💡 My Take

If you want to find a long-term partner, you will find this book helpful. It may be less relevant for you if you are into polyamorous or other kinds of relationships.

Logan essentially applied behavioral science insights from Daniel Kahneman’s book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' to dating. She explains how certain cognitive biases we have might make it difficult to find a long-term partner and how to mitigate them.

I wrote this summary as I found myself, multiple times, offering advice to my friends based on this book. It's not that its content is groundbreaking, but reading about dating concepts presented in a structured way might help you crystallize some dating aspects in your head.

I felt that Logan describes relationships as partnerships, indicating a subtle bias toward logic rather than emotion in her approach. Logan works as the Director of Relationship Science at the dating app Hinge. Give it a read. 😊

1-Page Summary

• ❤️ Love may be a natural instinct, but dating isn’t. We are not born knowing how to choose a partner.
• 😮‍💨 Dating has become more complex due to our self-determined identities, too many options, social media comparison, a lack of relationship role models, and pressure to make the “right” choice.
• 3️⃣ The three common dating tendencies are the Romanticizer, who has unrealistic expectations of what relationships should be, the Maximizer, who expects too much from their partner, and the Hesitater, who sets unrealistic expectations for themselves.
• 🥰 Soul-mate believers expect effortless love, while work-it-out believers understand love isn’t always easy and requires effort.
• 🧐 People looking for the perfect partner, often feel dissatisfied due to their high expectations. People who are content once they find what they want, tend to be happier.
• 🙀 Hesitaters delay dating because they don’t feel ready. They lose the chance to learn what they like and do not improve on their dating skills.
• 💞 There are three types of attachment styles in relationships: Anxious individuals, who are fearful of abandonment and desire constant contact with their partners; Avoidant individuals, who tend to distance themselves in relationships due to a fear of rejection and a desire to maintain their independence; and Secure individuals, who are typically reliable, trustworthy, and comfortable with intimacy, often leading to more satisfying relationships.
• 👫 A life partner should have emotional stability, kindness, loyalty, a growth mindset, the ability to bring out the best in you, good conflict resolution skills, and the ability to make hard decisions with you. Don’t focus on money, looks, similar personalities or shared hobbies.
• 🌹 The essence of a date is not to evaluate but to experience the other person.
• ✨ Immediate “spark” in relationships is a myth; It doesn’t guarantee a successful relationship. It can indicate charm or narcissism rather than genuine connection.
• 2️⃣ To counter cognitive biases in dating, such as the tendency to focus on negatives or misinterpret actions, practice positivity, go on a second date by default, and differentiate between minor annoyances and major dealbreakers.
• 🧑‍⚖️ Transitioning to the next stage in a relationship should be a conscious decision, not a passive slide. Conscious decisions, such as defining the relationship or deciding to move in together, can contribute to more satisfying marriages.
• 🚦 In relationships, individuals who stay too long (“hitchers”) often do so due to cognitive biases such as the sunk cost fallacy and loss aversion, while those who leave too quickly (“ditchers”) often misinterpret the initial excitement of love.
• 🗓️ If you have decided to break up, don’t wait. Make a plan.
• 🚀 Reframe breakups as gains rather than losses for faster recovery. Focus on the positives of the breakup and negatives of the relationship. Rediscover yourself and use it as a learning opportunity for future relationships.
• 💍 Being in love is not enough. Critically think about whether you should get married by explicitly discussing with your partner about major decisions, like if you want to have kids and where to live.
• 💖 Great partnerships are created with attention and choice, they are not discovered.

Chapter by Chapter Summary

Introduction

❤️ Love may be a natural instinct, but dating isn’t. We are not born knowing how to choose a partner.

Selecting a partner is a difficult task on its own. But on top of that, we are irrational. In all realms of life, we often make decisions that are not in our own best interest.

🧑‍🔬 This book uses relationship and behavioral science to help you approach your decision-making about a potential partner in a more strategic way.

🏋️ Section 1: Getting Ready

😮‍💨 Why Dating Is Harder Now Than Ever Before

Dating is harder now than ever before.

• 🪞 we shape our own identities

  Religion, community and social class dictated the lives of our ancestors. Today, we have the freedom and responsibility to shape our own identities. This includes who to choose a romantic partner.

• 🤷‍♀️ we have too many options

  Having many options for a potential partner is a new cultural shift with unknown consequences. And while people seek choice, too many options can make you less happy and more doubtful of our decisions. This is called “the paradox of choice”.

• 🧐 we yearn for certainty

  In our information-rich society, we are accustomed to researching all our choices. We cannot have this assurance in our relationships.

• 📱 social media comparison

  Our view into other people’s relationships is a curated social media feed. This makes us feel that everyone else’s relationship is perfect, while ours isn’t.

• 👥 we lack relationship role models

  It is easier to believe something is possible if you see someone else do it. However, many of us have not witnessed functional relationships firsthand.

• 💑 diverse relationship options

  Today’s relationships can take many forms, from dating to hooking up, deciding on children, or choosing monogamy. These options can be overwhelming.

• 🎯 pressure to make the “right” choice

  Parents and public figures indicate how critical the partner decision is. It can feel like our entire lives depend on this one decision.

Interesting Facts

Online dating started in 1994 with Kiss.com, followed by Match.com a year later.

Men tend to have smaller social networks and share less of their problems with their friends.

Around 50% of marriages in the US end in a divorce or separation.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: “I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is.”

3️⃣ The Three Dating Tendencies

There are three common patterns of behavior that hold people back from finding love. A common characteristic of all three patterns is unrealistic expectations.

• 🥰 Romanticizer

  You have unrealistic expectations of relationships. You believe that love is something that happens to you, and that the reason you are single is that you haven’t met the right person yet.

• 🧐 Maximizer

  You have unrealistic expectations of your partner. You want to explore all your options to be completely sure of your choice. Why settle?

• 🙀 Hesitater

  You have unrealistic expectations of yourself. You don’t think you are ready for dating because you’re not the person you want to be yet.

🤥 Disney Lied to Us (for romanticizers)

Mindset matters. Our attitudes and expectations create the context for our experience. This in turn, affects how we interpret information and make decisions.

People with the soul-mate mindset:

• 😴 believe “the one” is out there and they look exactly like they imagined. They consider people who don’t match what they have imagined, and end up missing out on great matches.
• 🔎 believe the hard work of love is finding someone. Everything after that is easy. They expect love to be effortless. If it’s not, they think they’re with the wrong person, so they give up on a relationship.
• 🔮 wait for love instead of putting the effort to create it.

People with the work-it-out mindset believe that:

• 🔨 Relationships take effort and building a successful one is a process
• 🎯 Love is an action to take, not something that happens to you
• 😭 No relationship is easy all the time. Even the healthiest, most rewarding marriages require effort.

Interesting Facts

In the past, marrying for love would have seemed strange. Marriage was about economics and convenience. Love was something you might experience outside of marriage. It wasn’t until around 1750, with the start of the Romanticism movement, that the idea of marrying for love became popular.

The Industrial Revolution resulted in widespread wealth. This allowed for marrying based on personal fulfillment rather than on meeting basic needs.

🧐 Don’t Let Perfect Be the Enemy of Great (for maximizers)

Maximisers obsess over making the best decision. They believe that with the right amount of exploration, they can find the perfect person and have absolute confidence in their decision. They feel like anything less than perfect is a failure.

On the other side of the spectrum are satisficers. Satisficers figure out what they want and stop looking once they find it. They do not settle. They just don’t worry about other options.

Satisficers report feeling happier with their choices, even when they select an objectively worse option. That is because satisfaction comes from how you feel about your decision, not the decision itself.

Maximizers always question themselves. What separates Maximizers and Satisficers is not the quality of their decisions, it’s how these decisions make them feel.

👍 Be a satisficer.

Interesting Facts

The optimal stopping point in an exploration task is 37%. Once you have explored 37% of your options, the next option that is better than any previous option is the optimal stopping point. For example, if you want to get married and could date between the ages of 18 and 40. The optimal stopping point is at the age 26. That means that after 26, you should commit to the first person you date that is better than all the ones you have dated before.

🙀 Don’t Wait, Date (for hesitaters)

Hesitaters are people that delay dating because they don’t feel ready. They fear rejection, failure or just not being good enough.

You’ll never be 100% ready for anything. And as you wait to become better, you bear the opportunity cost of not starting. You lose the chance to:

• 👩‍🎓 learn. You don’t know what you like unless you date.
• 🏋️‍♀️ improve your dating skills. You need to practice asking interesting questions, expressing yourself, and going in for a first kiss.

To start dating:

1. ⏰ Make a deadline for when to start dating.
2. 📝 Prepare. Download the apps (and take some flattering photos), get a few date outfits, consider therapy.
3. 🗣️ Tell Others. Tell a few close friends or family members that you’re going to start dating. You will feel more motivated to act once you have publicly committed to something.
4. 🎭 Commit to your new identity. Reinforce your own identity as a dater, not someone who goes on dates. Reinforcing an identity can shift your behavior to act according to that identity.
5. 🐾 Start small. Set specific dating goals. Go on at least one date a week.
6. ❤️ Be compassionate with yourself. Talk to yourself the way you would speak to your best friend.
7. 🚫 Stop talking to your ex. Keeping your ex around makes your breakup a changeable decision. And although we instinctively want reversible decisions, irrevocable ones make us happier in the long run. That is because, when we commit to a decision, a rationalization process begins in the brain. We retroactively ascribe more positive traits to things we chose and more negative traits to things we didn’t.

Interesting Facts

Deadlines work. Research showed that coupons with a 3-week redemption period were redeemed by 30% of the people, while coupons with 1-month redemption period were redeemed only by 10% of the people.

Research indicates that exposure to an ex-partner through Facebook may obstruct the process of healing. The research also indicates that talking to an ex worsens your psychological health and having sex with an ex makes it harder to move on.

💞 Learn Your Attachment Style

Attachment theory is a popular framework for understanding relationships. It can help explain why we are drawn to certain people and why past relationships didn’t work out.

We all have the same need for attachment and attention. However, we develop different coping strategies to deal with our particular caregivers.

😰 People who are anxiously attached (20% of people)

• are afraid of abandonment and want to be in constant contact with their partners
• jump into relationships and stay in them past their expiration date because they fear being alone
• do “protest behavior”. They act out to get their partner’s attention (like calling/texting a lot, threatening to leave)

🥰 🫷People who are avoidantly attached (25% of people)

• try to minimize the pain of rejection by pretending the don’t want to connect
• don’t believe they can rely on others to meet their emotional needs, so they avoid getting too close
• fear losing their independence. When intimacy increases, they try to pull away
• use partner’s imperfections to exit the relationship and regain independence

🤝 People who are securely attached (50% of people)

• make ideal partners
• are reliable and trustworthy
• avoid drama and try to defuse it
• are flexible, forgiving and good at communicating
• behave consistently
• create healthy boundaries
• are comfortable with intimacy

Securely attached people tend to report higher levels of relationship satisfaction than anxious and avoidants. They are good at building healthy relationships and tend to stay in them. So even though securely attached people are the majority in general, there are fewer of them among single people.

💡 Advice:

• Try to date secure partners.
• If you are anxious, try to self-regulate. Manage disruptive impulses and emotions.
• If you are avoidant, pay attention to your feelings. Ask for space instead of disappearing. Look for positive qualities and remember no one is perfect.

Interesting Facts

You can do the Attachment Styles and Close Relationships quiz to identify your attachment style.

👫 Look for a Life Partner, Not a Prom Date

Optimize for a lasting partnership, not short-term fun. Find someone that will be there during the ups and the downs, someone you can rely on, someone to make hard decisions with. Research tells us what makes a good Life Partner.

What’s less important:

• 💰 money

  Money matters, but only up to a point. When couples struggle to meet their basic needs, their marriage suffers. Couples who can afford to delegate time-consuming tasks (e.g. cooking, cleaning) enjoy greater relationship satisfaction because they spend more quality time together.

• 😻 Good Looks

  Physically attractive traits indicate health and vitality. That means that the mate will pass those traits to your kids and will stay alive to help raise them. So biologically, our brain developed a bias for attractiveness.

  However, lust keeps us around only for enough time to raise the baby. Then, our brain frees us to create new children with new partners. Lust inevitably fades over time as we seek novelty.

• 🎭 A personality similar to yours

  Studies tell us that similar personalities do not predict long-term relationship success. The most successful duos complement each other.

• 🎨 Shared hobbies

  It’s ok to have different interests, as long as the time spent doing them doesn’t stop you from investing in the relationship. A healthy relationship has space for different people with different hobbies.

  We cannot expect our partner to fulfill all of our emotional needs. Having multiple people you can turn to for your emotional needs, increases your overall well-being. You will both be happier when each one focuses on roles that match their skills and interests.

What’s more important:

• 🪞 Emotional Stability and Kindness

  The ability to self-regulate and not give in to anger or impulsivity predicts satisfaction and stability in a relationship.

  You can sense kindness by observing how someone treats people from whom they don’t need anything (e.g. waiter). You can sense emotional stability by observing how they respond to stressful situations. Do they keep cool? Do they take the time to thoughtfully respond, or do they react impulsively?

• 🔐 Loyalty

  Find someone who will be there for the good and the bad.

  You can estimate someone’s loyalty by observing whether they have friends from different stages of their lives. Old friendships indicate loyalty.

• 🌱 A Growth Mindset

  People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve their intelligence and skills. They are resilient and comfortable taking risks. When problems arise, you’ll want a partner who will rise to the occasion. Do they embrace or avoid challenges? Do they give up or persist?

• 💫 Personality That Brings Out the Best in You

  Understand what qualities they bring out in you, because this is who you’ll be whenever you’re with them. How do you feel when you are around them or right after meeting them? Energized? Deflated? Happy? Desired?

  Ask your friends “What do you think of me around them”, not “What do you think of them”.

• 🥊 Skills to Fight Well

  The goal is not to convince or change each other. It’s to find a productive way to live with a difference. Choose a partner that fights well, so you are not afraid to raise a concern and be able to recover after raising it.

  Pay attention to how you fight. Do you feel heard? Does the partner make repair attempts to de-escalate (e.g. jokes). The goal is to fight well, not to avoid flights altogether.

• ⚖️ Ability to Make Hard Decisions with You

  You will inevitably face hard choices. How will you cater to aging parents? Make decisions with them now to see what it will be like in the future.

Interesting Facts

Present bias is the tendency to focus more on the present situation than the future when making decisions.

Low-income couples are far more dissatisfied with their relationship than middle-income couples.

There is no increase in happiness once salaries exceed $75,000 dollars a year. Also, the extent to which you can derive happiness from money depends on the comparison of your wealth and the wealth of those around you.

Attractive people tend to earn higher salaries.

Over the course of 7 years, sexual desire for a partner declines twice as fast as “liking” (e.g. friendship characterized by loyalty and kindness).

There is a theory that we feel attracted to the smell of people who are genetically different from us. That is because, if we reproduced with them, we’d pass on two very different sets of genes. That could make our offspring more robust and more likely to survive. This effect reverses for women on 💊 birth control. Thus, when they go off birth control they might be suddenly attracted to different people.

Viktor Frankl: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”.

🫣 Section 2: Getting Out There

🤔 You Think You Know What You Want, but You’re Wrong

Online platforms are the most popular way to meet romantic partners today. Unfortunately, the way certain dating apps present information, can cause us to focus on the wrong things.

1. Our brains focus on what’s measurable and easily comparable. Apps display superficial traits, making us value these qualities even more.
2. We think we know what we want, but most of us have no idea what kind of partner will fulfill us long term. The apps allow us to filter out great potential matches and never give us the chance to be proved wrong unless we loosen the filters.
3. Apps have given us the false belief that we can break people down into their parts and compare them to find the best one. But only by spending time with someone can you appreciate that person.
4. Apps make us more indecisive about whom to date. Our brain is not set up to select a partner from so many options. The more options you have to choose from, the more chances you have to feel regret about your selection.
5. When we see only a rough sketch of someone, we fill in the gaps with flattering details. In dating apps, we create an unrealistic fantasy of this person, which ultimately leaves us disappointed.

Date smarter:

• 🔍 Change your filters in the dating apps. Be more open-minded about whom you allow the apps to show you. You probably don’t know what you want.
• 👍 Change how you swipe. Look for reasons to say yes. If it’s a maybe swipe right and see what happens.
• 🔢 Don’t go out with too many people at the same time. You’ll make better decisions if you take your time to really get to know them.
• 📸 Select great photos. No sunglasses, no people that might be mistaken as someone you are dating, no group photos with no clear indication of which person you are. Candid photos outperform posed ones. Selfies perform poorly. Black-and-white photos perform really well.
• ✍️ Write a thoughtful profile. Present yourself accurately, create opportunities for people to follow up and focus on what you like, not what you don’t. Your vibe attracts your tribe.
• 😎 Craft your opening line. Look at the profile and comment on something subtle with a touch of humor.
• 💬 Stay in touch. Find 15 minutes in the day to text.
• 🏃‍♀️Cut to the chase. Get to the actual date as quickly as possible. Great text chemistry doesn’t mean you’ll vibe in person.

Interesting Facts

Research by Stanford showed that “met online” is the most common way romantic partners connect today, followed by “met in a bar or restaurant” and then “met through friends”.

🤝 Meet People IRL (In Real Life)

1. 🥳 Go to events that you will both enjoy and interact with others. Commit to meeting at least one new person per event. The point is to practice socializing.
2. 👫 Get set up by friends and family. Let your friends play matchmaker. Share your preferences and some photos for them to show potential matches. Give feedback on their suggestions and consider rewarding them for successful matches.
3. 🎓 Connect with people you already know
4. 👋 Introduce yourself to people when you’re out and about. Our instinct to avoid conversations with strangers is wrong. We underestimate how much joy social connection can bring.

Interesting Facts

Black women receive 25% fewer first messages than women of other races. And when black women reach out to men first, they receive responses 25% less often than women of other races.

White, black and latina women rate asian men as 30% less attractive than they rate men of other races.

Publicly committing to a goal makes people more likely to accomplish what they set out to do.

🌹 This is a Date, Not a Job Interview

The environment of a date includes the physical location, the timing, the activities, and the mindset we bring to it.

The point of the first date is to see if you’re curious enough to want to spend more time with the other person. Try to experience them, not to evaluate them.

Design better dates:

1. 🔄 Shift your mindset to expect great dates and design a pre-date ritual.
2. 📍 Choose the time and place of the date thoughtfully, so that you feel comfortable.
3. 🎨 Opt for a creative activity. Go on dates where you can observe your date interacting with others.
4. 🦚 Show your work. Let your date know about the efforts you’ve made to make the experience special.
5. 🎈 Play. Be a present, honest version of yourself, just a little lighter.
6. 🗣️ Skip the small talk and build intimacy and connection
   1. Dive straight into the type of conversation that friends might have.
   2. Ask questions and listen to the answers.
   3. Ask for advice.
7. 👂 Be interested, not interesting. Good dates are about connecting with another person, not showing off.
8. 📵 Limit phone use. Research from MIT shows that a phone on the table decreases the quality of the conversation. That is because there is fear that at any moment the phone might interrupt them.
9. 🏁 The end of an experience matters. People judge experiences based on how they felt at the most intense moment and at the end.

Understand how your date makes you feel:

1. What side of me did they bring out?
2. How did my body feel during the date?
3. Do I feel energized or de-energized after the date?
4. Am I curious about them?
5. Did they make me laugh?
6. Did I feel heard?
7. Did I feel attractive in their presence?
8. Did I feel captivated, bored or something in between?

Interesting Facts

Quote from Henry Ford: “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right”.

It is easier to talk when we’re not looking someone in the eyes.

People value something more when they see the effort that went into it. This is why Domino’s Pizza lets you follow along each step of the preparation of the pizza.

When we laugh, our brain releases oxytocin (the same bonding hormone released during breast-feeding) and makes us trust the other person more.

✨ F..k the Spark

The spark isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. Its absence doesn’t predict failure and its presence doesn’t guarantee success.

1. It’s a myth that when you meet the right person, you’ll feel instant fireworks. Instant chemistry is often absent at the beginning of a relationship. Good sex and chemistry can build over time.
2. It’s a myth that the spark is always a good thing. Sometimes the presence of a spark is more an indication of how charming or narcissistic someone is. You may feel the spark when your date is playing games or sending mixed signals. People confuse anxiety for chemistry.
3. It’s a myth that if you have a spark, the relationship is viable. Even if the spark leads to a long-term relationship, it’s not nearly enough to keep the relationship going

2️⃣ Go on the Second Date

We unconsciously fall prey to cognitive biases that make us bad judges of character.

• 👎 negativity bias

  Our brains have evolved to focus on the negative experiences. In the past, this wiring helped us perceive and avoid threats. In dating, this means that we’re likely to remember mostly a person’s bad qualities after a date.

• 🤔 fundamental attribution error

  We tend to believe someone’s actions reflect who they are rather than the circumstances. For example, if they are late on a date we see them as selfish instead of assuming they hit traffic.

To fight the cognitive biases you can do the following:

• 🧘‍♀️ Train yourself to see the positives. Seeing the positives in life is something that can be developed but requires practice.
• 2️⃣ Have as default to go on the second date. This will help you avoid the brain’s tendency to focus on the negatives and help you look for attributes other than the spark.
• 🙅‍♀️ Stop confusing pet peeves with dealbreakers. Dealbreakers are characteristics that someone has that you can not imagine could work with you long term.
• 💬 After the second date, if you want to see this person again, let them know.
• 👻 Do not ghost. When people ghost, they think they’re taking the easy path. But they’re wrong. If you choose the kind, up-front, polite path, you will get positive reinforcement.

Interesting Facts

Research on gratitude journals found that simply writing down 3 new things you are grateful for, every night for three weeks, will start to change the way your brain perceives the world.

💍 Section 3: Getting Serious

🧑‍⚖️ Decide, Don’t Slide

There are two ways couples transition into the next stage of a relationship. By deciding or by sliding.

🤝 Deciding in making intentional choices about relationship transitions, like moving in together or having children. 🛝 Sliding is when couples slip into the next stage without much thought.

Couples that decide end-up in higher-quality marriages than couples that slide.

• 🗣️ Define the relationship

  Discuss where you are and where you are headed so you can make the right choice for yourself. Learn about how they feel, don’t try to persuade them to give you what you want.

• 🏠 Moving in together

  Married couples who move in together before they get married tend to be less satisfied and more likely to divorce than those who don’t. This is because:

  1. Cohabitation can lead to marriages (and subsequent divorces) that wouldn’t have occurred if the couple hadn’t moved in together.
  2. Moving in together makes it harder to be honest with yourself about the quality of the relationship because the cost of separating goes up significantly.

  ‼️ Since moving in together makes you more likely to get married, make this a decision point, don’t slide. 42% of couples who decided their way into living together enjoyed a happy marriage, compared to 28% of those who slid.

  Things to discuss with your partner before moving in together:

  1. Why are we moving in together?
  2. What does moving in together mean to you?
  3. Where do you see this relationship going in the future?
  4. Is marriage something we’re considering? If so, when do you see us getting married?
  5. What are your fears about living together?

Interesting Facts

In the US, 50-60% of couples live together before they get married.

🚦 Stop Hitching and Stop Ditching

At some point you will have to make a decision, whether to stay together or break up. Hitchers stick around when the relationship is not working and ditchers leave them too soon, without giving them a chance to grow.

• 🏃‍♀️ Ditching

  Ditchers end relationships because of a cognitive error called the transition rule. According to the transition rule, when we estimate how something will feel in the future, we tend to focus on the initial impact.

  Ditchers confuse falling in love, and its initial excitement, with the state of being in love. When they experience the loss of the excitement, they interpret it as a mark of disaster for their relationship. They never learn how to be a good long-term partner.

• 🛌 Hitching

  There are several cognitive biases that help explain why hitchers stay in relationships too long.

  • 🤿 The sunken cost fallacy: It’s the feeling that once you invest in something, you should see it through.
  • 🚫 Loss aversion: Losses loom larger than gains. We’re more afraid of the potential loss of our partner than intrigued by the potential gain of the person we could date instead.

  Breaking up is a major decision, with major consequences. But staying in a relationship is also a major decision. Hitchers underestimate the opportunity cost and miss out on finding a new relationship.

  💡 Advice on how to make a decision of staying or leaving a relationship:

  1. 👕 Take the Wardrobe Test: “If your partner were a piece of clothing that you own, what piece of clothing would they be?”

     👍: if it is a piece of outerwear, like something that keeps you warm.

     👎: if it is worn out, itchy or uncomfortable

  2. 🌍 Consider External Factors: Is your partner currently facing challenging circumstances? Could things return to normal once these issues are resolved?

  3. 💬 Effective Communication: Have you tried to fix things and given feedback? Give them a chance to address any issues.

  4. 🎯 Realistic Expectations: What are your expectations of a long-term relationship? Are they realistic?

  5. 🪞 Self-Reflection: Who are you in the relationship? Are you bringing your best self to the partnership? Can you work on being a more generous, present partner?

  6. 👥 Seek External Perspective: Ask a trusted friend or family member.

If you have given the relationship a real chance and it isn’t working, leave the relationship. Otherwise, stay and see what happens when you are patient and invested.

Focus on yourself first. We’re more able to love when we feel complete. The more confident and comfortable we feel about ourselves, the easier it is to give and share with others. If you can work on making yourself happy first, instead of expecting it to come from someone else, your relationships will be easier.

🗓️ Make a Breakup Plan

Sometimes people decide to end things but struggle to do it. They spend months or years hesitating. They don’t execute on their goals, most likely because they’re missing a plan.

1. 📝 Record your reasons for wanting the breakup.

   Motivation isn’t constant. Sometimes you will feel certain about the breakup, sometimes your motivation will drop and wonder if you made the right decision. Writing down the reasons for the breakup will remind you why you made the decision when the low motivation moments come.

2. 🗓️ Make a plan.

   • Set a deadline to yourself that’s within the next two weeks.

   • Decide when and where you are having the breakup conversation.

   • Decide what you want to say. Be compassionate but direct.

     Follow this Critical Conversation Planning Doc:

     1. What’s your goal for this conversation? (i.e. what does success look like)
     2. What’s the core message you want to communicate?
     3. What tone do you want to use? What tone do you want to avoid?
     4. How do you want to open the conversation?
     5. What needs to be said?
     6. What are your concerns about how the other person will react?
     7. What will you do if that happens?
     8. How do you want to close this conversation?

   • Set a time limit on the first conversation. Long discussions detailing everything that went wrong in the relationship are not useful and may cause you to say something hurtful.

3. 👥 Create a social accountability system with a friend.

   Tell them that you will break up. This will help you increase the chances of following through.

4. 🗣️ Have the conversation, but don’t have sex.

   It introduces a lot of confusing feelings and makes it more difficult to follow through with the breakup.

5. 🚶Make an immediate post-breakup plan for yourself.

   It can be something simple, like visiting a friend. Feeling lonely and uncertain makes you more likely to slide back into the relationship.

6. 🔄 Change your habits to avoid backsliding.

   Your breakup will likely leave a few holes in your life. Work on filling them. Plan who would you reach out to in different situations, e.g. to share good/bad news, plan for the weekend, discuss politics etc.

7. 😇 Don’t be the “nice breakup person”.

   Don’t stay around and don’t call them on their birthday. Give them space to move on.

🚀 Reframe Your Breakup as a Gain, Not a Loss

Breakups bring havoc on your physical and emotional health. But what you are feeling is temporary.

During a breakup our brain undergoes the same experience as in drug withdrawal. Also, breakups have been found to increase cortisol levels (stress), which then suppress our immune system. People can experience insomnia, intrusive thoughts, depression, anger and anxiety.

One of the reasons breakups are so painful is because our brain is hypersensitive to loss. And breakups are a dramatic loss.

You can speed up the recovery process by reframing the experience from a loss to a gain.

• 🎯 Focus on the positives of the breakup and the negatives of the relationship. Take 15-30 minutes a day for 3 days to journal about it.

• 🕵️‍♂️ Rediscover Yourself. Breakups can cause an identity crisis. Focus on who you can be again now that you are single.

• 🎓 Make it a learning opportunity.

  • Who were you in your last relationship? Who do you want to be in the next one?
  • What have you learned about what matters in a long-term relationship?
  • What will you look for in a partner that you didn’t prioritize in the past?

Interesting Facts

People who rapidly begin a new rebound relationship are not necessarily any worse off than those who wait longer. Moving fast to the next relationship means less time alone, questioning your value.

🪢 Before You Tie the Knot, Do This

Couples often make a big mistake when considering marriage. They are so fond of each other, that they assume the other person wants the same things in life. They don’t explicitly discuss about major decisions, like if they want children or where to live.

This is called the false-consensus effect. We tend to assume that the majority of others agree with our own values, beliefs, and behaviors.

Being in love is not enough. Critically think about whether you should get married.

Answer the following questions about 🫵 you. Be honest.

1. Is my partner someone for the long term or for fun?
2. Do the wardrobe test: If my partner were a piece of clothing in my closet, what would they be?
3. Is this someone I can grow with?
4. Do I admire this person?
5. What side of me does this person bring out?
6. Is this person I want to share my good news with?
7. When I have a hard day at work, do I want to talk about it with my partner?
8. Do I value my partner’s advice?
9. Am I looking forward to building a future with this person?
10. Is this someone I can make tough decisions with?
11. Do we communicate well and fight productively?

Answer the following questions together with your partner:

Set 3 nights over a month to answer them.

• 🕰️ The past

  • What are 3 moments about your past that you feel define you?
  • How do you think your childhood affects who you are today?
  • Did your parents fight? What are your fears around relationship conflict?
  • What traditions from your family do you want to carry on in our family?
  • How did your family talk (or not talk) about sex when you were growing up?
  • What did money represent in your family?
  • What baggage from your family do you want to leave in the past?

• ⏳The present

  • Do you feel comfortable talking to me as things come up?
  • Is there anything about our communication style that you want to work on?
  • Do you feel like you can be yourself in the relationship? Why or why not?
  • What changes would you like to make to our relationship?
  • How well do you think we handle conflict?
  • What’s your favorite ritual that we do together?
  • How well do you feel like I know your friends and family? Is there anyone in your life whom you’d like me to get to know better?
  • How often would you like to have sex? How could our sex life be better? What can I do to improve it? What’s something you’ve always wanted to try but have been afraid to ask for?
  • How often do you think about money?
  • Open up about your finances. Debt? Is my debt your debt?
  • What’s the most you’d spend on a car? A couch? A pair of shoes?

• 🔮 The future

  • Where do you want to live in the future?
  • Do you want to have kids? What options would you consider if we can’t conceive on our own?
  • What are your expectations around splitting child care and household duties?
  • How often do you want to see your family?
  • What role do you want religion or spirituality to play in our lives?
  • Do you want to discuss prenup? What fears does that bring up for you?
  • How do you expect to split finances in the future?
  • Do you expect you’ll always want to work? What happens if one of us wants to take time off?
  • What’s the cutoff for how much I can spend without checking in with you first?
  • What are your long-term financial goals?
  • What are you most looking forward to in the future?
  • What is a dream of yours for the future? How can I help you achieve it?

Interesting Facts

The happiness and satisfaction of marriage has a tremendous impact on the happiness, physical and mental health, life expectancy, wealth, and well-being of children.

Couples who date longer before getting married have better odds of staying together, in part because the initial excitement is wearing off and can better make logical decisions.

💖 Intentional Love

Marital satisfaction tends to decrease as the duration of marriage increases.

At the same time, fewer of us are finding long-term relationship satisfaction.

Great partnerships are created with attention and choice, they are not discovered. We, as individuals, change over time. Therefore, creating a relationship that can evolve is the key to making it last.

• 📝 do a relationship contract.

  Agreements in this contract catalyze conversations that couples should have periodically to figure out what they want out of their relationship. This document should be revised over time. See an example contract generated by Logan Ury on her website.

• 🗣️ Have a check-in ritual

  This is a short conversation in which you and your partner discuss what’s on your mind. It helps you deal with problems as they arrive.