1309: Paul Eastwick | Science Says You're More Attractive Than You Know

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“Yeah, your wife thinks you're more desirable than other people think. That's why you work so well”

together. I'm sorry, Rick, guys. When you come along, maybe you are an eight-on average, but she doesn't think that, she thinks you're a six because people also do this thing called Derrogation of Alternatives, which means because she's happily partnered with you, she looks at these other guys and thinks they're worse. All right, welcome to The Show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode

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and warming our hands on the ashes. We're talking about mate value that weird, spreadsheet-brained idea that year is six and she's an eight and somehow romance is just, I don't know, competitive accounting or something. Spoiler, that whole framework is mostly nonsense and not backed by science. We're breaking down the whole dating market thing, why that's not actually a market, why your score is probably irrelevant and how most of what you think you want in a partner you actually don't.

“We'll get into why online dating feels like a rigged casino. Why being friends first might”

actually be the slowest path to pretty much nowhere and why people who claim to have dating all figured out usually have it the most wrong. Also, testosterone, cheating myths, why hotness fades faster than your last situation ship and how humans actually evolved to choose partners. Hint, it was not swiping while half-watching something on Netflix and if you ever thought A, am I just not attractive enough or why is this so hard? This episode is for you and if you just

want to sort of revel in the fact that you're no longer on the dating market, you'll enjoy this one even more. And if you've ever taken advice from a guy with a YouTube channel and a ring light telling you that women are hypergamous robots, yeah, we're going to fix that too. So here we go with Paul Eastwick. I'm actually really excited to talk about all this stuff because I don't know if you knew this. I used to teach like men dating, meet women and say, and our angle was like,

hey, you can not be a total piece of crap and you can like not lie to people and you can be the best version of yourself and do this, which was a really unpopular sentiment in the community of guys at the time because at the time what was trending was like, I have all these cool fake stories that demonstrate my mate value or whatever. You know what I'm talking about? No, and I'm fascinated to hear about this too because I could only imagine what it might have been like

to come in with some less aggressive and yeah, less pick up artists, the strategies, but really trying to help people. So yeah, I got actually kind of bumps me out that people were skeptical. Not only skeptical, the bad guys kind of won in a way because if you look now at like the dating advice realm, they call it red pill stuff now, it's basically red pill. That is all of the worst

stuff that we never wanted to do that I always thought was gross and they're right about a couple

like small things here and there, which makes it even more dangerous because if it was totally wrong, smart people would just discard the whole thing, but instead smart people are like, but this and this and this and this and you're like, yes, but also not all women are terrible and looking for your money, but like there's just enough truth in it to hook people and so they kind of won, like the whole, hey, you can improve yourself and be the best version of yourself and like you're

gonna meet a nice person who wants the same things as you based on your values, that is sort of like, okay, boomer, that's kind of the sentiment that I hear now for that. And that is what I've experienced

and those interviews are straightforward, but in some cases, it does feel like there is this title wave of stuff that, yeah, I'm having to push back against, it's a little bit daunting, but it's kind of exciting too. I'm a scientist and the most boring kind of science is where you're making a claim, but you're not really pushing back against anything. Nobody's ever argued the opposite. So there is something exciting about pushing back against something that is out there and that is

big and that it's a little bit right, but it's also like mostly wrong and gross. Mostly wrong. Yeah, let's talk about this because the old way of thinking is you have mate value, it makes sense in a way on its face at first glance, right? Like you have mate value. Are you a good-looking,

“healthy person who can provide firm immense perspective for a woman and family and offspring?”

That's more attractive than somebody who's like, not those things. Okay, so mate value's real

and everybody who doesn't have this is going to die alone and never reproduce.

The point that I always want to make, I will agree with that sentiment and point out that for these things to be true, it really relies on this thing we call consensus is people have to agree that people possess a certain thing. And when we think about attractiveness, we think obviously, like we agree about who's attractive and who's not. It's just right there. You can see it on their face. But when you look at the studies, when you look at the science, consensus is not as powerful as

we think. I like to start with first impression context if we had to make a judgment about whether this guy in front of us here was hot or not or this woman in front of us was hot or not.

And we'd never matter, we'd agree like 65% of the time. That's it. I'm surprised because

“you remember the website, hot or not? Remember that? Yes, I was a happy user of that website,”

I do. I remember refusing to use it because I thought, oh gosh, not that I didn't rate other people. I just mean I would didn't have the balls to put myself on there because I was like, I don't want to face the bad news around this. And I remember that my friend put me up there because, oh that's probably, it was like a rule. And he was really upset when I scored higher than him, he was really upset. So it was kind of funny because I was like, I don't want to know what my

rating is because it's going to like mess with me for the next multiple decades. And then I got this kind of like really high rating that really excited me like crazy. And he got like a mid rating. And that blew up in his face so bad that it actually, this is totally a tangent, but it actually affected our friendship for a few weeks. Oh yeah, like he was mad at me. He was angry, but he knew

“I didn't do anything. You know, when somebody's like feeling upset because you exist, that's what I was”

dealing with. And it was like somebody lived in my floor. And I thought to myself, well, I'm really

glad this whole looking at other people online thing is a passing trend, and we'll never catch on.

Oh yeah, no, doomed to die in 2002. Yeah, that's totally how it went. You know what would make that website less of a bummer for your friend? If it showed you more than just the mean, if it showed you the variability because in real life, especially when we're interacting with people face to face, that is what we experience. So some people might think that you're exceptionally unattractive, but some people are going to think you're attractive. And that's another thing that

we show is that as people get to know each other over time, it's not 65% it starts going down. And it actually gets remarkably close to 50/50 chance. There's always still a little bit of a agreement left, even among people who have known each other for a long time, about who's hot and who's not, but there is a lot of variability. So for most people, and we might all agree that this person's a six, but there's a very good chance that somebody in that group thinks you're a nine and somebody

in that group thinks you're a three. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. And I suppose is either a huge relief or really depressing depending on the tactic with it because it's really nice to think somebody out there thinks, you know, this guy, Jordan's a nine man, what a good looking guy, but it's also like, so there's people out there that are just like, this man is hideous, who would marry this guy. That's sad. That's annoying. If the goal is to get a bunch of likes online,

I agree it's a bummer, but when we're talking about relationships, most people only need one or a few close relationships in their lives. And so it's handy that we see this democratizing process as people get to know each other over time. What that means is that if you spend enough time in the right context, it's going to work out for many of us. And I worry that this is the simple bit of

women, because I want to do improved my chances of being with more than zero of them in my life.

More than zero, it's actually profound, but go on. My buddy was like, dude, everyone gets married. And I was like, yeah, I mean, a lot of people get divorced, a lot of people settle. I'm trying to sort of avoid that, but your point does still stand that even if you really blow it, most of us, as long as you're not just an insufferably negative terrible person who is unkind as a matter of course, you're probably going to be fine. Yeah. And look, I want to encourage people to not be

terrible. Yes. And to be fine. But even a lot of the terrible, unkind people get partners to, I work at a law firm. So I know. Here's the real kicker is that those terrible, unkind people get in relationships and their partners genuinely think that they are great and that they are kind. Again, it can be a little bit mystical because you think like, how does she see good qualities in him? I really don't get it. But again, it's part of this process that makes relationships work

for many of us where we don't feel like we're always striving to get something better.

“Yeah. Let's highlight that because I think that's one of the core beliefs. I don't just want to”

pick on the red pill guys because it's not necessary, but it is one of the core beliefs of let's say like internet, mail, culture, dating culture. There is a belief that let's say women are always going to look for what do they call it? There's like a monkey is monkey branching when she is hanging on to one guy, but looking for the other one. And then there's like the bigger better deal. The hype. Hypergamy. Hypergamy. Yeah. Yes. Can you define what that is and then tell us

what that's all about? Yeah. So it's a concept that gets applied to women and the suggestion is that they're always looking to trade up. Especially relative to their own value. So I'm a woman. I look at myself. Okay. I'm a six. So I got to try to land a seven. And if I can live in the seven then maybe, I don't know, I can leverage that to get an eight or I'm not doing my best. Yeah, so channel this perspective, but this is how some men online think about women. It's pretty nasty.

And importantly, it's really not backed by the evidence when it comes to attraction, relationship formation, any of that. People actually don't pay attention at all to things like, oh, what is your mate value relative to mine? Yes, attractive people will be more appealing, but people aren't

“doing this trade up thing as they get to know people over time. That's the key though, as they get”

to know people over time because I will be the first to admit that if you put me in a room or

on a nap with 50 women in me, right, because I'm not dating men, I'm just going to look for the 10, 5 most attractive because I need to filter by something in the first one second, right? So like I'm looking for the, but if you put me in a room with those 50 women and we have to work on a project together, there's got to be a way to run this experiment. But the ones I would have initially picked, I'm going to bet that very few of them are left standing for the people I want to be a

round most of the time because why would those two things overlap when I'm starting to like, oh, Sharon is really funny. And my stomach hurts. I'm laughing so hard. If the things she doesn't says, and this one is so talented. And wow, the voice on this one is, I didn't even know I had a thing for that. That's all, and then it's like, why did I pick the girl with the tan earlier, like the tan? That was it. That's just not going to matter anymore. And I can see that.

You are describing the dating app that we all need, but we don't deserve right? Exactly. We get to hang out in groups with people over time. Now, these things exist. They're not called apps. They're called like intermural sports league bars. bars. You stay for 12 days. You're right. They're called college classes. And then alongside it, you learn about the ancient Egyptians or something. Exactly. That doesn't sound terrible. Now, we can't do that for everybody. But there are other contexts

“out there. Honestly, think like improv classes are probably another one. Yeah, I always recommended”

back in the day that was one of my top recommendations. Go take improv. You'll meet cool people. You'll joke around with them. And even if everyone there is just a terrible stick in the mud, you come away with no friends, no dates. You've gotten funnier when, when, when. Yeah. That is outstanding advice. Yeah. And it's 50 bucks. Because they're taught by pro comedians. So you can name your price and go take improv. What a one. You can probably just buy them a coffee and they'll let you

in. Hey, I'll let you sleep in my garage tonight. If you teach me improv. Oh, gosh, it's so beautiful. Yeah. Anyway, rescue me. Yeah. Okay. I loved these ideas. And I think another thing that's important to realize about like when we're using the apps and we're swiping and things is that even if we're not just filtering on the universally desirable stuff, if we're like, okay, like,

we are getting in our own heads there too. So we're needlessly filtering these things. We end up meeting people who actually, we don't have a particular preference for somebody who's an aerobic instructor or somebody who is not in finance because you think that absolutely turns you off. But these sorts of filtration exercises too also tend not to do all that much. So again, it's

“like to the center you're using the apps to artificially limit who you're meeting. I think they're”

not great in that sense too. I agree with you. And I've got a little theory that I want to run by you specifically because you might actually know the answer to this. My friend Zach Broment is still teaching guys like how to meet women and the apps are like a nightmare scenario for dating because as you probably are aware, it's like the top 1% or top 5% of guys are getting all these matches and it's probably all the women are getting like 10,000 messages and they don't have

any idea how to screen it. And then there's this misconception or real conception that I'll leave that up to you. Women are looking for guys over six feet tall. But my friend Zach who explains to me, he said, I don't think women are generally looking for men over six feet tall. I think women on apps are looking for men over six feet tall. And I was like, why? And he goes, we're having lunch. He goes, during this lunch, I will open my dating app and I will have zero messages

other than the ones I saw this morning, the two I saw this morning. If your wife makes a profile right now when our appetizers come by the time we're done with dessert, she's going to have 40 or 50 maybe more messages in there. How is she going to screen? She's going to make sure he's employed. She's going to make sure that he makes over. I don't know what the top income thing is. It's probably like 80 or 100 grand a year. Okay. Now what? There's 3,000 people in there at the

end of the month. All right. Just turn the height thing up all the way then. Whatever. So that now you're screening for guys that are over six feet tall, just so you can have under 400 unread messages

“in your inbox. That's the reason. I think this is a perfect description of what's happening and”

and look, I can tell you that when we look at what people like speed dating. So we're still talking

about first impressions, but at least you're there interacting face to face. Are the women

all going for the tall guys? No, really. There's a tiny preference for height, but you would need like a foot and a half difference in order to see it. So at that first impression face to face context, height barely matters at all. But we get really bent out of shape about it when it's online. I mean spoiler for materialists. That's like one of the huge subplots of the movie is that the guy was short, but then he like added some inches to his legs and then became much more desirable.

This is a complete misunderstanding of what happens when people are actually interacting. Yeah, this is fascinating because I'm 510 and I'm maybe like that with shoes on or something. It's hard to say 510 was shoes on. I like it. It's above average, but not by much and it's not 6 feet.

I have never ever thought about my height in dating, but also I'm not a product of dating in the

2020s. I've met my wife in 2013. So I'm sympathetic that maybe has changed a little, but I also remember when I was in Europe, I was an exchange student in Germany in high school. And my brother, my host brother at the time, was like, don't you think it's weird that your girlfriends are all taller than you? Because every girl I dated was really tall. And I was like, no, I is peggy taller than me. And he's like, dude, yeah, she's 6 feet tall. She's a bikini model. She's really tall.

In the girl you dated before that, Laura was this tall. She was taller than you. And then when she wore shoes, she was much taller than. And I was like, who notices this? And he's like, everybody. And I was like, not everybody, because I am sitting here going like, uh, with my hands and I'm like, wait, if I do. And I'm like, I guess I do look up to Laura when she puts the shoes

on and we go out. It just never occurred to me. And then I realized what a super power that actually

what now my wife's five feet tall. So I guess it didn't use it. But what a super power this actually was because I remember guys being like talking to the girl I'd be with who would you with this shrimp for it. I'd be like, shrimp, that's funny. Thinks I'm short. And we just walk in and I'm just like, oh, wait, he's 6 foot 5 and taller than you. And I'm 5 foot 10 and shorter than you with those shoes. I, oh, am I supposed to care about that? And it was just like this big, but now it's like a pathology,

man. You see these guys who are like 5 foot 10 and they're going to turkey to have their legs broken so that they can be 6 one. And is this mental illness or what's happening here? It's terrifying.

“But I want to just point out, I think you identified the real super power in there,”

which is your ability to have people say this to you. And then to say, what am I supposed to care about this? I'm not a dating coach. But if I were, I think I would start with that because I think so much of what men and women I'm sure too are experiencing out there are these like weird pressures where online life is like sneaking in to our offline life and getting us to

other people face to face, we tend to focus on the right things. We focus on how to I feel around this person am I laughing? Yeah, right. Does she seem exciting and telling gazing stories? But also how do I feel about myself? Does she make me feel small and comparison or is her confidence rub off on me? Like, I think people do these things pretty well. I just worry like when the offline starts infecting the online. I will tell you in this what year was this 2003

approximately maybe 2000? Yeah, something like that. We moved into house in Ann Arbor and we moved something and we found a journal in the corner and I was like, oh, we should definitely read this because it's somebody's private thoughts and we have no respect. It was a sorority girl diary and it was one of the most fascinating things that I've ever read in my entire life, especially at the time because I remember several entries about how this woman loved going to these frat parties

and she would connect with a guy but he would be short and her sorority sisters would go,

“you need to date somebody who's taller than him and she was very upset because she's like I'm”

connecting with these guys but they're all shorter than I'm supposed to be dating and she's like,

I don't care but if I date one of these guys, I'm never going to hear the end of it from the other

girls and so I have to date tall guys and every single one of them that I've met has been a total jerk and blah blah blah. And I just thought that was fascinating because I thought to myself, this is the dumbest thing to be upset about just forget what other people are saying but I not being cool enough to be in a fraternity had no idea of the pressure this woman was under from her sorority sisters at the time. She couldn't do it. It was not allowed. She was not allowed

to date short guys that she liked, period. This is a bummer and look, it's true in every context that the people surrounding you, it really matters that people feel like the people nearby support their relationship. This is just another one of these classic findings in the science that people feel better about their relationships when their friends are supportive and when your friends like your partner and they like you with your partner. So many times we can leverage that for good

but this is really capturing the downside of that experience especially when who you're surrounded by is this sort of broad group. I mean, she's probably not exactly friends with all of these folks, yet they have this big influence over her life. So I am often touting the importance of groups and that people can introduce people to each other and this is often where the magic happens but this story is a good reminder too. Like there are real downsides especially when it's a larger group.

“They're not all exactly your friends and they've got ideas about what you should be doing.”

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“I think about this now as an adult and I can't help but think that these other women in the”

sorority. They don't care if she's happy. That is the least of their concerns. What they care about

in our opinion. I don't care if he cheats on her. It doesn't want to hang out with her and

“she likes the other guy from the other Fred who's too short. We want it to look a certain way in the”

photos. That's all I care about. And so that to me was really the core of her criticism and the diary. She didn't articulate it like that. But looking back 25 years or whatever hence, it totally makes way more sense. That's exactly how she was feeling. Tell me about the ego script. You mentioned this in the book. Is this kind of part of that whole thing? Is this kind of ductal with that? I think so. When I talk about the ego script, I'm referring to some of these ideas that originally

grew out of evolutionary psychology in the 1990s. This was genuinely part of the science,

but it's really gotten spun out in our culture and online, especially in a bunch of nefarious ways.

And one of the components here does have to do with these standards that we assume that we have to meet. Make values part of it. We talked about that. You feel like you've got to be an eight or a

“nine if anybody's going to pay attention to you. And the only way to get there is to engage in”

radical acts of self-improvement, which can be very demoralizing for a lot of people. Some of it ends up being pretty gendered too. The early phase of evolutionary psychology really had a lot of components in there that were about how different men and women are. A different their concerns are how different their wants and desires are. And look, there are many domains of life. We're men

and women are quite different, of course, but we've tended to see in the more recent science of

attraction that, again, when you step away from those broader pressures and you look at what people actually like when they're meeting each other face to face, we should don't see much in the way of gender differences. That's even true with stuff that seems obviously gendered like earning potential ambition, like it's surely more important for a guy to be ambitious than for a woman to be ambitious. But what we actually see is that this is surprising to some folks, but

when men meet ambitious women, they tend to like them more. The less ambitious men is not what I've been told on Instagram comments. Exactly. On Instagram, where the women are quite ambitious, but let's setting that irony aside, that little boost that you get in terms of your appeal for seeming a little bit more ambitious. Similarly, you've got your life together. It's there for both men and women. And I think the fact that women will say on surveys, they care about earning

potential and ambition more than men do. Doesn't reflect their real life experiences of attraction. I think that's one great example of how they're, you know, get gender differences over here and what people think, but not over here in terms of what actually appeals to people. That's actually quite interesting. I was not expecting that. Tell me of how we've internalized some of this ego script in modern society. Because one, it's an odds with how humans actually evolved in

that odds with science, but also it does us no favors. Because it's wrong. Yeah, I think one of the biggest problems is this idea that we need to make ourselves appealing to strangers. We've got this

“idea that, okay, to succeed at the mating game, you have to go out there and attract people from”

ground zero. Deliver the perfect pickup line in order to real somebody in. Or just be exceptionally attractive and exceptionally good looking and let them come to you, I suppose. But what this misses is that a key part of the way that we evolved as humans was in these small social groups. If we imagine living life on the Savannah, 150,000 years ago, or 500,000 years ago, you likely lived in a group of maybe 50 people, give or take, it could be 70, but it's not that big.

And there might be a few other groups nearby that are about the same size and you probably know these folks, but now let's just do the math on how many people are roughly your age. How many people are of the gender you prefer and how many people are not partnered already? It's a pretty small number, but at least what you have going for you is that you're going to get to know these people over time. That's the context that shaped the way we think about ourselves

and the way we think about romantic partners, this deluge of strangers that we get today, like we've been primed and told, oh, this is the evolved way. A track strangers know it wasn't this is a weird modern skill that few people have. So I worry about that is a really good point. This is a weird modern skill that few people have and in the past you didn't need to do it.

lives with tribes that don't speak any English well or French and don't have modern

“technology. Like he will just get dropped off in the middle of the desert and Tanzania and walk”

for two days and then he finds this uncontacted tribe and he'll just hang out with them and live

there for a couple of weeks. It's really incredible. And one of the things that he had mentioned,

which I think maybe you touched on similarly in your book or maybe I read the elsewhere. The tribes are small, right? I mean, there's maybe 120 people living in a village that has like sticks around it to keep the livestock in, basically. And when you want to get married, the way you do it is either you marry somebody inside that little circle or like you're out hunting and you run into some other hunters from the other village thing that's 10 miles or

five miles or however far away. You're like, hey, man, do you know what it girls that are my age that are like, not married? And they're like, yeah, my sister. And if you get that lion, I'll introduce you. And it's okay. I met this guy in the middle of the Savannah. He killed a lion.

“And he's like 15 like us. You should come here and meet dad and bring some goat milk. That's the”

game. Yeah. Yeah. I do have a thought experiment like this in the book where I talk about it's important to me people through networks. But sometimes like it feels like your networks have dried up and there's no options and you've got to hit the road. I loved the studies. This is the work that the anthropologists conduct. I'm a psychologist, not an anthropologist. But I love their work. And so what they look at are these neighboring groups exactly like

what you describe. And again, these groups are so small that it's not uncommon that okay, who's in there, you know, late teenage years looking to partner up, oh, whoops. In this group, we got five guys and one woman. Oh, so four guys are left. They hit the road. And they can travel together. But they keep their ear to the ground. Where is the balance in the other direction? Where are there some unparnared women? Let's go seek our fortunes elsewhere. I kind of love that.

I love this idea that yeah, like we do have this ability to seek out new horizons. And one cool thing about humans is that's not gendered either. So if you look at the other apes, usually one gender that moves around in a varies, whether it's the males of the females that tend to move. But humans, like, if you look at these human hunter gather groups, sometimes it's the man that are taken off. Sometimes there's an abundance of women. And the girls look at each

of them and they say, like, we heard there are some pretty nice looking guys. They're about 100 miles to the west. This is going to take us a few days. But time to go. Well, this, this is when I moved to New York City. Everyone there's a transplant almost, not everyone, everyone but a lot of people. And you get to talking to somebody, me like, hey, so what made you move here? And for guys often, it'll be like, well, I got a job here. And for a lot of the women, it was like, well, I lived

in this really small town. And I always wondered what it would be like to live here. And it's like,

okay, so reading between the lines, you lived in a really small town. And it was either Mary, the guy that you dated since eighth grade. Or go somewhere and look at what else is out there because this is your chance to do that. So now you work at Sirius XM satellite radio as a receptionist at the desk and you're meeting all kinds of like famous people and corporate dudes and stuff like that. And I remember one gal, she was receptionist there. And I ran into her years later in Los Angeles

on the street in Hollywood. And she was like, Jordan, oh my God, small world. And we were talking and she's like, yeah, I'm here because my friend that I moved to New York with Maryd in A-list celebrity. And they're getting married. They're wedding is this weekend. And so I'm here for that. And I remember thinking like, wow, your plan totally works. This girl from the small town in New York, upstate, connected to you or whatever, right, goes in Mary's, this super famous

dude and like you're dating his for cousin or friend or whatever. And it was like, yeah, it was either that or I did from church, not there's anything wrong with that. But she wanted to see what was out there. And apparently this guy was out there. And sometimes this perspective I'm advocating,

“it sounds like I'm saying like, God, staying connected to you, although I think it's connected.”

He's probably pretty big. But the smaller place, I'll stay in your small town like you'll do fine. I love the modern ability. I'm a humanist. I love the modern ability to move to where you want to go. But it's important to keep in mind that mentally we still think about people in these concentric circles. This is the rim done by our idea that it's like, there are 50 people that you can conceptualize as being very close to you. And the more people that you're quote-unquote friends

with, the more they're really becoming more like acquaintances. You actually aren't that close anymore.

But I think it's an amazing thing that humans can move in these modern cities, but still maintain

meet such terrific people using this kind of approach. One thing that you mentioned in the book is

that mate value has nothing to do with compatibility. You touched on that on the top of the show.

“I think this is worth exploring because people might not want to date you, not because you're”

a six and they're a seven, but because of compatibility. Or they might want to date you anyway, even though you're a six and they're a seven because of compatibility. That's a huge realization because it does trash the whole, oh, okay. You've got to look smack some hit your cheekbones with a hammer. Have you seen these guys online by the way? Yes, absolutely. You've got to hit your cheekbones with a hammer and you've got to be ripped and have a six pack. And I've talked to these

guys. And I'm like, do you really believe that my wife would leave me if you showed up with your abs in your Bitcoin? That is like a delusional, weird cop. Of course, it usually makes up for the fact that their entire personality is abs in Bitcoin, right? And they have nothing else going for them.

Because otherwise, why would you think that I never think, hey, man, I bet that guy's wife

would leave him for me because I'm rich. I never think that. It does not occur to me outside the context of using it as an example for this podcast. That is the first time I've ever heard

“somebody call that a cop. But of course, that's what it is. Yes, of course, that's what it is.”

So I will now explain why it is indeed a cop. So let's say that your wife isn't eight and you're a six. Okay, your wife, the thing is, probably thinks that you're a ten. Otherwise, your relationship would not have gotten to this point. This is the beautiful part of the perception of compatibility, that really it's all in what people think. And because I'm a psychologist, the subjective is beautiful to me. Yeah, your wife thinks you're more desirable than other people think. That's why

you work so well together. Now, add on top of that, I'm sorry, Rift guys. When you come along, maybe you are an eight on average, but she doesn't think that she thinks you're a six. Because people also do this thing called derrogation of alternatives, which means because she's happily partnered with you, she looks at these other guys and thinks they're worse than they actually are. So what you have to overcome to do with these guys assume, apparently, they can do, it's an enormous

Gulf, most of the time. And again, it's these sorts of motivated perceptions, motivated biases that people have that are really responsible for often keeping relationships going. Yeah, the derrogation of alternatives is interesting and it makes complete sense. I've done this myself where I had a friend who wanted to introduce me to somebody and I had a girlfriend at the time and I was like, oh, man, you really think she's attractive and he's like,

are you crazy? And then years later, he's like, I still can't believe he didn't want to meet so and so. And I was like, yeah, what does she look like? Yeah, he showed me a picture and I was like, oh my god, she's gorgeous. What was I thinking? He's like, yeah, he had a girlfriend and I was just like, oh, yeah, her. Like, what? I mean, it's the funny thing because when we're with somebody and they make us happy, we put on these blinders, we don't notice the other desirable people around us.

Yeah, in some cases, like yours, maybe he'd come to regret that decision later.

Yeah, now it's fine. Look, I'm happily married now, but it's funny because Adam will always

be like, Jordan doesn't like hot women because he showed me it was like objective. Like, I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I was just like head over heels for whoever it was at the time that I was dating because, yeah, I don't know man, still kicking myself, maybe. We do this in all sorts of other ways, too. So in ongoing relationships, look, everybody's got negative qualities, okay? Everybody's a little messy or they get a little overly

stressed out at times. We all have issues, but our romantic partners, it's not that they don't acknowledge those issues, but they have ways of putting them in a box. So your friend also might have been like, why are you with Erica? Like, she's such a stress case all the time, but to you, you would honestly say back would be something along the lines of, yeah, but like, it's kind of

“exciting. That's why I love being with her. I never know what's coming next, and you're not lying.”

You're honestly perceiving her in that particular way when nobody else does. Again, these sorts of biases are really important for people's ability to maintain their relationships. Otherwise, we'd get so frustrated with all the negative aspects of our partners. We wouldn't be able to keep it up for long. Let's true. Do people tend to marry those of similar attractive events? Because I'm only thinking of counter-examples that you see on TV,

where this is like, lia love it, Mary's Julia Roberts, and everyone's what the heck is going on here, and it's like, yeah, you don't think about, I don't know, everyone else on planet Earth. Yeah, so it is true that people tend to marry other folks who are similar levels of attractiveness. We also tend to marry folks who are similar levels of SES too, right, socioeconomic status,

But on the attractiveness side, usually because, yeah, when people do form relationships quickly, when they have initial impressions of each other, yeah, the attractive people are better at attracting the other folks who are going to be

similarly hot. But ultimately, if your relationship is matched or mismatched, it doesn't predict that

much. It doesn't predict how long your relationship is going to last. That was my next question.

“Yeah, because I think a lot of people go, oh, she's so much better looking than her,”

she's so much better looking than him. This isn't going to last. And the other assumption is, tell me if this is true, oh, he's rich, I guess, because look at that. Yes, oh, yeah, this one's fascinating, because there's long been this idea that there's a particular gendered trade-off where men can trade their money for a woman's looks. And I'm fond of pointing out this little nugget that when the studies were conducted to show this in the middle part of the 20th

century, they didn't even assess how hot the guy was. And they didn't even assess how much money

she had. Was it they'd never read Jane Austen, where the women's money matters a lot. Okay,

so when you do the studies the right way, there's no gendered trade-off at all. Like sometimes people trade money for looks, but actually women do that, like just as often as men do, there's a mean difference, men have more money on average. Women are actually considered hotter on average. So you're going to see in the average couple that she is hotter than him and he has more money than her, but that's just like a mean difference in how men and women are.

“But I think that's where we get this illusion that there's a trade happening out there.”

It's just the mean levels in the population. Yeah, okay, that's a really interesting explanation, because yeah, in my head, as somebody who's just chucking the same amount of pop culture as anybody else, I guess on average, maybe a little bit less, it does really seem, oh, well, my buddy, he's okay looking, but he's loaded in his wife as a total smoke show. And then if you think about it, I'm like, well, no, I mean, he's in great shape and he's cool and he's fun and I like him. Well,

oh, wait, maybe he's to the same reasons as wife likes him. Maybe, and I'm not really in a good position to judge what other people attach to their preferences, like do they care about physical fitness that much or maybe they like it because he's taller. He's really witty and maybe she prioritizes that. In fact, my friend who I'm thinking of is all three of those things and married a really gorgeous gal and people will write into me as they sort of semi want to be whatever public figure

who's on the internet. I get all manner of messages in my inbox and people will go, oh my gosh, you're wife only married you for your money and I'm like, yeah, so what? But because my wife is quite attractive, but it has occurred to me now after reading your book that maybe she actually believes that I'm attractive, which is really good news and no really is good news and odds are that she genuinely does and maybe she's willing to say at some point, okay, like insert movie star here to see

you have like a movie star guy that she's at least willing to admit is super attractive. Yeah, who knows? Yeah, I'll have to ask her when I want to have nightmares for the next 20 years.

“Right, there he goes, so maybe don't. But even in that case, I think she's still genuinely”

thinks that you're basically in the same category and that even if this guy came along, ah, you have so many other things going for you, this is how people tend to think about Romantic partners. When their relationships are going well, want to point out too, that this explains where relationships go badly as well, because some of that is motivated reasoning too. You're not actually being a dick to your partner, the various ways that you were once connecting,

you're not connecting anymore and now we start seeing and amplifying all this negativity, it can go in the other direction too, but so much of it is in our subjective perceptions. If dating were actually a marketplace, some of you would have been delisted years ago. Luckily, our sponsors still see potential. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored and part by Saley. We travel internationally a lot. I'll tell you

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sponsors. They make the show possible. All of the deals discount codes and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinjer.com/deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find a code do email me [email protected]. I'm happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Paul Eastwick, correct me if I'm wrong here. All of this stuff kind of applies

mostly slash only to Western societies because I'm thinking of and hear me out here. I'm thinking of the example where let's say you're in an Islamic society and it's like you're going to marry this 50-year-old man when you're 25 because he's my third cousin and this is why I'm introducing you to and if you don't like him, my other friend is a professor and you can marry him and it's like all of these guys are in their late 40s and I'm 22 and I have to marry one of these guys.

I guess my point is that woman is not necessarily exercising her choice about who's attractive and interesting to her at all. Yeah, so this is an important point and you do see major cultural differences in how common it is range marriages, marriages where there's going to be a lot of parental involvement versus what we often call love marriages in contrast like no people get to freely

“decide but here's a key point. I think when we think about a range marriages we think about the”

form that you just described but that's actually not the most common way that it happens. It's usually you can think about it like intense parental involvement. The parents will be introducing you to various folks but you still have a lot of control typically in whether you want this thing to proceed or not. You're being given a few different options for who to consider

and the key thing is this. If we just look in these cultures so cultures where this is common

at the distinction between how happy are women when they're in a love marriage versus when they are in an quote unquote a range marriage there's not much of a difference but we do see the difference is when you ask them how much control do you have over the person you married and regardless of whether it was an a range marriage or a love marriage if the women feel like they had control they feel great about it. If they feel like the person was selected for them and they essentially

had no control that's when they're super bummed out. So there are indeed major cultural differences in how much parents are playing a role in this way but I tend to think about it more not in like a systemic thing that's causing the problem it's really about the cases where people feel like they

“don't have a say in who they get to marry. That makes sense. You ever watched 90 day fiance?”

No. I feel like you either love it or hate it. It's one of my guilty pleasures I haven't seen in years. Usually it's guys they meet some girl on an app and she's like 20 years younger and lives in the Kazakhstan. You're like thinking to see they're not real or whatever and then of course you're surprised that she exists but then the family hates her because clearly she just wants a green card because she lives in a glue and it's just like this whole mess of things and as I was

reading your book I was thinking like let's lay 90 day fiance over top of this or over top of that and that's I guess a different case right because these are like clearly people going oh different economic situation for me and my family for the rest of my life that's pretty appealing. I think that's right. That is an important point. This is something that we humans do and I think

that we've met for a long time then what of the apps done to us? We're also pretty flexible and we can make mating work within a variety of different contexts. Sometimes we do things like we turn

“mating into a shopping exercise in reality that's what the apps have done to us but we can also”

imbue mating with all of these important social connections to a way out of poverty. I think there can be cases where people still engage in the same kind of motivated reasoning processes if she's thinking this is a way to a better life. She's probably motivated to think this guy is going to be pretty good at least at first. That would just be my guess though. I'm now like

way beyond the data here but at least that's how I like to think about it. There's always going to be

a tendency to hope for the best try to perceive things in ways that make interaction smooth and make things go well at least at first whether or not I want to like recommend marriages like that for folks genuinely wouldn't want to do that. Is it safe to say that hotness I love that we're using that as a technical term by the way? Are we is it safe to say that hotness loses its pull over time? Absolutely. In fact, this one has shocked me a little bit too. Is we've really dug into the

research on this? So look, yes, attractive people are more appealing at first. People agree at first about who's attractive and who's not. But what's so interesting is that again, this is just another

one of these cultural ideas that has way too much currency is that all right, you meet somebody and

you know, you impress them and bang your dating like 20 minute coffee date. I know how I'm going to feel about you. It's not usually how it works. What the common thing is that people kind of grow on each other over time, right? The initial like lightning bolt thing. It happens but if you take a sample of relationships and then you rewind time and you suddenly say, okay, how did you feel at moment one? I don't like 20% will tell you it was a bolt of lightning. Everybody else was like,

“I thought you were all right at first. So here's why that ends up being important because if we”

look at that stretch of time when people are starting to think like, hmm, maybe I like her. She seemed pretty funny. I like the way she tells stories. She makes me feel confident. What's also happening during that stretch of time is that I like think she's exceptionally hot. And in fact, her confidence makes her seem hotter, but the extent to which she is objectively hot, the extent to which other people think she's hot is starting to wear off. So being an attractive

person, it matters at first, but then your ability to reel somebody in over time, which is often

a required part of this process, your hotness, your objective hotness is not going to help you as much as what's going on diatically between the two of you. And again, depending on whether you are objectively hot or not, maybe that's good news or maybe that's bad news. So the more you get to know people, the less looks matter. So exactly. Maybe it doesn't matter if we pick a partner with similar attractiveness. Maybe I want to shoot for the moon. I don't know. This is definitely part of it.

And you can shoot for the moon or just not care. Yeah, right. Exactly. And it can be tough to get in the door. I mean, God, I remember it gets embarrassing stories of me in eighth grade. I'd like started to figure this out. I knew that if I could just get super hot girl in this class, her name was Alex. And I don't know. She just absolutely knocked me sideways. But like, I didn't like get any time with her. And so I remember like going to my eighth grade social studies

these are me like, keep on me and Alex. No, you did this, too. I did this. It's a brilliant strategy. But my teacher was like, absolutely not. I absolutely come on to me. And she's, no, I'm not doing this. I'm not part of your game. I'm not a matchmaker. Get out of here. But it would have worked. It's so funny that that's your example because I have it in my notes, which I wish I could prove to you by showing them. And I can't. I have that exact example because I was like, hey,

can you put me in the same group as Lauren? And he was like, why? And I was like, she's lives near me and is really smart. And he was like, yeah, right. And he did, man, he did. I wasn't creepy though. I wasn't creepy. I think that helps, right? Not that I'm saying you're

“creepy. Did you ask a female teacher to do it? Yes, I did. That's why she was like, uh, this is weird.”

That was my mistake. No, my male teacher was like, yeah, this is actually a really good plan. I'm sure it's somewhere he was like, okay, get it. He's thinking ahead. I feel like if I'd asked a female teacher, she would be like, no, this is creepy. You're trying to artificially create a situation that shouldn't exist, whereas the guy probably just understood instinctively that, yeah, if this gets going to have a chance and hell, then it's going to be this one. And so

yeah, your teacher, not mine, was acting with some wisdom there and in seeing that people spending

time together, like anything can happen. It could have been the case. I'm you'll have to tell me, but in this group, it might have been the case that Lauren liked you less, as she got to know you. That's actually just as likely. That checks out. You got to keep trying. This is what we got to do. We got to get out there. We got to keep trying. We got to keep getting into Lauren's group. Take a shot. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Then you try again. If you try not to take it

personally, looks maxors. Like, this is the thing. It's really hard to predict whether somebody's going to like you more or less, as they get to know you, you got to get in there and keep doing it. What about people who think that they're going to date from their friend pool? It's at more successful, less successful, because it seems like the science we're talking about now, it should work better, right? It's actually still quite common. I know we think like online

dating has totally taken over. Online dating is the most common, but even still, there's still a whole lot of friends introducing friends kinds of relationships that happen out there, even some of the online dating relationships that form. It's like, you meet this person online and then your friends for a while before you actually get together. So anyway, there's a lot of ways it can happen. But when I advocate for people dating in friend groups, there are a couple important wrinkles there. One

is that at least for heterosexuals, it's important that those be like mixed gender groups. And it's not just because like it's a popularity thing, it's because what's often going to happen is that the women in that group, it's not that you're going to date them, is that they're going to advocate for you. They're going to get to know you and then they're going to advocate for you to like their friends or like their friends of friends, like sometimes the connections can be a little

“distant. But that's why you like start with the mixed friend group and then things go out from there.”

I don't know when it was last time you watched the movie Four Weddings in a funeral. Yeah, it's better. Yeah, but that's exactly what's happening in that movie. There's this core group of mixed gender friends. They're not exactly dating each other, but they're like branching. And as they branch, it's like people get pulled together. I think it's really a perfect demonstration

of this idea. Yeah, well, I've never actually done the friends first dating thing that was never

it for me. I was always like, go out with somebody and try to hook up or sleep with them depending on how old I was. And then after that, I start dating. It usually did not start dating and then hook up. It was like, I would just hook up a bunch of times and then it never start dating. And then it would just end. I almost did it backwards, which I wanted to ask about. Because I basically had like sexual relationships. I didn't appropriate age. Let's say starting in college. And then

“it was like, either that turned into something or it didn't turn into anything. I think a lot of”

times what people are doing. Yeah, this is a tendency to look at hookup culture and be like, oh, this is terrible. But I think a lot of times, again, when it's perfectly consensual, this is people working it out trying to work out how they feel about each other. Oftentimes, people don't know how they feel they hook up. And then if it's good, then they're like, let's do that again. And if it's not good, they think like, maybe one more time or maybe not. I think a lot of it was kind of like,

Jordan doesn't have the guts to do what he kind of wants to do. So let's drink too much, she'll drink too much at the same time. Then we hook up and then it's like, hey, was that okay? Yeah, let's do it again. Okay. Awesome. Now I don't have to be drunk next time because we've ripped off that bandade. Kind of like that. That's really interesting. Yeah. So the reduction in inhibitions is the thing that gets over the initial concerns. I mean, I do think this is why it is especially young folks

are more likely to do that. But sometimes when we think about friends first, it's tempting to think,

oh, you're like, best friends for a long time. And then all of a sudden, something happened. But look, that happens. But think about it more like, you just in each other's orbit. But maybe you've only spent time one on one for a grand total of 45 minutes. But it's still call the person a friend. It might be somebody you would text 30 years ago. It's somebody you'd call.

“I think that's also a useful way for thinking about how this happens. And sometimes it's a simple”

matter of getting to know somebody in multiple different contacts. You ever had that experience of like, if I see this person on like my dorm floor, I say, hey, but if I see them like at the grocery store, I like stop and talk to them because it's kind of interesting and exciting to see this person in a different context. So many times that's where it's coming from. It's like, I've now seen you in four different contacts. And we've talked in different ways in these four places. I'm starting to feel like

I'm getting to know you. And that can be like, how the ball gets rolling.

with my friends when I want to say either middle school or like freshman year of high school. We're trying to figure out girls. And my friend was like, okay, so I like Meg. And I saw Meg before at a football game. And like she looked at me and I said hi and I got introduced by Mark. And then I saw her today downtown Birmingham. And I saw her and she saw me. And then I like didn't really say anything to her. You invite her and Danielle over and then invite me and Jordan over and

we'll like hang out at the house. And this will be like the third time. So for some reason seeing

people in different places multiple times in different contexts is like a good thing for attraction. We didn't really understand what we were doing. But we figured that out. Like I firmly believe that the average Gen X theory of dating forged in the late 90s is better than almost everything that exists online today. And I don't think bulls just come from my own age. And look, I

“hope that people hear that story. And younger folks today and that they're like, yeah, that's what”

we do. You have this awful stereotype of the way the young folks stay today in the wall on our phones. And it's not actually what we're doing. We're actually doing exactly what you described.

I don't know for sure. But I really hope that the average 21 year old today. Here's what you just

described and says, yes, that is what I'm doing and what we're trying to do out here. It's like light matchmaking that we do for our friends and acquaintances. It's a wonderful thing. Let's kill some sacred cows. We already crushed one, which is that women date rich men or men who make more, but also it's true that rich women date men or women who make more date men who make less, but they're just harder to find. So that's why we often see women dating men who make more. It's

just like a probability thing. What about the idea that women usually date older men? Of course, I've seen plenty of examples of this not being true, but I don't know. I feel like my friends is mostly true. Is that real or sample bias? Okay. It is absolutely true that on average, if you look at couples, the man is older than the woman. I actually think this is one of the enduring mysteries that we only have to understand because we look at that average age difference and it's

in every country in the world where we measured it. There is. It can be like two years over here

and seven years over here, but you always see that average difference. Now, there have been some

“studies, initial impression studies where you look at, okay, but what are people attracted to?”

Who are we drawn to? And again, I come from like a speed dating tradition, but we've also got like blind dates where we've looked at this and you can look to see, okay, so our people more popular do they seem more dateable when they're younger? And indeed, when men are evaluating women, yeah, they like the women more to the extent that they're younger. It's actually not a huge effect, which is I think probably good. Yeah, that's let's leave that one there. Yeah, all right,

it's a small effect, but yes, the men like the women more to the extent that they're even there, Epstein. Yeah, exactly. But again, this has surprised me, but we've now seen it over and over again, the women also liked the men to the extent that they're a little younger. Now, that's age, again, abstracted from everything else to we're not looking at things like, oh, I'm sure that if they

“are on more, they're going to like those guys a little bit more. But there is something about the”

appeal of youth, maybe in men specifically, where this gets a little flipped around, like women actually don't realize they might like the younger guys, once they're on the actual dates with them, maybe they're a little more charming, maybe they're a little hotter, whatever it is. So it kind of leaves us with this unusual mystery, which is the women are liking the younger guys. Again, just a little bit more than the older guys. Why do we see this average difference? I've got ideas,

I got speculations. One of them is simply that if you look at the pool of dateable folks, like who's in the dating market, younger people. Yeah, well, so it's younger people, but we start out in this funny place where like there are teenage girls who are dating and boys who are not, but they're like in the same class together. And that is what starts to create this average age difference that from an early age when girls start dating, they look older because they look around

and they see what are essentially boys that we have not gone through puberty yet. And so that essentially, we just kind of get used to dating folks of a particular age range in that way, and it kind of carries forward. This is kind of speculative, but it is an intriguing mystery,

with men who are a little older. Look, I can't make you more attractive in the next 60 seconds,

but I can introduce you to products and services that'll make you a little bit less of a disaster. We'll be right back. Don't forget about our newsletter. We bit wiser. The idea is something specific and practical that will have an immediate impact on your decisions. Psychology, relationships, in under two minutes, every Wednesday, if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. Jordanharbinger.com/news is where you can find it.

Now for the rest of my conversation with Paul Eastwick. I mean, I look at guys my age and I don't mean this sense route, but whatever, I'll look at guys my

“age and I'm like, what happened? Did you just not work out at all for the last 15 years or what?”

And then I'll talk to some of my friends and I'm like, hey, how often do you sleep with your wife?

And it's not that often sometimes. And there's a really big difference between the relationship and physical health of guys who hit the gym three times a week, and maybe they take testosterone or they are testosterone appears to be normal. And the guys who are like not doing any of that. And it's quite interesting. And you mentioned that testosterone affects your relationships that's expensive for the body to make testosterone in terms of energy. Tell me more about this.

I don't think anybody's ever talked about this on the show. And it does, if jib with my observations that like, my friends were healthy and like the arrival of everyone to call it, they seem to be doing better relationship wise. I think we often think about testosterone as an

individual difference as something that differs between people and of course it does.

It's something that changes quite a bit with age, average gender differences too. But what testosterone does to our relationships is a little funny because testosterone varies a lot. Within a person, depending on what exactly they're going through in their life at the moment.

“And one of the biggest contributors is, are you single or not?”

Because when people are single, they know it. And their body seems to know it. And they produce more testosterone. And that testosterone is part of what we get a little bit of that edge, a little bit of that energy. You want to go out and socialize and spend time with people. When people get into a relationship, and especially if that relationship is a happy one, their testosterone tends to decline because they don't need that late night energy in the same way.

Anymore. So I think that's useful in that sense. Testosterone is not a thing that's like going to exactly make you more desirable. It's something that's responding to your social contact. Now, this is all independent of people like taking supplements and things like that. So wait a minute. So that if you're single in your testosterone's higher, does it follow that if you're committed, your testosterone drops? Yeah, that's exactly what

“you see. You're committed. It is going to be lower on average. It's especially true if you're in a”

committed relationship. And you are happy in that relationship. And you feel committed to it. But those folks tend to have lower testosterone. I was actually part of a lab where we would assess each other's testosterone. And you go around the room and everybody was looking at their values and chuckling about it. But it really followed a few very simple things. The older folks in the room. I was one of the older folks at the time. We had lower testosterone. The partnered folks had

lower testosterone and the women at lower testosterone. But you could see all three things happening simultaneously. So actually, my friends who look like they're young and virulent in shape, they might be miserable in their relationship because they're testosterone's high. It's possible that that's an indicator of. I mean, if I were using it to measure how happy you are in your relationship, it would be one of the worst measures I could devise. Okay. And I'd rather

just ask somebody. Yeah. But yes, testosterone tends to follow all three of those things. And it was funny to look around. There'd be like a young girl who was single, who would have more testosterone than an older partnered guy, right? It'd be very common to see that. What's our number for scientists? So what if we start taking exogenous testosterone? Does that make us more likely to stray or is that just not a thing that connects? This is a great question. I don't know

the answer to this. Now, I don't think the studies have been done that are that compelling. What I would absolutely buy is that it's going to increase like your sex driving, your sexual desire. And for your relationship, that might be good thing. You hear these stories these days about women, microdosing testosterone to improve their sex drive. But whether or not it's making more likely to stray. My prediction is no that it would not. It would make you want to have sex with your partner more.

But it wouldn't make you more likely to stray. But I'm pretty sure nobody's really done the studies. Because another funny thing happens, like when it comes to like sex and sexual fantasy and stuff,

get people into the lab, partnered people. And they say, "Who would you want to be with if you

weren't with your partner?" And you picture somebody. And then they say, "Please now have an elaborate sexual fantasy about this person." And what they show is that if you do that, yeah, you will experience more sexual desire for the person you just had a sexual fantasy about. But you'll also have more sexual desire for your partner at the same time. And I think that there's something intuitive about that as well. That, okay, I'm taking this supplement or I've had this experience of just seeing

something hot, but it like rebounds onto the partner in a good way, I think. It's like I had this experience where like I got hit on. And then I'm more interested in sex with my partners. It's kind of a great thing in that sense. That for sure drives with my personal experience. Sometimes ever a

member of this doesn't happen that much anymore, but back in the day my wife had tried to make

me a little bit jealous, probably before we were married, where she'd be like, "I went to a coffee shop in this guy, asked me, you know, for my number or whatever." And she's just sort of needleing me and test to me a little. It's good nature. It's not malicious. And I'm like, "Oh, okay." And like,

“now I'll be like, "Tell me, was he good? Like, I don't play into it." Like, "What? That's what you're”

correct. You're objectively correct." Yeah, to do that, to be like, "Oh no, tell me how hard he was. Tell me about his guns." Yeah. Oh, okay. She's didn't work up for you. Yeah, that's going to rub with the tattoos. Did you touch him? Yeah, and she's like shut up, you know, and I just like, 'cause it didn't work. Her plan didn't work, but then it became my plan. That's right. I love this. This is brilliant stuff. These are the real dating tips right here. The real science bag dating tips.

This is actually what I used to teach. I remember, because guys would say like, "What happens with a girl says, "My ex-boyfriend was in Navy SEAL." And it's what you do instead of going, "Oh, well, I go to the gym like six days a week and I ran an ultra-marathon." Instead of that, go, "Oh, wow, he sounds perfect for you. Do you have his number? Maybe I'll call him." And then they're like, "No, you were supposed to get upset and compare yourself in a negative way." And then Chase me more.

It's like, "No, no, no. Maybe I'll introduce him to my sister." Maybe he needs to work out, partner. I, in fact, I want to meet the guy. Sounds awesome. Exactly. There's a lot of wisdom in that.

“And look, I think what's going to happen in a lot of cases is okay. Like, he was hot, but”

there were all of these things that weren't great. And again, she's in the relationship with you. Odds are, she's motivated to perceive you to be better than this kind of variety of ways. Okay. Like, he was hot, but there were all of these things that weren't great. And again, she's in the relationship with you. Odds are, she's motivated to perceive you to be better than this kind of variety of ways. So you can lean into that without getting needlessly jealous about

the components that you don't have. And to try to have fun with it because so much of what makes relationships work is the ability to like laugh at ourselves, laugh at our partner, have these kinds of like in jokes and stories that you can riff off of. In many ways, this is like the life blood of what a relationship is. It's like the history you have together. And anything that creates tension, it is so much better to be able to laugh at it and to be able to like enjoy it and

work it into your story and exactly the way you describe. Before I let you go here, I would love to kill a few more sacred care. I got a few more things here. Is it a myth that casual sex is what men want, but not women? It is true that men are more interested in general in casual sex than women. Yeah, you see that one on average. I want to add the caveat that is really true when it comes to strangers. It is true, but far less true when it comes to people you actually know,

for many of the reasons we've discussed that when you get to know people over time that decreases the threat level makes women feel a little more comfortable. So again, if you're a guy and you are out for casual sex, if that's your thing, the whole stranger approach thing really, that is the worst case scenario that really heightens the gender difference. I see. So try to bang your friends. You said it not me. Okay. So on the other side of that coin, what about the idea

that women want commitment more than men is that true? Absolutely not. In fact, if anything that gender difference is like a tiny bit the other direction. Romantic relationships matter a little more to men than to women. Probably because men don't have great social networks

outside of their relationships. So they're like always we're walking around a little desperate

because we like forget as we get older, how to be friends with other men. So if anything like

“men need them at touch more than women, I think this is worth keeping in mind. There's this”

trope online, especially once again in this sort of red pill, subreddits and wherever else that's something like and they always seem to pick a different number. It's like one in five or one in three children is sired by a father not paired by the mother. That sounds high to me. What does science say? I'm glad you asked this one. This one is shocking. The answer is 1% 1%. Yeah. And they do this

and they look to see basically. Does your Y chromosome match the person who shares your last

name with the assumption that last name is passed through fathers? And in one percent of the cases, it doesn't match. It's a very clever way to capture paternity over centuries that these folks have devised. So yeah, 1% way less than birds, way less than other purportedly monogamous mammals, cheating happens, but it's not as common as we think. That must have been an interesting study because especially in the United States, you'd have to control for like slavery stuff. Yeah, I do think

it was conducted elsewhere in the world, but that's a very good point. Because I could get kind of like

“itky and uncomfortable and like then you got to control for stuff or you're like how do I even do this?”

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, that's complicated. You mentioned in the book. This is just a one-off thing.

Tinder dates are more likely to be psychopaths. Did I get that correct? What is that all about?

Yeah, it's true. And I think that's probably just because there are some folks out there who yeah, higher in psychopathy, higher in Machiavellianism, right? That's like you're being very manipulative. Yeah, the dark triad stuff. Yeah. Exactly. So these folks are overrepresented on Tinder and presumably other online platforms. They only sample Tinder. I'm sure it's not a Tinder specific thing. Yeah, like people are like, oh, I've got him on hinge. No, no, I wouldn't be too happy about the

Plenty of fish to the rescue. But yes, they are more likely to be out there on the apps or in other words, app users tend to be a little bit higher in these qualities than non-app users. And that's not just a function of like the partnered people are off of the apps. So it's just something to be

watching out for. Do you know why that is? My guess is that if you are higher on these qualities,

you've found a way to use the apps in a way that works for you. I mean, and maybe these are folks if you're a little bit higher in the dark triad, actually all these approaches I'm recommending. Oh, yeah. Hang out with people face to face, meet each other groups that people are then on big you. Yeah, they sniff you out pretty quick and you got to move towns, unless you're on Tinder, and you can just jump into a random new bubble every weekend. Yeah. So again, I'm guessing,

but that would be where I'd land is that it's something along those lines. Interesting. What do you think about the five love languages for people who don't know? This is like, I don't know, you pick a part of this diagram and it's like, do you like gifts? Is it acts of service that people prefer, or is it at physical touch or whatever? And it's this relationship scientist and it's claimed to fame as he can predict if people are going to get divorced years in advance or something

based on a two hour session. I'm curious what real scientists think of this stuff. Yeah, it's all

“like nice. I don't know. You should do nice things for your partner and you should tell them that you”

love them. These are wise things to do, but the idea that like you have a language and you need your partner to speak that language or else you can't ever meet or understand each other. This is just totally untrue. There's nothing in the love language matching part that predicts anything. Like, so you should do nice stuff for your partner. That's great. And if learning about the love language is makes you realize, oh, I guess I could be doing more chores for you. I could

be telling you more how much I appreciate you. Like, that's great. But the idea that we're explaining compatibility this way. No, no, no, it's not our words. Good. I like that. Last but not least, okay, a lot of people are going great. So online dating arbitrarily limits our options. We filter for a sweet dog walker making six figures whose tall and like, Metallica, that's great. But then I end up with somebody who has one or two of those traits that I'm perfectly happy. Okay, but where

do I be it? How do I make online dating more workable for me, you know, man or woman? Yeah, again, if you're going to continue to use the apps and I understand why people would. My suggestion generally is use the filters less. And then when you do meet people face to face, give them more of a chance. So setting up like a 20 minute date here in a 20 minute date here sandwiched in between some more dates, you're spinning your wheels and kind of wasting your time. I would rather

people give everybody that they're willing to consider three dates, preferably in three different contexts. So you get to see how they react in different ways. You can try to build something

“together. I think we tend to think, oh, I'm in a valuation mode. I'm trying to figure out what I”

think about you. And of course, there's some of that. But let's think about it like a building process. Are we building something between the two of us, a set of stories, a set of in jokes and other things like that? If we think about it a little bit more that way, I think the whole process will become more enjoyable and more fun. Paul Eastwick, thank you very much. Really interesting conversation.

that I could really get fired up about. And this is absolutely it. I don't know. You don't need

“people telling you this, but you're really good at this. Because other people like him like tell”

they're like going through their quest and it's like not building, but anyway, that was really fun. Thank you for coming on the show. You're about to hear a preview with Jamie mustard, who signed a billion-year contract at age five while he's still believed in Santa Claus and spent his childhood inside Scientology's Sea Org, where kids were warehoused like livestock and denied

even basic education. The story of the lost children of Scientology has never been told,

and I really do believe a people knew what happened to us in the 70s, 80s and 90s. What happened to us kids in that environment, they would stop it. There's a line for the suffering of children. By the age of five or six years old, I just basically started to go completely numb. These thousands of kids, they have autoimmune disease, they're all doing construction, most of them. Some of the more successful ones get lucky because they become contractors.

But if people knew what happened to us, which is the story that I wrote, that people would stop, it would be the end. On the day of my birth, I was handed over to a religious paramilitary organization and high control authoritarian group in a slum tenement, where I spent the first two and a half years of my life with little to no human touch, and that would be the beginning of pretty much a 20-year gauntlet, where I wouldn't go to school, and I would literally be analyzed.

We weren't looked at as anything of value until we could work or contribute labor.

I'd never went to school, the age of 20, I could barely write characters,

and I didn't know how to use a comma or construct a sentence or a paragraph. The reason I never spoke out is what I write about that happened to me, it's humiliating. I don't want anyone to know any of the things that we've talked about today.

“I mean, I think Scientology is the most sophisticated mine control system,”

probably in the history of the human species. I'm starting for the first time in my life to be chain free. To hear what happened during the largest FBI raid in U.S. history, much makes you wonder how this all stayed hidden in plain sight, and when he finally escaped

nearly illiterate at age 19, check out episode 1270 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

All right, great convo. So here's the takeaway. You are not a number. Dating is not a marketplace, and the idea that you're losing because somebody else is a higher score is mostly garbage. What actually matters is compatibility, context, and proximity, not some imaginary ranking system cooked up by guys who treat relationships like fantasy football. The real problem is not that you are not high value. It is that you are playing a game that does not exist. So get off

line more, stop filtering people to death, meet humans like a fellow human, and maybe just maybe stop taking advice from anybody who uses the phrase sexual marketplace value unironically. All things Paul Eastwick will be in the show notes on the website. Advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all on our website as well at Jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about six minute networking

as well over at six minute networking.com. I am at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jason Sanderson, Robert Fogretty, Tata Sadalaskas, Ian Beard,

“Gabriel Mizrahi, remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with”

friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who is interested in dating science, the science behind attraction, and mating, or they're caught up in all that weirdickey, red pill stuff. Definitely share this episode with them. In a meantime, I hope you will apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see

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