Original post:  http://bearlamp.com.au/against-the-five-love-languages/

You are in a relationship, someone made some objection about communication, you don't seem to understand what's going on.  Many years later you find yourself looking back at the relationship and reflecting with friends.  That's when someone brings up The Five Love Languages.  Oh deep and great and meaningful secrets encoded into a book.

The 5 languages are: 

1. Gifts
2. Quality time
3. Words of affirmation
4. Acts of service (devotion)
5. Physical touch (intimacy)

Oooooh if only you had spent more energy trying to get quality time, and less effort on gifts that relationship could have been saved.  Or the other way - the relationship was doomed because you wanted quality time and they wanted gifts as a show of love.  

You start seeing the world in 5 languages, your coworker offering to get you a coffee is a gift.  Your boss praising your good work is words of affirmation.  You start thinking like a Man with a hammer.  Strictly speaking I enjoy man with a hammer syndrome.  I like to use a model to death, and then pick a new model and do it all again.

What I want you to do now is imagine you didn't do that.  Imagine we cloned the universe.  In one universe we gave you the love-languages book and locked you in a room to read it.  In the second universe we offered to run you through a new relationship-training exercise.  "It's no guide book on how to communicate with your partner, but it's a pretty good process", we lock you in a room with a chair, a desk, some paper, pens (few distractions) and order you to derive some theory and idea about how to communicate with your partner.

Which one do you predict will yield the best result?

When I ask my system 2, it is fairly happy with the idea that using someone else's model is a shortcut to finding the answers.  After all they pre-derived the model.  No need to spend hours working on it myself when it's all in a book.

When I ask my system 1, it thinks that the self-derived system is about a billion times better than the one I found in a book.  It's going to be personally suited, it's going to be sharp and accurate, and bend to my needs.

Meta-strategy

Which is going to yield the best result for the problem? Self-derived solutions to all future problems? Book-derived solutions for all problems?

I propose that the specific strategy used to answer the problem, depending on the problem (obviously sometimes 1+1 will only be solved with addition, and solving it with subtraction is going to be difficult), is mostly irrelevant compared to having the meta-strategy.  

In the original example:

My relationship has bad communication, so we end the relationship.

The meta-strategy for this case:

My relationship has bad communication, how do we find more information about that and solve that problem.

In the general case:

I have a problem, I will fix the problem.

the meta strategy for the general case:

I have a problem, what is the best way to solve the problem? 

Or the meta-meta strategy:

I have a problem, how will I go about finding what is the best way to solve the problem? 

I propose that having the meta strategy, and the meta-meta strategy is almost as powerful as the true strategy.  On the object level for the problem example, instead of searching for the book in the problem field that is the five love languages you could instead search for any book about the problem area.  Any book is better than no book.  In fact I would make a hierarchy:

The best strategy > a good strategy > any strategy > no strategy
The best book > a good book > any book on the topic > no book on the topic

You encounter a problem in the wild - what should you do?

1. Try just solve the problem
2. Try any strategy (with a small amount of thinking - a few seconds or minutes)
3. search for a better strategy
   

Depending on the problem, the time, the real factors - the best path forward may be to just "think of what to do then do that", or it may be to "stop and write out a 10 page plan before executing 10 pages worth of instructions".

Should you read the five love languages book?  That depends.  What is the problem?  and have you tried solving the problem on your own first?

Meta: this took an hour to write.

My table of contents: lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mp2/my_future_posts_a_table_of_contents/ (which needs updating)

A half-baked literature review: Skills training for dating anxiety

In order to infer whether sociosexual skills training is a useful adjunct to standard treatment of anxiety, the first page of Google scholar was systematically reviewed for unique interventional studies that include with any measure of anxiety as an outcome, studies with comment on methodological issues or otherwise theorising with implications for the interpretation of the empirical evidence were discovered using the search terms: (1) social skills training for anxiety and (2) heterosexual social skills and (3) dating anxiety. And (4) behavioural replication training and (5) sensitivity training 10 studies were found, each very dated. The search space was expanded from (1) to searches (2) till (5) due to the keywords found in potentially relevant studies.

Studies that did not contextualise in terms of sexual motivations (e.g. dating) were excluded (namely: the study - Social skills training augments the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral group therapy for social anxiety disorder : www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005789405800619)

The studies found were (strike out: excluded):

• Social skills training and systematic desensitization in reducing dating anxiety: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005796775900546
• Treatment strategies for dating anxiety in college men based on real-life practice.: psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1979-31475-001
• Evaluation of three dating-specific treatment approaches for heterosexual dating anxiety.: psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/43/2/259/
• A comparison between behavioral replication training and sensitivity training approaches to heterosexual dating anxiety.: psycnet.apa.org/journals/cou/23/3/190/
• Social skills training and systematic desensitization in reducing dating anxiety: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005796775900546
• Social skills training augments the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral group therapy for social anxiety disorder : www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005789405800619
• Skills training as an approach to the treatment of heterosexual-social anxiety: A review.: psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/84/1/140/
• Self-ratings and judges' ratings of heterosexual social anxiety and skill: A generalizability study.: psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/47/1/164/
• Heterosexual social skills in a population of rapists and child molesters.: psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/53/1/55/
• The importance of behavioral and cognitive factors in heterosexual-social anxiety1: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1980.tb00834.x/abstract

The search is halted prematurely due to the discovery of a systematic review (see: Skills training as an approach to the treatment of heterosexual-social anxiety: A review.: psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/84/1/140/) However, other studies emerged after the review anyway. In any case, the review’s conclusions are likely to hold true and they do suggest that there is promise to sociosexual skills training, but methodological issues will hold back good empirical research. Therefore, it is not expected to be productive to continue this review.

It is hypothesised that the evidence is so dated due to changes in terminology. The literature approximates exposure treatments for social phobia or social anxiety. However, searches of the first page of Google Scholar (exposure therapy and social anxiety; exposure therapy and social phobia) yield no results except where pharmacotherapies are in adjunct to the therapy) which are inappropriate for our purposes.

Tl;dr. See: Skills training as an approach to the treatment of heterosexual-social anxiety: A review.: psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/84/1/140/

Research translation idea

I have an idea for teaching certain vulnerable young people the skills needed to achieve social skills without intoxication. I was wondering if you have any feedback for my proposal so that I can revise it. Many students report they drink or get high for the disinhibiting effects that help them socialise with the other sex. It is hypothesised that this is because of latent anxieties and inproper self-medication. Due to the irresponsiveness of the target population at universities to respond to demand reduction programs and health promotion, the inflexibility of the university’s institutions to delivering supply reduction campaigns,  and the relative resource intensity of harm minimisation programs, alternative, innovative interventions are sought. One innovative strategy is to treat the underlying anxiety that motivates substance use in young people. The purpose of this social skills training program is to train groups of young people to socialise romantically and sexually with the opposite sex to replace substance-assisted romantic and sexual initiatory behaviour. Initial steps will be surveying the evidence-base, followed by the design, implementation and evaluation of a pilot program. This will be disseminated for critique by the broader scientific and clinical community before scaling if and as appropriate. The success of the program will be evaluated by structured interview eliciting psychological distress.

Background reading

Gender differences in social anxiety disorder: results from the national epidemiologic sample on alcohol and related conditions. - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21903358

Examining Sex and Gender Differences in Anxiety Disorders - www.intechopen.com/books/a-fresh-look-at-anxiety-disorders/examining-sex-and-gender-differences-in-anxiety-disorders

not academic but interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSZky8dk7OE

[Relationships help us flourish](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/2/20/stronger-relationships-make-for-a-stronger-you.html). The [science is interesting](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/9/15/infographic-the-10-most-interesting-dating-studies-of-2014.html) e.g. men can more accurtely detect flirting than women - twice as well, in fact; And, cuddling after sex significantly improves sexual and relationship satisfaction (IMO, it's the best part!); And multiracial daters are the most desirable; Plus, Men but not women see a friendly (responsive) strateger as more attractive (feminine/masculine). [Relationships can help neurotic personalities stabilise](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2014/05/a-healthy-romantic-relationship-can-stabilize-neurotic-people/) too. Think your grannies wisdom has got your back? Opposites don't attract: 'Although there are competing common sense beliefs, the existing research overwhelmingly supports the idea that similarity leads to attraction and better quality relationships.1' - www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2011/4/14/do-opposites-attract.html. That's why I'm doing this very informal 'literature review'...

The following notes are designed to be useful without having to follow the links* I read through somewhere like 10 pages of the Science of Relationship blog, and the first page of their facebook page and clicked on any interesting links. Then, I disregarded that which isn’t directly supported by the study, and those studies with very small sample size, or that didn’t replicate. The remainder are reported here:

These points are formatted to be inserted into a discussion level post (in response to this, or a bro-sciency relationship claim) for further discussion while keeping the links in-tact.

[For the 144 speed daters, Vacharkulksemsuk says, "expansiveness (open body language) nearly doubles chances of getting a yes [to see each other again.]"]( http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/30/472250698/to-catch-someone-on-tinder-stretch-your-arms-wide)

[there’s enough dopamine triggered by sexual activity to actually make a person fall in love with their partner](http://bigthink.com/robby-berman/simple-carefree-casual-sex-as-if)

[Virgins are stigmatised]( http://www.glamour.com/story/stigma-against-virgins)

[Avoidants are moralise against privacy violations, the anxious moralise against potential infidelity]( http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/12/18/moral-boundaries-in-relationships-relationship-matters-podca.html)

[non symbolic gift giving is bad for relationships]( http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/12/17/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-the-science-of-gift-giving.html)

[surprise gifts are bad, gifts specifically on a partner’s wish list are good]( http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/12/19/this-holiday-season-get-your-romantic-partner-exactly-what-h.html)

[Principle 1: Give Experiences, Not Stuff, Principle 2: Give the Gift of Anticipation, Principle 3: Focus on Giving Quantity + 'we’ve got you covered. In previous articles, some of the best gifts for your relationship are ones that announce your relationship to the world, erotic photos, or simply exactly what your partner asked for']( www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/12/17/tis-the-season-5-principles-for-spending-your-money-wisely-d.html)

Don’t think you’re relationship material? [ two studies which found that relationships where there was self-expansion and self-pruning increased one’s willingness to be accommodating toward a partner, forgive a partner, and sacrifice for a partner. In contrast, self-adulteration and self-contraction increases thoughts about breaking up, attention to mate alternatives, and seeking revenge against a partner.](www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/12/11/how-relationships-change-us-over-time-relationship-matters-p.html)

[we may have an intuitive ability to sense other’s cheating ways  based on a few minutes from a video](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/12/9/can-you-spot-the-cheater-it-should-only-take-you-a-few-minut.html)

Are they looking for lust or love? [When deciding whether a given photo portrayed love, male and female participants focused on the faces depicted in the photos, but very little attention was paid to the individuals’ and couples’ bodies. In contrast, when looking for signs of lust, both males and females generally focused more on the bodies in the photos. The researchers suggest this work could inform interventions for therapists who want to identify how couple members view each other.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/12/2/love-or-lust-follow-the-eyes.html)

What’s marriage material? [For example, in one study researchers asked women what they were looking for in a partner.3 The women indicated that they were looking for someone who was financially stable, willing to commit, and emotionally secure. Unfortunately, the women in the study felt like they knew very few people in their community who fit the bill. As a result, they said that they would rather be on their own than make a mistake and marry the wrong person. Getting married only to later get divorced is a fear that many people share](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/11/25/four-things-you-need-to-consider-when-deciding-to-get-marrie.html)

[three types of social influence predict adolescent sexual behavior: peer pressure, thinking your friends approve  (injunctive norms)and thinking your friends are doing it (descriptive norms)](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/11/20/social-influence-and-teen-sex-what-matters-and-what-doesnt.html_) >The research team3 combined the results from 58 independent studies conducted between 1980 and 2012, including almost 70,000 adolescents from 24 countries, using a statistical technique known as meta-analysis...Of the three types of social influence, descriptive norms had the largest association with adolescent sexual behavior. Injunctive norms were the next best predictor of teenage sex, and peer pressure was the weakest. So normalness > normativity > normalisation

[So the next time your beloved shares a personal success, remember that a heartfelt “congratulations!” goes a long way towards fanning those warm feelings that sustain relationship happiness.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/11/18/are-you-listening-cold-shouldering-a-partners-successes-leav.html)

[In terms of general personality traits (e.g., openness to new experiences, neuroticism), online and offline daters are not significantly different from each other.1](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/11/7/the-truth-behind-online-dating-how-it-compares-to-offline-da.html)

[Two Is Stronger Than One: Shared Chocolate eating is More Intense ](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/11/3/two-is-stronger-than-one-shared-experiences-are-more-intense.html). The article generalises to shared experiences, but that’s insubstantiated.

[ A classic study from the 60s on in-person dating found that a date’s hot body/face predicted romantic attraction more than personality traits, intelligence, popularity/charisma, mental health, and self-esteem.2More recent “speed-dating” research shows similar results; beauty mattered more than political attitudes, preferred hobbies, values/ethics, and even attachment security.3 Perhaps unsurprisingly, some results from OKCupid’s data crunching show similar findings.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/10/31/the-truth-behind-online-dating-what-motivates-users-and-comp.html)

>Online dating exists as a business to turn a profit. It sounds like a cynical perspective to take, but the online dating website/app companies aren’t 100% enthusiastic about you finding a successful relationship, because if you do, then they lose a customer.

[It isn’t surprising that a person’s self-esteem may affect how she or he approaches flirting. When the risk of being rejected is high, men with high self-esteem use more direct techniques than those with low self-esteem, perhaps because they’re less concerned with how being shot down may affect them. However, men with low self-esteem are bolder and use more obvious approaches than men with high self-esteem when the target is clearly interested and rejection risk is low. This may be because encountering a sure thing is one of the only contexts in which a guy with low self-esteem feels safe making advances, so he has to make it count.]( http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/10/27/a-flirters-dilemma-subtlety-vs-success.html)

 >When rejection risk is low for women, they’re more direct regardless of their self-esteem. Women traditionally initiate relationships less often than men, so when the chance arises perhaps women decide to throw caution to the wind and just go for it. Of course it is also possible that women are using the technique that they know works better when men try to flirt with them.

 >When it comes to flirting technique the research is pretty clear: while subtlety is more likely to protect the flirter’s self-esteem, if you really want to get your message across, direct is best. A study asked college students about the most effective ways to show interest in someone. Both men and women agreed that subtle flirting was less likely to get the job done, and that the best approach would be a direct “Do you want to go to dinner with me?” 

[any reliable associations that the researchers found were in the opposite direction from what marketing would suggest. For example, people who had spent between $2000-4000 on an engagement ring had significantly higher rates of divorce compared to people who spent between $500 and $2000. Similarly, couples who spent less than $1000 on their weddings had significantly lower rates of divorce even compared to people who spent between $5000 and $10,000. People who reported having spent more than $20,000 on their wedding tended to have higher divorce rates compared to those who spent less. Furthermore, any cases where spending more was associated with better relationship outcomes were explained by demographic factors like having a high income. In other words, it wasn’t that spending more made things better. Other factors were responsible.It gets worse. The researchers found that high levels of wedding-related spending—for example, having a wedding that cost more than $20,000—was associated with stress over wedding-related debt. The researchers posit that this stress may help to account for some of the negative associations between high spending and marital outcomes. Couples spend money on their wedding that they don’t have, which later puts a strain on their marriage when they have trouble paying off the resulting debt.These results suggest that if anything, high levels of wedding-related spending have a negative effect on marriage, not a positive one. Of course, this study is cross-sectional, meaning that the researchers did not follow people over time. It would be great to see a longitudinal study where newlyweds first report on their engagement ring and wedding spending, and are then followed over time to see who splits up.](www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/10/17/diamonds-arent-forever-expensive-rings-and-weddings-may-lead.html)

[If you ask people who identify as straight, but then have sex with someone else of the same gender, this experience does not necessarily make them “bisexual,” but it does make them sexually fluid.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/10/13/debunking-myths-about-sexual-fluidity.html)   >In addition, romantic/emotional bonding is fundamentally different from sexual desire (love and sex are governed by different parts of the brain and different hormones in the body). In the words of Lisa Diamond, “one can ‘fall in love’ without experiencing sexual desire.” 4 The processes of affectional bonding (or romantic love) are not oriented specifically toward other-gender or same-gender partners.

[Researchers have found through more than two-dozen studies that relationship dissatisfaction accounts for 44% of a depressed partner's symptoms¹ (such as loss of interest and motivation, hopelessness, changes in appetite and sleep). Shockingly or not, partners in distressed relationships experience a 10-fold increase in risk of depression]( http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/7/28/what-does-it-matter-why-depression-is-so-important-in-troubl.html)

[Of the Big 5 personality traits, having a conscientious spouse was associated with important benefits for job success. Specifically, participants with more conscientious partners reported higher incomes, higher job satisfaction, and they were more likely to have been promoted during the study. A partner’s conscientiousness had more of an impact on earnings in single-income couples than in dual-income couples, perhaps because the partner’s supporting role is magnified. These benefits all occurred above and beyond any benefits of one’s own personality. That is, regardless of your own personality, having a conscientious partner relates to job success.According to study author Brittany Solomon, “…while previous research has shown that people desire romantic partners high in agreeableness and low in neuroticism, our findings suggest that people should also desire highly conscientious partners. While having a conscientious partner could seem like a recipe for a rigid and lackluster lifestyle, the findings indicate that having an especially conscientious spouse is likely to lead to both relationship and occupational prosperity.”](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/9/2/for-richer-how-your-spouse-influences-your-job-success.html)

So, you’ll probably automatically select an agreeable and less neurotic partner. But, go out of your way to get a conscienscious partner.

[More recently, researchers have advanced a Social Surrogacy Hypothesis that claims parasocial relationships (e.g. tv characters, pickup gurus) help to fend off real life rejection.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/8/29/parasocial-relationships-i-get-by-with-a-little-help-from-my.html). The author implies actual friends are better for that anyhow.

[Those who read more men’s magazines reported a lower likelihood of requiring consent before having sex; those who read more women’s magazines reported a greater likelihood to refuse unwanted sex. We can’t infer that reading men’s magazines causes these troublesome opinions about sexual consent; however, it does warrant paying greater attention to the messages that men’s magazines send and about those who are inclined to read them.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/8/27/no-means-no-reading-mens-and-womens-magazines-linked-to-sexu.html)

[It may be intuitive that when two people enjoy the same thing (similarity), they can enjoy it together. However, similarity itself did not predict satisfaction. On the other hand, when one person likes receiving what the other likes giving (complementarity), then everyone is be more satisfied. What may be less obvious, however, is the impact that the overestimating these things can have on sexual satisfaction.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/9/4/sexual-satisfaction-do-you-and-your-partner-have-to-be-the-s.html)

[Since when is human sexuality supposed to be simple and straight-forward? If psychologists claimed that people’s levels of introversion or neuroticism (two of the “Big Five” personality traits) fluctuate over time, that would perhaps seem intuitively obvious and uncontroversial (of course people can be shy in childhood and grow up to be more outgoing). But because we’re talking about sexual variables, some may assume they are (or should be) completely stable over time. I’m speculating here, but perhaps political liberals want to believe that sexuality is stable across the lifespan, thus giving credence to the idea that since people cannot change or control their sexual preferences (they are simply “born that way”), it would be a rallying cry for equitable treatment (equal rights) based on gender and sexual orientation. It’s worth mentioning that this research on sexual fluidity has also been abused and misused by anti-gay activists in favor of “conversion therapy” (see more here), but this a complete misrepresentation of the scientific research. While I whole-heartedly agree that everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, should be treated equally under the law (or otherwise), the idea that people’s sexuality does not fluctuate across their lives is scientifically inaccurate. Dismissing all of the supporting research does not do anyone any favors. I’m not sure why some people may believe that the theory of sexual fluidity is sexist, or at all insidious. But if folks are upset at the notion of sexual fluidity, then we should have a constructive, sex-positive conversation about specifically how it is damaging (if it is at all) and then how to fix it.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/10/13/debunking-myths-about-sexual-fluidity.html)

[These findings are one of the first to establish a causal link between stress and relationship behaviors. Specifically, they show how individuals’ acute stress experiences undermine relationships by making those individuals less likely to compliment one’s partner and more likely to pay attention to other potential partners.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/10/8/two-key-ways-that-stress-undermines-your-relationship.html). Keep your partner's stress low to keep your partner happy and your esteem in tact!

[ Good-looking men tend to be more interested in one-night stands and brief affairs, and owning an expensive electronic status-symbol might help them to attract partners. So we might expect to see handsome men first in line for the next iPhone.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/10/6/his-new-iphone-may-signal-hes-single-and-looking-to-hook-up.html)

[Results of the study indicate that men and women reported a similar number of lifetime “loves” and similar occurrences of falling in love first. However, compared to women, men reported physical attractiveness was more important and were more likely to mistakenly overestimate sexual interest from another person. Men also reported more occurrences of “love at first sight” and were more likely to fall in love without a partner reciprocating that feeling. Men who were more likely to overestimate females’ sexual interest fell in love more frequently, while women did not show a similar pattern. Men who place more importance on physical attractiveness fell in love first in their relationship more often when they thought they were with a highly attractive partner. Finally, women with a higher reported sex drive also reported falling in love more frequently. Overall, men seem to fall in love easier than women, but why? It may be that men fall in love easier because they think being in love is important to women. Thus,men fall in love is a way to show female partners that they are committed to the relationship. The fact that men were more likely to fall in love when they over estimated sexual interest suggests that a man may be more likely to have interest in a women once he believes she has sexual interest in him. That is, the way to a man’s heart is through his…well you know. Of course it is also possible that men who fall in love more easily are also inclined to overestimate sexual interest as a way of validating his own feelings.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/9/19/who-falls-in-love-the-easiest.html) >Though there may be true differences between men and women, it is also possible that this study tells us more about who falls in “lust” more easily. The researchers definition of love focuses heavily on the more passionate aspects of love such as powerful emotions, attraction, excitement, and intense desire. It is possible that a study focusing on more companionate or friendship-based love could yield a different pattern of results.

[the famous Czech writer Milan Kundera mused, “[it is] one of life’s great secrets: women don’t look for handsome men, they look for men with beautiful women.”1](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/12/1/i-want-what-shes-having-women-copy-other-womens-mate-choices.html). Women who thought other women regarded their partner to be attractive were more likely to experience an orgasm. What is interesting here is that this relationship holds even after other variables (eg. partner attractiveness) are statistically controlled for. In other words, even when all men are treated as being equally attractive, the ones that are perceived as being liked by other women are more likely to give their partner an orgasm. The authors were able to demonstrate that perception of other women’s assessment of partner’s attractiveness uniquely predicted likelihood of orgasm.

[The vast majority of teens do no meet romantic partners online...Overall, 64% of teens have never been in a romantic relationship (leaving about 36% of teens who have been). Of those who have been in a relationship, only 8% met a partner online.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/11/11/lets-talk-about-tech-and-teen-relationships.html)

>Why do teens use social media in their relationship?

The majority of teens (59%) report using it to feel more connected or closer to their partners. They also report that it gives them a chance to show their partners they care (47%) and to feel emotionally closer (44%). While those are positive sentiments for the relationships, 27% report that social media leads to feelings of jealousy and relationship uncertainty.

>How much do teens want to communicate with their relationship partners?

>The vast majority (85%) expect at least daily or more frequent communication, and 11% expect hourly communication from their partner. When asked what their partner expected from them, the numbers were nearly the same.

[Attachment style describes the degree to which we perceive our relationships (usually romantic partnerships) as being secure, capable of meeting our needs, and a source of comfort in times of distress.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/10/27/anxious-avoidant-duos-walking-on-thin-ice-in-relationships-a.html)

>It’s easy to see how an anxious-avoidant pairing could snowball into relationship dysfunction: in the face of an attachment threat, such as an argument or confrontation, anxious individuals are likely to pursue their attachment figures in an attempt to reestablish feelings of closeness, just as Anna did when she ventured out into the blizzard to chase after Elsa. When the avoidant partner responds by pulling away – as Elsa did when she told Anna her intention of never returning home – the anxious person’s fears are reinforced and the relationship is likely to suffer (i.e., Anna feels abandoned yet clings to her hope of reconnecting with her sister; Elsa feels overwhelmed and inadvertently strikes her sister with a nearly-fatal blast of ice).

>If you recognize a troublesome anxious-avoidant dynamic in your relationship, know that it’s possible to “unfreeze” bad patterns. After all, when Anna and Elsa finally empathized with each other and stopped letting their fears control them, they experienced self-growth and reconnection. Simply knowing your own attachment orientation can help you to understand your strengths and vulnerabilities in relationships. Likewise, noticing how your partner responds to relationship stressors can help both of you develop ways of communicating that fulfill each others’ attachment needs and reinforce relationship security over time. If Anna and Elsa can melt the ice and rekindle their bond, there’s hope for a happy ending for us all.

[“Parents Report More Positive Emotions Than Non-Parents; Age, Income, Marital Status Are Factors”](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/10/19/parents-are-less-happy-fact-or-fiction.html)

[reciprocity in disclosure facilitates more liking than engaging in only one of the two disclosing roles. This is where our measurement of interaction enjoyment, perceptions of being liked by the other, and perceived responsiveness came into play. We saw that all of these variables uniquely explained the difference in liking we saw between the two disclosure conditions. For example, because people found that engaging in reciprocal disclosure was more fun than non-reciprocal disclosure, they liked each other more.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/10/8/let-me-get-a-turn-dont-do-all-the-talking-in-a-conversation.html)

[when conversation flows easily between strangers, people tend to feel bonded with one another and this flow can indicate the beginning of a meaningful relationship. Likewise, when conversations are disrupted or otherwise difficult, this lack of flow can make people who have just met feel disconnected. But what about long-term relationships? Is a disruption in conversation as detrimental to couples as it can be for strangers? Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have tackled this question,1 and their work suggests that a conversational lull can actually benefit your romantic relationship - IF you feel already mentally connected to your partner](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/9/8/silence-is-golden-how-staying-hush-may-benefit-your-relation.html)  

>For people who reported being secure and strongly connected to their partner, having a disrupted conversation (with the one second delay) actually resulted in feeling more validated and in agreement with their partners during the conversation compared to those experiencing an undisrupted conversation.    

>This group of researchers report similar results in other close non-romantic pairs (e.g., friendships and family). It seems that the closer you feel to someone, silence or other interruptions in conversation can be beneficial for your relationship due to feelings of agreement that tend to accompany the disruptions. In relationships, sometimes silence is golden.

[anxiously attached partners are more likely to Facebook stalk their partners in an attempt to alleviate anxiety and (hopefully) confirm their partners’ undying devotion. Such findings suggest that individuals use the internet as a means to cope with their own desires to learn more about another.](http://ww.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/9/1/when-and-why-we-isnoop-on-others.html)

[when relationship partners idealized each other more, over time the individuals in the relationship actually changed to become more like their partner’s ideal.6 In other words, if you think long enough about your partner as fulfilling your ideals of what a romantic partner should be, sooner or later it may no longer be much of an illusion; they may actually be more like your ideal partner.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2012/11/15/and-for-my-next-trick-the-magical-effects-of-positive-illusi.html)

[we all come to view and appreciate our bodies in the context of our intimate relationships. In other words, how we feel about our bodies impacts our relationships and our relationships impact our feelings about our bodies.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/7/15/my-body-your-body-our-relationship-5-links-between-our-body.html_

>Fourth, working with our partners to achieve health, fitness, and our “best body” can be advantageous to all involved. Working with our partners should not involve denigrating or shaming them into eating well or spending more time on the treadmill. Research suggests that encouragement and support are likely to go a lot further. And, why not make it a team effort? Joining forces may mean skipping the ice cream aisle at the grocery store if you think your partner should eat less ice cream. Eat off of smaller plates to help control your portion

[We find out how our rational minds go all screwy when we're faced with attractive rivals or sexual competitors. Three new experiments show how sexual rivalry primes men to be cruel, self-centred, and prone to risk.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/7/7/catching-up-with-the-psychology-of-attractiveness-podcast.html)

Reddit’s The Red Pill (TRP) has a cannon theory called ‘alpha fucks and beta bucks’. It’s empirically false: [A study of 2,757 participants from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth examined how spouses’ relative earnings (i.e., who makes more money) influences likelihood of cheating. Results indicate absolute income did not predict infidelity, so simply earning more money did not make a person more likely to cheat. However, being the breadwinner (i.e., earning more than a spouse) was associated with men being more likely to cheat; the opposite was true for women-- they were less likely to cheat when they made more money than their husbands. Being economically dependent on a spouse (i.e., one spouse makes a lot more than the other) was associated with increased likelihood of cheating in both men and women, though the effect was stronger in men.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/7/2/is-it-better-to-be-the-breadwinner-implications-for-infideli.html)

[what you want and what you get may be two different things. Study 1 shows that everyone prefers a potential partner with high mate value. No surprise there. However, consistent with the matching hypothesis, only those with similarly high mate values sought out the high value potential partners. Importantly, this was self-imposed behavior. Study 1 can’t say whether the lower value initiators would be successful if they had tried to “date up.” Rather, the study suggests people don't generally try. Study 2 shows, that at least when it comes to online dating, this is what people try to do. They try to “date up” by pursuing others who are more attractive and essentially out of their league. It is likely that the low stakes environment of online dating where advances don’t result in outward or obvious rejection, but rather a much easier to handle lack of response. As a result, a “shotgun” approach where you contact lots of more attractive people is a more viable strategy that is less threatening to your ego. And really, you can’t blame a guy or gal for trying. But if you’re going for a higher success rate, Study 2 suggests that you’re better off sticking to others in your own league. Thus, the matching hypothesis operates on the more practical level of what type of partner you actually get, and not in terms of what people want. All in all this makes perfect sense. In an ideal world you may really want the best highest paying job there is. Yet, because of all of the other applicants, some of whom are more qualified than you, you end up matched to a job that most closely matches your skills and abilities. So if you ever find yourself in that room with other singles or online dating, while you may want to “date up” by pairing up with the most attractive partners, unless you are also one of the most attractive you’ll have better luck playing within your league.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/6/22/is-it-better-to-date-up-or-play-within-your-own-league.html)

[Individuals in committed romantic relationships tend to downplay the attractiveness of potential partners. This derogation of alternatives, as researchers refer to it, helps the relationship’s long-term future by decreasing the likelihood that partners will be tempted by others.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/6/2/see-no-evil-smell-no-evil-possible-alternative-partners.html)

[Now, if you’re getting married and want to potentially avoid any post-wedding blues, what should you do? First, talk to your partner about marriage, and be open and honest about your expectations. And if you have doubts now, you might consider why that is and take the time to figure things out before proceeding. Second, all relationships are better when they have the support and involvement of (nonproblematic) others. Celebrate your marriage, but do so with your friends and family.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/5/27/something-old-something-new-something-borrowed-something-blu.html)

[Why do people cheat? It’s a question we get (and address) here at ScienceOfRelationship.com regularly. Our coverage of the topic generally reflects the state of research on the topic, which focuses on proximal predictors of infidelity --- or science jargon for those things about individuals or relationships that directly increase the likelihood somebody will cheat, such as low commitment, more attractive alternatives, lack of impulse control, narcissism, and so on.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/5/19/cheating-its-a-family-affair.html)

>Students who had cheated on a partner were twice as likely to have had a parent who cheated compared to those students who had not cheated on a partner (44% vs. 22%). Interestingly, having a cheating parent didn’t affect the way students viewed cheating  -- they were no more accepting of the idea of cheating in general (at least that’s what they told the researchers)-- so it’s not entirely clear exactly how having a parent cheat increases the odds that somebody may one day do the same. It’s most likely that knowing your mom or dad was a cheater somehow influences one of the many proximal predictors of cheating (e.g., feelings of commitment to partners), but future work is needed to clarify the chain of events that links your parents’ cheating ways (or not) to your own.

[80% of people had experienced a desire discrepancy with their partner in the past month; in other study, couples reported some degree of desire discrepancy on 5 out of 7 days a week. And we know from past research that disagreements related to sex can be very difficult to resolve successfully](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/4/27/what-happens-when-your-partner-wants-to-do-it-and-youre-not.html)

>Across all three studies we found that a person’s motivation to meet their partner’s sexual needs, termed sexual communal strength4 (also discussed here and here) plays an important role (a) in the decision to engage in sex in these situations and (b) in the maintenance of both partners’ sexual and relationship satisfaction.

>People who are high in sexual communal strength—those who are motivated to meet their partner’s sexual needs without the expectation of immediate reciprocation—were less concerned with the negatives of having sex -- such as feeling tired the next day. Instead, these communal people were more focused on the benefits to their partner of engaging in sex, such as making their partner feel loved and desired. In turn, these motivations led the communal people to be more likely to engage in sex with their partner in these situations and also led to both partners feeling more satisfied with their sex life and relationship. This means that even though they engaged in sex to meet their partner’s needs, they reaped important benefits for themselves. In fact, communal people maintained feelings of satisfaction even in these desire discrepant situations.

>Our findings suggest that if one partner is interested in having sex, but the other partner isn’t in the mood, being motivated to meet a partner’s sexual needs can benefit both partners. It is very important, however, that this motivation to meet a partner’s needs comes from a place of agency, where people feel that they are able to meet their partner’s needs, and a delight in seeing ones partner happy. Situations that involve coercion or where a person ignores their own needs in the process (termed unmitigated communion) do not lead to the same benefits. In fact, an important part of communal relationships is that both partners are attuned to and responsive to each other’s needs. At times this may also mean understanding and accepting a partner’s need to not to engage in sex.

[Greater self-perceived attractiveness increased romantic self-confidence, which produced higher self-esteem. It seems looking good makes you more confident about your ability to attract and maintain relationships, which bodes well for your self-esteem.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/4/6/your-self-perceived-relationship-desirability-influences-you.html)

[People high in extraversion typically posted about social activities and everyday life, motivated by using Facebook to communicate and connect Low self-esteem was positively correlated with posting about romantic relationships Conscientiousness was positively associated with child-related updates (a topic often associated with a high number of “likes”) Those high in narcissism used Facebook to seek validation and typically posted about their accomplishments and diet/exercise routine (and reportedly received a greater number of “likes” and comments about their accomplishments)](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/6/18/what-are-you-sharing-on-facebook-and-what-does-it-say-about.html)

[In our second study, we asked half of our participants to read about the benefits of engaging in approach-motivated sex and we then instructed them to try and focus on approach-motivated reasons for having sex over the next week. That is, we asked them to think about the positive outcomes that they might expect to gain from having sex with their partner. One week later we followed up with them and asked them to report on their sexual experiences and relationship over the past week. People who focused on approach-motivated reasons for having sex (compared to people who were not given any information or instructions about approach-motivated sex), reported having sex more to pursue positive relationship outcomes and ultimately reported more satisfying sexual experiences during that week and felt happier with their overall relationship.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2016/4/22/why-you-have-sex-matters-for-your-desire-and-satisfaction.html)

[A majority of men and women admit feeling somewhat attracted to an opposite-sex friend at some point, but men report such feelings significantly more often than women do.3 Men are also more likely to want female friends for the purpose of casual sex, and are more likely to befriend women they find physically attractive.4 Even if they are in a committed relationship, men admit that feelings of physical attraction and sexual desire are important for initiating cross-sex friendships (physical attractiveness matters less to women in choosing their male friends); men are also more likely to end the friendship if they are rejected or denied sex.5 In contrast, women report wanting male friends more for social and physical protection (a “buffer” from the potentially creepy/dangerous men in the dating pool), although women also report wanting this kind of protection from their female friends as well. Like men, women will end their friendships with men if these needs aren’t satisfied.4,5](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2011/10/12/sexual-strategies-in-cross-sex-friendships.html)  

>Interestingly, women are often blind to the fact that their male friends are looking for sex to be part of the friendship—women underestimate the degree to which their male friends are attracted to them. In contrast, men overestimate the degree to which their female friends are attracted to them. This is part of what creates the confusion and ambiguity in cross-sex friendships. Men and women are often on different wavelengths in terms of their perceived romantic attraction.5,6 It’s also part of the reason why men are so protective and even violent when faced with a rival7     

[In both studies, the researchers found that partners who had greater executive control sacrificed more. They searched longer for the difference between the identical pictures and they typed out more letter strings. Partners who reported more commitment on the surveys also sacrificed more, but executive control was more strongly related to their sacrificing behaviors. Overall, these studies showed that commitment to a partner isn’t always enough on its own to promote sacrifice, especially when the sacrifice requires considerable time and effort. While sometimes it seems like we can effortlessly and automatically meet our partners’ needs, there are other times when we have to exert some extra mental effort to get past our own self-serving desires. So, even if it might take a little extra work to abandon your Netflix cue, the effort you put in to helping your partner could pay off big time for you both.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/3/30/id-do-anything-i-can-for-you-sacrifice-requires-more-than-ju.html)

So, smarter partners are better partners!

[being around an attractive woman can impair his cognitive ability..… on average women are more sexually satisfied than men....women find humor attractive perhaps because it shows his cognitive sophistication and intelligence....…women are typically more picky about who they date than men, but that this may have more to do with dating norms (i.e., men are expected to approach women and ask them out rather than vice versa) than with innate differences between men and women.…women were more in love actually initiated sex less often, perhaps as an invitation for seduction...](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/3/27/10-essential-relationship-lessons-that-men-should-learn-abou.html)

So, if you want sex, avoid getting fallen in love with!

[In comparison to the control conditions, savoring a specific past positive moment led to greater positive emotion in participants after the relational stressor. But, there’s an important catch. The savoring task appears to work mostly for those who are happy in their long distance relationship; the results mostly disappear when people are generally unhappy with their relationships.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/3/26/relational-savoring-in-long-distance-relationships-relations.html)

[While this study doesn’t conclusively show that self-expansion causes relationship quality, there is strong evidence from other studies4,5 that does support the idea that self-expansion improves relationship quality. In short, engaging in new, interesting and challenging activities with your partner can have a positive impact on your relationship over the long-haul.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/3/11/self-expansion-a-key-for-lasting-love.html)

[You need to show lots of active enthusiasm for your partner’s interests and activities5 (even if personally you find them dull or boring). You need to help them feel safe and protected when they experience distress.6 You need to show lots of gratitude and appreciation for your partner. 7,8 You need to put aside your own selfish goals for the good of the relationship (scientists call this pro-relationship motivation),9 or to resist responding with negativity when your partner makes a mistake10 (and everyone makes mistakes from time to time). These are all variables that are associated with long-term relationship health, and all of it is “work,” which can be challenging for many people even if they deeply love their partners. If you label these behaviors as something different, that’s totally fine, but when all is said and done, they’re still work. If it feels really good to make that kind of effort, then it simply means your choices are paying off.](http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2015/11/3/ben-affleck-was-right-relationships-are-hard-work-and-thats.html)

Based on that string of evidence, I think I’ll shift my goal from relationships, to … uhh… casual...

And with that, I am left with a list of the articles I have yet to extract conclusions as they relate to individual, evidence-based relationship decisions. So, here’s what I missed:

How Having Couple Friends Helps You Feel the Love - | - Science of Relationships

The Big Bang Theory Tests “The Intimacy Acceleration” Procedure - | - Science of Relationships

When Friends' "Help" Hurts - | - Science of Relationships

| - Science of Relationships

Afraid to Ask Someone Out? Read This. - | - Science of Relationships

How Do I Get (More) Intimate With A Woman? - | - Science of Relationships

Could You Be Loved, and Give Love? Cultural Differences in Pursuing a Partner - | - Science of Relationships

The Art of Pickup: Misogyny in Action - | - Science of Relationships

When Are Pick Up Lines Most Effective? - | - Science of Relationships

How Superficial Disclosures May Hurt You: Relationship Matters Podcast 44 - | - Science of Relationships

It’s Not Just About You and Me: How Social Networks Impact Relationships - | - Science of Relationships

Want to Increase Your Happiness? Science says… - | - Science of Relationships

How Sex Changes Across Stages in Relationships - | - Science of Relationships

Does Parenting Make People Happy or Miserable? - | - Science of Relationships

Stronger Relationships Make For A Stronger You - | - Science of Relationships

Got a Cold? Think Hugs, Not Drugs - | - Science of Relationships

Feeling Cold? How About a Romance Movie? - | - Science of Relationships

Give the Gift of Simultaneous Orgasm This Valentine’s Day - | - Science of Relationships

Valentine’s Day Sex: Extra-Special or Not-to-Be Expected? - | - Science of Relationships

Self-Esteem and Relationship Initiation: Relationship Matters Podcast 43 - | - Science of Relationships

"Survey Says": The Valentine's Day Proposal? - | - Science of Relationships

Should You Go See the Fifty Shades of Grey Movie for Valentine’s Day? - | - Science of Relationships

Survey Says: What Do Men Want for Valentine's Day? - | - Science of Relationships

A Feminist Valentine - | - Science of Relationships

Self-Esteem Affects When People Flirt - | - Science of Relationships

Stronger Impulses or Less Control? Why Men Succumb to Sexual Temptations - | - Science of Relationships

2014 Editors' Choice Awards: #2 - How I Met Your Mother's Cheerleader Effect - | - Science of Relationships

2014 Editors' Choice Awards: #3 - Feeling Like a Doormat - | - Science of Relationships

2014 Editors' Choice Awards: #4 - How Your Attachment Influences Relationship Quality - | - Science of Relationships

2014 Editors' Choice Awards: #8 - Don't Let Fear of Rejection Hold You Back - | - Science of Relationships

2014 Editors' Choice Awards: #9 - How Relationship Events Impact You - | - Science of Relationships

2014 Editors' Choice Awards: #12 - Does Your Partner Make You a Better Person? - | - Science of Relationships

2014 Editors' Choice Awards: #15 - Three Pillars for Building a Lasting Relationship - | - Science of Relationships

2014 Editors' Choice Awards: #13 - Are There Benefits to Playing Matchmaker? - | - Science of Relationships

“Clear for Takeoff”: Turbulence in Romantic Relationships - | - Science of Relationships

Putting Your Best Foot Forward: How Insecure People Attract Dates - | - Science of Relationships

Much Ado About Nothing: The Result of Biases about Partners’ Negative Emotions - | - Science of Relationships

Should You Be My Valentine? Research Helps Identify Good and Bad Romantic Relationships - | - Science of Relationships

“Give me a minute”...Before I Behave Badly - | - Science of Relationships

If At First You Don’t Succeed: A Strategy for Effectively Stealing a Romantic Partner - | - Science of Relationships

First, Best, Worst, Forbidden, and Regretted: Kisses and Kissing - | - Science of Relationships

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Five Predictors (and Five Not So Good Predictors) of Relationship Success  - | - Science of Relationships

| - Science of Relationships

Ideal and Actual Marriage Proposals: We Asked, You Answered - | - Science of Relationships

The Pornography Effect on Men and Their Romantic Relationships - | - Science of Relationships

Mythbusting Online Dating - | - Science of Relationships

7 Ways to Use Science to Help Your Partner Meet His or Her Goals - | - Science of Relationships

Do Your Preferences for a Romantic Partner Influence Your Actual Choice of Romantic Partner? - | - Science of Relationships

Negative Consequences of Emotional Suppression: Relationship Matters Podcast 46 - | - Science of Relationships

Face It, Recover the Self to Recover from Break-Up - | - Science of Relationships

I (Don’t) Want 2 B w/ U: Texting, Sexting, and Avoidant Attachment - | - Science of Relationships

The Psychology of Attractiveness Podcast - Preventing Cheating with "Coalitional Mate Retention" - | - Science of Relationships

Do "Birds of a Feather Go Together" or "Opposites Attract"? - | - Science of Relationships

Misattribution in Paradise: Would the Bachelor Contestants Have Connected without all of the Arousal Inducing Dates? - | - Science of Relationships

Two of a Kind?: What Facebook Profile Similarity Says About Couples - | - Science of Relationships

The Ghost of Relationships Past - | - Science of Relationships

All Women Lie - | - Science of Relationships

Creating Closeness: In the Lab and In Real Life - | - Science of Relationships

Who’s Hot, Who’s Not? Time Will Tell - | - Science of Relationships

How Do Romantic Relationships Get Under The Skin? Perceived Partner Responsiveness Predicts Cortisol Profiles 10 Years Later - | - Science of Relationships

Date Night Done Right: How To Maximize the Effects of Spending Time Together - | - Science of Relationships

Rejecting People is Hard to Do: Why People Fail to Turn Down Unwanted Dates - | - Science of Relationships

Break Up Kindly With Compassionate Love - | - Science of Relationships

For Better or for Worse: Attachment and Relationships Over the Long Haul - | - Science of Relationships

Infographic: The 10 Most Interesting Dating Studies of 2014 - | - Science of Relationships

Easy Love: Is it Easier for Some People to Love than it is for Others? - | - Science of Relationships

No Means No? Reading Men’s and Women’s Magazines Linked to Sexual Consent - | - Science of Relationships

Take Your Relationship to the Movies - | - Science of Relationships

An Attitude of Gratitude as a Relationship Rx - | - Science of Relationships

Getting Serious About Cuddling - | - Science of Relationships

Are You Over It? - 4%

Are You Over It?

What Kind of Sexual Personality Do You Have? - | - Science of Relationships

Have To or Want To?: Deciphering Your Partner’s Motivations for Helping You - | - Science of Relationships

Are “Rebound Relationships” Bad? Relationship Matters Podcast 36 - | - Science of Relationships

The "Awesomeness Factor" on Freakonomics Radio - | - Science of Relationships

How Love Usually Goes... - | - Science of Relationships

Hope this was useful because a day of dedicated work went into this:)

This is mainly of interest to Effective Altruism-aligned Less Wrongers. Thanks to Agnes Vishnevkin, Jake Krycia, Will Kiely, Jo Duyvestyn, Alfredo Parra, Jay Quigley, Hunter Glenn, and Rhema Hokama for looking at draft versions of this post. At least one aspiring rationalist who read a draft version of this post, after talking to his girlfriend, decided to adopt this new Valentine's Day tradition, which is some proof of its impact. The more it's shared, the more this new tradition might get taken up, and if you want to share it, I suggest you share the version of this post published on The Life You Can Save blog. It's also cross-posted on the Intentional Insights blog and on the EA Forum.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Valentine’s Day Gift That Saves Lives

Mainstreaming Tell Culture and other rational relationship strategies in this listicle for Lifehack, a very popular self-improvement website, as part of my broader project, Intentional Insights​, of promoting rationality and science-based thinking to a broad audience. What are your thoughts about this piece?

The following problem is best when not described by me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

Although there are many variations, the basic problem can be stated as follows:

There is a single secretarial position to fill.

There are n applicants for the position, and the value of n is known.

The applicants, if seen altogether, can be ranked from best to worst unambiguously.

The applicants are interviewed sequentially in random order, with each order being equally likely.

Immediately after an interview, the interviewed applicant is either accepted or rejected, and the decision is irrevocable.

The decision to accept or reject an applicant can be based only on the relative ranks of the applicants interviewed so far.

The objective of the general solution is to have the highest probability of selecting the best applicant of the whole group. This is the same as maximizing the expected payoff, with payoff defined to be one for the best applicant and zero otherwise.

Application

After reading that you can probably see the application to real life.  There are a series of bad and good assumptions following, some are fair, some are not going to be representative of you.  I am going to try to name them all as I go so that you can adapt them with better ones for yourself.  Assuming that you plan to have children and you will probably be doing so like billions of humans have done so far in a monogamous relationship while married (the entire set of assumptions does not break down for poly relationships or relationship-anarchy, but it gets more complicated).  These assumptions help us populate the Secretary problem with numbers in relation to dating for the purpose of children.

If you assume that a biological female's clock ends at 40. (in that its hard and not healthy for the baby if you try to have a kid past that age), that is effectively the end of the pure and simple biological purpose of relationships. (environment, IVF and adoption aside for a moment).  (yes there are a few more years on that)

For the purpose of this exercise – as a guy – you can add a few years for the potential age gap you would tolerate. (i.e. my parents are 7 years apart, but that seems like a big understanding and maturity gap – they don't even like the same music), I personally expect I could tolerate an age gap of 4-5 years.

If you make the assumption that you start your dating life around the ages of 16-18. that gives you about [40-18=22]  22-24 (+5 for me as a male), years of expected dating potential time.

If you estimate the number of kids you want to have, and count either:

3 years for each kid OR

2 years for each kid (+1 kid – AKA 2 years)

(Twins will throw this number off, but estimate that they take longer to recover from, or more time raising them to manageable age before you have time to have another kid)

My worked example is myself – as a child of 3, with two siblings of my own I am going to plan to have 3 children. Or 8-9 years of child-having time. If we subtract that from the number above we end up with 11-16 (16-21 for me being a male) years of dating time.

Also if you happen to know someone with a number of siblings (or children) and a family dynamic that you like; then you should consider that number of children for yourself. Remember that as a grown-up you are probably travelling through the world with your siblings beside you.  Which can be beneficial (or detrimental) as well, I would be using the known working model of yourself or the people around you to try to predict whether you will benefit or be at a disadvantage by having siblings.  As they say; You can't pick your family - for better and worse.  You can pick your friends, if you want them to be as close as a default family - that connection goes both ways - it is possible to cultivate friends that are closer than some families.  However you choose to live your life is up to you.

Assume that once you find the right person - getting married (the process of organising a wedding from the day you have the engagement rings on fingers); and falling pregnant (successfully starting a viable pregnancy) takes at least a year. Maybe two depending on how long you want to be "we just got married and we aren't having kids just yet". It looks like 9-15 (15-20 for male adjusted) years of dating.

With my 9-15 years; I estimate a good relationship of working out whether I want to marry someone, is between 6 months and 2 years, (considering as a guy I will probably be proposing and putting an engagement ring on someone's finger - I get higher say about how long this might take than my significant other does.), (This is about the time it takes to evaluate whether you should put the ring on someone's finger).  For a total of 4 serious relationships on the low and long end and 30 serious relationships on the upper end. (7-40 male adjusted relationships)

Of course that's not how real life works. Some relationships will be longer and some will be shorter. I am fairly confident that all my relationships will fall around those numbers.

I have a lucky circumstance; I have already had a few serious relationships (substitute your own numbers in here).  With my existing relationships I can estimate how long I usually spend in a relationship. (2year + 6 year + 2month + 2month /4 = 2.1 years). Which is to say that I probably have a maximum and total of around 7-15 relationships before I gotta stop expecting to have kids, or start compromising on having 3 kids.

A solution to the secretary equation

A known solution that gives you the best possible candidate the most of the time is to try out 1/e candidates (or roughly 36%), then choose the next candidate that is better than the existing candidates. For my numbers that means to go through 3-7 relationships and then choose the next relationship that is better than all the ones before.  

I don't quite like that.  It depends on how big your set is; as to what the chance of you having the best candidate in the first 1/e trials and then sticking it out till the last candidate, and settling on them.  (this strategy has a ((1/n)*(1/e)) chance of just giving you the last person in the set - which is another opportunity cost risk - what if they are rubbish? Compromise on the age gap, the number of kids or the partners quality...)  If the set is 7, the chance that the best candidate is in the first 1/e is 5.26% (if the set is 15 - the chance is much lower at 2.45%).  

Opportunity cost

Each further relationship you have might be costing you another 2 years to get further out of touch with the next generation (kids these days!)  I tend to think about how old I will be when my kids are 15-20 am I growing rapidly out of touch with the next younger generation?  Two years is a very big opportunity spend - another 2 years could see you successfully running a startup and achieving lifelong stability at the cost of the opportunity to have another kid.  I don't say this to crush you with fear of inaction; but it should factor in along with other details of your situation.

A solution to the risk of having the best candidate in your test phase; or to the risk of lost opportunity - is to lower the bar; instead of choosing the next candidate that is better than all the other candidates; choose the next candidate that is better than 90% of the candidates so far.  Incidentally this probably happens in real life quite often.  In a stroke of, "you'll do"...

Where it breaks down

Real life is more complicated than that. I would like to think that subsequent relationships that I get into will already not suffer the stupid mistakes of the last ones; As well as the potential opportunity cost of exploration. The more time you spend looking for different partners – you might lose your early soul mate, or might waste time looking for a better one when you can follow a "good enough" policy. No one likes to know they are "good enough", but we do race the clock in our lifetimes. Life is what happens when you are busy making plans.

As someone with experience will know - we probably test and rule out bad partners in a single conversation, where we don't even get so far as a date.  Or don't last more than a week. (I. E the experience set is growing through various means).

People have a tendency to overrate the quality of a relationship while they are in it, versus the ones that already failed.

Did I do something wrong? 

“I got married early - did I do something wrong (or irrational)?”

No.  equations are not real life.  It might have been nice to have the equation, but you obviously didn't need it.  Also this equation assumes a monogamous relationship.  In real life people have overlapping relationships, you can date a few people and you can be poly. These are all factors that can change the simple assumptions of the equation. 

Where does the equation stop working?

Real life is hard.  It doesn't fall neatly into line, it’s complicated, it’s ugly, it’s rough and smooth and clunky.  But people still get by.  Don’t be afraid to break the rule. 

Disclaimer: If this equation is the only thing you are using to evaluate a relationship - it’s not going to go very well for you.  I consider this and many other techniques as part of my toolbox for evaluating decisions.

Should I break up with my partner?

What? no!  Following an equation is not a good reason to live your life.  

Does your partner make you miserable?  Then yes you should break up.

Do you feel like they are not ready to have kids yet and you want to settle down?  Tough call.  Even if they were agents also doing the equation; An equation is not real life.  Go by your brain; go by your gut.  Don’t go by just one equation.

Expect another post soon about reasonable considerations that should be made when evaluating relationships.

The given problem makes the assumption that you are able to evaluate partners in the sense that the secretary problem expects.  Humans are not all strategic and can’t really do that.  This is why the world is not going to perfectly follow this equation.  Life is complicated; there are several metrics that make a good partner and they don’t always trade off between one another.

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Meta: writing time - 3 hours over a week; 5+ conversations with people about the idea, bothering a handful of programmers and mathematicians for commentary on my thoughts, and generally a whole bunch of fun talking about it.  This post was started on the slack channel when someone asked a related question.

My table of contents for other posts in my series.

Let me know if this post was helpful or if it worked for you or why not.

When you think of "ultimatums", what comes to mind?

Manipulativeness, maybe? Ultimatums are typically considered a negotiation tactic, and not a very pleasant one.

But there's a different thing that can happen, where an ultimatum is made, but where articulating it isn't a speech act but rather an observation. As in, the ultimatum wasn't created by the act of stating it, but rather, it already existed in some sense.

Some concrete examples: negotiating relationships

I had a tense relationship conversation a few years ago. We'd planned to spend the day together in the park, and I was clearly angsty, so my partner asked me what was going on. I didn't have a good handle on it, but I tried to explain what was uncomfortable for me about the relationship, and how I was confused about what I wanted. After maybe 10 minutes of this, she said, "Look, we've had this conversation before. I don't want to have it again. If we're going to do this relationship, I need you to promise we won't have this conversation again."

I thought about it. I spent a few moments simulating the next months of our relationship. I realized that I totally expected this to come up again, and again. Earlier on, when we'd had the conversation the first time, I hadn't been sure. But it was now pretty clear that I'd have to suppress important parts of myself if I was to keep from having this conversation.

"...yeah, I can't promise that," I said.

"I guess that's it then."

"I guess so."

I think a more self-aware version of me could have recognized, without her prompting, that my discomfort represented an unreconcilable part of the relationship, and that I basically already wanted to break up.

The rest of the day was a bit weird, but it was at least nice that we had resolved this. We'd realized that it was a fact about the world that there wasn't a serious relationship that we could have that we both wanted.

I sensed that when she posed the ultimatum, she wasn't doing it to manipulate me. She was just stating what kind of relationship she was interested in. It's like if you go to a restaurant and try to order a pad thai, and the waiter responds, "We don't have rice noodles or peanut sauce. You either eat somewhere else, or you eat something other than a pad thai."

An even simpler example would be that at the start of one of my relationships, my partner wanted to be monogamous and I wanted to be polyamorous (i.e. I wanted us both to be able to see other people and have other partners). This felt a bit tug-of-war-like, but eventually I realized that actually I would prefer to be single than be in a monogamous relationship.

I expressed this.

It was an ultimatum! "Either you date me polyamorously or not at all." But it wasn't me "just trying to get my way".

I guess the thing about ultimatums in the territory is that there's no bluff to call.

It happened in this case that my partner turned out to be really well-suited for polyamory, and so this worked out really well. We'd decided that if she got uncomfortable with anything, we'd talk about it, and see what made sense. For the most part, there weren't issues, and when there were, the openness of our relationship ended up just being a place where other discomforts were felt, not a generator of disconnection.

Normal ultimatums vs ultimatums in the territory

I use "in the territory" to indicate that this ultimatum isn't just a thing that's said but a thing that is true independently of anything being said. It's a bit of a poetic reference to the map-territory distinction.

No bluffing: preferences are clear

The key distinguishing piece with UITTs is, as I mentioned above, that there's no bluff to call: the ultimatum-maker isn't secretly really really hoping that the other person will choose one option or the other. These are the two best options as far as they can tell. They might have a preference: in the second story above, I preferred a polyamorous relationship to no relationship. But I preferred both of those to a monogamous relationship, and the ultimatum in the territory was me realizing and stating that.

This can actually be expressed formally, using what's called a preference vector. This comes from Keith Hipel at University of Waterloo. If the tables in this next bit doesn't make sense, don't worry about it: all important conclusions are expressed in the text.

First, we'll note that since each of us have two options, a table can be constructed which shows four possible states (numbered 0-3 in the boxes).

This representation is sometimes referred to as matrix form or normal form, and has the advantage of making it really clear who controls which state transitions (movements between boxes). Here, my decision controls which column we're in, and my partner's decision controls which row we're in.

Next, we can consider: of these four possible states, which are most and least preferred, by each person? Here's my preferences, ordered from most to least preferred, left to right. The 1s in the boxes mean that the statement on the left is true.

The order of the states represents my preferences (as I understand them) regardless of what my potential partner's preferences are. I only control movement in the top row (do I insist on polyamory or not). It's possible that they prefer no relationship to a poly relationship, in which case we'll end up in state 2. But I still prefer this state over state 1 (mono relationship) and state 0 (in which I don't ask for polyamory and my partner decides not to date me anyway). So whatever my partners preferences are, I've definitely made a good choice for me, by insisting on polyamory.

This wouldn't be true if I were bluffing (if I preferred state 1 to state 2 but insisted on polyamory anyway). If I preferred 1 to 2, but I bluffed by insisting on polyamory, I would basically be betting on my partner preferring polyamory to no relationship, but this might backfire and get me a no relationship, when both of us (in this hypothetical) would have preferred a monogamous relationship to that. I think this phenomenon is one reason people dislike bluffy ultimatums.

My partner's preferences turned out to be...

You'll note that they preferred a poly relationship to no relationship, so that's what we got! Although as I said, we didn't assume that everything would go smoothly. We agreed that if this became uncomfortable for my partner, then they would tell me and we'd figure out what to do. Another way to think about this is that after some amount of relating, my partner's preference vector might actually shift such that they preferred no relationship to our polyamorous one. In which case it would no longer make sense for us to be together.

UITTs release tension, rather than creating it

In writing this post, I skimmed a wikihow article about how to give an ultimatum, in which they say:

"Expect a negative reaction. Hardly anyone likes being given an ultimatum. Sometimes it may be just what the listener needs but that doesn't make it any easier to hear."

I don't know how accurate the above is in general. I think they're talking about ultimatums like "either you quit smoking or we break up". I can say that expect that these properties of an ultimatum contribute to the negative reaction:

• stated angrily or otherwise demandingly
• more extreme than your actual preferences, because you're bluffing
• refers to what they need to do, versus your own preferences

So this already sounds like UITTs would have less of a negative reaction.

But I think the biggest reason is that they represent a really clear articulation of what one party wants, which makes it much simpler for the other party to decide what they want to do. Ultimatums in the territory tend to also be more of a realization that you then share, versus a deliberate strategy. And this realization causes a noticeable release of tension in the realizer too.

Let's contrast:

"Either you quit smoking or we break up!"

versus

"I'm realizing that as much as I like our relationship, it's really not working for me to be dating a smoker, so I've decided I'm not going to. Of course, my preferred outcome is that you stop smoking, not that we break up, but I realize that might not make sense for you at this point."

Of course, what's said here doesn't necessarily correspond to the preference vectors shown above. Someone could say the demanding first thing when they actually do have a UITT preference-wise, and someone who's trying to be really NVCy or something might say the sceond thing even though they're actually bluffing and would prefer to . But I think that in general they'll correlate pretty well.

The "realizing" seems similar to what happened to me 2 years ago on my own, when I realized that the territory was issuing me an ultimatum: either you change your habits or you fail at your goals. This is how the world works: your current habits will get you X, and you're declaring you want Y. On one level, it was sad to realize this, because I wanted to both eat lots of chocolate and to have a sixpack. Now this ultimatum is really in the territory.

Another example could be realizing that not only is your job not really working for you, but that it's already not-working to the extent that you aren't even really able to be fully productive. So you don't even have the option of just working a bit longer, because things are only going to get worse at this point. Once you realize that, it can be something of a relief, because you know that even if it's hard, you're going to find something better than your current situation.

Loose ends

More thoughts on the break-up story

One exercise I have left to the reader is creating the preference vectors for the break-up in the first story. HINT: (rot13'd) Vg'f fvzvyne gb gur cersrerapr irpgbef V qvq fubj, jvgu gjb qrpvfvbaf: fur pbhyq vafvfg ba ab shgher fhpu natfgl pbairefngvbaf be abg, naq V pbhyq pbagvahr gur eryngvbafuvc be abg.

An interesting note is that to some extent in that case I wasn't even expressing a preference but merely a prediction that my future self would continue to have this angst if it showed up in the relationship. So this is even more in the territory, in some senses. In my model of the territory, of course, but yeah. You can also think of this sort of as an unconscious ultimatum issued by the part of me that already knew I wanted to break up. It said "it's preferable for me to express angst in this relationship than to have it be angst free. I'd rather have that angst and have it cause a breakup than not have the angst."

Revealing preferences

I think that ultimatums in the territory are also connected to what I've called Reveal Culture (closely related to Tell Culture, but framed differently). Reveal cultures have the assumption that in some fundamental sense we're on the same side, which makes negotiations a very different thing... more of a collaborative design process. So it's very compatible with the idea that you might just clearly articulate your preferences.

Note that there doesn't always exist a UITT to express. In the polyamory example above, if I'd preferred a mono relationship to no relationship, then I would have had no UITT (though I could have bluffed). In this case, it would be much harder for me to express my preferences, because if I leave them unclear then there can be kind of implicit bluffing. And even once articulated, there's still no obvious choice. I prefer this, you prefer that. We need to compromise or something. It does seem clear that, with these preferences, if we don't end up with some relationship at the end, we messed up... but deciding how to resolve it is outside the scope of this post.

Knowing your own preferences is hard

Another topic this post will point at but not explore is: how do you actually figure out what you want? I think this is a mix of skill and process. You can get better at the general skill by practising trying to figure it out (and expressing it / acting on it when you do, and seeing if that works out well). One process I can think of that would be helpful is Gendlin's Focusing. Nate Soares has written about how introspection is hard and to some extent you don't ever actually know what you want: You don't get to know what you're fighting for. But, he notes,

"There are facts about what we care about, but they aren't facts about the stars. They are facts about us."

And they're hard to figure out. But to the extent that we can do so and then act on what we learn, we can get more of what we want, in relationships, in our personal lives, in our careers, and in the world.

(This article crossposted from my personal blog.)

Speaking from personal experience, finding the right relationship can be HARD. I recently came across a rational take on finding relationship partners, much of which really resonated with my experiences:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-part-2.html

(I'm still working my way through the Sequences, and lw has more than eight thousand articles with "relationship" in them. I'm not promising the linked articles include unique information)

Background:

I was very recently (3 weeks now) in a relationship that lasted for 5.5 years. My partner had been fantastic through all those years and we were suffering no conflict, no fights, no strain or tension. My partner also was prone to depression, and is/was going through an episode of depression. I am usually a major source of support at these times. Six months ago we opened our relationship. I wasn't dating anyone (mostly due to busy-ness), and my partner was, though not seriously. I felt him pulling away somewhat, which I (correctly) attributed mostly to depression and which nonetheless caused me some occasional moments of jealousy. But I was overall extremely happy with this relationship, very committed, and still very much in love as well. It was quite a surprise when my partner broke up with me one Wednesday evening. 

After we had a good cry together, the next morning I woke up and immediately started researching what the literature said about breaking up. My goals were threefold:

1. Stop feeling so sad in the immediate moment
2. "Get over" my partner
3. Internalize any gains I had made over the course of our relationship or any lessons I had learned from the break up

I made most of my gains in the first few days, by day 3 I was 50% over it. Two weeks later I was 90% over the relationship, with a few hold-over habits and tendencies (like feeling responsible for improving his emotional state) which are currently too strong but which will serve me well in our continuing friendship. My ex, on the other hand (no doubt partially due to the depression) is fine most of the time but unpredictably becomes extremely sad for hours on end. Originally this was guilt at having hurt me but now it is mostly nostalgia+isolation based. I hope to continue being close friends and I've been doing my best to support him emotionally, at the distance of a friend.  Below are the states of mind and strategies that allowed me to get over it more quickly and with good personal growth. 

Note: mileage may vary. I have low neuroticism and a slightly higher than average base level of happiness. You might not get over the relationship in 2 weeks, but your getting-over-it will certainly be sped up from their default speed.

Strategies (in order of importance)

1. Decide you don't want to get back in the relationship. Decide that it is over and given the opportunity, you will not get back with this person. If you were the breaker-upper, you can skip this step.

Until you can do this, it is unlikely that you will get over it. It's hard to ignore an impulse that you agree with wholeheartedly. If you're always hoping for an opportunity or an argument or a situation that will bring you back together, much of your mental energy will go towards formulating those arguments, planning for that situation, imagining that opportunity. Some of the below strategies can still be used, but spend some serious time on this first one. It's the foundation of everything else. There are some facts that can help you convince the logical part of brain that this is the correct attitude. 

• People in on-and-off relationships are less satisfied, feel more anxiety about their relationship status, and continue to cycle on-and-off even after couples add additional constraints like cohabitation or marriage
• People in tumultuous relationships are much less happy than singles
• Wanting to stay in a relationship is reinforced by many biases (status quo bias, ambiguity effect, choice supportive bias, loss aversion, mere-exposure effect, ostrich effect). For someone to break through all those biases and end things, they must be extremely unhappy. If your continuing relationship makes someone you love extremely unhappy, it is a disservice again to capitalize on those biases in a moment of weakness and return to the relationship.
• Being in a relationship with someone who isn't excited about and pleased by you is settling for an inferior quality of relationship. The amazing number of date-able people in the world means settling for this is not an optimal decision. Contrast this to a tribal situation where replacing a lost mate was difficult or impossible. All these feelings of wanting to get back together evolved in a situation of scarcity, but we live in a world of plenty. 
• Intermittent rewards are the most powerful, so an on-again-off-again relationship has the power to make you commit to things you would never commit to given a new relationship. The more hot-and-cold your partner is, the more rewarding the relationship seems and the less likely you are to be happy in the long term. Only you can end that tantalizing possibility of intermittent rewards by resolving not to partake if the opportunity arises. 
• Even if some extenuating circumstance could explain away their intention to break up (depression, bipolar, long-distance, etc), it is belittling to your ex-partner to try to invalidate their stated feelings. Do not fall into the trap of feeling that you know more about a person's inner state than they do. Take it at face value and act accordingly. Even if this is only a temporary state of mind for them, it is unlikely that they will never ever again be in the same state of mind. 

2. Talk to other people about the good things that came of your break-up.  (This can also help you arrive at #1, not wanting to get back together)

I speculate that benefits from this come from three places. First, talking about good thinks makes you notice good things and talking in a positive attitude makes you feel positive. Second, it re-emphasizes to your brain that losing your significant other does not mean losing your social support network. Third, it acts as a mild commitment mechanism - it would be a loss of face to go on about how great you're doing outside the relationship and later have to explain you jumped back in at the first opportunity.

You do not need to be purely positive. If you are feeling sadness, it sometimes helps to talk about this. But don't dwell only on the sadness when you talk. When I was talking to my very close friends about all aspects of my feelings, I still tried to say two positive things for every negative thing. For example: "It was a surprise, which was jarring and unpleasant and upended my life plans in these ways. But being a surprise, I didn't have time to dread and dwell on it beforehand. And breaking up sooner is preferable to a long decline in happiness for both parties, so its better to break up as soon as it becomes clear to either party that the path is headed downhill, even if it is surprising to the other party."

Talk about the positives as often as possible without alienating people. The people you talk to do not need to be serious close friends. I spend a collective hour and a half talking to two OKCupid dates about how many good things came from the break up. (Both dates had been scheduled before actually breaking up, both people had met me once prior, and both dates went surprisingly well due to sympathy, escalating self-disclosure, and positive tone. I signaled that I am an emotionally healthy person dealing well with an understandably difficult situation). 

If you feel that you don't have any candidates for good listeners either because the break up was due to some mistake or infidelity of yours, or because you are socially isolated/anxious, writing is an effective alternative to talking. Study participants recovered quicker when they spent 15 minutes writing about the positive aspects of their break up, participants with three 15 minute sessions did better still. And it can benefit anyone to keep a running list of positives to can bring up out in conversation. 

3. Create a social support system

Identify who in your social network can still be relied on as a confidant and/or a neutral listener. You would be surprised at who still cares about you. In my breakup, my primary confidant was my ex's cousin, who also happens to be  my housemate and close friend. His mom and best friend, both in other states, also made the effort to inquire about my state of mind. Most of the time, even people who you consider your partner's friends still feel enough allegiance to you and enough sympathy to be good listeners and through listening they can become your friends. 

If you don't currently have a support system, make one! OKCupid is a great resource for meeting friends outside of just dating, and people are way way more likely to want to meet you if you message them with a "just looking for friends" type message. People  you aren't currently close to but who you know and like can become better friends if you are willing to reveal personal/vulnerable stories. Escalating self-disclosure+symmetrical vulnerability=feelings of friendship. Break ups are a great time for this to happen because you've got a big vulnerability, and one which almost everyone has experienced. Everyone has stories to share and advice to give on the topic of breaking up. 

4. Intentionally practice differentiation

One of the most painful parts of a break up is that so much of your sense-of-self is tied into your relationship. You will be basically rebuilding your sense of self. Depending on the length and the committed-ness of the relationship, you may be rebuilding it from the ground up. Think of this as an opportunity. You can rebuild it an any way you desire. All the things you used to like before your relationship, all the interests and hobbies you once cared about, those can be reincorporated into your new, differentiated sense of self. You can do all the things you once wished you did.

Spend at least 5 minutes thinking about what your best self looks like. What kind of person do you wish to be? This is a great opportunity to make some resolutions. Because you have a fresh start, and because these resolutions are about self-identification, they are much more likely to stick. Just be sure to frame them in relation to your sense-of-self: not 'I will exercise,' instead 'I'm a fit active person, the kind of person who exercises' not 'I want to improve my Spanish fluency' but 'I'm a Spanish speaking polygot, the kind of person who is making an big effort to become fluent.'

Language is also a good tool to practice differentiation. Try not to use the word "we," "us," of "our," even in your head. From now on, it is "s/he and I," "me and him/her," or "mine and his/hers." Practice using the word "ex" a lot. Memories are re-formulated and overwritten each time we revisit them, so in your memories make sure to think of you two as separate independent people and not as a unit.  

5. Make use of the following mental frameworks to re-frame your thinking:

Over the relationship vs. over the person

You do not have to stop having romantic, tender, or lustful feelings about your ex to get over the relationship. Those type of feelings are not easily controlled, but you can have those same feelings for good friends or crushes without it destroying your ability to have a meaningful platonic relationship, why should this be different?

Being over the relationship means: 

• Not feeling as though you are missing out on being part of a relationship.
• Not dwelling/ruminating/obsessing about your ex-partner (includes both positive, negative and neutral thoughts "they're so great" and "I hate them and hope they die" and "I wonder what they are up to". 
• Not wishing to be back with your ex-partner.
• Not making plans that include consideration of your ex-partner because these considerations are no longer important (this includes considerations like "this will make him/her feel sorry I'm gone," or "this will show him/her that I'm totally over it")
• Being able to interact with people without your ex-partner at your side and not feel weird about it, especially things you used to do together (eg. a shared hobby or at a party)
• In very lucky peaceful-breakup situations, being able to interact with your ex-partner and maybe even their current romantic interests without it being too horribly weird and unpleasant.

On the other hand, being over a person means experiencing no pull towards that person, romantic, emotional, or sexual. If your break up was messy, you can be over the person without being over the relationship. This is often when people turn to messy and unsatisfying rebound relationships. It is far far more important to be over the relationship, and some of us (me included) will just have to make peace with never being over the person, with the help of knowing that having a crush on someone does not necessarily have the power to make you miserable or destroy your friendship. 

Obsessive thinking and cravings

If you used a brain scanner to look at a person who has been recently broken up with, and then you used the same brain scanner to look at someone who recently sobered up from an addictive drug, their brain activity would be very similar. So similar, in fact, that some neurologists speculate that addiction hijacks the circuits for romantic obsession (there is a very plausible evolutionary reason for romantic obsession to exist in early human tribal societies. Addiction, less so). 

In cases of addiction/craving, you can't just force your mind to stop thinking thoughts you don't like. But you can change your relationship with those thoughts. Recognize when they happen. Identify them as a craving rather than a true need. Recognize that, when satisfied, cravings temporarily diminish and then grow stronger (you've rewarded your brain for that behavior). These are thoughts without substance. The impulse they drive you towards will increase, rather than decrease, unpleasant feelings. 

When I first broke up, I had a couple very unpleasant hours of rumination, thinking uncontrollably about the same topics over and over despite those topics being painful. At some point I realized that continuing to merely think about the break up was also addictive. My craving circuits just picked the one set of thoughts I couldn't argue against so that my brain could go on obsessively dwelling without me being able to pull a logic override. These thoughts SEEM like goal oriented thinking, they FEEL productive, but they are a wolf in sheep's clothing.

In my specific case, my brain was concern trolling me. Concern trolling on the internet is when someone expresses sympathy and concern while actually having ulterior motives (eg on a body-positive website, fat shaming with: "I'm so glad you're happy but I'm concerned that people will think less of you because of your weight"). In my case, I was worrying about my ex's depression and his state of mind, which are very hard thoughts to quash. Empathy and caring are good, right? And he really was going through a hard time. Maybe I should call and check up on him.... My brain was concern trolling me. 

Depending on how your relationship ended, your brain could be trolling in other ways. Flaming seems to be a popular set of unstoppable thoughts. If you can't argue with the thought that the jerk is a horrible person, then THAT is the easiest way for your brain's addictive circuits to happily go on obsessing about this break up. Nostalgia is also a popular option. If the memories were good, then it's hard to argue with those thoughts. If you're a well trained rationalist, you might notice that you are feeling confused and then burn up many brain cycles trying to resolve your confusion by making sense of a fact, despite it not being a rational thing. Your addictive circuits can even hijack good rationalist habits. Other common ruminations are problem solving, simulating possible futures, regret, counter-factual thinking. 

As I said, you can't force these parts of your brain to just shut up. That's not how craving works. But you can take away their power by recognizing that all your ruminating is just these circuits hijacking your normal thought process. Say to yourself "I feeling an urge to call and yell at him/her, but so what. Its just a meaningless craving."

What you lose

There is a great sense of loss that comes with the end of a relationship. For some people, it is a similar feeling to actually being in mourning. Revisiting memories becomes painful, things you used to do together are suddenly tinged with sadness. 

I found it helpful to think of my relationship as a book. A book with some really powerful life-changing passages in the early chapters, a good rising action, great characters. A book which made me a better person by reading it. But a book with a stupid deus ex machina ending that totally invalidated the foreshadowing in the best passages. Finishing the book can be frustrating and saddening, but the first chapters of book still exist. Knowing that the ending sucks isn't going to stop the first chapters from being awesome and entertaining and powerful. And I could revisit those first chapters any time I liked. I could just read my favorite parts without needing to read the whole stupid ending. 

You don't lose your memories. You don't lose your personal growth. Any gains you made while you were with someone, anything new that they introduced you to, or helped you to improve on, or nagged at you till you had a new better habit, you get to keep all of those. That show you used to watch together, it is still there and you still get to watch it and care about it without him/her. The bar you used to visit together is still there too. All those photos are still great pictures of both of you in interesting places. Depending on the situation of the break up, your mutual friends are still around. Even your ex still exists and is still the same person you liked before, and breaking up doesn't mean you'll never see them again unless that's what you guys want/need. 

The only thing you definitely lose at the end of a relationship is the future of that relationship. You are losing something that hasn't happened yet, something which never existed. The only thing you are losing is what you imagined someday having. It's something similar to the endowment effect: you assumed this future was yours so you assigned it a lot of value. But it never was yours, you've lost something which doesn't exist. It's still a painful experience, but realizing all of this helped me a lot. 

Additional Reading:

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Dealing_with_a_Major_Personal_Crisis

Addendum:

Comparisons and self-esteem:

Brains are built to compare and optimize, so one difficult problem I've faced in the months after the break up was seeing my ex date other people. I had trouble because my unconscious impulse is to think "he has chosen them over me." This thinking pattern is instant, unconscious, and hard to break. And it comes with a big hit to either self esteem or my willingness to humanize these actual humans he is dating.

It was helpful to remind myself that the break up occurred because the relationship was broken. There is a heavy opportunity cost to date someone with whom it can never work out or with whom you are not happy. That opportunity cost is the freedom to seek a better relationship. So I shouldn't be comparing myself to any flesh-and-blood person. He chose opportunity and freedom over me. And its just not possible to compare yourself to a a concept like that in a way that makes sense. The people that come as a result that choice are irrelevant.

Milestones:

It took me 2 weeks to be over this particular relationship, it took me a month and a half to not wish I was in some relationship, to get excited and happy about being single. It was 3 months before dating and experiencing new people started to sound like it might be fun/interesting.

Long Tail of Sadness:

During the period after the break up, for about 3 months, I had to be extra careful to have enough sleep, drink enough water, get sunshine, eat enough, and meditate. If my physical state was normal, I almost always felt great, acted normal, and rarely thought about my ex. But if I let myself get into a physical state which would normally cause a generalized bad mood, I would more often find myself ruminating on the break up. Sleep is medicine.

According to evolutionary psychologists as well as the cultural main stream, men are going for sensually attractive women, while women are going for men who can provide them safety (plus other things we don't need to get into here). Whereas we might think that modern, cultured people are somewhat above those basic instincts and actually look for mates which fit their individual character, values, preferences, and interests, the world of online dating seems to throw us back a couple of centuries of progress. Many dating sites have been designed to increase usage and interaction with the site (so that more ads can be shown) and do this by relying a lot on pictures of their users to incite other users' interest. On the other hand, our individual character, values, preferences, and interests (or, ICVPI, for short) are to a large extent represented in text form as either essays or predefined answers to predefined questions. Now, while the text contains a lot of the relevant information, it is severely disadvantaged by this site design. Not only do the pictures have a much higher salience, their presence also directly speaks to our impulses and emotions (or system one, for those who have read Kahneman's "Thinking fast and slow") which hinders the already somewhat harder processing of text by system two.

The result of this click-optimizing is that user's choices whom to contact are much more driven by pictures (and therefore, looks) than by other criteria. This leads to the destructive effect that visually attractive women are swamped in messages among which it is hard and tedious to chose ones to reply to, while the less attractive ones do not have enough choice to find men that match their individual preferences. In other words, the mutual matching between people who might fit each other is more sabotaged than helped by those picture-driven dating sites. 

Now, as a basic rationalist I will of course question my motivations and ask myself if the run for beauty is really for my own best or if it is a learned behavior stemming from our (in this case arguably superficial) culture. If we leave aside the antiquated Freudian principle of "drive" and read psychologists like Rogers and Fromm, we might realize that hunting for beautiful mates is just one way among others for a man to boost his self-esteem, not necessarily a motivator in and of itself. Indeed, modern studies have shown that lasting self-esteem and deep happiness can be created best by exercising our strengths in a meaningful way. (For details and the studies see Seligman's "Authentic Happiness".) Following this argument, if I get my self-esteem and social recognition from (for example) writing awesome blog articles and helping lots of people at work, then this positive emotion will "buffer" (in Seligman's terms) against any judgmental looks and statements that I will be facing when going out with my awesome, but ugly, new girl friend. (Can you hear them saying "what? are you dating her?" in a raising voice that bounces back from the ceiling?)

To sum up, wouldn't it be the most rational thing to simply switch off pictures on the dating site (Firefox currently has AddOns for this, Chrome can do it natively, just type "block" in the search box on the settings page), thus keeping my impulsive system one at calm, write more thoughtful messages, and get more and better responses, both because I am writing to less message-swamped women and because my own messages are better. Then dating will be less like a meaningless competition, the resulting relationships are more profound, and I will find out that my friends are not actually prejudiced against ugly people and will not look down at me for making that choice. Just let go of my own prejudices and false beliefs and I win. Right?

About a year ago, we had a major discussion about procedural knowledge gaps. Here's what was covered....

How to tell whether food is fresh

pjeby claims that eating raw chicken is safe because the gag reflex identifies it fast

How to buy investments

Memorizing the alphabet and other arbitrary lists

Comparison of various how-to sites

General discussion of making things (including Less Wrong) easier to use

How jump start a stalled car.

How to use the Yellow Pages.

Cheap and easy healthy food.

Questions about preparing a simple soup.

Exercise.

Starting relationships, especially for heterosexual men.

Cooking in general.

Browning meat.

How to become bisexual.

How to transfer money from one electronic account to another.

How to buy a used car.

Interacting with police.  (Don't talk to US police! The rules are different in the UK.)

How to speak clearly, slowly, etc..

How to fold a fitted sheet.

How to make a will.

How to order at a bar. Also, some cookbook recommendations.

Tipping in the US.

Tipping in the UK and France.

Spacial orientation.

Personal hygiene-- washing, soap, shampoo.

Haircuts for men.

Haircuts for women.

Growing and maintaining long hair.

Putting a cover on a duvet.

Telling the difference between flirting and friendliness.

Choosing shirts that fit.

Left vs. Right (which hand, not political).

Shaving one's face.

How to end conversations politely.

How to make people laugh.

Mailing large objects in the US.

How to format comments at Less Wrong.

How to declutter.

E readers.

Touch typing.

Dvorak, etc.

How often to see a doctor.

Remembering to be polite.

Tying shoes.

Home maintenance.

What might melt in a dishwasher.

Kitchen knives.

Sorting laundry.

Does cranking up the thermostat heat the house faster?.

More about investment

How to not stutter.

How to be a good manager.

Scrubbing.

How to use Google.

How to talk to strangers.

Potential topics:

How to give clear instructions.

How to see things from other people's point of view

Cool sidetrack: Fish and lightning

Links and quotes:

Why grad school in the humanities is a bad choice One probably could not devise a better system for keeping people with humanistic values away from power than by confining them to decade-long graduate programs with a long future of transient adjunct positions making less than the minimum wage. From Part 2. The first article is a nice example of applying the far view (look at how things are in general) to a personal decision.

Upon reading Eliezer's possible gender dystopias ([catgirls](http://lesswrong.com/lw/xt/interpersonal_entanglement/), and [verthandi](http://lesswrong.com/lw/xu/failed_utopia_42/) and the other LW comments and posts on the subject of future gender relations, I came to a rather different conclusion than the ones I've seen espoused here. After searching around the internet a bit, I discovered that my ideas tend to fall under the general category of "postgenderism", and I am wondering what my fellow LessWrongians think of it. 

This can generally be broken down to the following claims:

1. A higher level of egalitarianism between the sexes increases utility. For example, if only men are generally allowed to do Job A, then you are halving the talent pool of people who can do Job A, AND women who would otherwise be happy in Job A lose that utility. It is equally of dis-utility if only women are socially allowed to be emotionally expressive, etc, etc. In other words, Equality = Good.
2. The differences between men and women are a mix of environmental factors, such as social conditioning, and biological factors, such as varying levels of hormones.
3. Some of these differences are optimal in the current environment, and others are suboptimal. For example-Women have better social skills (good!), but are more prone to depression (bad). Men are better self-promoters (good!), but are more prone to suicide (bad).
4. Should transhumanism occur, it will eliminate the suboptimal differences. We can help people become less suicidal and not depressed.
5. This will lead to a spiraling effect- Fewer *actual* differences will lead to a lessening of socialized differences, which will lead to less actual differences, etc

EDIT- Due to some really insightful comments;

I replaced men being prone to aggression as a negative, with men being prone to suicide.

I made the verbiage a little more explicit that no one would be *forced* to change, but would seek out the changes that transhumanism would have available.

The recent popularity/controversy of articles such as Alicorn's Polyhacking and of course lukeprog's Rationality and Relationships (preceded by his Rationality Lessons from Romance 1 and 2) leads me to believe that this topic deserves a monthly open discussion thread.

I can't think of any rules.  Have at it!

Recently I asked for feedback on two versions of a new post, 'Rationality Lessons from Romance'. 'Version 2' was my original draft. 'Version 1' was a more recent draft edited in response to comments from a collaborator. We wanted to test whether my collaborator's comments genuinely improved the post. Version 2 now sits at 1 upvote and version 1 now sits at 16 upvotes, and I take this to be some evidence in favor of the hypothesis that my collaborator's comments improved the post.

My thanks to those who participated in that experiment; we got the information we wanted!

Thanks also to those of you who provided feedback on either version of the post. Most comments were critical, but this is often the case even with massively upvoted posts like Build Small Skills in the Right Order. My hope is that relationships posts on Less Wrong merely need to be better and more sensitive to a wide variety of sensitivities than my first attempt was, not that sex and relationships are inherently mind-killing topics. There is an amazing interplay between rationality and relationships, and I feel it would be a shame to leave them unexplored.

So I'm trying to learn how LessWrongers can discuss relationships productively.

One difficulty in extracting lessons from the feedback on 'Rationality Lessons from Romance' is that different people had different complaints. Some were 'seriously skeeved-out' by the overtly personal nature of the post, even though earlier posts of a similar personal nature have fared well on Less Wrong, and even though others didn't mind the personal-ness of the post. Some didn't like the promotion of polyamory, others didn't mind. Some thought my interactions with women were unethical, others didn't. Some disagreed with a premise of the post, that sexual jealousy and monogamy are suboptimal for some people. Some felt the brief lessons pulled out from the stories were effective, others didn't. Some thought I was, like Socrates, being skewered for looking at things with too much clarity, others thought my post was weird and confusing.

I may try to rewrite 'Rationality Lessons from Romance', incorporating as much of the feedback as I can. In the meantime, I'd like to ask the Less Wrong community to very different questions:

1. What standard or non-standard rationality lessons can you draw from your own journeys in romance?
2. How have your intimate relationships been affected by your implementation of rationality skills?

Note: I am testing two versions of my new post on rationality and romance.

Please upvote, downvote, or non-vote the below post as you normally would if you saw it on the front page (not the discussion section), but do not vote on the other version. Also, if your last name begins with l–z, please read and vote on this post first. If your last name begins with a–k, please stop reading and read this version instead. 

Rationality Lessons from Romance

Years ago, my first girlfriend (let's call her 'Alice') ran into her ex-boyfriend at a coffee shop. They traded anecdotes, felt connected, a spark of intimacy...

And then she left the coffee shop, quickly.

She told me later: "You have my heart now, Luke."

I felt proud, but even Luke₂₀₀₅ also felt a twinge of "the universe is suboptimal," because she hadn't been able to engage that connection any further. The cultural scripts defining our relationship said that only one man owned her heart. But surely that wasn't optimal for producing utilons?

And thus began my journey toward rational romance — not at that exact moment, but with a series of realizations like that about monogamy, about the assumed progression toward marriage, about the ownership of another person's sexuality, etc. I began to explicitly notice the cultural scripts and see that they might not be optimal for me.

Rationality Skill: Notice when things are suboptimal. Think of ways to optimize them.

Gather data

But I didn't know how to optimize. I needed data. How did relationships work? How did women work? How did attraction work? I decided to become a social psychology nerd. The value of information was high. I began to spend less time with Alice so I could spend more time studying. 

Rationality Skill: Respond to the value of information. Don't keep running in what is probably the wrong direction just because you've got momentum. Stop a moment, and invest some energy in figuring out which direction to go.

Sanity-check yourself

Before long, I noticed that Alice was always pushing me to spend more time with her, and I was always pushing to spend more time studying psychology. I was unhappy, and I knew I could one day attract better mates if I had time to acquire the skills that other men had; men who were "good with women."

So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked. I thought she would appreciate this because she had previously expressed admiration for detailed honesty. Later, I realized how hard it is to think of a more damaging way to break up with someone.

She asked that I kindly never speak to her again. I can't blame her.

Rationality Skill: Know your fields of incompetence. Sanity-check yourself by asking others for advice, or by Googling "how to break up with your girlfriend nicely" or "how to not die on a motorcycle" or whatever.

Study

During the next couple years, I spent no time in (what would have been) sub-par relationships, and instead invested that time optimizing for better relationships in the future. Which meant I was celibate. But learning.

Alas, neither Intimate Relationships nor Handbook of Relationship Initiation existed at the time, but I still learned quite a bit from books like The Red Queen and The Moral Animal. I experienced a long series of 'Aha!' moments, like:

• "Aha! It's not that women prefer jerks to nice guys, but they prefer confident, ambitious men to pushovers."
• "Aha! Body language and fashion matter because they communicate large packets of information about me at light speed, and are harder to fake than words."
• "Aha! Women are attracted to men who make them feel certain ways and have positive subjective experiences. That's why they like funny guys, for example!"

Within a few months, I had more dating-relevant head knowledge than any guy I knew.

Rationalist Skill: Scholarship. Especially if you can do it efficiently, scholarship is a quick and cheap way to level up.

Avoid rationalization

Scholarship was comfortable, so I stayed in scholar mode for too long. I hit diminishing returns in what books could teach me. Every book on dating skills told me to go talk to women, but I thought I needed a completed decision tree first: What if she does this? What if she says that? I won't know what to do if I don't have a plan! I should read 10 more books, so I know how to handle every contingency.

The dating books told me I would think that, but I told myself I was unusually analytical, and could actually benefit from completing the decision tree in advance of actually talking to women.

The dating books told me I would think that, too, and that it was just a rationalization. Really, I was just nervous about the blows that newbie mistakes (and subsequent rejections) would lay upon my ego.

Rationalist Skill: Notice rationalizations and defeat them: Consider the cost of time and trust happening as a result of rationalizing. Consider what opportunities you are missing if you don't just realize you're wrong right now.

Use science

The dating books told me to swallow my fear and talk to women. I couldn't swallow my fear, so I tried E&J brandy instead. That worked.

So I went out and talked to women, mostly at coffee shops or on the street. I learned all kinds of interesting details I hadn't learned in the books:

• Politics, religion, math, and programming are basically never the right subject matter when flirting.
• Keep up the emotional momentum. Don't stay in the same stage of the conversation (rapport, storytelling, self-disclosure, etc.) for very long.
• Almost every gesture or line is improved by adding a big smile.
• 'Hi. I've gotta run, but I think you're cute so we should grab a coffee sometime" totally works when the girl is already attracted because my body language, fashion, and other signals have been optimized.
• People rarely notice an abrupt change of subject if you say "Yeah, it's just like when..." and then say something completely unrelated.

After a while, I could talk to girls even without the brandy. And a little after that, I scored my first one-night stand.

I was surprised by how much I didn't enjoy casual flings. I wasn't very engaged when I didn't know and didn't have much in common with the girl in my bed. But I kept having casual flings, mostly for their educational value. As research projects go, I guess they weren't too bad.

Rationalist Skill: Use empiricism and do-it-yourself science. Just try things. No, seriously.

Try harder

By this time my misgivings about the idea of owning another's sexuality had grown into a full-blown endorsement of polyamory. I needed to deprogram my sexual jealousy, which sounded daunting. Sexual jealousy was hard-wired into me by evolution, right?

It turned out to be easier than I had predicted. Tactics that helped me destroy my capacity for sexual jealousy include:

• Whenever I noticed sexual jealousy in myself, I brought to mind my moral objections to the idea of owning another's sexuality.
• I thought in terms of sexual abundance, not sexual scarcity. When I realized there were thousands of other nearby women I could date, I didn't need to be so needy for any particular girl.
• Mentally, I continually associated 'jealousy' with 'immaturity' and 'neediness' and other concepts that have negative affect for me.

This lack of sexual jealousy came in handy when I grew a mutual attraction with a polyamorous girl who was already dating two of my friends.

Rationality Skill: Have a sense that more is possible. Know that we haven't yet reached the limits of self-modification. Try things. Let your map of what is possible be constrained by evidence, not popular opinion.

Finale

I now enjoy higher-quality relationships — sexual and non-sexual — of a kind that wouldn't be possible with the social skills of Luke₂₀₀₅. I went for years without a partner I cared about, but that's okay because the whole journey was planted with frequent rewards: the thrill of figuring something out, the thrill of seeing people respond to me in a new way, the thrill of seeing myself looking better in the mirror each month.

There might have been a learning curve, but by golly, at the end of all that DIY science and rationality training and scholarship I'm actually seeing an awesome poly girl, I'm free to take up other relationships when I want, I know fashion well enough to teach it at rationality camps, I can build rapport with almost anyone, my hair looks great and I'm happy.

Note: I am testing two versions of my new post on rationality and romance.

Please upvote, downvote, or non-vote the below post as you normally would if you saw it on the front page (not the discussion section), but do not vote on the other version. Also, if your last name begins with a–k, please read and vote on this post first. If your last name begins with l–z, please stop reading and read this version instead. 

Rationality Lessons from Romance

Years ago, my first girlfriend (let's call her 'Alice') ran into her ex-boyfriend at a coffee shop. They traded anecdotes, felt connected, a spark of intimacy...

And then she left the coffee shop, quickly.

She told me later: "You have my heart now, Luke."

I felt proud, but even Luke₂₀₀₅ also felt a twinge of "the universe is suboptimal," because she hadn't been able to engage that connection any further. The cultural scripts defining our relationship said that only one man owned her heart. But surely that wasn't optimal for producing utilons?

This is an account of some lessons that I learned during my journey into rational romance. That journey started with a series of realizations like the one above — that I wasn't happy with the standard cultural scripts: monogamy, an assumed progression toward marriage, and ownership of another person's sexuality. I hadn't really noticed the cultural scripts up until that point. I was a victim of cached thoughts and a cached self.

Lesson: Until you explicitly notice the cached rules for what you're doing, you won't start thinking of them as something to be optimized. Ask: Which parts of romance do you currently think of as subjects of optimization? What else should you be optimizing?

Gather data

At the time, I didn't know how to optimize. I decided I needed data. How did relationships work? How did women work? How did attraction work? The value of information was high, so I decided to become a social psychology nerd. I began to spend less time with Alice so I could spend more time studying. 

Lesson: Respond to the value of information. Once you notice you might be running in the wrong direction, don't keep going that way just because you've got momentum. Stop a moment, and invest some energy in the thoughts or information you've now realized is valuable because it might change your policies, i.e., figuring out which direction to go.

Sanity-check yourself

Before long, I noticed that Alice was always pushing me to spend more time with her, and I was always pushing to spend more time studying psychology. I was unhappy, and I knew I could one day attract better mates if I had time to acquire the skills that other men had; men who were "good with women."

So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked. I thought she would appreciate this because she had previously expressed admiration for detailed honesty.

She asked that I kindly never speak to her again. I can't blame her. In retrospect, it's hard to think of a more damaging way to break up with someone. This gives you some idea of just how incompetent I was, at the time. I had an inkling of that myself - though I'm not sure if I realized right away, or if it only dawned on me six months later. But it was part of the motivation to solve my problems by reading books.

Lesson: Know your fields of incompetence. If you suspect you may be incompetent, sanity-check yourself by asking others for advice, or by Googling. (E.g. "how to break up with your girlfriend nicely", or "how to not die on a motorcycle" or whatever.)

Study

During the next couple years, I spent no time in (what would have been) sub-par relationships, and instead invested that time optimizing for better relationships in the future. Which meant I was celibate.

Neither Intimate Relationships nor Handbook of Relationship Initiation existed at the time, but I still learned quite a bit from books like The Red Queen and The Moral Animal. I experienced a long series of 'Aha!' moments, like:

• "Aha! It's not that women prefer jerks to nice guys, but they prefer confident, ambitious men to pushovers."
• "Aha! Body language and fashion matter because they communicate large packets of information about me at light speed, and are harder to fake than words."
• "Aha! Women are attracted to men with whom they have positive subjective experiences. That's why they like funny guys, for example!"

Within a few months, I had more dating-relevant head knowledge than any guy I knew.

Lesson: Use scholarship. Especially if you can do it efficiently, scholarship is a quick and cheap way to gain a certain class of experience points.

Just try it / just test yourself

Scholarship was warm and comfy, so I stayed in scholar mode for too long. I hit diminishing returns in what books could teach me. Every book on dating skills told me to go talk to women, but I thought I needed a completed decision tree first: What if she does this? What if she says that? I won't know what to do if I don't have a plan! I should read 10 more books, so I know how to handle every contingency.

The dating books told me I would think that, but I told myself I was unusually analytical, and could actually benefit from completing the decision tree in advance of actually talking to women.

The dating books told me I would think that, too, and that it was just a rationalization. Really, I was just nervous about the blows that newbie mistakes (and subsequent rejections) would lay upon my ego.

Lesson: Be especially suspicious of rationalizations for not obeying the empiricist rules "try it and see what happens" or "test yourself to see what happens" or "get some concrete experience on the ground". Think of the cost of time happening as a result of rationalizing. Consider the opportunities you are missing if you don't just realize you're wrong right now.

Use science, and maybe drugs

The dating books told me to swallow my fear and talk to women. I couldn't swallow my fear, so I tried swallowing brandy instead. That worked.

So I went out and talked to women, mostly at coffee shops or on the street. I learned all kinds of interesting details I hadn't learned in the books:

• Politics, religion, math, and programming are basically never the right subject matter when flirting.
• Keep up the emotional momentum. Don't stay in the same stage of the conversation (rapport, storytelling, self-disclosure, etc.) for very long.
• Almost every gesture or line is improved by adding a big smile.
• 'Hi. I've gotta run, but I think you're cute so we should grab a coffee sometime" totally works — as long as the other person is already attracted because my body language, fashion, and other signals have been optimized.
• People rarely notice an abrupt change of subject if you say "Yeah, it's just like when..." and then say something completely unrelated.

After a while, I could talk to women even without the brandy. And a little after that, I had my first one-night stand.

I was surprised by how much I didn't enjoy casual flings. I didn't feel engaged when I didn't know and didn't have much in common with the girl in my bed. But I kept having casual flings, mostly for their educational value. As research projects go, I guess they weren't too bad.

Lesson: Use empiricism and do-it-yourself science. Just try things. No, seriously.

Self-modify to succeed

By this time my misgivings about the idea of owning another's sexuality had grown into a full-blown endorsement of polyamory. I needed to deprogram my sexual jealousy, which sounded daunting. Sexual jealousy was hard-wired into me by evolution, right?

It turned out to be easier than I had predicted. Tactics that helped me destroy my capacity for sexual jealousy include:

• Whenever I noticed sexual jealousy in myself, I brought to mind my moral objections to the idea of owning another's sexuality.
• I thought in terms of sexual abundance, not sexual scarcity. When I realized there were thousands of other nearby women I could date, I didn't need to be so needy for any particular girl.
• Mentally, I continually associated 'jealousy' with 'immaturity' and 'neediness' and other concepts that have negative affect for me.

This lack of sexual jealousy came in handy when I built a mutual attraction with a polyamorous girl who was already dating two of my friends.

Lesson: Have a sense that more is possible. Know that you haven't yet reached the limits of self-modification. Try things. Let your map of what is possible be constrained by evidence, not by popular opinion.

Finale

I now enjoy higher-quality relationships — sexual and non-sexual — of a kind that wouldn't be possible with the social skills of Luke₂₀₀₅. I went for years without a partner I cared about, but it felt okay because the whole journey was seeded with frequent rewards: the thrill of figuring something out, the thrill of seeing people respond to me in a new way, the thrill of seeing myself looking better in the mirror each month.

There might have been a learning curve, but by golly, at the end of all that DIY science and rationality training and scholarship I'm seeing an awesome poly girl, I'm free to take up other relationships when I want, I know fashion well enough to teach it at rationality camps, and I can build rapport with almost anyone. My hair looks great and I'm happy. If you start out as a nerd, setting out to become a nerd about romance totally works, so long as you read the right nerd books and you know the nerd rule about being empirical. Rationality for the win.