Logan Ury

the one. I don't believe in soulmates. I feel like there's a lot of people that we could make a life with, and it's really up to us what kind of life we want to live, and we can choose different people for that. I'm actually looking for the reverse, uh, not the person who's necessarily looking for the best match, but people who believe there's they're never gonna fine love, there's not somebody out there for them. It's an interesting question.

I just sent out my email newsletter today and it was about finding a penthouse person or a basement person. So a penthouse person is somebody who lifts you up, they energize you, they make you feel your best. A basement person is somebody who brings you down? And it was basically saying, instead of dating with the checklist, he must be this tall, he must make this much money. Think about the person in your life who's your penthouse person. Maybe it's your best friend, maybe it's your cousin, and

date for somebody with those qualities. And a woman wrote back to me and said, what if I'm a basement person? What do I do about that? And I thought it was so interesting because oftentimes we think about how can I choose the right person? And rarely we think am I the right person? And I think that actually is a lot of it. Maybe there's nobody out there for you because you are not allowing yourself to be loved,

or you are not allowing yourself to connect. And so for someone like that, I might say, maybe you right now need to do some work on yourself. But I do feel like people who are open to connection and are willing to compromise on the things that don't matter and double down on the things that do, I feel like there there is love for them. Okay, you know, there's the threshold. There are many people, especially in today's era of dating apps, who view it as like getting

a job. Very scientifically, But there are a lot of other people who just cannot get over the threshold, even though these people might to those who know them be very desirable and if they just played, they would certainly be inundated with those who want to interact with them. Now, you may not see that many of those people because they don't come to you. But what do you tell those people to get engaged in the game. Yeah, no, I actually do see a lot of those people. I

call them hesitators. There are people that are just not putting themselves out there at all, and they're not in the game, and they oftentimes feel like they're just not datable yet. They're just not ready for love. And they tell me these things like if I lose weight, if I get a more impressive job, if I finally unpack those boxes in my apartment. So they're not even dating because they feel like they're not lovable yet, and the

work that I do with them is helping them understand. Look, the only way to get better at dating is by actually dating. And it's kind of like stand up comedy. If you just sit in your house writing jokes, you're just writing. It's not until you're in front of an audience that you're actually doing stand up. And similarly, these people read self help books, so they think about how they want to date one day. But you can really

only get better at dating by actually dating. And also you only see what kind of person you want to be with by actually going on dates. And so for some of those people, it's just about getting out there and dating. In terms of people that are just not getting any matches or not seeing any success, I usually like to talk to them and just look at their past and look at their patterns and say, Okay, when you have met somebody in the past, was it on

an app or was it at a dog park? When you have connected with somebody, was it actually a friend that turned into a relationship? And so some people maybe are not actually the best fit for online dating, and I'd rather look back and help them understand what are the situations that set them up for success, and then how can they do more of that. Now, the nature of life is as you get older, there's attrition. And I'm going to talk about a couple of specific examples.

I have a couple of friends who spouses have passed away, and they're in their sixties, and you know, some of them married a few times, but they just didn't envision this happening, and they're so reluctant to get into the game. Is there any advice you have for them? I wouldn't say I'm necessarily an expert on dating at that stage

of life. I have worked a lot with millennials and gen z. I do get a lot of emails every week from people who are like, you know, I'm in my six season seventies and I read your book and I didn't think it would be for me, but I learned a lot. But I just want to start by saying I'm not necessarily the most experienced with this. But what I would say is for some people, they actually aren't looking for someone. I hear from people all the time they're like, I'm way happier being alone than being

in an unhappy relationship. And I think for some people that's the right answer. For other people, when they have been out of the dating game for years, trying to date online feels really forced and not necessarily comfortable for them. They feel like they're learning a brand new language. It's like, well, how I dated in the eighties is not relevant anymore. But for those people, I would say just think about the apps or think about online dating as the modern matchmaker.

That's just where the connection happens. But once you go on that first date, it's the same experience. It's what are you about? What am I about? What are you looking for? Let's go have fun, Let's go on a hike, Let's really get to know each other. And then the last thing might be you know, speaking of attrition at a certain age, are there other people in your life that maybe you had a connection with and they've also lost their spouse, and is there an opportunity to turn

some of those friendships or companionships into something more. Now, in the Tinder era, more than ever, attractiveness is a key element. And certainly those of us who live for a while, there are certain people they're fighting off the other sex or maybe same sex, if they are of that ilk persuasion. You know today you gotta worry about every word you use. You're gonna get canceled. But um, you know, if they're gay or whatever. But then there are people who say, well, I'm not high on the

attractiveness scale. So if I go on Tinder, j s wipe all these other things, you know, my opportunities are going to be limited, So what do you tell those people? Yeah, I think about this a lot. There's this kind stup called relations shopping. So we used to go relationshipping, which is looking for a relationship, and now we go relations shopping, which is shopping for somebody as if they were a product that we're going to purchase. And so let's say somebody was like, Bob, I need a new pair of

wireless headphones. You might think about, okay, well, how much do you want to spend, what quality do you want? What kind of charging? You might think about all the specs and break the product down and then say, okay, these are the single best pair of wireless headphones for what I want. Unfortunately, people are also doing that with dating, where they're breaking people down into their parts and saying height, attractiveness, education, job,

quality of photos, etcetera. And the issue with relation shopping is that people are not what we call searchable goods. People cannot be broken down into these parts. People are what's known as experience goods, which is something like wine or a movie. I might love this wine and you hate it. I might really not enjoy this movie, but it age you cry, and you thought it was triumphant, and so people are really not something that can be

broken down into their parts. There are people that have to be experienced to be understood, and so I do think it's a shame when people feel like they can't represent themselves because they'll just be you know, swipe left on because of their attraction. That being said, there are a lot of ways to shine on the apps. That's

not just how you look. And so, for example, with Hinge, they have audio prompts, so you can record something in your voice and you can tell a joke, you can do an impression of a movie, you can say something silly. My friend Joe, for example, he uses the voice prompt how to pronounce my name, which is obviously there for people who have hard to pronounce names, but he just says Joe. And this factor's people out right. If you think that's funny, you have the dry sense of humor

that he has. If you right back, do you really think I don't know how to say Joe, then he

just knows that you're not for him. And so there are these things that are happening right now that are limiting that space between who you are on this two dimensional app and who you are three D in real life, and they're trying to make it easier to understand from the app what that person is really like, and so things like being silly, being funny, using correct grammar, expressing yourself in a specific way, showing that you can be silly and serious, and so yes, I do think in

general it's not just an app problem. People are very visual, they're very focused on attraction, but there are these other parts of your personality that you can make shine. And I especially think that's true as people get older, because in general, nobody in the sixties and seventies market is as attractive as the person in the twenties market, and so I would hope that the emphasis on attraction goes down somewhat because it's just a different pool of people

that you're looking at. Well. As I say, I'm not solely by audience, is not solely people of that age, but just BEng In with one specific example, I have a friend in his forties, makes seven figures a year, very attractive, very in shape, never been married, says he wants to be in a relationship. If that person came to you, what would be the question you would ask him? How would you you know, approach getting this person into

a reasonable relationship that might lead to marriage. Yes, well, I think you gave me a good lay up there by saying he says he wants to be in a relationship, Um, but you seem to doubt it. And so I would probably dig into that too. And so let's say I was working with him in a coaching capacity. In the first session, i'd really ask him to tell me his dating history, probably starting in high school. People really like to start in that time. A lot of people say

to me, I was a late bloomer. Nobody really looked at me. Um, I didn't have high self confidence. This is when I lost my virginity. People really like to start pretty early on and telling me who they are. And it's very interesting to hear their narrative. Some people focused on the number of partners they've had. Some people focus on how they were always so job or school

oriented and that's why it didn't happen for them. But I would really listen to what he chooses to include in that narrative and then dig in and ask certain questions about, you know, why did you break up with this person, or what did you like or not like about them, and for him being in his forties and it sounds like you think he's an eligible bachelor. I would ask him, why do you think you're single? I would have him text his friends and family and say,

why do you think I'm single? I would really start to get some data points on what's going on with this person, and then I would reflect and say do I believe this? Sometimes people say, oh, I'm just too picky. I'm like, well, maybe you're picky, but about the wrong things. Maybe you actually never got over the fact that you were a late bloomer and you really enjoy just dating around and you're not looking for something. I would try to dig in and say, what's your long term old

Do you want to have a family? Do you want to grow old with someone? If you do, you have to change your behavior because where you're headed now is not leading towards a path of doing that, and so you need to be on board with making a behavioral change. And sometimes people aren't. Sometimes people actually are just happy or not happy where they are, but they are not willing to change their behavior. And you can't just do the same thing over and over again and expect a

different outcome. How about you know with this same gentleman, he gets in relationships which those of us who are his friends might say are inappropriate. Is that an age thing?

Let's be these women be in their twenties, but I am I'm referring that sort of a different These are people who are self supporting, okay, and these are people who are not is intelligent worldly that you know, one wonders whether he can pick them by virtually the fact that he can control them, and is fearful that he's someone who's more established he might not be able to

control any thoughts about that. Yeah, I've definitely encountered people like this, and I sometimes think that they create a mentor mentee dynamic where, similar to what you said, they want to feel like they're in control. They want to feel like that person comes to them for guidance. There's a sense of a power and balance that they seem to benefit from. What I talked to them about that is that mentor mentee relationships tend not to work out.

The mentor gets bored and the mentee gets resentful. And as that person gets older and more independent, they start to resent the older person for feeling like, um, they need to ask them from permission or things, or they just don't you know, they want to be in an equal relationship. The other thing that I would say to your friend is who are some of the relationships in your life that you admire. Tell me about some of

your friends that have great marriages, great partnerships. I would listen to what that person says, and I imagine that he would say something like, I really like this couple. They seem to have fun together, they have a great dynamic, um they like traveling in the same way, and they're just really pushing each other and they have fun. Or he telling me about another couple where it just seems like there's a lot of passion and they're really romantic

and they're not sick of each other. And then I would talk to him about these what you called inappropriate relationships and say do they have that dynamic and just start to help him understand that obviously this is very hypothetical, but that likely the relationships he's pursuing are about those people's physical attraction or about the fact that if he

has more power, maybe they won't leave him. Maybe he feels like he's trying to live out some high school fantasy that he never got to have because he wasn't cool in high school, and that it's time to grow up and look for the life part NERD instead of the promptdate. Okay, So I was on the phone with somebody yesterday and we were talking about potential partners and this is a big thing amongst guys, the issue of attractiveness.

And I said, well, in this demo, whatever, what percentage of the people you want to carve out that don't meet your qualifications? He go se but professing that he would like to have a relationship, What would you tell someone like that? Yeah, I've thought about this a lot. I've thought about what matters more and less than people think for long term relationships. And so some of the things that matter less than people think include attractive attractiveness, money,

having the same personality, and shared hobbies. In general, people tend to overestimate the importance of those. The reason why it looks matter but matter lesson we think, is because of this idea of adaptation. Over time, we just get used to whatever's around us. And so I think I said some in my book, like even halle Berry's husband cheated on her, right, you can have like the most

attractive partner in the world. But if you see them every day, you just get used to them and sort of that initial joy or initial spark of that person's level of attraction just you just get used to it over time, and it's less exciting. So I wouldn't put all my eggs in the attraction basket because you're just gonna get used to it. Plus looks fade. Another thing is money. It's the same idea. Yeah, it's great to

have money. It makes life easier. There's a lot of research that shows up to a certain amount money matters, but over that amount, it just tends to fade into the background. Your house, it matters more how big your house is compared to your neighbor's house than how big your house is. Over time, and so even if you have a ton of money, you start comparing yourself to people who have even more than you. You just get

used to that amount. That's why lottery winners tend to be as happy as they were a year after winning the lottery, because they just get used to having money. Similar personality, you don't have to be a personality twin with your partner. Maybe you compliment each other, maybe you're really outgoing but you're you're also a little spacey and you need somebody to ground you. And then shared hobbies.

I think people talk way too much about I love music and this person needs to love music and Bob, you might be an exception to this because music is a huge part of your life. But for the average person, you can have a hobby that you embrace with your friends or that you do on the weekends, and your partner doesn't need to have the same level of passion

for it. So I think people get really distracted by some of those things and they are just not what the research tells us matters for long term relationship success. Do you think someone you might not be physically attracted to initially you can grow to be physically attracted to. Yeah, I think above a certain threshold. So if you meet someone and you are just grossed out by them, or what the kids call these days the ick factor, if you're feeling the ig factor, you're probably not going to

overcome that. But there's tons of examples of people who met somebody in their apartment building, met somebody at work who they didn't really feel an attraction to, but over time, as they get to know that person as they see how beautiful they look when they are talking about their family, or how fun they are to be around when they're doing a crossrood puzzle with them, that attraction grows. And

there's some really cool research on this. UM. I don't know how much research you want me to get into today, but UM, basically, if you just look at a group of people and you say who are the hottest people, we're all going to agree. But if we spend six months with them and I get to know some people and you get to know some people, at the end of the six months, I'm going to think the people that I got to know are most attractive, and you're going to think the people that you got to know

are most attractive. And so attraction definitely grows over time through what's known as the mere exposure effect, and also just the more that you see different sides of someone, the more they can grow on you. Okay, one of the fascinating things that I read about you is you say, or something you said, was people find those in therapy very attractive. I'm a big believer in therapy, been going for decades, etcetera. I've gotten a lot of ship for that, and I know a lot of people who won't go

to therapy. So is it just a small subset of people or generations different? What's going on there? So this is research that we conducted it hand over the last year. Basically, I was inspired to do this because I was talking to a lot of people who said, to me, look, the pandemic was really hard. It was really tough. It pushed me to my limits. I went to therapy to

quote unquote do the work. Now I'm meeting these people who haven't done any of that and they basically come to me and I have to be their therapists, And like, I'm not willing to do that. I've done the work. I want to be with someone who's done the work. It really felt like there was this cultural shift away from therapy being this stigmatized thing that means there's something wrong with you, to being this very healthy thing that means, yes,

I'm prioritizing my mental health. And so what we found it hinge was that over of people said I want to be with someone who actively takes care of their mental health. And then they also said if somebody mentioned on the first date that they go to therapy, I would be more likely to want to go on a second date with them, and so I do think this is a cultural shift. Uh, Millennials and gen z tend

to be way more focused on self help. They follow a bunch of therapists and coaches on Instagram, they consume a lot of self help podcast that's just part of the zeitgeist. But I also think that the pandemic really pushed this because people were so challenged that they were forced to deal with some of their stuff, and in doing that, they were like, Wow, this is really valuable. I wish I had done this before. I wish my parents did it, and I absolutely want my partner to

do it. What's your therapy experience? Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm Jewish, I'm from South Florida. I feel like therapy is just something I'm very comfortable with. I've seen a series of therapists in my life. I feel like some people have had really magical therapy experiences. I wouldn't say I've had one particular therapist that was life changing, but I think it's just really healthy at different stages to have somebody to confess things to and to talk to.

And it's basically a space where you put a lot of stuff that's messy that you don't want to bring anywhere else. I also feel like one of the reasons why my husband and I are married is because his mom is a therapist. And he has this joke he likes to say, which is, I didn't talk to my mom that much growing up. She didn't take my insurance. That is funny. He's really funny, But I feel like his mom is one of the major reasons we're married.

A lot of people these days like to say that they're feminine us, but I think my husband actually is a feminist, Like he reads books by women about the women experience. He liked The Show Girls. It's not like a showy thing for him. It's not about protesting or marching. It's that he actually is very interested in what women think and feels like men and women are equal. And I think that just came from having a very sassy, opinionated, strong,

emotionally intelligent mom. And I feel really lucky to be married to the son of a therapist, and as he had individual therapy himself. Yeah, I mean, I think we're both just of the Yeah. For us, therapy is like, yeah, you have something going on, like you probably need to go to a therapist. That there's I would say, it's not stigmatized at all. And yeah, I would say I'm lucky to be in a community where most people I

know have probably been to therapy at some point. Okay, I had a free subscription to a o L and I'm dating myself when people had to pay by the minute. So literally I lived on that service and it benefited me professionally. But I would like to explore all those things. I mean, there was love at a o well, never mind the chat groups, chat rooms, and then match dot com.

I mean, I've been in a one on one relationship for decades, but I still have a free subscription if I could find the log in, because those of us were grandfathered in. But when two interesting things. One I found that I could say the same thing to two different women get wildly divergent reactions when you're moving too fast, the other one would say, this is just too slow, I have to abandon you. The other thing I found was that it really got my chops up for interacting

people with in regular life. So to what degree do you believe just being in the game is working on your own games? Such you're open to love or really if you want to get in a serious relationship, the apps themselves can do this for you. Oh this is this is funny to think about. It takes me back. So I also had the free A O L subscription, and then I spent much of my middle school in high school years on a I am right, I am right,

of course, the predecessor of my message, of course. And sometimes I like to think about, you know, the Malcolm Gladwell ten hours thing. I'm like, my ten hours is chatting day. Well, believe me, I feel the same way. People say, you know, you know, I'll just go a little left field here. People say, oh, chat rooms I don't understand, say you don't understand how to play the game. There's a there's a chat room for every sexual predilection. I said, I don't want to know what your sexual

predilection is. But in the user created rooms, it's there, and there's it was thirteen or fourteen people in every chat room, and then you click and get their profile and then you connect, you contact them via aim. You know, to this day, what's interesting because older generations are much less tech savvy than they say, and same thing with younger generations. The old cliche used to be, well, if you got a tech problem mass somebody who's twelve. That's

not necessarily the case anymore. But there's a lot of experience to be gained there. So you gain that experience. And now that I've gone off on my own, little Hahira, there,

give me continue the story you were telling. Oh sure, yeah, I didn't spend a ton of time and chat rooms, but I definitely it was a kind of thing where maybe you sat next to a cute boy in class and you never spoke, but when you would go home at night, you would talk on a I AM for three hours, and I feel like you, I really did

get my flirty writing style down. I usually think about it as a waste where I'm like, I could have learned Spanish, I could have learned how to code, Like why did I spend so much of my time there? But then I'm also like, I'm a pretty good written communicator, and I think some of it was honed using that service, And so I agree with you. And so in terms of being in the game, I absolutely agree with that idea.

It's kind of what I was talking about before with hesitators, where some people are just not dating at all, and maybe they are afraid of dating. They feel like they're out of practice, they're afraid to get out there. But so much research on how to achieve your goals has to do with identity. Right. There's this great book Atomic Habits where he talks about how his friend lost a hundred pounds by saying every time she had to make a decision, she would say what would a healthy person do?

And she basically adopted the identity of a healthy person and then was able to make decisions like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, ordering a salad instead of the fries, whatever it was. And so the dating analogy here is how can you adopt the identity of a data and say I am a data? I am somebody who goes on dates. That means that I save this many nights a week for dating. It means that I

respond to messages on the app. I really feel like you have to think of yourself as somebody who's in the game. And if you just think of yourself as somebody who will eventually be in the game, who who's occasionally in the game, I don't find that those people really make progress. You know. One of the things my psychiatrist said early in the game, this is the nineties. With this particular psychiatrist would say, yeah, certain things attract.

Physical attractedness is one thing, would attract love partner. But also if you're a man, uh status, whether it be fame or a certain job, money, you know, so many people might say forget the people who are not playing at all. Well, I'm playing at this level, but I hope to play at a higher level when I got further in my career. What might you say to someone like that. Yeah, I do a lot of work with people where we say, okay, where are you now, where

do you want to get to? And what are the steps along the way, and then I might walk them through a checklist of you know, the bare minimum. So at the bare minimum, you need a great profile with attractive pictures and showing you in a flattering but accurate light, something that tells a story. All right. You need to be logging in pretty consistently, because if you just log into the app every Sunday and then you let those

conversations die, you don't go on dates. You need to be going on first dates that actually have good conversation and leads to connection and maybe a kiss at the end of the night. If your first dates aren't turning into second dates, let's zoom in there, what's the problem? How do we get you to second dates? And just really working with people and seeing are you doing the must have steps? And then where are you getting stuck?

And how can we fix that? And so I could imagine maybe somebody listening to our conversation and being like, oh, that sounds, you know, so technical, that sounds like you're trying to apply maybe business techniques or thing to dating. But at the end of the day, a lot of people are single, they don't want to be they want help, and we have blind spots that make it hard for

us to see what we're doing wrong. And so I really like to be that third party that sits there with them and says, well, if you're going on a ton of first dates and no second dates, you're doing something wrong in the first date, and let's figure out what's going wrong. Now. I know from personal experience more than once you're in a long term relationship, you hit a point where the other person wants to get married. Okay, So let's say someone comes to you said we'll have

a long term relationship. But really, I'm just in my twenties. I don't really want to get married till they're till I'm in my thirties, and then gets you know, starts to get traction with someone. You know, what do you tell someone like that. I've found that people change their minds more often than they think. So I know so many people who in their twenties said I don't want to have kids, and then in their thirties all their friends had kids, and they're like, I guess this is

the thing to do. And so part of that is just an acknowledgment that people change over time way more than we think we will. There's this really cool research from Dan Gilbert out of Harvard called the end of history illusion, where people think, oh, i'm twenty, I'm not going to change. Oh i'm thirty, I'm not going to change. I'm forty, I'm not going to change. We keep thinking that we're done changing, but when you look back on

the previous ten years, you've changed a lot. And so part of it is just helping people acknowledge and understand that your desires may change. Another thing is that sometimes your timeline doesn't match up with somebody else's if you're dating someone who's older, who's ready to get married now, and that's not your exact preferred time, could you compromise,

Could you be ready a little bit earlier? And then something else might be is it that you don't want to get married or is it that you don't want to be with this person? And maybe they're actually conflating those ideas, and so I would dig in with them and say, is this actually is it of timing or is this not the right person? You know, the entertainment business is littered with people who walked in in marriages or had early marriages, had a lot of success, fire

the spouse and got somebody else. So you know, what do you tell those people that really, you're not going to find what you're looking for when you have something established or now you have a better cv, you're really

going to find someone better. Yeah, it's funny. I don't have a lot of personal experience with the entertainment industry, but it reminds me of lots of friends who have gone to business school, where you walk into business school with the partner and then you meet someone who you think is more on your level or you have more in common with and suddenly there's a lot of divorces happening that first year of business school, and so there

is a tendency in our culture. I think too. Maybe it's like have a starter spouse or to trade up. And the question I would ask this person is on what dimensions are you trading up? Is it that you think that you could have someone more attractive and so you're you're leaving your first partner behind. I would really question for those people where the decision is coming from.

And some of the celebrities and people I admire the most are people who have their O G relationship and their O G friends and basically have realized that that person loved them even before they were Mark Zuckerberg world billionaire and things like that. Right he's he's been dating his partner for a long time, and so there of course there's going to be divorces. And that's not the problem.

I think the issue is when people feel like they need an upgrade to represent where they are right now, and they might not realize realize the sacrifices they're making because that person is drawn to who you are now and maybe not who you were when you were a more humble version of yourself. Okay uh. There was a song in the eighties by Paula abdual Opposites Attract, and I always use that as my mantra when it comes

to relationships. People are looking for someone who's identical to them, and as the couple therapists we see says, you know, you would absolutely hate that. So what's been your experience? I completely agree. I I just I think you said it very well. It's like people think that they are so great that they need to find someone just like them. And I can remember a client of mine who came in and said, I'm the life of the party. I'm so much fun. I I literally do event planning for

a living. And I just don't know if I can be with my girlfriend. She's such a homebody, and she's quiet, and she wants to go home at eleven PM and not sail till three am. And then I say, this person, two of you in a relationship would be way too much. You would be competing to be the center of attention. Neither of you would be the grounding force that reminds

you to spend time together. I don't think that relationship would work, and so I often recommend to people that they find their compliment, and I can say, in terms of my own experience, my husband and I are really a different He's introverted, he's a scientist, he's doesn't care what people think about him. He's vegan, he works out every day. There's just sort of a private, self assured nous to him, and I think I'm the opposite of that.

And sometimes he really frustrates me. And for example, we've been married for two years, but we just had our wedding celebration two weeks ago, and the first line of my vows is when I look at your face, I see the person who drives me crazy and the person who keeps me sane. And that's exactly how I feel about him. He annoys me so much. She's so frustrating. Why won't he do anything I ask him to do?

And then I'm like, oh, yeah, this is why we've been together for seven years because I love that he doesn't do what I asked him to do, because it keeps things interesting and he always surprises me. And I can't just mold the world around I can't mold him to my liking like I can do with other people. And so I feel like it's that tension that keeps you together. Okay, let's go through the varying dating apps, because it's certainly changed from the era of just Match.

Then we have a Harmony, we have Bumble where you work for Hinge Tender, explain the landscape. Yeah, So one of the big changes that happened was prior to ten years ago, most of these dating most most of the online dating was on a desktop, right. So I remember using okay Cupid in two thousand eleven and you could search for different people and you could have these long

conversations and it was a very desktop focused experienced. And then the big game changer was Grinder, where Grinder was location based and you would see, oh, turns out my neighbor is gay, and you know, down for some fun, and it was really based on your phone and who was around you. And then the next big technological change was Tinder, which was ten years ago now inventing the swipe and the fact that you could just right swipe like someone or left swipe reject someone. And so those

were the big changes in terms of the scene. Now almost everything is very app focused. There's apps that are more focused for older folks. So things like our time in general, e Harmony and match are tend to be a little bit older, and then you have Bumble, you have Hinge and Tinder in general exkews a little bit younger or a little bit less focused on relationships. What about I believe it's Rya. You know they have these uh dating apps there have some level of exclusivity. What

has your experience been with that? I really only know two couples that have come out of Riya. In general, it's the kind of thing where people want you didn't know that they're on Riya, but they're not necessarily using it. Often are looking for a relationship, and so Rya is one that I'm curious about because it definitely has that prestige factor. But I haven't necessarily heard about a ton of relationships coming out of it. Okay, I come to

see you. I'm you know, somewhere between twenty four and thirty eight, and I want to have a relationship. How do you choose which app you direct your client too? Yeah, it's interesting. Some people are just on way too many and then they get burned out or they feel like they have to check too many of them, and so I would just say, hey, let's pick maybe one or two that you're on. Obviously I'm biased towards Hinge. I really like it. I feel like I liked it before

I worked there. That's why I chose to work there. Um, this is going to sound very salthy for Hinge, But before I worked there, I was interviewing people from my book and I had the chance to eat interview the CEO, and I said to him, your tagline is designed to be deleted, and I just don't believe it. I've worked at tech companies. The biggest thing is you want to avoid chre earn. You want to avoid having users join and then leave. How could you be designed to be deleted?

That doesn't make any sense. And he said, ever since we shifted towards that, we've had way more success because if your brother meets somebody on Hinge, he's going to tell everyone about it. If you read in the New York Times in the vows section that somebody met on Hinge, you're going to sign up for it. And so focusing on actually getting people into relationships and not making the app fun or a place to just you know, play a game, and you know it's not gamified. It's not

about making the app fun. It's about meeting somebody and then getting onto the data as soon as possible. Okay, let's go to very specific. Some of these are more pass like Okay, Cupid and plenty of Fish. To me, those that didn't charge, let me put it in a different way. Those that did charge got rid of a lot of the detritus, people who were not serious or not worthy partners. Is that reasonable or is that just a bias. I would say it depends on your age

and your intention. Maybe you're just online to have fun and you just graduated from college, and you meet people at work, you meet people at bars, and you also meet people online. I think what you're looking for is totally different than somebody who's divorced with the kid, doesn't have a ton of time and really only wants to meet people who also want to get remarried and have a family. And so I think it's almost like saying

is expensive food overrated? Well, you know, it depends what can you afford and what are you looking for and what are your expectations for food? And so I think it's like the dating journey really really depends on your age and how serious you are and what you're looking for. Okay, let's go to another extreme and your experience. Is Craigslist still a thing. I don't hear about craigslist hookups anymore. I know there were casual encounters and things like that,

but I haven't heard about that in a long time. Okay, so has someone you know it's a long time ago. Someone who's certainly been on dates as a result of online you know those places. I always tell people two things, Get face to face as soon as possible, and then make it so that it can be brief, because frequently you know very quickly. What do you tell your clients? I totally agree with the first point. I have found that people spend way too long talking online before they

meet up in person. And I call it the Monet effect, which is that our brains have a tendency to fill in the gaps of information we don't know with positive information. And so let's say somebody puts on their app I love music. Your brain is going to go, oh, she loves music. I bet she loves the same music as me, And we basically create a fantasy in our minds of what this person is like. So the longer we talk the longer the fantasy builds. So let's say three or

four weeks into talking, we finally meet up. Suddenly that person doesn't match your fantasy, even if they're independently great, they are different than what you've built up in their mind, and that feels disappointing. It's much healthier, it's much more effective to meet. Make sure you have some stuff to talk about, make sure you're enjoying the conversation. They're asking you questions, you're asking them questions. Get to the date,

and then see do we have chemistry in person? Do we enjoy the sound of each other's voices, are we curious to spend more time together? And so I really think the much better strategy is meeting on the app, talking on the phone or video chat as soon as possible, meeting up in person quickly, and then making decisions based on that, not based on text communication. Now the second half, which would be meet somewhere where it can be brief

me for coffee as opposed to dinner or your take there. Yeah, so I've I've changed my view on this over time, But it might just be that I live in Silicon Valley and people here are obsessed with productivity and effectiveness and to do list. And I've worked with clients that treat dating like something on there to do list between going to the gym and picking up their dry cleaning, and so they'll save twenty minutes for a coffee date

in between two meetings. And then they do this over a year, and they wonder why it never works out, and they think that this is must must just be the people that they're meeting. But in that situation, I would say, there's something about the way that you're dating

that's not leading to connection. You're in between two meetings, You're probably in work mode, You're probably not being very flirtatious, you might be stressed out, you might not be open, you might be not vulnerable, because why would you become

vulnerable for twenty minutes in between two business meetings. And so for some people, I feel like what they need to do is actually go on fewer dates, but give each date more time and say, I'm going to meet this person for drinks after work, and if it goes well, I don't have anything later, so we can extend it to dinner, we can extend it to going to another bar.

Um For some people, they just really are so burned out that they're trying to make the date short, and I think sometimes it does take a moment for you to get to know someone. That being said, I also work with clients and these tend to be female clients who say, oh, I went on this five hour date with this guy, but I'm not interested in him. And I'm like, why did you give him five hours? And she's like, well, he seemed to be having fun and I didn't want to be rude, And in that situation,

I'm like, you don't owe someone five hours. You don't owe someone five drinks. You should give them a chance. Maybe that's ninety minutes, but at that point, if you're not feeling it, you also need to respect your own time, because going on five hour dates with people that you're not interested in, it's just going to lead to you

feeling burned out. Okay, going to the other extreme, which is the harmony, you don't really hear that much about it anymore, but I know a number of people who were married as a result of the harmony, which is the opposite paradigm, which is you communicate a lot before you do meet. Is what are your thoughts on that in general? I would say that the pandemic change the way that people dated, and the pandemic force people to

get more creative about what a date is. And so I heard way more people going on video dates, going on phone calls. People were basically doing this step in between chatting online and meeting up in person, And so I'm hearing more and more and more about that, And so in general, I think people are getting offline sooner, and even if it's just a phone call, They're seeing do we have something to talk about? Do I like

the sound of your voice? Is there some chemistry? And so I'm just in general, across different generally sations seeing a shift of talking less online and getting to the in person date or the phone call date sooner. How much is it getting your chops up? Like you talk about the issue, I'm not in the dating game right now, but I respecting your own time. How do you teach people to cut it short, as you say, we're not talking twenty minutes, but to not give five hours and

respect their own time and ultimately feel good about ending it. Yeah, it's interesting. I would say the more that I do this work, the more I see that different people need different advice. So some people are way too picky and nobody is good enough for them. And some people are not picky enough and they need to respect themselves more. And so my advice for each of those people would not only vary, but perhaps be the opposite. And so for the two picky people, I would say, what are

the good qualities in this person? What is something that you admire about them? Could you imagine yourself having fun with them? For the person who's not picky enough, I would say, realistically, is this person you're equal? Is this a person that you feel could create the lifestyle that you want? Is this person on your level? And so I would give them opposite advice, And so for the time thing, the same thing holds true. For some people. I would say, give people enough of a chance, don't

just judge them for the first few minutes. And for the other people, I would say, look, you don't owe anyone anything. What you owe them is to show up when you say you will, to be open minded and give them a chance. But you certainly don't owe them a certain number of drinks, and you certainly don't owe them, you know, over an hour. We'll let me be a little bit more specific I know, so these people who run a hedge fund and they started cold calling people.

That was their first gig okay, and they experienced an unbelievable amount of rejection. The average person, from my experience, is so fearful of rejection or the other person feeling bad about them that it inhibits them both to be in the game. And then say this isn't working for me, I'm going to pull back. Yes, that's definitely what I

am hearing. I had this idea for an art project a few years ago called the Rejection Room, where you would walk into a tunnel and on the side would be all of these um screenshots of people rejecting each other online or maybe a voice of somebody reading it out loud. And I started to talk to my friends and say, oh, can you send me screenshots of your rejection And what I would hear most often is oh,

nobody really outright rejects you. They just ghost you. And so the modern epidemic and dating is ghosting, where you basically could be dating someone for literally months and then they just stopped responding to And it's when I hear these stories they feel so unbelievable, like you get home from a trip and your your partners moved out. But there really are extreme versions of ghosting happening. And I've done research into this and very clear how people feel

in terms of getting ghosted. People say, I'd rather you reject me outright. It hurts in the moment, but at least I know where we stand. But when it comes to the behavior, people say, oh, I would rather ghost it's less awkward than having that direct confrontation. And so I think you could attribute this to changes in digital communication, people not seeing the results of their action when they

reject someone online instead of to their face. But yeah, I think ghosting really represents what you're talking about, which is people are afraid to outright reject someone. So what do you tell your clients. I say, just let them know. I say, in your notes app on your phone, save a template and it could say, hey, blank, I enjoyed getting to know you. I don't think we are a romantic match, thanks for thanks for the drink, thanks for a fun night, whatever you want to say, and you

just you don't have to overthink it. You just send that message and it lets the person know we're not going to move forward. The worst thing is when you leave somebody in this ambiguous space where they're saying, oh am I ever going to hear from Bob again? Is Loogan going to ask me out again? And it's in that space that you're really wasting someone's time. And so the research is very clear that the average person would rather be rejected. We just don't do it because it

feels awkward. Okay, let's dive into hinge. You know, made to be deleted. So what's so great about Hinge? Yeah, first of all, I think Hinge is just really designed to get people into relationships. And so it's not about how do we make the app as fun as possible, how do we keep you on their swiping. It's really about how do we design something that's going to lead you to connect. So a couple of things that are cool.

One is we talked about those audio prompts, so you could do an impression of of famous movie and say, uh, you know, name the movie. You could talk about how to pronounce your name, You could say, you know, this is what dating me sounds like. Whatever it is, I think that parts really fun. There's something called most Compatible, where every day they say here's one person that's a

particularly good match for you. There's also Hinge was the first to create these things called prompts, which are kind of like icebreakers, so something like my typical Sunday or we're the same kind of weird if and it's really a chance to show off your personality. And then in general, I just think Hinge tends to attract people who are actually looking to have a conversation, connect and go on a date. Okay, bumble the woman gets to choose. That's attractive to a lot of men. So what do you

say to both men and women about bumble? Yeah, I mean clients that I've worked with have used all kind of dating apps. I'm definitely more familiar with Hinge. I think it's also about seeing in your city which one works best for you, and so I would say, you know, you can give a few of them to try see where you have the most success, and then from there really invest in the one that seems to be working for you. So what exactly do you do it? Hinge?

So I have this fancy title Director of Relationship Science, and what I get to do, which is a dream job, is conduct research into modern dating. And so, for example, let's say six months ago, I was like, all right, I keep hearing about people who say I want to date someone who's done the work. Let's investigate how are

people feeling about dating someone who's been in therapy. And that's where we came out with this concept that the biggest deal breaker for two would be if somebody doesn't go to therapy or somebody doesn't invest in their mental health. And then a few months ago, I was hearing more and more about how gen Z is just not that into drinking. They drink less than millennials did at the same age. There's a huge rise and nonalcoholic beverage is. It just really feels like there's a cultural shift away

from drinking. And so I spent the last few months doing drink doing research into sober dates, and we found that there's been that date or is this summer would rather go on a date where they're not drinking, and that's twice as much for gen Z. Gen Z is, like, I really care about my mental health. I hate having a hangover. It makes me feel anxious. I want to be in the right state of mind when I date. And so now there's this big push towards sober dates.

So I basically look at what's going on in culture, whether it's drinking, inflation, the pandemic, and then conduct research to see what impact is this having on dating? How exactly do you do it? Yeah, so we have a research team, really great researchers with a combination of qualitative research though talking to users, talking to people who don't use hinge, talking to Gen Z, millennials, boomers, Gen X, etcetera.

And then we also conduct surveys that give us a sense of what's going on with our users in the US, around the world, people who don't use Hinge yet, And so it's really just hearing those voices and getting those survey results to get a sense of what's happening in dating now with those people that you're surveying, be Hinge customers or just the public in general. So mostly we

survey Hinge customers. Um, it's just kind of one of those things where it's a lot easier to reach them, but we have conducted surveys where we're talking to a broader population and it sort of just depends on what's

the question that we're investigating. Okay, one other thing that struck me in your book was you said not to lie, and certainly when it comes to age, everybody I know on the app, unless they're very young in their twenties mid twenties, they all lie about their age, and they and then there's a usue of what kind of picture to put up? Talk about that. Yeah, I think that that trend has actually changed a bit. So I think there was a point where it was assumed, oh, everyone's

adding two inches to their height. Everyone's subtracting five years from their age. I have found and I think this really just represents our culture that there's sort of an expectation that there's so much information about you online that it's not really worth it to lie. Somebody can google you and see what year you graduated high school or what year you graduated college. Somebody can put together the pieces based on your LinkedIn and so in general I

see people not lying about their age. The hype thing is hard to tell. Um. I know that people feel like, oh, if I'm this hight, you know women are going to filter me out. But my opinion on this is that you don't want to show up on a date starting from a place of deception. You don't want to start and say, hey, I'm actually fifty two. But if I put forty eight, I'm more likely to get matches, and so I did that. I think it just starts from

a weird place. I think you want to start from a place of confidence and a place of honesty and build from there. I think this is going to change, or I'm interested to see what happens in our society with the proliferation of egg phrasing, because part of dating is that you want to date somebody who maybe you could have a kid with. And men start doing the calculation in their head, right, they think, oh, she's thirty five, we would meet, we would date for two years, we'd

get married when we're thirty seven. Um, you know, she can only have a kid until this age. And people start doing this fertility math. But as people do egg freezing and things like that, they're actually sort of changing their biological age and changing their fertility calculation. And so I'm not sure how that would be incorporated into an app, but I can see a world where people are thinking differently about age because of some of the scientific advancements

that come along. Have you frozen your eggs? Yeah, and so in a perfect world, since you're now in control old But as you say, people change when would you like to have children? Yeah, it's an interesting thing. So my husband worked at Google and he got egg freezing as a benefit, and so I really like yeah. I was like, hey, I'm not gonna say no to a very expensive benefit. And so four years ago we did embryo freezing. So you know what means, it's my eggs

and then they're fertilized by his sperm. And so now I'm thirty four. But it makes me feel like I have these thirty year old eggs, and so I'm not sure when we're going to have kids, but I feel a little less pressure because if we decide to use them,

we have these very nice thirty year old eggs. The other thing is that my husband went through cancer treatment for the last two years, and so I don't know the deal with his sperm, but it might just be that the embryos that we froze when we were both thirty are in better shape than his sperm is now, and so I just feel really grateful that we did that. So, since you're in the Ellia the Beast, is this really just upper middle class and wealthy people freezing the rags

or is it promeating the whole socioeconomic strata. For now, it's definitely a very privileged thing. It's really expensive. It's uh yeah, it's a benefit at high paying tech companies. I think over time, as it becomes more common, more insurers will pay for it, more employers will pay for it. For now, I would say it's definitely in the upper

middle class, privileged sector. But if you're thinking ahead ten or fifteen years, what happens when maybe women at just say, hey, you know, instead of grad school, or you know, instead of instead of giving me some money for grad school, I would love if I could get money towards egg freezing or things like that. I'm not sure where our culture is going on that, but if you just think about the fact that dating decisions in your twenties and

thirties are often based on assumptions about fertility. If that fertility number shifts back five or ten years, how will that change dating? Okay, so you have this gig it hinge and you're also a dating coach. How do you split your time? How much time you're working on either one? Yeah? So Hinge has been really understanding about the fact that I love to do this one on one work and

it informs the work that I do there. So it might be like a client of mine says something about being sober, and then I end up thinking about that and turning it into a research project. And so I do my hinge job during the day. It's based on the East Coast, and I live on the West Coast, so I start pretty early and I do my hinge job, and then I coach people in the evenings after work, and I also teach a dating class called Dates Smarter.

And I'm really moving in some ways away from the one on one coaching and more towards this class because I feel like there's something about learning information in a community that's way more powerful than any individual thing that I could say in a session. Okay, so what came first, the book or the coaching. The coaching came first. The coaching was basically I was like, all right, I am extremely interested in this topic. I've been doing research on it.

I've been doing interviews with people who are experts in the field, I've been reading books. I went to a dating coach, and now I was like, how can I share what I know with people? Time out? Tell us about you going to the dating chare. Yeah, So basically, I mean, how many years ago is this? Maybe eight or nine years ago? I was dating lots of people, I was using apps, and I met this guy at Burning Man and I was just very crazy about him.

And I don't know if attachment theory and that whole genre has come across your desk, but basically I was very anxiously attached. I would find someone and kind of glob onto them and try to convince them to like me. And I really thought it was like achieving a goal, you know, you just have to prove your value to somebody and eventually they'll like you. And this guy had the opposite attachment style. He was avoidantly attached and basically as somebody got too close, he would push them away.

And so we met at Bernie Man, and when we came back to the Bay Area, I thought that we would date, and we were in this cycle where I would smother him and he would pull away, and it was just going back and forth, and I felt very hurt by it. I felt out of control. I felt confused, and someone that I know recommended a dating coach, which I didn't even know that that existed at the time, and I went to see this woman and through seeing this woman, I learned to focus on the things that mattered.

And so, for example, she made me do an exercise where I thought about how I wanted my partner to make me feel. I said, I wanted my partner to make me feel desired, attractive, inspired, confident, happy, all of these great emotions. And when I thought about how this guy from Bernie Man made me feel, it was the opposite. That he made me feel like I wasn't good enough, like I was insecure. Was he going to call me? Was he not going to call me? I never knew

where I stood. And I realized that this guy at work that I had been spending time with as a friend made me feel exactly the way that I wanted somebody to feel. But I had written him off for a number of reasons, and I basically realized that that was the kind of person that I should be with. And now I'm married to that person. Okay, so then talk about starting your own coaching business. Yeah, so in

the beginning, I coached people for free. And there is some research that came out about ten years ago from okay Cupid about what a hard time black women have on the apps. And so two groups that have a really hard time, or black women and Asian men. And so I actually started off my coaching business by coaching for free a couple of my black female friends who were having trouble, and I would develop some of the techniques that I still think are some of my my

best things. Like I have this thing called the post date eight. It's a questions that you ask yourself after a date to tune into how the person made you feel and if you should see them again. I have this concept called the events decision matrix, which is really paying attention to what types of events you should go to to meet people, with the insight being events where you're likely to interact with people and you're likely to

have a good time. And I moved from doing free coaching, was charging people, you know, a small rate, and then just it became friends and then friends of friends, and through that I what happened next, Yeah, I just I was really enjoying coaching and people were really benefiting from it,

and so I continued to do it. And then I was working at Airbnb at the time, and I was like, all right, I want to turn this dating thing into a full time job, but I don't know how to do that, and so I took a three month sabbatical from Airbnb and I worked for a professor. And what I found was that this professor was brilliant and I loved his research, but it wasn't necessarily designed for lay audience.

It was more for academics. And so I was like, how can I take the amazing research that's happening in all of these labs and how can I be the translator that brings it to the average person to help them date. And so that really became my goal. And so then I left my job at Airbnb. I did a program at TED where I basically worked from the TED office. I conducted research on breakups and then I gave a TED talk and then through that experience, I

got my book deal. And the book was amazing because I think we all need deadlines, we all need containers, and so I was like, all right, I have to write whatever it wasn't eighty thousand or ninety thousand page word book. And during that time I did more coaching, which was research. I did more interviews. I had dinners where I would discuss big topics with people, and then through my book, that's how I got the job at HINGE. Well, you know, looking at the New York Times article, it

looks like at the present time, coaching is quite lucrative. Yeah. I mean, I feel like dating and finding love is pretty recession proof. If you are single and looking for love, that is probably the biggest motivator in your life is to find someone. And I feel like I'm offering something that's different. I'm offering very realistic advice. I'm offering advice that changes your behavior and helps you overcome bad patterns. And I also think by the time somebody's coming to me,

they've tried other things. They've tried dating by themselves, they've tried asking for help from their friends, and they really need to work with somebody who's going to completely shift the way that they show up and dating. Okay, So another therapist I saw for a long time, he gave he would tell me what to do. And anybody has had a lot of therapy know they don't literally tell you what to do your It's a very subtle hint

and made the biggest mistake of my life. The present therapist I see never in a million years would tell me anything what to do. You know, you wouldn't call him. You would just say, well, we'll talk about the next session. So, thinking about your business, people are working with you, they're doing what you tell them to, they're having success. Then do they say, Okay, I'm in a relationship I need I can't break away, I need your advice. I gotta call you to sustain the relationship. Yeah, I mean I

that's a great problem for me to have. I like to say that I help people find love and I help people not fuck it up, and so so okay, so let's see my found love and let's sue I get I'm moving towards marriage or I might even have marriage. To what percentage of your clients stay connected during that phase? It depends you know. Some people I see over a period of time. I had a guy who started with

me when he was single. Then once he found a relationship, I started working with him and his girlfriend and we would meet the three of us who I would meet with each of them one on one. Then I coached them through getting married, and now I've coached them through having their first kid. And so there's people where it's like we just have a really good dynamic. I feel so invested in them and we just keep working together.

There's people where we work together for a year and by the end maybe they've been in a relationship while we're together, but they've broken up. It really depends on the person. By the time people find me, they've often had a lot of struggles, and so I never say to someone, you know you're going to meet the love of your life in three months, like, I can't control you. I can't control the people you're meeting. What I can do is making sure that you're aware of your behavior

and that you have a plan for how to act differently. Okay, so all your clients come from word of mouth? No, now that now that the book came out, I would say most of my clients come through the book or podcast that I have been on. And so that's been really fun because it's really changed the range of people I work with. I now work with people around the world,

people probably from you know, twenties to seventies. Um. I I feel like there's just a lot more diversity and who I work with because people are hearing about me. They're not just one or two degrees removed from my community. So presently, how many individual clients do you have honestly, I would have to look it up. I feel like there are people who maybe have one session left as part of a package and are saving that for one

big final conversation. And so it's not an exact number because there are people who sort of still have like an hour with me that they can cash in it sometime. Okay, well let me put a different way. I see that you have an assistant. How many people were in your organization just the two of you? Oh yeah, that was funny. They called through the assistant in the article and I was like, she's really not my assistant. She's smarter than I am. She does all of the operations. I feel

so lucky that she works for me. I don't know if you have somebody like this, or if you've worked with someone like this where you're just like you keep me like, I can't imagine working without her. And so I have her who works for me full time basically running the class that we teach, um doing a lot of the operations. She's just like on top of the

website and everything else. She is fantastic. And then I also have somebody who works with me doing social media, and so that's helping me with whether the visual design or responding to comments or editing videos. And that's something where it's like, how do I take a three hundred and thirty page book and turn one small concept into a video that people can then understand even if they're

never going to buy the book. Well, there's only so many hours in a week, and you say you're trans transitioning into a more group, but how much can you handle? How many people can you are quote service at one time? Yeah, it's interesting. I think about the scale. So with Hinge, I'm doing research that represents millions of Hinge users around the world, right, and then with my writing, you know, many thousands of people have bought my book. With a podcast,

you can have thousands of people, right. So it's like going from the highest, biggest scale down to the one on one coaching. And I feel like where I am really enjoying right now is these classes. So the last class I had had a dred and twenty people in it. I think the age ranges from seventy four, oh sorry, from to seventy four. And I think it's so great is that I can give people advice and I can

give people information. But there's something special about learning in a community where you hear somebody else express a problem that you used to have and you no longer have, and hearing that person talk about their issue makes you realize how far you've come. Or maybe you advise somebody else who's where you where five years ago, and things like that. Um, there's these affinity groups right, dating over fifty, dating as a single parent, um, dating as a queer

person in a rural community, dating with chronic illness. And so I'm creating this community of vetted single people and then allowing them to connect to help each other. And they spend so much time. They start texting each other, they meet up in person, they form What's app groups, and so I feel like I'm really designing this container for all these amazing people to meet. I give them information,

I teach them, I give them feedback. But I think they're learning just as much or more from each other. And what I've really done is brought them all together. Okay, at this point in time, and I realized it's changing. What percentage of your time is one on one, what percentage your time is group? Huh? You know it depends

for the classes. Like I would say, let's say I teach four or five live sessions, I might spend fifty hours or more preparing the material for the one or one and a half hour session, and so it's sort of like, I know, that's kind of a sidestepping the question, but I guess I would maybe say fifty fifty right now. But it really depends because the classes are only in session a few times a year, but there's a tremendous amount of prep that goes into them. So what's the

dream I'm figuring that out. I mean, I love being in conversation with people, like I'm really enjoyed talking to you right now. I have had the chance to do some TV interviews and I I really like that. I feel like there's an adrenaline rush to being live and you have to make your points and say the right thing and banter. Um. I enjoyed writing my book, but it's also really hard, and it's really like quite a solo task for me as someone who's so social, and

so I'm just trying to figure it out. How do I get at the information that I really care about out there? How do I keep it elevated so I'm not just you know, engaging in the days TikTok trend. But yeah, I think I'm just really trying to figure out how do I keep on top of what's going

on in dating and help as many people as possible. Well, you know, I don't want to talk about things that veered towards cults, but if you certainly look in the past, they are all these organizations, some of which still exists, which have really grown exponentially. It's a big business, Okay. Is that your goal to be like the dating coach of you know, of America. I realize your worldwide, but oh yeah, you want to go everybody knows that's where you go to go. You go to Logan's place. I'm

not sure. I think the way that I think about my life is how you spend your day days, and how you spend your weeks, and how you spend your years. Right, So I could tell you, oh, I want to make this many millions of dollars a year by this date, and I'll figure out a way to get there, But that's not really what motivates me. I want to spend my time on Earth doing things I like. And so if I had to spend the next two years alone

writing a book that doesn't sound fun to me. I don't really enjoy being alone thinking in front of a blinking cursor. What I really enjoy is being in conversation with people. And so I would say, right now, I feel really lucky. I've been able to figure out a job that I can live the lifestyle that I want. I can work with interesting people. I can pay for Kimberly to work for me full time. I can do research at Hinge. Like right now, I'm getting a lot

of those needs met. I think. I think that, yeah, this is just like a deeper conversation that I need to have, probably with myself or with my husband. That's just like, how do I make sure that I'm spending my time in a way that makes me happy and not just in pursuit of some big your goal that maybe is actually kind of egotistical or empty. So let's assume someone listening to this podcast is interested in your services. The most of the people come through, uh, connecting via

your website or social media. How do they find you to connect? Yeah, so the two biggest ways are following me on Instagram or subscribing to my newsletter. I have a weekly newsletter called Logan's Love letter, and every week I post dating advice or the latest trends in dating. Sometimes I'll talk about a piece of writing that I've done.

People respond I write back, it's it's fifty people right now, and it's a pretty engaged community, and that's the best way to kind of follow along with what I'm doing. And then, as we talked about a lot of my work is trending towards the State Smarter class and some people are like, no, no, no, I'm so unique. I need to meet with you one on one. And I'm like,

give this chance, give this class a chance. I feel like you will get your needs at and you'll probably have more fun than you think you could have on a on a zoom class. Okay, so I'm interested. What's the nexus they connect with you or they connect with Kimberly in terms of putting them in lane. You know I'm playing, I'm I'm ready to play. Yeah, they would

just email me or sign up. They could email me it's logan at logan eari dot com, or they could sign up for the Date Smarter waiting list on my website. And then when the next class is announced, which I think it's going to happen in September. We would just let them know, like applications are open um, but I do get emails from people around the world asking specific questions.

Sometimes I can help. Sometimes I'm just like, this isn't you know a question that's a good fit for me, Or I don't feel like I have enough context to give you an appropriate answer. But yeah, I would say, I'm I'm reachable online. Okay, I'm excited and I want to and I contact you and I want to have one on one. What then happens? Yeah, I would just send you an email letting you know when I have a spot available and what it costs, and seeing if

that's something that fits with you. Okay, So let's assume I'm interested and uh, you know, I'm ready to play. When might a spot be available? And what is the pay package? Is it? Okay? If we don't talk about the pay okay, but the pay the pay is not cheap in any event. Okay, So let's start with when might I you be available? Yeah, I have some spots

opening up in the next few months. People who I started with around six months ago are starting to wrap up, and so I have some of those spots and then usually what happens is I meet with somebody, we do an initial assessment, right, you know, I asked them about the relationship history. I have some homework that they do before we meet. We really talked about like what's been going on? Okay, what's really going on? What? What? What? Well, a little bit slower so I'm into one on one coaching.

First thing is I say, I'm into it. Next thing you say is I have to have a time. So how often do you have a time available or does that person have to wait? Yeah? So you know the system Calendarly, I do not. Yeah. Anyway, it's so just a calendar booking system. So I would say to them like, hey, here's the price. Um, if you want to move forward,

you can book your first session through Calendarly. They can just like look ahead at the openings that I have and then send me the payment and then we would get started. However far out the first session is, so maybe it would be six weeks? Okay, So what are the options irrelevant of price which you'd rather not get into. Can you buy two sessions? Do you have to buy ten? How does it work? Right now? People are buying six sessions.

That's something that I've changed over time. I found like I found that six sessions is enough where the first few I can really understand who you are here, your backstory, give you some assignments, send you out into the world

with some experiments to run. Then you come back to me and you say how those are working, and then we tweaked them, so you might say, I'm actually going on lots of first dates, but no second dates, and then we try to figure out what's preventing you from that, and then you can use the six sessions whenever you want over a year, and what you really try to do is run, you know, try as many things as you can, and then come back to me and we

we tweaked the plan. And so it's not like therapy where we're meeting once a week and you may not have anything in your mind. And sometimes the sessions are great and sometimes they're not. Each session is supposed to be very juicy and you have a lot to talk about with me, and how long is this session? Okay, so I'm in, I've signed up, I've bought six things. You say, you send me up. You send me a package which is to go a little deeper. What you're sending to me and what that experience is. Oh, I

just mean I sell a package of sex. No no, no, no no, I maybe loose language on my part. You send self tests and questionnaires. Didn't I get that? Tell me about that, That's what I'm sure. Yeah, So before we meet, there's a few things that you do. So one thing is you journal about, um, what's your greatest

wish for yourself in dating and relationships. So, for example, earlier in our conversation, we talked about your friend who's in his forties dating people who you don't think are the right fit and you're not sure what he really wants. And so that's an opportunity for me to dig deep with someone and say, what are you really looking for? The next question is something around their greatest fears in dating.

So maybe this is a chance for them to tell me they feel like they're not lovable, or they feel like because their parents were divorced, they don't have a relationship role model and they don't know what healthy relationships look like. That's a chance for me to really get to know what's holding them back. And then I also do this assignment where they asked their friends and family, why do you think I'm single. And this works for

a few reasons. One is I talk a lot in my book about dating blind spots, these patterns of behavior or ways of thinking that hold people back from finding love, but that they can't identify on their own. And that's the thing. If it was so obvious, people could do it on their own. They could say, I know my issue, I'm too picky. I just have to be less picky. But that doesn't magically work. A lot of times we

can't see the truth of our own actions. And so in sending this question to their friends and family, they get a bunch of responses back. They can start to see patterns. I can start to see patterns. The second reason it works well is because it's leaning into that identity piece. You're saying to your friends and family, this

is something that I'm tackling right now. This is something that I'm really working on and working with this woman Logan and um investing in this and in adopting that public persona as a data and someone who's working on it, people take you more seriously, and you take yourself more seriously. So I do all this prep work, I send it

to you. What happens in my first hour. Yeah, in our first session, we talked through your answers, and so you're telling me what you really want, You're telling me your fears, and then you're sharing with me the answers to that question. And so we're talking about all right, it sounds like what your friends and family think is that you never got over your boyfriend from ten years ago and that you compare everyone to him. Or I'll say, you know, your friends seem to think one thing and

your family seems to think another. Who do you think is correct? And so some of it is just understanding where they are. Then we do that thing where we talk about their relationship history, and we really go into what are their stories, what's their narrative? Who are they? Do they believe that love is waiting for them? Do they believe that there's a perfect person out there for them?

And this is where I start to use some path and recognition, and so I have this framework I've developed called the three dating tendencies, which is three of the most common types of daters that I've seen in my coaching practice. And so what they all have in common is unrealistic expectations. The first type is the romanticizer, and they have unrealistic expectations of relationships. This is the person who thinks there's a soul mate, there's one person out

there for me. They're gonna come in this package that I recognize, and dating should be effortless and if it ever gets hard, then this must just not be the right person for me. And these are people who want to have the romantic meat cute, and they're very focused on this person's physical appearance and how the relationship is going to be easy. And the work I do with those people is saying to them, hey, this is not

about Disney movies, This is not about rom comms. What really matters and love is working problems, doing small things, often making the most of the relationship, building together. It's not about how you met, right if you date somebody for fifty years, the day you met is point zero zero five of your whole relationship, and kind of taking them away from the romcom paradigm and really moving them

towards a realistic view of love and dating. The second type is the maximizer, and they have unrealistic expectations of their partner. And this is a type I see a lot, especially in New York and San Francisco. And this is the person who says, I love doing research. Anytime I have a problem, I analyze it. I'm just gonna keep dating and keep swiping and keep doing more and more research because the perfect person is just one swipe away.

And so they reject everyone because they feel like somebody out there has all the qualities that they're looking for. And they just get older and older and pickier and pickier and just rejecting everyone. And they don't understand that they're not perfect. No one is perfect, and eventually you have to choose someone and build a relationship. You don't just find the perfect person and that's the perfect relationship. And this is hard for people because they feel like

I'm telling them to settle, but I'm not. I'm telling them to be realistic and to understand that they can build a relationship they want. And then the last one, which we talked about is the hesitator, and they have unrealistic expectations of themselves. They think that they're just not lovable yet, and so they're not even dating. They're waiting for something to happen, like losing weight or getting a more impressive job. And for them the work is just

saying stop hesitating, start dating, put yourself out there. That's how you're going to get better at dating. Okay, so we cover all these ground in the first session. What's the assignment after the first session the assignment completely. It

depends on the person. There's a lot of therapy, you know, called programmatic therapy, where I'm walking you through a certain thing every session, and I do that a little bit in terms of the first homework and asking you about relationships, but it just it could be a hundred different things for a hundred different people. And I really enjoy making

up homework assignments on the spot. And so for somebody who has fear of rejection, maybe for them it's sending a lot of personalized comments and just putting themselves out there and kind of what we call rejection therapy. Just get used to getting rejected so that it doesn't bother

you as much anymore. For somebody who it feels like they don't have anything to talk about on dates, maybe it's actually okay, how can you invest in the hobby, How can you go read some books, How can you feel more interesting so that on dates you can actually share some of those things more, and so it's really seeing what is the thing in this person's life that's holding them back from taking the next step, and how

can we break that down and help them tackle it. Okay, I've paid, I've had my session, and do I start to go on dates after the first session. It's completely depends on the person. For some people, I say to them, Hey, um, we need to work on your profile, So send me sixty photos of yourself and I'm going to help you pick the top six photos and I'm going to help you rewrite your profile. So for some people they really

need help with that. For other people, they already have a ton of dates and the issue is not starting to date, it's starting to pick different people or show up differently, and so there's so many different types of daters with so many different problems. That's really about understanding what is the thing that's holding that person back and then coming up with a homework assignment that's within their stretch zone but not within the danger zone. So what

does work on a profile? Yeah, there's a ton of research that we've done in this at hinge. So one thing is thinking about your profile is storytelling who are you? What would it be like to date you. What are you looking for and how can you answer that in your profile? And so your potos should be accurate but flattering. So there's a picture of myself that I really like from two thousand nine, but I should not put that in my profile because that is not how I look right.

That was a long time ago, So that is not being the accurate a flattering category. You want to have photos that clearly show what you look like, no filters, no sunglasses. You want to show yourself with some friends and family to show you have a social life. It's great to have pictures of you doing something that you love. You also want to respond to those hinge prompts very carefully and show um in some you know your hobbies.

So you could say typical Sunday, Maybe you say, wake up, make myself fancy coffee, go for a walk with my dog, maybe go to a bookstore, um, have lunch with friends, and then spend the evening you know, watching movies. Something like that, Like give me a sense of what your life is like. Talk to me about what you're looking for. Say I'm looking for a long term adventure partner. I'm

just looking for fun. I'm looking for someone to sail the world with whatever it is, And so people just rushed through making their profile, and it's actually a huge opportunity to really express who you are. And people I've worked with have gone from getting almost no matches to getting a lot of matches just by something like changing out their pictures. Okay, at some point I'm engaging in

dates and I realize every person is different. But what might the coaching look like it Maybe someone who merely jumps into relationship, Maybe someone who meets for twenty minutes. You know, once I'm started in the field, what are the issues that arise. One of the issues is states that feel like job interviews. People show up and they say, where are you from, where did you go to school, what did you study? How many siblings do you have?

What's your five year plan? And it's like an exchange of information, and then they say to me, oh, I just didn't feel the spark. And so I try to deep program people away from that and say, how would you want to converse with somebody? Maybe you want to talk about somebody at work who's driving you crazy and get their advice. Maybe you want to talk about the crazy phone call that you got on the weight of

the date. How can you actually show up and have fun, have a connection, be playful, have some flirtatious energy, and moving people away from that interview date mindset is one of the biggest things that I do. Something you mentioned on social media which really cracked me up is going on dates with people who don't ask questions. Oh yeah, I'm glad you brought this up, because I mean, obviously, part of your job is that you ask questions for

a living, and you're you're very good at it. But I get so many complaints about these people, and I started calling them z Q zero questions. And so what happens is somebody will say to me, I went on a date with this woman. I feel like I could write her biography. I know everything about her, and she

didn't ask a single question about me. And it makes people feel like the other person is just so rude or not into did And so I did research where I asked my you know, fifty thousand newsletters subscribers, what do you do in this situation and what do you think it means? And some people said, I'm actually very awkward. I sometimes forget to ask questions. I don't mean to you know, I hope somebody will give me a second chance. This is really something I'm working on. So some people say, like,

I'm actually just awkward. Other people say, this is a sign that this person isn't interested in me, and they're just interested themselves, and so I move on. But where I've wound up is just telling people here's how to let the other person know that you want to be asked questions. And you could say something like, wow, I've asked you so much. What do you want to know about me? Or what can I tell you about myself? And so sort of just quietly or or suddenly nudging

them to ask you questions. You can also sort of poke fun at them. So, for example, a woman said that a guy complained about his sister in law for a now and a half, and so at the end of that she said, how do you feel about your sister in law? I can't tell. And you know, the best case, of course, is using humor to let someone

know that they're breaking a social norm. But I think it's just fascinating how much this comes up, and it's everyone thinks, oh, it's just women don't ask men, or men don't ask women, But I get emails about this from everyone, and I think the takeaway is the best way to make someone think you're charming is asking good questions. It is much more important to be interested than interesting.

The more that you can get somebody to open up and talk about themselves, the more they enjoy talking to you and learning how to ask interesting questions, Questions that help people explore who they are, that help them go deep. Is one of the best ways to get a second date. Okay, you have this, Well, it's a mathematical equation. They hit thirty seven percent, and then you date someone who's explain

that yea. So this comes from a book called Algorithms to Live By and the concept is called the secretary problem. And basically what it is is, imagine you're hiring a secretary and admin whatever, and you have a hundred candidates. You have to go through each candidate one by one and say yes or no, so you can't go back and get somebody from earlier on. And so the mathematical question is at what point should you stop. If you wait until the end, maybe all the good people are gone.

If you hire somebody too early, maybe you don't know who's out there. And So the mathematically correct answer is that you go through thirty seven percent of the candidates, and you've met thirty seven of them, and you say who was the single best person from that group, and that person is now your benchmark. The next time that you interview somebody who's better than that benchmark, you hire them on the spot. And so the point is that you get a sense of who's out there, make a benchmark,

and then select the next person. With dating, what they do in this book, algorithms live by as they say, imagine you're going to date from eighteen to forty. We don't know how many people you're gonna date, but we can say maybe you'll date for those ages. So what is thirty seven percent of the way through? It's twenty six point one years old. So by the time you're twenty six, you say, who is my single best person

I've dated so far? That's now my benchmark. The next time I find someone who I like as much or more than them, I'm going to commit to that person. And the reason why I love to use this example is because for those maximizers, the people who are always thinking the next best person is out there, and I just have to keep swiping. It helps them understand you likely have already dated somebody who would make a great partner, and it's about choosing somebody and committing to them. It's

not about this infinite search and infinite research. So what's your hit to ship ratio? What does that mean? That means your success ratio? I realize it depends on the clients. Hundred people come in, how many have a long term relationship after working with you? I honestly don't have a great answer for that, because for some people, what success looks like for them is that they haven't dated in

ten years and they start dating again. And so maybe they don't find a partner in the time we're working together, but they overcame their fear of dating. For some people, they might meet the person that they marry. For some people's success is that they exited toxic relationship or run in the other direction when they see red flags. And so I would say all of my clients experience a lot of success in overcoming their behavior. That doesn't always mean that they find a partner right away. Okay, so

tell me about the group D sessions. How often are they in a year, and how many people in a group yeah, So Kimberly and I are are figuring this out. We've done a bunch of experiments where we've had classes of thirties, sixty, hundred and twenty and we're basically like, how big is too big? When is this going to break?

And right now it hasn't broken. And in fact, I think our class with a hundred and twenty was maybe the most fun because you were very likely to have somebody else in that class who was experiencing the quirky dating problem that you were experiencing. Um the Neck class is probably going to be in September and it's either going to run for between three to six weeks. And how it works is you meet once a week with me and I teach a live workshop with slides and exercises,

and it's very high energy. It's kind of trying to be like you've ever been to a Tony Robbins experience where you're like, oh, like every few minutes something is changing. It's it's very engaging, it's not like your average zoom meeting. And then you also have homework that you're doing in

between classes, you're getting feedback on it. You're also meeting in small groups with people who might share some qualities with you, and then there is a slack community, so people are constantly asking each other questions, getting feedback, getting first aid ideas, getting advice on their profiles. And so it's like whether the last one was six weeks, and so for this six week period, you're basically all in

on dating. You're going through this boot camp, You're creating this identity around dating, and people really seem to get very transformative results from that. You know, I remember listening to talk radio and learning certain things and going to my shrink and saying, yeah, in reality, you're just the opposite. You know. It's like if you read my number one bitches, these billionaires and other very successful people giving advice that worked for them, and unless you are literally them, it's

never going to work for you. Never mind, Look, you have to find out what your strengths are. So irrelevantive cost I find if it's one on one, even though as I say, maybe much more expensive, my uh odds of positive results are much higher. Yeah, you know, I I thought that for a long time too, And I think many people come to my website and are like a group class. I'm not interested in that. This is really private. I don't want to talk about it publicly.

I want the one on one help. But I've had clients that worked with me one on one and then took the class, and when they took the class, I feel like they just started moving faster. And so I've just seen that learning in a group setting is different. If you meet with me once a month, you have a homework assignment, you have insights, but it's up to you whether or not to change. When you are part of a community, it's so powerful. There's social norms. Everyone

is doing this. Everyone is going on dates on Thursday nights. Everyone's talking about those dates on Friday. Everybody's sharing this. I I am a really huge proponent of the power of community and the power of social norms. And sometimes when you want to change your behavior, information on it gets you so far right. There's this concept called the information action gap. I can tell you how many calories are in a donut, but if you're walking into Dunkin Donuts,

you don't care. You're there to buy a donut. And so information is helpful, but you also need exercises, environment activities to actually get you to change your behavior. And the class seems to be that immersive experience that causes people to not just know the right thing to do, but actually do it. Okay, let's assume I'm in a relationship.

In your book, you talk about a number of things, one having a weekly check in, so my I would like you to talk about that, and also how you evaluate that you should get married, and also how you should evaluate that you should get divorced. Yeah. So a lot of my thinking about relationships comes from John and Julie Gottman. Are you familiar with them the Goatman Institute only from your book? Okay, Yeah, So anyway, I'm I think their research is amazing. I feel like it's so helpful.

And one of the biggest things that they talk about is just the fact that you need to constantly be investing in your relationship. They have this expression small things often and so people think, oh, I can just put my relationship into maintenance mode and once a year going a romantic vacation and relight the pilot light. But that's actually not what works. What we find is that relationships where people are unhappy or they break up, our relationships

where you basically stop investing in them. And so part of the weekly check in ritual, which can be a series of questions that you ask your partner, let's say every Sunday. They help you tackle problems before they start. I just read a stat that said I found a little hard to believe, but it said, you know, couples weights seven years before they go to a couple of therapy. Couples have problems and problems and problems, and it's to the point where they're about to break up that they

finally go. And maybe in some cases it's too late, but if they had gone earlier, they could have said, Yeah, I have a lot of resentment around this, like I, um, I feel like you don't split the child care evenly with me, or I resent the way that you spend money and don't save. And so part of the check in ritual is tackling problems before they start by saying, how am I showing up for you? What can I

do differently? What do you need from me? And so it's really a mindset of relationships or something to constantly be working on, not something that you once a year, you know, go on a sexy anniversary date, okay, and evaluating whether to get married or divorce. Yeah, so I have a surprising number. I'm doing this a little bit less now, but for several years I would have these ninety minute decision making conversations with people, and so it was a one time session and they basically would give

me the context. I would ask some a bunch of questions and then we try to figure out what they should do next. And some of these were should I get married? And some of these were should we break up? For the should we break up? Once, I asked them a series of questions that helped me understand is the problem something that has been there for a while, or is there some external factors? So maybe that person lost their jobs, so they're feeling down on themselves, so they

lost their sex drive. Is that going to go away at any point? Sometimes it's a situation where you know they haven't been investing in the relationship and they both need to show up for each other more and maybe there's an opportunity there. Um. I have this question that I asked people called the wardrobe test, where I say to them, if your partner were a piece of clothing something in your closet, what would that piece of clothing be. Give me your gut reaction? And so sometimes people say,

my girlfriend is my favorite pair of pants. I would never have bought them, but I love them and I feel really cool and alternative when I wear them. And sometimes they'll say things like my boyfriend is a scrubby sweatshirt that I would wear to the gym, but I hope nobody sees me in. And even though the question is a little silly, that's actually the point. It's almost like this roor shock test where you just say what comes to mind, and that helps me understand where you are.

And so we could talk for three hours about the pros and cons of your relationship, but it might not be until that moment where you really say, wow, I've outgrown this, or well, if I could just get out of this without hurting them, I would do it tomorrow. And so I really help people explore what's going on, is it permanent or impermanent, and how do they really feel in terms of should we get married? Sometimes people get married and they haven't even talked about the hard problems.

They haven't talked about what you know, what are our goals around finances, what happens if one of us gets sick? Where do we want to live long term? And it's like you're so in love and you're feeling so connected, you just assume, Oh, I'm sure Bob feels the same way I feel about this. Because we love each other so much, we must agree. And so sometimes it's about

having those hard conversations first. And I have a series of questions in my book that people can ask each other things like, um, you know, what are our values around this? What was the history and your family around fighting, What was history and your family around money? Just having those hard, practical conversations to make sure that you're on the same page. Also making sure that this person has the same views that you have on monogamy, fidelity, having

a family. And it seems so obvious. It's like, who doesn't get married without talking about that? But the answer is many people. And it's really important to have those conversations before you are committed, and I would say especially before you have kids, because at that point you're entangled with that person for the rest of your life. Okay, so prior to graduating from college, you talked about your

aim connection with this person. In high school, what was your dating experience, Yeah, I mean I definitely dated a lot. I feel like I was just one of those people that found it really fun to connect with people. I dated people that were nerds. I dated people that were athletes. I dated people that I met online, I dated people

I met at work. I feel like I I feel lucky that I've had these different experiences because it makes me feel like I know that my husband is a great match for me, because I've dated all these different permutations of humans, and I'm like, well, I couldn't have predicted it, but this is the one who really makes me happy and keeps things interesting. You went to Harvard. What was that experience? Like? I loved Harvard. It was so fun. I think in some ways it is the

happiest four years of my life. I mean, it's just such a good fit for my personality. You live with your best friends, you go to classes, you're constantly learning your writing, and somebody's job is to read your writing and give feedback on it. I thought it was really fun. You know, not everybody at Harvard likes to party, but if you're in the group that does, people are excited to meet you. And it was just really, really fun.

It felt so lucky to get to go there. I think it makes you feel like the first eighteen years of your life, we're building towards something. For the four years I was there, I didn't worry that much about the future because I was just like, I am a exactly where I should be right now, and so I really loved the experience. Now, when you go to an elite institution, a lot of it is what you learn from the people and the relationships you make. Have those

relationships paid dividends subsequent to graduation. Absolutely, yeah. I feel like I absolutely invested in relationships while I was there, in part just because I'm super social and I loved, you know, having lunch in the dining hall with one person and dinner in the dining hall with somebody else. But years later, those people are now running media companies and working as publicists and book agents and developing TV

shows and you know, working in the White House. And so I feel like a lot of people I know, even if they were tangential connections, have super interesting jobs. And I have had moments, whether it was you know, seeking out healthcare for my husband or you know, just visiting another country where I feel really lucky to have onto school with a bunch of interesting people who are now doing especially interesting stuff. So you graduate from college, what are the moves? How do you end up here? Yeah?

I had this vision in my mind that I wanted to live in San Francisco. I had never lived there, but I really loved learning about the sixties. One of my favorite classes in college was about youth culture in the nineties sixties, and of course San Francisco was a big player. And so I did a summer internship in San Francisco, and then I only applied to jobs in San Francisco and I ended up working at Google right out of college. And what was that like? Yeah? It

was crazy. I had this very surprising first job out of college. I ran the porn Pod, which was a team and we managed the Google advertising, so the Google ads for sex toy operators and porn sites, and um, yeah, it was just really interesting. I definitely don't think my parents expected that. Over Thanksgiving, I would tell them that I was putting my Harvard diploma to use helping porn advertisers.

And what was your Google history from there? Yeah, so you know, I did that job, but it definitely didn't have a ton of upward trajectory. Google is not investing in porn, and in fact, I think that team doesn't even exist anymore, and the rules have gotten a lot stricter since then. And so I eventually moved into this amazing team called the Irrational Lab, And basically I had an academic counterpart named Dan R. Yelie, who I had been a big fan of before I went to Google.

He wrote this amazing book called Predictably Irrational. And Dan is a professor at Duke and he's one of the most interesting creative thinkers that I've ever met. He really just lives life very experimentally, where he's thinking, how can I help as many people as possible, how can I teach my kids how to be great humans? How can I run a lab that does interesting experiments? And so he was working part time at Google and we worked in this lab where we basically applied these very academic

lessons of psychology and decision making into Google. Right, so, how do you get employees to go on more walks instead of just sitting in a meeting? How can you get somebody to log in and improve their ad Words accounts? And so it was this amazing opportunity to basically work in a lab like grad school, but instead of being

in grad school, and getting into debt. I was working at Google and making a living, and so that was a life changing experience because I learned directly from Dan about this field of behavioral science, the study of how we make decisions. And now my work applies a lot of behavioral science to get people to change their behavior and continue from Google to today. Sure, so when I was at Google, I was single, I was online dating. I was swiping men hours a day, and I was like,

this whole online dating thing is crazy. I feel lost, the people around me feel lost. Let me create a series where I get to interview experts on this. And so I started this talk interview series called Toxic Google Modern Romance, and I invited in some of the foremost experts.

So I invited in John and Julie gott mem, I invited in Dan Savage, I invited in as Stare Parrel, And through this I made some of the connections that ended up being really helpful for me later on, but also just helped me see, wow, this is a thing. Thousands of people signed up for the email list in a few days, people were coming to the events. The YouTube videos were getting a ton of views, and that just made me feel like, all right, I'm onto something.

People are really struggling and they need help, and I can help produce events, produce content whatever to help people answer these questions. And so I ended up leaving Google and going to Airbnb. And I liked working at Airbnb. It was really design focused, the company was has an amazing product that I love. The office was beautiful. I got to know all three of the founders. It was

really fun to be there. But I just kept saying to myself, I have this passion for dating and relationships, and let me really see what I can do to invest in that. And I had this freak accident where I was walking in Golden Gate Park and a tree fell on me and it was a huge eucalyptus tree. Several people each year die from accidents involving trees falling on them in Golden Gate Park, and I was I

missed work for a few weeks. It was really really scary, and I think through that I was just like, holy sh it, life is short. Nobody just comes up to you and says now is the time to quit your job and pursue your dreams. And I just felt like all right, like this is what I need to take a risk, and that was the year that I left Airbnb and started doing this stuff full time. So what was your injury and if you're fully recovered, Yeah, I mean I had some back issues. I have a kind

of gnarly scar on my leg um. But it was one of those things where a police officer happened to observe it was like a few inches in any one direction and you would have been gone. And so the injuries were tough, but it was more the brush with death that I think really lit a fire under me and made me feel like you're never gonna wake up one day and be ready to do your own thing. It's always going to be scary, and it just felt

like this opportunity to take a risk. And then every year on the anniversary of that accident, I have a party called an obituary party, where I make people come over and write their obituaries. And in doing that exercise, it really helped me understand what I wanted to be remembered for in the legacy I wanted to leave, and that also helped me quit my job. So do you

go back to Golden Gate Park? I do, but I would say, you know, I live there's a eucalyptus tree near where I live, and I still feel a little bit of panic when when I'm under certain huge treets. Okay, your parents divorced when you were in high school. How did that affect your view of relationships? I think about

that a lot. And what I believe is that when my parents got divorced, it was very surprising to me, and so I stopped taking relationships for granted and I felt like, Okay, this happily ever after thing, it's not a guarantee. Just because you get married doesn't mean that you stay married. And so it really encouraged me to take an anegal analytical look at relationships and say, what's happening in these good ones, what's happening in these bad ones?

How do you choose the right person? How do you date enough people that you know who's out there, but not date so many people that you end up never finding somebody? And so I think it was just this kind of Spider Man getting bitten by the spider moment where it just really made me feel like this is something that I want to learn more about. It gave me this curiosity, and it gave me this almost humbling feeling of you can't take it for granted. Okay, So what would it take you to get divorced in my

current relationship? Yeah, yeah, it's funny. My husband likes a joke that I'm not somebody he'd want to be divorced from because I don't know. I think he thinks I would. I would be tough in the in the divorce litigation moment. Okay, well you live in California's anyway, unless somebody, unless somebody brought assets to the marriage. But it, yeah, it is. It is funny that he thinks I'm scary in that regard. I mean, I've been with my husband for seven years.

We've definitely had super strong moments and moments where we're disconnected. I think if I had to imagine a world where we got divorced, it would be because we don't invest time in each other like we spend. You know, we're in the same room, but we're on our phones or we talk, but we only talk about logistics. And so I think it's really about practicing what I preach and

investing that daily effort. Okay, So reading your book, you know, this Sunday night check in certainly hit me and needle said, I don't do that. And you talk about your husband being fearful about a divorce with you, it seems you're certainly very verbal, personable, and intelligent. The question we become people might say, well, is she controlling him in the relationship or does he pushed back and say I don't

want to do this or I don't want to do that. Oh, my husband is extremely stubborn and he does not let me get away with anything. That's kind of what I was saying before about keeps me saying and drives me crazy. Sometimes I wish he was more appliable and he would say, sure, whatever you want, but that's not his personality. He's extremely intelligent and extremely skeptical, and he does not do anything

unless he's bought into the value of it. And so he's I'm lucky in that he lets me talk about him on podcasts like this and talk about him in my book, But he really only participates in these relationship things because he thinks that there's value in them. Okay, So another big thing you talk about, and you referenced it earlier, is don't expect your partner to provide to check everything in the list. So you talk about having activity partners. So okay, I'll talk about my own relationship.

You know, I've been to a lot of exotic places. I'd like to go more. There's certain ones that my girlfriend says she doesn't want to go there. She doesn't want to go to Shanghai, Beijing. I'd really I have not been there. I've only been to Hong Kong and China. So do I just say hey, get somebody else to go, or do I say go? Because usually when you do go,

you end up having a good time. Yeah? So um, I talked about this idea of other significance others, and this is an idea from Eli Finkel and Elaine Chung. And the idea is that in modern society, we expect to get our needs met by every We expect to get all of our needs met by one person. And we think you're going to be my lover and my best friend and my co parent and my business coach and my tennis partner. And it puts way too much pressure on one person, and that person is unlikely be

able to meet all those needs. And so how can you have these o s os, these other significant others that play different roles in your life. And so it might be that with your girlfriend, she might have an OsO who's her travel buddy, and that might work out fine. But if you feel like well, you just might be stubborn about going. But once you go, you have a good time, then that's up to you. And so I think it's less important like, you know, do you travel

with her or not? And more this big idea of we should be in grain in a community where we have different people that we go to for different things, and that we take some of the pressure off our relationship and we still invest in it, but we don't expect our partner to be our everything. And what about jealousy? Yeah, you know, I live in the Bay Area and there's

a huge movement around relationship anarchy and ethical nonmonogamy. And one of the big ideas in ethical nonmonogamy is that instead of feeling jealous when your partners with somebody else, you actually feel what's called compulsion, which is joy for

them at their pleasure. And so I'm in a monogamous relationship, but I have clients and friends and acquaintances, etcetera that are in these polyamorous or ethical nonmonogamy relationships and it's been really amazing to see them tackle jealousy, and so I would say in general, sometimes jealousy is helpful. It's a sign of what we want. I'm jealous of you because you've achieved this, and that's a sign for me that I want to achieve that. But other times, in relationships,

I think it's a sign of insecurity. So okay, let's choose the example of the guy who likes to be out late at night for his business and the woman wants to be in bed at eleven PM. Let's just assume they do things separately. The guy is going to be meeting a lot of people. How does the person who goes to bed at eleven feel comfortable that these he's not going to meet somebody and leave her because this person is closer to his lifestyle. Yeah. I think

there's a few levels there. So one is for that person to understand that they're not making a sacrifice by being with their partner who wants to go to bed at eleven. That partner is a great fit for them and helps them build a balance life, and so they're not settling for that person while going out and hoping to find somebody else at two am, and I think that in situations like that, you have to trust your partner.

I feel like one of the things I love most about my husband is that I really really trust him. He's extremely honest, even sometimes when I don't want him to be, and I really trust his behavior. We each have plenty of friends of the opposite sex, and it's

not a problem for us. And so I would say, if you're really worried about your partner going out and meeting other people, then that's a sign of some fundamental insecurity that needs to be tackled, and not just you being like, well, I'm going to force myself to go out because they might meet someone else, Like you can meet someone in an app, you can meet someone on the street. Like. You can't control somebody's behavior. What you can try to work on is a foundation of trust

between the two of you. Now, your husband, you were involved with him and after a number of years he got cancer and had to have essentially half of his leg removed. You know what was that like? And did you would ever question your involvement with him? Yeah? I mean what was it like? It was fucking crazy. I mean, my husband is one of the healthiest people I've ever met. He's vegan, he works out every day, he reads books

called how to Not Die. He's very very smart, and he's focused on longevity and really just interested in that kind of research. And so this was just a freak thing where he got bone cancer. And another reason it was so crazy is because he really started getting his diagnosis in March, just as the pandemic was starting, and so when he was going to get the m r I, I was like, don't go to a medical institution. That's crazy.

You could get COVID right now. And so luckily he ignored me and got the m r I. But we just couldn't believe the diagnosis because imagining imagine a really healthy person in their early thirties. You just don't think it's going to be cancer. In terms of the amputation, I mean, it's a very slow process of recovery. It obviously changes your body forever um and he's had some other major surgeries as well. But I never questioned the relationship. I felt like I felt even more serious about him.

I was like, I can really stand up and support him. I felt very capable. I think I'm good in emergencies. We have an amazing community that supported us. We had our friends throw us a last minute wedding. Um we got married in Golden Gate Park the day before his amputation. I mean, I feel like it just made us more serious about each other. And it makes me feel like whatever comes down the road, we know that we can handle it because we've handled such a freak challenging thing.

Now you live what in what the New York Times labeled a commune? What do you what's your actual living environment? Yeah, I mean you could call it a commune. They called it a luxury commune, which now the people I live with quote all the time as a joke because this place is not luxury. I mean it's nice and we love living here, but I don't think you would call it luxury. Basically, during the pandemic, when my husband got this diagnosis, I was like, this sucks. I don't know

how to do this alone. He's spending three out of five weeks in the hospital. I'm coming home to Pepperoni pizza on the floor, or this sucks. I I don't want to do this by myself. And so our friends had bought and developed this communal living situation in Oakland, and we visited them for dinner one night, and I was like, they're having the time of their lives. They're doing Camp Radish. This is the way to do the pandemic. And so they luckily had a one bedroom apartment open

for us. We moved in a few weeks later, and I think it's the best thing in my life. I mean, I have dinner with friends every night. It's like living on a group trip. Everyone is creative, generous, open minded, interesting. It's really a group of people that I think are are living in a really joyful way. Okay, is this one of a kind or there are multiple Radishes. There's only one place called Radish, but we're part of a community of other communal living situations and it's somewhat popular

in the Bay Area. I think once you start tapping into the network, there's other ones. And some are moral tternatives, some are less alternatives. Some have people in their twenties, some have people with kids, and I would say ours is in the middle. It's starting to have its first kids. But it's just it's really functional. I mean, there's not a lot of drama. We have a house meeting once a month. We share all of our food and cooking expenses,

and yeah, it's just a really functional, happy place to live. Okay, So how big a building is in So there's one building with six bedrooms, there's another unit that has four apartments, and then there's um a building that has a communal kitchen and a communal living room. But then people are buying the houses next door, so it seems to be growing. Okay, So every night it's dinner together. Yeah, there's seven thirty dinner.

It's absolutely not required. If you didn't come because you were traveling or you just didn't feel like being with the group, that would be fine. There's no expectation. But people we happen to have a lot of people right now who are either uh there's one guy who's a professional chef. There's people who are just really into cooking. And you know, it turns out cooking for fourteen people every fourteen days is a lot more fun and easier than cooking for yourself every day. So if everybody comes,

it's fourteen people. Yeah, it's about that. As I was saying, you know, some people have gotten pregnant and bought houses nearby and they still come over a lot. And what we you know, it's called Radish, and we have these people called Ratillites that are kind of satellite members of the community. And sometimes people have guests and it can be you know, it could be as small as five or maybe as much as twenty people. And you own your unit, No, we just rent you rent. That Is

it comparable to the price of a one bedroom elsewhere? Yeah, I think you know, I haven't looked for an apartment in a while, and I know stuff has changed during the pandemic. But I would say people are here not to live extravagantly and not to live cheaply. They're basically here because they feel like this is a better way to live. And so it's not about eating ramen and saving money. It's really about like life is better when you live amount among people that you respect and admire

and have fun with. Well, somebody cooks dinner, and let's say I don't want to eat carbs or I don't know more, I don't need meat. What what goes on there? I mean, I think you can. I I don't think this will surprise you. But there's a long list of different people's eating restrictions. And so there's this person is low carb, this person's vegan, this person is pscytarian, this person is trying to be dairy free, And in general

people just accommodate it and it's not that hard. It's like put the cheese on the salad on the side and make one vegan dish. And some people are really experienced that cooking and some people are not as experienced. But in general, people just try to accommodate different food requirements. Okay, if I go to dinner at seven thirty, how long I'm mighty sit there bullshitting? It depends. I mean, I

love bullshitting. I feel like I wake up and I'm happy, and then I sort of crash around three, and then I get in a worse and worse mood until seven thirty, and then I have this huge boost of positivity and energy and I might, you know, go and eat dinner from seven thirty to eight thirty and then do dishes with people till nine and come back to my apartment. I might put on a TV show and watch Sometimes

we just listen to music and hang out. It's it's really like this dinner party that you get to attend every night. If you're around and you want to go. Okay, any people you don't like no. I actually am surprised. I mean, we have a pretty strict policy where people are sub letters and then we kind of get to know them for two months and figure it out. But we're lucky enough that we have so many people that want to live here that we really get to pick

and shoes. And most people have been living here since before me, so there's very little turnover. And I think it's basically like an an opt in self selection thing. Like if you're someone who's going to get so stressed that somebody used your knife in the kitchen, you're probably not a good fit and you probably will choose not

to stay. And what if I'm working late and I come home at nine I missed dinner, Yeah, you would just go to the leftovers fridge or ask somebody to make you a plate, or you ate dinner before you got home. Okay, but let's say I want to buy my own personal crap, whether it be yogurt chips or whatever,

when I keep those in my own apartment. Um, the cool thing is that you're paying into a food system, so you would just we actually have this system where you know, somebody's in charge of finances, somebody's in charge of ordering the food, and we basically have a slack channel called make It Appear, where you would put the name of the potato chips that you want and put it on there, and it would get ordered for you

and a few days later it would arrive. And so if you really felt strongly that you wanted to pay for your own chips and keep it in your room, you could, But that's pretty rare. People are just like we have an abundance mindset. I get the groceries I want and if they get finished, then I'll just order them again. And so how many activities are there beyond dinner? It depends. We have these things called rad talks where

people give a short lecture about something. So somebody works in climate VC and it's going to be talking about her climate fund. Somebody is giving a talk next week about her relationship history over the last five years. Somebody is giving a talk about the future of cities, and so it depends. Sometimes we have parties. I think we're having a stand up comedy show next Friday. It really depends.

I wouldn't say it's like NonStop activities, which would probably be overwhelming, but if people choose to put something on. They just put it on the calendar, and then people show up, and what about trips and other activities outside the compound. We don't leave the compound that much. It's kind of funny. I went to a comedy show with people last Friday, and it was like weird being with them outside. I think there's kind of a gravitational pull to being here. It's like it's all the food that

we want. It's super physically comfortable. We have a hot tub, we have a sauna, we have a fire pit. It's really really a nice space. And so we mostly hang out here together. And what pretendage that people are in relationships and what percentage you're single? Most people are in relationships, But I do like having the single people around. I feel like it mixes things up and they're bringing new

people in and so, you know, it depends. Sometimes people come and go, and sometimes people are here and there in relationships and they break up. But maybe it's sevent in relationships and you frozen your eggs. You're married. During the you know, throws of your career, do you feel you're either going to time out or age out of

radish or theoretically be there for a long time. Yeah, it's something I'm actively thinking about right now because I feel like the apartment I'm in is probably not the physical space that i'd want to have a family, and it just feels like a little bit small. But I'm seeing what other people are doing, and somebody who lives in the same apartment upstairs just had a kid and

seems to be making it work. Um, somebody bought the house next door and is into graded with Radish, and so I feel like it makes sense to me that we are not meant to have families in these small, concrete little boxes. I think that leads to isolation, resentment, loneliness, and so I'd love to find a way to stay incorporated with Radish for a long time, as long as I feel like I have the physical space to be comfortable. Okay, it's a nice Jewish girl. I assume you went to

summer camp. Is that a correct assumption? Yeah? So to what because I said, you know, if I could go somewhere for summer camp, I'd sign up for that on for the rest of my life. So to what degree is Radish resemble summer camp? Yeah? So I went to a few summer camps. One was like a performing arts one, one was a Jewish one, and honestly I didn't really

love it. And then I went to these nerdier summer camps that happened at UH it was called Saint Mark's in Boston or Wellesley, where it was basically nerdy kids from around the country who would take kind of like pseudo college classes like politics of the Simpsons and sushi making. And that was one of the happiest periods of my life. And I think Radish is like that. It's basically nerdy,

passionate people coming together designing their definition of fun. Well, look, and I want to thank you so much for taking this time. I mean, I'd rather talk about this than almost anything because it's all about people, and you found a niche. You know, if I was single, I would sign up, you know, I like to do everything once just to see what it's about. But if I was single, I would certainly, you know, at least by the group package, just to see what it's like. You know. So I

think you're really onto something. And there are too many self professed experts who have no CV. It's really thin and that's obviously not you. So once again I want to thank you for taking this time. Thank you, it was so much fun. I was really honored to see your email and several folks sent it to me in and they're like, I don't know if you know who Bob is, but he's a really big deal. And the fact that you read that article did a deep dive

into my life. Wanted to talk. It's incredibly validating and it was really fun to talk to you and talk about myself for the last two hours. And thanks for the opportunity you bet until next time. This is Bob Left Thash