Science of Attraction, Compatibility & Romance | Dr. Paul Eastwick

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
When you look at who gets the right swipes and who receives messages on the apps, it's the most popular people. Folks have claimed that it's one of the most unequal markets in the world, but regular acquaintanceship is not nearly so dramatic. I don't think the influence of attractiveness ever goes away, right? There's always going to be an unlevel playing field to some extent, but the more that people spend time together getting to know each other, it reduces some of those market forces that give the desirable people all the advantages.

Andrew Huberman:
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Paul Eastwick, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. Today we discuss the science of attraction, mate selection, and relationships. And I promise you, what you are going to hear will surprise you. Paul's research has discovered that much of what you've heard about how people select partners, date, form relationships, even break up or repartner, is simply wrong, at least when you look at the actual data. For example, his data show that both men and women, when given a choice, select partners that are younger than them. Yes, you heard that right. It's not just men. Men and women equally select partners that are younger than them, given the choice. His data also challenge the idea that financial status is more important to women when looking for male partners. Turns out that when men are looking for female partners, on average, financial status is as important as it is when women are looking for men. And somewhat less surprising, his work shows that indeed, dating apps select for qualities that are not the ones that research shows builds lasting partnerships. But he also offers solutions to those that are using dating apps to try and find a partner. Today's discussion is not just about finding a partner. It's also about what solidifies and maintains healthy relationships over time. Again, what the data say about that. Things like physical intimacy being among the very strongest predictors of relationship stability, as well as both partners feeling that no matter who else might be attractive to them, that their partner has unique qualities that no one else can match. So whether you are in a relationship or not, looking for a relationship or not, today's discussion gets into social bonding of all sorts. And repeatedly throughout today's episode, both as it relates to single people looking for a partner, people who are already partnered, we talk about the importance of activities that are done with other people. Could be other couples or other single people, et cetera, and that this is critical for those wanting to meet a partner, and it turns out to be critical for maintaining a healthy long-term relationship. We'll talk about what the data say about that. Super interesting. So today is not just about the real data of how people rate attractiveness, find partners, and the glue that keeps people happily together. It's about the real-life data and the actions that anyone can take that help you build and sustain excellent romantic and other types of relationships. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Paul Eastwick. Dr. Paul Eastwick, welcome.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Thank you so much for having me.

Andrew Huberman:
Lot of theories out there, a lot of speculation about attraction, dating, romance, and relationships, which are separable things, of course.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
We'll talk about all of them. But one of the semi-dominant themes in the public narrative, and indeed on many podcasts, is kind of anchoring to evolutionary theory, which, to put it really coarsely, is sort of a market-based theory. People even say, "I married up," or-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and people put quantitative measures on people. "They're a six, they're a seven, they're a 10 in this, but a four in that." As a neuroscientist, I hear that and I immediately go to, and again, this is just purely theoretical, "Oh, this sounds very limbic." This is very much-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Mm

Andrew Huberman:
... of like the hypothalamus. This is very much like the kind of thing that you might expect under conditions of low food availability.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Low mate availability.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Lot of weapons and very few laws to regulate violence or something, meaning men will harm each other in order to get access to mates. Women will be deceptive. This is the whole idea. And you step back and you go, "Well, that's not the world we live in now." We have a forebrain. We can make choices. We can be strategic in the direction of benevolence. We can think about kindness. And so to me, it seems we need a revision, or at least a better understanding of what's actually true in 2026 and forward. So if you would, what are your thoughts about what is not true, based on the data, and perhaps what is true about this "evolutionary model" of dating, relationships, and so on?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
The marketplace ideas, I think they definitely have their place, and it derives from a sensible evolutionary perspective, like what you're describing. I think it describes well what happens in initial attraction settings when people are really meeting for the first time. There's this class demo that I do in my undergraduate classes. A lot of people use this demo. And what you do is you have a bunch of your students put a number on their foreheads, and they sort of hold it up so that they can't see it, but other people can. And you tell the students, "Your goal is to pair up with the highest value person that you can. And you don't know what your number is, but I'm going to count to five, and then I want you all to stroll around the room and try to make mating offers to folks." And what you see is that the people who have been randomly assigned a low number start to panic, because what happens is that nobody will talk to them.

Andrew Huberman:
And this is random.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Totally random.

Andrew Huberman:
Otherwise, it'd be very unethical to do.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right, exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
And also, who would decide? But okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
But people don't like it. If you get a low number, it's not an enjoyable experience. And I think there is a parallel to what people are experiencing as they're growing up, or maybe even if they're a little older and they're going to a party and they haven't met anybody there. So this is an analogy for how people internalize and act upon something that we call mate value. And it's like what you describe. It's supposedly linked to traits that reflect your core desirability, like maybe your physical attractiveness, but it could be other related traits, too. It could be things like the size of your bank account or your status. What we tend to see is that when people are meeting for the first time, this is a reasonable facsimile of how people behave. But interesting things tend to happen when people get to know each other over a little bit more time. What then tends to happen is that that agreement that is required for that study to work, that study only works because you can read the numbers on people's foreheads. But if I were to blur that number, we wouldn't see as much pairing up. It wouldn't be as sad and as difficult for the people with low numbers. And in real life, that's kind of what tends to happen. We stop agreeing about who the eights are and who the fives are. And people might, on average, say that you're a six, but if I've gotten to know you over time, it means there's a chance I think you're a nine. There's also a chance I think you're a three. And so that increase in idiosyncrasy and variability, I think is a really fortunate thing, and it's the thing that's going to allow a lot of partners to find each other, even if they're not consensually the most desirable people.

Andrew Huberman:
Consensually meaning in the eyes of others.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. So even if on average people think you're kind of middling, with enough time, people are more likely to find, "Okay, y'all think I'm a five, but she thinks I'm a 10." And then what you're kind of crossing your fingers for are these moments where, "And I think she's a 10, too." And it's this level of sort of disagreement or the emergence of what we might call compatibility that I think it's been missing from the evolutionary narratives. But I think it plays a core part in explaining how couples get together as well.

Andrew Huberman:
Wow. So many things come to mind. The first thing that comes to mind is the question, who and what are others looking at?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It seems like one of the more, I want to use the word immature, but let's say less evolved, not in the evolutionary biology context-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... but kind of like life maturation sense, like less evolved aspects of self is when we are not thinking about what we actually like and don't like, but we're paying a lot of attention to what other people like and dislike-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... as a barometer of what we should do or not do. Now, of course, that can be very informative in healthy ways, but when it really comes down to it, it's a potentially very toxic aspect of human nature, right? So what I hear you saying is that at some point, there's this kind of dating, romance, and relational maturity that people come to, where they're really able to sense what they actually like, and they're able to put the blinders up to how other people are necessarily behaving. Like, does everyone like this person?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Do they not like this person? And the words that come to mind, two words, are junior high. Like the junior high school dance-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Uh-huh

Andrew Huberman:
... for a number of reasons-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... is kind of the first time most kids are starting to hit puberty or somewhere in puberty at that phase, and so there's a lot of recognition of others and kind of like who is cool, who's not cool, who's getting attention, who's not getting attention, seems to surface first in junior high.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And admittedly, we're all pretty immature in junior high.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's my memory of junior high .

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, exactly. So has this been looked at in a structured way? For instance, are there adults who are good at ignoring what the consensus is? And are they able to find mates and set up relationships more readily than people who are paying a lot of attention to what other people like and don't like?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes. I am sure that there's considerable individual variability in how people react to what's going on around them. Sometimes you see this phenomenon called mate choice copying, but what that essentially means is that you kind of look to see who's attracted to somebody in my... Is everybody attracted to this person? Well, there must be some signal there. I'll sort of follow that. I totally agree. It's a very junior high way of thinking about this whole process. But I think a lot of what is happening is that if people are spending time together, and I often go back to thinking about what is it like when we're hanging out in mixed-gender groups if you're heterosexual. So we're spending time together, and maybe for whatever reason, I happen to spend more time with this person. We find something interesting to chat about. I see her reacting in situations that other people don't get to see. And so the particular time that I spend with her ends up being the material that I use that causes my opinion to diverge from everybody else's. So everybody else might be like, "She's not all that great." And I think, "But you weren't there when we were hanging out-"

Andrew Huberman:
Talking about some family challenges that I had. I'm trying to put myself back in what were the things we would've been frustrated about in high school. But in talking about problems at school or problems with other friends, she was supportive and listened to me, and then I was supportive and I listened to her. And that reciprocity through a unique experience with another person, a lot of times this is where initial attraction comes from. It sounds a little squishy. It doesn't sound like the sexy form of attraction that we often think about, but what we see in our work is a lot of times this is how it happens. It takes a little while, but attraction can form when two people spend that time together sort of pulling unique things out of each other. I'd like to take a quick break to acknowledge one of our sponsors, David. David makes protein bars unlike any other. Their newest bar, the Bronze Bar, has 20 grams of protein, only 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. 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Tracking your glucose with Lingo can help you see how food, activity, and stress impact your glucose throughout the day. I personally have used Lingo, and it's been an invaluable tool for improving my metabolic health. If you would like to try Lingo, Huberman Lab listeners in the US and UK can save 10% on a four-week plan. Just visit hellolingo.com/huberman for more information. Terms and conditions apply. Again, that's hellolingo.com/huberman. It's interesting. I'm thinking about movies. Yeah. And admittedly, I haven't seen that many romantic comedies. Zoomed over. But there's some pretty awesome-- I've seen a few of them, but there's some awesome movies about this issue. Yeah. And I'll offer some examples that will date myself. I'm ready. But that seem to fall into at least three bins. One is, "You're awesome. I'm awesome. Let's get together." All right? Nowadays, I think regardless of music taste, I think the kind of royally celebrated couple is not a royal couple- Yeah. ... incidentally. I would say it's like the Taylor Swift, Kelce couple. Yeah. People were like, "They're both winners." Yeah. "They're both super attractive." Yeah. "They're both super successful." And whether you like the Chiefs or you don't, whether or not you like her music or you don't, you're like- Yeah. "They're like two- You're happy for them. ... badass winners pairing up." Exactly. And it's very hard to say anything except like, "Wow, they totally quote unquote 'belong together.'" Yeah. Right? Yeah. So there's that pairing, and you can find that in movies. And all the '80s John Hughes movies centered around this. Yeah. And then broke that model. Right. We'll go back to that. The other one would be, yeah, the breaking of that model. This is very '80s, but the kind of like the athlete pairs up with the nerd. Yeah. Right? Okay, nowadays we have athlete nerds- Yeah ... and so it doesn't work quite as well. And then the third model is the, like, "Well, you're screwed up and I'm screwed up, but we're really good people." Yeah. Like you get True Romance, the movie True Romance- Yep. ... which is an amazing movie, right? She was a not by her own choice, apparently. She's like, "I've been a prostitute, call girl for three days." And he's like, "Well, someone paid for you to be on this date with me." They fall in love. They leave their professions, right? Yeah. And they go on this sort of semi-crime spree that really demonstrates their immense love and devotion to one another. Yeah. And the whole notion is like, "You're so cool." They both think the other person is super cool. Yeah. Don't care about their past, and kind of enjoy the fact that- Right ... they're both from hardscrabble backgrounds. Right. So then there's that. And what's so different about that kind of model compared to today where I hear, so I don't have a lot to offer about personal experience on apps many years ago- Yeah ... but it's been a while. Is this notion that you hear this, everyone's competing for the same small number of people. Right. So it seems like even those three cliché models that are presented in a number of movies, they exist. It's like since when is everyone thinking that they're supposed to pair up with the same small number of people? This is ridiculous. Yeah. That's like saying everyone's supposed to like the same top three songs- Yeah ... even though you might not even like that genre of music. Yeah. That's insanity. Yeah. The apps

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Absolutely pull for this. So when you look at who gets the right swipes and who receives messages on the apps, it's the most popular people. Folks have claimed that it's one of the most unequal markets in the world. It's basically a kleptocracy. The extent to which-

Andrew Huberman:
Kleptocracy?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, kleptocracy. Right. The extent to which it's skewed, right? That there's the rich, quote unquote, who get all the right swipes at the top. But regular acquaintanceship is not nearly so dramatic. So, one example that I like to use is that if our job was just to evaluate whether somebody standing in front of us was hot or not, and it was somebody that we interacted with briefly, and we're making just simple binary judgments. You and I are going to agree about two-thirds of the time. So that's better than 50/50, but it's far from 100%. I think, actually, that would surprise a lot of people. There's a reasonable amount of disagreement there. That's already starting to set the stage for us not necessarily pursuing the most appealing person, because if there's disagreement, that means there's a chance that, well, you're going to go for this person, I'm going to go for that person, and it levels out the playing field somewhat. I don't think the influence of attractiveness ever goes away, right? There's always going to be an unlevel playing field to some extent. But the more that people spend time together getting to know each other, it reduces some of those market forces that give the desirable people all the advantages.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, the reason junior high school seems so dreadful-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in my memory.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I had a good time in junior high school, but it was largely, at least for me, the fact that people in my peer group, because it was a pretty broad age range, were still among the guys, were hitting puberty at different rates.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So, a game of soccer that at one time was pretty even with respect to who could play well, suddenly you're playing against what felt like a grown man.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
There was actually a kid-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in our town who, I don't want to give up his name, who I think he went on to, I don't ever think he became a professional soccer player, but he was just fully developed-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... by the eighth grade. He was like facial hair-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and he was fast, and he had legs like tree trunks, and he could move. And it was just completely dangerous to have him out on the field-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... with the rest of us.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Right? And he was respected, adored, admired. And it was very context-dependent. This was the other thing I was going to say. I think you and I are both scientists, so coming up, you spent a lot of time in labs.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I'll never forget, there was a romance in a neighboring lab, that none of us understood. Like none of us understood.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's funny.

Andrew Huberman:
And I remember asking my friend, who was in this pairing, and he said the attraction for him, although she was also attractive, but the hook was her prowess at aliquoting. So there's this thing you do with antibodies in labs where they come in, and you have to put them into-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, yes

Andrew Huberman:
... the little things so that it freeze out a little bit. And apparently-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's really hard.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's really hard.

Andrew Huberman:
And it's hard, but you get good at it. But apparently, he walked in one day, and she had a bunch of these little tubes stuffed between her fingers, and she was just aliquoting really quickly while talking. And from that moment, he was just smitten.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's beautiful.

Andrew Huberman:
And I'll say they both have-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I've never heard an example that's good.

Andrew Huberman:
I was like, her aliquoting process, or prowess. And I thought to myself, like, "Is this tapping into something?" They actually have children.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
He's a professor. They have children together. They seem very happy. I think anyone would say they're both attractive people, but their pairing seemed not predictable-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... by any other external metrics. And the fact that something so specific-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... was the hook.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And that opened up into what turned out to be a longstanding marriage with kids-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... is kind of wild.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It is.

Andrew Huberman:
But is this uncommon? Because what you described before is kind of like this. There's something unique that makes it feel like there's a special attraction that indicates something that opens up to a special discussion, and then there's this kind of intimacy, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That they share-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... around aliquoting.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Around aliquoting.

Andrew Huberman:
Or that was spawned by aliquoting.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I don't recommend folks run out and learn how to aliquot in order to... This is not a strategy.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
But that's the thing.

Andrew Huberman:
Thematically, it might be, but. So what are your thoughts on something like that?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay. This is an incredible example. And I think if we're talking about couples, I think most people would find this idea intuitive. That if I ask somebody, "What is it that you love about your wife?" Or, "What is it that you love about your husband?" You know you're going to get a bunch of, if you get them talking for long enough, you'll get some idiosyncratic details. You'll get some stories. Maybe if they're really forthcoming, they'll give you the in-jokes, and they'll explain the moments that made them feel something special for this person. I think what I'm suggesting is that those moments, the creation of a narrative with another person, it goes back earlier than we think, and that a lot of times what we're doing when we're trying to figure out if we're into somebody, yes, we look at how they look visually, and we take in all that information and it matters a lot, but we're also talking with them, forming little stories. If you have a little bit of good banter, that means when I see you at the party next week, I'm going to want to sit next to you and see if we can recreate that moment, and that's often where attraction is coming from. I think that's why the apps are so hard, because it turns it into an interview where you're trying to impress other people with your traits. And again, traits are important, but it's not the life of the thing. The life of the thing is the little stories and moments that two people are sharing, and that, I think, is something that people can be doing more with.

Andrew Huberman:
I'd like to divide this process that we call dating, romance, relationships-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... et cetera, into some pieces that may or may not be the right way to segment it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So please change any of what I'm about to toss out. We're talking about impressions-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that either seed or don't seed desire for more time.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So interest.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And then I'll just broadly separate with compatibility over time.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So let's spend some time on impressions that lead to desire.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Which ones are meaningful, which ones aren't, and which ones can be a bit misleading. I think most people are probably more intuitive about those, if they're really honest.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Like, what they find, who they find attractive, who they'd be willing to admit they find attractive if you remove all the other social inputs.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And so on. But the compatibility over time piece is the one that is really hard. If you just look at the statistics on marriage-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right

Andrew Huberman:
... let alone the statistics on other relationships.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's not a bleak picture, but the numbers don't play out into if people get together and make the commitment, most of the time it works out. It unfortunately doesn't seem to be that way, or maybe who knows, fortunately. But so impressions leading to desire. Given that many of the people listening to this will either be thinking about their own history with their current partner, or are seeking a partner, or maybe not, what do the data say about what people are picking up on as really valid cues that drive real desire, as opposed to the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the BS about, well, everyone else thought they were great, or the great on paper kind of thing.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. The early phases especially are just naturally filled with a lot of uncertainty, and I think this is a bummer for a lot of people because it can feel like you're really into somebody, or they're really into me, and then it turns on a dime. So part of that is about searching for signals, trying to resolve the uncertainty, and the problem is that it's not like, oh, if I get sufficient evidence that you're smart, that's going to do it, or if I get sufficient evidence that you're really good at aliquoting, that's going to do it. What people are, I think, trying to do is they're trying to figure out, do I feel enough of something for you that I want to continue this, that I want to keep going?

Andrew Huberman:
Spark.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes. But I don't want to act like-- Because sometimes when people think about the spark, what they think is, oh, it's got to be there right away, and I've already got to be feeling 100 for this person. Right? I got to be at the top of the scale. That actually isn't what happens on average. Typically, if you look at what most relationships look like, and you look back at the beginning, the typical first impression is middling. That's how we feel at first. Middling. Just kind of, I don't know, middle of the scale. Yeah, they seemed all right. It was fine. And then we interacted again.

Andrew Huberman:
Not bad, not over the top.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Not bad, not over the top. And as we spend a little more time together, oh, actually I find him pretty funny. Or, I think he's really smart. Or, I really like how good a listener he was. And I think what people are often trying to do is get enough moments that fit enough of these different trait categories that they think, well, whatever other people say about this person, with me, he seems like a pretty sensitive guy. With me, he seems pretty witty. With me, I actually think he's really hot when he does XYZ. And so if you accumulate enough of those, then you find yourself, it's like you keep coming back. So that's how I think about it, is this slow accumulation of information. Sometimes people will encounter things like the ick, where there's one moment, and then they tip over the edge the other way into feeling like, "I can't be with this person."

Andrew Huberman:
Is that typically-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... women who feel that about men? Do men-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I think-

Andrew Huberman:
... describe that?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I think, yeah. Men have those experiences, too. It is pretty under-researched, and one of the reasons why is because this whole phase I'm talking about is remarkably hard to study. Because as researchers, we're very good at how do you feel about somebody if you're looking at a picture or if you've hung out for four minutes. That's what a lot of the initial attraction paradigms look like. I like those paradigms. I study those paradigms myself. And then it's very easy to recruit couples, and then see what happens to them, what explains why their relationships stay together and why they fall apart. But this period, and it's my favorite thing to think about, and it's also one of the most mysterious, is, yeah, but what happened from minute 10 to day 30, where now you were really determined to be in a relationship with this person. And that's a typical amount of time. It usually doesn't happen instantaneously, that people know right away, "Hey, no, this is it. I want to be with this person." It's that slow accumulation, and when we look at it, it's almost like you've got a window of uncertainty, and it's slowly collapsing to a stable impression that people have of this person as they gather a little bit more information and a little bit more information. And what you just hope for is that as two people, you're collapsing to a fairly stable impression that is both very positive of each other. And I think a large part, that's how people get together.

Andrew Huberman:
And hopefully accurate, too.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So the accuracy part is interesting because I'm a social psychologist, and so social psychologists are big into, well, your perception is your reality. And boy, do you see a lot of evidence, especially in relationships, that people are biased when it comes to their romantic relationships.

Andrew Huberman:
In what sense?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It can happen in ways like, you know Everybody kind of agrees that your partner's a jerk, but you genuinely don't think they're a jerk. And when they're with you, they don't seem like a jerk. So any kind of measure I would take about your perception of your partner versus everybody else's perception, you would seem to be horribly positively biased for your partner. The question is whether you're wrong. And I land on the side of, from your perspective, you're not. To argue that it would be better to listen to the consensus that your partner is a jerk, it's sort of like you're arguing for a sleeper effect, like there's wisdom in what other people know that you don't see. The evidence for that is actually not great. It could be, and I'm sure it happens sometimes.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
But what usually happens in relationships is that people's own impressions and perceptions tend to be the major driver. Now, that can go in the other way, too, because we might all agree this person would be the most amazing partner to be with, and yet you've now gotten to the point in this relationship where you don't see it anymore, and you can't unsee the negative things you've seen. And so that relationship can be very hard to salvage.

Andrew Huberman:
The statement has been made by someone I know and trust about all things in life, not just relationships, but certainly including them, that if people just treated their taste in people, in music, in art, in experiences, the same way they treated their taste in food, everyone would be a lot better off.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman:
Meaning if one has the impression that they really like something, they really like this person, then just go for it. Unless there's some sort of danger they're not aware of.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay? And we'll talk about consensus-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... communicating danger. Separate issue, but it crosses into this online dating thing based on a lot of conversations I've had with young men and women. But music, you hear it, you either like it or you don't. We don't tend to have a hard time defending our stance on those things. But when it comes to relationships, it's almost like we're, many people are walking around with a little or a lot of that junior high narrative in their-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in their mind. Not necessarily be with somebody that they can't stand because everyone else thinks they're great. I think that's pretty rare. Probably happens, but it's pretty rare. But at these early stages that you study, that they're navigating that process in a way where they're not in tune with their own taste. They're integrating all this other information in a way-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that's not helpful. It's not protecting them. In fact, it's just clouding the signal. It's noise, right? In the signal-to-noise model, like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... it's noise. It's just pure noise.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And as a consequence, people are wasting their time and other people's time.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I don't believe everyone's trying to waste each other's time. It just seems that we're conditioned to do this.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I will say, it does take a pretty strong person to say, "Listen, I know that's what you see. I know that's what they say, but like-"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... "this person's great. They're right for me." And when people do that, in general, people tend to back off.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And of course, there's Shakespeare about this, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right.

Andrew Huberman:
But that tends to be cultural pressure of like, no, you two can't be together.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Or the parents don't want it, or one set of parents.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Some of the greatest romances have been born out of that F-U to the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... to the elders.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
To the community.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
But this is a little different.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes. It's a tricky thing to navigate because I think one of the best situations to end up in is where you're in a relationship, and let's say it's a new relationship, and your friends around you basically think, "We're happy for you, and we're going to celebrate this relationship. We support you. We just wouldn't be terribly interested in this person ourselves." That's the ideal, right? Where it's not exceptionally competitive. You're not worried about your friends trying to poach your partner away. But at the same time, they're supportive of the relationship. Because that support from friends and family, it is important. It certainly shapes how people feel. There's a way to navigate that that doesn't make it a, like, "I'm glad you like my girlfriend, but, like, don't like her too much, please." You want to kind of try to find that balance there. And that's a tricky thing. I think this is a lot of what people are trying to navigate in adolescence. They're trying to figure out, how can I be part of a friend group and have a romantic relationship and navigate the complexities that come with that? I vividly remember these junior high, early high school experiences of dating somebody, but also your friends are into this person, and actually, it was a relationship where my girlfriend at the time broke up with me, starts dating my best friend. We're all friends now. It's all fine now. And it's like at this moment that I discover evolutionary psychology, that I discover this narrative, and it just felt like such a double-edged sword, because how wonderful is it to think about how people have been navigating these challenges, ex-girlfriends breaking up with you for your best friend. This has been happening for tens of thousands of years. Like, I'm not alone. I'm not the first person to experience this. And then to also read at the same time, oh my god, this reflects something true about my deep underlying value. This is kind of scary. So those two things together weirdly were what got me hooked on this. The feeling like evolutionary psychology is fascinating and really bleak at the same time.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, I agree. I was going to say brutal. I'm sorry you had to go through that.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Although I'm glad you're all friends. I think it happens-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's all good.

Andrew Huberman:
... probably not to everyone, but-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep

Andrew Huberman:
... I can remember similar experiences-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... where you're just like, "Oh, man, what a gut punch."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And part of the maturational process is realizing, okay, they might be better suited, and there'll be someone for me, and-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Honestly, they were better suited for each other.

Andrew Huberman:
All right.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
All right. I have a question about the science.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Or how to study these sorts of things. So if I set aside my science hat and I say-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... "All right. You can study this stuff, but wait. If we're talking about a kind of unique hook," like, let's just assume the people are within the range of attractiveness. Again, I hate this quantitative thing, but-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... they think the other person's attractive.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
They're dating because they want to find someone, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
They're not resistant to commitment. They're looking for-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... for a partner, and the number of histories that people are bringing to that is infinite or near infinite.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So let's say the hook is, listen, one person had a hard past based on an abusive household. The other person is really gentle. They had a great past, and the person feels very safe in that, right? We always think about the trauma bond, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Which is an unfortunate thing that does seem to happen. But it could also be both people had difficult pasts, parents with addiction issues or mental health issues, and they can relate. Okay, that's one example. The other is-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... we both value X. We both value Y. And so the unique glue-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... is near infinite, right? So the question I have, and this isn't a challenge, it's just a genuine curiosity, is how do you study this process then?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because what are the universals of what-- Is it what people define as some kind of lock and key that they didn't know they were-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Mm

Andrew Huberman:
... looking for that lock and key combination, and then they go, "Oh, this feels unique." And the reason I ask this is because I want to frame the science, but also, I want to know to what extent being aware of what's critical to oneself is important in this process.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Does that make sense?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
There's a lot of words there, but-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... basically, how well one knows themselves can often help lead to better choices-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in partner choice. And so people go know, like, "Gosh, I really, really would like someone that I could feel understood around this-"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
"... or feel really safe around this, or make them feel really safe around that."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
With any relationship, it's almost like you have to hold these two seemingly contradictory truths at the same time. One is that no two people in the history of the world have experienced what we're experiencing right now, and yet there are broad, general principles that we can point to that can explain some of the dynamics of every romantic relationship that has ever existed. So when it comes to broad principles, I love the attachment framework, and what's fascinating about attachment is that this is just as evolutionary as all the other evolutionary theories you've heard about online. It's just a different evolutionary theory. But this perspective suggests that we are creatures that form bonds with each other. We essentially crave closeness, intimacy, support. We thrive when we get it. We're more likely to recover. We sleep better. We get all of these benefits from close, attached relationships. But for some people, or at some points in their lives, we can struggle to have those kinds of relationships, sometimes because we become too anxious about them. We need them a little too much. We become uncomfortable in our own skin. Or we tip the other way. We become very avoidant. We become overly independent. We become convinced that we really don't need anybody else. These are broad attachment dynamics that people will go through their whole lives having to navigate. A lot of people have probably heard about you can have an anxious attachment style or an avoidant attachment style, and all of that is true. But one thing we know today from studying more couples and getting better at studying couples over longer periods of time is you realize that, boy, people's attachment orientations really can change. So somebody can come into a relationship with an avoidant trauma-filled past, but with enough time with the right kind of person, again, sharing their unique bond, which maybe science will never crack, but they know all about it, that person will start to become less and less avoidant with time. They'll become more secure. They'll get more of those physiological benefits out of the relationship. They'll get more of the support-related benefits out of the relationship, and that can, in effect, turn somebody into a more secure person. So these are the attachment lessons that I often point to, and I think they're useful for at least helping me remember that tension between, yeah, anxiety and avoidance. Two very broad processes that are always happening behind the scenes, and yet the way it unfolds for any one particular couple, it's always going to be this weird, unique combination of stories and in-jokes and little moments that scaffold up to hopefully help somebody become more secure eventually.

Andrew Huberman:
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since. The reason I started taking AG1, and the reason I still take it every day, is because AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. AG1 is designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy, and it does so by helping to fill any gaps that you might have in your daily nutrition. I get asked pretty much all the time, "If I could only take one supplement, what should that supplement be?" And my answer is always AG1. It has just been so helpful for supporting all aspects of physical health, mental health, and performance. If you would like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to get a special offer. For a limited time, AG1 is giving away a free bottle of their new omega-3 coenzyme Q10 product. Omega-3 and coenzyme Q10 are known to support cardiovascular health, cellular health, and energy generally, brain health, and much more. I personally take them both every day. Again, go to drinkag1.com/huberman to get a free bottle of the new omega-3 coenzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. Seems to me that barring, again, an emotional or physical safety issue, the less that couples are talking to other people besides a trained therapist- Yeah ... if they choose to do that- Yeah ... or maybe not even doing that, about their relationship, probably the more protected their relationship is- Oh, that's interesting ... from the darts of envious people. Yeah. The unhelpful positive comments from people, right? Because there could be- Yeah ... instances where a relationship is really flagging and someone doesn't disclose that, and they don't really understand what's going on. And were they not to share that then everyone's getting all this positive input, and they think, "Well, I think this is just how it's supposed to go." Yeah. So there's the suffering in silence piece. Yep. I don't think that's good. But there's the kind of going out for external assessment piece. And as I say this, it's funny because you're at UC Davis, and I did my PhD there. I was just remembering, when you pick projects in graduate school, you get some consensus about what's a good project. Yeah. But so much of becoming a good scientist is kind of learning to put up the middle finger and just keep going. Yeah. The sort of pressure test of doing science- Yeah ... is people going, "Well, is that really that interesting?" And you don't really know how much to pay attention to it, and it kind of pays to be a little bit- Yep ... bulldog-ish and just go, "Yeah, I don't know." And just ignore it- Yeah ... and just keep going. I can say this is also true in any kind of creative endeavor or public facing life. Yeah. It doesn't make good adaptive sense to pay too much attention, but nobody wants- Yeah ... to be the person that steps in it or does something really stupid. But in relationships, if something feels good, maybe we shouldn't be going out and putting our finger in the wind- Yeah ... to get input. So it's fascinating because I mentioned earlier that, right, the extent to which you feel at least, like the people around you have your relationship's back, that's a useful thing. But I think that probably isn't happening through a process of, yeah, like pseudo therapy. I want to talk to my friends about my relationship. Or at least to the extent that that is happening, I bet you're right. That has some real risks. I think probably the good version of this process, or the one that I would advocate for, comes from research looking at couple friends or double date nights. So I'm not asking you for input on my relationship, but in effect, I'm asking you and maybe your partner to experience our relationship in real time by hanging out together, the four of us. And so that can often feel like validation without explicitly asking for it, and I think that can often be a very good thing. And there's research showing that, generally, couples who feel like they have couple friends and are embedded in networks like that, that generally tends to go well on average. So yeah, I would think about it that way. It's like you can feel that you have the support of the people around you without directly asking for their assessment of your relationship, because the reality is other people don't know. And this is hard as a judge, because when I encounter couples, and I have friends who are in relationships, it is so tempting to look at that relationship and think like, "Man, she shouldn't have done that," or, "I don't know, if I were her, I wouldn't stand for this." But I'm not in that relationship. So unless you are a therapist and they're coming to you for therapy, I find it useful to try to resist that impulse because a relationship is this vast, deep store of information that two people have, and often we're not privy to what's really going on there. I'm going back to junior high school again. Yeah. And I can remember at this one dance- I hope this isn't traumatic. No, it's not. Not at all. But we had this all-girls school in our town- Yeah ... Castilleja School- Yeah ... which was a boarding school. And so their dances were the best because they'd invite people from other schools. Yeah. But all the guys were really excited to go, right? Yeah. Because the numbers were really worked out really well, and there were a lot- Got it. Yeah ... because women and boys and girls- Yeah ... it was an all school, right- Right ... would go to these dances, but that means you just have an outsized pool of people. So everyone got- Yeah ... someone to dance with at some point. This is what- Yeah ... mattered in the seventh grade. Yep. Right? But there were these people, I have to say, there were these individuals who were not going through the admittedly tense challenge of- Yeah ... first dance, first slow dance. This was before phones, and it was- Yeah ... tense then, too. Yeah. And they weren't doing any of that. What were they doing? They were running around telling people about who was doing what- Yeah ... and who was doing that. And I remember thinking at the time, I'm no psychologist, then or now, but thinking, like, "They're avoiding the whole thing." Yeah. This is like going to a soccer game, and instead of playing soccer, they're critiquing people from the sidelines- Yeah ... because it's a lot easier to do that than to actually get out there- Than be in the game. ... and risk being the goalie that lets the winning shot through. Yeah. And I remember thinking, like, "These people are really corrosive." One or two in particular. I don't know whatever became of them.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Hopefully, they're doing well in their lives, they got over this. But those people exist throughout life.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Meaning they're rarely the people that are happy in their own relationship life. Now, I have to say, it's probably a Y chromosome link disorder, but I assume that my male friends who are in a relationship, if they're still in the relationship, that it's going great.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's funny.

Andrew Huberman:
There's not a lot of feedback.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
There's not a whole lot of feedback exchange.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
That said, if something were really off, I assume that they would bring it up, but probably not to me.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I do think that there's probably a sex difference here, and these things are changing now.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But I think that there's not a lot of sitting around talking about how well or poorly the relationship is going, and sort of like, you ask about somebody's spouse, like, "How are they doing?" And they go, "Yeah, great."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
"We did this this weekend." There's not a whole lot of, "Yeah, we had this one moment of exchange that was kind of sticky. Can I get your input on it?"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That's not happening. That's just not happening, at least not in my life.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I'm glad you brought up these gender differences because I think you're hitting on one that at least, again, as a relationships researcher, I would sit here and say, "I think this is the big one." And the big one is that women generally are better at cultivating social support from all corners of their lives, not just their romantic partner. Whereas for men, it's largely their romantic partner.

Andrew Huberman:
Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's where they're getting most of their support, intimacy needs met, probably the person who, at least for a while, is mostly in their corner. And this is why you see across the full range of the arc of a relationship that men are always a little bit more eager than women.

Andrew Huberman:
Eager in what sense?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Eager in all the ways. I want to be in this relationship in the first place. I'm more likely to say I love you first. I'm more likely to want to be exclusive. I'm more likely to want to take things to the next level.

Andrew Huberman:
Men are more willing to do that.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Men. Men across the board.

Andrew Huberman:
This runs countercurrent to all this stuff about men being non-committal.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right. There's new review papers on this that are really compelling, and it's kind of the same effect size across the board, which is how we talk about how big is the sex difference. It's medium size, but it's just right there all the way through. Through breaking up, who's more likely to want to break up? It's women who are more likely to want to break up. Men are more likely to be thinking about their exes. And the-

Andrew Huberman:
Not while they're in a relationship.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. Not while they're in a relationship. Right. Now it's over, I'm thinking about what she's doing.

Andrew Huberman:
That's the meme.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I went on a lot-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's not the meme.

Andrew Huberman:
The meme is like, who's he thinking about?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay, yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Exactly. The reason put forward for this, and I find it very compelling, is that that's because men just don't quite have their social lives put together in the same way that women do.

Andrew Huberman:
Meaning they don't have a lot of male friends or, by the way-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Because you don't want to go to your friend's

Andrew Huberman:
... I should've said a disclaimer at the beginning. I should've said this. To make the conversation more fluid-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... we're framing everything in the context of heterosexual pairings.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
But I think it's fair to assume-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that this would also extend to homosexual pairings-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I think it would, yes

Andrew Huberman:
... in many ways. But men have friends.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I realize activity-based friendships-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... are kind of the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... dominant theme. Men not having connection in other things.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Could it be that the connection that I feel to my male friends and coworkers-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... is very deep. They're important to me.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
They're like family to me by now. We spend so much time together.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So it feels connected, but it's a very different kind of, I don't ever think of the word intimacy. I think of trust.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I'm not trying to just put up a wall to my whatever feminine traits I happen to harbor.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm cool with that. I'm good with the idea that I have emotions-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and that I have needs and stuff.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But I think it just makes good intuitive sense to me that if I have something that I want input on that has more of an emotional undercurrent, that I would bring that to my romantic partner.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So here's the question I would pose, and I would be clear, I'm not a therapist, I'm a scientist, but I would ask you this. If something went wrong, do you feel like you have a sense that there are other people in your life, not your partner, but other people that you could go to if you needed to?

Andrew Huberman:
Definitely.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
See, that is the essence of social support. It's actually not literally do you take people up on it. It's do you kind of have a vague sense-

Andrew Huberman:
Hmm

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
... that people are around, and that's the part that matters. That's the part that gives us the health and well-being benefits. It's like a bank account you never have to dip into.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It just gives you the sense of security.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, I've had to dip into it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right. There you go.

Andrew Huberman:
Luckily, it's a vast account.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right.

Andrew Huberman:
But I try not to make too many withdrawals on it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. So just the feeling that it's there is really the core component, and I think there are a lot of men, not you and not me, but a lot of men out there that don't feel like they have that social support bank account. And-

Andrew Huberman:
Like a close male friend-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... or female friend.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep, or female friend.

Andrew Huberman:
That's purely platonic.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, or family for that matter.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Who's more likely to lose touch with siblings? I'm willing to bet that that's more likely to be men, too. So I think this is part of the modern challenge of masculinity that worries me, that I point to. I want to help men at least have that sense. I think they can cultivate it through all the activity-based things that you describe, and I did that myself throughout my 20s and 30s. I could not count the number of kickball and softball teams that I participated in. And I did that not because I wanted support. I don't think I ever got emotional and cried in front of any of those guys, but I knew they were there, and that if I ever had to go to that, I could.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, I'm talking about memes and internet themes, and I have to be careful doing that because I don't want to put too much weight on the direction of those things and what they really mean. The science is what I'm interested in. But I think most guys would probably say that that scene in that movie "The Town," where Ben Affleck walks in and says, "Listen, we got to do something. People are going to get hurt. We got to do this." And you know, "And you can't talk to anybody." And his friend's only response is, "Who's driving?"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Is kind of like the essence of what a lot of men want and kind of idealize male friendship as.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Like, we got to go bury a body or create one.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And it's the loyalty, it's the trust.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
A lot's encapsulated in that. It's a bad, quote unquote, "badass scene," right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But they're about to do something real bad.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
I don't recommend that.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
That's not the friend test you want. I know people-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Please don't.

Andrew Huberman:
... have used that as the friend test, and they paid dearly for it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, right.

Andrew Huberman:
But the point is that friends who aren't going to ask too many questions, that they can hold in the center of their mind without any long preamble that your friend needs something, and you'll do whatever it is that they need because you love them.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I think that that's what's the deeper layer of it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
For me, I'm realizing I have this sense that there's a big contradiction, not in the scientific literature, but in the public perception.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Which is this. I feel like one common narrative these days is, look, men failed. They just failed. They didn't step up, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
They weren't committal. We have to take care of them. They live much longer in a relationship.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
We die much earlier.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That's one narrative that you hear a lot about. It's a scary narrative, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because you also hear the narrative, yeah, women are just very extractive. They'll trade up. You know how-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... unfortunately, your friend dated your-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right

Andrew Huberman:
... then they broke up.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
She broke up with you first.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. Exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
But you know, a lot of the things that come into play, like the Coldplay concert affair that-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... went viral.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It was about this woman, and a lot of it was pointed at her. Him, too.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But it was like a lot was made of this thing that does happen-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that there's this notion like, well, who would actually pair up with their female friend. A woman-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... pairing up with a female friend's husband or brother. There's a lot of that.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And you never know how much of these narratives are being fed. So I feel like now we're at this point that seems to be resolving a little bit, but we've been at this point where there are these two camps.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I saw something on Twitter, X, some time ago, and it just stopped me in my tracks, which said, "The way you destroy a society is to get the men and the women to hate each other." And maybe I would just underwrite-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... distrust each other.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Right? And so we need to move through this.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm not asking you to solve it, but what do the data say?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
For instance, if we were to look at dating apps, and I ask, do you think that the dynamics on dating apps, the algorithms, which are clearly designed to make the companies money-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... do you think those are more female-driven algorithms or male-driven algorithms? Not meaning who runs the companies.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, interesting.

Andrew Huberman:
We know the answer to that-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... for the most part. The question is, do you think that the apps are trying to optimize for more women to come to them or for more men to come to them and stay there? Because the theory is always kind of launched in the opposite direction.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Again, if that wasn't clear, I'm just wondering who's got the power.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
My understanding, now again, the dating apps are hard to decipher because these companies don't share data with us. I've worked with some matchmaking companies' data. They're more interested, generally, in collaborating with scientists because they've got to make people on dates happy. They don't work on engagement. They work on happy dates.

Andrew Huberman:
Right.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So they're more interested in talking to scientists.

Andrew Huberman:
Right.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
But I think when your goal is getting users and getting engagement, what you're probably trying to do is bring more women in, because my understanding is that there's more men on the apps.

Andrew Huberman:
Is that right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, I think so. What I don't know, and I don't know if anybody knows other than the people at these companies, is like, okay, but how many of those apps are in use, and how many regular users? I'm not sure. So you got to bring more women in, but again, engagement is the goal, right? That's what the apps want. They want you spending time on it, and then they want you to get the fancier features. So is that going to be more geared toward men? It might be, but I'm kind of speculating here. I expect that when you're trying to create an app for heterosexual men and women, you're going to have to somehow marry those two challenges. And look, one of the bigger gender differences that we see in the whole realm of sex and relationships is in swiping behavior. The fact that women will swipe yes on 5% of the men they see, but men swipe yes at about 50/50.

Andrew Huberman:
But that fits the kind of evolutionary, quote unquote, "narrative." Like men being less selective-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... wanting to spread their DNA-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... this kind of thing. To my mind, that whole thing around men want to spread their DNA. Okay, I believe in evolutionary biology, sure. But there's a lot of modern features that make accountability for offspring-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and things. It's not like men can run around just having kids with anyone-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
... and afford all of that, right? We were talking earlier, there's sort of two models. There's the Genghis Khan-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... ideal within this evolutionary biology model.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And then there's kind of like, where are we now?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I don't think anyone With the exception of some very wealthy people who have-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right

Andrew Huberman:
... kids with lots and lots of people, and clearly can afford it, I don't think anyone's thinking they're going to go out and just have kids with as many people-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right

Andrew Huberman:
... as they possibly can.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. And so what's so interesting about these gender dynamics is that from my perspective, they tend to get the largest, the biggest gulf between men and women, in the situations that are the weirdest. So for example, and this is a real study. You recruit confederates, so that means it's somebody who's working for the experimenter, and then they go around campus, and they ask people, "I've noticed you around, and I find you very attractive. Would you like to go to bed with me?" And when you do this, you find that men are about 20 times more likely to say yes to that request than women. Very few women say yes to this request, but a reasonable number of men do. All right. But the thing about that experiment, and that experiment is very valuable, and it's very influential, and I love at least that it was real, that people were actually out in the world doing something, even if it's a little wild and probably a little scary, especially for the women. But if you do this one little tweak, and you say, "Yeah, okay, but how about the last time that happened to you in real life, like in a context where you knew people?" And then you look at the gender difference, it's not 20 times more, it's two times more.

Andrew Huberman:
What do you mean?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's like the last time somebody you know, among a group of friends, asked, "Hey, do you want to go hook up?" How much more likely then-

Andrew Huberman:
Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
... are men to say yes than women? And men are still more likely, but they're only twice as likely-

Andrew Huberman:
Mm

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
... rather than 20 times as likely.

Andrew Huberman:
So this is not my belief, but the cynical incel types on the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... internet, or they're just cynical-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... guys will say-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
This is a good channel. I like this

Andrew Huberman:
... will say, "Oh, that's because women are sleeping around more than they used to when the first experiment was done." I don't believe that's true.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But I can tell you that would be their reflexive response. So there's this ammo.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Yeah. I know. There's so many

Andrew Huberman:
There are these arrows that each side holds. One side holds the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... guys aren't stepping up. They're not managing their own lives-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... let alone making themselves somebody who would be attractive as a partner, who could listen, and help take care of somebody, because the notion of taking care is something that we can talk about. The guys are saying, "Well, they're just all extractive."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And there's deceptiveness there.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And they'll trade up at a moment's notice. And so, I don't want to feed the flames of distrust, but the data you just provided, what is the conclusion? So that's the result.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But in that paper, the authors-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... "We, the authors, therefore conclude that"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. So I would-

Andrew Huberman:
You know

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
... conclude this, that approaching strangers is, especially in a romantic or sexual context, is very tricky, very challenging, and it is a weird modern skill because we actually evolved in environments we didn't actually meet that many strangers. So if some people are adept at that, God bless. But for most of us, we had to get to know people over time. We needed that long process to make a good impression on somebody, because most of us are not all that hot and not so appealing that people fall for us the moment we see them. And so that is what I would tell these hypothetical incels, is I think part of the problem is that you're locked into a way of thinking about sex and romance, that it's about a pickup line, or it's about an initial impression. I think women are more interested in casual sex when it's somebody that they kind of know and have been friendly with for a while, and have had some good banter with. And if you surround yourself with people, not just women, but also men, and you meet friends of friends, you're going to find more opportunities that way. So it's like a shift in the mindset that we have about how it is we meet people and how it is we get to know them, and that hitting on strangers is low yield, very difficult. Spending time with friends, it's time-consuming, although it's enjoyable in and of itself. It's a time-consuming approach, but it's ultimately going to be better for more people, on average, at least.

Andrew Huberman:
In light of the apps, social media, this divide, I'm very grateful that you're bringing up this notion of spending time in small groups.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Probably around certain activities. Could be pickleball, could be a barbecue.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Sure.

Andrew Huberman:
I mean, that's how people used to meet.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Sometimes there's work adjacency. I think that one of the reasons the Coldplay thing went so viral is that the woman was head of HR.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
There were a number of things that were ethical violations independent of, like, they tried to kind of rescue it, like, "But they were in love, and their marriages were failing," and people were like, "There are violations down the line on this, right?"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
In laboratories, many people coupled up-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in laboratories. My advisors were always really adamant that no one should do that. I listened.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, interesting.

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So they tried to lock it down.

Andrew Huberman:
In graduate school, I worked alone in the lab.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But my graduate advisor actually suggested I not even date within our graduate program. This is peer-to-peer. I was a graduate student. And for the most part, I obeyed, but I was so focused on work.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I guess it happened with, like, you'd go to meetings, you meet other graduate students, so it's really peer-to-peer.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
In my postdoctoral laboratory, my advisor was vocal to everyone, like, "No dating in the lab." And of course, there are certain married couples nowadays with kids, several of them, in fact-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that met in the lab just by proximity, interest, and who knows, aliquoting prowess. Who knows?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Somebody out there-

Andrew Huberman:
Somebody out there

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
... is an incredible aliquoter-

Andrew Huberman:
Exactly

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
... that never got to attract somebody.

Andrew Huberman:
Totally. To my knowledge, by the way, folks, again, this is not a way to attract a mate, unless you're a molecular biologist, perhaps. But I think that there's real value in this because unlike our earlier discussion, where other people's input can be kind of toxic to the process of- Understanding and really getting in touch with one's sense of taste.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I like this person, I don't. This feels safe, it doesn't feel safe. And I'm not using, by the way, the safe language to be politically correct. Some people feel emotionally unsafe because it's just like if there were a stressful circumstance, they would dissolve into a puddle of their own tears.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That's a different version of it, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right.

Andrew Huberman:
I think we all kind of flip to the extremes, but that's another aspect. But this is a context in which you can get a read of how someone behaves, their values, their reflexive levels of kindness or-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... lack thereof with other people.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You get a lot of-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... data-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in a setting that you're hopefully enjoying yourself-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in any way. That seems very, very valuable.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So we're talking '80s movies and '90s movies already, so I'm going to throw out "Say Anything."

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Do you remember "Say Anything?"

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay. So the John Cusack lead character asks out the Ione Skye character, but where they go on their first date is absolutely fascinating. They go to a party. So they are clearly going together, but they don't spend the whole party attached to each other, and they're not interviewing each other like they met on an app.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
They're actually kind of watching each other as they float through these various groups, and sometimes they're talking to other folks about the fact that they're kind of on a date right now, and how is it going, but they're also talking to each other, and it's kind of a beautiful depiction of this old kind of lost art of you're dating, but you're also with other people, seeing how they behave. And one of the moments where Ione Skye, you can see her starting to fall for John Cusack, is when he's actually looking out for some of the other folks there, like taking their keys away so they don't drive. And I think that-

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
... that idea of watching how we behave around other people can be very powerful.

Andrew Huberman:
So one of his unique qualities was that he's protective of other people-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and responsible, and he put other people's safety ahead of his own-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... desire to go out and drink that night or something.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, I forgot that scene.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. It's really-

Andrew Huberman:
That's a perfect segue to what I was going to say next, but I'm brought to this mildly traumatic experience in high school where I didn't go to any-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
This is the good stuff

Andrew Huberman:
... high school dances. Early in high school, I was really into the skateboard community, and just really focused on that. And then, it was my junior year of high school. The now woman, then young woman, girl, whatever-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... asked me. It was the Sadie Hawkins dance, where the girls ask the boys.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, okay.

Andrew Huberman:
This was very old-fashioned, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's like I've heard this. Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
It already assumes, right-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right

Andrew Huberman:
... that the guys always ask the girls-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... which was pretty much the standard.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
We go, and she was a year older and extremely beautiful, super kind. It ended up being a very long-term relationship. But I remember going, and she had something back then where her hands would get really cold. She had this thing where it was a cold night-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and so she ran to the bathroom. She said, "I have to warm my hands."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
She was in there a really long time. And I'm standing out there, and people are coming up to me, and they're like, "What are you doing here?" Like, "Why are you at a dance?"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I said, "So-and-so invited me," and no one believed me. They were like, "There's no chance." And I have to say, it was the most mortifying thing. And I kept waiting for this moment where she would come out of the bathroom and vindicate me.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And they all kept dissipating before she came back. She eventually came back.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, that's funny.

Andrew Huberman:
And I just remember thinking, like, "Oh, man, nobody even..." And I remember thinking, "I'm either completely outclassed-"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
"... like completely outclassed, or this is one of the best opportunities that ever landed-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in my lap, and I'm going to pursue this with everything I've got." So I went with the second thing, and anyway, we-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. This is John Cusack energy right here.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. It was brutal. I had to sit there and go, you know? And no one believed me. They actually thought I just snuck in or something like that.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Anyway, the John Cusack example is a really good one because his character in that movie is a little awkward along certain dimensions.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
He's certainly not as "ambitious" in the typical sense-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right

Andrew Huberman:
... although he wants to be a great kickboxer.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Kickboxing, sport of the future.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. Exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
Right? There's a great scene between him and her dad, where he's explaining what he's going to do in life, and-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and not in any kind of fluent way.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And her family clearly has other plans for her.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But it gets to this thing that I had written down because I wanted to ask about next, which is this notion of texting in particular. So not even apps, but let's just say it's migrated-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... off app or people meet, they exchange number, and there's some texting, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And this notion of the kind of unique advantage, at least early on-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... that I think can be somewhat misleading of people who are hyperverbal.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, interesting.

Andrew Huberman:
And in particular, among men. So here's what, I think years ago when I was on the job market for academic science, a really fantastic neurobiologist who actually ran, let's just say a very famous school in Boston's brain science center-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay

Andrew Huberman:
... they never admit the name of their school anyway- ... said to me, he said, "You know the worst part about the job search process in neuroscience is that it selects for hyperverbal people, where people can present their data-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... excite people about it, present their vision."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep.

Andrew Huberman:
And he said, "And there's so many amazing scientists that just don't know how to communicate their data, and we're selecting for someone who can also teach, who can also do these things."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I realize he's absolutely right. And some people can overcome this, but some of the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... best scientists in the world, speaking isn't their forte.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay. So in the realm of text communication, there's a kind of a bias toward can somebody, like a good listener in a-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... face-to-face interaction, like a guy can just sit there, listen, not interrupt, nod-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Be a good audience. Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... maybe reflect. Maybe reflect. Tell me more. Well, that must have been interesting, hard, whatever. And can convey a lot of genuine ability to communicate and bond. Over text, just listening doesn't work.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Doesn't work.

Andrew Huberman:
In fact, if it's just like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Doesn't work

Andrew Huberman:
... wow, that must have been hard to a paragraph this long-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... it starts to fall flat. And this is where I think some people might be screaming, "No, no, no, that's what I want."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But there's a strong selection process now for people who can communicate quickly with their thumbs-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... be witty in writing, and so the hyperverbal thing has moved to text.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That's a challenge. And I do think, even though some men are very hyperverbal, there is a sex difference here-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that we are well aware of. So do you think that that's skewing things? Because the ability to get and keep somebody's interest early on is strongly dependent on, these days, on texting.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. I think this is a really good point. I was reminded of some work, this is early work in the online interaction space, that suggested that actually anxious people get a lot out of being able to communicate w- with a keyboard or with texting because they don't get so overwhelmed. So this is probably going to be somebody who also on a first date would be having a bit of a tough time. So it might be that actually texting for them has at least the advantage of reducing some of the anxiety because they can take a minute to think about what they want to say before they have to actually come out with it. But I also think you're right that the ability to be witty over text, as opposed to the kind of non-verbal listening that you're describing, that is going to be a special advantage for some people today. So it could very well be skewing things in the way that you describe. There's not great data on this either. I mentioned earlier, we don't have great data on the arc of the relationship, but some of the people that have tackled this question, there's this great researcher named Mimi Bryneberg at Ohio State, and what she does is she gets couples who are together and then says, "Let me see your texts," and then gets the whole text thread, with their permission, all the way back to when they first started texting. And what you see are some cool things. Essentially, their styles of communicating start to cohere, right? It's like a pattern of mutual influence where they get a similar cadence, and they start using similar words and other things as they're talking to each other. Now, of course, those are the successful cases. So what would it look like if we had the unsuccessful cases? And I think you're right. We would see that the people who can't match or can't be witty early on, that those are the text threads that never become couples. So we just have to figure out how to recruit those folks to be in our studies. Give us the last 10 threads of dates that never went anywhere.

Andrew Huberman:
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking LMNT makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. My days tend to start really fast, meaning I have to jump right into work or right into exercise. So to make sure that I'm hydrated and I have sufficient electrolytes, when I first wake up in the morning, I drink 16 to 32 ounces of water with an LMNT packet dissolved in it. I also drink LMNT dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. LMNT has a bunch of great-tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. I love the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor. So if you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free LMNT sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack. Yeah. We're sort of veering towards compatibility when I say, if I were to ask a close family member, "What's great about the relationship you're in?" This is a woman, and she'll be referring to her male partner-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in this case. She'll generally talk about the things that he does and the things that he is able to do in support that-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, interesting

Andrew Huberman:
... may or may not even require the ability to speak.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Now, he's not aphasic. But-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... it's more about what he does.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And when we've had conversations-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's interesting

Andrew Huberman:
... on this podcast in the past about-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... kind of relationship glue and things like that, it's like, "Oh, one person always seems to make the bed by the time I'm back from the bathroom in the morning."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And you're like, "No, my turn." Or the other person always sets out the coffee or something.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's the little thing phenomenon.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Sometimes it's a note.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But rarely is it like, "Yeah, I love the way he strings together sentences," or something like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... "I love the way that she describes this thing." So it's often about actions-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... at least in the observing the positive qualities of the male partner.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And that's very kind of stereotypical, but I think that it's a kind of window in my mind into the difference between the quote-unquote exploration and courting process, although the courting process, what people do arguably matters more than what they say.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And the long-term thing.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
The consistency of the stability of the relationship over time. So I wish that, it's a shame that these apps don't select for action.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
The only way to do that would be something where you would say, "Okay, if you're going to sign up for this app, we're going to ask you to go on at least three dates with anybody that you match with, and we want to see you dating in these very different circumstances where the point isn't always to just talk at each other." That also, you've got to do things together. I wish there were dates that were like, "Assemble this IKEA furniture." But like, yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Don't people still go for a hike or go to a show?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
No, that's good too, because at least it's talking and interacting, but a different kind of talking and interacting. But I want physical challenges, get out of this escape room, stuff like that. Anyway, I'm not actually a dating coach.

Andrew Huberman:
See how people handle under-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, right. You're right, yeah. So you've got to be witty, but also not panic.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you suggest that as a first date?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I don't know, maybe third date.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Third date sounds good for escape. I want to be clear, I've only done the escape room board games at home.

Andrew Huberman:
You're just throwing people under the bus-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
... just to see what happens, to get that data. Yeah, no, I'm just kidding.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
But events, sporting events, I mean, things that are exciting, that you're doing together, but also facilitate interaction, I think can be really good. It is very, very hard, though, to simulate the patterns of what would it be like to be in a long-term relationship with this person and the 4,000 daily responsibilities that come with that. And I think even when we are really crazy about somebody early on, we try to forecast what that's going to be like as best we can, but we really don't know. And I think the beautiful thing but also the challenge that a lot of relationships have is what you do is, like you just described, okay, it becomes my job to set out the coffee, and it becomes your job to mow the lawn. And we create this very elaborate structure that guides not just our day-to-day lives and the crap we have to do, but it also guides how we communicate, when we communicate, what we communicate about. If we create a business together, that can create a relationship that starts to feel more transactional, that's maybe less warm. It has less opportunity for connection, as opposed to creating a relationship that builds time for fun activities together, for fun experiences, or again, I recognize people are stressed and often working multiple jobs, but at least when we are interacting, are we able to interact about the fun, silly things that brought us together in the first place? I think it's very challenging to do these things. When people go to couples therapy and the couples therapy is effective, it's usually because therapists are able to help couples essentially rewind all the bad patterns they've created and go back to when things were good, rediscover what it was that they really appreciated about each other, and recreate their relationship from there in a new way. But yes, many of these things are just deeply, deeply hard to forecast.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, and there's always the natural desire to want to know if one's time and energy-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... is well spent. I mean, it's really, in some sense, the most important investment-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... is time and energy. I mean, and this is-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's kind of all we have.

Andrew Huberman:
It's all we have, and that's very evolutionary-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in its core. You talked before about this kind of crystal ball question-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... or probing for particular disclosures that people are willing or not willing to make as a perhaps better indication of whether somebody is interesting or appropriate-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... for you. I realize, however, that the notion that there's a question or a set of questions-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that would say, "Green light," that's not true. That just can't be true. There's probably some answers that are red light. Everyone knows red light.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Hopefully, they're paying attention to that. But it's the yellow- But it's the yellow lights and not knowing what questions to ask to see if there's a sort of green light path forward. Tell me what those questions are.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Phrase differently.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
If two people are on a date and they have only a few minutes, it's kind of a speed dating type situation-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep, yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and they need to make a good assessment as to whether or not they genuinely would like to spend more time with the person again-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... what are the questions they should ask?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
All right. So I like the questions that are a little bit more offbeat. What people tend to do on speed dates is they want to find common ground quickly. If it's college students, maybe they're going to talk about their major. "Do we share a major? No." Pivot. "Where are you from?" And they'll try to find something that they can bond over. And that can work very well. But I think the core of what we want in an initial interaction with somebody is to take away something that feels like it was at least a little different than all the other interactions that we have. And so sometimes what that means is going a touch deeper than people are comfortable with. Now, in four minutes, it's tricky. If you have a little bit longer, like a regular evening-length date, I really like the 36 questions test. Sometimes it's called the Fast Friends procedure. But these are questions like, what's one thing that you've never told somebody that you've always wanted to tell them, and what's stopping you? Or-

Andrew Huberman:
People answer that?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. I mean, if you've been hanging out with somebody for 60 to 90 minutes, that ... is a pretty good way to elicit real depth and give both people a chance to do some reciprocal self-disclosure, because that's what people want.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's what people connect over, is like, "I feel like I've just heard, maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but I feel like you've just told me something that you haven't told most people, and maybe you haven't told anybody." I vividly remember falling for somebody when that moment happened, where it's like, "You are telling me this. I don't think you've ever told anybody this before." And it is such a rush. I think, I don't know, man. The internet, it's like convinces all we care about is sex and hotness. There is nothing like the rush of having somebody tell you something that they've never told anybody else. And again, this is the stuff that gets relationships researchers excited, because this is what we see in our data. Responsiveness, closeness, building trust, and all of that stuff. Now again, four minutes is really hard. Four minutes, you just got to get a little nugget of something that you want to build off later, and maybe that is your hometown, and maybe it is like, "Isn't this a weird experience that we're only going to get to chat for four minutes?" But whenever there are routes to go for a little bit more disclosure, I usually advise that people go for it. It will pay off on average, even if it can feel kind of awkward in the moment.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you think there's more excitement if one gets the sense that the other person is taking a bit of a risk in disclosing it?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Not like, "I've been dying to tell somebody this-"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... "and there's never been an opportunity. Thanks for giving me the opportunity," and whatever.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
"I always wanted to come back in my second life as a guppy or something." I don't know. I'm picking a trivial example on purpose.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because it's not true. Much better tropical fish. A big tropical fish enthusiast.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's right.

Andrew Huberman:
Much better. Freshwater discus, much better fish. Owned by me, because it would be, have a really good life. Take really good care of my freshwater discus. But in all seriousness, does that mean that people are walking around harboring, especially single people-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... are harboring parts of themselves that they're craving intimacy? That's of the exchange things that they've never told anyone, that they wish they could tell someone, feel safe enough to tell them. Is that what you're talking about?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Creating a real moment of intimacy early on that's not physical intimacy, it's, I don't even know if it's emotional intimacy. It's like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's a human connection, right?

Andrew Huberman:
Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's like I'm a person that's had particular experiences, and you're a person that's had particular experiences, and we have these narratives and stories about ourselves.

Andrew Huberman:
Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Again, the science historically has been so focused on traits, and I get it. And I understand the evolutionary focus on traits. But man, humans are stories, right? We're narratives, and we want other people to be privy to that narrative, and then maybe eventually be a part of it. So I think that that is often what can be very powerful. Now, for people who are single and they want to be in a relationship, I do think that it can be that sense that they're lacking. A lot of people are single and are very, very happy with their single lives. And I also understand that a lot of people, if they're single and they're dating, look, there's a lot of reasons to be cautious. Forming a relationship is a low base rate event. It doesn't happen all that often.

Andrew Huberman:
And it's time costly.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It can be financially costly.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's right.

Andrew Huberman:
It's energetically costly.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
It's very energetically costly.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Exactly. We don't go around forming relationships with everybody. But I also happen to think that once the ball gets rolling, the pull can be very strong. And part of that pull is this desire to have somebody see me, get me, understand me. I might be talking about securely attached people on average, right? There's always going to be that avoidance pull, too. People need to self-protect to some extent. But the sort of desire to open up and have somebody really get you, it's so core to the relationship science worldview, and I think it says a lot about who we are as a species, and how we form mating relationships.

Andrew Huberman:
You've said in so many words before, that men and women essentially want the same things.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I think that's going to hit some people square in the face.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I know.

Andrew Huberman:
And they're going to say, "That is so not true. Men just want blank."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
"Women just want blank." I'm on this campaign lately to try and defang-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the trolls-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that seem to have, it's like if we were in high school-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... let's leave junior high school. Let's go to high school.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
And there were a bunch of really awful people. Let's evenly distribute it between the sexes. Let's just do that for fairness' sake.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And they're constantly pointing out how these people are always bad and extractive, and these people are always cold and avoidant, and like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... And if those narratives were just constantly posted on the walls and like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and talked about over lunch, and whispered in the hallways, it would be very poisonous to-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the whole environment.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And that's kind of what the internet is.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And then the traditional news, but also some podcasts, not this podcast, but will kind of amplify these narratives because-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... they feel juicy, and they get clicks.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I think we all have an innate desire to avoid danger.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So we want to know where this stuff is. But when you step back, you go, most people are pretty well-meaning.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Most people are looking for good partnership. Nobody's perfect, but where people make mistakes, most people are looking to at least modify their behavior over time.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Huh.

Andrew Huberman:
It's all reasonably benevolent.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But then there are these-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... kind of nasty characters out there, and we give them so much credit.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And we give them so much power. And they just plain suck.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So men and women want the same things. Let's shut them up for a second and ask what the data say.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
This was one of the first things I studied when I started looking at attraction almost 20 years ago now. And in part because I found the gender differences fascinating. It was very clear for decades and decades that if you ask men and women about the qualities they want in a partner, that you'll see these differences show up pretty routinely. And they are differences that then, in the hands of nefarious characters online, get spun out into exactly the narrative that you're describing. But the basic data on what men and women say they want, it's there. Men will say they care about attractiveness in a partner more than women, and women will say they care about earning potential in a partner more than men. Now, I'm phrasing that in a particular way, and I'm saying what people say they want because I'm critiquing the experimental paradigms that were used. It usually had people rating a bunch of traits on scales. And as a psychologist, I have no problem with that. I'm very interested in people's subjective experiences, and I use scales all the time. But we wondered, that's different, or it might be different, than what happens when you're meeting people face-to-face and you're reacting to a set of people who might be very attractive or of middling attractiveness or not very attractive at all. And that, to me, seems closer to capturing what people actually want. If you meet 10 women, how much does their attractiveness drive your desire to date them? How much does attractiveness affect whether you want a second date with them or not? So we ran speed dating studies to try to capture exactly this phenomenon. I'll make it about earning prospects because it's really the same thing. So we have these men, and they go speed dating, and some of these women are very ambitious. They're going to be lawyers and doctors. Others are a little bit less ambitious. And what you'd see is that the men tended to like the women a little bit more to the extent that they were ambitious. It wasn't a huge driver of their liking, but it was definitely there, and it was definitely positive. But then when we flipped it and we looked at what the women were drawn to, not what they said, but what they were drawn to, they also tended to like the ambitious men a little bit. And the magnitude of that preference was identical.

Andrew Huberman:
Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
And it's been 20 years of this, where we've looked at ongoing relationships. We've looked at 40-something countries throughout the world. That narrative plays out every time. There's no gender differences in the extent to which these traits appeal to men and women when they're evaluating real people they've actually met. Online is different. What people say they want is different. But real people that you've at least met face-to-face seems to dramatically reduce the power of the gender differences and the appeal of these traits.

Andrew Huberman:
Fascinating, and runs countercurrent to, I think-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... what many people, including I, have heard-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... out there.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. But I think the key lesson here is believe your subjective experience when you're interacting with somebody and you're getting to know them. And maybe that subjective experience is like, "She's hot, but I am not feeling this." And maybe that subjective experience is like, "I know that maybe to some people, he looks like he doesn't have his life together, but I really see a spark there." If you trust that experience, I think that's likely to go better. And we don't have an experience to go on like that when it's online. When it's online, it's very easy to put people in boxes, put people in groups, and then make the groups fight each other. And I too am very distressed about all the heteropessimism.

Andrew Huberman:
Heteropessimism.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right. It's not my term, but it's one of my favorite terms.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you know who coined it?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I know the year. It's like 2019, but I forget the author.

Andrew Huberman:
Cool. We'll look it up.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, look it up.

Andrew Huberman:
Great term. Heteropessimism.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right? It's like men and women can't get along. How could they get along? They've got different interests and different priorities. Look, in the close relationships realm, it's not true, and that's the realm I know. Men and women, they want the same things out of their relationships. Yes, there are gender differences in the thresholds for sex, and especially early on, that can be really messy. But overall, I see a lot of similarity and a lot of potential for the bonds that men and women form to do great things for people, and women and women and men and men and any gendered combination that you want to come up with. I think we're pair bonding creatures. We get a lot of joy and a lot of fulfillment out of that, and I want to see men and women find a way to make it work again.

Andrew Huberman:
Springboarding off of the heteropessimism-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... term, which is great because it encapsulates so much-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... even though what it encapsulates is definitely not great.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
The term I'm about to use is going to sound like it means something it doesn't, but is there any research on homopessimism, which is not the same as homophobia.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
Homopessimism, meaning I'm not aware, because I happen to be heterosexual, but I have homosexual friends, men and women. I'm not hearing them talk a lot about-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... how dating culture is much worse now.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I hear this too, yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But then again, sample size isn't that great here.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
So I don't know. Because a lot of the same things apply in terms of apps. Sure, cultures vary.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But there are some constants in this picture. So in any research, yours or others', research about homosexual dating and couples-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... is there pessimism? Guys saying, "Well, guys these days," and women saying-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... lesbian women, let's just-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... for lack of a better term, saying Women these days

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I don't think that's out there nearly to the same extent. I think some of the interesting components that you see out there is, look, the apps, I think they did a lot of good in the world for people who just felt like their social networks had no options in them.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
But especially for people who might've been living in places that were genuinely unsafe for gays and lesbians, and might've helped them to find romantic partners. So I always want to be the first one to give the apps credit for that, for providing those kinds of opportunities. Classically speaking, what you tend to see is that, I've talked a little bit about the timeframe as people form relationships in the first place, and that sometimes we get locked into this idea that it's like, oh, it's going to happen in an instant, and now you're together. But the reality is it's often an elongated process. That process has tended historically to be even longer for folks who are gays and lesbians forming same-gender relationships. And I think part of that is something that you might even call a bigotry tax, because if you lived in a place where it was vaguely dangerous to admit your same-sex attractions, you've got to be really careful before you start disclosing how you feel about somebody, because rejection doesn't just mean rejection. Rejection maybe actually carries other threats and stigma and all of these other things with it.

Andrew Huberman:
Loss of jobs.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
We've seen examples that, again, it plays on stereotypes, but I'm going to assume some of it is true. Like in "Mad Men," right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
There's a disclosure-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and then it doesn't go well.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. It doesn't go well.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I love the movie "Call Me By Your Name."

Andrew Huberman:
I don't think I've seen it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. It's about 10 years old. It's Luca Guadagnino, and he's a fabulous director. But it's about two men who get together over the course of a summer, young men. It's one of Timothée Chalamet's earlier movies.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
And one of the things they come to regret is that, well, we didn't disclose our feelings sooner. But the movie was taking place in the 1980s, so you had to be really careful with whether you were going to be upfront about how you were feeling about somebody. In a place where you can't be fully confident that you have a sense of safety, it could be really dangerous. So that's an important difference that we see, and I think the apps were really good at helping people to come together in that sense.

Andrew Huberman:
I have a question about-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... financial stability-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay

Andrew Huberman:
... and level.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You mentioned there aren't real big gender differences there.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Earlier, we were saying scientists are always doing the opposite of improv. Instead of "Yes, and," they always say-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
... "Yeah, but."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
"Yeah, but what about?"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, "But what about?"

Andrew Huberman:
It's in our training.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep.

Andrew Huberman:
Income level on its own, or amount of money that somebody has, in my mind, is somewhat informative. What's more informative is having the additional data point of where they started out.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because people with money who-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... didn't have to work very hard to get it-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... it's a different picture. Now, some people might say, "Who cares?" And I will make the argument that some people-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's a cool idea

Andrew Huberman:
... some people who had to work very hard to make their money oftentimes are still in the working hard mode.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
The twist in the high level of income thing like that-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the additional question that's useful is how much free time do you have?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because a lot of the people I know who have a lot of money, they don't have a lot of free time. So if people pair up with them thinking that they're going to feel very financially secure and have a lot of stuff, that might be true.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep.

Andrew Huberman:
But how often they're going to see their partner or the co-parent of their kids is an-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... important question. And this extends both ways.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So many of these attributes that in the abstract sound really good to us, but then when you actually put it in a person that also has all these other attributes and things going on, you realize, wait a minute, their cutthroat ambition actually wasn't that great, right? Because it means that they're never around. I think for this reason, it can be very challenging, especially if you're looking at long-term relationships, to take things like a person's income level and use that to forecast, for example, how their partner is going to feel about them. We've done some of this work, indeed, some of the work looking at gender differences, and the reality is a person's objective income, it has very, very small effects on how their partners feel about them. The bigger effects are things like, if now we scaffold up and look at socioeconomic status. So do you have the resources to get by as a couple? That can be very challenging for people.

Andrew Huberman:
I've seen numerous examples of couples where the man loses his work, and if he's not able to get stable work again-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... reasonably soon-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... this isn't a peer-reviewed study.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Most of the examples I can think of, the couple eventually dissolved. And it wasn't necessarily for a lack of enough resources.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Families were able to help, et cetera. And of course, we could talk about depression.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
We could talk about some other thing that might have happened or many things that happened, but is there a sex difference there?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
The part that I find the most intuitive about these examples is that when a man loses his job like that, and I love that there are other resources around, so we know that that's not the exact problem. My guess is that the challenges are coming more from his genuine troubling loss of identity, loss of self, what am I going to do with myself, and less, maybe not zero, but less about his partner thinking Now he's no longer a provider.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
And that's just generally my bias from what I see in the science, which is when tragedies befall us, they affect our perceptions especially strongly. So this guy is going to feel this pretty hard that he's lost his job. Stepping back and looking at the broader picture of the data, it used to be true that marriages were more fragile when the woman earned more than the man in the marriage. But this stopped being true in the '90s. So that gender difference doesn't exist anymore. And I think it's easy to surmise, I don't know if the sociologists who've studied this have drawn exactly this conclusion, but it's easy to posit that what's happening there is that people in general have gotten more comfortable with the gender imbalance relationships. And in the '90s, we were still getting used to this idea. Today, even if the average couple, the man earns more than the woman, you do see that because there is a gender difference in income levels on average, but in education it's flipped now, right? Women, at least in younger couples, the woman is more likely to be educated than the man.

Andrew Huberman:
More educated or educated period?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
More educated than the man in the relationship, right?

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So women are earning more of the higher degrees, so if there's a mismatch, probably the woman has more education than the guy. That's not a risk factor relative to if they were the same level, relative to if he were higher. It just doesn't really seem to be doing anything. I know we can get really nervous about what does it mean for men's desirability if they're not ambitious. I get that. If men are not out there making things of themselves, I'm not worried about the women getting a better education than them. I think it's important for men to have a sense of purpose. I think trade schools can be awesome, but the mismatches in the level of education and in the level of income, those don't spell a problem. We just got to get men feeling good about themselves again.

Andrew Huberman:
And the data say they're not.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, I think that's what you see. The data that concern me the most are that men, and I think especially low SES men, they're the ones that feel like their social networks are gone. They don't know where to go to get any kind of companionship. So if they're really feeling that acute sense of loneliness, of lack of belonging among real people in their lives, that's the thing I worry about because then that's going to affect your sense of self. That's going to affect all of your ambitions and, in really bad cases, might push people to some of those nastier corners of the internet.

Andrew Huberman:
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Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
This isn't always true.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But there's this what apparently, based on your work, is a myth that women desire older men, men desire younger women.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Your work points to the possibility that there is no gender differences in attraction to younger partners.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. And look, let me say that this is, I think one of the more tenet-

Andrew Huberman:
And it's a big-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and it's a big sample size, 4,500.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
4,500.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm like, wait.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's a lot.

Andrew Huberman:
And I'll weave a quick anecdote.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
There's this guy at the gym that I sometimes go to. He's probably in his 70s or something, and he's in great shape. He's retired. He made money. He's enjoying life. He's got-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... grandkids. He just seems like, I don't know him that well, but it seems like he's really got it together-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and he's really loving life. And I always say, "What brings you here every day?" I figured he'd be like, "Oh, I just feel so good." And he just-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... always says the same thing. He always just says, "I don't want to lose my wife to a younger guy." And I always laugh and I go, "Then-"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
This is smart, man.

Andrew Huberman:
I know a lot about the contour of his life, and maybe there's something he's not disclosing, but anyone would say, "This guy's just totally got it made." Again, I don't know the details of his life, and I shouldn't, but I know enough about it that he's checked off all the boxes three or four times-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and then had the wisdom, in my opinion, to not just keep working like a maniac-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and just spend time with his kids and grandkids-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Preach it

Andrew Huberman:
... and his wife. But he always answers the exact same way. "How's it going?" He goes, "Pretty good. Just don't want to lose my wife to a younger guy, so I'm here again today."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Let me tell you about this study. And look, again, I'm a scientist, and sometimes the data, I'm like, "Huh?" You don't say. I didn't see this one coming. I mentioned this earlier. So we partnered up with folks who do matchmaking. So these are people who are paying for a service because they want to be in a long-term relationship. And so they will set people on dates, and they've got a whole pool that they're working with. And within that pool, the men who are searching for dates are older than the women by about four years on average. Okay? So that's what they've got to work with. And they set people up on these dates, and so most of the time, the woman is going to be younger than the man, but there's a range. Sometimes the woman is much younger than the guy, and sometimes the woman is the same age as the guy, and sometimes the woman's even a little older than the guy. All right? So what you'd expect to see is that if men are looking for younger women and women are looking for older men, then when we look at how the age of the partner affects whether you want to go on a second date with this person, it should be the younger folks appeal to the men more, and the older folks appeal to the women more. But that wasn't what we saw. We saw that the younger folks appeal to the men more. And by the way, it's not a huge effect. It's not like the gross stereotype that's out there. Men are a little bit more interested in the women to the extent that they're younger, but it's not gigantic. Women are doing the same thing. They're a little bit more interested in the younger guys. They don't say that on paper. In fact, sometimes they're like, "Don't set me up with the younger guys." And then they do, and they say, "Huh, that was interesting. I enjoyed that date. I would like to see him again."

Andrew Huberman:
Are the stated reasons similar in any way? For instance, are both groups saying less baggage? That would be-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... kind of a cliche answer.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
No. I-

Andrew Huberman:
But we could place that on either side.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. I don't know, and I would love to know. I think sometimes when women downrate whether they care about attractiveness or something, I think sometimes they are kidding themselves a little bit, that they actually do appreciate a younger guy who's maybe is fit and in shape, or they don't fully appreciate how exciting it would feel to be sitting across the table from a guy like that. This is my best guess. And what's so fascinating about this dataset is that, look, they're trying to create these couples, but you only create a couple a fraction of the time. Much of the time, the people don't really hit it off. But in the couples that get created, the guy was four years older than the woman, and in the couples that don't get created, the guy is four years older than the woman, because that was what they had in the sample to begin with. So we look around, and you see that age difference. That age difference is real, and I am sure it means something important. And data like this just make me think something else is going on here. Whatever is creating this age difference, it's not age difference in how people sort. It's not happening on date one. It's not happening at the initial attraction phase. Maybe it's happening earlier. Who puts themselves in the pool? Maybe it's happening later. I don't know. She's going to date this younger guy once or twice, but then she's going to be done with him, and she'll settle down with somebody who's a little older.

Andrew Huberman:
Interesting you said she's done with him.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, right.

Andrew Huberman:
Interesting.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, exactly. Right, but it could go the other way, too.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, what I've heard before, because I'm 50, I have some female friends who are dating, and they'll say that they do date younger guys, but then the deal breaker is if the guy says he wants kids.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Kids. That's tough. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So the agreement is to move on based on that.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Often. This is a reasonably common thing.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I actually hear about this more and more these days.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. And I think one thing that online dating affords is if you've got something like that that's exceptionally important to you, there are opportunities to filter on it. We haven't talked about this too much yet, but you can get into a whole line of research and studies on, oh, if people are filtering for things in the abstract, does that match what's ultimately going to appeal to them when they meet face to face? We find that generally speaking, these things tend to be pretty uncorrelated, so what people think they want doesn't match up with what they actually end up liking once they meet somebody face to face. But you can argue that sometimes that's not a good thing. If somebody really wants kids, shouldn't it be within their power to craft a pool of partners who also want kids to give them that opportunity? That seems like a reasonable, humanistic thing to do, and so to the extent that the apps are able to do that or the services are able to do that, I think that's ultimately a good thing. I think we-

Andrew Huberman:
Don't they click-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... like want kids or not?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. I think often.

Andrew Huberman:
I see.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I think you can. In some apps, that might be a special feature you have to pay for. These things get complicated.

Andrew Huberman:
Who knows if the news is accurate, because it's not real data.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's whatever the news decides to shine a light on.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
This idea that more young people are going to church, which is a values, plural-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... indicator. Most churches are open to whoever shows up.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But the assumption is that people are there for certain reasons that they're either trying to build on or have certain values-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that are family, children, values, morals-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... adjacent-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... if not central. Right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I think people know what I'm saying. Sure, bad people can show up at church.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But the idea is that somebody's taken the time to get dressed up on a Sunday morning and go and listen to someone else speak.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And a lot of people are meeting that way now.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Are there any data that that's a response to the Wild West of online dating and social media and just the general culture of everybody? It's the culture of everybody.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Even in high school-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... there were subgroups. Some people moved between subgroups.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I see what you mean.

Andrew Huberman:
But it The vastness of the internet and social media-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... even if you state your preferences about what you do and don't want to see on social media, it's a flood. I see people and-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... things on there from way back when that, they're not bad people. I have no interest in what they're doing now. And then occasionally I see people where I'm like, "Oh, no way."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And reconnect.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But it's a fire hose.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, and you need some way to reduce it to something manageable. Again, we evolved in an environment where we knew 50 other people. That's your group. You probably knew more than that, maybe 150, some nearby groups, but that's all ages and all genders and everything else. It's a small number of potential partners for you. But you had reasons to interact, structures that were going to put you in contact with each other. And to the extent that church is fulfilling a function like that, I think that's great, and in fact, I think that's exactly what's missing. And if church isn't your thing, there's a million other things that people can do in any kind of modern urban context that are going to be helpful along those lines. You can join any kind of intramural sports team. I mean-

Andrew Huberman:
Improv class.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
Just came up on it, yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. So I think the improv classes are amazing because not only is it a chance to interact in a group over a period of time where you don't get to opt out if you don't love somebody right away, but also you're practicing being vulnerable and being responsive and things like that. So I think these things are all wonderful. Are people doing it because they're trying to limit the pools to the folks that they think will fit what they're looking for? I'll bet you some people are doing that. I'll bet that if somebody's like, "I really want to be with somebody else who's active, so I'm going to join a running club," or, yeah, "I want to be with somebody who shares my values, so I'm going to join church." I think that's great. If I'm being buzzkill scientist, I'd probably sit here and be like, "It probably actually doesn't matter." Join the church, join the running club, join all these things. You're probably no more or less likely to find somebody that you're going to click with.

Andrew Huberman:
It's more about getting yourself in a small group environment.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Exactly. But I'll be the first to say, when it comes to the base rates of these things, if your goal was, "In 90 days, I want to be in a relationship. What are the things I should do that give me the best likelihood?" I'm embarrassed to say my field can't answer that question.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I can't tell you, "Use two apps and use these two apps and go to church. Don't join kickball because they're a mess." I was a kickball player, so I'm allowed to say that. "But you should join the running club." We can't answer questions like that. So in the absence of that kind of specificity, my answer is always just be around people on repeated occasions.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm not trying to provide pushback here. I'm not qualified to do it-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay

Andrew Huberman:
... because I'm going to-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
No, I love it

Andrew Huberman:
... come from a totally different field. But I feel like there's certain smallish group environments-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... like church, but there could be other examples. Like for instance, like a hiking club-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... or rock climbing-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... or something like that, where there's kind of a, this shouldn't be the reason people do it-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the only reason people do it, but let's say people pair up-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... as a consequence of time there.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That the culture of that thing provides additional opportunities to grow the relationship with peers.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because there's certain things, like you join an improv class-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Exactly

Andrew Huberman:
... great. My sister-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... is really into drama and theater, still does-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... theater classes for her own enrichment.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But if you meet someone there, it's not like the culture around it sort of cultivates the evolution of the relationship. Whereas in church, you might even get married in that church.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep.

Andrew Huberman:
In the context of a-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Thousand

Andrew Huberman:
... hiking club, you might be out with the other couples that you meet or-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... single people that you meet for many years. It's a community that-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... can grow over time.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Certain things, here I'm showing my ignorance around improv classes.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But certain things like a pottery class or pickleball or something, it doesn't just at face value present a sort of trajectory of like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's right

Andrew Huberman:
... I'm sounding-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... really nerdy here, but kind of like a set of maturational stages that you can continue to be in the relationship-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... there.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Does that make sense?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep, absolutely.

Andrew Huberman:
Really stumbling for the words here.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
No, I totally get it.

Andrew Huberman:
This, by the way, is a great reason to not meet people at work. I'm not trying to throw a cold blanket on people-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... who decide to meet people at work, but oftentimes-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's a challenge

Andrew Huberman:
... oftentimes the relationship doesn't necessarily flourish in the context of the work environment. It's not like the work environment makes the relationship grow.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I've seen more things split over time if both people work there. Oftentimes, they have to move to separate buildings.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Just for a variety of reasons. But it's not like the culture encourages it. Whereas there's certain-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... things that are a bit more, since you were talking for a moment there like an evolutionary biologist-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... we evolved in small villages-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and small groups where you had peers and elders that provide this positive reinforcement-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... on relationship. It's kind of an interesting thing, no matter how evolved we are or progressive-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... we are, I don't know many women that ask men to marry them in 2026. I'm sure they're out there, but it's still the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Interesting

Andrew Huberman:
... tacit assumption-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that men are going to do the asking.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Just saying. Okay, so how progressive are we really, right? It's also true that when people get married, most of the time, they stand up in front of other people-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and state their vows.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
This is not like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... under the bedsheets, "I promise."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
This is like a public disclosure.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
These days, it ends up on Instagram. So there's clearly a feedback that comes from being part of a larger structure-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that reinforces relationships over time.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, and it can be a big help.

Andrew Huberman:
You promised. You didn't just promise to me.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You promised the whole world.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
And that can be an important source of support, too, because then it's that At least the subjective sense, like these people have our backs, right? If we run into hard times, there's a community that's going to be there and support us. And then I think you're right. On the initial attraction side, having a sense that we're part of this larger collective, that there's something about that that feels good and provides structure that can help keep moving things forward. And you're right that the workplace context is particularly tricky because many workplaces don't want to encourage that kind of thing. And it's going to often happen anyway, and probably the smartest workplaces are the ones that allow for the possibility that peers are going to get together and have structures in place that will be able to keep the personal life appropriately personal and then deal with the fallout if the fallout happens.

Andrew Huberman:
One place I trained, might have been UC Davis, all the junior faculty, of which there were many of them-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... when I first joined, there were a large fraction of couples-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in the department-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... or who had spouses in other departments. I think more than 80% of those couples ended up divorced. Now-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, wow.

Andrew Huberman:
Now, there are a lot of-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... variables there. Fortunately, most of them are on good terms. I can't say they ended up with other people in the department. That didn't happen. But I watched and was like, "Whoa." Like, "This is interesting."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
This, I don't want to say didn't end well because I think they're all happy now.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But there does seem to be some additional stress of that.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So, this gets to a question you've actually studied, which is this notion of similarity. So maybe we should talk more about that because it's a more data-driven question, which is perceived similarity-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... matters more than actual similarity.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
What is perceived similarity?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So perceived similarity is this general sense like, eh, we have a lot in common. There are a million things that we could talk about. We share the same values and attitudes and preferences about things in general. But notice the way I'm describing it. I'm not tethering it to any particular attitude or value or preference or anything else. Because it's so free-floating, I, as the perceiver, get to attach it to whatever I want. And that affords people to have a certain amount of motivated reasoning so that when they like somebody a lot, they will find the similarities there. They will really come to think that what really matters is that we love Japanese cinema and that we share the same politics. Whereas for another couple, you know what? We have different politics, but that doesn't really matter to us.

Andrew Huberman:
Does anyone say that nowadays?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
No, people still do. Look, what you see in the political matching data is that the odds that people of diametrically opposed preferences, the odds they're going to get together in the first place are very, very low. But among the mismatches that do exist, it actually doesn't predict satisfaction all that much, and I think this is why. Because you just compartmentalize it.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
If we match, it's important. If we don't match, oh, who cares? Does anybody care about that, right? So much motivated reasoning. So this is why if what I wanted to do was take two people who had never met and assess everything I could about them and then figure out whether they were going to be a match or not, based on whether they were similar, I really was probably going to be no better than a coin flip at figuring out whether or not they were going to click. That's actual similarity. I take things that are true about you without the ability for you to engage in motivated reasoning, and I say, "Okay, you're an 83% match on all the things I could assess. You two should like each other." When we've done studies like that, you basically get a coin flip every time.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, this is why the apps seem totally useless. Because if you were to just pair up, well, you want this and you want this, and I want that too, and I want that too, you're telling me that it's as good as chance.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's as good as chance. And look, if there's evidence for similarity on anything, it could be in the realm of demographics, socioeconomic status kinds of things. I've seen unpublished data, but promising. But even then, those effects are so small. So we're going from a 50/50 coin flip to like 53/47. These are small effects across the board because we get all of this motivational latitude.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
When we really like somebody, we find the things we have in common, we focus on those, we convince ourselves those are the most important things in the world. And the thing is, who am I to criticize them because the people in the happiest relationships, that's what they're doing. They're exhibiting those kinds of biases, and it's like stupid human tricks, but it kind of works.

Andrew Huberman:
You want to hear something really scary?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You probably know this already, but I was shocked. Let's just say someone I know who would know told me that the biggest dating app in the world, by an enormous margin is-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's not Tinder?

Andrew Huberman:
Instagram.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh.

Andrew Huberman:
And this was actually very much in parallel-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Huh

Andrew Huberman:
... to the algorithm favoring communication by direct message. People will say social media isn't social anymore. It's not about seeing what people are doing. The real dynamics, the real time spent, and you'll notice how you get rewarded and what gets served up in the algorithm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Reward meaning like what posts do better than others. If there's a strong correlate to communication about that through direct message. It's a dating app that's kind of cloaked-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... for many people as a social media app, but of course, I use it to teach neuroscience, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, right.

Andrew Huberman:
And other things, and this will be on Instagram. So I'm a big fan of Instagram and other social media platforms for teaching and learning, and I say that sincerely, but the majority of the Time spent now is not scrolling, it's getting to communications-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that move to real world.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And then feedback-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... to social media. So I found that interesting. So I'm imagining a question.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because you study questions people ask them on dates, and we used to be able to say, "If you were on a deserted island, who would you want to be there with?"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Like, who's the one person that you could stand being with or perhaps even really enjoy being with?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Assuming you have all the resources.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Now, I think the question should be, who's the one person that would get you to not engage with anyone else in the world?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Mm.

Andrew Huberman:
In other words, set down what you called, and I've never heard this before-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the derivation of alternatives.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
This is an interesting term.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So in some ways, like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... committed partnership is about setting aside the idea that there might be somebody better for us. And I would argue, again-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... I've strong positive feelings towards Instagram. I really do.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's a fun and great platform when used in moderation.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But it's the opposite of the deserted island. And a former guest on this podcast, who happens to be a divorce lawyer, James Sexton, has talked about the fact that many of the divorces that he litigates? No.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That he's involved in.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Resolves.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, that he helps resolve, win for his clients-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... started with a innocuous communication on Instagram. Starts with a like.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh.

Andrew Huberman:
Starts with a like, starts with a conversation. Ends up-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in the corner of a grievance or a commonality-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep

Andrew Huberman:
... that's sensed, and then the derivation of alternatives emerges-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and eventually the relationship dissolves.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. We think about how people handle alternative partners. If you're in a purportedly monogamous relationship, this is a challenge that relationships are going to face, and I sort of see these twin streams happening at the same time. So what you see in general is that for people who are in relationships, and especially if they are happy in that relationship, any alternative partner that you can throw at them, they will tend to think that that alternative partner is pretty weak sauce. They think that person is less desirable than any other metric you might want to come up with for how desirable that person actually is. That's what we mean by derogation of alternatives. It's like they're coming in up here, but, hmm, because I'm partnered with you and I'm happy with you, I see them as less desirable than they actually are. Side note, that's one of the reasons why the marketplace metaphor starts to break down, because people actually start to become bad barometers of what is, quote-unquote, good. You stop seeing this alternative's actual value because you're so happy with the person that you have. Okay, so this is a good thing, and this is a real defense mechanism that people have.

Andrew Huberman:
Is it a defense mechanism? But it's protective of healthy, monogamous relationships.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, yeah. But I mean it in the best-- Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
You know what? That's so funny because in our jargon, we say defense mechanism, I mean that in the best possible way.

Andrew Huberman:
Protective mechanism.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, protective mechanism.

Andrew Huberman:
Protective mechanism. Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. Yeah, you're defending the relationship.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's so funny. I'd forgotten that-

Andrew Huberman:
We've had a few too many psychologists on here.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right, of course. That has a negative connotation for some people. Not for me. Okay, so it's a protective mechanism, but at the same time, people also do this thing that you might call like playing with fire, but it's more like playing with what really seems to be a harmless book of matches, and I'm just messaging these people. "Well, what's the big deal? This isn't going to go anywhere. We're chatting a little bit. This isn't going to go anywhere." And things escalate.

Andrew Huberman:
Sorry to interrupt, but-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and one of our former guests on this podcast, who's immensely popular in the dating, relationships, and romance sphere, is Esther Perel.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I think the perception about some of her messaging, whether accurate or not, is that there can be some value to, in her first book, I think, and I haven't read it, but the excerpt that was relayed to me was this notion like, oh, someone isn't feeling as much chemistry in their relationship, so the woman, this wouldn't happen nowadays most likely-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... but goes to a bar and flirts a bit and then like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... some sense of sexual confidence is restored-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep

Andrew Huberman:
... and then her husband is then attracted to her differently again. And I've heard the more crude phrase, "Doesn't matter where you get your appetite as long as you eat at home." This is more of the 1950s, '60s variety.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
By the way, none of these statements come from me, although my mouth is saying them. These are things that you hear out there, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Directly in opposition to what you're saying, which is not to say that what you're saying is wrong, I just think that there was about a 20 or 30-year period there-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... where people kind of assumed that monogamy could thrive-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... despite the inputs, and monogamy could thrive perhaps even better if people acknowledge this aspect of self that is still attracted to other people.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
They talk about it. What you're talking about is really more of a protective cloak around the commitment. I do sense people are veering back toward that, what you're describing.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
You know how I think about it is, it's the protective cloak, that that's sort of there as a baseline, but then signals will get through sometimes. Sometimes because you're messing around on Instagram but sometimes because you went to the bar with your friends, and there was this cute guy who was chatting you up. And the evidence there, too, I interpret, I think the way Esther would interpret it, and what you see in the data, also suggests something like a protective mechanism. Again, it's playing with fire, but if you look in studies where they ask people, "Have a sexual fantasy about your partner Now, how much sexual desire do you feel for your partner? It has gone up. Great. That's pretty straightforward. Now, please have a sexual fantasy about, I don't know, whoever's in second place that's not your partner. Then you start having sexual feelings for that person, and you start having sexual feelings for your partner at the same time. So it's exactly the metaphor that you're describing, that when we feel a sense of attraction, it can rebound onto our partner. And by the way, it doesn't happen in the reverse. Okay? So the partner, your current partner, again, for most people in happy relationships, holds a special position, you might say, where even when there is a little bit of a threat, and I've noticed somebody, it rebounds somewhat. I don't advise that people go out and do this.

Andrew Huberman:
Are you saying it rebounds, like it's a fuel for the relationship-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the way that Esther and other-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... people have talked about?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That's a real thing.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Yep. It's recent studies. I can point to one or two. They're all within the last few years.

Andrew Huberman:
This is going to be very uncomfortable for some people to hear-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that their partner may come home-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... immensely attracted to them because they had some sort of interaction-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... during the day of either-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... being attracted to someone or receiving-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... signals of attractiveness.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. Where I am 1000% with Esther is that the danger, the problem, is not that your partner was sexually attracted to somebody else. The problem is usually in the escalation. It's, yeah, but now are they like repeatedly hanging out with them and having conversations that they feel secretive about? Or if it's you, that you feel secretive about. Those are the warning signs because then what will start to happen is that the protective layer that people typically put around their partners, it will start to erode, and that's when people are at a greater risk of infidelity. It's usually a process like that. The simple fact that we can be attracted to other people, that is not a problem for the average relationship. It's the repeated follow-through on that attraction that becomes a problem.

Andrew Huberman:
And that's something that evolved in recent years, that there used to be far more transient interactions-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that would never resurface again.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
You sit next to someone on a plane, you'd have a conversation.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
There might be attraction, there might not be, but you develop some degree of-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... intimacy. Some people would disclose a lot on planes.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And then you never hear or talk to them again.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Nowadays, there's almost always an opportunity-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Opportunity, yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... for people to follow up and connect with people. That's what James Sexton is referring to-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... when he talks about social media being a, borrowing the other person's language here, an-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... attack vector-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... on a relationship. And maybe that is a good reason for people who are in committed relationships to just get off of-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... social media, period, but it's also a context where people, quote-unquote, "spend time" with people for other reasons.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. It's tricky. I don't recommend using that sort of process to bolster your relationship. I guess if you're going to do it, try to do it by watching somebody, yeah. Figure out if you're a man who's with a woman, just ask her, what actor does she have the hots for, and be kind enough to watch a movie featuring him. Maybe that's a way to make this work for you.

Andrew Huberman:
What about in the reverse?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Or the reverse. Yeah. Sure.

Andrew Huberman:
Some of what appear to be the strongest and happiest couples that I know, I know very little about their dynamics, period.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Which is kind of an interesting thing in its own right.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But some of the people that are in that set-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... seem to have a pretty relaxed rapport around, "Oh, yeah, so and so," referring to their spouse, "really likes that actor or actress."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... it's just kind of a thing that they understand.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
But it's over there. Right? It's at a distance.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It feels safe. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. It's not a looming threat.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's very different if it's about somebody that you both know and spend time with.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
It's much more threatening in those cases. And I think that also is part of why that derogation process happens, is because that threat feels very uncomfortable. Even if it's your attraction, you kind of want to downplay it because the thought of, "What would it mean if I'm with the wrong person?" Or "What would happen if this thing spiraled out of control?" It's upsetting for most people. We take all this time to build a relationship up to be this thing that we really value, that's a central part of our lives. The thought that it could disappear at a moment's notice because of a mistake that we would make, it can be threatening to most people, even if we're imagining ourselves engaging in the actions that would bring things to an end.

Andrew Huberman:
I heard a really scary story that may or may not be informative. I think it is, and maybe you can help-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay

Andrew Huberman:
... me understand it. Anytime someone starts a story with, "I have a friend"-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... it gets a little weird. But based on an observation I had a long time ago where I was going to a gym, and I had a truly just platonic friendship with this woman. She would go to the gym, too. Back then, not a lot of women worked out in gyms, if I'm honest.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It was like not a lot of women lifted weights.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It was something that was kind of reserved for guys or for female bodybuilders. But she wasn't a bodybuilder, but she liked lifting weights.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And super fit. She's a super accomplished athlete now. She, one day, when we were leaving, she was really upset. I was like, "What's up?" And she's like, "All these guys kept coming up to me." And I'm like, "Well, that's happening all the time."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And she's like, "No, they were all really unattractive." And I said, "Okay, well, you're good at dealing with..." She was very skilled. She's very beautiful, then and now, and so very skilled at saying, "Thanks, but no thanks."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And then she said something that was absolutely shocking to me, that I've shared with other female friends and some men-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and they always go, "No way." And she said I feel like I have to go flirt with a really attractive guy now.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Whoa.

Andrew Huberman:
And it was clear that despite being incredibly attractive, incredibly accomplished, and super athlete, was questioning her own value. This is very evo-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Ah.

Andrew Huberman:
... evolutionary biology, because the guys that were approaching her were-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in her mind, very, quote unquote, "low value, unattractive."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It got to her. Of course, my interpretation was, okay, guys, the next time a really attractive woman walks up to you and seems like-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... she's chatting you up, you don't know that it's actually about you.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
You know?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Just know that it may not be about you. Note to self.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And what's wild is that years later, I observed and talked to someone in a basically same dynamic.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But she's married, and she said, yeah, if a bunch of people hit, people always hit on this-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... this other woman, too. She's like, "If they do that, I sort of feel like I have to go kind of get a clear perception again of whether or not I could be with an attractive guy." And now-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Wow.

Andrew Huberman:
... granted, she's married-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... to a super successful-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... what anyone, male or female, would describe as super good-looking guy.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And they have a super stable family. And I thought to myself, "Oh my God." And I don't know that this is unique to women-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... I don't know. But it's kind of weird if you think about it. Now, it could be their unique insecurity, but it's like if data start coming in, let's flip it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
If a lot of really attractive people of the opposite sex-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... start talking to you, whoever's listening to this-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... you perhaps start to wonder if something important-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... is going on there.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
There's information there.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I just would like you to reflect on this. I've been perplexed by it for a long time.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
In some sense, it makes total sense. But as a scientist, I've learned, yeah, but.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's just like, what's really going on here?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I think the part of the story that's the most head-scratching is that they're in relationships, so shouldn't they be-

Andrew Huberman:
In the second case.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, in the second case.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So shouldn't they be getting the feedback that's positive on a regular basis anyway? Let's, for the sake of argument, just assume that she was. So she was getting positive feedback at home, and yet the experience of having less appealing men come up to her led her to feel like, ooh, I need to do something to reaffirm that.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, I think it was the question, "Am I losing it?" Was kind of the language that came up.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Am I losing it?

Andrew Huberman:
Am I losing it? Whatever it was.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. One of the reasons that scientifically I am out here questioning the usefulness of the mate value construct is because I know that people of, quote unquote, "low value" can have absolutely fantastic relationships, and people of, quote unquote, "high value" can have absolutely terrible relationships.

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, I've observed that-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... many, many times. Sure.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
There you go.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So that happens all the time. I think one of the strongest, most resonant things that mate value does for us, or the way that we experience it most acutely, is indeed in the attention we get from strangers and/or the junior high type scenarios that we talked about. So that we do have a level of attractiveness, and it changes as we age. There is a consensus out there about how desirable we are, and that consensus is not gonna stay exactly where it is. It's gonna shift. And you might be in a relationship and be very happy with the person who unambiguously thinks you're a 10, and yet still wonder, what does everybody else think? Do they think I'm a seven? Do they think I'm a four? What has happened to me? So I totally get that experience of how am I coming across to the world? Is it less than I thought it was? And that the only great information that you have is how strangers respond to you. It's sort of a funny way of flipping all of this stuff around because, again, as a relationships researcher, my bias is always, your husband thinks you're a 10. You think he's a 10. You won the lottery. That's it. You did it. But I acknowledge, yeah, there can be cases where we still wonder about what strangers think of us, and it might matter to our sense of self-worth and sense of who we are. So I'm not gonna judge it, but it is a fascinating flip of the way I typically think about these things.

Andrew Huberman:
It makes me wonder whether our notions of self, and this goes back to what we were talking about before, the Esther Perel thing and-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... attractiveness that sort of boomerangs back into the relationship. Something that's gonna be uncomfortable for a lot of people to hear, but at some level, all of it makes me wonder whether there's a healthy compartmentalization that we could adopt as a society.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Which is not to say anyone can be attracted to anyone, and therefore commitment isn't real.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Nor is it saying, okay, when you're in a committed relationship, it's a complete black box.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Right? Because there is this thing called the internet.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And there is this thing called the human psyche.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And you study it-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... around these issues. But maybe if people understood that those are two different things.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Sometimes we refer to it as the shiny object, but that that's an aspect of self, or it's an aspect of wanting that's not not real. It's real. But that maybe there's a way to compartmentalize it so that it has the potential to be toxic to a relationship.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But acknowledging that it's real, that it's part of our wiring, might diffuse some of its power.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Like I said, some of these couples that are like, oh yeah, what's the phrase couples have where they're like, oh, you get a, it's like a hall pass.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Which is never gonna happen, right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
She's like, "You know so-and-so."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
"My wife gets a hall, I get a hall pass with," because basically it's never gonna happen.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, right.

Andrew Huberman:
So it's not really a hall pass.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's a hall pass that exists in this alternate universe where the other person could actually sleep with someone.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Be careful with the hall of fame notion-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right

Andrew Huberman:
... because I don't know where that could lead. I'm not suggesting it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
They need to be, like, really famous.

Andrew Huberman:
Not a protocol I suggest.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Really famous.

Andrew Huberman:
Not a protocol I suggest. But it's kind of interesting because the parallel that comes to mind is, if you're in Los Angeles long enough, you get to know some people who are actors.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And from time to time, you'll run into somebody, male or female, who was a spectacular actor-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... had an amazing run on a comedy series or movies, and they're no longer working. And it is a bimodal distribution. People who are happy and content and focusing on their life and can say-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I've always wondered about this, yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that was the younger, more attractive, working, funny, sexy, whatever, and this is men and women, versus the tortured, "I'm not getting work," "The work is not as good as it used to be." And I've seen this with people who had fame young for other reasons, in sports and things like that, and they are crushed. And so what you want to say is, "Just realize that you have this awesome aspect of self that-"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... doesn't live in you right now anymore. But it's-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... still you.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You've got that.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I think there's a similarity here.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
If people would just be like, "I've got everything I need, and I'm good because, yeah, that other stuff exists, and I feel good about it."

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Not like I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist. Seems like that could be a very functional way to move through life for people who have this insecurity.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I totally agree, and in fact, I'll even go a step further, which is to say, I try, I don't always succeed, but I try to think this way about relationships that have come and gone, too.

Andrew Huberman:
Hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Because I think there's a real tendency, I was going to say in our culture, but it might be a lot of cultures, to see past relationships that have ended, and I'll even put divorces in this category, to look back and say, "I failed." And I think people reinforce this, even unintentionally. You go through a breakup, a dating breakup, and people say, "I'm so sorry. I know what that's like. Come over and have some ice cream." You go through a divorce, and people say, "Well, what happened?" Because they're trying to make sure that it doesn't happen to them, because they're interpreting it as a failure. And boy, I think if we give each other a little bit of grace and see it all as, yeah, that was a thing that happened. It was real. It mattered in that moment. Things happen along the way. It didn't work out. I changed. You changed. Being able to accept that all of those things are real and have or had value, I'd love to try to encourage people to do that. I know there's so many people out there right now who are like, "Yeah, but my ex is a dick," and I'm with you. I totally get that. And to the extent that there's any ability to hold these two thoughts in mind simultaneously, I think it's good.

Andrew Huberman:
My girlfriend and I have a rule. We don't have many rules.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
One of the rules is we don't talk negatively about anyone else that we've ever been with.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
We are-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
This is good

Andrew Huberman:
... we're very comfortable with the fact that we've had previous relationships.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because early on, we realized that, in the end, that's all about our choices.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So it's kind of a crazy argument.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right.

Andrew Huberman:
And-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
What does it say about you?

Andrew Huberman:
... and she said something beautiful. She said, "I'm grateful to all the good and bad-"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... things that you've had to experience, regardless of-"

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I said the same to her because the relationship is great, and we bring that. And I do think it was built on the trials and tribulations and-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... great things.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Now, I'm careful to not ask too many questions.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And she's careful to not ask too many que- We actually have-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... selective ignorance around certain. We just, I don't care.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I genuinely don't go down certain lines of inquiry, and she doesn't either.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I think it's great.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I think it's great. I think it sets up-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
This is totally fine

Andrew Huberman:
... we're here now. This is time moving from now forward-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and where it goes, we determine that. But histories are real. And I have always admired, I have a few friends that paired up very early.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And they went through all these developmental milestones together. First jobs. Some even graduate-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... college as couples, kids, all this stuff. And there's something really beautiful about people that you have a long developmental trajectory-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... big milestones that they reach together. Nowadays, people are pairing up later. They're getting divorced and remarrying.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
It's harder to build a common narrative.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Is there any data about common narrative, good or bad, like we went through a lot-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep

Andrew Huberman:
... can be building as well. Is time together a factor? When you control for everything else, is duration of relationship an indicator of quality and satisfaction of relationship?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
So if we're looking strictly at relationship duration, honestly, on average, it tends to be a bad sign. In other words-

Andrew Huberman:
Wait a second. Staying together is bad?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. No, it just means that over time, people were the happiest early on in their relationship than they are-

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, no

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
... today.

Andrew Huberman:
Really?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right. It's actually kind of a bummer.

Andrew Huberman:
Can you just break up and get back together a bunch?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, right.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
We don't study that. We should.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That might have some promise.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm not volunteering.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. But let me say this. The narrative, right, the idea that we experienced a lot, that we grew, that we faced all these obstacles, that is huge. So literal time is not the best metric to capture, I think, the essence of what you're getting at. It's a sense that we were in this together and that we had a shared story. This is also why breakups are so hard, because not only are you often losing a source of support Perhaps for men, it might be more likely to be their only source of support. Not only do you have to face the possibility of getting back out there, but you're also losing the continuity with yourself. You're losing the stories and the narratives that you've built with this other person and all of those memories and all of those components.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, I think that's why it can feel like a failure-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... because there's this understandable, and I think very desirable wish that this-- It's like a novel.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the end is death. Like, we're going to till death do us part.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That is written into-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the script, right? And so I think if it ends early, I think a lot of people don't know how to integrate it-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... into their life story.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
The evolutionary biology part, which seems very real to me, is that all we have is time and energy.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And when we invest, time is running.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
There's no do-over.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
There's no do-over. So I think that people carry a lot of resent about the time lost.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. And the energy and the investments that you put into it. But, and I think it's useful to think about those investments as being about self and story, and that to the extent that you can use it as an opportunity to like, whether it's like reinvent or recreate or, you preserve some of the parts of yourself from the prior relationship, but maybe not all the prior parts of yourself. There are some things that you'd rather let go. To the extent that you can hold onto the good parts of the story, the parts that you want to remember, that you want to keep. It'd be so painful when you're going through the breakup in the first place that I think a lot of times people just want to take all of it, put it in a box, and get rid of it.

Andrew Huberman:
Definitely throw away the photos at some point.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Although now everything's in the cloud, it's very challenging.

Andrew Huberman:
Hypothalamus versus forebrain. Does the good primitive stuff-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... meaning-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep

Andrew Huberman:
... sexual attractiveness outweigh the ability to think about how great someone is? Ideally, there's both.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But the good lover beats stated preferences model-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... is something that-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay

Andrew Huberman:
... you've talked about before.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
In other words, is the real glue in a long-term relationship some form of physical intimacy that in a-- Or put differently, can we think and talk our way, perhaps to ourselves-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... forward through a relationship that doesn't have that physical intimacy?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Usually, you will see that things like sexual satisfaction or sexual desire for your partner are gonna be pretty tightly related to how you feel about the relationship in general. It's an important component. I wouldn't say it's an essential component or even the central component for many people. But for other people, it certainly can be. And I, again, I do believe in the Church of Esther Perel, which is that there are ways of recultivating sexual feelings about somebody, that actually our sexual feelings about somebody, it's not like a switch where it's just on or it's off, and we know just when we look at them, that sometimes it's about the things we're talking about, the time we spend together, or the time that we spend apart, and that that can be rekindling in various ways. So I think the key thing for me is not to engage in fatalism about the sexual desire component, that when s-- Like when the passion fades in a relationship, that doesn't mean that it's gone forever. It might not be something that you feel like every day at 7:00 PM anymore. It might be the kind of thing that comes to the fore in certain circumstances or when you're not totally exhausted. I think that's okay, and a lot of relationships can absolutely thrive under those circumstances. And you can push it to extremes, too, where it's like, my partner hasn't been sexually attracted to me in years and years. Like, that's gonna be tough. And part of the reason that's tough is because you don't have the sexual intimacy, but also part of the reason it's tough is because it's making me feel terrible about myself. So these things all cascade in various negative ways, but I think they can also be helped in ways, too, that engage some of these more, the parts of our brains that at least we're more aware of and have some agency over.

Andrew Huberman:
So is it true that sexual attractiveness, that rating the person's-- A person rating their partner as a quote-unquote "good lover" is-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... among the strongest predictors-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... of how positively they feel about their partner?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, exactly. And I-

Andrew Huberman:
Okay, because that's-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I really appreciate your answer, but I want to make sure that if that's-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... true, that comes through.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because what I'm hearing is, yes, it can, those feelings can wax and wane.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And yes, life circumstances and raising kids and job and stress-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... yes, yes, and yes.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yep.

Andrew Huberman:
I think everyone, including me, acknowledges that. But this idea that it's not important after a certain stage or that-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Right

Andrew Huberman:
... a really healthy romantic relationship can exist without that, what I'm hearing is the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... data pointing the other direction.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
No, that is absolutely correct. The subjective sense that, and that's exactly the wording that we use, the subjective sense that like this person that I am with or this person that i-in that study we have people who are in relationships, but we also have people who are reporting on like just folks that they're initially attracted to. But in both, it actually doesn't really matter. In both cases, feeling like this person is a good lover or likely to be a good lover, in the case of the attraction scenarios, is a very, very good sign for how positively you feel about the relationship in general and whether you want the relationship to continue. It, but again, it's that subjective sense, and that's kind of where I'm getting to this component of like, if If I start to feel like you're not a great lover, that's going to rebound so that then you don't feel desirable, and it's going to sort of cascade in all of these negative ways.

Andrew Huberman:
All seems to converge on it's an important feature of romantic relationships to cultivate, protect from-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right

Andrew Huberman:
... and you describe some, to me, surprising, I think for some reason it makes total sense and yet it's surprising that this kind of energy from the outside can provide positive support to the relationship.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But Esther said it, Estero-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... excuse me, has said it, and others have said it. So, very interesting. Final question. Sounds like a game show.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
Final question.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
A million-dollar question.

Andrew Huberman:
Your course on this topic and related-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... topics is incredibly popular for obvious reasons. It's a super interesting topic. At the end of the day, our species evolved through these dynamics.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It wasn't all like club the-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the lion, gather food, make babies.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Right.

Andrew Huberman:
There was a lot of dynamics. I always chuckle when people say stress is a holdover from when we were being hunted by saber-toothed tigers. No, that's complete nonsense. It was also there for when your spouse went hunting for the day-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... or gathering, and you didn't know if they were going to come back, or they came back after sundown when normally they're there at sundown. It's for when your baby was sick.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Or people are going to be disappointed in me.

Andrew Huberman:
The notion that stress is only about predation-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... it's just so stupid. I'd like to have words with whoever came up with that. It's so dumb. It's not true.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
What are the questions that students are asking most often nowadays?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh.

Andrew Huberman:
Because I realize that as a 50-year-old male, I suffer from a number of-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... different delusions about relationships as it is for people in their 20s, 30s now, and maybe for everybody, because we're all in our own experience. But I think even though the college classroom is not a perfect sample-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... by any stretch, presumably there are a lot of different people in there.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Men, women.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Right? Most are probably straight, some are gay, on average 10%.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You're going to get a lot of questions.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
What are the big questions that people seem to want answered that you're just hearing over and over again that are both in the direction of, "This is a challenge," but also, what's going right out there?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Is anything going right?

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I think most of the questions are about, there is often an assumption that, yeah, but these days it's so screwed up.

Andrew Huberman:
That's what they're saying.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. You just have this undercurrent. It's almost like, and I worry about this sometimes, that when I teach the science on these topics, there's a general sense of, okay, but this is science from the before times. Like today, when the apps have controlled everything and nobody goes out anymore, what are we supposed to do? And sometimes I fall back on the, well, look, these groups and things like we were talking about, these clubs, they're still out there. You can still get out there and meet people.

Andrew Huberman:
Activities.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah, activities. Through these avenues, they tend to work pretty well. And at the same time, I have to acknowledge that the generations are going to change, and these folks' experiences will be different than the experiences that my generation had. So I think in many ways, this ends up being the challenge. To convey the science to folks, but also do it in a way that shows that you're being responsive and aware of the fact that any generation feels like, "But things have changed now." And sometimes it takes a while to know what has really changed. I do think that these students go out less often. I think they drink less often. I think they aren't spending time socializing in the same way, and they're interfacing more with technology. That's probably helping some people, and it's probably really making it hard for some other people. And so, I try to live the example of, hey, I spent time hanging out with people in groups, and it was hard, and I got rejected, and my high school girlfriend dumped me, but I ended up doing okay. And I hope that other people can resonate with that message in my classes.

Andrew Huberman:
Love it. And I'm also hearing, perhaps don't just sign up for something, but be the person who organizes it.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. I love this.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, someone can-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... you can throw a picnic or a party.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
When I was a graduate student at Davis, I often didn't make it because I was in lab, but-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... every Friday there was a pickup beach volleyball game.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, that's fantastic.

Andrew Huberman:
And then people would go to, there was a Thai restaurant that was also a bar. That night sometimes ended the next morning.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
There was a tattoo shop right across the street that closed called American Graffiti.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, yeah. Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. That some people got tattoos.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah. Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
And those, do not recommend. Definitely don't get tattooed drunk. Probably don't even get-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... do what you want. But it was every Friday.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And there was only one rule, which is that you had to at least attempt to do the kind of bump set approach to beach volleyball.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You couldn't just hit it across-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
You couldn't just go into the...

Andrew Huberman:
And it didn't matter how bad you were.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
You had to do the three-part-

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. And then everyone would go and have Thai food.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Some people would have drinks if they drank.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Some people would have a lot of drinks if they definitely drank. It was just a really cool thing. Anyone could come.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Things like that happened a lot, and it took zero planning. It was an email that basically just went out.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
That's cool.

Andrew Huberman:
And no one person was in charge.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Everybody did it.

Andrew Huberman:
It was just kind of in the collective.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
They did cooking competition things-

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Oh, yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... where you'd meet at someone's house, and everyone would have to bring a particular dish, and then everyone would try them. And I had no time in graduate school. I was working all the time. I would make time for these things occasionally, and they were a lot of fun.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
These things are super easy to do.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You don't have to have any real athletic ability or cooking ability, trust me. I just feel like there's so much opportunity for that. But the barrier must be really there for people if they're not doing these things, because I think it was just reflexive.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Technology has a pull, and we can say it's the phones, but we could also say that it's whatever is on your TV. There's lots of reasons these days for people to stay in that just weren't there 20 to 30 years ago. I'd hope that the message would resonate like, "You know, gang, whether it's the entertainment companies or the apps, they're trying to keep you away from real socialization. Young people, don't you like rebelling and stuff? Rebel against this." Exactly. Form these groups. Go out and meet people again in person. I think it's coming back.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
I really do. I think it was like a long pandemic hangover where we just kind of forgot this part of our social architecture. But it's coming back. It didn't go anywhere. We're still social creatures, and we also have these great frontal lobes, and even if you don't feel like going out and interacting with people, you can kind of nudge yourself to do it. And I think that's pretty fantastic.

Andrew Huberman:
Thank you so much for the work you do. It's very brave. It's very brave because it runs right up against some longstanding theories, of which I still think very highly of a good fraction of the evolutionary biology and psychology literature. I now have to filter it through these new findings. But you've created your own new field, basically, which is, of course, why your book, which we'll provide a link to, and your work is so popular. And I love the optimism that it shines into every interaction. I'm sure people picked up on that, that you're not a doom and gloom guy. You're a solutions guy.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Really appreciate your time here. Many people will thank you, both those in relationship. You learned some things to armor your relationship, understand your relationship better yourself. And for those who are seeking partners or who are just observing the world around them and are content where they're at, they're going to benefit. So thank you so much. Really appreciate you.

Dr. Paul Eastwick:
Thank you so much for having me.

Andrew Huberman:
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Paul Eastwick. To learn more about his work and to find a link to his book, "Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection," please see the links in the show note caption. If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review, and you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the "Huberman Lab" podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled "Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body." This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience, and it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation, and of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called "Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body." And if you're not already following me on social media, I am hubermanlab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the "Huberman Lab" podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the "Huberman Lab" podcast. Again, it's hubermanlab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network Newsletter, the Neural Network Newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the Menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to Newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Paul Eastwick. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Speaker 3:
"I want to date with rules," Carty says. "Rules?" Rucka asks. This is the love story of real Hinge couple Carty and Rucka, written and read by me, Nicola Dinan. Listen to the free audiobook now.