A recent study discovered that couples reported higher satisfaction with sex and their relationship by focusing on this one thing. Leader of the study, Amy Muise, discusses more about her team's work in Science of Relationships.
Produced by Noah Friedman. Original reporting by Jessica Orwig.
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What's the secret to making a relationship last for years? It all comes down to things you do every day.
Psychologist and life coach Nikki Martinez, Psy.D, LCPC, told INSIDER that building successful relationships takes three key traits — and each one of them requires small but meaningful daily commitments from each partner.
Ready for the long haul? Here's what your relationship needs to have:
This one's no surprise: Open dialogue is the bedrock of good relationships. But if you and your partner are having a little trouble in the communication department, you're definitely not alone:
"[For] every couple that’s ever come to me in therapy, when I ask, 'What are your problems?' They say, 'Communication.' Every single one of them," Martinez said.
There are a few ways to get better at communication. One is simply being a good listener. "Have an agreement that you will completely hear the other person out before you say what you have to say," Martinez said. "You don’t have to agree with what they’re saying, you just listen to their point of view and try to understand it."
Next, remember to look beyond the words your partner is saying.
We communicate the bulk of our emotions via tone of voice, gestures, and body language — not the actual words coming out of our mouths, Martinez said. (If you've ever said "I'm fine" and not meant it in the slightest, you know exactly what she's talking about.) The couples in lasting relationships tend to be better at noticing these nonverbal cues, she added.
"So many couples make these assumptions about what the other person is thinking, what they’re going to do, what they’re going to say, how they’re going to react," Martinez said. "They’ve already played it all out in their mind."
The problem with this habit (Martinez calls it "mind reading") is that it hampers communication. We get so caught up in imagining how our partner will react to a certain question or confession or suggestion that we forget to actually talk to them about it. The worst part: We usually read our partners' minds incorrectly.
"I swear, like, 95% percent of the time, they’re wrong about what the person would have said, how they would have reacted, what they would have done," Martinez said. "It’s sort of like we expect the worst possible reaction."
So keep the mind reading to a minimum and keep talk openly with your partner, even when it comes to prickly topics. Their reaction likely won't be as bad as you've imagined.
When couples on the rocks come to Martinez for help, she makes them commit to a simple exercise: "Every day, they have to tell their partner something they appreciate about them. I don’t care if they leave a note, say it, send an email, text it."
Martinez has found that, at first, many couples dismiss the practice as cheesy. "Then they come back to me and they loved it," she said. "The majority of the time, it’s something they want to keep doing."
There's a simple reason it works: It's easier to remember what it is you love about your partner when you make a habit of pointing out their best qualities every day.
If you start looking for studies on flirting and romantic attraction, the psychologist Nicolas Guéguen's name comes up repeatedly.
For years, Guéguen has been researching the science of heterosexual courtship; he and his colleagues have published multiple papers on what makes a woman more likely to agree to go out with a man.
As it turns out, it's not just about how the guy looks — environmental factors may play a huge role. As in, gentlemen will probably want to pose their request on a sunny day, but not when carrying a gym bag.
Below, we've rounded up some of Guéguen's most intriguing insights.
Keep in mind that you should always take study findings with a grain of salt, especially when they come from a single researcher. There's no telling whether all of these results will apply to you and your romantic interactions.
But taken together, these findings do suggest that there are ways for men to boost their appeal in the eyes of women — without putting in much effort.
SEE ALSO: 13 facts about flirting that single — and married — people should know
The scene: a nightclub in France. The actors: an attractive young man (the experimental confederate) and 120 unsuspecting young women.
The young man went up to women, introduced himself as "Antoine," and asked if they'd like to dance. Half the time, he touched the women lightly on their forearm; half the time he made his request without any physical contact.
Sure enough, women were more likely to agree to the dance when the man had touched their arm.
A similar experiment revealed that men who approached women pedestrians and asked for their phone numbers were more successful when they touched the women's forearms.
One summer, Guéguen sent a bunch of 20-year-old male business students onto the streets of France. He tasked them with soliciting phone numbers from 500 young women.
Half the time, the participants were sent out on sunny days; half the time, they were sent out on cloudy days.
In both conditions, the men introduced themselves as "Antoine," told the woman they found her pretty, and asked for her phone number so he could call her later about getting a drink.
As it turns out, women were significantly more likely to provide their digits when the sun was shining.
Another study found that the "foot-in-the-door" technique, often used by salespeople, can work for romantic interactions, too. Essentially, when you ask someone to do one thing for you, they're more likely to comply with a second request — in this case, to go on a date.
For the study, three men between 19 and 21 years old approached nearly 400 young women walking alone in shopping malls in France.
Sometimes, the men carried a cigarette with them and asked the women for a light; regardless of whether the women had one, they then asked the women if they'd like to have a drink.
Other times, the men simply asked for directions; again, regardless of whether the women were able to provide them, they then asked the women out for a drink.
Still other times, the men asked the women out without asking them for anything else.
Results showed that women accepted the men's requests at a rate of just 3% when they weren't asked for anything. But when asked for a light or to give directions, they agreed about 15% of the time.
Most friendships develop so naturally that you don't even realize how or when they started.
Sometimes, though, you want to make an effort to befriend a new acquaintance or become a better friend to existing pals.
To help you out on that front, we scoured the psychological research to find science-backed strategies to get people to like you.
Read on to find out how to develop better relationships faster.
This is an update of an article originally written by Maggie Zhang.
SEE ALSO: 12 things you're doing that make people dislike you immediately
This strategy is called mirroring, and involves subtly mimicking the other person's behavior. When talking to someone, try copying their body language, gestures, and facial expressions.
In 1999, New York University researchers documented the "chameleon effect," which occurs when people unconsciously mimic each other's behavior, and that mimicry facilitates liking.
Researchers had 78 men and women work on a task with a partner, who was really a confederate working for the researchers. The partners engaged in different levels of mimicry, while researchers secretly videotaped the interactions. At the end of the interaction, the researchers had participants indicate how much they liked those partners.
Sure enough, participants were more likely to say that they liked their partner when their partner had mimicked their behavior.
According to the mere-exposure effect, people tend to like things that are familiar to them.
Knowledge of this phenomenon dates back to the 1950s, when MIT researchers discovered that college students who lived closer together in housing projects were more likely to be friends than students who lived farther apart.
This could be because students who live close by can experience more passive, day-to-day interactions with each other, such as greeting each other in the common room or kitchen. Under certain circumstances, those interactions can develop into full-fledged friendships.
More recently, psychologists at the University of Pittsburgh had four women pose as students in a university psychology class. Each woman showed up in class a different number of times. When experimenters showed male students pictures of the four women, the men demonstrated a greater affinity for those women they'd seen more often in class — even though they hadn't interacted with any of them.
Taken together, these findings suggest that simply spending more time with people can make them like you more. Even if you don't live near your friends, try sticking to a steady routine with them, such as going out for coffee every week or taking a class together.
People will associate the adjectives you use to describe other people with your personality. This phenomenon is called spontaneous trait transference.
One study found that this effect occurred even when people knew certain traits didn't describe the people who had talked about them.
According to Gretchen Rubin, author of books including "The Happiness Project,""whatever you say about other people influences how people see you."
If you describe someone else as genuine and kind, people will also associate you with those qualities. The reverse is also true: If you are constantly trashing people behind their backs, your friends will start to associate the negative qualities with you as well.
As long as monogamy has existed, so has cheating. What makes people stray from the ones they love? We wanted to find out specifically what drives men to be unfaithful.
We talked to a leading expert on the topic, M. Gary Neuman, a psychotherapist and the author of "The Neuman Method" and "The Truth About Cheating." Through his research, Neuman found that the main reason men cheat has little to do with sex or physical attraction.
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Romantic love is shrouded in mystery. What draws people together and how does the falling-in-love process work?
According to Elizabeth Philips, a Ph.D. student in applied experimental and human factors psychology at the University of Central Florida, psychologists have identified ten factors that explain why and how we fall in love.
Here's what it takes:
Kevin Loria contributed to this article.
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NOW WATCH: 5 scientifically proven ways to make someone fall in love with you
Imagine that you've agreed to participate in a scientific study on relationships.
You're sitting in the lab room, waiting for the experiment to begin, and you can't help but notice that the participant sitting next to you is super cute.
The experimenter is going through everyone's paperwork and realizes that she's missing the cutie's relationship status. "I'm single," the cutie tells the experimenter.
Score! Okay, not really, because you're in a relationship.
But now the cutie is talking to you, locking eyes with you, telling you about some other crazy experiment they participated in. At one point they gently touch your arm.
When it comes time to complete the survey, you're asked all sorts of questions about how you'd feel if your significant other (the person you're dating in your real life, outside of the study) was 20 minutes late or if they told other people about something humiliating you'd done.
How do you answer?
That was the question researchers set out to investigate in 2008. They wanted to know if heterosexual men in a room with an attractive, flirty woman would answer the questions differently than heterosexual women in a room with an attractive, flirty man.
That's right — the cutie sitting next to imaginary you was none other than … an experimental confederate! Foiled again!
And as it turns out, men and women did answer the questions differently after interacting with that confederate. Specifically, after flirting with their neighbor, men were less tolerant of their partner's hypothetical transgressions while women were more tolerant.
A follow-up experiment suggests that's because women perceived the attractive person as more of a threat to their relationship than men did.
But research published in 2010 adds some nuance to these findings.
For that study, researchers had heterosexual participants play a computer game in which they had to "shoot" certain people. Sometimes the person was an attractive member of the opposite sex; sometimes the person was an average-looking member of the opposite sex.
Results showed that both men and women in relationships were more likely to accidentally "shoot" the attractive person — but this effect was stronger for men in relationships. The researchers theorize that this is because men found the attractive women threatening.
These results might seem to conflict with the earlier findings. Yet the researchers behind the 2010 study write that it's possible heterosexual men are highly threatened by attractive women, but that their way of protecting themselves doesn't necessarily translate into strengthening their existing relationship.
Interestingly, the 2008 study also found that men could be taught to use "if-then" strategies to defend their relationship from tempting alternatives. In other words: "When an attractive woman approaches me, I will do [whatever] to protect my relationship." In fact, after developing their if-then strategy, men were just as likely as women to protect their partnership, as measured through a virtual-reality game.
Obviously, if every time an attractive person glances your way, you feel animosity toward your partner and are tempted to jump ship, you might be in the wrong relationship. Just saying.
But what if you're satisfied in your relationship and you simply feel flattered and a bit intrigued when someone super-cute deigns to flirt with you? Perhaps — no matter your gender — the best weapon against temptation is one prepared in advance, like an "if-then" strategy.
It's hardly romantic to think about using a psychological tactic to prevent yourself from flirting, or worse, with someone other than your partner. But there's no shame in accepting a little help from science to keep from losing the good thing you've got going.
SEE ALSO: 13 facts about flirting that single — and married — people should know
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NOW WATCH: Research reveals why men cheat, but it's not what you think
We already told you what scientists have determined to be the reasons behind why men cheat. Now it's time to ask the same question about women.
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Whether you’re a manager or an entry-level new hire, you can do your part to make your office a better workplace for the whole team — here are five tips for making it happen.
SEE ALSO: 7 signs you can't trust your coworkers
"The mistake that many people make when building trust is to expect others to trust them without the individual first showing trust,” says Harvey Deutschendorf, an emotional intelligence expert, internationally published author and sought-after speaker. “When we start out with the belief that others are trustworthy until they prove us wrong, we will encourage and motivate others to trust us in return."
If you're a manager, Harvey advises that the best way to demonstrate trust in your employees is to allow them the opportunity to be creative and try new ideas—and stand behind them even when things don't work out as planned.
Your team needs to feel like they're in the loop.
"Share everything that's going on with your work, including bad news, in a timely manner," Harvey advises. Transparency is key to building strong relationships at work.
"Keeping our ideas and feelings private when we first form relationships is a good idea, but as the relationship develops, we need to open up," says Harvey. "Failing to do so creates distrust."
When appropriate, be open—about your opinions, your work and your life outside of the office.
Convey the same information to your boss, your peers and those working under you.
"Be congruent and give the same message consistently regardless of the circumstances or audience," says Harvey. This is particularly key for managers. "Managers need to elevate themselves above the seductive trap of favoritism," says Harvey. "In everyday life, we have people we like more than others and we treat them accordingly. When managers do this, they lose their employees' trust."
The No. 1 driver of a rich life is our relationships.
A lot of people think I define a "Rich Life" as mostly about money. Wrong!
I think money is an important, but small part of a Rich Life.
Also included:
Today, we're going to talk about RELATIONSHIPS.
To start, think about the last time you got excited and shared that excitement with someone else. Maybe it was losing weight, starting a business, traveling somewhere exotic…whatever.
I love noticing people's responses. They're so revealing.
For example, some people say, "WOW! That sounds amazing!"
Others say, "I wish I could do that" (code for: "I could never do that because [insert excuse here]").
Or one of my favorites: "There's more to life than making money."
The last one is very telling. I absolutely loved this comment in a blog post about ambition:
"What irks me are the assumptions inherent in people saying ‘There's more to life than just … 'What have I said that makes you think I'm excluding other ‘important' things? Why are you positioning my ambition and other aspects of life as two separate ideas, as if they don't connect or enhance each other (for example, can't a love for your family fuel your ambition?) … The phrase says a lot more about the person saying it than the person it is being said to."
Statements like, "There's more to life than just … " are what I call extreme-reach barriers. We use these phrases whenever we focus on the worst possible outcomes (irrationally) instead of what we want.
How many of us claim we want something, then let extreme-reach barriers hold us back?
Some of my favorite examples…
That last one may strike a nerve with the systems weirdos who read my site.
Isn't it interesting that we'll read 6,253,468 articles about Pomodoro Technique this and No-Carb that — and then make the most lazy assumptions about what research says is the #1 driver of a Rich Life: our relationships?
My friend Ryan Holiday wrote about this in his post: "The Perfect Spouse Is The Best Life Hack No One Told You About":
"For all the productivity and success advice I've read, shaped and marketed for dozens of authors in the last decade, I've never really seen someone come out and say: Find yourself a spouse who complements and supports you and makes you better. Instead, we're supposed to believe that relationships tie people down, that they are the death knell for creativity and ambition. When Cyril Connolly said that there was 'no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall,' he was voicing, in appalling clarity, the selfishness and self-absorption that draws many people away from love and happiness."
I love Ryan's take.
Not just because he rejects everything our culture (especially Silicon Valley's "success" culture) tells us about marriage, but because he goes deeper.
It's EASY to sit in your computer chair and say, "Screw relationships, I'm trying to change the world." Or to struggle on, assuming your personal life and work life don't dramatically affect each other. It's much more challenging to say, "You know what? Relationships matter a lot. I'm going to figure out how to have an amazing relationship and change the world."
Yes and yes!
Look: I'm not telling you to go get married tomorrow. I'm not married yet, either. The point is that when you fall back on extreme-reach barriers (instead of thinking for yourself), you block yourself from defining — and living — your own Rich Life.
We've all heard it: "Once you get married, bye-bye sex life." I wanted to explore this, so I invited Esther Perel (bestselling author of "Mating in Captivity") into my studio to talk about the unwritten rules of intimacy.
What Esther revealed is that a stale sex life is NOT the inevitable dead-end of a relationship.
It's the result of breaking rules that:
Once you know these rules, you can improve your relationship — piece by piece — and your sex life will thrive automatically.
Here's an 11-minute excerpt from our talk. I was struck by her opinion (at the 3:00 mark) on marrying for love and passion:
SEE ALSO: Science says couples are deluded about how likely they are to cheat on each other
DON'T MISS: There's a key difference in how men and women react to flirting outside their relationship
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It's a lot of couples' worst nightmare: Someone succumbs to temptation and strays.
Maybe it's an emotional affair — they fall in love with a coworker — or maybe it's a sexual affair — a one-night stand after a few drinks.
Psychologists have spent years studying the science of infidelity, including what makes someone inclined to cheat, how your partner is likely to react after you cheat, and how to bounce back from cheating.
Below, we've rounded up some recent findings and how they might help you maintain a strong relationship.
SEE ALSO: 15 relationship facts everybody should know before getting married
A 2008 study found that, after flirting with an attractive person of the opposite sex, men were less tolerant of their partner's transgressions — while women were more so.
It's possible that men don't feel threatened by temptation and women do, or that men do feel threatened but their response isn't to protect the relationship.
The 2008 study also found that men could be taught to use "if-then" strategies to protect their relationship from tempting alternatives.
In other words: "When an attractive woman approaches me, I will do [whatever] to protect my relationship." In fact, after developing their if-then strategy, men were just as likely as women to protect their partnership, as measured through a virtual-reality game.
Recent research suggests that a person who is economically dependent on their spouse is more likely to be unfaithful— and that's especially true for a man who relies financially on a woman.
Interestingly, when women are the breadwinners, they're less likely to cheat. When men are the breadwinners — specifically, when they earn more than 70% of the total household income — they're more likely to cheat.
Relationships are bound to disintegrate — but not yours, of course!
In a recent study, university students reported that the average person of the opposite sex has about a 42% chance of cheating on their partner.
But when it came to their own partners, participants estimated that there was about a 5% chance that their partner had already cheated on them and about an 8% chance that they would cheat on them in the future.
As it turns out, 9% of participants said they'd really strayed.
Who you hang out with matters more than you may think.
In fact, your friendships could have a major impact on your net worth.
After researching the daily habits of wealthy people for five years, author Thomas C. Corley found that they avoid one type of person at all costs: pessimists.
"Self-made millionaires are very particular about who they associate with," Corley writes in his book, "Change Your Habits, Change Your Life.""You are only as successful as those you frequently associate with. The rich are always on the lookout for individuals who are goal-oriented, optimistic, enthusiastic, and who have an overall positive mental outlook."
Eighty-six percent of the rich people in his study made a habit out of associating with other success-minded individuals. On the flip side, "they also make a point to limit their exposure to toxic, negative people," he explains.
The importance of substituting negative friends and acquaintances for positive individuals stems from the fact that positivity was a hallmark of the rich people he studied — and we emulate the people we associate with.
"Long-term success is only possible when you have a positive mental outlook," Corley states.
He's not the only one to suggest that negativity derails success — or that your relationships could affect your financial success.
Nearly a century ago, journalist Napoleon Hill drew similar conclusions after researching over 500 self-made millionaires. "Men take on the nature and the habits and the power of thought of those with who they associate," he wrote in his 1937 bestseller, "Think and Grow Rich," and "there is no hope of success for the person who repels people through a negative personality."
The bottom line: Negativity will derail you from pursuing success, and like attracts like. Avoid the pessimists and start hanging out with the optimists.
SEE ALSO: 13 habits of self-made millionaires, from a man who spent 5 years studying rich people
Millennials are having less sex than previous generations, according to a recent study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.
The study, conducted by researchers at Florida Atlantic University, found that 15% of millennials aged 20 - 24 said they had no sexual partners since turning 18; for people the same age who were born in the 1960s, just 6% said they hadn't had sex.
While some experts believe that better sex education and access to pornography could explain this statistic, Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist and Chief Scientific Advisor to Match.com, suggests millennials aren't sleeping with each other for two key reasons.
First, because millennials are more ambitious in their careers, and second, because they are more cautious about getting into relationships.
Today's young people are "a very ambitious generation," Fisher told Business Insider. She believes that millennials are focusing on their careers over sex and love, and holding off on having regular sex until they're ready to commit to a serious relationship.
"The more you have to offer a person in terms of education and earning power and social net worth, the more likely you are to find a partner of higher 'mate value,'" Fisher said. She describes 'mate value' as a person's worth in a relationship, measured by how much they can give to a partner romantically. Millennials could be avoiding sex because that’s one of the first steps of a relationship, and they are looking "to increase their 'mate value' first," Fisher said.
Young people are also putting their careers ahead of getting married. "In the past, in order to be a grown-up, you really had to be married," the expert said. "This generation is not interested in getting married." While having an active sex life doesn’t mean being interested in marriage, Fisher said that having sex makes people more susceptible to becoming attached and falling in love.
"When you have sex with someone you can catch the feelings of romantic love," she explained, adding that having an orgasm triggers hormones that inspire feelings of attachment, like oxytocin — a hormone released by both sexes when they orgasm. "The bottom line is, casual sex is not casual. It leads to relationships."
I asked Fisher about online dating apps and sites, and why it is young millennials are meeting more people online but having less sex. The biggest problem with online dating is "cognitive overload," she said. "The human brain can’t cope with that many choices ... The more people you meet, the less likely you are to go out with any of them."
Millennials "are more cautious, more careful, more picky," and "more ambitious," she explained, adding that one reason young people are so selective is that many of them come from single-parent homes or have divorced parents, and want to avoid getting divorced themselves.
"The sex is going to come along, they know that. It’s everywhere for them when they want it," Fisher said. "They’re choosing not to have this because they’re trying to do something else."
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NOW WATCH: Couples improved their sex lives in a week with this one simple tip
I hug her goodbye and tell her it was a pleasure to meet her.
As I turn my back and walk away, I instinctively pull out my iPhone, swiping left and right on my way to my car.
3 more Tinder matches, 1 Bumble match and 3 messages on OkCupid fill the contents of my screen.
A laugh comes over me. This is ridiculous. This was my 43rd first date.
What the hell is wrong with women these days? They seem so boring and unattractive.
Or is it me? Is something wrong with me? Am I boring and unattractive?
Is my dating strategy worse than eating raw chicken livers?
All over America, singles are swiping right into love, while others are developing arthritis in our fingers.
I can’t help but feel annoyed as I look out over Seattle’s moonlit lake.
If online dating is the new way of finding love, what was I doing wrong? Why can’t I be one of the 35% of people clicking their way into the hearts of others?
So I set out on a journey to uncover my dating problems.
Today single people no longer have to settle for the girl next door or someone they met at school. We now have the tools to find the “best” soulmate in the world!
If a girl is too short or too tall, she doesn’t cut it.
If she watches a stupid reality TV show like the Kardashians, she’s kicked to the curb.
If her hair is too blond, she’s out.
There’s always another option just one swipe away.
Today, all romantic possibilities are on the table. Online dating apps like Tinder and Bumble create the illusion of endless options.
With endless options of traits, body types and interest in the 24/7 singles bar in the palm of your hand, why settle for less than the best?
On average, people who search for the best put much more time and effort into their romantic search. They go on more dates; they ask more friends for advice, and feel more miserable in the process.
Rather than comparing the women I’ve been going on first dates with, my mind ended up selecting the features of each woman I saw (both in person and online) to create a “fantasy woman.” An ideal that no woman could measure up to.
I created a gorgeous woman who turns heads as she walks by. Bursting with charm and charisma, lighting up every room she enters. A rising start in her career and cherished by all her friends. And that’s just her public persona – at home, she’s mind-blowing in bed, an amazing cook, selfless, and devoted.
Research into this phenomenon has shown that, online, men seek younger and prettier women than they would in real life. Women seek taller and higher-earning men than they normally would. Online, people tend to seek the ideal profile, rather than someone with real potential.
As I’ve clicked through OkCupid, I’ve stumbled upon a beautiful woman, with a witty bio, a job she is passionate about, and lots of shared interests including salsa dancing.
But she’s not… perfect. After looking her over for a few seconds, I go back to my search, leaving her and many other good matches to die in my browser history.
Instead of finding a woman that is good enough, I have to find “the best” woman for me. But how do I know I’ve found the best?
To answer that question, I would have to date every damn person there is. It’s a recipe for countless first dates into complete misery.
Since I’m living in Seattle and being an avid online dater, I am flooded with dating options. Every corner and swipe revealed more potential matches. The world of love has opened the doors into the house of choices, and that’s the problem. According to Sheena Iyengar, an excess of options can lead to indecisions and paralysis.
In one of her studies, she set up a table offering shoppers samples of jam. Sometimes they were offered six types of jam, and other times they offered 24.
The larger selection of jams lured more people to the table for a jammy taste, but they were ten times less likely to buy a jam.
The study, among many others, demonstrates how an overload of options frustrates us from choosing, even when it is not in our self-interest. Having too many jam options prevents us to enjoy a jamming love life.
Let’s say I go out on a date with a brunette-flavored jam. On my way to the bathroom, I check my phone to see texts from three other jams. I open up Tinder and I see even more jam, so I hop on OkCupid and add filters to find even better jam.
Should I go on a second date with this average brunette jam that is good enough, or should I go on dates with the 5 other jams that washed up on the screen of my phone? Could one of them be the best?
Even before asking a girl on a date, my way of analyzing my options are brutal.
Online dating has allowed me to be more picky and analytical. I was messaging a girl the other day and she mentioned that she occasionally likes line dancing. Instantly my mind said, “Yup, you’re done.”
That’s all it took – something fun she did every once in a while. Of course, sometimes these kind of deal breakers end up making their way into the picture even if a contender somehow makes it to the first date.
One of the problems with a first date is we know very little about a person, so we overweight those few things that we learn about the person. Suddenly they’re wearing orange pants and you don’t like orange pants, so they’re out. Or they don’t know what Gureye cheese tastes like, so you don’t pursue the second date.
Next thing you know you’re a serial First Datepreuner, drowning in the sea of choices and rising tide of unrealistically high expectations.
These expectations and illusions cause far more frustration in our pursuit of the “one.”
1) Change expectations: Frustration from online dating is a byproduct of unrealistic expectations. While online dating does expand your potential dating pool and enables you to meet women you’d never meet, most of these people are unavailable to you. Online dating includes a lot of upfront effort that may produce zero results.
You may chat with someone and never go on a date. And most online dating requires a lot of first dates that never turn into second dates because they’re not what you’re looking for, you’re not what they are looking for or the chemistry just isn’t there. As more and more people venture into the virtual world of love, we are not only flooded with options, but we have to filter through lots people and red flags before we find someone that clicks. Online dating is an exhaustive dating strategy because it is like a second job that requires knowledge and skills that very few of us have.
In fact, my research has convinced me that too many people spend way too much time doing the online dating, and not enough time on the actual dating part.
2) Broaden your standards: Given the illusion of options in online dating, it is easy to overlook attractive people who are interesting just because they are two years older or two inches shorter than your ideal. The biggest problem is the selection criteria such as age, height, body type, hair, education, income, ethnicity and religion.
These items tell you pieces about a person, but very little about whether or not she would be a good match for you. Thus, our ridiculous standards cause us to be over selective on traits that aren’t as significant as we think.
Most men who date online use the “0 years up, 10 years down” rule when it comes to age, which deletes a lot of amazing women. According to Christie Hartman a majority of men were interested in women 10 years younger, while the majority of women were not interested in men 10 years older.
"It’s not enough to focus on the women you want; you also need to focus on which women want you."– Christie Hartman
Very often, a 5 year difference doesn’t make a difference. So Christie Hartman suggest a “10 down, 5 up” approach for men in her dating book Changing Your Game.1
By broadening your standards, you’ll expand your chances of having more second and third dates.
3) Optimize your dating portfolio: If online dating is your only source of potential partners, you’re severely castrating your love life. Just like stocks and identity, investing all of your effort in a single dating basket puts your self-esteem and emotional well-being at risk.
Staying involved in work, your friends and family, and volunteering not only help alleviate the exhaustion of online dating, but they also filter people who you are more likely to be compatible with because of your interests in the things you spend your time doing.
4) Go on better first dates: If you’re a man, you typically take the lead in orchestrating the first date. A study titled “Couples’ Shared Participation in Novel and Arousing Activities and Experienced Relationship Quality”2discovered that couples that did novel and exciting activities showed a significantly greater increase in relationship quality.
Most dates we have include coffee, drinks, or a meal. Although we seek to find someone who excites us, we tend to subject our potential romantic partner to a boring resume exchange which limits us to building rapport. Instead, go to an interesting environment that really opens both of you up to get a sense of each other. Studies in social science show that more interesting dates lead to more romantic success.
5) Focus on quality, not quantity: With online dating it’s easy to create a dating policy focused on optimizing the quantity of people we go on dates with. For me this included exploring as many options as I can.
I was consistently choosing to meet new people instead of investing in the potential of a relationship. To combat this, I decided to change my dating strategy to investing more in people and to spend more time with one person. Rather than go on five first dates, why not go on five dates with one person? Normally if I took a girl out on a date and she felt like a six, I wouldn’t invite her on a 2nd date.
Rather I’d be giving my swiping thumb more unnecessary exercise in search of the elusive first date with a nine or ten. When I implemented my new dating strategy, I noticed the sixes on first dates usually evolved to an eight or nine on the second date. The second date allowed me to get to know her better and discover things about her that weren’t initially apparent. Sometimes we would create inside jokes and connect on some really goofy stories.
Being a First Datepreuner in the hunt for Mr. or Ms. Perfect is an exhausting strategy of endless dates that rarely lead to the connection and chemistry that builds on the second and third date. Sadly, there are probably a lot of women who I would have had a quality relationship with who I eliminated for some unrealistic standard. Not to mention this dating strategy is way less stressful than thumb punching countless messages into the screen of your phone with more and more people.
So if you find yourself becoming a First Datepreuner, change your expectations, broaden your standards, go on awesome first dates and focus on quality. Not quantity. Studies show that over time a person’s “mate value” that you decide on their first impression matters far less than a person’s “unique value,” which develops over time spent with them. Plus, your thumb really hates arthritis.
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In a way, the prevailing model of American marriage today seems awesome compared to the traditional one.
No longer do we get hitched because our dad told us to, because the guy is wealthy, or because the girl comes from a high-status family. (Gross.)
Instead, most of us get married if and when we feel like it, to someone we love and who loves us in return. (Awww.)
Except, in case you haven't heard, marriage today can feel impossibly difficult — perhaps even more so than it used to feel.
How's that?
In a recent interview with bestselling author Ramit Sethi, couples therapist Esther Perel shared some insight into why marriage is so darn hard.
Here's what she told Sethi:
"Marrying because you are deeply attracted to someone and have fallen deeply in love with someone and are lusting [after] that person — all of these are rather recent ideas.
"They come with romanticism; they have arrived in the west about 150 years ago. And never has love been the foundation for marriage — and certainly not in love and in passion."
Perel said that, in the traditional model of marriage, "we want companionship, family life, social status, and respectability, and economic support."
But our desire for those things didn't disappear when the modern, romantic model of marriage took hold. We simply added more requirements to the mix.
Here's Perel again:
"Now we want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot — and we live twice as long. That's the model."
These increasing demands can have serious — and not always positive — ramifications for our sex lives.
"We have moved from a model of sexual duty in this romantic arrangement to sexual pleasure and sexual connection," Perel said, "in which desire is, I don't do it [have sex] because it's part of marital duty."
"I do it because I feel like it and you feel like it and we feel like it at the same time and hopefully for each other. There's a lot of conditions that need to be met here."
In other words, when you expect your partner to fulfill all your needs as a human being, there's more room for disappointment. That's especially true in the bedroom.
Perel's comments are especially relevant in light of recent research by the psychologist Eli Finkel, who found that our expectations for American marriage have changed drastically in the last two centuries or so.
As Business Insider's Jessica Orwig has reported, before 1850, people got married for food production, shelter, and protection from violence.
Starting around the mid-19th century, however, people started marrying for companionship and love.
Since 1965, people have seen marriage as optional, and have looked to their spouse for personal fulfillment.
That means that good marriages, in which the partners do fulfill each other's existential needs, are great. And marriages in which partners fall short in a couple categories are highly dissatisfying.
The solution here isn't to go back to the old model of marriage, letting our parents assign us spouses based on their socioeconomic standing. Instead, it's worth being aware that you're placing so many demands on your partner — and that they might be equally demanding of you.
Perhaps, as Finkel suggests, you'll want to look outside your marriage for additional sources of personal fulfillment — like friends and hobbies. Or maybe you and your partner will have a conversation about how grateful you are for what the other does provide, and what each would like to see more of going forward.
Your marriage will never be perfect — but being aware of the broader cultural forces behind your particular issues is perhaps the first step to solving them.
You can watch the full interview with Esther Perel here.
SEE ALSO: 15 relationship facts everybody should know before getting married
More than half of Americans are single, according to a 2014 report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, a figure that's risen 13% since 1976.
And being single might have some surprising benefits. Dr. Bella DePaulo, a social scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, went through more than 800 studies of single and married people and found that singles tended to be more self-reliant and -motivated than people in a relationship.
The single folks were also more likely to develop and grow as individuals, judging by how many goals they set for themselves and how much they'd learned about their personalities.
DePaulo's research was presented at the American Psychological Association's 124th Annual Convention. On top of all that, singles showed an increased value of connections with parents, siblings, friends, and coworkers.
"When people marry, they become more insular," said DePaulo in a press release.
One benefit DePaulo noted behind being self-sufficient is happier emotions. She found that people who relied on themselves more were less likely to experience times of negative emotions. Interestingly enough, the more married people relied on themselves instead of their partners, the more likely they were to experience negative emotions.
Although DePaulo researches the benefits of a single lifestyle, she doesn't want married people to think that they're losing out, either. One of the possible benefits of marriage, for example, might include greater financial stability.
"More than ever, Americans can pursue the ways of living that work best for them. There is no blueprint for the good life," DePaulo added.
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Here's the thing about relationships.
Sometimes they're candlelit date nights, and walks through grassy meadows, and feeding each other cake at your wedding.
But sometimes they're doing the dishes, and comforting a screaming baby, and fighting over whose turn it is to do the dishes or comfort the screaming baby.
Which is to say, while sometimes your love and passion for each other is obvious, sometimes it's really, really not.
So how do you know if your relationship is terrific — or heading south?
Psychologists have spent years studying the traits that are fundamental to successful long-term relationships and come up with a few key ideas. We rounded up some of their most surprising insights below.
A word of caution: If you notice that your relationship doesn't meet all these criteria, that does not necessarily mean you should end things with your partner. Consider this list a general set of guidelines that can help you start evaluating whether your current relationship is bringing you satisfaction and happiness.
SEE ALSO: 15 relationship facts everybody should know before getting married
In 2007, researchers randomly dialed nearly 300 married people and asked them a series of questions about their relationships, as well as how in love they felt.
Results showed that certain relationship characteristics were linked to stronger feelings of love. One especially interesting finding: The more often people reported thinking about their partner when they were apart, the more in love they felt.
The same study included a follow-up experiment with nearly 400 married New Yorkers, which found that difficulty concentrating on other things while you're thinking about your partner is also linked to strong feelings of love — especially for men.
Business Insider's Lauren Friedman has reported that one litmus test of a happy relationship is how enthusiastically each partner responds to the other's good news.
A Psychology Today blog post breaks down four ways a man could respond after his wife tells him she got a promotion at work:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the response that's most closely linked to relationship satisfaction is the "active-constructive" response.
Over the past few decades, we've started placing increasing demands on our spouses. As Business Insider's Jessica Orwig has reported, no longer do we expect them to be financial partners, protectors, and companions — now we also want them to provide personal fulfillment.
The psychologist who produced some of these findings, Eli Finkel, suggests that if you want to be happy in your marriage, it's best not to look to your partner for all your existential needs. Finkel recommends finding yourself in hobbies, friends, and work as well.
There's a handful of married couples competing in the Rio Games— but they probably won't be sharing a bed in the Olympic village.
On Instagram, Canadian heptathlete Brianne Theisen-Eaton (who's married to American decathlete Ashton Eaton) revealed that the couple can't room together during the games.
"No married couple housing," she wrote in response to a commenter. "We each stay in our own building and sleep in our own twin bed."
In 2012, an Olympic historian told the Wall Street Journal that married couples are sometimes allowed to room together — the decision is actually up to each country's Olympics committee.
For example, during the London games four years ago, rifle shooters Katy and Matt Emmons (of Czechoslovakia and the US, respectively) were allowed to stay together in Czech dorms. But, during the same Olympics, Australian shooters Lauryn and Russell Mark were not. (The Marks went on to accuse officials of discrimination.)
For the Eatons, rooming together isn't an option since neither the US nor Canada appears to allow it. But they don't think of it as a bad thing. In fact, the separation helps them focus on the competition at hand.
"For something as big as the Olympics, we prefer to have our own spaces and sleeping places since our schedules and competition days are different," Theisen-Eaton wrote on Instagram.
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Think about a time when you engaged in sex with your partner in an effort to promote a positive outcome in your relationship, such as to feel closer to your partner or enhance intimacy in your relationship.
Now think about a time when you had sex to avoid a negative outcome, such as disappointing your partner or experiencing conflict in your relationship.
As it turns out, the reasons why we have sex in our relationships have important implications for how much sexual desire we have for our partners and how satisfied we are with the sexual experience and with our relationship overall.
In a recent set of studies1, we asked people to reflect on and write about a time when they had sex with their partner to either: 1) pursue a positive outcome in their relationship (approach-motivated sex) or 2) avoid a negative outcome (avoidance-motivated sex). We also had a group of people simply write about the room they were currently in (to act as a comparison group). People who reflected on approach-motivated sexual experiences reported feeling more desire for their partner, more satisfied with their sex life, and happier with their overall relationship compared to people who reflected on avoidance-motivated sexual experiences or people in the control group.
Previous research has shown that people’s goals or reasons for engaging in sex are associated with their desire and satisfaction (discussed here and here). But the current set of studies is the first to show that altering people’s focus towards approach-motivated sex can lead to higher desire and satisfaction. In addition to having people recall past experiences, we also wanted to test whether we could alter people’s goals for future sexual experiences and ultimately enhance their desire and satisfaction.
In our second study, we asked half of our participants to read about the benefits of engaging in approach-motivated sex and we then instructed them to try and focus on approach-motivated reasons for having sex over the next week. That is, we asked them to think about the positive outcomes that they might expect to gain from having sex with their partner. One week later we followed up with them and asked them to report on their sexual experiences and relationship over the past week. People who focused on approach-motivated reasons for having sex (compared to people who were not given any information or instructions about approach-motivated sex), reported having sex more to pursue positive relationship outcomes and ultimately reported more satisfying sexual experiences during that week and felt happier with their overall relationship.
These results are promising for couples who are hoping to reap more benefits from sex and suggest that why a person has sex with their partner is important for their desire and satisfaction. In a relationship, aiming to focus on the positive aspects of a sexual experience, such as feeling closer to a partner or enhancing intimacy in a relationship, may enhance sexual and relationship satisfaction.
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