The Science Behind Lasting Relationships with Logan Ury
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Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel, all while spending less and saving more. I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to have you joining us today for a conversation about dating, love, relationships, and more.

If you're thinking, well, I'm happily married, maybe this isn't for me. Well, I really hope that's not the case because I am also happily married and I'm incredibly excited to talk to our guest, Logan Ury. Logan is a behavioral scientist turned dating coach and the author of the fantastic book, How to Not Die Alone. She is also the director of relationship science at the dating app Hinge, where she leads a research team dedicated to helping people find love.

Before that, she ran Google's behavioral science team, the Irrational Lab. Her works appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and so many more places.

While I might not be looking for love anymore, I'm so fascinated about everything she's learned from her research, especially because it seems like the internet has changed the dating landscape so much since I was in the game. I'm also curious to hear everything she's learned about building long-lasting relationships and everything she's learned about how dating might apply to other areas of life. Oh, and of course, I'm excited to learn what I might be able to share with a few of the friends of mine who are still on the hunt for their future spouse.

So I hope you'll enjoy this conversation with Logan Urie. Let's jump in. Logan, thank you for being here.

Hi, Chris. I'm really excited to join you. So the book is How to Not Die Alone, which is a really bold statement and one that I think speaks to a lot of people. Can you talk about coming up with a title, what it means, and why that's something that's really important to people? Yeah. So the whole frame of my book is how can you apply behavioral science to decisions around dating and relationships? And so a lot of us have these cognitive biases or these blind spots that

fuel faulty decision making. And so a big one that I'm sure you're familiar with is loss aversion, right? We have this huge urge to avoid loss at any cost. And so what I wanted to do with the title, How to Not Die Alone, is really put you in this mindset of, oh, I could die alone. And that's something that I really want to avoid. And so I've absolutely heard the negative feedback, right? Therapists write me and they're like, I love your book, but it's hard to recommend because I'm

my patients are going to be offended by the title. But you know what? It's memorable and it really gets to the truth of the matter, which is if you're on a path towards dying alone and you don't want to be, read this book and let's do something about it. Yeah. Are people better off being with partners in their lives? Is there data to support that? Yeah. So I absolutely understand that there are people who are single and love it and more power to them. But

many people want to find a partner and people who are single and have been looking, let's say for a decade are very frustrated by not being able to find someone. And there is a lot of research around how being in a relationship can help you earn more money, be happier, be healthier, live longer. And those results are especially true for men who are in relationships. Yeah.

What led you to jump into this field? It's not a title that I think most people have. It's not an area most people dig into. I've always been interested in love and dating and relationships, which I imagine many people are, right? Like that is the core of most Sunday brunch conversations is talking about dating or complaining about your relationship. I also have this interest in psychology and how people make decisions. So let's see, around seven or eight years ago, when I was working at Google, I was

leading this behavioral science team, I was also single and I was also using Tinder and other dating apps. And I was working at Google and I was like, okay, these are some of the smartest people in the world. These are the wizards who created the internet. And we all seem to be struggling with dating. What's going on here? And so I was able to combine these two interests, how people make decisions and sex, dating and relationships and combine them to really forge my own career and my own direction for

bridging the two. And so what I've been doing since then is finding ways to say, all right, people are unhappy. They're not finding the relationships they want. In many ways, it's because of these cognitive biases or blind spots. How can I break dating down into a series of micro decisions and help you make better choices along the way? Yeah, that makes so much sense. And this has to be a problem that's existed forever, right? Is this kind of the oldest problem people have faced? And how has it evolved?

Yeah, great question. So dating is actually a relatively new phenomenon in

According to the book Labor of Love by Maura Weigel, which is a great book on the history of dating, dating as we think about it now didn't really emerge on the scene until around 1890. And so what happened before then was depending on your social status in life, you might have an arranged marriage, right, with the Prince of Sweden, or maybe just your father would negotiate with the person whose land touched Sweden.

the land next to his, right? The person with the parcel of land next to his. And they would negotiate your hand in marriage for, let's say, 12 camels or a certain amount of rice. And so for a long time, you were not in charge of finding your long-term partner. This was something that your community, your family, a matchmaker did for you. And so one of the big themes that we see in modern dating is that

It feels like it's just up to us. And that can be very hard because, yes, we have more freedom to find someone. But it also means that if we fail, the failure is completely on our shoulders. Yeah, I took a psychology of sex and relationships class in college, and we actually talked a bit about arranged marriages and their cultures where that's still a thing. What do you think of keeping that kind of pre 1890 tradition? Is that a process that works well? Is that something you address at all in the book?

So the research on arranged marriage shows that arranged marriages start less happy than what's called love marriages or non-arranged marriages. But after the four-year mark, they actually overlap love marriages in terms of happiness.

So you start off in a lower place, but then over time you grow to love this person. And so what's really interesting is we can't have an experiment where we assign this person an arranged marriage and this person a love marriage, right? There's obviously a lot of cultural reasons why this happens. If you're in a culture where divorce is not really an option, then when you get into that marriage, your mindset isn't, I'm going to stay until I'm no longer happy. It's, this is forever different.

And so I'm going to find a way to make it work. And so there's something psychologically in that commitment where you say to yourself, this is what the rest of my life looks like. So I'm going to commit and do everything I can to make it work. But I have had plenty of millennials and even some people who are in Gen Z who've said to me, why should I pick the person? I have no idea what I'm doing. I would be happy if somebody set up an arranged marriage for me because they can't do any worse than I have in choosing my person. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think there's probably a middle ground there too, which isn't just, it doesn't have to be an arranged marriage, but I have a friend and I have two friends that we set them up on a date and they knew each other. They actually worked with each other, but they never thought they should date. And we were like, why don't you guys just go on a date? And so I like to think there's a middle ground of telling people, Hey, maybe you should go on a date, but you don't have to necessarily get married. Like we don't have to commit you to this, this grand thing. So I don't know if that's, that's played a role in helping people, uh,

try things they wouldn't try, which I have to assume people aren't the most rational when it comes to dating.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I do feel like now with the position that I'm in, if I set people up on a date, they're likely to say yes. And then they're likely to think, well, Logan really thought that I would get along well with this person. And so I think that's only a positive because they walk into the date thinking, all right, I'm going to try to discover what Logan had in mind for me about this person, or I'm going to walk in with a really positive frame and I'm expecting to like

them. And what we know is that so much of our experience in life, including dating, is all about our mindset. So there's that quote, whether you think things will go well or you think things will go poorly, you're right.

And so when I think about that with dating, it's like if you walk in with a mindset of it hasn't worked for the last 10 years, this is my 100th first date in a long time. It's not going to work out. Yeah, it probably won't. But if you walk in with the mindset of I'm going to create the experience I want to have, it only takes one person that has a huge impact on how you show up and how well the date goes.

Yeah, it's interesting. I was talking to Patrick McGinnis, who's this guy who created the term FOMO. And I think you were on his podcast, actually. And he brought up in conversation that people who make kind of quicker, less researched decisions are often happier with the outcome. And people who take more time actually might make a better decision, but are less happy because they're aware of the alternatives.

So a question I have is, I feel like, and I totally missed this boat, right? I haven't really dated anyone since the late 90s, maybe the early 2000s. So I missed the boat on online dating, but I feel like now there's, it feels like there's a lot of options in front of you versus before it was kind of who you met. Does, do more options make it harder for people to date? Yeah. So I love everything Patrick said, and I'm sure we'll get into this, but one of my, I

contributions to the field is this idea of the three dating tendencies, this framework for how people have unrealistic expectations and how it holds them back. And one of those tendencies is the maximizer. And the maximizer is all about, I want to see every possible option. I want to turn over every stone. And then and only then can I make the perfect decision. And there's this obsession with optimizing and making the perfect decision. But what we know is

is that there's another group called satisficers. And these are people who, instead of trying to find the perfect thing, say, I have a bar, I'm going to stop looking once I achieve that benchmark. And what we see is that satisficers are happier than maximizers. Because in life, it's not about making the perfect decision, it's about

how you feel about your decision. And so in dating and in many things, it's not about seeing everything that's out there and choosing. It's about choosing something great, committing to it, building it and making it work. And going back to what we said about arranged marriages, there's an element of satisficing in arranged marriages. You're not saying, who are the 10 other people I could have married and would they have been better? It's I'm going to make

what I have in front of me work because I'm committed and that's how I'm going to be happiest long-term. It seems somewhat in conflict with the concept of there being the one. So would it be fair to say that's not something that you kind of believe in?

Absolutely. Yes. I think the one is a harmful idea. The same thing with soulmates, because it gives people permission to leave relationships that are perfectly good enough, but that they're struggling in. And so there might be a situation where you expect that you're going to meet your soulmate, that everything is going to be easy. And then you're dating them and you hit an inevitable rough patch. And instead of saying, yep, this is what relationships look like, you say, well, this person must not be my soulmate.

Because if they were my soulmate, this would be so much easier. So then you leave the relationship. So if you remove the concept of the soulmate and you say there are many people in the world with whom you could get along, you can write different love stories and different life stories with different people, then you no longer put that pressure on yourself to find that one person. And you instead are empowered to build a great relationship instead of focusing on finding that perfect person.

Yeah, that sounds like the kind of maximizer to satisficer transition. I don't know where I am in dating, but I know in a lot of things in life, I'm definitely feel like that maximizer personality and, and certainly my optimizing attitude falls in that. Are there tricks or tips to help someone kind of make that transition more easy?

Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that Patrick and I have talked a lot about in terms of FOMO. So, for example, I am absolutely a maximizer. And in all the research that I did for my book, one of the clear things that came out for me is that some things are just not worth maximizing.

So somebody might say, oh, I don't use Instacart because I want to be able to choose the right tomato and somebody else can't choose the perfect tomato for me. Then when you think about it, it's like in the scheme of life, how important is it that you be the one to choose the tomato and could your time be better spent elsewhere? Another thing is I used to spend multiple days researching airline flights, trying to get the perfect arrival time and the perfect airline and maximizing my points. And then,

At the end of the day, it was just a waste of time. So now I'll say something to myself like I'm giving myself one hour to research flights. And at the end of that, I'm going to choose the best possible flight. And so part of it is understanding does this decision matter enough, matter or not?

Another one is giving yourself a time limit. And I think another one is just a psychological shift to say, it matters how I feel about the decision, not if it's the perfect decision. And I'm actually more likely to be happy with my decision later

If I set a benchmark, stop looking once I've achieved it and then embrace what I bought instead of the maximizer thing, which is you research for days or months or years, you buy the thing and then you have this pro con list in your head of all the other things you could have bought. And could this have been better? And actually, that experience is more likely to just make you regret your choice in the first place.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so that's the maximizer. We didn't really describe it in the context of dating as much, but maybe it'd be interesting to walk through the three tendencies that you've identified and kind of talk a little bit about each.

Yeah, I do a lot of one-on-one dating coaching. And so that means that I'm meeting people around the world. They're telling me their life story, their relationship history. We're talking about who they've been, who they are now, where they want to go. And I found that talking to a lot of different people from different countries and cultures, they're

They all seem to have the same thing in common, which is that they had unrealistic expectations of certain parts of dating and relationships. And so from that, I created the three dating tendencies. The first one is the romanticizer tendency.

And this is the person who we talked about the soulmate and the one they have unrealistic expectations of relationships in general. So this is the person who loves love and they don't want to use a dating app because it's quote unquote, not romantic. And they have this very clear vision of their in their head of what their future partner will look like. They're focused on the we met story. And they think that once you meet the right person, everything's going to be easy. And

And the issue with the romanticizer is that they're not willing to put in effort to make the relationship great. And they're not even willing necessarily to be strategic about how to meet someone because they think that everything will happen to them. And so for the romanticizer, it's about overcoming some of this Prince Charming stuff and really understanding that who cares how you met? That's such a tiny percentage of the relationship. What actually matters is building a relationship with someone.

The second type, which we talked about a bunch, is the maximizer. And their whole thing is, is there somebody better out there? And so I meet a lot of people who say, I like my girlfriend, but could she be 10% hotter or 5% more ambitious? Or could she push me more to think about big ideas? And I have lots of conversations with people who are either single or deciding if they should get married or deciding they should break up. And I hear the maximizer come out of them where they're really weighing the

is this the best that I could get or is there somebody better out there? And the third type is the hesitator and they have unrealistic expectations of themselves and they're just not even dating at all. So the story in their head is something like,

I'll be ready to date when I lose 10 pounds, when I have a more impressive job, when I move and get settled in my new city. And so they're always coming up with these reasons, really excuses, why they're not ready to date. And the thing in their head is that they're not lovable yet. And only when they're lovable should they put themselves out there. But the truth is that nobody's perfect, not you, not the person you're going to wind up with. And

You're only going to get better at dating by dating, and you're only going to figure out what kind of person you want to be with by dating a bunch of different people. And so for hesitators, it's really about overcoming this fear of starting and just really getting themselves out there, getting better at dating and learning who they should be with.

It's fascinating that you break this down. I can't remember, but I feel like I was probably a maximizer given my personality. The show is called All the Hacks. Yeah. So it's always looking for that extra 5%. I've started learning in my life how to realize that that extra 5% for something really big is more important than the extra 5% for something small. So I'm no longer picking out my own tomatoes, though...

the last two orders from Amazon Fresh have brought me green bananas that have taken three to four weeks to ripen. So I'm currently have a big gripe with Amazon because we just like each week it's new green bananas that just won't ever ripen. But I feel like something interesting. We talk a lot about money on the show and people seem to want to find love and build their wealth. They're kind of similar big aspirations in people's lives.

And we don't talk about them either in school. It's not like you learn how to date in school or you learn how to manage your money in school. But it does seem like there's a lot more data and research on what people should do with their money. So then there is about their relationships, at least in terms of dating versus, you know, how to handle a marriage. Is that true? Do you feel similarly about dating being kind of this taboo thing we never learn about but should? Yeah.

One thing I would say is there are definitely a lot of books that people read about money, right? So many people read, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. So many people read The Millionaire Next Door, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I do feel like there's really a tradition of a lot of personal finance books and people feeling really comfortable about saying, hey, how much are you invest

in crypto? Am I too late to buy Dogecoin? And all of these different things, right? I feel like people are really comfortable with that. There's less of a tradition of self-help books around dating that people are really comfortable talking about. And there's sort of a shame around it. There's a feeling, oh, love is natural and you should be born knowing how to love. And to that, I would say, yes, love is natural, but dating is not.

Dating, as we talked about, is relatively new in the span of human history. Dating apps are a decade old. Of course, you need to be taught how to date. It's not something that you are just born knowing. It's actually pretty complicated. You're making a decision. If you're going to be in a monogamous long-term relationship, you're choosing one person out of billions to spend your life with. That's a huge amount of pressure.

In terms of how much research there is, so there is a field called relationship science, which is a field in academia. So one of my mentors, Eli Finkel, is a relationship scientist out of Northwestern. He does incredible research there. And they talk about things like what makes people attracted to each other? Does that last long-term? What are the things that matter more and less than we think they do for long-term relationships? There's also Drs. John and Julie Gottman,

who are out of Seattle, who have been working in the field for over 40 years, and they have done some really seminal research in the field of relationship science. So they have this concept called bids that you may have come across, which is that this is kind of a long story, but I think it's worth telling. So what they used to do is they used to have this apartment,

And it was kind of like a room at an inn and they would have couples stay there for the weekend. And they decked it out with cameras, microphones. They measured the urine in the toilet. They even had something under the chair called a gigalometer that measured how much you were moving your chair while you sat in it. And they would observe couples for the weekend and they would look at how they talk to each other and different things like that.

Six years later, they checked in with these couples and they saw that some were together happily. They called these these relationship masters and some were together unhappily, relationship disasters, or some people had broken up.

And what they found was that the number one predictor of who would become a relationship master versus a relationship disaster is how the couples treated each other in these micro moments. And so they call them bids. So, Chris, an example would be you're staying in this inn with your wife and she stands up and looks out the window and says, oh, there's a sailboat going by and you're sitting in the chair. How do you respond? Do you A,

stand up and walk next to her and say, oh, that's a beautiful sailboat. Maybe we should go sailing while we're in town. Do you ignore her or

Or do you say, wife, I'm trying to read the paper. Why are you interrupting me? And this might seem really small. It's just a small moment where she's talking about a boat. But how you respond to those bids for connection determines how you'll do long term. And so successful couples turn towards each other, which is being positive, being affirming, asking a follow up question.

They turn towards each other 86% of the time. And the couples that break up or unhappily married, they only turn towards each other 33% of the time. And so what they found is that relationships are not about the once a year trip to Hawaii or the romantic dinner once a year.

once in a while. It's about on a daily basis, when your partner tries to connect with you, do you choose to connect back? And that's really what determines how happy and successful we are in relationships long term.

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Now, I know there are sometimes things that are causation or not. Do you think that this is something it sounds like something you could learn? It's like, oh, if I want to have a long term relationship, I could just make sure that I put more of an effort in to respond positively to these bids. Or is it more the kinds of people who by default respond to those bids are more successful? Is it one or the other?

So, yeah, it's a great question. And this is definitely something that can be taught. And it's why I find the work of the Gottman so inspiring, because since I first went to their workshop with my then boyfriend, now husband in 2015, I've been applying this lesson all the time. And I can see the periods of my life where I was more focused on work and less invested in the relationship, which meant I wasn't making as many bids or I wasn't responding to bids or

Our relationship did worse. And now I'm constantly reminding myself if he walks into the room and talks about his day and I'm in the middle of an email, the most important thing I can do is look away from my computer and talk to him because that's the stuff that really matters. And so, yes, there are people who are naturally inclined to be good at relationships, right? If you are more open, if you are...

less neurotic, if you are more conscientious, those personality traits are correlated with relationship success just because it might be easier for you to connect with people or for you to follow through or be reliable. But in general, the concept of bids is pretty simple. It's make efforts to connect with your partner. And when your partner makes efforts to connect with you, choose to turn towards those bids.

Yeah, this is great. I feel like that's something that everyone could apply to any relationship they're in. Do you think it applies to other relationships? Like even at work, if someone brings something up at work, do you build deeper relationships with colleagues by responding to maybe they're not bids, but similar, similar aspects?

Absolutely. Yes. I just recently gave a talk at Google applying some of these concepts from relationship science to relationships at work. And bids was one of the main things I talked about, which is that relationships are really built in these small moments. So if your colleague just came back from a trip, spend 30 seconds saying, hey, how was your trip?

What was it like to be there? How did you choose? Just make an effort to connect with that person. Or if somebody mentions that they haven't been feeling well, the next time you talk to them, say, hey, how are you feeling? And it's these small things that we think, oh, those are so small, they probably don't matter. But the reframe is they are so small. And in some ways, they are the only things that matter.

Yeah. And so you said you did this talk. That was a big piece of it. Were there other lessons from relationships and dating that apply outside of that world? So one of the big things I talked about in terms of applying relationship science to relationships at work is what I just mentioned in terms of bids and what the Gottmans call small things often. And so some of my key takeaways there, one of them was make bids to new team members, turn towards bids from your colleagues.

assume positive intent in digital communication. That's a really big one. It's just so easy in a remote world to not have that foundation of friendship and intimacy to fall back on. And so when somebody says something that feels kind of sharp in a Google doc, you might just assume that they're criticizing you, but how can you really assume positive intent? And then another one, which I got from my friend, Liz Foslian, who if you're not aware of her work, she would be a great guest on your podcast. She has an Instagram account

called Liz and Molly, and she does these amazing illustrations about things at work. And so this is a concept from her called assign a meeting monitor, which is that on a rotating basis, you have somebody in a meeting who makes sure, did this person raise their hand but not have a chance to speak? Or has this person not expressed feelings

their feedback in a while? And should you reach out to them one-on-one? Is somebody consistently being interrupted? And just monitoring those micro moments in a meeting can actually have a big impact on whether or not somebody feels heard, whether or not somebody feels respected at work. And so really the overall concept here is that a lot of what matters to us in relationships, which is

how we feel in small moments also affects us at work. And then the other concept that I applied is called decide, don't slide. And so there's tons of research in relationship science that shows that couples who make conscious decisions to either move forward or break up

are happier, more successful, and even have more passionate sex than couples who do the opposite, what's called sliding. So sliding would be, Chris, you and I have been dating for a while. My lease is up. I guess I should just move in with you as opposed to us sitting down and saying, what does moving in together mean to you? Does it mean we're giving...

our relationship a try? Does it mean we're going to get married? Things like that. And so you want to decide your way into a decision, not slide. And the same thing is true at work. You want to be constantly checking in about, are we on the same page about priorities? Have we talked about OKR planning?

Do I understand if the company's initiatives have changed? You really want to make sure that people are super clear on their roles, responsibilities, priorities, and not just making assumptions and sliding your way into the next project. - Yeah. If I apply some of these lessons back to relationships, which is, I guess, where they started, it seems like some of the biggest things people get wrong are thinking it's all about the big moments

and kind of not taking the time to maybe be more intentional about major points in a relationship. Are there any other big things you think people get wrong about relationships with partners?

Yeah, there's a ton. So starting with dating, one of the biggest mistakes that I see people making is this idea of optimizing for the spark. And so so often I will set somebody up on a date or my dating coaching client will call me and they'll say, I met this woman. She was perfectly nice. She was great. We had a great conversation. She was attractive, dynamic. I'm not going to see her again.

I'll say, that's surprising. Why? And the person will say, well, I just didn't feel the spark. And so the spark has become this all-encompassing word that means I didn't feel instant chemistry. I didn't feel fireworks. And it's just such a mistake because many of the happiest couples I know knew each other for a long time.

Before they started dating, maybe they worked together, maybe they were roommates, maybe they orbited each other in a mutual friend group. And over time, that person becomes more attractive to you. You see how kind they are. You see how talented they are. And that...

affection and appreciation grows. And so I say to my clients, fuck the spark, which is stop expecting instant chemistry and instead say, what side of me does this person bring out? Am I curious about them? Do they make me feel relaxed? Do they make me feel confident? Do I feel attracted to them? And really just tuning into different sides of the experience instead of optimizing for this immediate fireworks or chemistry.

Yeah, I like that. My wife and I met in a co-ed business fraternity and she was my little brother. So we certainly did not start with a spark. In fact, it was through these like planned...

activities that we were supposed to do with each other that we ended up falling for each other. And at the end of the semester, they were like, which big little brother combo had kind of done the most activities? And we were like, well, let's withdraw from this competition because now we're dating. And I feel like we just ticked off a lot of boxes that people don't need to know about.

That's so funny. I rarely does somebody tell me my wife was my little brother in college. Yeah, yeah, that might be a first. It's not a typical way to open a conversation, but it usually leads to some fun stories. I noticed the longest chapter, I think, in the entire book was about looking for a life partner, not a prom date. And I'm curious if the length of that chapter could interpret that that's kind of the biggest problem that people face or how you think about that challenge of people looking for something that's different than what they actually need.

That's so funny that you brought that up. I don't think anyone else has mentioned that. And Chris, I do hope we get a chance to talk about the book writing process. But honestly, like writing a book is so hard. And especially your first one, you're just like, how long is a chapter? Do all chapters have to be the same length? And in a really early version of the book, I had some chapter

that were, let's say, 10 pages and some that were 50 pages was able to work with an editor who explained like, no, this needs to become like a sidebar in another chapter. And most chapters should be similar length. And so I didn't even realize off the top of my head that that was the longest chapter, but that does make sense. And so the premise there is that at a certain point in your life, you need to stop looking for the prom date. The prom date is somebody who's hot,

You would love to dance the night away with them. Maybe you'd want to sleep with them at the end of the night, but they're not really the person who's necessarily reliable and going to pick up your kids from the dentist. The life partner is the person who you want to align yourself with long term. This is a person who you can make hard decisions with, who you fight with well, who you respect, who you admire, who brings out

a really happy, satisfied part of you. And all too often, I see that people start in their dating journeys by going after the prom date, and then they never make that really important shift to start looking for the life partner. And so for many of the people I work with, it's about saying, hey, you need to take yourself more seriously. Stop dating this guy who doesn't call you back,

who doesn't really care for himself or other people, who doesn't seem to be passionate about anything. He's ambivalent about his job and he's ambivalent about you and start looking for someone who's actually serious about building a relationship. And so there is this really critical point where hopefully sooner rather than later, people understand, okay, maybe I would have gone out with that person in the past, but they're more of a prom date. And now it's time to really find this life partner.

Unfortunately for me, I'm in a relationship. A lot of the chapters were more like curiosity filling than things that I can apply necessarily, though I really appreciate you helping me apply them to work examples. But the last chapter was one of the shortest and about what to do after you decide to get married and with your spouse and everything.

I'm hoping that maybe that's because there's a second book in the works. Maybe not. But I'm curious where you would go with the things you've learned for people already in a relationship that want to make that relationship last longer. We talked about bids, but are there other things you think people should work into their practice of their marriage? I know you're married. Are there things you do specifically? I'm married. Yes, it's funny. One of the most common Google search terms is Logan, you're a husband.

Which I wonder if you have like Chris Hutchins wife, if people Google that. I think it's a lot of people are like, all right, who's this Logan person? Is she even married? Is she even found love? So anyway, yes, I am married. In terms of why that chapter is there, just a little bit of behind the scenes with book writing.

It felt very clear to me in terms of who would buy the book that it would be mostly people who are single and looking for a relationship. That expression, it's easier to sell medicine than a vitamin, right? It's when somebody has a problem, they want to pay to solve it versus somebody who's less likely to pay money just to say like, yeah, I should invest in my long-term relationship. But

for me, I was like, I really want to set somebody up for success A to Z. I want you to start the book when you're single and things aren't working out. I want to help you date, get into a relationship, move in together, commit or get married. And then I wanted this last chapter that was like, go forth and do these things. I would say perhaps that chapter hasn't landed as much as I hoped it would because so many people reading it are single and they're like, I'll come back to this later. But it does matter to me because I think

The whole idea of my concept of the happily ever after fallacy is that people think, oh, the hard work of love is finding someone. And once I find someone, it's easy. And that's just clearly not true. And so that last chapter is all about the things that you can do to keep your relationship going.

So one is this concept from Daniel Gilbert, who's a Harvard psychologist called the end of history illusion. That's the idea that we always think that we're done growing. So if I said to you, Chris, how much have you changed in the last 10 years?

You would likely tell me a lot and you would say, I'm in a completely different place than I thought I would be. And X, Y, Z has changed. And then if I said, how much do you expect to change in the next 10 years? Most likely, if you're like the average person who Dan Gilbert surveyed, you will say, oh, not that much. And so we always think we're done growing, but that's just not true. So the same thing is true in relationships. We think I found my person and we are who we are.

But if you actually think about the fact that you and your partner are constantly growing and changing, how can you design a relationship that grows and changes with you? And so some of the hacks there, one of them is a weekly ritual that I call the check-in ritual. John Gottman also has something he calls the State of the Union, just basically a

conversations where you and your partner check in and say, how are things going? How can I support you? What do you have coming up in your life? How are you feeling about our relationship? And really just saving that time to think

stop problems before they start. Because once there's a lot of resentment or built up problems, it's hard to go back. But if you can actually deal with those problems before they boil over, you're in a much better position. And so for people listening to your podcast who are into hacks,

I would say use the power of Google Calendar, right? It sucks when you have to be the person in the relationship who's like, hey, we should check in. Hey, can we talk about this? Hey, we haven't done this in a while. If you can just put it as a recurring event in your calendar, neither one of you has to quote unquote hold space. The calendar does that for you. And so this check-in ritual is a really healthy way to stop a problem before it starts.

The other one is a relationship contract. My husband likes to call this the relationship charter. It's really saying, let's chart a course for where we want to go. And so we might say, what are the rituals in our life that we like and we want to keep? What are the...

Who are the friends or family that you want me to get to know better? What are our financial goals? What are our emotional goals? Really, the relationship contract can be whatever you want it to be. But the really important thing is to just make sure that you and your partner are on the same page about where you are now and where you're headed. And then you can check in maybe in a year, maybe in two years, maybe every five years. And it's really that chance to course correct because people are living longer and they're

They're going to be in relationships that are decades longer than marriages of the past. And how can you make sure that that relationship can really adapt to serve your changing needs as you change over time?

I couldn't help but think when you were talking about this relationship charter that there's so many websites where they say, oh, put in your email address to download this PDF. I don't know if you have a template for it. If you do, I'll link it in the show notes. If you don't, I would totally sign up for any newsletter to download a copy of it because I think it's fascinating.

Yes, I do have a relationship contract on my website that people can access. There's also one in the book. And in terms of downloads and things, if anyone was curious about that three dating tendencies framework, I have a great quiz on my website that will tell you what your tendency is. Oh, that's awesome. So that is something I think is really cool.

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I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going to get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners. You can go to all the hacks.com slash deals. So please consider supporting those who support us. Are there things outside of relationships and dating in your life that are

You know, I always say like routines or tactics that you do that other people are often surprised about but want to try themselves that you've used to help your personal or professional life.

Sure. Yeah. I'll give one more that has to do with personal life and dating, which is this concept called OSOs or other significant others. So there's this really great research from Elaine Chung, who was at Northwestern and now actually works with me at Hinge by coincidence. And I love her research. And it's this idea that if you say to couples,

Who in your life do you go to to talk about work? Who do you go to to talk about drama? Who do you go to to talk about politics? If people can make a list with a lot of different names, which means they have a really extensive social network, those couples tend to be happier than people who have very few friends or only rely on each other.

The reason for that is that we often expect too much from our partners. We expect them to be everything to us. And so, Chris, in your relationship, I imagine there are topics that your wife's really excited to talk about and topics that when you bring up, she her eyes glaze over. What are some of those topics? Yeah, I mean, I think I could go deep on that.

travel points and stuff. And I feel like sometimes I can get her reeled in and be like, let's engage. And sometimes she's like, why don't you just find the hotel, send me two. If you need me to pick between two, that's great. And then sometimes I call some of my other kind of nerdy travel hacking friends and I'm like, where should we go in Greece or something?

100%. Yeah, I totally relate to that. I once wrote an article about this concept where I said my husband came home from work and I ran up to him at the door and I was like, I moved this bank account around and I opened up this credit card and I saved $300. And it was this really long story. At the end, he said, I would have given you $300 to not tell me that story. Yeah.

He's very funny and he's very nice. But anyway, I was like, oh, my husband is not my coupon person. And so I called my mom and I told her that story and she was thrilled. And so this whole concept of other significant others is that you should have people in your life who you go to for different things. I go to my husband to talk about health, working out.

eating. I go to my best friend from high school if I want to talk about my emotions. I go to my sister if I want to talk about work. And I have these different people in my life that play different roles. It takes the pressure off your relationship. Your partner doesn't have to talk to you about travel points or coupons. You have someone else in your life. And it might sound simple, but

It really allows your partner to serve the roles that they want to serve and not be forced into roles that really are not a good fit for them. And so in my personal life, I do have a big network of friends and community. But last year, during the pandemic, my husband and I went through this really horrific situation where he's super healthy, he's a vegan. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he was diagnosed with this rare form of bone cancer. And

And it was the beginning of the pandemic, just completely surprising, right? It felt like the world was falling apart. Our world was falling apart. And so I was good at asking for help from different friends, but people couldn't travel. People couldn't visit us indoors. It's very isolating, alienating time. And so Chris, our mutual friend, Kristen, runs this communal living house called Radish. And so my husband and I happened to go there for dinner and

during the pandemic. And we were like, wow, these people are doing the pandemic correctly. They are 14 people living together. They have dinner together every night. They are just really supporting each other. They were in one quarantine pod. And so we ended up moving into an apartment within Radish.

And basically creating this really tight knit group of OSOs, other significant others, to get us through the pandemic, to get us through his cancer treatment. Really, they were incredible. And we even have our WhatsApp group is called OSOs.

And so I feel like for anyone listening, whether you're going through a tragedy or not, just investing in those relationships in your life to take pressure off your partnership and to invest in friendships and community and colleagues. That's really one of the secrets to a great relationship, because then it's kind of like a release valve that just allows the relationship to be what it can be and doesn't put too much pressure on it.

Wow. Well, first off, I'm sorry to hear about your husband. Thank you. Okay. One other kind of hack that I heard you talk about in the past, which I'd love to kind of explain a little bit about is how you ended up writing the book and forcing yourself to make progress on something that, you know, I'm definitely a procrastinator. And you found a way to do that, that I think is a little bit unique. Sure.

Sure. Yeah, I would love to talk about that. So I love the framework from Gretchen Rubin called the four tendencies. And that was some of the inspiration for my thing in the dating tendencies. And so I'm an obliger, which means that it's easy for me to hold things.

It's easy for me to show up for other people, but it's less easy for me to show up to myself. So you and I have this appointment to do a podcast. Of course, I was going to be here. I wouldn't have missed it. But if I put on my calendar later, do Peloton at 3.30, there's a high percentage chance that I will not show up for myself. So knowing that, I said, how can I tap into my obliger tendency to get this book written? And so what I did is I...

Asked a number of people, can you host book dinners for me? I'm going to give you a certain amount of money towards food. You get to invite the people. And what's going to happen is I'm going to send two chapters of my book a few days before the dinner. Then everyone will read the chapters in advance, come to the dinner and discuss them.

And so the feedback at those dinners was priceless. I got a lot of great ideas, great terms. I understood where I was being offensive or not inclusive, or I thought a joke was funny and it wasn't. But perhaps most important was that I wasn't going to let these people down. If people were throwing me a dinner party and come Thursday night to coming to this dinner, I was 100% going to send them those chapters.

And so I basically tapped into this obliger tendency and I said, I might not show up for myself, but I'll show up for other people. I had a bunch of these dinners and that was really how I was able to get my book done, stick to a schedule and not procrastinate. And I think it's really because of that hack that I didn't just have a mental breakdown and write my book.

four weeks before it was due. And in fact, I handed my book in on time, which based on the feedback from my editor, I think is actually pretty rare. But I was like, no, that deadline is there for a reason. Once you let the deadline pass, maybe you'll never hand it in. And it was super important to me to hit that deadline.

Wow. Yeah. I only recently have ever even thought about a book because someone brought it up. They were like, oh, I love the podcast. Are you ever going to write the book? I'm curious as someone who maybe similarly, I'm not sure if you had aspirations to write a book, but you've gone through this process. Does that make you tell people, yeah, you should? Or is that like, man, that was a process. I don't recommend it. It definitely was a life goal of mine. My big life goals for the last 10 years were give a TED Talk,

get published in Modern Love in the New York Times and write a book that my parents would read. And I've been really focused on those goals. And I now with the book coming out, have achieved all three of them. And that's felt great. And I do think it's a good lesson that just having goals, whether or not you hit them exactly, definitely helps you prioritize your time, take big risks, believe in yourself, things like that.

Writing a book is so hard. You're solo. You're sitting alone at a WeWork. You're editing the same sentence for the 10th time. You're sick of being by yourself. You're sick of staring at the screen. Writing a book's really hard. And so when people call me saying, should I write a book? I usually say only write a book if you can't imagine not writing it, because otherwise there's just a lot of other things.

media that you could explore. So with a podcast, it's like you and I are recording this now, I'm sure it'll come out pretty soon. And then you're going to get feedback on it. With a book, you might work on it for three years, not get any feedback, and then it comes out. And so I think there's a lot of things that are, there are a lot of easier ways to express your ideas than a book. And so you should really only write one if you can't imagine not writing one. I like that framework. So you hit your three goals. What are the next big three goals?

I have to think about that. Yeah, I think it was a what? Where are we? We're in November right now. Yeah, I really need to assess my for my 2022 goals. But I imagine that there'll be personal things around achieving work life balance. I also started a course on Maven. Are you familiar with Maven? Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm launching my first course next week in terms of teaching people more at scale, like moving from one-on-one coaching to cohort-based courses. I have a great person working with me on that. Yeah, I love the question. And I have to think about like, what are my next big goals? I think probably things around like having a TV show or having a podcast, things like that. But right now I'm just really having fun seeing the impact of my book and getting these great emails about people who said,

In the past, I would have rejected this person because of his job or because of his height. And now I'm in the happiest relationship I've ever been in. And so for now, I feel like I'm actually just really absorbing the impact of the book. And that's been fun. Yeah. I mean, I get emails a lot.

It sounds like you do too. It's really rewarding, I think, to create content and know that people are listening and people are enjoying it. It's having an impact on their life. So keep it coming. I love it. We didn't talk about this at all. I know you work at Hinge, but what do you think of dating apps and how they've affected all of this?

Yeah, so I'm a huge fan of Hinge and I was before I worked there. How I ended up working there was I interviewed Justin McLeod, the CEO of Hinge, while I was writing my book. And I walked in very skeptically sort of saying,

your tagline is designed to be deleted. That doesn't make any sense. I've worked in tech for a decade. Why would you want to have your user base leave when you have to get a bunch of new users? And his whole thing was ever since we adopted that tagline and really adopted that ethos, we've grown rapidly.

exponentially. And that's because it's much more powerful if your friend through word of mouth says, oh, I met someone on Hinge. It's a great place for people looking for relationships than just sort of gamifying it or doing whatever else. And so...

I feel like Hinge does a really good job at slowing people down. You have to comment on a photo or a written response. You can only send a certain number of likes per day. And so Hinge is really where people go when they're looking for a relationship.

I think it's been fascinating to observe how dating has changed as people have more options. So there's certain groups that are really benefiting from it. So there's groups called thin markets, people over 50, the LGBTQ plus community. They really benefit from dating apps because previously it might've been very hard to identify singles in your area who are in that demographic. And with a dating app, it makes it really easy to do that.

Yeah. An interesting question I have about dating apps. So I moved to Burlingame, which is, you know, south of San Francisco. And we have a 15 month old and we're living in the suburbs. And a lot of our friends kind of moved farther away or places that aren't that convenient. And I realized that some of our closest friends now are people that we've met in the neighborhood and that I don't have a lot of like close, I guess, OSOs in person. And so I was like, gosh, what?

Will there ever be an app that is commonplace for people to meet just people? And I thought it was so funny because my quest on this led me to Bumble, which has a BFF feature, which I could never bring myself to actually use, but it was something that in my mind seemed like,

Well, if I want to meet someone, I could go randomly find them, but I can't because it's COVID. Like, what's the right way to apply everything about dating to meeting interesting people that could become close friends of yours when we're no longer working in person and there's less social events happening? Maybe that comes back sooner, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot and didn't know if you had thoughts.

One of my close friends, his name is Smiley Pozwelski, and he wrote a book called Friendship in the Age of Loneliness. And his book is all about how do you meet friends in your late 20s and 30s and beyond? And I think it's just such an interesting premise. It's basically saying like when you're in high school, when you're in college, there's all these people in the same stage of life as you. Everyone's looking to connect. But at a certain

point it becomes really hard. And so you might be surprised by the number of emails that I get saying, I'd love to have OSOs, but I don't have any friends. Or I'd love to date one of my friends, but first I'd have to make a friend. And so honestly, I think we are living in this loneliness pandemic. And

One of the best ways to find a romantic relationship is to really expand your friendship community, because the more people you know, the more people they know. And so I just kind of want to validate and acknowledge that in general, when people move to the suburbs or move to a new city, it can be really hard to meet friends and that there are some societally accepted ways to meet friends.

potential mates like using Hinge, but there isn't necessarily such an easy way to meet friends. And yeah, I think that's a problem that people could solve. Yeah. This has been so fascinating. Thank you so much for joining. Where should people find you online? And what are you working on right now that they can check out?

Thanks, Chris. Yes. So people can find me at Logan Urie on Twitter and Instagram. They can go to my website, loganuri.com. I really encourage people to take that three tendencies quiz to find out what's holding them back from finding love. And if people are interested in working with me, they can email me about my cohort based course or about one-on-one coaching. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. It was so fun.

What a fun conversation. Thank you so much for listening. I know many of you aren't currently dating, but I hope this was as interesting for you as it was for me. I am so curious about so many things and I always find it fascinating to dive deep into an area I know very little about. If there are any other topics or areas you think would be fun to dive into on the show, please send them my way. I'm Chris at allthehacks.com.

New issue of the newsletter, all about holiday gifting and all the deals you can get shopping in person and online is coming tomorrow. It also has a few fun small gifts I'm really excited to be giving people this year. If you're not already subscribed, you can read it online or sign up at allthehacks.com slash email. That's it for this week. See you all next week.