli and Paul's rom com themed advice One More Time.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Tip one.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Learn from films like Before Sunset and build intimacy through
self disclosure. You'll be surprised how much people will like
you if you share something vulnerable. Tip two is from
When Harry met Sally. Friends can become lovers, so don't
overlook people you already know. The third tip comes from
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. Relationships are unique. What
(44:23):
worked in one partnership might not work in another, so
don't be tempted to think there's a single formula. Tip
four is a cautionary tale from Clueless. Don't believe that
high school myth that the sevens can never date the tens.
Potential partners don't exist on some objective scale. Even the
most conventionally beautiful person is a three to someone, and
we're all a nine or ten to somebody else out there.
(44:46):
Five hundred Days of Summer provides tip number five. Soulmates
just don't exist. If you believe there's only one person
for you, you might give up too quickly when your
relationship inevitably.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
Hits a rough patch.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
And our final piece of advice comes from Challengers. What
attracts you to a short term partner, things like looks fun,
a thrill of danger that has little to do with
the attributes that make for long term relationship happiness. If
you enjoyed my conversation with Paul and Eli, stay tuned,
as we'll be bringing you a whole episode of Love
factually in this feed on February fourteenth. After that, our
(45:19):
how To season will turn away from dating advice and
back to the bigger questions, starting with the puzzle of
how to lead the richest life possible. All that next
time on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos,
Pushkin, Where did you learn the dues and don'ts of
dating from your high school friends, an older sibling, your mom.
Many of us long for a happy romantic relationship, but
we don't always get reliable advice about how to meet
and bond with a potential life partner. You might have
(00:37):
learned about the birds and the bees in biology class,
but I bet you didn't get much instruction about how
to navigate a first date or diffuse your first big
narrative fight. If we're being honest, a lot of our
relationship advice comes from Taylor Swift songs and the research
material my expert guest in this episode focus on a
lot rom com movies, but.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We'll probably talk about like initiating relationships but also maintaining them.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
We'll just like cover the whole gamut.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Kind of yeah, Okay, Okay, great, all right.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Eli Finkel of Northwestern University and Paul Eastwick from UC
Davis are both world renowned relationship experts. They've recently launched
a podcast called Love Factually, which explores what rom comms
get right and wrong about how humans really find love.
Eli and Paul turned to films like Clueless, La La
Land and When Harry met Sally to compare their plots
(01:26):
to the actual scientific research on love. Their goal is
to figure out the facts from the fiction. So, in
honor of Valentine's Day, I just had to include Eli
and Paul in this episode in our how to season,
which we are calling how to Learn.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
From a rom Com Movie.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Now I know Eli and Paul's academic credentials are top notch,
what are they really experts on rom cam movies? There's
only one way to find out. So, having found out
that you all were both into this stuff, my producer
decided to make an impromptu quiz surprise rom com quiz,
Who nice best quiz? Most famous quotes? Oh wow, So
I'm going to read you a rom com or rom
(02:05):
drum quote, and I just want to see if you
know which movie it's from.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Should we buzz in?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Like?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Should we compete to see who gets it first?
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Okay, number one, I'm just a girl stitch in front
of a boy nodding hill.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Thank you very much, I'm the puzzer. Doesn't even count.
What about the buzzer? Oh? I am playing the rest
of this game under protest?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yes, okay, Well, I think we got one for Paul
that because we didn't finish it, I'll give the whole quote.
It was, I'm just a girl standing in front of
a boy asking him to love her. You know, I
do want to give context for that quote since you also.
Speaker 5 (02:39):
Yeah, it's a lovely scene. I mean not nodding Hill right.
A lot of people will remember this. It's something between
a drama and a calm in the rom category. It's
a rom drama com. I guess she's famous American actress
and she's in love with someone like everyday English guy
and there's you know, some consternation about whether she's out
of his league and so forth, and at the end
you get this really vulnerable open moment where she shows
(03:02):
back up at his door, and you know, it's not
really a story about her being out of his league
or what their status is in the broader world. It's
she's a vulnerable person just like the rest of us,
and she's in love with him and it's just hopeful
that he returns the love. And it's beautiful, of course,
because she's Julia Roberts and that's kind of awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Okay, moving on to number two, and I guess we'll
use Paul rules where you just jump in and say
it if you know it as quickly.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Number two.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Number two, you see how picky I am about my
shoes and they only go on my feet.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
We did this one, Paul. This is ten things I
hate about you? Right? No, this is clueless.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Ding ding ding, Yes, clueless.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Okay, sorry, okay, moving on, moving on, moving on. Number three.
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Oh am, I not remembering what this is from Originally,
I have to be honest, I don't think I've ever
seen this.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
This is old school.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, this is love story.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Right yeah, ding ding ding very good, nice.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Job, but I've actually I've actually never seen it. I'm here,
I am admitting this.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Okay, that'll be a new episode.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Number four, nobody puts baby in a corner.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
All right, I'll take it. This is dirty dancing. It's
a great one, a totally adorable movie. I carried the watermelon.
All sorts of great moments in that one.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Okay, So we're talking about rom coms and it seems
kind of silly, but you all in this new podcast
have really argued that we can learn something really.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Important from rom coms. You like, explain why that is.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
Well, what we realized is that rom coms are fun,
they're entertainment, and the dramas too, right, they're entertainment. And
the fact is that these movies contain messages. They contain
implicitly or explicitly, messages about how relationships work. And due
to the fact that films are so influential, we can
think of them as messages that are injected into the
(05:00):
cultural psyche. And some of these messages are accurate. That is,
some of these messages when we consider them, we say, like,
is that true? Is that an accurate way of thinking
about how relationships actually work? Most people in the world
don't realize there's a field called relationship science where people
collect evidence on these things. So we thought it would
be fun to fact check Hollywood and to say, these
(05:21):
are the messages that the movies are are sending and
to what degree through these messages actually align with the evidence.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And I think too that sometimes it's really exciting when
the movies are getting it wrong, because many times that's
a great way to set up a contrast between something
that feels very intuitive when you see it on screen.
Often it's these tropes that we've seen many, many times,
but it's kind of handy to be able to say,
you know, we know from these kinds of studies that
(05:51):
it doesn't actually work this way or it doesn't usually
work this way. And there was something about the realization
that we could do both point out what they're doing
well but also point out what they're getting wrong that
seemed pretty exciting.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
So I know there's some kinds of TV shows, like
historically those shows like Survivor have had the like psychology
consultants that come in, you know, and even some movies
like Inside Out that franchise definitely has lots of famous
psychologists that consult Do.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
You know if like rom comms and rom drums do.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
This, I'm not aware of it, Paul.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
I think there was one episode where we joked that
like it almost seemed like they had a great advisor
on set, and then both of us were jealous of
that hypothetical job.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, I mean it was. I think it was with
her episode.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Spike Jones, the writer director, really had these sharp insights
about how people build intimacy, and well, what if you
just made that person not have a body, couldn't you
do it just as well? Just as seamlessly. But I
don't think anybody is necessarily going to scientists for this.
I think a lot of times they're generating these insights
(06:55):
on their own.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And talk to me about what we know about our
own insights when it comes to love and romance. You know,
if you had to guess kind of how much we're
accurate versus how much we're inaccurate, you know, what would
the finding show.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You know, it's a fifty to fifty proposition. I think
there are some times when people have really good insights
and instincts when it comes to relationships. I think generally speaking,
most people recognize that relationships require a certain amount of
vulnerability and a certain amount of self disclosure and give
(07:28):
and take. And that's going to be required to build
a relationship in the first place, and it's going to
be required to sustain closeness over time. So this is
one area. And we see this in the films too.
They do a pretty good job of making this clear. Right,
whether you're talking about people initiating relationships with each other
(07:49):
or you're talking about people maintaining a relationship, that is
a message that comes through fairly well.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Yeah, I mean there's a bunch of movies that do
this really effectively, And one of the movies that we
had in season one is Before Sunrise, which is basically
a movie that's about, again, your audience may be familiar
with this, but two people we'll meet on a train
on a url pass basically in Europe and spontaneously get
up the train and then spend the evening together in Vienna,
(08:16):
And basically it's a film about them walking around the
city and talking to each other. And what the film
captures beautifully, among other things, is this process through which
people confide intimate information with each other. How we start
as strangers and then I get to know a little
bit about you, you get to know a little bit
about me. And the beautiful thing about that movie in
(08:36):
particular is that it puts that whole relationship initiation process,
this process of getting to know each other, including really
intimate information, in a turbocharger. And again, that's something that
I think people do have decent instincts about this, and
the films generally get right the process through which intimacy
generally develops in relationships.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And so let's dive into that franchise, because this actually
is one of the kind of if you had to
pick a few tips that you've learned from rom comms
and rom doms that really get relationship science right. It
seems like the Before Sunrise, Before Sunset franchise is one
of those eli do you want to do a quick
plot summary on Before Sunset?
Speaker 5 (09:12):
I love this movie. It's not something that we did
in season one. We just did Before Sunrise in season one,
but I did watch all three in advance of our episode,
and in brief In the first movie, they get to
know each other and they spend the night together and
then they make this plan to meet up again, and
that's basically where the first movie ends. Second movie and
he Jesse played by Ethan Hawk, is on a book
tour and he's on a book tour in Paris, and
(09:34):
then while he's doing an event at a bookstore, Selene
walks in, and what we discover is he had arrived
six months later when he was supposed to and she
couldn't because her grandmother had passed away, and so he
had written a book about their experience, and now he's
on this tour, and then the rest of that movie,
now they're walking around a different European city and you know,
(09:55):
I don't want to ruin the end. But the tension
in the movie is that he has a flight back
to the States that leaves that evening right before sunset
is the second movie, and she keeps saying, you're about
to miss your plane. You're about to miss your plane.
And they're having these amazing conversations and these amazing settings.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And reconsidering and revisiting many of their major life decisions
in the process. And to watch again a process that
when people are going to upend their lives, they usually
take I don't know, a few months to do it.
But now we're going to see that whole thing happen
in a very compressed period of time. So it's in
many ways the same conceit, but now we're seeing this
(10:30):
whole different relationship process happening very very fast.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Okay, So I'm trying to guess what the major correct
relationship insight I'm supposed to take from this, right, you know,
visit European cities with Ethan hawk, Like apend your life
in twenty four hours.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
That's it. I mean, that would be a good one.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
Like if if you know it is an opportunity that's
available to you, I'd recommend it, or Julie delp would
be great too. I mean, that movie's tricky. This is
again the second movie in the series, the Before Sunset film,
and the reason why it's tricky is that has this
really interesting moral complication is that he by this point
has gotten married and has a son, and so when
(11:06):
Paul talks about how these major like decisions are happening quickly,
Jesse didn't realize that Selene was going to show up
at this reading. He thought you was gone forever, and
he built this alternative life, and then over a course
of a few hours of walking around Paris has basically
uprooted all of it now for a second time in
a really different sort of way from the first movie,
(11:27):
and the third movie engages with something different when they're
now in their forties and have a family together, and
all three of the films deal with those sorts of things.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Okay, so what's the relationship insight here though?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
So, I think if one is going to take a
lesson from these movies, it's that any amount of intense
self disclosure that you're going to get into with somebody
is going to build a lot of intimacy and has
the potential to build a connection. Although again, if you're
in a relationship that you'd like to keep, then be
careful who you're doing that with because it might seem like, oh,
(11:58):
we're just like harmlessly getting to know each other, strolling
around this gorgeous European city, and before you know it,
you are now really questioning some of your life choices.
There are a really fastudy by Art Aaron back in
the nineties, often called the thirty six question Study. But
what he does is he takes unacquainted pairs, gives them
these questions would escalate in intensity, escalate in the degree
(12:22):
to which they elicit intimacy and vulnerability. And what he
shows with enormous effect sizes is you can get two
people to really like each other if they go through
this sixteen to ninety minute process. So again, that's great
if you're looking to build a relationship. Those are good tips.
You know, if you're not looking to build a new relationship,
(12:42):
be really careful with how you do that.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
So one of the things I love about the Aaron
study is that you forget that you can continue building
that relationship with a long term partner. I mean, I
think one of the reasons relationships kind of often fall
into kind of boringness, is that we're not doing that vulnerability,
that sort of morements of disclosure, They kind of fall
by the wayside when you've been with somebody five years,
ten years, twenty years. Do you think we can use
(13:05):
that same kind of technique eli for kind of building
current relationships.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
The brief answer is I think so, But the full
answer is I don't think we know, because the question
is why do people stop doing this as much? I
share your premise people don't do this as much later on.
One possibility is what you're suggesting that you know, they
get distracted or they just don't prioritize it to the
same degree. Another possibility is we know quite a bit
about each other after twenty years, and so this idea
(13:32):
that there's some like big well of discovery to start
exploring makes it tricky. But nonetheless, there's always more to know,
there's always more sort of new perspectives on things, or
you know, going for example, to a thought provoking film
and discussing that these options are always always always available
to us. So I think it's a little bit in
the column of it's easier to have big discovery before
(13:55):
you really know each other, and also we get into
ruts and sort of lazy habits and don't bother to
try to rekindle some of these high intensity, high emotion
sorts of experiences.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I think another great thing that we learned from this
study is the fact that that kind of self disclosure
is actually positive. I think so many of us have
the misconception that like kind of sharing our messiness might
be yucky. But of course social scientists have talked about
this beautiful mess effect, right, Paul, what's that effect?
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And Kin, how does it play out here?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
So people often when they're trying to make an initial
impression on somebody, they want that impression to be good.
They want to come across perfectly, they want to self promote,
and often those instincts are really misguided. What people really
find appealing in those early moments is, like you put it,
(14:45):
a little bit of messiness, a little bit of vulnerability.
You know, old classic study, right, the person who's kind
of a klutz ends up being more appealing than the
person who's fully put together. And these are examples of
how we can make ourselves open and seem approachable to
another person, and it also makes us interesting. I mean,
(15:07):
there actually isn't a lot that's very interesting about somebody
who's fully put together. You know, it's not clear why
they would be interested in us because they're fully put together.
So having a little bit of vulnerability opens up an
opportunity for more connection in a way that the movies
often get right and sometimes we kind of miss when
(15:28):
we get into resume exchange mode on dates. I got
to come off as good as I can because I
know there are all these other competitors out there, and
I got to be the best.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
It's time for a quick break, but Paul Eli and
I will be back soon.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
So that was first insight that we get from rom
COM's positive insight that self disclosure often a good thing.
Try to promote more of it. Now we're going to
get to big tip number two, which comes from a
classic rom Com one that I've seen, although very very
long time ago. When Harry met Sally. Who wants to
do the When Harry met Sally two second plot twist?
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Paul, here's the arc.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
When Harry met Sally, they first meet, they don't like
each other very much. Five years past, they meet again,
they don't like each other very much. Five years pass again,
and now they kind of hit it off. They form
this genuine friendship that goes on for a few years,
and they go to each other as confidants. They try
(16:29):
to set each other up on dates with some of
their friends. It doesn't really work out, but it's a
genuine friendship that we see for the majority of that movie.
And of course, you know, there is the rom com
trouble if they do get together at the end in
a romantic way. Okay, But what this movie nails is
what's often called the friends to lovers pathway, the idea
(16:50):
that people are commonly good friends before they form a
relationship with each other. And it's often underappreciated just how
common that pathway is. Some re search by Danie Stinson
and colleagues suggests that it's something on the order of
seventy percent of relationships forms through that route. So that's
(17:10):
reflected in the movie.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Really well, I'm glad you explained what it was about,
because I was like, does it have to do with
the orgasms scene?
Speaker 4 (17:16):
That's all I remember from them?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Is there any other scene in that movie?
Speaker 4 (17:19):
We're supposed to fake our orgasms, and we're supposed to
not fake our orgasoms.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
So I think this idea that the arc of the
relationship matters is really important.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
You know, what kind of advice do we get? Are there?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Kind of obviously this sort of friends to partners arc
is a pretty good one.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Are there other good arcs that we should think about?
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Eli Sometimes when we're single and looking, it can feel like,
how are we going to meet new people? You know,
where are we going to go to try to meet
new people? And luckily, now we can just swipe left
and right. Well, luckily and unluckily you can do all
that stuff. And one of the things that we I
think underutilize is that that's not the way, at least historically,
(17:56):
at least until very recently, that relationships have really begun,
and to a significant degree, they still emerge from our
existing social networks, from people that we already know.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
And Paul, you've studied this bit.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
But there's this like view that there's the one night
stand or that we met and we've never met before
and we started a relationship, and that is just a
vast oversimplification of how relationship initiation works.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Right, Yeah, I think people often think that the way
you start a relationship is you like arm yourself with
some really good pickup lines, and you know who to approach,
and you know, thirty minutes start to finish, I did it.
I started a relationship. And it's just those skills. The
ability to approach somebody and make them experience desire for
(18:41):
you in minutes or even hours is a rare and
rather unnecessary skill. Historically speaking, that wasn't how most people
did it. You get to know people, some people grow
on you, some people don't, but you're within these networks
that shift and grow and change, and that's where most.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Relationships come from. It's very easy to lose.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Sight of that in the modern world of online dating,
and I think online dating pushes us to think we
need these skills that most of us historically have not
really needed.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So that's for people who are kind of starting out
relationships and just sort of dating, the sort of arc
kind of matters. It doesn't work the way we think,
what can people who've been in relationships for a long
time tape from the movie.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I think in a lot of ongoing relationships, people develop
these narratives about who we are as a couple, how
we came to be this way, and these narratives are
really important. I mean, having a coherent and positive narrative
definitely predicts things like relationship satisfaction, right, how stable people's
relationships are. And it's also important to keep in mind
(19:46):
that relationships often change.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
With the seasons too.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Somebody takes a new job, right, Maybe there are kids
that come into the relationship.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Somebody just comes by and like, lose them. I don't
know how to show up.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Yeah, I drop off, Yes, hey.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Go, I got this kid for you.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
But relationships go through these dramatic changes too, and I
think it's very easy for people to remember and stay
locked into their early narratives and patterns about who we are. Right,
we are the fun couple, we are the couple that
stays out late, and now we have a two year old.
And does that make it feel like you're losing yourself,
(20:23):
You're losing your identity for who you are as a couple.
Or can you try to reinvent who you are as
a couple to fit the new reality. These are also
places where people have challenges and how they adapt to
those circumstances can be really important.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
You know, we saw that in Lalla Land. Right.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
This is one of the things that I think was
not obvious in La La Land, but was an interesting
aspect which is so Sebastian played by the ever gorgeous
Ryan Gosling, he is a very, very traditional jazz enthusiast.
He's like, on this crusade to save traditional jazz. He
then ends up in like a jazz fusion band and
(21:03):
it's pretty popular, but because of how much he's always
cared about traditional jazz, his girlfriend Mia played by the
Oscar winning Emma Stone, can't really understand what he's doing.
So even though now he's in this other band and
he's kind of enjoying it, she's like, this isn't you
and I don't get it, And so, you know, one
of the interpretations of what happens in that film is
(21:23):
that he changed, that his goals changed in ways that
she didn't really track, and therefore she's supporting one of
his goals that's no longer what his current goal is.
And they're narrative about who each other is is no
longer fitting the changed version of who they are now.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
And so any advice for how to kind of update
those narratives and kind of understand I mean.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
A good relationships therapists, right, A good couples therapists will
come in and will try to get people to unpack
all of the unspoken assumptions that people have about why
we're doing this thing and why it works best that
we interact like this, and why it's best that we're
pursuing these goals. So to unpack it all, put it
on the table, and then identify, Look, these things seem
(22:05):
to be conflicting with the new reality. What can we
take away, what can we change, what can we alter
in order to make these pieces fit again? So this
is what couples therapists are really good at. But you
don't have to have a couples therapists in order to
be able to do some of that rearranging of the pieces.
But it's not easy because we're often very defensive about
(22:28):
you know, why we behave this way, or why we
have this goal, or you know, but you had said this,
and we hold people to things that they said years earlier,
and so having some amount of humility and flexibility and
the ability to reflect in this meta way about what
exactly are we fighting about? Is it really about you know,
(22:48):
you stayed out late, but I was expecting you to
come home, or is it about these broader goals that
we once had that kind of don't fit our current reality,
and is there anything here that we can change to
make this work better.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Now we get to tip number three that rom comms
get right, and this one is from a kind of
oddball movie. I think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
which I saw many many years ago but totally don't remember,
except they're like lying on some beach in Montalk or something.
That's like the whole memory I have of this film.
Who wants to do the thirty seconds on it?
Speaker 5 (23:20):
Well, I'm delighted that the main experience you have of
this movie is failing to remember it, because that is
of course what the movie is, right. They erase their
memories of each other. This is Clementine and Joel. They
release their they erase their memories of each other. And
one of the messages that this movie gets to it
is related to what we were talking about a little
(23:40):
bit ago, which is that relationships are tied to a
specific person. That is, it's not just that you know,
if you find somebody who matches me on certain dimensions,
we're going to get along. No, it's the sculpting and
the building of relationships over time. That's what we mean
(24:01):
when we talk about relationships as microcultures. And the reason
why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind gets this so
right is that one of the characters has access to
like weirdly intimate information about something that happened in somebody
else's relationship and then tries to do the same thing
and fails. So let me be specific about this. They're
(24:23):
erasing Joel Barris's memory. He's the one played against type
by Jim Carrey. He's trying to forget his memories of Clementine,
who's played by Kate Winslet. But in this process of
having a memories erased by the company named Lacuna Ink
who does the memory eraser, one of the really creepy
guys who works there now knows everything Joel did with
(24:46):
Clementine to get him to like her so much, the
things that he did that were just incredibly effective, including
nicknames and including which gifts he gave her and when,
and he knows that her memory has been erased too.
That is, this creeper played by Elijah Wood knows that
both of them have had their memories erased, so he
tries to go and basically get Clementine doing the things
(25:06):
that he knows full well she really dug when Joel
did it, and they are colossal fails. And the lesson here,
which I think is really crucial and illustrated perfectly in
this movie, is that it's not a copy paste way
to relationship success. It's not like you can say everything
that I did with Alice was effective, and therefore I'm
(25:27):
going to do the exact same things with you know, Janita,
and that'll be effective. No, we have to track and
tailor what it is we're doing to the like authentic
growth of this particular relationship. It's not a story about
finding people who do the things we like in general.
It's finding people who adapt with us in ways that
make our own little unique microculture effective rather than like venomous.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Sometimes people use the term strategic or strategy when it
comes to all aspects of relationships, whether it's initiating, whether
it's maintaining relationships, like, oh, you've got to find the
right strategies to make yourself appealing, to make part happy,
et cetera. And I don't want to throw out that
concept entirely, but I do think it is misleading for
(26:15):
exactly this reason, because a strategy for most people implies,
I'm going to learn how to do this skill, and
then wherever I take this skill, it's going to be effective.
And the lesson we get from Eternal Sunshine, and the
lesson that we get from the science too, is that
that's not really how it works. That what makes one
person appeal to us is going to be totally different
(26:37):
from the reasons that somebody else appeals to us. What's
going to make this relationship satisfying and fulfilling. The things
we're gonna do to make that happen are jointly co constructed.
And if I try to take those ideas and copy
paste them onto the next relationship, it's not really gonna work.
You know, maybe you can sort of start with that
and then alter it and try to make it work
(26:57):
with this new person. But the idea that you can
develop a set of strategies that's going to be universally
effective across partners this is this is not a good
way to think about it, and Sunshine seems to know this.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I like this advice because it also seems like if
you had some strategy that you kind of liked or
maybe part of a relationship microculture that really resonated with you,
and maybe a former partner wasn't that into it. It
doesn't mean it's never going to work again. You might
find somebody else who kind of really gets that either
your humor or your goofy is or whatever it has
to be.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
So hang tight. Your Kate win Slant might be out
there waiting for you.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
And people often have core things that they want a
relationship to be built around, and I do think that's
a useful way of thinking about like what your deal
breakers might be or whether this relationship doesn't work for
you that you really want to be able to connect
with this person over X, y Z, and if you're
(27:59):
having trouble making that happen, that could be something that
you can't get past with this particular person.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
But my advice is often try not to go into
it with very strong assumptions about what you need that
person to do and assume that there's going to be
some joint construction that's going to happen along the way.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
All right. So those were our positive tips from rom coms.
So when we get back from the break, we're going
to turn to what rom coms get wrong, Happiness Lab.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Oh yeah, So I'm curious as we start this section
with your relationship science background, are you ever like, you know,
in the middle of some new rom com and watching
it and then just the characters do something and just
(28:47):
from a scientific perspective.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
You're just like no, like, no, oh, you're both nodding.
This seems like this comes up a lot from the
nods I'm seeing.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Eli, Yes, I do this.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
I kind of wish I didn't, right, Like, I there's
sometimes that I want to watch something in the role
of critic and sometimes I just want to like bask
in the enjoyment of it. But yeah, it's hard to
unknow the things that we know about what's effective and
what's ineffective in general, as at least for me as
I watch something on the screen.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
So let's get into some of the kind of misleading
messages that we get from rom coms, starting with one
that breaks my heart because it's one of my only
favorite rom coms out there. Clueless. I like already like,
don't believe this premise. I don't think share Horowitz can
do anything wrong. But maybe it was the movie. It
wasn't it wasn't Share herself.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
So you're right.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
For all the folks out there that don't know clueless,
sad folks, you are go see it right now. Who
wants to do the thirty thirty second on Clueless?
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Maybe I'll do it.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
I'll do it the product.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Way Clueless is share Horowitz.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Alicia Silverstone, very popular girl in high school, decides she's
going to use her powers to like match everybody up together.
I think she starts with a teacher, but then she
takes her kind of slightly dumpy friend, kind.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Of teen Britney Murphy.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
It hooks her up with somebody, but then the dumby
friend tie I think, becomes even more popular. She realizes,
oh my gosh, I've been using my powers poorly and
realizes that this was an insight that she's heard from
her stepbrother, amazingly cute looking Paul Rudd, and she figures out,
oh my gosh, I'm in love with Paul Rudd, and
then magic of rom com makes everything work out.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I think the phrase is she's but crazy.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Crazy, Yes, exactly, So how is this misleading us when
it comes to the science of relationships?
Speaker 4 (30:34):
What is this movie getting wrong?
Speaker 5 (30:35):
Paul I'm happy for you to do it, but can
we just acknowledge that we're just bad people and that
really this movie has done nothing wrong and that everybody
who loves this movie is one hundred percent correct.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I completely endorse that statement, and Share is my personal hero.
That being said, there is an important assumption that she articulates,
which is that there are popular people and the unpopular people,
and her goal is to turn Tie into one of
the quote unquote popular girls so she can date one
(31:08):
of the very few acceptable boys at this high school
in SHARE's eyes. And in order for her to do
her magical work, she has to do a couple of
things related to messages that lead us astray. One is
that she plays the game of desirability as a project.
So you need to boost your attributes in various ways
(31:31):
in order to make yourself appealing to other people. Right, So,
when Tie comes in, we are to understand that she
is not desirable and she must have things done to
her to make her appealing and acceptable. Now, the movie
actually knows that this is silly, because the reality is
that she was always meant to be with skater boy Travis,
and that could have happened in minute two of the movie.
(31:52):
But we have to wait for a minute eighty eight
and that's fine, and that's great. So the movie knows
that this is an idea that leads us astray. But
the second thing, and this is the one that is
really tied to some of the complexities in the science,
has to do with agreement about who is desirable and
who is not.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Because this movie is playing.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
With ideas that I think take for granted that there
is a clear hierarchy of desirability, with popular people and
middlingly popular people and unpopular people, and people must date
within their sphere. The reality is that much of the
time dating doesn't actually work this way, especially in environments
(32:34):
where people are getting to know each other over time.
Speaker 5 (32:37):
I'd love to reinforce this. I mean, first, I just
want to ask Paul, did you use the phrase boost
your attributes? Yes, it seems like there was some subtle
meaning there that. But I would love LORI, if you'll
indulge me, to drive this home forcefully. What Paul is
saying is that this widespread view that pretty much all
(32:59):
of us seem to adopt, that you know, some people
are tens and some people are threes. He's basically saying
that's false, and to a significant degree, he's predicating that
conclusion in the evidence. He's not saying that there's no
individual differences at who's conventionally attractive, or that we wouldn't
agree on that on first meeting. That's for sure true.
(33:19):
But in terms of who's going to be a good
relationship partner, almost all of that is driven by who
is uniquely compatible with us, that is, with whom have
we built an effective relationship, And almost none of that
is figuring out that you're a seven and then making
sure you don't date anybody who's like lower than a seven.
And the reason why this is such a big deal
(33:40):
is that it ends up being such a corrosive story
in the broader marketplace of ideas that you might conclude
that you're a three, and like, what a catastrophe that
would be to walk through the world being like, I'm
a three. I'm just not very datable. People aren't going
to like me. There's a truer version of reality that
you're at least an eight for someone, and you know,
going out there and trying to make it work with
(34:02):
various people that is totally available to you, and that
is what I think is the messages that clueless ten
things I hate about you. They're sending this message that
there really is a hierarchy and who's objectively awesome to date,
And there's a little bit of truth in that, but
there's much more truth to the idea of building something
compatible and being tens for each other.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
I think this is so important because it's one thing
when this kind of idea of like your three and
that's it kind of plays out in sort of nineties culture,
like you know, you got to go out to the
mall and get the new skater pants or something. Yeah,
but I think there's a much more insidious version of
it that exists now and sort of in cell culture
and online, where people really have these categories and it's
(34:42):
really fueling some incredibly nasty behavior.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Paul, you're nodding a lot. Is this the kind of
thing that you've sort of seen?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
No, And I worry about this too. I mean, honestly,
this has been a journey for me over the last
ten years because the idea that there are tens and
there are threes goes to some pretty grim places online.
If you look at things like the red pill ideologies
or even worse. Black pill ideologygies. And it is not
(35:10):
lost on me that the people who are talking about
these ideologies are often talking about other aspects of the science.
It's actually not usually relationship science that they're pointing towards.
They're looking at some of the classics. Sometimes it's evolutionary
inspired research on what people find attractive, And over the
last ten years it's gone to some pretty depressing places.
(35:33):
And this point is exactly the one where I want
to jump up and down and be like, but you're
misunderstanding the science. All of those studies showing the high
agreement about who's attractive. We're done with photographs and people
who are meeting each other for the first time. When
you put people in situations where they're getting to know
each other over time, consensus goes down, agreement goes down.
(35:55):
Some people grow on you and some people don't, and
this is how most people end up getting relationships. But
if you're not in social networks that are morphing and
changing and you're getting to know people over time, and
you'll miss out on that whole process. And so I
worry that there are all these forces in society today
(36:16):
taking us in this terrible direction where the reality is
much more hopeful as long as you are out there
meeting people and not relying on your you know, your
photograph on an online dating site to carry you through
to a relationship.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
So that one seems pretty harmful.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Now we get into bromcom rom dram relationship advice.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
It's pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
And this one comes I think from five Hundred Days
of Summer. And so, Eli, do you want to do
my five hundred Days of Summer real quickly?
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (36:44):
So plot summary of five hundred Days of Summer. We
meet Tom played by Gordon Levitt, Thomas something something, Okay,
what's his name?
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Levit dde again? Do it again? Start over?
Speaker 5 (36:58):
We track Tom played by Joseph Gordon Levitt and his
relationship with Summer played by Zoey Deschanel. And the movie
plays with this idea that there are soulmates, right, And
at first he's convinced that there are soulmates, and she's
convinced that that's ridiculous, and she has a much more
cynical view. By the end of the movie, I think
(37:18):
you've more or less decided that there are soulmates. She's
come to the view that there are soulmates. He's wavered
a bit, but then at the very end it's like, no,
the fates really did bring this to us.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Now it's above the pay grade of a.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Scientist, of any sort of relationship scientist or otherwise to
say is the universe determined by fate? So let's set
acide that issue to ask a more empirically tractable question,
which is, what are the consequences of believing that people
are either meant to be or not meant to be?
And here, you know this will sound familiar to you, Laurie,
because you'ren't familiar with Carol Dweck's work on incremental and
(37:52):
entity beliefs and all those things. But there's a lot
of work in the relationship space, some of it from
my lab, that looks at this question of what is
it like to believe that there are soulmates? And the
answer is, if the relationship is going well, then believing
that you know, we are meant to be in some
cosmic sense is just fine. The problem really is if
(38:14):
the relationship is going through a difficult time, which is
basically the over under on that is, one hundred percent
of relationships will eventually go through hard times. Once that happens,
what is the story we tell ourselves about why we're
going through hard times. If you don't really believe the
soulmate story, then you talk about, well, we're going to
try to work through this and figure it out. But
(38:35):
if you do believe in the soulmate story, what you
might be seeing is evidence that we weren't meant for
each other anyway, And the conflict isn't really like, yeah,
but we're going to learn and grow from working through
this together. It's evidence that, wow, maybe we're not meant
to be and therefore we are less forgiving, at greater
risk for breakup and so forth. So it is risky
(38:55):
to hold the sorts of beliefs that movies like Five
Hundred Days of Summer inject into the cultural bloodstream, which
is that really what you want to do is find
your soulmate.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
I think it's also problematic just because it causes you
to do something real bad when relationship troubles come up, right, which,
as you say, oh, this is just a sign that
everything's wrong. This is the kind of thing we see
in the Happiness work a lot. Right, Someone experiences like
a mild negative emotion and it's like oh, everything's wrong, right,
It's supposed to be good vibes only. But I think
(39:25):
when we kind of mistakenly assume that their relationships are
good vibes only, then we just don't do the stuff
that we need to do to fix relationships.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
The fixing part is really important because I think many
times these caustic beliefs are somehow linked to and there's
nothing I can do about it. So another kind of
belief that comes up from time to time is this
idea that men and women are fundamentally different. And look,
(39:52):
you know, we see this in Before Sunrise. This is
one of the fun things that they debate throughout that movie,
and they're really interesting conversations. And the belief that men
and women are very different are, at least in heterosexual
mixed couples, those beliefs are linked to relationship difficulties. And
(40:13):
part of the reason why is because eventually couples do
encounter conflict, they do encounter differences of opinion, and if
you are someone who believes that that is linked to
something deep and essential about your gender, that often comes
with the unfounded assumption that there's nothing we can do
about it. So these ideas that like gender is essentialized
(40:39):
that our behaviors are determined by gender. Right, there's no
way to intervene and stop those things that could be
sort of fun to chat about as you're getting to
know people. But if you really carry those beliefs with
you into a mixed gender relationship, that's another place where
people are going to be headed for trouble.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
So, finally, since we are running out of time, which
I knew what had happened, because you all are both
so fun and so awesome, and this is why I
love listening to love. Factually, the last movie that gives
us some bad ideas about relationship is a very recent one.
This is the movie Challengers. Paul, do you want to
do it? Thirty seconds on Challengers?
Speaker 3 (41:11):
So in this movie is and Dea.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Her character Tashi is interested in these two guys, Patrick
and Art. And Patrick and Art have these very different
depictions in the movie, but one thing it sets up
very clearly is the distinction between the good dad in
the character Art versus the cad right, the like hot
but a little bit skeezy.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Guy in this case played by Patrick.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
And This is a dichotomy that we commonly think is
out there and explains differences between people that there are
the people you sleep with and the people that you marry,
And this again applies across gender as well.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Right, So we have this stereotype.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
And this is a very misleading idea about people's interests
and the abilities when it comes to short term and
long term relationships, because the reality is that people's interest
in having short term and long term relationship chips tends
to be pretty weakly correlated. You can be into both,
you can be into neither. But more importantly, somebody's attractiveness
(42:18):
or appeal as a short term partner truly has nothing
to do with their appeal as a long term partner.
So just because somebody has had a lot of fun
hookups in the past as zero implications for whether or
not that person could be a good partner with you.
And when people carry those assumptions around, boy do they
(42:38):
make some nasty, unfortunate inferences.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
About other people.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yeah, it just becomes a sort of interesting self fulfilling prophecy.
It seems like if you're sort of carrying these beliefs
and also might make you kind of feel nasty about
your own history, depending on what it's like.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Too, Right, right, why are you looking.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
At me now, So justice we're winding down. I mean,
what seems tricky is that we both can't get these
really good, scientifically based insights from rom coms and also
some really terrible strategies too. What should we take away,
like what's the sort of health warning that should go
with romcom z Ela?
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Mostly, I just.
Speaker 5 (43:13):
Want people to enjoy the films, Like there's a cost
to you know, being in your head all the time
that said films send messages whether we know it or not,
and we internalize these messages to a significant degree. And
so I am delighted that we started the podcast. I
think some idea that there might be like a fact
check for this stuff that we can look up somewhere.
(43:34):
I don't think that exists anywhere. So I would advise
people enjoy the movies and then if you want to
check out Love Factually.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Yeah, seriously, you really should check out Love Factually. It's
a great show and you can find it wherever you
get your podcasts. Plus, I was a guest on a
recent episode which I'm going to drop in this feed
on Valentine's Day as a special treat for you.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
But before we wrap up, let's go.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Over Eli and Paul's rom com themed advice One More Time.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Tip one.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Learn from films like Before Sunset and build intimacy through
self disclosure. You'll be surprised how much people will like
you if you share something vulnerable. Tip two is from
When Harry met Sally. Friends can become lovers, so don't
overlook people you already know. The third tip comes from
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. Relationships are unique. What
(44:23):
worked in one partnership might not work in another, so
don't be tempted to think there's a single formula. Tip
four is a cautionary tale from Clueless. Don't believe that
high school myth that the sevens can never date the tens.
Potential partners don't exist on some objective scale. Even the
most conventionally beautiful person is a three to someone, and
we're all a nine or ten to somebody else out there.
(44:46):
Five hundred Days of Summer provides tip number five. Soulmates
just don't exist. If you believe there's only one person
for you, you might give up too quickly when your
relationship inevitably.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
Hits a rough patch.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
And our final piece of advice comes from Challengers. What
attracts you to a short term partner, things like looks fun,
a thrill of danger that has little to do with
the attributes that make for long term relationship happiness. If
you enjoyed my conversation with Paul and Eli, stay tuned,
as we'll be bringing you a whole episode of Love
factually in this feed on February fourteenth. After that, our
(45:19):
how To season will turn away from dating advice and
back to the bigger questions, starting with the puzzle of
how to lead the richest life possible. All that next
time on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos,
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